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

home  ♦  about the blog ♦ the book ♦ the author ♦ buy the book  ♦  contact

Bosnia update, Sunday, September 20, 2026
Environmental problems: Gas pipeline politics; Death of Mladić; Bosnia & Israel; Upcoming elections.

As you can see by the heading, there is a lot to cover in today's blog entry. There's a danger of the news about Mladić's death crowding out all the other important things, so let's start with the latest environmental emergencies causing worries throughout the country.

Until recently I have sparsely covered environmental problems and resistance to destructive exploitation in this blog. If you want more background, see my series of six articles from 2025 here, and my series of four from this year, here.  

In those articles, among other things, I discussed the widespread assault of international mining companies and their profiteering local officials in many areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The interesting part of the story is, of course, the widespread grassroots resistance to this extractivism. Prominent among these cases are the pursuit of lithium on Mt. Majevica; nickel and cobalt on Ozren; lead, gold, and copper near Jezero; and silver and other strategic minerals in the area around Vareš.

Various international mining companies have hovered around these locations for years, angling for exploration permits and mining concessions. They made the most headway—and accompanying environmental destruction—near Vareš, where Adriatic Metals opened the mine at Rupice, and now the drinking water downstream at the town of Kakanj has been rendered poisonous.

Resistance has managed to slow down exploration at Ozren and Majevica, for the time being. However, recent news has it that the Swiss company Arcore has received a permit to conduct exploratory drilling on Majevica. Mining there, as described in my articles, will not only pollute the land and soil locally, but also the rivers that flow down into surrounding municipalities farther afield. Local resistance continues to grow and organize, but activists are up against the entire corrupt, opportunistic political class headed by Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik. Last year, Dodik offered mining concessions to President Trump in a proposed deal resembling one that Trump had arranged with Ukraine.

In my several years' examination of environmental endangerment in Bosnia I found a long list of problems caused by extraction of strategic minerals for the "green transition," where the situation is described thus: "We want to save our environment, but we don't care about yours." At first glance, the solution is to harness renewable energy. But as I described at length in my articles, the hydroelectric dams that have been constructed have done more harm than good, ruining almost all of Bosnia-Herzegovina's major rivers. The worst damage is now being done by smaller private companies that set up lower-megawatt dams that benefit no one except a couple of profiteers.

And sadly, as it turns out, the same problem shows up with the creation of solar and wind farms. Again, private companies without concern not only for the law, but also for local communities, are guilty. This is partly the case because the state and entities do not have funds to finance renewable energy projects, so they make deals with the "privatniks" and turn a blind eye to their violations.

These violations include usurpation both of private land, and of state land whose disposition is supposed to be on hold until a reconciliation on this matter can be achieved at state level, as I have discussed in previous blog entries.

One example is found in the area near the western town of Tomislavgrad, where people are complaining that "many kilometers of land are covered by monotonous, glowing solar panels; some people have gotten rich, while many are losing their living space." A petition has been circulating in this area to control the construction implemented by what the locals call "megalomaniacal concession-mania."

Meanwhile, forest fires of the season are exacerbated by global warming, an environmental problem much vaster and more global. Compared to events that seemed disastrous a couple of years ago, fires of the season (and next: floods) now seem apocalyptic, though they also promise to get worse. In many parts of the country, especially Herzegovina, drought has afflicted the land, with water levels receding in the rivers and lakes. Fires have broken out throughout the southern part of the country, spreading around Konjic, for example, and threatening to come close to residents' homes. Many fires are in locations so inaccessible that they have to be fought with tanker helicopters.

More on the Proposed Gas Pipeline

In my previous two blog entries (July and August) I discussed the matter of US pressure on Bosnia-Herzegovina to go forward with the construction of a gas pipeline that would open a source of gas to BiH in addition to the Russian supply (arriving via Serbia and Sarajevo) that now dominates. The Southern Interconnection would provide a lucrative outlet for gas supplied by the US. Negotiations about the construction of the pipeline are also poised to push through a resolution to the ongoing, intractable problem of the disposition of state property. Such a resolution would tend to work in favor of profiteering forces in the entities (and separatist tendencies in the Republika Srpska), rather than preserving at least a vestige of state control over public property.

