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

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Bosnia update, September 10, 2024
Sanctions and Separatists ~ EU assistance (or not) ~ Political chameleons ~ Srebrenica ~ Fires

In the three months since I put out my last Bosnia blog, summer happened. With summer, the 29th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide took place. Environmental activism carried on in the face of ongoing environmental aggression by international mining companies. More recently, the dangers of a changing environment made themselves ever more plain, with fires breaking out in many parts of the country. Meanwhile, the usual back-and-forth among separatists and profiteers in the political class continued like last summer's re-runs, in the face of increasingly biting sanctions levied by the US.

Sanctions and Separatists

The list of political operators targeted by US sanctions keeps getting longer. Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik, his son and daughter, and several in-laws and cronies are all sanctioned for violating Dayton and the decrees of the High Representative. Along with these figures, a number of companies they are involved in are also under sanction. These sanctions have grown real teeth as the banks that the sanctioned individuals and companies do business with have been warned that they will be punished if that business continues. As a result, many politicians (not just in the Republika Srpska) and companies have had their bank accounts closed. This forces them to pay their employees with cash.

A recent tactic to circumvent the sanctions is to form a new company—which is actually the same company, with the same owners and directors, under a different name. You can form a new company in the Republika Srpska for half a euro. For example, the television company close to Dodik, Alternativna Televizija (ATV), formed a puppet company named Video Audio Media, or VAM. VAM's address is the same as that of ATV. The company Prointer, in which Dodik's son Igor is closely involved, formed a replacement firm named Invictus Technology Group at the same address as Prointer.

One of the measures for which individuals in the Republika Srpska are being targeted is, of course, their advocacy of secession from Bosnia-Herzegovina. In June of this year, in line with a decades-long litany of such declarations, Dodik stated that for the RS to remain within Bosnia was a "waste of time and opportunities." He went further this time, saying that it would be "natural and historically justified" for the RS to join Serbia. Dodik regularly asserts that the RS will, eventually, undergo a mutually agreed "peaceful separation" from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Dodik made these statements on the heels of a "Pan-Serbian assembly" held in Belgrade in early June. The conference, attended by representatives from Serbia, the RS, Montenegro, and Kosovo, formulated a 49-point "Declaration for the Protection of National and Political Rights and the Common Future of the Serbian People" that said that the Serbian people "constitute a single entity." The Declaration was adopted by the parliaments of Serbia and the RS. It stated, among other things, that Serbia's territorial integrity and sovereignty continues to include Kosovo.

More recently, in late August Dodik proclaimed that the RS "has not had and does not have a plan for secession, rather, it has a plan to protect its autonomy." Defining "secession" as the "violent separation of territory against the will of others," Dodik repeated that "peaceful separation" would take place with the consent of the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina, because BiH cannot function as a state. This superficial amelioration of his secessionist stance came soon after CIA Director William Burns visited Serbia and Bosnia. Upon his visit, Burns condemned the "secessionist rhetoric and behavior" of the RS leaders, and expressed support for Bosnia's territorial integrity.

On the X platform, Dodik responded that the RS has "never opposed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina along the lines of the Dayton agreement, and secession has never been our policy. But the RS has the right to fight politically for its status according to Dayton."

It is best to note that Dodik's rhetorical flip-flops intensify as each next election approaches, and upcoming nationwide municipal elections are set to take place on October 5. There are many commentators who assert that Dodik does not sincerely hope for secession, but finds its advocacy effective for keeping his constituency nervous and supportive of his extreme ideas—while diverting people's attention from the ongoing plunder committed by him, his family, and his accomplices.

70 million

Another political goal of questionable reality is the process of Bosnia-Herzegovina becoming a member of the European Union. The following example highlights unwillingness both on the part of doctrinaire separatists in the Serb-controlled entity, and Bosniak nationalists on the other side.

The European Union presented its "Growth Plan for the Western Balkans" in late 2023, including strategies for reform of the states involved; fostering regional integration; and accelerating their accession to the EU. In this framework, the EU presented Bosnia-Herzegovina with a reform agenda containing 113 conditions that would have to be fulfilled in order for Bosnia to receive an assistance tranche of 70 million euros. The conditions pertained to enhancement of rule of law, strengthening of security, and economic reform, among other requirements.

