ANALYSIS
by Georgio Konstandi
Georgio Konstandi is the Founder and Editor of The Scroll. Georgio spent two months volunteering at the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potočari, and is currently working on a project to create an educational resource for British schools on the 1992-1995 genocide in eastern Bosnia.
On 2 October, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina will head to the polls for the country’s General Elections. On the ballot will be the makeup of Bosnia’s Presidency as well as national, entity, and cantonal governments. Meanwhile, the very survival of Bosnia is at stake.
For months (even years) now, both Serb and Croat nationalists have been escalating their secessionist and Islamophobic rhetoric, matched with emboldened political manoeuvres. Embodying their agendas are the likes of Dragan Čović (Croat nationalist leader), Milorad Dodik (Serb nationalist leader), and their respective patrons in Zagreb (Croatian president, Zoran Milanović) and Belgrade (Serbian president, Alexander Vučić). All the while, Kremlin officials have sustained a range of covert and overt support for ethnonationalism in Bosnia
There are two aspects of the ongoing nationalist onslaught against Bosnia’s sovereignty which, from both a historical and humanitarian perspective, should alarm us most. First, the increasingly overt cuddling-up between Serb and Croat nationalists, both within Bosnia and without. Second, the growing complicity of European officials in decision-making positions (e.g. the Office of the High Representative), upon which today’s nationalists can rely.
If history is to be our guide, then lawmakers and diplomats must take an active role in protecting Bosnia from partition. For if Kremlin-backed nationalists are left to triumph here, the political and humanitarian costs will know no bounds.
Serb and Croat nationalists: expedient allies
Ever since Bosnia declared its independence from rump Yugoslavia in 1992, target number one of Serb and Croat nationalists has been the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) people.
The last time Serb and Croat imperialists were left to (unsuccessfully) carve up Bosnia, they left a bloody trail of 100,000 dead, the majority of whom were Bosniak civilians. Concentration camps returned to Europe less than fifty years after the Holocaust. Rape camps were the sites of genocidal rape against thousands of Bosnian women.
It is not impertinent or alarmist to bring up this historical context, as voices from both nationalist camps would have us believe. Rather, this atrocity-laden legacy of Serb and Croat nationalism must act as the guiding compass for pro-Bosnia diplomacy.
When we use the term ‘pro-Bosnia’, we of course mean all those who support a united, multiethnic Bosnia with a functioning democracy rooted in equal rights for all (and not based on special rights for so-called ‘constituent peoples’).
As in the 1990s, today’s Serb and Croat nationalists are singing from the same hymn sheet. As then, today’s nationalist-imperialist axis can be outlined as follows: Croat and Serb secessionists seeking a monopoly on Bosnia’s internal politics (Dragan Čović’s HDZ, Milorad Dodik’s SNSD), backed by imperialist leaders in Zagreb (President Milanović) and Belgrade (President Vučić), all conspiring to undermine Bosnia’s sovereignty and prospects of liberal democracy.
On the eve of the Bosnian War, in March 1991, Croatian nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman met with then President of crumbling Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević. Evidence, including Tudjman’s own admission, suggests the two leaders discussed the partitioning of Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia.
By November 1991, the Croat nationalist party in Bosnia, the HDZ, had declared the establishment of their so-called ‘Herceg-Bosna’, with the full support of the Croatian political establishment. ‘Herceg-Bosna’ was an ethnostate Croat nationalist forces attempted to establish within Bosnia in the 1990s. Just two months later, in January 1992, Serb nationalists declared their own ‘Serb Republic of BiH’, later called ‘Republika Srpska’.
But there was one major problem for both ‘Republika Srpska’ and ‘Herceg-Bosna’: their claims to ‘Serb’ and ‘Croat’ land stretched across most of multiethnic Bosnian territory. And in March 1992, the Bosnian people voted for independence as a unified, multiethnic nation.