The Federation Minister of Energy Vedran Lakić recently channeled a message from the upstart/startup AAFS company, tasked with constructing the pipeline. The company boasts no construction background, but it does benefit from cozy connections with higher-up political levels in the US. Lakić said, "The Federation should not be dependent on just one source of gas. The Southern Interconnection is not only about energy, but it is also a security project."

To me, this sounds like a protection racket.

The revival of the pipeline project started just weeks after US sanctions on Dodik were lifted last year. Dodik's imprimatur is critical because of his control over decisions at state level. Even though he no longer holds public office, he is still head of the most powerful Serb party (the SNSD), which has veto power at the state level.

In return for Dodik's compliance on the project, he gets leeway to develop a different gas pipeline that favors the Serb-controlled entity, coming in from Serbia but going straight through the RS without diverting to Sarajevo. This bolsters Dodik's secessionist plans. His compliance with what is essentially an American profiteering venture also earns him a tacit approval for entity-based solutions (read: crony-based privatization) on state-owned land.

These benefits are a natural result of Dodik bribing his way out of sanctions. He was politically intelligent enough, early on, to understand his commonality with the current US President.

Here are comments from two well-placed journalists assessing the nature of the US relationship with Bosnia, and especially Dodik. In August, the American reporter Charles Kennedy asserted that the US has changed its approach to Bosnia because of energy politics. He explained that since the second half of 2025, the Trump administration started taking apart key elements of long-term politics of the US towards Bosnia-Herzegovina, all because of the wish to build the pipeline from Croatia that will deliver US LNG (liquified natural gas). Kennedy mentions a plan outlined in a lobbying agreement between the RS and a company headed by Rod Blagojevich, the crooked former governor of Illinois pardoned by Trump. Blagojevich and Michael Flynn have worked successfully to connect Dodik with Trump.

Kennedy also points out that "since Trump unleashed Dodik, things haven't been going as smoothly as he expected, because Dodik is an animal that he can't control." This refers to Dodik's continuing advocacy for secession.

Meanwhile, Bosnian correspondent in Washington DC Ivica Puljić responded to an American politician's comment that things had stabilized in Bosnia since the lifting of sanctions on Dodik were "straight out of Ripley's Believe it or Not."

For an excellent recent article on these matters, read Jasmin Mujanović's "'Pay for Play?' Trump’s Bosnia Moves Highlighted in U.S. House Probe" here.

Death and Celebration of a Genocidaire

On August 27 Ratko Mladić, one of Bosnia's most notorious war criminals, died in the Scheveningen detention unit at The Hague. In 2017 Mladić was found guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He had been on the lam for 15 years, but was apprehended in 2011. The Hague Tribunal found that he had played a leading role in permanently removing Muslims and Croats from their homes between May and November of 1995, and eliminating the Bosniak population in Srebrenica by killing men and children and forcefully expelling women, children, and older men. He was found to have participated in three different Joint Criminal Undertakings that perpetrated murder and extermination; clearing the non-Serbian population from different areas; and spreading terror among the civilian population of Sarajevo during a sniper and bombing campaign. He was also found guilty of inhumane acts including arrest without charge; torture; rape; burning houses; and destroying cultural and sacred monuments.

The above is a dry, minimal account of Mladić's conduct during the war. He was found guilty on ten charges, but acquitted on the charge of genocide in six other municipalities in Bosnia. Two judges dissented, saying that  "it is absurd that certain perpetrators were convicted of  having the intent to destroy a part of the Bosniak population, but Mladić and the others who were using these perpetrators were not."

This was a controversial decision that disappointed the survivors of those murdered in Prijedor municipality, as well as in Kotor Varoš, Foča, Sanski Most, Kljuć, and Vlasenica.

