The lobbying activities of Milorad Dodik in the United States (U.S.) are not new. However, they are taking new forms. The same brutal language he has been using for two decades in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has begun to be used in that country as well. Some will say he is allowed to do so, or that he paid for it.
Dodik is spreading in the U.S. the narrative about “Islamic domination in Europe”
Putting that aside, this is how his guest appearance in Lara Logan’s podcast interview looked in September: he called former U.S. ambassador Michael Murphy, literally, a fascist in the middle of the U.S., while imagining himself as a factor on the world political stage, and for a long time explained Putin’s aggression against Ukraine through the alleged non-compliance with the Minsk agreements. Still, one new and, in the context of the strengthening of the global right, much more dangerous narrative that he spreads stands out.
Simply put, he advocates the thesis that the Republika Srpska (RS) has all these years been the bulwark of Europe’s Christian values against the advancing, as he called it, Islamic globalism. Therefore, it would probably be necessary to absolve all the methods used from 1992 until today in stopping the advance of Bosnian Muslims. Yet, the more perceptive will quickly realize that there is nothing new here either, but that it is merely a pale copy of the treatment of the Battle of Kosovo from the pen of the French Academy 5 or SANU, whose outcome is well known.
The story of lobbying in the U.S. centers of power has once again opened the question of the activities of certain political and media actors in relation to BiH.
Ivica Puljic, correspondent from Washington, revealed a series of worrying connections concerning the spreading of Milorad Dodik’s propaganda narrative in the U.S. political space.
“This is a paid interview that was made in September in Banja Luka, not here in the U.S., because Dodik could not come to the U.S. at that time,” he explains.
Everything was staged and arranged, and later shared with many addresses
He adds that the interview was conducted by Lara Logan, who calls herself an independent investigative journalist; however, Puljic warns, she is a very controversial person who was fired from CBS and Fox News, and was paid to come to Banja Luka to interview Dodik.
In that conversation, Puljic recalls, Dodik was presented as a victim of Islamic persecution, a Christian who fights for Christian rights in RS, BiH, and Europe.
Although Puljic emphasizes that “everything was staged and arranged,” it is worrying that such a narrative reaches people who can be very close to the President of the U.S.
“The interview was then taken over by Laura Loomer, known for conspiracy theories; they say she is a Mossad agent, a very controversial woman, an extreme right-winger on a neo-Nazi platform,” Puljic points out, adding that Loomer has accreditations for the Pentagon, that she traveled with Trump during his presidential campaign, and that she has access to Trump and the people around him.
The whole story, he adds, was then taken over by General Michael Flynn, who was one of the leading figures in Trump’s first administration, and later had some convictions and trials.
Flynn, as Puljic states, further posted all this on social networks, but also sent it to various addresses in the State Department, the White House, the Pentagon, etc.
Puljic emphasizes that this is a very dangerous narrative that the authorities in BiH should focus on and stop because it is based on falsehoods.
He warns that it is the same demagoguery that Radovan Karadzic used in the 1990s, claiming that Muslims and Croats were a threat to the Serbian people.
The idea of a third entity originates from the Heritage Foundation
Speaking about the new narrative about BiH that circulates through U.S. conservative circles, Puljic explains that it all originates from the Heritage Foundation.
“That is the foundation that created the manifesto according to which Donald Trump governs in the U.S.,” he points out.
He adds that in this story, there are two analysts – Max Primorac and James Carafano – who wrote two analyses that also include claims about the defense of Christianity, but also about the need to create a third entity, and sent them to certain addresses in the U.S. administration. Based on that, he explains, new analyses and information are created and sent to higher instances.
“It should be said that Max Primorac from the Heritage Foundation is close to Dragan Covic, through Zeljana Zovko, a member of the European Parliament, and that Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic also met with Primorac and people from the Heritage Foundation in May this year.”
Puljic concludes by saying that BiH must prevent the spreading of lies that could be harmful to it. Everyone can have a position on the entities and the third entity, but lies cannot be used to justify it, as Max Primorac and James Carafano are doing, Puljic concludes.
