Dodik's plan with migrants in BiH

Before the meeting of the members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Tuesday, the media reported Dodik's announcement, which showed that the Chairman of the Presidency does not intend to solve the problem of the migrant crisis that has been seriously shaking the country since last year. "It is not a problem for me, and I have already scheduled a session of the Presidency for tomorrow," Dodik told reporters in Banja Luka, and then added, "all of this could be a futile story, because there is no Council of Ministers that could do anything operational about it." Dodik, therefore, even before the session, made it clear that he does not intend to take any steps that could solve the uncontrolled influx of illegal migrants and refugees who enter the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina through Serbia and Republika Srpska, an entity in BiH, where they remain stuck because the next state border with Croatia is strictly guarded and impenetrably protects the exhausted people fleeing the horrors of the Middle East towards the West.

According to data from the Service for Foreigners' Affairs, published by the Council of Ministers at its last session, from January 1, 2019, to June 5, 2019, 9,081 illegal migrants were registered in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, although this number could be much higher, as security agencies fail to register every person entering BiH.

Academician Esad Duraković, in an article published on the website of the Patria News Agency titled "Migration as a factor of further destabilization of BiH," views "the influx of migrants into a country like BiH and their retention at the EU border as a very serious factor of destabilization and thus of BiH's survival, given that the country is already in a very difficult crisis."

If we look around Bosnia and Herzegovina, listen to politicians' statements and the reactions of the civil sector, we will see that migrants are producing three key problems in the country: security, economic, and political problems, as state institutions are not adequately responding to any of these challenges. Since last year, the burden of fully securing migrant camps in Bihać and Velika Kladuša, which house thousands of unfortunate people, has been borne by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Una-Sana Canton, which is insufficient for both migrants and the local population to feel safe. Migrants are fed and clothed mainly by charitable organizations and altruistic citizens, while migrants are housed in improvised and unsanitary facilities. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, Milorad Dodik, manipulates refugees and migrants for political purposes and deepens inter-ethnic tensions in an already divided country, trying to bill the global problem of migration exclusively to Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In one of his statements about migrants coming to BiH, Dodik said: "... We in Republika Srpska believe that Bosniaks generated this story. And that they look favorably on this problem. And they do not want to be part of the solution. Because these are people of the same Islamic faith as Bosniaks. This is intended to change the ethnic composition." On the ground, however, things work quite differently, contrary to what Dodik is promoting in the media – because it is precisely Dodik who is doing everything to allow as many migrants as possible to enter Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thus, Dodik, as the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH and the top politician in RS, has blocked every attempt by the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina to secure the border between BiH and Serbia, from where dozens of illegal migrants enter the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina daily. The police of Republika Srpska not only do not block the passage of migrants through the territory of that entity but also stimulate their passage to the Federation of BiH, where unfortunate people concentrate in Bosnian Krajina towards an uncertain future.

Member of the Presidency of BiH Željko Komšić proposed that "the Presidency of BiH instruct the Minister of Defense Marina Pendeš to order the use and deployment of military-police, engineering, reconnaissance, as well as other units of the Armed Forces of BiH to support and assist the patrols of the BiH Border Police in controlling the border of BiH with Serbia and Montenegro in order to prevent illegal border crossings." Some time earlier, it was proposed that the Federal Police Administration assist the BiH Border Police at crisis points on the border with Serbia and Montenegro. Dodik rejected both proposals: "I will never give consent for the army to be deployed on the border between Republika Srpska and Serbia," Dodik said when asked to guard the border, while regarding the engagement of police from the Federation of BiH, he stated that "he will not allow the deployment of other police forces on the territory of RS."

Therefore, Dodik acts as a spanner in the works of the state for every attempt by the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina to find a solution to the migrant crisis that is shaking BiH.

The Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, Milorad Dodik, knows why he is doing this – the assumption is that he could be accumulating migrants in the Federation until the situation escalates at one point, which could serve him for the final collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because of this, Dodik does not want the corrupt judiciary in the country to change – about whose illegal work even the international community reports – because any other judiciary, not headed by Gordana Tadić and Milan Tegeltija, would prosecute Dodik for attempting to destabilize the state due to the migrant crisis.