As my friend from Kozarac, Prijedor municipality, told me, “If there was not genocide in Prijedor, then there is no such thing. I carry that genocide on my shoulders; I was in the camps, I saw the beatings and the killings. So I don’t need there to be a decision in order to know there was genocide.”

Mladić was the commander of the Army of the Republika Srpska and, together with Radovan Karadžić, was responsible for the campaign of terror—supported by neighboring Serbia—that led to the destruction and partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Today there remain two opposing narratives among people in the region today: some regard Mladić as their tormentor and the destroyer of their homeland, and others venerate him as their hero and protector.

Expression of the latter attitude has been flagrant in the Serb-controlled entity of Bosnia, as well as in Serbia. In many towns in the RS and Serbia, murals and billboards glorifying Mladić have appeared regularly. You can buy t-shirts bearing pictures of Mladić in just about any town in the entity. Provocateurs have posted placards to the same effect right in Srebrenica. At sports events, people have chanted Mladić's name.

As Mladić's health was worsening during this summer and it became obvious that he was going to die, his family and Serbian officials requested that he be given "humanitarian release." This met with objections from organizations of survivors from Srebrenica and elsewhere. After some deliberation, the residual court (International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals) at The Hague rejected the appeal, and Mladić was allowed to die in prison. Court authorities explained that early release was not warranted, especially given that Mladić had never expressed any remorse for his crimes.

When Mladić was apprehended in 2011 he was already in poor health, having suffered at least three strokes and experiencing a variety of other debilitating ailments. He was kept alive and received top-quality medical treatment at The Hague for the next 15 years. However, his supporters in Serbia declared that Mladić had been "murdered," and that the Hague Tribunal was a "terrorist organization." Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić stated, "We have now seen that The Hague wanted Ratko Mladić to die behind bars. This is anti-civilizational behavior, without  precedent and without justification."

On the other side, Srebrenica survivor and director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center Emir Suljagić commented, "Mladić's death doesn't bring back the dead, erase the mass graves, or change the verdicts. It doesn't change a criminal into a historical figure."

Between August 27 and Mladić's September 7 funeral, there followed a period of glorification of the deceased that surpassed the previous decades of his adulation—so amplified that it unsettled and alarmed people around the region. On one side, again, prominent politicians praised and honored Mladić, and ordinary Serbs gathered in large numbers in numerous towns and cities to demonstrate affection for him.

Banja Luka mayor Draško Stanivuković, member of the "opposition" in the RS, extolled Mladić as a man "whose name is deeply inscribed in our history, who took the hardest moments of our people on his shoulders and made personal sacrifices. He fought for the people." Dodik called Mladić "a commander of the RS army in the struggle for freedom of the Serb people. We won't forget his role, and we will remain faithful to that which Mladić stood for."

There was a memorial service at the main cathedral in Banja Luka, attended by entity ministers and war veterans. In Zvornik hundreds of citizens lit candles for Mladić and held a memorial walk, in the municipality where thousands of Bosniaks had been expelled, with hundreds killed. Similar expressions were seen in Višegrad, East Sarajevo, Trebinje, and Bijeljina. On a wall in Bratunac near Srebrenica, someone painted a slogan, "All Serbs are Ratko's soldiers."

RS politician Nebojša Vukanović, the closest approximation to a sincere anti-corruption figure in the politics of that entity, praised Mladić saying, "Ratko Mladić never feared danger; he had a great reputation among the soldiers, and he was a fighter against corruption"—with no mention of Mladić's crimes.

This is why I put the word "opposition" in quotation marks in the RS context, because the main difference between Dodik's dominant SNSD clique and the rest is simply that the latter are not in power.

Meanwhile, commercialism got more crass as advertisements went out for t-shirts portraying Mladić, and there were even commercials for Ray-Ban sunglasses resembling the ones that Mladić had worn. Meta had to remove several such commercials that had slipped under the radar to appear on social media.

