“The German government is watching Dodik’s behavior with great political concern – just like his ally, the President of Serbia Vucic, a real bad guy in the Western Balkans,” writes the German press.
“Milorad Dodik’s secessionist policy makes further escalation between the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Government of Republika Srpska (RS) increasingly likely,” writes Frankfurter Rundschau (FR).
The paper recalled that only “three days before the start of the war in Ukraine, on February 21st, 2022, European Union (EU) foreign ministers in Brussels decided to almost double the forces of EUFOR/Althea to 1.100 soldiers and to equip them with armored combat vehicles”.
The author points out that this is “one of the reasons why the Bundestag decided in the summer of 2022 that the Bundeswehr should rejoin the EU mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) after ten-year abstinence, whereby NATO, in accordance with the agreement Berlin-Plus, supports the EU forces by using the assets and capabilities of this military alliance, despite the fact that the Western military alliance as a whole is not engaged in BiH. And in June, the Bundestag extended the mandate of EUFOR for another year – until the end of June 2024 .”
“Threat level high”
The Frankfurt Daily writes that “the German government, as well as its allies in the EU, assess that the security situation in BiH is still ‘controllable’, but that the threat level is ‘high'” – which stems from a document of the Ministry of Defense in Berlin, available to the media. It points to “risks of violent or criminal actions against Western citizens, international, and national security forces and members of the state administration”.
The text also mentions the writings of some BiH media that they are thinking about “increasing the number of EUFOR troops”, to which SPD politician Nils Schmid said: “BiH must, first of all, be strengthened politically – and not by further increasing the number of soldiers on the ground”.
Schmid said, reports FR, that the German government is watching “Dodik’s behavior – just like his ally, a real Bad Guy in the Western Balkans – Serbian President Vucic,” with great political concern.
“Punishment for everyone who respects Dodik’s laws”
The text assesses that “Dodik’s latest attacks on the institutions of the state of BiH and the High Representative of the international community, Christian Schmidt, are among the most serious since the Dayton Peace Agreement was reached in 1995”. In this context, the dispute over the Constitutional Court of BiH is mentioned, as well as the fact that “former CSU politician and now High Representative in BiH Schmidt reacted last week with a decree on the expansion of the criminal code, which foresees criminal consequences for public officials who respect Dodik’s laws. For actions that endanger ” the constitutional order” of the state as a whole is threatened with a sentence of up to five years in prison.”
“Austrian international law expert Joseph Marko warned in the Standard daily,” reports FR, “that Dodik’s actions are the last step before declaring secession.”
The paper also writes that “Dodik has been advocating the militarization of the Bosnian Serb police for years. “From 2015 to 2017, the RS’s budget for the procurement of military weapons tripled. In 2018, he confirmed the acquisition of 2.500 assault rifles at a time when the RS police already had 4.000 such weapons and hundreds of machine guns, mostly from Serbia, Brazil, and Belgium. According to the data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serb police now has 5.200 members of the police force.
The text further states that “the situation, as they say in security and political circles in Brussels, could be calmed down by the stationing of EUFOR units in Brcko District, which is Dodik’s Achilles’ heel because it divides the RS into eastern and western parts”.
BiH: A slow secession instead of a big bang
“The collapse of the state as a whole could happen even without a “big bang”, that is, slowly, given Dodik’s long-term undermining of state institutions and the construction of parallel structures. The moment, when his paramilitary forces are strong enough to put entity crossings (Inter-Entity Boundary Line) under police control, he could provoke an escalation. Bosniak member of the BiH Presidency, Denis Becirovic, warned in early July that in the event of secession, there is a Plan B – in order to protect the constitutional order of BiH,” concludes FR, DW reports.
E.Dz.
