Churchill observed once in his inimitable condescending style that Balkan peoples have more history than they know what to do with. Judging by the current events, Churchill was perhaps more right than even he could have suspected.
Where to begin? Perhaps Romania would be a good start. In that NATO/ EU member and proving ground of Western democracy, the unsuitable Presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, who was winning in the election, was unceremoniously banned on trumped-up charges from participating in the political process. What then was the point, one might ask, of shooting Nikolae and Elena like dogs? What most naively had thought was a laudable act of tyrannicide is now exposed as just plain murder.
To disqualify him, Georgescu was smeared as a “far right” politician, “populist,” “nationalist,” anti-NATO, anti-EU and anti its fraudulent “values,“ and for good measure also a Kremlin puppet who, preposterously, promoted his successful candidacy against abundantly financed and media-supported rival candidates by weaponising the Chinese owned Tik Tok platform. A bogus dossier, debunked within days of publication, was duly produced to corroborate the fictitious Russian and Tik Tok connection behind Georgescu’s candidacy. (President Trump should be particularly sensitive and sympathetic to Georgescu on this score, having not so long ago been victim to a similar scam, the infamous Steele dossier.) Ultimately, the majority of the epithets pinned on Georgescu were proved either false or were shown to constitute acceptable views that in a functioning democracy a political candidate was entitled to espouse.
But these trivial details left no impression whatsoever on the Romanian judges who were faithfully following their marching orders from NATO and Brussels, whilst the European Court of Human Rights declined to even consider the minor matter of Georgescu’s aborted candidacy, citing an obscure technicality.
Furious crowds in the hundreds of thousands in the streets of Bucharest and other Romanian cities are manifesting their outrage at the electoral coup, but so far to little avail. On Tuesday 11 March, a day after Romania’s cowardly Supreme Court, without even bothering to cite a legal basis, rejected his final appeal, Calin Georgescu made his case directly to the Romanian nation and to the indifferent world in a poignant address that should have shaken every decent person to the core. It is worth watching and pondering like few other political statements in recent memory.
Whilst in Romania the front-running Presidential candidate was being illegally prevented from getting elected, in the Republic of Srpska the sitting President, Milorad Dodik, is being illegally driven from office on concocted political charges inspired by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s illegal colonial governor, the phony “high representative” Christian Schmidt. Schmidt is wreaking institutional havoc in Bosnia and Herzegovina without any legal warrant for his activities because he has not been duly appointed by the UN Security Council, as the protocol provides.
Dodik, it should be noted, has already been tried and convicted in a Bosnian court for “refusing to implement the high representative’s directives,” a novel penal offence invented specifically for the purpose of facilitating his criminal prosecution, for which he was sentenced to one year in prison and barred from exercising any political function for six years. That conviction is currently under appeal. But in order to accelerate his removal, new proceedings were concocted by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Prosecutor’s Office on the pretext that Dodik, Republika Srpska Prime Minister Višković and Parliament speaker Stevandić were “conspiring to undermine the constitutional order.” An arrest warrant was issued when the “suspects” failed to show up in Sarajevo for interrogation. The Prosecutor’s Office, like the rest of the federal judicial system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is of course under the operational control of Schmidt’s colonial bureau and the NATO occupation structures that rule the country behind the veneer of the Constitution that was promulgated following the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, whose provisions they manipulate at will.
Evidently, the broader aim of these machinations in the Republic of Srpska is not to politically destroy just Dodik but to decapitate the entire leadership of the Serbian entity, leading to its collapse. The Serb portion of Bosnia are collectively guilty of disobedience of the most objectionable sort. That includes maintaining close relations with Russia over the head of the central authorities in Sarajevo, using the entity’s constitutional veto power to block Bosnia’s accession to NATO, and refusing consent to collective West’s insistent demand for centralisation, which in practice means the hollowing out and political divestiture of the Serb half of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The stage is now set in Bosnia and Herzegovina for an epic confrontation, pitting the beleaguered Serb entity against the self- proclaimed “international community,” consisting of NATO, the EU, and the local transmission belts through which their power is exercised. The intention to physically apprehend the Serbian leadership was ominously signalled by the arrival in Bosnia of a detachment of 300 Rumanian special forces. Their precise task has not been clarified but it may be surmised. They probably would be better advised, if they must arrest anyone, instead of travelling abroad to take into custody the corrupt Romanian judges whose tyrannical electoral decisions are plunging their own country into chaos.
Dodik and his crew may be problematic in many respects, but there can be no doubt that any assault by the collective West on Republika Srpska’s autonomy, the status guaranteed to it under the Dayton Peace Agreement, will provoke fierce resistance. As we speculated recently, that may be exactly the sort of upheaval that is deliberately being orchestrated.
Whilst in Bosnia ultimate intentions may still remain partially obscure, in Serbia over the last several weeks they have stood out with increasing clarity and in bold relief. The duplicitous, collective West-aligned regime which feigns goodwill toward Russia is moving precipitously toward a violent confrontation with the protesting students and the masses of citizens supporting their demands for systemic change, with unfathomable but assuredly explosive consequences.
As in Bosnia, so in Serbia the stage has now been set. On Saturday 15 March hundreds of thousands of Serbs will converge on Parliament Square in Belgrade to challenge the misrule of the corrupt regime. After three and a half months of student-led rebellion which has left no corner of Serbia uninvolved or unaffected there is a widespread sense that the rally on Saturday will be a watershed event, after which nothing in Serbia will remain the same.
The regime also shares that impression, as reflected in the increasingly combative rhetoric of its spokesmen. Of particular concern is its decision to erect a virtual military camp, equipped with tents and staffed by its militant supporters, in the spacious park which separates the Presidency building from the National Assembly, where the protesters are expected to congregate.
There is credible evidence that the authorities have engaged hooligans on their payroll and trusted convicts on temporary furlough from prisons where they are serving time to act as agents provocateurs tasked with staging violent incidents. The violence would be conveniently blamed on the protesters, providing a motive for the introduction of harsh measures such as state of exception and mass arrest of political opponents that the cornered regime is keenly interested in.
In the highly charged atmosphere prevailing in Serbia, the only outcome to which the contemplated course of action could lead are large-scale disorders, possibly resulting in the collapse of civil authority. Such a result would serve perfectly the purposes of NATO, whose garrisons surround Serbia, as it would furnish the pretext to enter Serbian territory and “restore order.” The NATO Partnership for Peace programme, to which Serbia is a signatory, provides for movement of NATO forces within the country, including the infamous Status of Forces provision which exempts NATO personnel from liability before Serbian courts.
It is inconceivable that on Saturday 15 March the Serbian regime would consider resorting to the use of force against the protesters on the scale that, judging by the meticulous preparations, is envisaged unless such a plan had been cleared in advance with curators in Washington, London, and Brussels. That brings us to the critical question. Is a Sadam Husein trap being deliberately laid, deceptively assuring the regime that the collective West has no interest in how the protests are suppressed or objection to the level of force used to accomplish that purpose? That position can easily be reversed once the bait is taken, to accuse the expendable regime of grievous human rights violations requiring an urgent R2P intervention and overt occupation of Serbia once the encouraged mayhem has yielded its malignant fruits?
Some of the answers to these intriguing questions should become available soon after Saturday. But even an ordinary cui bono analysis should suffice to impart credibility to some very dark forebodings.
