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

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Bosnia update, June 9, 2025
Floods; Trump's long arm; Prijedor; Denial; Three "fugitives;" and the ongoing secession "crisis."

You'll remember that in February of this year, RS President Dodik was convicted of violating Bosnian state laws and decrees of the High Representative (see a full description in my previous blog entry, here). In a first-instance decision, Dodik was sentenced to a year in prison and banned from participation in politics for six years. The decision was non-binding, pending appeal. Dodik and his lawyers have appealed; there will be a hearing on June 12th, and a decision is expected in the fall.

Before I go into the story of Dodik's intensification of his secession attempts and the escalation of his manufactured crisis, let me go over a few highlights of real news from Bosnia:

Floods: Late March saw serious flooding in many parts of this country that boasts well over 200 rivers. Serious damage took place in the north around Gradiška, Teslić, Doboj, and Maglaj. Banja Luka and Prijedor also witnessed overflows and damage to hundreds of houses and buildings.

The long arm of Trump: The US president's capricious and destructive tariff policies are having their impact on Bosnia-Herzegovina; as of early April the tarrif for the country was placed at 35%, leading to a possible loss of as much as 60 million KM (over $40 million) annually. All exports to the US are at risk. Meanwhile, Trump is also pressuring Bosnia, along with Serbia and other neighboring countries, to receive immigrants who are to be deported from the US. 

Prijedor: May 31 was the 33rd anniversary of the day that local radio and television announced the demand that Bosniaks and Croats, along with all other residents who were not Serbs, must wear a white armband when outside of their homes. This marked the rapid escalation of the extreme Serb secessionist assault on the municipality, resulting in the establishment of several notorious concentration camps, the expulsion of most of the non-Serb population, the murder of well over three thousand people, and the creation of around 400 mass graves in the area. Attempts to establish a monument to the more than 100 children killed during the war have so far been thwarted. And the Dodik regime saw fit to come to Prijedor the day before this anniversary to commemorate the anniversary of the "defense against Muslim and paramilitary formations."

Denial: In late May Vojin Pavlović, leader of the Bratunac-based "Istočna Alternativa" (Eastern Alternative) was convicted of genocide denial and glorification of war criminals, and sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment in a first-instance finding. This is the man whose organization has for years been putting up posters of Putin and Mladić on the walls of buildings in Bratunac and Srebrenica.

Finally, release of my six-part series on environmental resistance in Bosnia-Herzegovina is now underway, being published online by the LeftEast collective. Based on my visits to many environmental activists last fall, the series discusses river protection; resistance to mining companies; and the criminal network exploiting coal reserves in many parts of the country. You can see the series, complete with photos, here. Four articles are posted, with two more to come.

Dodik's attempts to create a Bosnian "North Korea"; his life as a "fugitive," and international response to the "crisis."

I put the word "crisis" in quotation marks because the constant use of the word over the past 30-odd years has devalued its meaning completely and, along the way, off-handedly served up a distorted evaluation of the nature of Bosnian state functions. To put it briefly, let it be understood that crisis is a permanent condition built into the Dayton system.

The nature of that system is more and more clarified by the ongoing (since February) phenomenon of three leaders of the Republika Srpska, now regularly called "fugitives" by the Federation press, coming and going freely across international borders, creating more and more blatant secessionist measures in their entity, and flagrantly mocking what passes for the state-level authorities of Bosnia. This refers to Dodik, RS Prime Minister Radovan Višković, and RSNS (Republika Srpska National Assembly) Speaker Nenad Stevandić, all of whom are wanted for undermining the constitutional order of the state and failure to appear at legal hearings.

In the course of his escalated secessionist moves, in late March Dodik orchestrated the passage of a series of laws in the NSRS  that, among other things, prohibited the operation of the state police (SIPA), the Bosnian Court, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, and the state prosecutor on the territory of the Serb-controlled entity. Another new law prohibited the implementation of Constitutional Court decisions in the RS, while punishing all RS judicial institutions that don't observe the prohibitions. The RS Ministry of Finance was also directed to cease funding any institution that failed to obey. Along with these measures, Dodik called for all Serb members of SIPA and other state institutions to resign and join parallel RS para-state bodies.

