WHAT HUMILIATION Mr. Izetbegović, give up the role of chief negotiator, because...

By: Academician Esad Duraković/Depo

Not so long ago, Bakir Izetbegović announced his visit to Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade, even though that President Vučić was a very active participant in the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina and regardless of the fact that he still has his diligent contractors working on the destruction of BiH. At that time, I wrote the text „The Road to Canossa“, showing how it is also a historical symbol of self-humiliation, servility, and admission of defeat.

However, Mr. Izetbegović is now again announcing his meeting with Vučić, and we have already heard him say earlier – well, that meeting doesn't necessarily have to be in Belgrade…

Izetbegović did not understand the essence of the message I sent him, although I know that a huge part of the BiH public supported my dissuasion of Izetbegović from his multiple negative meeting with Vučić, and he – apparently – is not giving up on it: it seems he is not giving up on cooperation with Vučić to the detriment of BiH. How can that man not understand this?!

Mr. Izetbegović, with that potential meeting you are causing immeasurable, historical damage to the state of BiH and to Bosniaks, of course. With this visit, you are doing everything exactly as it suits Vučić's plans regarding BiH and as stated in the instructions of Memorandum II.

In diplomacy, it is normal for a president to talk to a president, and you are not that – you are not the president of the state. Vučić wants to reduce BiH to Bosniaks, then Bosniaks to the SDA, and party leaders to tribal chieftains. Memorandum II of SANU precisely contains the instruction that BiH institutions should be bypassed and destroyed, and with this meeting you are supporting exactly that instruction from the Memorandum. 

Vučić is the head of a state that committed aggression against BiH, and what do you have to negotiate with him?! In doing so, you give him, publicly and bypassing state institutions, false legitimacy to decide on the fate of the state of BiH and even Bosniaks, and you are thus politically completely devastating and degrading that state. In this way, you affirm the thesis of the hopeless division of BiH into three peoples, humiliating all others (the so-called others), and thwarting the civic model of the state, which is the ideal of the majority of its citizens. 

We do not need the kind of „reconciliation“ between Bosniaks and Serbs that Vučić falsely advocates – we need creative coexistence with everyone, we need a state that will be represented and presented to all external entities by state institutions, not by individuals who think they are more important than institutions. 

Remember one universal, eternal and beneficial rule: Every individual is worth only as much as they have enriched institutions with their potentials. Your potential talks with Vučić would represent enormous damage inflicted, in this way, on the state, its institutions, its future, and even Bosniaks, of course, in the final result. 

You have no right to such fateful historical mistakes, Mr. Izetbegović!

I am sorry that I must nevertheless tell you publicly: 

Do not do these things, Mr. Izetbegović! Give up the role of chief negotiator because it is not in the interest of BiH or Bosniaks. Preserve your dignity and that of your people. With all these negotiating actions, you are thwarting the future of the state of BiH, and you will thereby – be assured – expose yourself to severe condemnation from both the present and history! 

Save the state institutions while there is still this little time left for this suffering country!

I believe it is useful to once again present to the public my text „The Road to Canossa“ because the announcement of negotiations/talks between Vučić and Izetbegović „reprises“ the context. Who knows for the umpteenth time…

The name of the Italian castle in Canossa near Parma became a metaphor for self-humiliation, when in 1077 the German Emperor Henry IV visited it to humbly submit to the Pope. In recent history, there is no example of a victim of someone's aggression being the first to go to the aggressor, it has always been the opposite. After the terrible attacks of the Informbiro on Yugoslavia, Tito was not the first to go to Moscow, but Khrushchev was the first to visit Tito; Polish statesmen after World War II did not go to Germany, but Willy Brandt was the first to visit Warsaw and bow to the victims of fascism; the USA kept China under blockade from 1949, but Zhou Enlai was not the first to go to the USA, but Richard Nixon was the first to come to Peking to pay homage and reconcile...

Such a form of submissiveness and self-humiliation was announced just these days by the statement of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, that Bakir Izetbegović – former member of the BiH Presidency and president of the SDA – will come to him in Belgrade, to his feet, and after he will have a conversation with Milorad Dodik who, of course, also comes to his feet – for his judgment, opinion, for his decision on the fate of the supposedly sovereign BiH in which he is a member of the Presidency. What terrible paradoxes!

True, Vučić has already come to BiH, but he has never admitted the genocide committed in it. Through Dodik, he persistently destabilizes BiH, showing with this invitation to Dodik and Izetbegović that he has a decisive influence on events in BiH. We do not know at this moment whether Izetbegović's visit to Vučić in Belgrade will materialize, but whatever it would mean, in what context and what effects it would have if it happens. Therefore, it would be good if Izetbegović did not travel to the feet of that Vuk who hypocritically presents himself with the diminutive VUČIĆ.

It would be Izetbegović's road to Canossa: a road of humiliation and something else:

1. Izetbegović should know that he has no legitimacy to represent BiH alone, nor Bosniaks, and that he alone cannot negotiate about its fate. Whenever he alone negotiates about the fate of BiH, he actually shows that neither he nor his party can be trusted.

2. By potentially going to Belgrade to negotiate about the fate of BiH's statehood – at Vučić's feet – he problematizes the sovereignty of his own country, acknowledging with that visit the fateful influence of the president of a neighboring country at a critical moment for BiH.

3. It would be his journey to Canossa – submissive and at the feet of a person and President whose country committed aggression against BiH and which has been convicted by the highest international judicial instances for failing to prevent genocide in BiH, a person who personally fought against BiH, in the aggressive campaign of his country and who said (do you remember?): „For one Serb, we will kill 100 Bosniaks“. (The forces of context force us to recall the debacle of the revision of the Bosnian genocide lawsuit.)

4. It is a delusion if Mr. Izetbegović thinks that his (potential) visit could decisively influence Vučić's intentions and decisions.

5. By going to Belgrade, he would vindicate all those who consider us here in BiH (and there are such in the international community) as warring tribes represented by three chieftains. Such treatment by that Trio causes enormous damage to all citizens and the state of BiH, and a statesman should be aware of that.

6. By going to Belgrade – at Vučić's feet – at this moment and in this context, Izetbegović would extend a lifeline to Dodik, who already has one foot over the political abyss and who deserves to fall, and it would not be the first time that Izetbegović's party extends him a lifeline at a decisive moment: that Trio („Bosnian Holy Trinity“) operates very successfully on the principle of mutual interests; they are true partners in the sense that they work for each other's benefit. That is the principle of their already too long survival.

7. By going to Belgrade, Izetbegović would, therefore, be saving Dodik, his proven partner (which means also himself), but – besides the two of them, the main political profiteer would be precisely that hypocritical Vučić: he would convincingly present himself to the international public as a peacemaker, although he never was one. Today in Europe there is no more skilled politician than him who knows how to make political capital even out of nothing.

8. Finally, that potential „road to Canossa“ of Izetbegović would be a terrible humiliation for both the state and the people. One should talk, indeed, but there are conditions under which it is done. The very international practice I mentioned at the beginning testifies to how a successful dialogue can be conducted only on the condition that the aggressor admits the mistake and does not humiliate his partner. Vučić possesses none of those virtues.