**Milorad Dodik represents the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He now wants to dissolve this very state – and make the Serbian republic autonomous.**
SARAJEVO taz | He sits with his staff on the sofa of his office in the presidential building in Sarajevo. The beefy politician drinks schnapps and bawls along to the songs of a harmonium player glorifying his Serbian origins.
Milorad Dodik knew very well that he was provoking the non-Serb majority population in Bosnia-Herzegovina with his behaviour last Sunday. And he did so in the very office that he, as a member of the country’s three-member presidential council, actually no longer wanted to enter. Dodik had shortly before called on all Serbs to withdraw from the institutions of the state as a whole. The elected representative of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina thus wants to destroy this state and form the Serbian constituent republic into a state of its own.
Dodik, who was born in 1959 in Laktaši in northern Bosnia, has been regarded as unpredictable and contradictory since the beginning of his political career. He can also be described as agile. For as late as 1986, the political scientist was appointed head of the city council of his hometown by the communists. Shortly before the fratricidal war in Yugoslavia, however, he joined the liberal League of Reform Forces in 1990.
During the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995, he stayed out of politics, did not follow the radicals behind the war criminals Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. He preferred, as Serbian journalists claim, to earn his money by smuggling cigarettes. Even after the war, Dodik initially remained a businessman, but founded a party, of which he became chairman.
Orientation towards nationalism
Dodik was considered to be unpolluted. In 2000, he even joined a non-nationalist reform government including parties such as the then strong Social Democrats. However, this failed and Dodik turned towards nationalism. In 2006, he won the elections in the Serbian entity with nationalist rhetoric and became prime minister and president of the republic in 2010.
Since then, Dodik has been the “strong man” of the Bosnian Serbs, setting the tone, cracking down on oppositionists, steering the media and the state apparatus in autocratic style and miraculously increasing his wealth for himself, his wife and their two children. Today he denies any war crimes on the Serbian side, including the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.
He skilfully exploits the geostrategic interests of Russia, which wants to gain more influence in the Balkans. Putin invited the provincial to Moscow several times. His position wobbled, however, when he tried to grab the throne of Serbian autocrat and president Aleksandar Vućić years ago.
Now, however, he is faithfully following the guidelines from Belgrade and Moscow. With him, conflicts in the Balkans can be fuelled at any time to the detriment of the EU and the West as a whole. And that is exactly what he is doing now.
It’s worth remembering what started this crisis in the first place.
The High Representative is an EU appointed, unelected bureaucrat with dictatorial powers, including the power to pass laws by decree, completely bypassing the parliament, and ban actual elected officials from holding public office.
For citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is no legal recourse against his decisions in their own country. Even though his decrees might take away constitutionally granted rights to Bosnian citizens, the Constitutional Court is unable to do anything because he is above the laws.
A Constitutional Court which has foreign judges on it BTW.
Valentin Inzko, in his frustration, right before leaving the country decided to give Bosnia one final fuck you and destabilize the situation to levels unseen before 1991.
He did that by criminalizing “genocide denial”, even though it is the official stance of RS that Srebrenica was not a genocide, and the opinion held by the vast majority of Serbs in the Republic.
The law has no power of course as nobody in RS will enforce it or allow its enforcement, but it opened up Pandora’s box. Bosnia works, relatively speaking, in a ceasefire where precarious balance is maintained, and where all sides are willing to let shit slide to keep the peace, but a foreign despot criminalizing a widely held and touchy stance might have been the last drop.
A moron on his last legs dancing around the fire to gain support for an election while his party has the lowest support seen in the past 10 years openly admitting he will run the RS’s economy into the ground if he can win again.
My favourite transaction in the past week:
Dodik (Oct 12): there will be no sanctions against the RS
Dodik (Oct 14): The EU will not put sanctions on the RS, I will not allow it.
*USA, UK, France all announce potential sanctions against RS*
Dodik (Oct 15): Sanctions may be coming but that’s okay
Dodik (Oct 18): Sanctions are proof we are right
Bosnia has failed to leave the past behind, republika srpska which is an autonomous part of Bosnia where majority Bosnian serbs live wants to secede from Bosnia. This may sound strange to an outsider as to why the Bosnians just don’t let them and it can be explained by complex deep rooted issues related to identity conflicts in world war 2 and the recent war. For a bosniak it is a sensitive topic since to them allowing RS to secede is to accept territory that has been obtained by ethnic cleansing and thusly rewarding Serbian aggression. Many cities in Republika Srpska are strong majority serbs because of ethnic cleansing and vice versa in the federation of Bosnia (everything outside republika srpska, the serb autonomous region of Bosnia).
The Dayton agreement lead the country into a paralyzed peace. Because its people failing to leave the past behind the country remain FUBAR. Bosnia is the UN’s spoiled kid, despite major international investment and attention than any african country has ever been given, Bosnia failed to evolve into a self-sustaining and stabile democracy. The current politics in Bosnia has been the same for more than 20 years. It can be summarized as zero-sum politics, you can describe it as ‘continuation of the war by other means’ which manifests itself in provocative rhetoric and institutional paralysis and stagnation.
This is Dodiks politics, it is all obstructionism doing whatever he can to make the country fail so to motivate a secession further but the catch here is that Dodik is a very selfish man and a clown. He gives zero fucks about serbia and he will chicken out as always which has been proven before.
