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

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Bosnia update, April 21, 2024
EU Accession ~ Electoral Law Changes ~ UN Resolution on Srebrenica Genocide—reaction and denial

There is a lot of news from the last couple of months to cover.  But first, a couple of announcements:

You'll recall that in my last blog, I wrote at length about environmental destruction—mostly wrought by international companies, especially via mining—and local resistance to this kind of development. I'm glad to announce that the on-line magazine LeftEast published my essay, "International Companies Wreak Havoc on the Environment: Is Bosnia Becoming One Big European Mine?" in two parts, here and here. Take a look. It also got quickly translated and is being published serially, starting here.

Meanwhile, the documentary photographer Fabrice Dekoninck has finally published his much-awaited photo monograph, Between Fears and Hope. Publicity describes the book thus: "This long-term work paints a portrait of a Bosnian society traumatised by the legacy of the war, which, in the absence of historical truth, takes the risk of seeing it resurface. In the light of the return of war in Europe and the resurgence of nationalism worldwide, this book provides crucial insights into the risks posed to peace by instrumentalisation of war memories." You can learn more about the book, see some sample photographs, and order it here. 

Green light from European Commission to open negotiations with Bosnia on EU accession

You'll recall that in my February 10 blog I mentioned the discussion between the European Commission and Bosnia that was taking place at the time. The EU had called for several conditions to be fulfilled by Bosnia before it could be approved for accession negotiations. Since then, Bosnia took care of a couple more of these requirements. In mid-February the state-level parliament unanimously adopted a law on prevention of money laundering; this law also includes measures against financing of terrorism.

By early March parliament also adopted a law on prevention of conflict of interest in Bosnian institutions. This creates stricter checks on the activities of office holders and their families. Politicians must report possession of all movable property worth more than €2,500, and all real estate. Neither they nor their families may receive more than €100 in gifts.

This law is instituted to satisfy the demands of the EU for establishment of rule of law, but one has to wonder how politicians and their friends will make the living that they are accustomed to without resorting to bribes and money laundering.

In any event, the European Commission stated that it was impressed, saying that Bosnia "showed strong dedication to moving forward with reforms." In the first half of March it recommended to the European Council that accession negotiations with Bosnia should be opened. The Commission noted that "in one year, Bosnia had made more progress in compliance than it had made in the past decade." The Commission did not point out that this progress could easily have been made more than two decades ago, had there been the political will.

And notwithstanding the European Commission's recommendation, it still criticized the Republika Srpska for refusing to recognize decisions taken by the Bosnian Constitutional Court, and for promulgating an unconstitutional law criminalizing libel.

In comment on the decision, some EU countries (including Denmark and Netherlands) nevertheless remarked that negotiations for accession should not be opened, for fear that this would be an unacceptable political compromise.

Croat member of the state-level presidency Željko Komšić noted that it remained to create a law harmonizing the functions of the state courts with those of the EU, and that there should be a law that protects territorial integrity, as well as one that ensures honest and fair elections. Komšić questioned whether the kind of state Bosnia is now, with its built-in discrimination, could actually become a member of the EU. He said that if the EU were to accept Bosnia as a member in its present condition, that would be a great victory for the ethno-nationalists of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as "for their bosses in Zagreb, Belgrade, and why not mention Moscow?"

On March 21, the European Council officially opened the way for negotiations for EU membership. Of course, more reforms will be necessary before the negotiations actually start. And there are 35 "chapters" of laws and regulations, divided into six "clusters," that must be harmonized with the EU in a structured course of negotiations, before membership is granted. These six clusters address the internal market and competitiveness; the green agenda; sustainable connectivity; and resources and agriculture. Broadly speaking, negotiations must address problems related to rule of law, joint foreign policy, security, the judiciary, the functioning of democratic institutions, and public administration. This is the cluster that is opened first in the negotiations, and closed last.

It's worth noting that Serbia and Montenegro are in the negotiation phase—but they have been in that status for over a decade.

After the green light was given, top officials naturally boasted about their achievement. Federation Prime Minister Nermin Nikšić said, "Finally we have moved forward and taken advantage of the hand that the EU extended to us. This is a great thing, above all, for all our citizens." One response in the magazine "Slobodna Bosna" read, "All the merits you ascribe to yourself belong to Vladimir Putin and the genocide that is underway in Ukraine."

In an article titled "DPC on why granting opening of accession negotiations is counterproductive for EU/Western and BiH interests," the Democratization Policy Council issued one of the most incisive statements characterizing the green-light decision as "magical thinking," and "a triumph of hope over experience." The article calls the decision the "latest and grimmest chapter in a 2-decades-old policy of artificial/fake progress of Bosnia-Herzegovina on the EU path, enabled by concessions..." The DPC predicts that as things are moving, the "reality is that a Dayton BiH will never enter the EU or NATO, not because these goals are impossible, but since the Dayton system allows the political elites enormous latitude to abuse public funds and trust without accountability...and importing BiH [into the EU] as it is would import inherent, curated instability." The article further notes that concessions and appeasement to Dodik and Čović encourage them, and are a sign of weakness of the EU, emboldening their ethno-nationalist and secessionist agendas.

