ANATOMY OF A DEAL: The State of Bosnia Again a Currency for Haggling, Who Dictated Tasks to Dodik?

Written by: Rasim Belko

“I am addressing the parliamentary majority that this today, without any emotion, is a political task. You were also at the meetings, you were at the talks and you know why we are doing this. Do not allow those who seek to turn this into a circus to prevail…“

That is how, yesterday, without a tremor in her voice and without a shred of scruple, Željka Cvijanović addressed the deputies in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.

That sentence, uttered coldly and technically, is in fact the most important political quote of the year. It encapsulates the entire logic of Dodik's regime - obedience to those who dictate, whether they bear the insignia of the party power center in Laktaši, or the diplomatic insignia from the embassies of two Western countries.

But the key word is not “task,” but the question: who assigned it?

Timing that says it all

The answer came swiftly. Just 24 hours later, a statement from the State Department arrived, praising the NSRS for the appointment of Ana Trišić-Babić, with the standard diplomatic formula that this “opens the way for deepening cooperation between the USA and BiH.” In the same sentence, it also “strengthens the stability of BiH.”

These are the kinds of sentences written in Washington when they want to signal that one of their investments has begun to yield results.

So, let's not beat around the bush: Milorad Dodik has evidently been negotiating something with Washington in the recent period, and by God, with London as well. Something weighty enough for the US administration to make a U-turn from sanctions to compliments in a matter of days.

The lifting of sanctions on Dodik's associates, which local media tried to present as a temporary technical correction, was essentially a signal of goodwill. It is not an act of relief, but an act of an offer among traders who have a history of relations. An offer to those who were labeled for years in Washington as destabilizers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and who have now suddenly become partners for “stability.” Of course, it didn't happen overnight; they have been working in tandem, we just caught on to them.

Therefore, one should not be naive – this is the beginning of a new political trade. In it, Bosnia and Herzegovina will once again be the coin for haggling.

Manipulation from outside and inside

Interestingly, while the American and British diplomatic machineries do their work, British media, as is often the case, follow a narrative that obscures the essence. Thus, Reuters writes today that Dodik, in his statement “we agreed all this with the foreigners,” meant – Putin and Lavrov. This is, of course, a pure bait-and-switch.

Because, realistically, Moscow in Bosnia and Herzegovina has no serious levers of power except Milorad Dodik himself. It has no strong media, no defined political structures, no international channels. Washington has all of them and uses them whenever it wishes.

That is why it is both ridiculous and dangerous when someone tries to explain that the “political tasks” mentioned by Cvijanović are a product of Moscow. They are not!

They were written in the West at the time when Sarajevo's political cucumbers were explaining that Dodik's end was near, during that period of agreed court verdicts. They were written in offices that have been shaping the geopolitical landscape of the Balkans for three decades, changing the masks of their “partners,” but not the goal – control of processes in a status quo and artificially created chaos.

Dodik, who until yesterday was threatened with indictments and isolation, now suddenly becomes “politically rational.” This is not a transformation, it is a trade. And in this trade, as in every one before, the currency is neither sanctions nor his political career, nor a tank; the currency is the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The swift reaction of the State Department and the US Embassy only laid bare what had long been simmering - that the fate of this country is still being shaped through cabinets where Dodik and the “Western friends of BiH” trade.

Therefore, when Željka Cvijanović says “political task,” we must read the invisible continuation “...from Washington and London.”

Because the answer to that question reveals not only Dodik and his regime, but also all those in Sarajevo, Belgrade, Brussels, and Washington who pretend not to know what it is about, while Bosnia and Herzegovina languishes in the mud as an experimental testing ground for others' interests.

And so, without illusions!

This is not the end of one phase, but the beginning of a new one, in which we must reckon that nothing good for all of us who love Bosnia and Herzegovina, nor for the state itself, will come from the trade between the “friends” from Washington and London on one side and Milorad Dodik on the other.