Therefore, the only method for the so-called ‘Republika Srpska’ and ‘Herceg-Bosna’ to establish their ‘Serb’ and ‘Croat’ states respectively, was through genocidal ethnic cleansing.
During the Bosnian War, the ‘Republika Srpska’ political elite admitted that Croat imperialist forces were their allies of expedience. In the 17th session of the ‘Assembly of the Serb nation’ (July 1992), convicted genocidaire Radovan Karadžić framed the imperialist attacks against Bosnia as a Serb-Croat fight against Islam:
“Neither Serbs nor Croats can control Islam’s penetration of Europe through birth rates because within 5-6 years Muslims would make up 51% of the population in a unified Bosnia… even if we don’t see eye to eye with the Croats in a common state, we will probably agree with each other when we leave the common state [of Bosnia].“
In August 1992, Momčilo Krajišnik, then chair of the Serb Assembly who would later be convicted of crimes against humanity by the ICTY, called for the international community to recognise the Croat nationalist ethnostate, ‘Herceg-Bosna’:
“If the international community has recognised Bosnia and Herzegovina, then it should recognise Herceg-Bosna and Serb Bosnia. Then all will be fair and square.”
None of this changes the fact that thousands of Croat civilians were killed in the name of ‘Republika Srpska’, and thousands of Serb civilians in the name of ‘Herceg-Bosna’. Indeed, convicted war criminal and genocidaire, Ratko Mladić, made clear in the 34th session of the Serb Assembly (August 1993) that any cooperation between Serb and Croat imperialists was strictly of expedience:
“We […] helped the Croats. Not because Mr. Karadžić or I love them […] but because we had to bring Srebrenica to breaking point.”
Today, Serb and Croat nationalist leaders are rhetorically cuddling up to one another again. In the midst of Bosnia’s election campaign, the nationalist-imperialist axis that has long haunted free Bosnia, echoes familiar threats. Croatian President, Zoran Milanović, who has publicly relativised and denied the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, calls Milorad Dodik “a Croatian ally in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
Meanwhile, at a nationalist election rally in the Bosnian town of Jajce, Croat candidate for the Bosnian Presidency, Borjana Krišto, called Bosnia and Herzegovina “a union state”. This is the same misnomer used by Serb nationalist leader, Milorad Dodik, who until Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s re-invasion, was aggressively pushing for the secession of the Republika Srpska entity from the rest of BiH.
HDZ leader, Dragan Čović, with whom Krišto is affiliated and who is backed by Zagreb, shares Dodik’s desire for secession. Čović and his HDZ party have openly called for a ‘third entity’ (mimicking the bloody ethnostate of ‘Herceg-Bosna’) to be formed.
Despite admitting that Russia’s stalled re-invasion of Ukraine put a brakes on his planned secession, Dodik has since ramped up his threats against Bosnia during this election campaign. Addressing the Republika Srpska Assembly, Dodik claimed that “Bosnia is an example of the fact that Christians and Muslims cannot live together harmoniously”.
If that wasn’t enough, Dodik made an explicit threat against Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which the Republika Srpska entity is a part. “Bosnia and Herzegovina as it has been created today by external forces, must disappear,” he announced to the RS Assembly.
This is the “ally in Bosnia” lauded by Croatian president and fellow genocide denier, Zoran Milanović. This is the man in whose private residence Milanović spent three hours only this week. And so, Serb and Croat nationalists seem to be, once again, allies of expedience. As in the 1990s, they are counting on support from the European political establishment to achieve their goals.
Europe fiddles while Bosnia burns
While the number of murdered Bosnians mounted in the 1990s, the ‘international community’ maintained its arms embargo, ostensibly against ‘all parties’ of the war. The Serb and Croat military forces – the VRS and the HVO – could rely on a steady supply of weapons from their patrons in Belgrade and Zagreb. Meanwhile, the Bosnian army seeking to defend its territory against invaders, found itself starved of supplies.