You can read the DPC article here. Incidentally, NATO also granted Bosnia-Herzegovina candidate status during a meeting in late March.

Given the probability, in my opinion, that everything the DPC wrote about Bosnia's EU accession prospects is accurate, the information that the green light for negotiations has been given should probably be classified as yet more " not-news news."

High Representative Schmidt implements technical changes in electoral laws, causing uproar

The most salient problems with elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina are two-fold: first, the Dayton system is discriminatory against nearly everyone in one way or another: first of all, against people who are not members of one of the three "constituent peoples" (konstitutivni narodi: the Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs), and then against Croats and Bosniaks in the RS, against Serbs in the Federation, and against anyone who wants to declare as a "Bosnian" rather than one of the other categories. For more on this subject, and the relevant European Court of Human Rights rulings, see my previous blog here.

The second outstanding problem is one of so-called "legitimate representation for Croats," terminology promoted by HDZ chief Dragan Čović and his fellow Croat crypto-separatists. They can't stand the fact that a non-nationalist politician who declares as a Croat, Željko Komšić, has won the seat for Croat member of the state-level presidency four times. This rankles the Croat nationalists something fierce and they have been fighting for control not only of the office, but of the electoral process, for quite some years.

Komšić's successive victories have been possible because the Croat and Bosniak members of the presidency are elected from the Federation, and anyone—Croat, Bosniak, or "Other", can vote for any candidate there. It's something approaching democracy that's not existent in the Republika Srpska, where one can only vote for a selection of Serb candidates. Čović's crowd has been angling to change this process, but that's not what I want to go into here—see my previous blog entries here and here to read more about that. There will certainly be more on the subject sooner or later.

The latest in electoral law news is that High Representative Christian Schmidt, using the Bonn Powers, decreed a broad range of technical electoral laws imposing such things as scanners for ballots; video surveillance at polling stations; publication of the names of the polling station committee members with their party affiliation; prohibition of early campaigning; expanded prohibition of misuse of public funding; allowing all citizens to review the voter rolls; ensuring voting by mail; better education of electoral administration officials; automatic recounts if there are significant problems at a given polling station; balanced sex representation in the Central Elections Commission (CIK); enhanced safety measures for election materials; greater access for disabled people; opening a special account for financing of campaign; expanding the definition of hate speech and media rules; greater sanctions for political subjects and individuals who have broken the rules...whew!!

All that, and a whole lot more—114 new rules altogether. No convicted war criminals may hold office (and there are several doing so at the moment). No official may hold office both in the executive branch and in the legislative branch. The CIK will appoint the polling station committees, preventing political bargaining and manipulation in that sphere. Biometric identification will be established for voters, preventing operators from voting seven or eight times with different sets of identification. Schmidt also extended the tenure of the present members of the CIK to 2027 to prevent political manipulation in the meantime.

These are measures that any relatively well-functioning democracy has already implemented. They are also all guidelines that have been routinely violated—sometimes in quite imaginative ways (see my report on the 2022 general elections here). It is hard to imagine how any of the crooked political operators in Bosnia-Herzegovina can object to the measures with a semblance of propriety, but they have found ways. For example, Čović said that the measures are "not necessary and not acceptable," because they "render the role of Parliament and the democratic selection of representatives senseless." It's true, as others have pointed out, that the Bosnian government, in a sovereign state, should have formulated these rules on their own. But they didn't. I see Schmidt's measures, coming on the heels of the European Council decision, to be a way of advancing the rule of law—and that could be significant, in advance of October's upcoming local elections.

The strongest reaction was from RS President Dodik and his SNSD colleagues. Dodik suggested that "the colonial administration annul all the decisions of the fake Schmidt within seven days" and if not, "our representatives will call a session of the Bosnian Parliamentary Assembly to do so, and to forbid Bosnian organs of government to implement them, and to forbid Schmidt's legal Acts to be published." Dodik further advocated that the CIK be "disabled as a para-state institution," and that the ambassadors of Great Britain and the US, along with Schmidt, be declared "enemies of the people" and expelled from Bosnia. Dodik threatened that if this does not happen, then RS representatives will interrupt their work and withdraw from state-level institutions—as they have already withdrawn from the Constitutional Court.

In the course of several Republika Srpska National Assembly (NSRS) sessions in recent weeks, the body has developed draft laws creating an RS Election Commission to supersede the work of the state-level CIK, now pending public discussion. The RSCIK would make its own appointments to city and municipal polling stations within the entity. Such measures will violate the state-level laws that set CIK as the body whose authority cannot be violated at the entity level.

During the same sessions, the NSRS also made a change in the way that the entity's governmental employees can be paid their salaries. This has become a problem because 27 RS citizens are now under sanctions by the US government, including several high-level members of the RS government. Those include Dodik, Serb member of the state-level presidency Željka Cvijanović, RS Prime Minister Radovan Višković, and Speaker of the NSRS Nenad Stevandić—all cronies of Dodik and members or allies of his SNSD party. They are in trouble because of a measure connected to the sanctions that has closed their bank accounts. So the NSRS created a law that allows them to be paid with cash.

