Surprisingly good news!

A copy of this week’s Economist is sitting on the sofa next to me. On the cover the headline declares: ‘Afghanistan’, adding, underneath the picture of an American coffin being loaded into a waiting vehicle, ‘The growing threat of failure’. I’ve not read the accompanying article yet but I can hazard a guess at the point it’s making. American, along with its allies, has invested heavily in Afghanistan. Time, money and human life have been poured into trying to create a stable democracy. Yet, years down the road, it could all go horribly to waste. Such are the perils of interventionism.

All too often I find myself reading articles about the Balkans in general, or Bosnia and Herzegovina more specifically, that suggest the same threat still hangs over this region. So imagine my surprise to discover this week’s lead article in the Europe section of the same magazine was title ‘Entering the Yugosphere: former Yugoslavia patches itself together’. What followed was probably the most positive piece of writing I’ve seen about the current situation.

It talks about a ‘huge shift in the daily life of the western Balkans [that] is happening without fanfare.’ The reason for this, in the opinion of The Economist, is the sad fact that ‘good news is no news’. As someone who often finds the reality of their day to day life at odds with the bleak press predictions about the future of this region I was encouraged to think that perhaps my optimism is not entirely misplaced. Time will tell but I, for one, will not give up hope.