”The international community must find a new model for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and persecute all those who disagreewith it. This means that they will have to put pressure on the leadership of the Republika Srpska (RS) because their leadership is hindering the development of BiH,” is the message of the former head of the British army, Lord Dannatt, in an interview with N1. Lord Dannatt also believes that glorifying war criminals and denying genocide in BiH is inadmissible in BiHand the world today.
“Greater Serbia”
”The establishment of the RS as one of the two entities has formalized the division that is passing through BiH today. I think that the international community should say very loudly to Serbia and RS that BiH will progress only when full integration occurs, and the RS and the Federation of BiH (FBiH) will be fully integrated into one government structure. You may think this will never happen.
”Maybe a moment was missed because I said, I think the international community does not understand how strong it was in 1995 and how weak the sides were in 1995. And that was the moment to come up with a much more ambitious formula and to force Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, to work together in an integrated framework. You will know better than me if there is a chance for that in the future. But if that level of integration is not achieved, and it will probably have to be brought by the forces of the international community that will really re-engage in BiH, you will remain divided and therefore you will not prosper in the way you should. And I think it is a tragedy, for 30 years, the war is over and the tragedy is that BiH has failed to prosper and make the progress it actually needed,” noted Lord Dannatt.
Lord Dannatt, who has served in BiH in both peacekeeping and NATO forces, also stated it should be clear to neighboring Serbia that RS will never be part of “Greater Serbia”.
”I think that what is needed is for the Dayton Two conference to take place effectively, with the main parties that would come together and agree on the best new formula for BiH. And then when that new plan is made, then those parties that will not agree with it should be persecuted. This will, in fact, mean that pressure will have to be put on the RS leadership because their leadership is hampering the future development and economic prosperity of the whole of BiH. And that is wrong, which is why I said earlier that Serbia must be a part of this conversation because Serbia must give up any desire to integrate RS into ‘Greater Serbia‘,” Lord Dannatt points out.
Denial of genocide and glorification of war crimes
When it comes to the denial of genocide and the glorification of war crimes in BiH, especially in Srebrenica, Lord Dannattstressed that as a witness in the Krstic and Mladic cases there is no doubt that what happened in July 1995 is a crime that cannot be justified.
”I testified in the case against General Krstic. I also testified against General Mladic. And in preparation for those two cases, I visited Srebrenica, visited the places of mass executions. I also visited secondary sites where the bodies were exhumed after the first burial. Before the end of the war, Serbs were worried that the bodies would be found or that many of them would be buried again. Srebrenica was a well-planned unprecedented activity that took place in July 1995. And then the months that followed. There is no excuse for the outrageous killing of some 8.000 Muslim men and boys.”
Croatian Self-Government
Little is known to the public in BiH that Richard Dannatt, today’s Lord Dannatt, played a key role in the “Croatian Self-Government” or “Hercegovacka Banka” case, and that he issued an order to attack this bank.
”More precisely, after the end of the war, the first round of elections was held in 1996 in BiH to the astonishment of the international community, hardline politics won the elections and remained in power. I returned to BiH four years later as NATO Deputy Commander when the second round of elections took place. And in the second round of elections, more moderate politicians were elected. However, what we noticed in the next few weeks was that hardliners continued to exercise power, we could not quite understand why this was so until we realized that hardliners still control a lot of money.”
We followed the money they controlled to the headquarters of Hercegovacka Banka in Mostar, and the international community signed a paper on taking over that bank. Well, you can sign the paper, but that doesn’t mean that some officials will give you control. So I’m afraid I applied military logic and said, well, if we’re going to take over the bank, the only way to take it over is to do it. So in the morning we broke into the bank, removed all the documents, all the files, all the computers.
Ukraine and Russia
”First of all, personally, I do not believe that we will see an invasion of Russian troops in Ukraine. What is President Putin trying to do now? We must remember that President Putin, if you scratch him to the core, is an unreconstructed KGB colonel whose beloved Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union were destroyed in the late 1980s, especially by the harmony of NATO, NATO nations that have become closer.”
