Old ghosts and new realities push Bosnia-Herzegovina back to the brink

Three decades after war turned the mountainous centre of the disintegrating Yugoslovia into a cauldron of intercommunal violence and genocidal murder, Bosnia-Herzegovina is once again unravelling. Nowhere have the ominous old spectres and newer menaces been more on display than at the 30th anniversary celebration earlier this month of the Bosnian Serb proto-state known as Republika Srpska.

There, on the parade stand in Banja Luka, standing behind the controversial Bosnian Serb president Milorad Dodik, was Vinko Pandurevic, former commander of the notorious Zvornik Brigade. The unit was allegedly behind the massacres of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica during Bosnia’s civil war, and Pandurevic was sentenced to 13 years in prison by a Hague tribunal for war crimes. He was released after serving 10 years.

But on the 9 January birthday of Republika Srpska, he was treated like a hero, standing among envoys from Russia and China along with top officials from the right-wing Serbian government in Belgrade, as well as Dodik and his entourage, who have revived talk of seceding from Bosnia-Herzegovina and uniting with Serbia.

“There cannot be freedom for the Serbian people if they do not have a state,” Dodik told the thousands lined up along the street beneath a grey winter sky for the parade, which has been repeatedly ruled illegal by Bosnian courts. “Republika Srpska is our state, regardless of what some may think of it.”

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Along the street, in front of the foreign and local dignitaries gathered for the celebration, portraits of Serbian orthodox saints adorned black Bosnian Serb-made Despot armoured vehicles passing by. Just after the local martial arts club and the fire department rescue workers marched, the Night Wolves motorcycle gang – known as a shadowy Russian paramilitary operation – swept through, as did the Special Unit of the interior ministry, which was linked to war crimes that took place during the civil war. At night, fireworks lit up the sky.

“If you look at the symbolism, the choreography, they’re sending entirely the wrong message,” says Sead Turcalo, professor and dean of the faculty of political science at the University of Sarajevo. “They are glorifying the war crimes of the Republika Srpska. In a civilised country no one would celebrate those years. You’re delivering the message to young people that it’s acceptable to worship these criminals.”

January’s celebration alarmed many across Bosnia. But it was far from the only sign that the 1995 Dayton accord, which ended the war, was coming undone, at a moment in history described by the United Nations high representative Christian Schmidt as the country’s “greatest existential threat of the post-war period”.

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Bosnia-Herzegovina’s war began in 1992 after the break-up of Yugoslavia. Ethnic Serbs rejected being part of a nation dominated by ethnic Muslims, and pursued what war crimes experts have described as a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing, rattling a west that had vowed “never again” after the Holocaust. The capital, Sarajevo, was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces, which shelled the city indiscriminately.

Led by the United States, Nato eventually intervened with force in 1995 and ended a war that had cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced many more. The country was partitioned into ethnic enclaves under the Dayton peace accords.

Few are convinced of the likelihood of another epoch-defining conflict. For now there are simply not enough weapons, or even young people, left in the country to make it plausible. “You can’t make a war with a few statements,” says Milos Solaja, a professor of political science at Banja Luka University. “You need an army, weapons, money and allies.”

But the possibility of armed confrontation is not all that remote, and old fears and chauvinistic attitudes have resurfaced in many parts of the country. Reports of vandalism targeting mosques in Bosnian Serb areas are emerging almost daily. Portraits and murals celebrating Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb war criminal jailed for life after being convicted in The Hague for his role in the siege of Sarajevo, show up overnight.

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“The problem is, we used to be a majority, and now Serbs have become the minority,” said Slavko Bobic, a 56-year-old business owner in Banja Luka who attended the parade. According to a 2013 census, a little over 50 per cent of Bosnia-Herzegovina is made up of Bosniak Muslims, while 38 per cent are Serbs and 15 per cent are Croats.

To many, the chief culprit for the current trouble is Dodik, 62, who has served in leadership positions in Republika Srpska since the late 1990s, and, as president of the entity, is a member of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s three-member presidency council.

Though originally considered a reformer and a moderate, he has shifted to the right – perhaps sensing a surge of Serbian nationalism among his political base, and seeking to fend off his ultra-nationalist rivals as well as allegations of corruption.

