Bosnia

In Bosnia, US overtakes EU as crisis boils

There is regional frustration the EU has not matched America’s assertiveness in trying to corral nationalist leader Milorad Dodik.

BY UNA HAJDARI

U.S. officials have descended on Bosnia and Herzegovina, trying to defuse a combustible moment in the country amid regional frustration with the EU’s own efforts. 

Gabriel Escobar, the U.S. special envoy to the Western Balkans, arrived Sunday for a two-day visit amid a backdrop that, to many, resembles the leadup to the war that overtook the country from 1992 to 1995. 

Milorad Dodik, the current Serb representative in the country’s threeway presidency, has been threatening to create a breakaway Serb army, is boycotting the country’s central institutions and is pledging to withdraw Bosnian Serbs from central institutions — a campaign the nationalist firebrand started after a law was passed in July banning denial of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. For many, the actions are akin to a call for war.  

On Monday, Escobar met with Dodik. Afterward, he called the get-together “productive” and told journalists the Serb leader “was open to discussing withdrawing all the legislation that would weaken the central institutions.”

And he stressed: “One of the things we want to make sure of is that Bosnia remains independent, sovereign and territorially whole.”

Yet Dodik was more confrontational during his own press conference after the meeting, refusing to back down from pledges to rewrite the existing rules. 

“I agree with Mr. Escobar that we need to preserve peace and stability,” he said. “I told Escobar that we would continue with our goal to send certain laws to the parliament of the Republika Srpska and withdraw our consent from issues such as the army, indirect taxation, the court system, and that we will draft new legislation in the next six months.”

Bosnia is divided into two subnational administrative units: the Serb-majority Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, mainly inhabited by Bosniaks and Croats. Both units have their own government and parliaments overseen by state-level umbrella institutions. The country’s leaders, too, are elected based on ethnic quotas.

Attempts to significantly change this carefully drawn balance carry the potential to destabilize the entire country.

For the U.S., the trip is a signal the country is ramping up its already assertive role. The U.S. sanctioned Dodik in 2017 for impeding the peace agreement that ended the war and has not hesitated to directly criticize the nationalist leader — including recently. 

And the move comes just as the EU has faced criticism for its more restrained approach. The bloc has failed to sanction Dodik and hasn’t confronted the Serb leader with the same barbed language as U.S. officials: Just last week Escobar accused Dodik of trying to “protect his power and his wealth.” 

“Escobar’s statements on Dodik were the harshest and most direct we’ve heard from any top Western official,” said Tanja Topić, a political analyst based in Banjaluka, the largest city within the entity of Republika Srpska. Conversely, she added, “the European Union has been consistently humiliating the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina.” 

Dodik’s nationalist campaign

Dodik has been a central figure in politics for more than two decades, rallying ultra-nationalist voters by minimizing the Bosnian Serb army’s crimes during the war. Most contentiously, he denied that the slaughter of 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica during the war constitutes genocide — an appeal that has now put him on a collision course with the country’s laws. 

While Dodik claims to not want war, he has continued to use contentious language, especially regarding the country’s Bosniak community, who are nominally Muslim. Dodik regularly claims that Bosniaks, as Muslims, are threatening to dominate the country’s other ethnic groups.

“We can not allow Bosniaks to fulfill the quotas intended for Serbs or Croats in the army and for us to one day have a Muslim army,” he said Monday.

Bosnia has a 10,000-member army, formed between 2004 and 2006. Ethnic quotas were established to ensure equal representation of the three major groups. 

Dodik’s nationalist rhetoric closely resembles that of other right-wing populists in Europe. So there was little surprise when he met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Saturday and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša on Sunday ahead of Escobar’s visit. Both leaders have previously echoed Dodik’s sentiments regarding Muslims. 

Dodik said his meeting with Janša was focused on the EU’s lackluster efforts in the region, especially on plans to admit countries that used to be part of Yugoslavia to the bloc. He raised the issue again with Escobar during their meeting Monday.

“It is clear that in Europe there isn’t a consensus on EU integration … and I told him that neither he nor the U.S. can force the EU to open their arms to the Western Balkans,” Dodik said.

The US promotes the EU

The prospect of integrating Western Balkan states into the EU — and the economic benefits that entails — was once an effective means of curtailing wayward Balkan leaders. 

But after an initial period of eastward expansion into the former communist territory, the EU became increasingly hesitant to accept new members, mainly at the expense of Western Balkan countries. This has led Balkan leaders to become less fearful of hurting their country’s EU prospects.

Still, Escobar is pressing EU membership as a key talking point in his Balkans strategy.

“I am confident that the Europeans will understand that you should be part of Europe within a reasonable period of time,” he said Monday. 

For some in the region, Escobar may be a better messenger for the EU than the actual bloc. He recently acknowledged during a U.S. congressional hearing that Washington had helped the EU solve another Balkan crisis — the recent flare-up at the border between Kosovo and Serbia. And, said Topić, the political analyst, the U.S. has consistently proved more proactive in the region.

She noted that in addition to the existing U.S. sanctions on Dodik, which barred him from traveling to the U.S. and froze any U.S.-based assets, Escobar has vowed any “future sanctions would be much harsher and would include various companies close to Dodik and his government.” 

Meanwhile, the EU has struggled to make similar promises, as its sanctions must be approved by all 27 members — a frequent struggle for the bloc.

For Dodik, “sanctions from the EU or certain member states would affect him even more than U.S. sanctions,” Topić said, arguing EU officials are too quick to appease ethnic party leaders who are in fact part of the problem.

“Instead of insisting that problems be solved within Bosnia’s own institutions, they constantly talk to leaders of political parties directly and solve issues while having drinks and dinners,” she added. 

Last week, Peter Stano, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, stressed that the situation in Bosnia was “a source of great concern for the European Union.” Yet for many in Bosnia and Herzegovina, such statements don’t fully address the gravity of the situation. Some analysts insist the EU may be missing an opportunity to prevent a damaging conflict.

“I think that the lack of understanding of the situation in Bosnia — by the EU, in particular — is huge, and that unfortunately, the EU will pay the highest price for this lack of understanding and lack of timely reactions,” said Senada Šelo Šabić, a senior researcher at the Croatia-based Institute for Development and International Relations.

“Simply, the focus is elsewhere — which I completely understand,” she added. “But unfortunately, Europe cannot avoid the consequences of the conflict or degradation of Bosnia to its own security and its own political and economic interests.”

Dodik’s rhetoric is tapping into a war trauma still prevalent in Bosnian society, Šelo Šabić warned.

“People in Bosnia see the calls for the country’s destruction as an existential threat,” she said. “Currently, people are again talking about either how to flee or how to fight.”