Partitioning Bosnia, the EU way
Never has a nation been stripped of so much as Bosnia and Herzegovina. From its territory, almost half of which was awarded to Bosnian Serbs in the form of an entity Republika Srpska (RS) for successfully committing genocide, to a significant movement of young people to EU member states. All this is no thanks to Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) signed in 1995, or you can read, forced on Bosnia by the incompetent EU and Bill Clinton administration. The DPA tore the country limb by limb to award the aggressors and force Bosnia to its knees, making it a dysfunctional, poverty-stricken ward of the international community.
The DPA gave power to corruption and the further rise of nationalists such as Bosnian Serb Milorad Dodik and Bosnian Croat Dragan Covic. It has also successfully awarded them with instruments to destroy what is left of the country.
The 1990s war and dysfunctional DPA have left a vacuum along political, social, and economic lines, leading to corrupt political and criminal elites that have remained functioning after the war.
The devastating war had ravaged Bosnia and ruined its economy, dropping the GDP by 90% between 1990 and 1995. The magnitude of the crisis was higher than in nearly any other country that had faced war. The World Bank has suggested that there is a significant difference between the ‘new poor’ in Bosnia to that in Africa and Asia. By the time the war had ended in Bosnia, there were still many highly educated and highly skilled people. The latter had problems finding jobs, but those from the working classes were employed faster in factories and other low specialised categories of work. Bosnia’s economy is so bad that young people leave the country for EU member states offering them better opportunities.
But as the country also faces security threats from Russia, the EU could, for instance, give Bosnia an EU candidate status. Instead, the EU is uninterested in finding a solution to help build Bosnia’s economy. What the EU has done is unleashed a bunch of unelected bureaucrats who are looking for an easy way to change electoral law so they can go back to their countries and write reports on how they have achieved the impossible. The EU has continued to send a message to Bosnia that the block rewards warmongers and supporters of genocide. For example, the EU has yet to sanction Dodik. That tells you the EU is perfectly fine with what he is doing. Or that the EU diplomat Angelina Eichhorst has allegedly threatened Bosnians that she will withdraw EUFOR if they don’t sign election reform. The reform would favour Bosnian Croats, namely Covic and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), of which he is the president. The reform would give him a permanent, successive victory to the membership of the Presidency no matter who wins most seats from the Bosnian Croat side. It would equal a dictatorship. Or that US President Joe Biden kept Matthew Palmer (whose wife is a Serb) in the position to favour that same Croat agenda of HDZ. Palmer recently left his post for a new one at the US Embassy in London, but he’s done enough damage to Bosnia. Or that Johann Sattler, an EU Ambassador and Special Representative, blames the entire Bosnian parliament for rejecting sanctions against Russia when it was actually the fault of Covic and Dodik, both of whom are in President Vladimir Putin’s pockets. So EU has already loudly sent a message that Serbs are to be rewarded just like they were in DPA with the RS. And they have already rewarded Serbia with EU candidate status, the same Serbia which holds demonstrations in support of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the same one that refuses to sanction Russia and ban the citizens of that country from flying in and out of Serbia.
And how could we forget Michael Scanlan, Principal Deputy High Representative, who unconstitutionally, allowed Republika Srpska Day to go ahead in Brcko District, Bosnia? According to Al Jazeera Balkan, this is the same Scanlan whose father, John Scanlan, alongside Lawrence Eagleburger, Brent Scowcroft and Warren Zimmerman, were referred to as Belgrade Mafia in the US State Department. John Scanlan would even call Slobodan Milosevic “a good guy.” That is the same Milosevic who was indicted for war crimes and died in his cell in the Hague a few months before his verdict was due. That is the type of Westerners the international community sends to Bosnia. But the message is clear, and it is not to stabilise and help Bosnia but to work on its continued division and help usher young Bosniaks out of their country. Therefore, making it easier for the international community to divide the country between Croats and Serbs just as the British tried during the 1990s war.
Let’s not forget that while genocide was unfolding in Bosnia, the US military used experience from the Vietnam war to analyse the Bosnia war even when that was not applicable. Because many US military leaders, including Collin Powell, read Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan and had based their views on that book. They continued to do so as late as 1995 when a senior Marine Corps general who read that book recommended it to his colleagues, saying, “Read it if you want to understand what is going on.” To reference such a book to avoid intervention in Bosnia makes one question what other agenda-driven diatribe the US military was ready to believe in during the 1990s.
By the time the international community got around to ending the war, thousands of Bosniaks were killed in concentration camps, thousands of women and young girls were raped, thousands had been tortured and starved, and genocide was committed against the Muslim population. But the Clinton administration told Bosnia’s President Alija Izetbegovic if he didn’t sign DPA, he would lose American support. Now it appears that Eichhorst allegedly decided to do the same, to try and force Bosnians to give Bosnian Croats whatever they wanted so that they and Bosnian Serbs could make Bosniaks second class citizens in their own country. But, of course, that would inevitably lead to creating the Bosnian Croat entity that could join Croatia. That is a dream of Croatia’s former President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, who is also one of the front runners to take Jens Stoltenberg’s job when his mandate as Secretary-General of NATO ends in one year.
But Eichhorst, as a Dutch diplomat, should be careful, knowing how much Dutch battalion contributed to not preventing the Srebrenica genocide. Does she want to destabilise security in Bosnia further to the point that her inability to do her job and her contempt for Bosniaks could cause another conflict? Palmer has tried that already and has done enough damage. But as Serbian politician, Ivica Dacic, said, “In our region, it is said — where your wife is from, you are also from there.” Convenient enough, Palmer supports HDZ, which is aligned with the Bosnian Serbs. So it makes sense that he would be Serbia’s son-in-law.
And finally, Joseph Borell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, whose unhelpful comments had always pointed against Bosnia and seemed to support furthered division. I had wondered whether Borrell had the same energy to support Catalan separation from Spain as he seemed to have favoured that for the RS from Bosnia? But after a member of Bosnia’s Presidency, Zeljko Komsic, travelled to Spain for a state visit with the Spanish King and his Prime Minister, Borell seems to have changed his tune and appears to be working to help Bosnia, at least for now.
