SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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March 10, 2020
Dodik's latest "crisis": demanding the ouster of foreign judges
 

In the last 15-odd years, one of the most ironic statements you can hear about politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina is that there is a crisis underway. I remember that in 2007, about a year after Milorad Dodik became prime minister of the Serb-controlled entity, he brought political functions in Bosnia to a halt. Everyone said it was a "crisis." Then Dodik backed off. There was another Dodik-engineered crisis about one thing or another approximately every year or year and a half after that, each one ending with Dodik easing off. Eventually, it became clear that Dodik was, for his own political benefit, playing the national mood like a symphony violinist, and that the crisis was not an episodic thing, but a permanent one.

It was, and is, the permanent dysfunctionality of the political structure of Bosnia as crafted by the Dayton agreement and the Constitution it contains. In a way, this problem was summed up recently by former High Representative Christian Schwartz-Schilling, who wrote, "Dayton turned Bosnia-Herzegovina into an ungovernable state."

I say "in a way," because in fact the problem is not that the state doesn't function. It functions perfectly well according to the wishes of the corrupt ethno-nationalist elite. Their special powers are built into Dayton, which divides people by ethnicity, enshrining the war-created ethnic homogenization. Those divided people have few choices about how to participate in politics. There are choices, but the least risky one is to elect and re-elect the same corrupt leaders because they are seen to represent the three main ethnicities. Stuck in this dynamic, ordinary people don't feel that they have much of a choice other than to stick with the entrenched elite.

So now, for the past month or so, another "crisis" is taking place in Bosnia. It started last November, when the RS assembly adopted a law on the disposition of agricultural land that is not privately owned. The law stipulated that agricultural land that is a "public good" is property of the Republika Srpska—the entity, rather than property of the Bosnian state. Bosniak and Croat politicians appealed this decision; when the RS Constitutional Court rejected their appeal in January, they took it to the state-level Constitutional Court. On February 7 that court ruled the law unconstitutional, saying that only the state can manage agricultural property.

It was at this point that Dodik and his colleagues chose to draw a line and resist. They chose the Constitutional Court as their target. This court, a Dayton institution, is composed of seven judges: two Croats, two Serbs, two Bosniaks, and three foreigners chosen by the president of the European Court of Human Rights in consultation with the three-member Bosnian state presidency. In short order, Dodik declared that Serb officials were not going to participate in politics at the state level until the foreign judges were removed from the court and that composition was abolished.

At this time much rhetoric was circulated about the "meddling of foreign officials," the "violation of Bosnian sovereignty," "return to original Dayton." This last item refers to the RS leaders' objection to what they have perceived as the transfer of legal powers from the entities to the state that should have remained at the entity level. They see this as a machination performed by successive High Representatives in service of the "centralizing" intentions mainly on the part of Bosniak politicians who, they say, wish to control all Bosnia-Herzegovina by virtue of their demographic majority.

In mid-February the RS parliament held a special meeting and drafted a set of conclusions. The principal of these was the demand to remove the three foreign judges on the Constitutional Court. This demand was to be backed up by a boycott of state institutions by RS representatives until such a decision would be made.

The conclusions were couched in the phrasing of opposition to the "anti-Dayton behavior" of the Constitutional Court. Proponents of the boycott and of last fall's RS agricultural property law have ignored the fact that not only is the Constitutional Court (and its composition) a Dayton institution, but also that it is the highest court in the land and all citizens are obliged to respect its decisions. RS officials have ignored the court's decisions before, and are doing so in the present case.

In an atmosphere of heightened polemics over the ensuing several weeks, there has been much talk about secession by the RS, most likely following a referendum on the question to be held in the entity. In fact, on one occasion Dodik announced, using English phrasing, that it was time for "Goodbye Bosnia-Herzegovina, welcome RS-exit."

On one hand, most commentators agree that if there were a referendum on RS secession, a majority of RS citizens would vote in favor. At least 80% to 90% of those citizens are Serbs, and they have been under the sway of Dodik's entity-controlled media for decades. On the other hand, an actual secession would not be able to take place without violence. The possibilities for a war scenario are broad. Everyone involved knows this. Dodik knows this, even though he often abstractly talks about a non-violent secession "when the time is right."

In this vein, RS opposition politicians, primarily of the SDS and PDP (both of whom were soundly defeated in the national elections in October 2018) have objected to Dodik's behavior on several grounds. They challenge his reckless and dangerous call for secession. Also, Dodik's operatives formulated a plan for replacement of the three international judges with three, one of each main ethnicity, to be selected by the entity parliaments. Then Dodik and his colleagues changed this to have the state-level presidency choose the judges. So the RS opposition objected to this, on the grounds that it would remove power from the entity institutions. In other words, the opposition politicians don't object to Dodik's insular, nationalist and separatist behavior, but to the fact that he is the one wielding power, and not they.