Alija Izetbegović, the President of BiH during the war, presented evidence of Serb-run concentration camps in northern and eastern Bosnia to his French counterpart, François Mitterand, as early as June 1992. Mitterand’s former aide, Bernard Kouchner, later admitted that Mitterand refused to investigate evidence of the concentration camps. Bill Clinton, who was US President at the time, says Mitterand was “less willing to see a Muslim-led unified Bosnia”.
We now know that tens of thousands of Bosnian civilians, mostly Bosniaks, were held in concentration camps and detention camps across Bosnia between 1992-1996. Unspeakable acts of torture, as well as killings, unfolded in Bosnia, while European leaders maintained their policy of non-intervention and an arms embargo which only prevented Bosnians from defending their country.
Today, the concentration camps are gone. But European leaders are walking a similar fine line between disinterest and complicity in Serb and Croat nationalism.
The Office of the High Representative (OHR) was created upon the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, which forced Bosnian troops to halt their liberation of their own country and reward the Serb nationalist elite with their Republika Srpska entity. The OHR is charged with ensuring the implementation of “civilian aspects” of Dayton and is committed “to ensure that Bosnia and Herzegovina evolves into a peaceful and viable democracy”.
The Bosnian people were alarmed, therefore, when in July this year, the OHR declared it would be imposing an election law reform drafted by Croatia’s Foreign Ministry (!) and backed by the Croat nationalist party, the HDZ.
This election law reform proposed to change how Bosniak, Croat and Serb delegates are distributed in the administrative units (cantons) of the Federation of BiH (not in the Republika Srpska entity).
The proposed reform threatened to further entrench Bosnia’s existing sectarian framework which only recognises voters who identify as one of the three ‘constituent peoples’ (Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs). Voters in Federation cantons were set to lose their delegate(s) if their ethnic group made up less than 3% of the same group’s population in the Federation.
The removed delegate would instead be given to a canton with a larger population of that ethnic group. Analysts have pointed out that this would disproportionately benefit the Croat and Serb nationalist parties in the Federation’s parliament. Hardly a step “to ensure that Bosnia and Herzegovina evolves into a peaceful and viable democracy”.
The OHR backed down from imposing this Zagreb-drafted reform, largely because of the threat of unrest which became apparent when thousands of Bosnians took to Sarajevo’s street to protest. But the HDZ and Zagreb are openly calling for the reform to go ahead, and the OHR continues to consult with them both on this issue. Meanwhile, the OHR refuses to meet with multiethnic parties in Bosnia. A slap in the face for Bosnian democrats, a victory for the nationalist-imperialist axis.
All the while, authoritarian leaders within Europe continue to prop up their nationalist pals in Bosnia. Serb secessionist Milorad Dodik continues to brag about his close relationship with Vladimir Putin, and says he will travel to Moscow once again before the upcoming elections.
Milorad Dodik has been one of the many recipients of the Kremlin’s $300 million splurge on far-right pals since 2014. This is all the more relevant given the open threat against Bosnia made by the Russian Ambassador to BiH, Igor Kalbukhov, back in March of this year.
As Russian forces were re-invading Ukraine, Kalbukhov told Bosnian media: “If (Bosnia and Herzegovina) decides to be a member of any alliance, that is an internal matter. Our response is a different matter. Ukraine’s example shows what we expect.” As we now know, the re-invasion of non-NATO member Ukraine had little to do with alliances.
So while Croat nationalists can rely on support from EU member Croatia, and alarmingly perhaps even the OHR, Dodik’s support stems largely from the Kremlin, Belgrade and other illiberal states such as EU member Hungary.
The question, therefore, is where do Bosnia’s democrats turn to ensure the same imperialist forces do not try to carve up their country? If Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that military alliances, not poetics, protect democracy. It is often too easy to forget that behind such commitments lie human lives at risk of destruction. In the 1990s, Europe fiddled while Bosnia burned. The vultures of Serb and Croat nationalism are circling again; the world mustn’t give them the carcass they want.
All views expressed are the writer’s own.
Article Image Credit: PxHere
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