In the runup to the funeral, to be held in Belgrade, it was announced that there would be free transportation from Bosnia and from towns in Serbia and Montenegro. Mayor Stanivuković announced that he would attend, proposing that the day of the funeral be proclaimed a day of mourning in "all Serb lands."  Pushing back at the accusations of glorification of Mladić, asked, "What glorification? We are just speaking the truth"* Mladić was a general who defended our fatherland and our country."
*[cf "I'm just being honest...", which people often say just after having said something rude]

Regional and international response to the glorification of Mladić was strong, despite the fact that it had been made illegal in Bosnia-Herzegovina under a 2021 decree by former High Representative Inzko. High officials in Croatia and Brussels, as well as members of the UN Senate, decried the flood of praise for Mladić. A Czech member of the EU Parliament called on the EU to freeze Serbia's accession process, saying that an EU candidate "can't celebrate war crimes, and fuel nationalism in the Balkans."

And there was a controversy about whether the funeral was going to be held as a "state funeral," or not. One high official in Serbia announced that it was going to be a state funeral. President Vučić denied that.

As it happened, the funeral was held on September 7th with a military guard and a three-volley rifle salute to Mladić, whose body had been brought to Serbia on a state airplane. The coffin was covered with a Serbian flag, and greeted by a salute from military officers and policemen. As the coffin was lowered, as it was reported, people shouted "Long live Ratko Mladic" and "Glory to the hero.'"

In Bosnia, there were several thousand complaints of violations of Inzko's anti-glorification law. And during the funeral, the main Bosnian television station suspended the signal of the RS entity's main television station, because of its broadcast of programs about the funeral.

Bosnia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmedin Konaković withdrew Bosnia's consular corps from its embassy in Belgrade, and declared two of Serbia's emissaries in Sarajevo persona non grata, requiring them to leave the country.

Commenting on the funeral and the glorification of the genocidaire, Srebrenica survivor Hasan Nuhanović wrote, "Can we in the region build a European future? Or will we remain imprisoned in a dark room where some glorify him, rejecting legal collective responsibility (de jure), but accepting it de facto?"

Some 16,000 people attended the funeral, but President Vučić did not attend, citing a prior obligation. The general opinion in circulation is that he was responding to international condemnation of the glorification of Mladić, and attempting, afterwards, to "reset the message." He announced, "Serbia should now forget everything [another one for Ripley's] and concentrate on economic development and avoiding conflict. We don't need any war."

Bosnia and Israel

Here's another topic that deserves much more space than it can get here: the relationship between Bosnia and Israel. Periodically, and more often in recent weeks, the relationship comes into contrast because of Dodik's apparently successful attempts to exploit a commonality between the RS and Israel. That exploitation is successful because the commonality—one between racist autocracies—is real.

In between his visits to Moscow to be photographed with Putin, Dodik has taken to going to Tel Aviv to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has been there this past week, following on a similar visit less than two weeks ago. His close accomplice Željka Cvijanović, Serb member of the state-level three-part presidency, has also recently visited Israel, as I discussed in a previous blog entry.

In Israel, Dodik speaks of "cooperation and furthering of relations" between Israel and the Serb-controlled entity, which Dodik refers to as a "state." On September 9, during his previous visit, Dodik was awarded recognition as a "hadžija," which designates him as having undertaken a pilgrimage to a center of Christian Orthodoxy. (Among Muslims, one is a "hadžija" after having undertaken the hajj to Mecca. For the Orthodox, the term is the same, although the conditions are quite different.) Dodik commented on his award, presented by the Orthodox Patriarch Teofil, saying that it "represents a strong confirmation of deep ties between the RS and Jerusalem."

The Republika Srpska, through the voices of Dodik and Cvijanović, have made "self defense" a common theme resonating between the RS and Israel. Soon after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the ensuing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, Dodik announced that "the RS supports Israel's right to self defense." The Palace of the Republic, the Banja Luka state house, was for a time illuminated with the colors of the Israeli flag. Dodik touted the "political and historical ties between Serbs and the Jewish people, and their similar suffering."