The attempt to further separate the RS from Bosnia's state functions carried on for the next couple of months. Ultimately it turned out that only about a half-dozen Serbs quit SIPA and other agencies. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to arrest Dodik, Višković, and Stevandić. There was a feeble attempt to bring in Dodik during his attendance at a meeting in East Sarajevo, when several unarmed police from SIPA arrived to serve him a warrant. They were met by RS police who warned that they would use "any means" to prevent the arrest. The SIPA officials left, and soon afterwards, the RS Prosecutor announced charges against seven of them for an "illegal attempt to arrest" and for "abuse of official position or authorization." The Bosnian prosecutor filed counter-charges against the RS officers who resisted Dodik's arrest. The whole affair looked more like a performance than an actual arrest attempt.

Meanwhile, both Dodik and Stevandić have made several public trips across international borders, leading to the Bosnian state court's request of Interpol to issue an international warrant for their arrest. Interpol declined to honor the request, and an appeal of this decision failed.

One notable voyage by Dodik in late March took him to Israel via Serbia, ostensibly to participate in a "conference against antisemitism" in Jerusalem. While in Israel, Dodik attempted to make the most of his affinity for the country and, as he expressed it, the historical commonality between Serbs and Jews, saying: "Serbs and Jews are peoples who have faced attempts at total eradication—and they survived. That is why we understand each other. And that is why we stand together,” and "Just as Israel defends itself unapologetically, Republika Srpska defends its right to exist, decide, and uphold the legacy of its ancestors." With these statements, Dodik reinforced the crass equation of Zionism with Judaism; echoed the US administration's weaponization of a dishonest definition of antisemitism; and played to his home audience by pulling out the perennial victim card. He tried to cozy up to the Israeli regime as a way to counter burgeoning criticism and sanctions from the West.

Dodik clearly expressed commonality with an authoritarian, racist regime. In this vein, in early April he announced support of French extremist Marine Le Pen. He compared himself with her, saying, "She too is paying the price because she has the support of her people...I support her dedication to the strengthening of the sovereignty of her people and the state. I support her advocacy for the defense of traditional Christian and family values." Along these lines, Dodik's close ally, Željka Cvijanović, Serb member of the three-part state level presidency, recently traveled to UN headquarters in New York. There, she made a show of unctuous flattery directed at the current US regime—again, in keeping with her (and Dodik's) instinctive sense of commonality with the new US government.

The sycophantic display by Dodik and his ilk towards Western authoritarians (Netanyahu, Trump) has, for now, fallen flat, leaving a pathetic picture. It's different with the authoritarians on the other side. Putin and Orban are only too happy to pal around with Dodik, and Serbian president Vučić has his uses for the RS president as well. Dodik recently announced that he will seek to have the RS join a military alliance between Serbia and Hungary. It is doubtful that there's any constitutional foundation for such an arrangement between a Bosnian entity and a foreign government.

Dodik's venture in Israel failed dramatically. It was just hours after his arrival at the Jerusalem conference that the Bosnian court contacted Interpol seeking an international warrant for Dodik's arrest. It was not known for several days yet that Interpol would reject this request, and the Israeli authorities "politely" requested Dodik's departure from the conference. Several prominent rabbis and analysts had declined to participate in the conference because of Dodik's presence, pointing out his history of genocide denial. Dodik failed to obtain the attention and support he sought from Netanyahu and, on his departure, stated, "I came to Israel to speak against antisemitism. Instead of that, I felt unwelcome, like an intruder."

International pressure against Dodik has steadily increased over the past few months; Germany and Austria have sanctioned both Dodik and the Republika Srpska, suspending millions of euros in infrastructure projects in response to his undermining of the constitutional order. The two countries also imposed travel bans on Dodik, and on Višković and Stevandić as well. The UK and the US have placed sanctions on Dodik twice since 2017, and there is bilateral pressure in Congress to strengthen those measures. Poland and the Netherlands are both preparing sanctions, and Lithuania also recently imposed them.

In response, Dodik has lashed out in various directions: He reacted malevolently to the German moves against him, saying, "Germany will never get our lithium because Germany is our enemy and has always been the enemy of the Serb people." He also engaged an Israeli lawyer—to the tune of $840,000—to lobby Trump for the removal of sanctions against him. The lawyer, Marc Zell, is a settler who lives in the occupied West Bank, and has offices in New York, Washington DC, Moscow, and several other countries.