And after all, it is not they, the opposition figures, who are in the position to implement widespread corruption, nepotism, and fraud, and this rankles them. It makes them desperate and they have lately proven that they are, for now, unable to switch places with Dodik's garnitura (political clique). They see Dodik skillfully manipulating public opinion and, half in admiration and half in resentment, wish they were in his shoes. They miss the old (pre-2006) days, when their parties were in power. There's nothing that shows that they can return.

So the opposition brings up the truth about the agricultural law: it was designed to profit Dodik's accomplices. Shortly after the Constitutional Court decision Mirko Sarović, president of the SDS, pointed out that the agricultural land that was the subject of the court case was secretly allocated, under an extended concession, to "functionaries of the ruling party" and that some of that land was even transferred to their private ownership. Šarović did not advocate that the land should become state property, as the court has decided, but that it should go to the local communities. For some reason, his revelation did not lead to a scandal regarding the behavior of Dodik's group.

Meanwhile, in response to the talk of referendum and secession, a great nervousness prevailed in the land. Much print and electronic media space was taken up in discussion of a variety of war scenarios. Reaching for new heights of disingenuous sleaze, Dodik's colleagues said things like, "We're not really talking about secession. We just want to have a dialogue. We didn't expect that the Bosniaks would react like this, but that they would comprehend it as a call for discussion, not a call for political hatred." On the other hand, when a reporter at a news conference annoyed Dodik by asking how long this "artificial crisis" was going to last, Dodik responded, "The crises will disappear when Bosnia-Herzegovina disappears."

Among the set of conclusions the RS parliament drafted in mid-February, one called for RS representatives to inform the parliament of the implementation of its conclusions within 60 days. In the meantime, RS officials have announced that they will not actually boycott state institutions; rather, they will participate in parliamentary sessions and in the government, but they will not make any decisions nor pass any laws until the foreign judges leave Bosnia. This stalling will hurt the RS as much as any other part of Bosnia, when the failure to approve budgets results in failure to allocate funds to the entities.

Another move that RS officials have taken was to request a demarcation of the "border" between that entity and the Federation. There's no staving off the impression that this is a preliminary step to secession. Given this, Federation officials declined to participate—and pointed out that there is no "border" between the two entities. The word "border" is used in the Dayton agreement only to refer to the international borders between Bosnia and its neighboring countries. The line between the entities is just not a border, just a line—an administrative boundary. In any case, there is no provision in Dayton for secession; such a measure would have to be approved by all three ethnicities, and that is not going to happen.

Naturally, there has been plenty of conjecture and commentary on the reasons for Dodik's turbulent move at this time. Why now? What has prompted his renewed upsetting the apple cart?

One rather facile explanation is that it's an election year (on the municipal level). Well, every other year is an election year. And it was rather early in the year to start with this kind of manipulation. It's not that it doesn't work. Dodik's constituency has shown to be prepared to follow him sheeplike.

Another explanation has to do with Dodik's recent signing of the "reform plan" that ended the more than a year's delay in formation of the Bosnian government after the October 2018 elections, and gave Dodik's party, the SNSD, the opportunity to take its position in the government and state parliaments. In return, it is conjectured, he signed the reform plan that is a euphemism for the Annual National Plan that constitutes one step forward in the NATO membership process (for details on this development, see my article here). So the hypothesis is that Dodik chose to throw a wrench in the workings of the Bosnian court system in order to live down what is perceived as his "sellout" to NATO. One commentator proposes that Dodik is doing all this under pressure from Russia, which does not want to see Bosnia join NATO.

At least part of this is plausible, that is, that Dodik is reiterating his anti-Bosnia stance after his embarrassing compromise. However, I'm just not so sure. Could it be a combination of these two theories, plus a matter of Dodik just keeping in practice? Repeating past disruptions ("crises") to keep everyone off guard? I think that's as likely as anything else. The disruption is an old habit that Dodik has to keep dusted off. And presumably, he feels that he is in a politically strong position now to absorb whatever risks could result from the present disruption.

Then, the question is, where does this lead? Some people say, well, Dodik has brought up referendums 15 (or 30) times before, all leading to nothing. They also say that he knows it's not a good idea to start a war, and that Serbia probably won't support it, and Russia certainly not. However, the snowball is already rolling downhill and there comes a point in the course of political machinations when they get out of everyone's control. That has happened before. It could happen again, if enough people get so nervous that they start acting without any restraint.

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