On March 1st, the 30th anniversary of its independence, Bosnia and Herzegovina came out to celebrate. Milorad Dodik, the country’s Bosnian Serb representative, was in a less festive mood. His non-attendance at ceremonies held in Sarajevo was conspicuous enough; his assessment of them as “illegitimate” now has analysts spooked.
For many Bosnians, it conjures up a nightmarish past of ethnic and religious enmity. They well remember how securing their independence from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia plunged their country into chaos. In a 1992 referendum, an overwhelming majority of 99.7%, with a voter turnout of 63.4%, had voted in favor. The European Economic Community and the U.S. recognised Bosnia as an independent state on April 7th of that year. Nationalist Bosnian Serbs had however boycotted the referendum; almost none had cast their vote. The Serbs consequently dismissed the referendum as invalid, and exploited the fact in a most cynical fashion.
That month, Serb obstinacy turned violent, when their paramilitary forces laid siege to the capital of Sarajevo. Many of the towns in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina with large Muslim Bosniak populations, such as Zvornik, Foča, and Višegrad, came under attack. The country descended into a genocidal civil war, which only NATO-intervention brought to a close. Not two weeks before Christmas, in 1995 an uneasy truce had been realized. Over 100,000 had perished in the intervening years.
In an effort to maintain peace, the U.S.-sponsored Dayton Peace Accords created two main administrative units in Bosnia—the Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska (RS), and the Bosniak-Croat majority Federation of BiH. Some autonomy was given to the two entities, yet important decisions were left to be made on the federal level. There, a three-way presidency—each member of which represents one of the three main ethnic groups—and a council of ministers oversee the country’s main institutions, including army, top judiciary, and tax administration.
As previously reported in The European Conservative, Bosnian Serb nationalists, under their president Dodik, lately have taken steps to extricate themselves from this federal framework. For years, Dodik has been threatening to break up Bosnia, saying that the Republika Srpska uniting with Serbia would be the “final frame.”
It is little surprise then that his latest stunt is worrisome. “Illegitimate” is the last word a strained Europe wants to hear a Bosnian Serb leader utter. It unfortunately is but another addition to an already extensive list of such political provocations. Each constitutes a dowsing of gasoline on a—for now only smoldering—fire, and are fast becoming commonplace. The risk of waking old demons, which might revisit this most unhappy Balkan country, no one wants to chance.
The EU, with the fallout from the Ukrainian crisis on its front burner, is eager to hold off such a horrid sequel. In light of a deteriorating “security situation internationally,” which has the “potential to spread instability to Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the EU had already beefed up its EUROFOR (European Union Force in BiH) presence in the region, deploying 500 personnel in late February, 2022. Over the next two weeks, these would bolster forces there already, and maintain a “safe and secure environment.” The deployment has now brought the total number (a coalition of Austrian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Slovakian forces) up to 1,100. EUFOR, also known as Operation Althea, succeeded NATO’s Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR) in 2004. The Sarajevo-based Dnevni avaz, the country’s most influential newspaper, captured footage of the convoy as it drove towards the city.
On Twitter, Bosnia’s international peace envoy Christian Schmidt welcomed the decision, and paid the troops a visit.
Last Saturday, the peacekeeping force announced that, starting Monday, France, as a “voluntary national contribution,” would conduct fast-jet training flights over Bosnia.
That decision came only one day after a meeting of NATO’s foreign ministers, where Ukraine was high on the agenda. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that it is the Kremlin’s ambition to “recreate a sphere of influence and deny other countries the right to choose their own path.” So too with Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose Bosnian Serbs receive support from Moscow, and is at risk of “even more intervention, subversion and potentially even attacks by the Russian armed forces,” he said, adding that “Russia’s aggression has created a new normal for our security, where fundamental principles are contested through the use of force and we face the threat of conflict for years to come.”
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s federal leadership has been ringing that bell for a while now. Worried about violent flare-ups in her country, its foreign minister Bisera Turkovic said in a Newsweek interview that the Ukraine war “is causing fear and concern in our region that this might now be the beginning of a larger trend in Eastern Europe,” and that “the Balkans is Europe’s Achilles heel.” In a separate March 3th tweet, she stated her desire for Bosnia and Herzegovina to soon gain entry to both the European Union and NATO, and called on these institutions to speed up that process.
Turkovic considers Dodics “open announcements of secession and gross violations of the Dayton peace agreement,” to be openly supported by Russia and that it has caused the most serious political and security crisis in the country since its signing in 1995. “The western Balkans requires urgent protection and needs the EU to sanction those who endanger the peace and security of Bosnia and Herzegovina as it may very much be the next battleground,” she ventured to prophesy.
Moscow has always been clear in its intent to step in should Bosnia join the U.S.-led military alliance. It has the good fortune that, among Bosnian Serbs, pro-Russian sentiment is high, and there will be resistance. Even when under EU and U.S. sanctions for his rhetoric and threats of secession, Moscow backing makes Dodik feel increasingly emboldened. Only last year, he said: “if anybody tries to stop us, we have friends who will defend us.”
True “friends” are known to do and return favors, as the U.N.’s vote on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on March 2th revealed. According to the web portal Klix, Dodik sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres through its Russian mission, asking him to stop the Bosnian ambassador from voting on the resolution because the three-way presidency had not agreed on a joint stance on the matter. Dodik’s foreign policy advisor, Ana Trisic-Babic, denied that he tried to stop the vote.
A few days after Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Reuf Bajrovic, co-chair of the US-Europe Alliance organization, warned in an Al Jazeera piece about the danger posed by proxy wars in the region. “Putin’s proxies in the Balkans will be watching very closely the aggression against Ukraine because of the implications,” he said, adding that Russian successes there will embolden them to try to use violence to reach their political aims. “This is especially true in the case of Milorad Dodik and [leader of the Bosnian Croat nationalist party HDZ] Dragan Covic–Putin’s key allies in Bosnia,” he added. Covic and other nationalist Croat leaders have advocated electoral reforms for years. If implemented, these would create a third entity, separated from the Bosniaks.
In that same article, Kurt Bassuener, senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council, told Al Jazeera there’s “real potential for Russians to try to activate their partners,” adding that “[Russia] has been very much in favor of what [Covic] has been trying to pull, too, but Dodik is their most valuable player in the Balkans.” Russia’s recent publication of a list of foreign states that “commit unfriendly actions” only confirms this. Notable absentees are Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, the latter of which has outright refused to toe the EU-line on its Russia sanctions. At the same time, it is mobilizing, calling upon conscripts to strengthen its military, already outfitted with Russian arms.
Some see light amidst the dark and gloom. On Twitter, the Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina stated that the Ukraine crisis presents “a unique opportunity for Bosnia to deal a decisive blow to Putin-backed separatists in Bosnia,” offering as one suggestion the “isolation and destruction of structures that are the extended arm of the Kremlin.”
Ajla Delkic, head of the Advisory Council, told the publication that “we must pre-emptively dismantle Putin’s ability to project power and fix the mistakes made in the 1990s that allowed bad actors to use force to carve up territory and commit genocide.” While think tanks are useful tools in our Balkans kit, one can not help but sense that the real work, yet to be done, will demand our utmost resolve. To that end, idealism and pragmatism need to be kept in careful balance. No one should fool himself into believing the region is not a quagmire already—victories, as well as setbacks, are certain to be ample.