The inflated commonality goes on: during the recent Rosh Hashonah (New Year's) holiday, Cvijanović wished the Jewısh community in Bosnıa-Herzegovina a "successful, peaceful New Year—May it be a year of interpersonal respect and understanding, continuing to build bridges of friendship and togetherness."

All this is much more a message to Israel, a country with clout, than to the ~500-to-700-strong Jewish community in Bosnia. The relationship that Dodik & co. strive for is also attractive to some Israelis for business and political reasons, but that story will have to be discussed later. Meanwhile, those who would like to see Bosnia-Herzegovina pulled apart, that is, the separatist Serb nationalist leadership and some among the Croat leadership as well, are also striving to pry apart centuries-old ties of respect and support between Bosnia's Jews and Bosniaks. So far, that attempt has not been successful. Again, a story for another time.

Upcoming State-wide Elections

--"We need to get rid of the electronic voting machines and secure our elections!" Mike Lindell, owner of MyPillow and top backer of President Trump, as reported by Mehdi Hasan.
--"The ballots will look like a lottery or Bingo card...Why use a method that doesn't exist anywhere else in Europe?...The new electoral system is too complicated and will create space for manipulation." Milorad Dodik, August 14, 2026.

As usual, autocrats and promoters of autocracy both in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the US are reading from the same script, preparatory to upcoming national elections. The Bosnian ones are set to take place on October 4, with a complete new set of anti-cheating measures introduced by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC). So one has to wonder—is the objection to the new measures, in fact, really that they will make the voting too complicated to manipulate?

The reforms of the voting process include biometric identification of voters; optical scanning of ballots; accompanying manual counting of ballots; and quick electronic transmission of the vote count from each of hundreds of polling stations. Strict control of the identification process will ensure that one person will have only one vote; that empty ballots will not be able to be used after the polling stations close; that no one will be able to vote in someone else's place; and that no dead people's names will be used to vote—all of which have been common practice in previous elections (about which you can read in detail in my previous blog entries).

The reforms, enabled by a change in the electoral law, are predicted to strengthen efficiency and accuracy in the electoral process. The new law created the framework for digitization of the identification process and the vote count, making sure that each voter will be identified correctly before receiving a ballot. The optical scanning makes a parallel vote count alongside the hand count, and retaining the physical ballots makes a recount possible.

Objections to the new system overwhelmingly come from the Republika Srpska's ruling SNSD party under Dodik. This makes sense, because it threatens their ability to carry out blatant, scandalous tricks as in past elections. The party has been carrying out ever louder attacks on the reforms, especially on the scanners. Opposition candidate Jelena Trivić, whose victory in her run for election to the presidency in 2022 was arguably stolen from her by the SNSD, noted that there was "panic in the ranks of the SNSD," and quipped, "Relax, people, you're being transparent."

It's not that the upcoming elections are necessarily foolproof. In a recent trial run, ballots simply did not arrive at some polling stations. There will also be a problem if the internet connection, responsible for transmitting the vote count, fails. And there are other ways of influencing the vote, such as the traditional buying of votes; paving roads to a susceptible community; and offering jobs to willing voters. The CEC maintains strict rules governing the campaigns as well: the campaign may not start until four weeks before the election; children may not be exploited in campaign advertisements; and there is a period of campaign silence just before the voting. The CEC has already fined several parties for violating the first two of these rules, with SNSD "earning" the biggest fines. But infractions have been committed on all sides.

There have been many "recycled" promises during the present campaign; as one commentator noted, constructing the same new section of a highway has been promised before, and it is promised again. The same hospital reconstructions, the same employment opportunities, and the same fight against corruption are also recyclable items.

One survey provided interesting results: Pod Lupom found that nearly 80% of citizens do not believe that the elections are free and fair, and over 10% of respondents have witnessed vote-buying. People massively (80%) support the new technology, and over 73% plan to vote.

I hope it's not too naïve to look for more honest results on October 4.