As it happened, Bosnia was able to satisfy 110 of the reform conditions, but there were three outstanding requirements that the RS blocked—each of them, because they would lead to enhanced cooperation between the Serb-controlled entity and the state. That is, they would help to make Bosnia a more functional state—thereby taking some of the wind out of Dodik's sails when he repeats how dysfunctional Bosnia is.

The first two of these unfulfilled requirements are dry and technical, but important for the functioning of the state. One is the establishment of a "unique citizen's number" to be used in emergency cases throughout the country—this, where the RS leadership regularly mobilizes to prevent the possibility of such overarching processes (such as allowing a hospital patient in one entity to be cared for in the other, or in another country). Another condition is the abolition of the entity veto where the distribution of state-level assistance is concerned. Again, this would create smoother functioning of such financial appropriations by centralizing the approval process—a centralization that's strongly opposed by the separatists.

The third unfulfilled condition is actually two-fold; first, it requires the Republika Srpska to fill its empty positions on the state-level Constitutional Court. The RS has withdrawn one of its two judges from this court before his retirement date, and never replaced the one who had retired earlier. This was again a manifestation of the RS's refusal to acknowledge the authority of the state-level Court, even though the Constitution is a document contained in the Dayton agreement. Second, the RS (and every entity, District, and citizen) would be required to honor all decisions of the Constitutional Court.

These three conditions were a "red line" for the leaders of the Republika Srpska, and they were willing to forego much-needed EU funds in order to stand by their separatist principles. Discussing this behavior, the title of one column read, "Stupidity stronger than EU money?"

On the Federation side, several Cantons under the sway of the Bosniak nationalist SDA, the party of Bakir Izetbegović, declined to approve the reform document because the reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a "state" had been removed from a few places—on the demands of the RS politicians. Responding to this obstruction, members of other political parties in the Federation pointed out that the term "state" was still present in the reform agenda in hundreds of places, and they accused the SDA operatives of perpetrating an "electoral move."

A free-for-all of back-and-forth recriminations ensued; and Bosnia did not receive 70 million euros from the EU—the only one of the six Western Balkan states to lose this opportunity.

Dragana Čavka, chameleon

I should mention one other instance of political chicanery and finagling. In early July the RS National Assembly nominated Dragana Čavka to become a member of the administrative committee of RTRS, the RS Radio-Television. She was nominated to fill a position as a Bosniak member—her declared ethnicity.

Politicians and other operatives filling politically appointed positions must declare themselves as either Croat, Serb, Bosniak, or "Other," and this makes it possible for a given political body (House of Peoples, the Presidency, etc.) to be filled with the required proportion of different ethnicities. On the whole, people declare their ethnicity as the one they were born with. However, in recent years there have been instances of people declaring their identity as one ethnicity or another that is not obvious; that does not conform to their name; or to change their declared identity from time to time. These are obvious instances of political manipulation to gain a political position illicitly by pretending to belong to an ethnicity that is needed for a particular position.

Dragana Čavka had  not long ago declared as a Serb, which is what one would assume based on her name. When she was appointed to the RTV post, the Bosniak caucus of the Council of Peoples (the upper house of the RS Parliament) filed a complaint, demanding that the RS Constitional Court verify Čavka's ethnic affiliation. The complaint stated that an official can be a member of a given ethnicity based on their birth, or if they have declared as such for many years. In response, Čavka stated, "I don't see anything problematic about this. I feel as a Bosniak and the constitution and the laws guarantee me that right."

A week after the Bosniak caucus filed its complaint, the RS Constitutional Court found the complaint unacceptable: Dragana Kavkaz is a "Bosniak."

The only reason I bring up this routine instance of political manipulation is that it strikes me that if enough people spoofed the system in this way, it would so undermine the virtual, artificial, and absurd "confessional" order of things as to render it meaningless. Then it would disintegrate, and people could vote as citizens, rather than as members of a flock. At least, this is the way it would happen in a Joseph Heller novel.