Furthermore, in early April Germany’s Minister for Europe and Climate, Anna Lührmann, visited Banja Luka to meet with members of the opposition. However, the meeting was summarily canceled when the RS Ministry of the Interior declared Lührmann persona non grata and ordered police to escort her out of the entity. None of this behavior bodes well for the Republika Srpska, whose fourth-largest trading partner is Germany. Ms. Lührmann was unflappable, saying that "It is clear that Dodik does not speak on behalf of the population. People there want good relations with Germany and the European Union. They know that the European path leads to stability and prosperity. Many German companies want to invest in Republika Srpska." She added, "One of the reasons for my trip to Banja Luka was to explain to the people that sanctions against Dodik and his inner circle are not aimed at citizens but rather to show that we stand with them." Lührmann wrapped up her comments by saying, "I have yet to meet a person from Republika Srpska who wants to emigrate to Russia. People want to go to Germany, Austria, and the European Union. That is a clear signal."

Dodik made an attempt to ingratiate Trump in order to get him to reduce sanctions: he proposed a Ukraine-style minerals deal, saying that "the RS is ready to explore a partnership in the field of strategic minerals with Hungary and the [USA]," adding, "We are seeking the America that once was, and that it can be again...as a guarantor of peace, a partner in development, and a protector of our sovereignty." So far, the current US regime has shown no interest nor sympathy for Dodik's situation.

Constitutional Court pushes back

In late May the state-level Constitutional Court finally reacted to the RS Parliament's passage of the above-mentioned laws barring state institutions from functioning in the Republika Srpska. It annulled the prohibitions against the Bosnian Court, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, and SIPA. It also struck down the notorious "foreign agents law," which stigmatized NGOs and excluded them from engaging in public policy or in political discussion. The Court reiterated that the entity government may not override state-level authority; only the state Parliament can do so.

Dodik responded by calling High Representative Schmidt, who supported the Constitutional Court's decisions, "a tourist" with no official power, threatening to arrest him if he enters the RS. He lashed out at Bosniaks in general, saying that the "Muslims are the most ordinary genetic liars" and that they should "return to their original Catholic or Orthodox religion—then we will see that Serbs are in the majority in Bosnia."

Meanwhile, neither SIPA nor any other state or entity police agency has made a serious attempt to detain Dodik or the other fugitives. This is not to say that SIPA has obeyed the RS's unconstitutional law that the agency must refrain from working in the entity. Between Dodik's conviction and early April, SIPA had already conducted four operations in the RS, including a raid of ten locations in Banja Luka that resulted in the arrest of numerous suspects for human trafficking.

There's a certain logic to putting off an attempt to arrest Dodik, in that while the RS does not have an army that could establish secession and independence, Dodik controls several paramilitary outfits and the militarized RS police. Any one of these will probably employ violence in response to an arrest attempt, and it is smart to avoid this.

This brings us to the question of what the outcome could be of the present episode of the crisis. I would not venture to make a prediction, but I don't see Bosnia teetering on the edge of dissolution. You may dispute my assertion, as some people have. I have never thought that there would be a violent dissolution nor an outright secession—for that matter, I have not read any of Dodik's dozens of crises as the "real thing," including the present one. Rather, I have seen them as performances that push along a trend from political stagnation, which is what Bosnia has now, toward a resigned de facto separation. Somewhere in that continuum, depending on your evaluation, is where Bosnia stands now. Where it will proceed to is up for discussion.

As columnist Gojko Berić recently wrote, the hunt for Milorad Dodik is unfolding mainly in the media—and you could say that that's where the "crisis" is primarily taking place, as well. On the other hand, one seasoned observer (initials CH) of Bosnia reminded me that the Dragan Čović, leader of the Croat nationalist party, has been making significant inroads towards his own brand of separatism or autonomy, while supporting Dodik's similar trend with dedication. That's another can of worms that's more than I can discuss here. But it lends weight to the possibility that the secessionist forces—and this refers not only to Serbs—could actually prevail. One variant short of actual political separation that might satisfy the secessionists would be the functional operation of three different ethno-states in all but name.