For all intents and purposes, this is a team that should not exist. In 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were killed during the Srebrenica genocide. Several of the players who will take the field for Bosnia this week are the children of survivors of that genocide. Others are children of families who were displaced by ethnic cleansing. Players like Esmir Bajraktarević belong to a generation born abroad because their parents escaped unimaginable violence and rebuilt their lives in places they had never expected to call home. Born in Wisconsin to parents from Srebrenica, Bajraktarević has spoken about carrying Bosnia’s painful history “in his blood.”
Bosnia's Esmir Bajraktarević, second from left, celebrates with teammates after scoring his side's second goal during the 2026 World Cup Group H qualifier soccer match between Bosnia and Romania in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. —Armin Durgut—AP
For more than thirty years, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political life has been organized around the management of ethnic difference. The Dayton Peace Accords ended the war in 1995 but also embedded ethnicity as the organizing principle of politics. That compromise secured peace. Over time, however, it has rewarded politicians who seek office on the basis of ethnic identity rather than competence, and who remain in power by spreading fear and discord.
The team also embodies a civic ideal largely absent from Bosnia’s politics. It represents one country rather than competing constituent peoples and ethnicities, helping to explain why it resonates so deeply across Bosnia and among its diaspora.
On the pitch, players do not pass the ball to a fellow Muslim Bosniak, Orthodox Serb, or Catholic Croat. They pass to the teammate best placed to score for their country. That sounds obvious. In a political system organized around division, it is revolutionary.
Every spontaneous celebration beneath the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina challenges the central claim of ethnic nationalists: that the country’s people have no meaningful future together. But as someone put it, a politics that fears joy is deeply insecure.
But it can show that merit can prevail and that when citizens unite around a common purpose, they are stronger than any narrow political project.
Whatever happens on the pitch, these players have already changed their country. Not because they have reached the last 32 of a World Cup, but because they have shown that Bosnia’s future need not be imprisoned by its past. For ninety minutes at a time, they have offered a vision of Bosnia and Herzegovina in which merit outweighs division, trust overcomes fear, and a shared civic identity is allowed to flourish.
That is more than a football lesson. It is a political one. May it prevail.
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