Jasmin Mujanović for Patria: The revolution in Macedonia can be a good roadmap for BiH

Political analyst from the East-West Institute in New York and Doctor of Philosophy from the Faculty of Political Sciences at York University in Toronto, Jasmin Mujanović, stated in an interview for the Patria news agency that neither the EU nor America can build democracy and a free society in BiH unless the citizens of this country do it themselves.

In an interview for NAP, Mujanović spoke about Russia's influence on the Balkans, political relations in the Balkan countries, the transition from a one-party to a multi-party system, the significance of political changes in Macedonia for the entire Balkan region...

PATRIA: According to the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina is under NATO's patronage. According to these agreements and legal norms, BiH is essentially part of the NATO family. For three and a half years, Western media wrote about the NATO crisis caused by the brutal aggression against Bosnia. NATO finally reacted, and that reaction preserved and strengthened its position. How aware are the Euro-Atlantic powers today of these agreements and BiH's historical position?

MUJANOVIĆ: Well, first, I don't know if any representative within NATO would say that BiH is the "patronage" of that organization, nor would I agree with that description. I think if things were really like that, there would be no need for BiH to officially join that alliance at all. In reality, BiH has very close relations with both the NATO alliance and a large part of the Atlantic world, but we certainly lack the guarantee that the NATO pact offers through so-called Article 5. 

Therefore, in the worst-case scenario, BiH today lacks the guarantee that anyone else will defend its sovereignty or territorial integrity, just as in 1992. Dayton is almost irrelevant here. So, to avoid accidentally finding ourselves in the situation of Ukraine - where Russia officially respected its borders and statehood until the day they annexed Crimea and occupied Donbas - BiH must join NATO as soon as possible. And that is best for the entire region.

PATRIA: The intelligence connection between Croatia and Serbia has always been special. Most of Milošević's leaders from the Serbian UDBA and the military intelligence sector were Croats. Starting with Frenko Simatović, Stanko Čolak, Zlatko Radnić. Zdravko Mustač, as the police chief, secured Milošević at Gazimestan. How long can such connections last?

MUJANOVIĆ: It depends on what you mean by "such connections." If the implication is somehow ethnic, then I think it's pure coincidence or at least a consequence of the fact that the SFRY was a state of a "mixed" character. In any case, this is more a question of institutions. A dirty little secret of the breakup of Yugoslavia is that it didn't just happen like that. The SKJ (League of Communists of Yugoslavia) and the SFRY disintegrated, but the political elites who were in power in the 1980s, in all former republics, are mostly still in power, and the (de facto) one-party system remained in power, only now divided into 6 or 7 parts. 

This is also the case in those various state security organs, both in Croatia and Serbia. The last man who truly threatened that system, Zoran Đinđić, ended up with a bullet in his head. That tells us a lot. Anyway, in that sense, what "lasts" in this entire region are not personal relationships or ideologies, but a general authoritarian political system that citizens have not yet found a way (or the will) to break.

PATRIA: You are the first to notice an unusual connection between the Croatian and Bosnian HDZ and the Russian side. Todorić could not take out loans without state approval. HDZ had to know that with huge loans from Sberbank, one could fall into economic and political dependence on Russia. The endangerment of economic sovereignty implies political dependence. In the West, they suspect that this was a conscious choice by Croatia.

MUJANOVIĆ: Conscious or unconscious, these are facts. We must understand that Croatia is, in practice, a one-party state. HDZ has only lost parliamentary elections twice since 1990. And even those two times they lost, their allies within state and non-governmental institutions very quickly stalled the opposition's program. As in all states where such systems exist, this means that Croatia's economy is under tremendous political pressure. 

So, even if HDZ didn't plan to hand Agrokor over to the Russians just like that, their deeply corrupt politics allowed it. And now, in a moment of general panic, as Agrokor is falling apart, they are ready for all options and all relationships just to save their regime. And that came as a godsend to Moscow. Now they can control both Zagreb and Belgrade, and in that way, completely paralyze BiH, the strategic center of the entire Balkans.

PATRIA: Dodik was brought to power in RS by the Euro-Atlantic countries themselves. After he was placed on the US blacklist, he should have been restrained in his radical statements. Dragan Čavić said that he was warned by Western officials not to do anything against Dodik. Can Dodik turn towards NATO again?

MUJANOVIĆ: He cannot. Dodik has burned all his bridges, just like Nikola Gruevski in Macedonia; it's only a matter of time when and how he will be removed from power. It's even a big question whether he will politically survive the next elections. But even if he somehow gets through, his regime is on life support. And in the end, he will simply be replaced by the citizens and the opposition in RS and BiH, not by NATO and the West. It was like that with Milošević, it was like that with Gruevski, and it will be like that with Dodik.

PATRIA: After the attempted coup in Montenegro, the violence in the middle of the Sobranje in Macedonia, behind which, allegedly, the Russian intelligence service stood, it seems that Bosnia and Herzegovina is next in line for these global clashes on the territory of small countries. 

MUJANOVIĆ: Yes, but we must remember that these are primarily local events that are only now gaining some global dimension. But essentially, this is a fight for our future and for the future of our democracy in this region. In that context, we must understand that the Russians are our key enemies, or at least their current regime is our adversary, and also that neither the EU nor America can build democracy and a free society for us if we are not willing to demand it from our leaders and representatives, or to insist on it through protests, demonstrations, and even elections.

Macedonia is important to me because their "Colorful Revolution" truly changed the political dynamics in that country; it united ethnic communities, activated youth, reformed the opposition... That is an example for us, a roadmap, and as long as we don't start thinking about politics in that way, as a personal duty, we will remain cheap and mostly forgotten pawns of larger powers.