Bosnia's NATO Path - Čović's Lullaby or Judicial Alarm Clock

It must be stated without reservation that the conflict between the deniers and defenders of Bosnian statehood ends with the activation of the Action Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina's membership in NATO, MAP.

Numerous national and state anniversaries mark the content of April. This April marks six full Bosnian years since the adoption of obligations from Tallinn and the awarding of a conditional MAP. The BiH authorities committed to registering, first sixty-nine, and then sixty-three, military properties as state property with the right of use by the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of BiH.

Annual summits passed, the state did not fulfill this obligation, it lagged behind its neighbors on the NATO path, and international relations significantly changed, having painful effects on the relations between political factors in Bosnia.

On June 8th and 9th, another NATO summit will be held in Warsaw, and the issue of BiH's MAP will be on the agenda.

As things stand today, there is little likelihood that the activation of Bosnia's MAP will occur at this summit with the registration of military property completed.

Despite these facts, one of the members of the Presidency of BiH, Dragan Čović, offers the public unquestioning optimism that it will happen. He did so at the commemoration of the 24th anniversary of HVO last week in Čapljina.

None of Čović's statements of this kind have revealed the way in which this can be achieved.

And this is what should be feared and why his "state-fluttering" optimism should be accepted with reservations. After these statements, he also made those that garnished the MAP issue with the Prud principles, Dodik's ultimatums on the territorial distribution of all state property (that from succession and that from the state continuity of BiH).

Čović grossly ignores and undermines both the Constitution of BiH and the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH, as well as the law prohibiting the disposal of state property of BiH.

Čović is like an iceberg; you only see the white part that can attract you, but you don't sense the dangerously larger part of the iceberg below the water surface.

Simultaneously with Čović's "diplomatic-political" antics, a decided case concerning the resolution of state ownership of a military property in Republika Srpska is in the appellate council phase before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which proves the Republika Srpska legal farce regarding the dispute of state ownership over its property.

One might say - "In the mud of sand and river lies the confirmation of Bosnian statehood." The sand is Han, and the water is Crna. With the imminent confirmation of the BiH Court's verdict in this case, a judicial precedent would be established that would allow for the unimpeded registration of military property in RS to its owner, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It is strange that Čović offers completely different unconstitutional and legally unfounded solutions for activating the MAP. That underwater part of Čović's iceberg remains loyal to the agreement with the political Siamese twin Milorad Dodik, known only to him. The division of state property, including this property, hidden from the public, has only one goal - to hide the hundreds of millions in theft of military and other state property, and if possible, to carry out new thefts on the part that has not been plundered.

There is no fear, the controlled state Attorney's Office will not disrupt the devil's plan. For years, it has not fulfilled its obligation to annul void legal actions of transferring ownership of state property, despite the legal prohibition. Those before them, Mandić, Ljubić, and Vilić, did not do it either, so why would they? The author of the prohibition law - the OHR - has also remained silent.

Interest groups, political tycoons, and the party-political oligarchies connected to them have unhinderedly completed the business of billions worth of state property. They have become brazenly rich, and the ethno-territorial units have causally become a new de facto situation. All acted on the principle of "their own national territory." Čović knows all this, and therefore he diligently and zealously completes it with a populist-nationalist fervor.

There is another possible scenario for Bosnia's MAP that sends shivers down the spine. The summit in Warsaw, God forbid, could activate the MAP even without a single military property registered to the state of BiH in RS, thereby creating the illusion of achieving Bosnia's MAP. This scenario would position the Bosnian state in a Cypriot status, and the division of BiH would become a fait accompli.

The zone of military-political influence of the ever-present Russia would thus be confirmed by its presence in Republika Srpska. The external borders of Bosnia, in its merely formal part, would cease to exist, and the administrative line dividing the entities would become the new state border of Russian influence.

The scenario is almost fictional, but in the context of Balkan-Bosnian circumstances, it is possible. We must fear Čović's lullaby (experience teaches us), and the answer to these fears should be given by the appellate department of the BiH Court with its judicial decision. Bosnian statehood must be pulled out of the mud of sand and the Crna River, and the time from Tallinn is running out.

By: Muharem Cero