“I think he’s the most talented politician in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” said Dragan Bursac, a columnist for Radio Sarajevo and a professor of philosophy. “He was a socialist, then a reformist, then opposition, then an American darling, then a populist.”

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Dodik rarely tempers his words. He has described Sarajevo as similar to Tehran, capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He refers to Bosniaks as “Muslims”, and has downplayed the horrific 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica as “a fabricated myth”. He has disparaged Bosniaks returning to the Drina River Valley homes they fled during the civil war as “occupiers”. He has denounced Bosnian Serb dissidents and critics who call attention to his alleged corruption and war-crimes denial as “traitors”, or “mercenaries” of foreign powers.

“If you listen to what Dodik is saying, it’s similar to what was being said in the months before 1992,” says Fuad Avdagic, a Sarajevo activist and law student. “His words are xenophobic and Islamophobic. He’s insulting his opponents and the international community.”

Dodik’s defenders say he has no intention of seceding from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and even some of his critics speculate that his rhetoric is meant to pressure Sarajevo into granting Republika Srpska more power. Among the flag-waving crowds in Banja Luka, he seemed to inspire hope and pride. “He respects Dayton, and the constitution,” said Bricic Dusko, a 57-year-old musician and restaurateur in Banja Luka.

“The actions that Dodik makes are really reactions to those who want to destroy our constitution,” says Snjezana Novakovic-Bursac, a Bosnian Serb lawmaker and member of Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats. “We don’t want to secede. We want to re-establish our constitutional competence.”

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But few in the west trust Dodik. Adding to penalties already imposed on him in 2017, the United States Department of the Treasury this month slapped fresh sanctions on Dodik for corruption and “divisive ethnonationalistic rhetoric” that undermines the Dayton peace agreement.

But underlying the current difficulties and multilayered crises are the limitations and failures of the very same Dayton peace, which froze the conflict between the Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks but failed to offer a roadmap for healing and political integration. With reform efforts moribund, widespread corruption and political paralysis have eroded public trust in institutions, creating fertile ground for both demagoguery and apathy.

“We are talking about a long-term process of making nonsense of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a system, with the participation of the Serbs and Croats and with the assistance of the Bosniak political elite,” says Srdjan Puhalo, a Bosnian Serb political analyst and commentator. “There are no sides that are innocent. Even this element called the international community is involved in it.”

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Diplomats were jolted awake to the growing crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina in December, when the Republika Srpska parliament passed laws enabling it to form its own parallel institutions and army by May. It has already begun forming its own health procurement agency, in what some consider a violation of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s constitution.

Some Serbs disagree, arguing that it is well within its rights to begin transferring some authorities to Banja Luka. They say the constitution is vague and in need of reform. A key issue is whether Sarajevo or Banja Luka holds authority over public lands and waterways in Republika Srpska.

“We don’t even have the original text of the constitution because it was lost somewhere,” says Solaja. “We don’t have an official translation which would be published in a gazette.”

In any other country, disputes between various powers over state authorities would be hammered out in the courts. But Bosnia-Herzegovina’s judiciary is perceived as notoriously politicised and biased, and few in the public or in the country’s political groups have faith in it.

Adding to the country’s woes are discontent and separatist fervour among Bosnian Croat factions, who are at loggerheads with Bosniaks over electoral reforms ahead of October’s national elections.

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Even the possibility of a return to conflict is already exacting a price. Bosnians are reluctant to invest in the country, and the queues for visas stretch long outside the consulates of western countries. That makes the possibility of war less likely. With much of the country already divided up into largely ethnically homogenous enclaves, and the youth already fleeing to better parts of Europe, who would fight a war and over what?

But the fear is palpable, and in Sarajevo many speak of delaying plans for future apartments or businesses, or hustling to get abroad rather than waiting to see whether the politicians will resolve their differences. “People do not feel safe,” says Tucalo.

“Until last year I didn’t think people were gathering guns,” says Bursac, the columnist, who has moved to the US to escape death threats in Republika Srpska. “I am sure that’s not the case any more.”

Jasmin Brutus contributed to this report