Srebrenica
On July 11, the 29th anniversary of the fall of the Srebrenica enclave, another annual burial of the exhumed remains of genocide victims was carried out. This year 14 victims were reburied. (For comparison, when I attended the funeral in 2010, 775 were buried—the numbers get fewer and fewer). The youngest victim, Beris Omerić, was 17 when he was killed. His remains were not uncovered until last year. The oldest victim buried was Hamed Salic, 68. Beyond the 14, 11 more victims have been identified, but they were not buried because their skeletons were far from complete.

The surviving family has the option to wait for more of its relative's bones to be discovered. It happens quite often that incomplete remains are buried, and then "reassociation" happens, where the remains are exhumed to receive additional bones, as they are discovered. This re-exhumation has been performed over a thousand times; this year 78 re-exhumations were set to take place in the weeks after the July funeral.

The total of victims now buried at the Memorial Cemetery at Potočari now stands at 6,765, with another 250 buried at other cemeteries. Over a thousand victims from the Srebrenica genocide are still missing.

The denialist provocations, offenses against the truth and against survivors, continue. In Serbia the right-wing organization "Nazi" (Ours) posted placards reading, "In Srebrenica there was no genocide." And on the main road leading to Srebrenica, a local organization of Serb extremists put up posters bearing the photos of Serb soldiers who had been killed during the war.

A little later in the month, in the Prijedor area, the annual reburial of exhumed remains was held at the Kamičani cemetery on July 20th. Four victims of the ethnic cleansing and killings in that area were buried on that day.

In related news, at the beginning of this month, the RS Pedagogical Institute published the curriculum for the entity's public schools for the upcoming school year. The history curriculum for 9th grade students includes a segment called "Republika Srpska and the Defensive-Fatherland War," in which it presents convicted war criminals Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić as heroes. There is no mention of genocide nor of the aggression of neighboring countries against Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the contrary, Mladić and Karadžić are presented simply as commanders and war heroes. Both figures have been convicted of genocide, among many other crimes.

Fires

It is getting into a rainy season now, but for much of the summer, Bosnia-Herzegovina has been experiencing record high temperatures and little or no rain. And since early August, forest fires have been breaking out in many parts of the country. From Kladanj, Konjic, and Maglaj in central Bosnia, to Stolac and Gacko in Herzegovina, and all the way up to Drvar in the northwest, flames have been consuming forested mountains and fields. In Čapljina and Ljubuški the fires toppled electrical transformers and destroyed an electrical substation, interrupting rendering regional communication. In some places firefighters were unable to combat the flames because of the danger of mines left over from the 1990s war.

Almost predictably, leaders among the Serb separatists have opportunistically used the emergency to drive home the point that the two entities could not, and should not cooperate—not even to quell a natural disaster. While leaders in the Federation were calling for help in fire control from neighboring countries, the Republika Srpska was looking only to Serbia for assistance—while avoiding the logical request for help from the helicopters used by Bosnia's armed services.

Columnist Puro Kozar commented, "It is important to Banja Luka that helicopters fly to Bosnia from another country to put out the firers, because in its declaration, the Pan-Serbian assembly recommended that the institutions of Serbia and the Republika Srpska act in unison and with coordination—and in that vein, the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina was not even mentioned."

In mid-August, while addressing his congregation, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia Husein ef. Kavazović called for people to make a specific prayer for rain. Within a few days a long-awaited rain did put out a fire in Konjic. One commentator, Ivana Marić, responded wryly, stating that "this ingenious idea should be patented immediately, so as to resolve the problems with the climate." Another commentator said, "Welcome to the Stone Age—where we belong!" These and other expressions were met with a barrage of angry comments, ostensibly in defense of religion, while sacrificing free speech.

More recently fires broke out in Srebrenica municipality, near the remote town of Luka. As of early September the fires were threatening people's residences. Firefighters were unable to approach, because of high winds. A firefighter noted that "red-hot rocks were rolling down the hills." People were left to hope for rain, but eventually a Serbian helicopter came to help put out the fires.