There is no such thing as a Balkan generation that doesn’t see the war atleast once in it’s life
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**Milorad Dodik represents the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He now wants to dissolve this very state – and make the Serbian republic autonomous.**
SARAJEVO taz | He sits with his staff on the sofa of his office in the presidential building in Sarajevo. The beefy politician drinks schnapps and bawls along to the songs of a harmonium player glorifying his Serbian origins.
Milorad Dodik knew very well that he was provoking the non-Serb majority population in Bosnia-Herzegovina with his behaviour last Sunday. And he did so in the very office that he, as a member of the country’s three-member presidential council, actually no longer wanted to enter. Dodik had shortly before called on all Serbs to withdraw from the institutions of the state as a whole. The elected representative of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina thus wants to destroy this state and form the Serbian constituent republic into a state of its own.
Dodik, who was born in 1959 in Laktaši in northern Bosnia, has been regarded as unpredictable and contradictory since the beginning of his political career. He can also be described as agile. For as late as 1986, the political scientist was appointed head of the city council of his hometown by the communists. Shortly before the fratricidal war in Yugoslavia, however, he joined the liberal League of Reform Forces in 1990.
During the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995, he stayed out of politics, did not follow the radicals behind the war criminals Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. He preferred, as Serbian journalists claim, to earn his money by smuggling cigarettes. Even after the war, Dodik initially remained a businessman, but founded a party, of which he became chairman.
Orientation towards nationalism
Dodik was considered to be unpolluted. In 2000, he even joined a non-nationalist reform government including parties such as the then strong Social Democrats. However, this failed and Dodik turned towards nationalism. In 2006, he won the elections in the Serbian entity with nationalist rhetoric and became prime minister and president of the republic in 2010.
Since then, Dodik has been the “strong man” of the Bosnian Serbs, setting the tone, cracking down on oppositionists, steering the media and the state apparatus in autocratic style and miraculously increasing his wealth for himself, his wife and their two children. Today he denies any war crimes on the Serbian side, including the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.
He skilfully exploits the geostrategic interests of Russia, which wants to gain more influence in the Balkans. Putin invited the provincial to Moscow several times. His position wobbled, however, when he tried to grab the throne of Serbian autocrat and president Aleksandar Vućić years ago.
Now, however, he is faithfully following the guidelines from Belgrade and Moscow. With him, conflicts in the Balkans can be fuelled at any time to the detriment of the EU and the West as a whole. And that is exactly what he is doing now.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
It’s worth remembering what started this crisis in the first place.
The High Representative is an EU appointed, unelected bureaucrat with dictatorial powers, including the power to pass laws by decree, completely bypassing the parliament, and ban actual elected officials from holding public office.
For citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is no legal recourse against his decisions in their own country. Even though his decrees might take away constitutionally granted rights to Bosnian citizens, the Constitutional Court is unable to do anything because he is above the laws.
A Constitutional Court which has foreign judges on it BTW.
Valentin Inzko, in his frustration, right before leaving the country decided to give Bosnia one final fuck you and destabilize the situation to levels unseen before 1991.
He did that by criminalizing “genocide denial”, even though it is the official stance of RS that Srebrenica was not a genocide, and the opinion held by the vast majority of Serbs in the Republic.
The law has no power of course as nobody in RS will enforce it or allow its enforcement, but it opened up Pandora’s box. Bosnia works, relatively speaking, in a ceasefire where precarious balance is maintained, and where all sides are willing to let shit slide to keep the peace, but a foreign despot criminalizing a widely held and touchy stance might have been the last drop.
A moron on his last legs dancing around the fire to gain support for an election while his party has the lowest support seen in the past 10 years openly admitting he will run the RS’s economy into the ground if he can win again.
My favourite transaction in the past week:
Dodik (Oct 12): there will be no sanctions against the RS
Dodik (Oct 14): The EU will not put sanctions on the RS, I will not allow it.
*USA, UK, France all announce potential sanctions against RS*
Dodik (Oct 15): Sanctions may be coming but that’s okay
Dodik (Oct 18): Sanctions are proof we are right
Bosnia has failed to leave the past behind, republika srpska which is an autonomous part of Bosnia where majority Bosnian serbs live wants to secede from Bosnia. This may sound strange to an outsider as to why the Bosnians just don’t let them and it can be explained by complex deep rooted issues related to identity conflicts in world war 2 and the recent war. For a bosniak it is a sensitive topic since to them allowing RS to secede is to accept territory that has been obtained by ethnic cleansing and thusly rewarding Serbian aggression. Many cities in Republika Srpska are strong majority serbs because of ethnic cleansing and vice versa in the federation of Bosnia (everything outside republika srpska, the serb autonomous region of Bosnia).
The Dayton agreement lead the country into a paralyzed peace. Because its people failing to leave the past behind the country remain FUBAR. Bosnia is the UN’s spoiled kid, despite major international investment and attention than any african country has ever been given, Bosnia failed to evolve into a self-sustaining and stabile democracy. The current politics in Bosnia has been the same for more than 20 years. It can be summarized as zero-sum politics, you can describe it as ‘continuation of the war by other means’ which manifests itself in provocative rhetoric and institutional paralysis and stagnation.
This is Dodiks politics, it is all obstructionism doing whatever he can to make the country fail so to motivate a secession further but the catch here is that Dodik is a very selfish man and a clown. He gives zero fucks about serbia and he will chicken out as always which has been proven before.
There is no such thing as a Balkan generation that doesn’t see the war atleast once in it’s life