Dodik should have been stopped already, are the international officials becoming his accomplices?

Amra Vrabac 

It is the third day of the new year 2022, the impressions of congratulations and best wishes sent to us by politicians have settled. They sounded very optimistic as we do not have any problems in the country. And there are too many problems. We do not have a state budget, we will be financed on the basis of 2020, the work of state institutions is blocked, competencies are unilaterally transferred from the state to the RS entity, the state is undermined, the war is often mentioned, we have lived in uncertainty for months which gives rise to further emigration of BiH citizens.  

Milorad Dodik - the biggest, but not the only culprit for this situation - is still only under the ‘observation’ of the international community. Because, how to deal with something whose creation you supported and maintained until it got out of control. We have been hearing about American ‘sanctions on the table’ for months, but that did not scare Dodik either, and he speaks very openly about it, and even ridicules American diplomats. When the RS National Assembly passed the RS Law on Medicines and Medical Devices in late October, establishing an entity agency for medicines and medical devices, it was clear that Dodik's plan had begun to materialize. Neither then, nor until the session on December 10, at which the conclusions on the transfer of competencies from the state to RS in the field of justice, indirect taxes, defense and security were adopted, and even after that, Dodik and his partners in power were not stopped. The formation of the case in the Prosecutor's Office of BiH came too late. The attack on the constitutional order began much earlier, and is now almost in its final stages.

The international officials are now on vacation, and on the eve of the holiday, the arrival of the American envoy Matthew Palmer and the European representative Angelina Eicchorst in BiH was canceled because, as they say, there are no conditions for continuing talks on changing the BiH election law. Although they themselves said that political representatives should give up maximalist demands, some of the actors did not understand the message correctly, so they continue the old story and set their deadlines for changes.

During a lull related to the election law, the attack of the Dodik-Čović duo on BiH from within is becoming more coordinated. Čović is increasingly mentioning and linking separatism and Bosniak unitarism, but he never mentions Dodik's separatism. One could even say that he justifies it, which should not be surprising because they have complemented each other well for years, and Čović still nourishes the idea of ​​a third entity which he would rule. While Čović is attacking Željko Komšić, Bakir Izetbegović, and even the Islamic Community of BiH, he is silent about Dodik, even though he generated the biggest crisis since the war.

If the international community intends to try to disentangle the political knot in BiH, it will only be possible if all those involved in the crisis are in the same package.

It is illusory to expect any continuation of the talks of political leaders without the help and mediation of a foreign factor. In no case can this be and must not be domestic self-proclaimed mediators who are preparing the ground for the upcoming elections.

In the current situation, it is difficult to expect the normalization of relations between the SDA, HDZ and SNSD, which make up the state government. Even worse is the case when you have two opponents whose common goal is to fight the third. That is why the SDA must not be left alone in this fight. This was also shown by the negotiations on the Election Law, when the representatives of the international community finally invited the representatives of the Democratic Front to talks, along with its president Željko Komšić.

The important fact is that the Election Law exists and that elections can be held despite the fact that the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights have not yet been implemented. However, the other problem is that the state budget has not been adopted and that could make it impossible to hold elections that cannot be financed by donations. If it is the plan of SNSD and HDZ not to have elections in October 2022, then sanctions are inevitable for all those who undermine the elections of one democratic state. Anything contrary to holding elections would take BiH in the direction of tribal communities in which chiefs decide on life in that community. But then we can no longer talk about democracy, which is a failure of the international community itself, which has invested so much in BiH.

Months before the blockade of state institutions by representatives of the RS parties, allegedly due to imposed changes to the BiH Criminal Code, which punishes genocide denial and bans the glorification of war criminals, Dodik announced such a scenario. In May 2021, when there were no imposed changes (Valentin Inzko imposed changes at the end of July), Dodik asked the NSRS (National Assembly of the Republika Srpska) for support for a peaceful breakup, or secession of the RS.

At the time, he boasted that he had participated in the defense of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, convicted war criminals. Every word spoken at the rostrum became a reality and more than that. Dodik moved from words to deeds. And we can no longer talk about the red line, because it was crossed by the adoption of the Law on Medicines and Medical Devices of the RS.

Who can now talk and reach any agreement with Dodik while he repeats that ‘normal Bosnia is the one that does not exist’? There is no more time to try and persuade Dodik to talk about a state he does not recognize, about the institutions he is destroying, about repealing the law according to which he should be sanctioned first.

It has long been clear that Dodik has embarked on a journey of no return. The only question is how many like-minded people there are, because Serb citizens are also leaving BiH. Can he count on the 300,000 votes he has been calling for? How did Milorad indebt ‘his people’?

Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens have no use of shallow individual and joint statements of the international representatives, embassies, individuals. If there is no adequate reaction in the coming days, they can be considered Dodik's accomplices in the overthrow of the state, the one that was internationally recognized by the UN in 1992. No entity can be older than a state whose 1,000-year history is unquestionable. It cannot be the subject of Dodik's and Čović's blackmail, nor the compromises that Izetbegović and international mediators talked about.

This is a state that will survive and be led, not ruled, by smarter, wiser and above all better people than we have now.