I'm traveling through Bosnia and Herzegovina now and I've been learning a lot about the history of the country, the most recent war, and the outlook for the country. There still appears to be deep separations based on ethnic/religious lines to the point where there are separate mayors for the same town, separate power companies, separate cell phone companies, and so on, for the different groups.
Even the people living in Bosnia and Herzegovina cheer for football teams based on their ethnic identity which has resulted in riots / beatings numerous times over the last ten-ish years.
Why was it important to keep Bosnia and Herzegovina together as one country with three governments in one instead of letting some parts go to Croatia, some parts go to Serbia, and some parts be their own independent state? I have asked this question to the locals, checked this reddit's FAQ, and looked on google but haven't found an answer.
Thanks!
Many of the deep separations that exist now were caused by the war, and did not exist before. So there was no reason back then (in the 1990s) to split up the state because of them.
That said -- the international community did not want to split up Bosnia and Herzegovina because of a general belief that borders should be preserved. When Yugoslavia split up, the new borders were the borders of the Yugoslavian states, and so even though one country turned into five, in a sense the borders were preserved. The reason for this doctrine is that unclear borders tend to cause even more conflicts. There are many examples where countries are still fighting wars over border conflicts that go back centuries.
Looking at it practically: the ethnic map of Bosnia-Herzegovina was very complicated before the war, and still is pretty complicated. Splitting it up along ethnic lines would have created incredibly complex borders with lots of enclaves and exclaves, which would have guaranteed conflicts for centuries to come and made simple things like who maintains roads and water pipes impossible to figure out.