OPINION - Peace in Bosnia precariously poised on a precipice

The author is the director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center. A part-time lecturer at the International Relations Department of the International University of Sarajevo (IUS), Dr. Suljagić is also the author of two books: “Ethnic Cleansing: Politics, Policy, Violence - Serb Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in former Yugoslavia” and “Postcards from the Grave”

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

If Bosnia and Herzegovina was in the grip of a crisis just a few weeks ago, nowadays it can only be said to be standing on the edge of a precipice. As of this week, there is no doubt that Milorad Dodik, the leading Bosnian Serb separatist politician and nominally member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, plans to initiate violence. In fact, he put a clock on it last week when his Independent Social Democrats convened and passed a series of documents that spell violence in the short term. His plan is for the Bosnian Serb parliament to pass a series of laws in mid-November, establishing parallel institutions. The documents that have since become a public show that he not only plans to establish a Serb-run intelligence service, a taxation authority, and an armed force, but that he plans to have the Bosnian Intelligence Service and the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina removed from Serb-majority areas “through the intervention of the organs” of the Republika Srpska entity.

Establishment of the Bosnian Serb military is a thick red line

That is as explicit a threat of violence as can be. But, even if Dodik was not planning violence, the very fact of the re-establishment of the Bosnian Serb military, officially named “Vojska Republike Srpske” during the war of aggression (1992-1995), is a thick red line.

First of all, it is an institution that was found by the International Court of Justice in 2007 to have been responsible for genocide. Bosnian genocide was a short period of intense violence over the summer months of 1992, with medieval sieges of population centers such as Sarajevo, Bihać, and Srebrenica lasting well into 1995. The Bosnian Serb Army besieged the capital city of Sarajevo for three and a half years, resulting in crimes against humanity. It organized detention and concentration camps in 1992 and was at the center of the genocidal violence that targeted Bosniak and Croat populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In July 1995, it was at the heart of the genocidal operation in Srebrenica. The top echelon of the organization was directly involved in the planning and execution of the mass murder of the male population of the former UN Safe Area.

It was not military. It served as an extension of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) initially, whereas its officers’ corps remained on the payroll of Yugoslavia and Serbia into the 2000s. It was a civilian-killing machine. It never won a battle on equal terms, and when the balance of power changed in the autumn of 1995, it was put to rout. “Vojska Republike Srpske”, along with Republika Srpska, was saved only by a lie that Richard Holbrooke fed to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović that then-US President Bill Clinton had told him that NATO would bomb the Bosnian Army if it tried to take Banja Luka, the rebel capital.

Bosniaks have been treated as enemies

Second, the Bosnian Serb army continually undermined the peace process during its post-war existence. It aided in the hiding of indicted war criminals. It intimidated non-Serb returnees to Serb-majority areas. It spied on NATO troops stationed in the country. If it is reconstituted, the entire region is going to become all the more unstable. It will become an anti-NATO platform – with some Russian help that will no doubt be forthcoming – sharing a porous border of hundreds of kilometers with Croatia, the neighboring NATO member state. In simple terms: it is a security threat of the first order, inherently adversarial to Western interests in the Balkans.

Third, its primary target is going to remain the continued existence of Bosniaks. Its default enemies are Bosniaks as a people. Starting with the so-called Six Strategic Goals adopted by the same Bosnian Serb Assembly - from Directive No. 4 dated November 1992 to Directive No. 7; the order to kill Srebrenica in short – the Bosnian Serb military treated the entire Bosniak population as an enemy. In Sarajevo alone, 1,600 children were killed during the siege, a great many of them by sniper fire. We simply cannot be expected to coexist with such an institution, dedicated solely to bringing about our physical destruction. It was proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not fancy.

Peace is at stake

Milorad Dodik has painted all of us in the corner. There is very little room for maneuver, and peace is at stake. He has been emboldened by the weak reactions from the United States and the European Union to his open declaration of violence and has every incentive to continue executing his plan. He has already withdrawn from the Dayton Peace Agreement but still pays lip service to it in order to create a new de facto situation on the ground before he officially declares it. Every time he says that he does not wish for war, he and his minions buy more time to continue building a new capacity to wage one.

The only way to stop Dodik is to convince him that the costs of his plan outweigh the potential benefits. That is in our hands. The current situation ultimately boils down to one question: Are we, those who survived the genocidal onslaught in the 1990s, willing to live, to coexist with the capacity to repeat it? I am not. I don’t think any one of us is.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.