Dodik in Austria: Hospitality of Right-Wingers and Islamophobes

Milorad Dodik is definitively completing his political portrait with the Vienna episode and his meeting with the FPÖ, a radical right-wing party in Austria. Christian Strache, leader of the FPÖ, demanded the right of Republika Srpska to secede. As usual, European politicians show little interest in trials before international courts and in the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing on which Republika Srpska was founded.     

Who is Milorad Dodik really? One might say that his political character is as rigid as those he meets in Austria. In Biljana Plavšić's work "Svjedočim" (I Testify), who herself is a convicted war criminal, the following detail is mentioned: "The first session of the Assembly of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina was held on October 25, 1991. The Speaker of the Assembly, Momo Krajišnik, two deputies, and members of the assembly committees were elected. Serb deputies from other parties also immediately joined our assembly, two deputies from the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) as well as deputy Milorad Dodik, who later, after the war, became Prime Minister of Republika Srpska," writes Plavšić. Thus, Dodik immediately sided with the nationalist and wartime Serbian policy. During the war, he would travel around Europe from Perugia to Prague, talking about peace, and then deliver warmongering speeches in Republika Srpska, as in 1995 at one of the sessions of the Assembly of the so-called Serb Republic:   

"The demands to capture Tuzla, Sarajevo, and other major cities, as well as Bihać, are now unrealistic and should be rejected. We should have captured these cities at the beginning of the war; we failed then, and now these demands are unrealistic... I think the time has come to consider asking our allies, the Russians, to prevent any new mission by Carter (meaning former US President Jimmy Carter, editor's note) and other Western busybodies, for the simple reason that we had a bad experience with the first arrival of this man, Carter. I openly say now that his mission directly caused us not to capture Bihać." He calls on General Ratko Mladić: "Directly or indirectly destroy the Fifth Corps so that we no longer have a strong enemy on the banks of the Una who could destabilize us."

Back in March 1996, in an interview with Belgrade journalist Aleksandar Čotrić, he gave an interview titled "Karadžić and Mladić Must Go to The Hague." In that interview, he said that Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić must face the court in The Hague, where they must be tried.

"...We believe that cooperation with the Hague Tribunal is necessary. It is necessary for all those who have committed concrete war crimes to be brought to justice."

One of Čotrić's questions was: "Do you consider Bosnia and Herzegovina your homeland?"

"Yes!" was the explicit answer.  

This statement was met with relief by Western leaders, who immediately promoted him as a man for a new era. Then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright unconditionally supported him immediately. In her memoirs, Carla del Ponte recalls her first meeting with Dodik. He immediately began to talk about how his government was doing everything to arrest Radovan Karadžić, but that he was surrounded by his people who protected him and that these people were around him: "My government is doing everything to remove the main problem of Republika Srpska, and that is Radovan Karadžić, who must go to The Hague at all costs." 

The true essence of Dodik's entry onto the political scene of Bosnia and Herzegovina was recorded in Richard Holbrooke's memoirs. He analyzes the surprising election results in Bosnia and Herzegovina, held in September 1997:

"Muslim deputies, along with supporters of Plavšić and Milošević, elected a prime minister – unanimously – a previously unknown thirty-nine-year-old businessman named Milorad Dodik... Although the government in Sarajevo viewed this skeptically, Dodik announced that he would respect Dayton and build a multi-ethnic Bosnia. In return, the US began sending aid that had previously been withheld from Bosnian Serbs"... "American efforts in Bosnia were paying off. In March, the US was quite satisfied with the situation and, due to his support for Dodik, began to "reward" Milošević by lifting some remaining economic sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," wrote Holbrooke.

Del Ponte writes: "We listened with disbelief as Dodik predicted that Slobodan Milošević would fall the following year (according to Dodik, 1998 – in reality, two years later). He said that Milošević's opposition in Serbia would turn the people's dissatisfaction against him"... Dodik complained to Del Ponte that the Hague Tribunal had not arrested Vojislav Šešelj. He claimed that Šešelj was behind the bombings in Republika Srpska. 

Then followed Dodik's almost daily outbursts, provocations, political conflicts, insults to other nations, blackmail, raising tensions, threats of secession, boycotting state institutions, supporting Russian policy in the Balkans, referendums... And all this lasted for years. At the same time, the country was economically collapsing, banks were failing, his entity was enormously indebted and is today barely repaying annuities, which are increasing year by year.

Dodik has definitively rounded off his political career with this visit to Austrian rigid radicals and Islamophobes. The question is how it is possible that Dodik has support in Austria from such radicals, while his radicalism is increasingly rejected in Republika Srpska. Hospitality from right-wingers and Islamophobes is entirely logical.

A statement from Banja Luka best explains his political career: "Milorad Dodik came to power on the tanks of the international community, so it is logical that a similar means of transport awaits him on his departure."