UN considers resolution on Srebrenica

In the first part of April, Germany and Rwanda introduced a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly pertaining to the genocide at Srebrenica. The resolution, to be discussed mid-April and voted on in early May, would designate July 11 as an international "Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica," to be observed by UN member states annually. The resolution also condemns genocide denial and glorification of war criminals, urges states to observe the requirements of the UN Genocide Convention, and calls on Bosnian authorities to work to find and identify the rest of the missing victims of the genocide.

The reaction of officials in neighboring Serbia, and of Bosnian Serb leaders, was as strident as the reaction to Schmidt's decreed electoral laws. During a visit to Belgrade, Dodik declared, "Bosnia-Herzegovina may not survive this...I have said, and I say publicly, that the genocide in Srebrenica did not happen. We believe that putting the resolution on Srebrenica to vote in the UN General Assembly is a direct destruction of the possibility to live in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is directly directed [sic] against Srpska and the Serbian people as a whole.”

On April 17 the resolution was discussed at the UN. More than a dozen states supported it, and Serbia, Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and North Korea opposed it. The next day, in the midst of the bustle of the Republika Srpska parliament's development of new entity-based election laws, the SNSD organized a rally called "Srpska is Calling You" (Srpska te zove) in Banja Luka in opposition to the proposed UN resolution.

This took place on Thursday, April 18, with President Dodik stating that "Srebrenica was a mistake and a huge crime, but it wasn't genocide," and declaring that if the resolution passes, then the RS will "work rapidly on measures and actions aimed at its independence. One of those actions is the Electoral Law. We do not want to live in the same state with you [Bosniaks] and we will not live in the same state with you...We will do it (split) when the conditions are right.” He noted that if Trump is wins the presidential election this year in the US, then "that would create different conditions in which we will play."

Dodik ended his speech saying, "Long live Russia!" There were huge banners present, depicting the likeness of Vladimir Putin.

Dodik's address was followed by Darko Banjac, president of the People's Party of Srpska (Narodna Partija Srpske). Mentioning the EU, he declared, "I don't want to enter that fa**ot organization. At this moment Ana Brnabić, Prime Minister of Serbia and an open lesbian, was standing right behind him with an uncomfortable expression on her face.

Organizers of the rally stated that some 50,000 people attended. The Serbia-based organization "Archive of Public Gatherings" examined aerial photos of the event and assessed the number at closer to 9,000. A friend of mine who was present noted that many were bused in from Serbia.

Immediately after the rally, members of the RS Parliament returned to session to conclude work on the draft electoral law. Besides promoting the electoral law and cash payments for officials under sanction, it also reaffirmed support for the findings of a "research group" it had formed a few years ago, the "Independent International Commission for Research of the Suffering of All Peoples in the Srebrenica Region from 1992 to 1995." The group had presented its conclusions to the effect that somewhere "between 1,500 and 3,000" people were killed upon the fall of Srebrenica, and that "most of them were soldiers."

Odds and ends: Dodik's love affair with Russia and Putin

Back in February, President Dodik made one of his regular pilgrimages to Russia, where he met with Putin for ten minutes. During that short meeting Putin presented Dodik with the Alexander Nevsky award, the third-highest honor in Russian affairs. Putin said to Dodik, "You're always welcome in the Russian Federation. The Republika Srpska is our friend, and cooperation between Russia and the Republika Srpska has connected us in different ways..."

During a meeting with Russian media, Dodik stated, "There have been many years of struggle by the RS against attempts of the West to abolish our entity and to centralize Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Anglo-Saxons are prepared to remove me, and the West is demonstrating this via means of the colonial, inquisitional court that has no constitutional basis. They want to discipline me and force me to fulfill their demands.

High Representative Schmidt commented on Dodik's meeting with Putin, saying that as an EU candidate, Bosnia-Herzegovina is obligated to follow the security and foreign affairs directives of the EU. This rules out cooperation with countries under sanctions, and personal meetings with the leaders of those states.

In mid-March Russia held its national elections, in which Putin was re-elected president for a fifth time. Absentee voting was held in Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Putin lost in the latter two states, but won the vote in the Republika Srpska. There, the RS "Palace" (state building) in Banja Luka was lit up in the colors of the Russian flag. Dodik hailed the "victory," saying that the news "was met with joy among Serb people because they see Putin as a great statesman and friend on whom they can always depend."

Meanwhile, Dodik's slow but ongoing trial for violation of decrees by the High Representative (see here) continues. In mid-April Dodik attended a hearing where testimony was presented. This took place at the same time that the criminal trial of D. Trump was underway in New York City. Dodik stayed awake, but brought a book to read during the proceedings. When the judge asked if everyone were present, Dodik raised a hand nonchalantly, without looking up.