IV. WHAT IF… BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA DISINTEGRATES?
Zoran Nechev
‘Today, we are finally liberating ourselves from this artificial and so-called state of Bosnia-Herzegovina…’ announced Milorad Dodik, the former president of Republika Srpska (2010-2018) and now prime minister, to a large crowd of Bosnian Serbs who had
gathered in Banja Luka.
Within an hour of Dodik’s announcement, hundreds of Bosniak war veterans and their
supporters gathered in the heart of Sarajevo, chanting their opposition to ‘the birth
of a genocidal state’ and calling on Europe to prevent Republika Srpska from seceding. In a press conference the same day, the Bosniak member of the Bosnian presidency
condemned the move in no uncertain terms: ‘Bosniaks will not accept something established on ethnic cleansing and mass killing to become a state. We will fight against it
with all the means we have.’ Bosnian Croat leaders mainly felt vindicated by events, seeing it as proof that the decision of the Bosnian Croat political parties ‘not to take part
in the unconstitutional and illegal elections in 2018’ was the right one.
The inflammatory rhetoric was quickly followed by violence: the next morning, six
bombs simultaneously exploded in Bosnia’s four most important cities Banja Luka,
Sarajevo, Mostar and Brcko, and a group of men singing Serbian nationalist songs vandalised the Srebrenica genocide memorial centre. During the night, Bosnian Serb police
forces and Serb-dominated units of the armed forces entered the disputed city of Brcko,
thereby linking the disconnected eastern and western parts of the Republika Srpska and
establishing communications with Belgrade. The state of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH)
was about to cease to exist.
The consequences
Within days, BiH had returned to its 1995 frontline situation, with the three major
ethnic groups managing themselves administratively. Whereas Sarajevo tried to reverse
Milorad Dodik’s move, Bosnian Croats continued their (since 2018) de facto self-rule.
Online jihadist groups jumped at the occasion to garner Bosniak support and called for
violence against Serbs and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
At the international level, the most rapid response came from Russia and Turkey. The
Russian foreign ministry called on all sides to keep the peace, but boasted that ‘the
West’s policy of undermining the rights of Serbs and Croats in post-1995 Bosnia, combined with its open support for those who sympathise with the agenda of Islamic extremists, has officially failed.’ At the United Nations Security Council, Russia’s ambas-
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sador objected to UK-US calls for an emergency session on the crisis, explaining that
‘Russia is now working closely with Turkey and other partners in the region on a new
initiative for Bosnia. The EU and the West are no longer considered to be honest brokers
in Bosnia or the region.’
Meanwhile, Turkish President Erdogan declared that he ‘and the Turkish people stand
ready to protect their Bosniak Muslim brothers and sisters.’ Serbia quickly got involved,
too: President Aleksandar Vučić, now in his second term, and Croatia’s Prime Minister
issued a joint statement calling on all parties to refrain from resorting to violence. More
controversial rhetoric came from Croatia’s president while out on the campaign trail:
‘should the Republika Srpska’s secession succeed, 400,000 Croat Catholics cannot be
abandoned in a failed state full of Muslims who openly sympathise with ISIS’
The Austrian and Slovenian media were the first to broadcast news about Frontex preventing hundreds of Bosnians from crossing the border with Croatia. Meanwhile, the
Bosnian diaspora started to organise protests in all major Western European capitals.
Finally, the EU’s EUFOR mission was unable to prevent the crisis from occurring. First,
because it did not have a back-up plan once Russia blocked the prolongation of the
Chapter VII mandate for EUFOR in the UN Security Council. Second, because it did
not establish an adequate military presence in the strategically important Brcko district.
Where did it all go wrong?
The biggest driver of the crisis was that some of the most prominent Bosnian political
figures opted to distract the population from the country’s difficult socio-economic situation with ethnic tensions and political disagreements. In 2017, almost half of the country’s total budget was spent on repaying past loans. Revenues were generated through
taxes, new loans and the selling of state assets. At the same time, BiH struggled with a
large trade deficit, was unable to attract much-needed foreign direct investment (FDI),
and its economy and citizens were dependent on remittances from diaspora.
The covering up for the difficult socio-economic situation with fights over ethnic and
constitutional issues was already visible in 2016. During the summer of 2016, Bosnian
politicians clashed over ethnic aspects of the census results, and then in September they
fought about whether or not to hold a referendum on a holiday in Republika Srpska. In
late 2016, there were more disagreements over how to interpret the call by the European
Parliament for BiH to undertake constitutional reforms in order to become fully federalised. And throughout 2016, rival politicians fought over who sits and decides in the
EU coordination mechanism. 2017 then saw the revival of a lawsuit against the Republic of Serbia for the Yugoslav wars. The EU’s active (and passive) role in these and later
developments left the Union with little or no influence once the crisis erupted.
What if ... Conceivable crises: unpredictable in 2017, unmanageable in 2020?
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Transparent lobbying efforts by Croatia in 2016 yielded results: changes to the electoral
law in BiH became a condition for the country to be awarded EU candidate status. But
this did not help Bosnian politicians reach a compromise. Instead, it provided them
with a topic they could fight over and use to fire up their electoral bases. The EU’s conditionality and failure to change the electoral law by the 2018 general elections encouraged Croat political parties to decide to boycott the vote – effectively paralysing the state
and entity institutions. In the eyes of non-Croats, the EU was perceived to be favouring
one side, something which only served to strengthen anti-EU narratives.
The EU’s accession negotiations – its most effective foreign policy instrument – were
then suspended. As a result, no progress was made on strengthening the rule of law and
fighting corruption. The EU did not do enough work to assess and prevent the radicalisation of the Muslim population in BiH, nor did it collect or spread credible, reliable
and up-to-date information on the country’s situation. This played into the hands of
Russian media outlets and Republika Srpska’s president, who since 2016 had started
using questionable data about the rise of extremism in BiH to portray Bosnian Muslims
as religious extremists.
In addition, the EU did not engage sufficiently in explaining the benefits of the accession process to the public. It also did not insist that the Bosnian government implement
and adhere to EU standards in areas that would improve the lives of citizens (road safety,
air pollution, public procurement, etc.) Moreover, the pledge made by the President of
the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, not to allow any new accessions until
at least 2019 further complicated the situation, leaving those politicians who wanted to
bring BiH closer to the EU without an actionable platform.

Jebo EU, zna se ko je gazda na Balkanu