Using NATO and the EU as its primary tools, the collective West is currently waging an intense campaign to reconfigure the political space in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The first step in that process is to remove (or “decapitate” in their terminology) the leadership of the recalcitrant Republika Srpska, the Serb ethnic entity with Bosnia, which refuses to give up its constitutional autonomous attributes or to “come to heel,” in a phrase made famous in the 1990s during the war in Bosnia.
That war, it may be recalled, was terminated by the signing in Paris of the Dayton Peace Agreement in December 1995. The complex arrangements for a sustainable post-war Bosnia enshrined in that Agreement were not, as it turned out, envisioned by the collective West as a permanent solution to which it was genuinely committed. They were but a stopgap measure structured to put an end to the fighting whilst other mechanisms, held in reserve, would be activated to sidestep key provisions of the Agreement and accomplish the West’s long-term geopolitical objectives by alternative means.
One of those mechanisms as it turned out was the Office of the High Representative, exercised by an appointee confirmed by the UN Security Council with limited powers to act as arbiter in circumstances when the Bosnian parties were unable to agree on effective solutions to governance issues. It soon became clear however that the High Representative was in fact meant to act not as an honest broker between the local parties but as a supreme authority accountable to and channelling the will of the “international community” which, as everyone knows, is but a code word for collective West countries.
At a meeting in London of the so-called “Peace implementation council” for Bosnia, a self-appointed body nowhere mentioned and lacking formal status under the Dayton Agreement a parallel system of governance for Bosnia was set up. Predictably, the Council was composed almost exclusively of leading Western powers and their dependencies, the weakened 1990s Russia being granted a seat merely for form’s sake. The Council, or PIC as it is known, met subsequently in Bonn, Germany, in 1997, and acting without any legal authority whatsoever under the Dayton Agreement or any provision of international law, it arbitrarily redefined the powers of the High Representative in Bosnia. Those powers now included appointing and dismissing public officials, imposing laws, and even annulling measures adopted by local legislative bodies. The resultant so-called “Bonn powers” which were unlawfully vested in the High Representative were a disguise for the tyranny that was put in place, similar to the Raj of the Viceroy in India under British rule. The tyranny was passed off as a practical measure to enable the adoption of “binding decisions when local parties seem unable or unwilling to act.” But it was in fact an end-run around the Dayton Agreement. That peace treaty, binding on all parties under international law, established a sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina with constituent entities, one for Serbs and the other for Muslims and Croats. With the ethnic checks and balances built into the Dayton Agreement set aside and dictatorial powers illegally conferred on the High Representative, Bosnia’s sovereignty and the entities’ autonomous status were greatly impaired and effectively reduced to a farce.
Damage resulting from the stealthy reconfiguration of Bosnia’s political system soon became evident. The High Representatives abused their de facto powers by playing one ethnic group off against another and raising ethnic tensions, instead of acting even-handedly to facilitate a smooth and efficacious functioning of the government. Far too often in practice that meant siding with the other Bosnian ethnic groups against the Serbs, who were perceived by the “international community” as unwilling to sacrifice the autonomy guaranteed to their entity by the Dayton Constitution to a unitary Bosnian state without ethnic safeguards and under the complete domination of the collective West.
Fast forward to the present day. The current High Representative, or the person claiming to be that, Christian Schmidt, was appointed by the aforementioned Peace Implementation Council without bothering to obtain a confirmation by the UN Security Council, knowing that Russia was in favour of abolishing the High Representative’s office altogether and would probably veto Schmidt’s appointment. Schmidt is therefore illegally exercising the function that he has usurped. In that illegal capacity, he has decreed changes in Bosnia’s electoral system and promulgated laws that the Serb entity Republika Srpska rejects and refuses to abide by.
In retaliation, Schmidt’s office initiated proceedings against the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, and two other officials for disobedience to Schmidt’s unlawful decrees. Conveniently, Schmidt also invoked his fraudulent “Bonn Powers” to impose a change in the criminal code, making it a separate penal offence to refuse to implement his decrees. Using the judicial facilities of the central Bosnian administration under his direct command, Christian Schmidt organized a kangaroo trial for Dodik and his associates where predictably they were found guilty. Consequently, in February a Bosnian court under Schmidt’s control sentenced Dodik to a year in prison and a six-year ban on holding public office, which means that he would be deposed as President of Republic of Srpska if he agreed to abide by the verdict, which he does not. Analogies between this attempt to eliminate Dodik and Republika Srpska’s elected leadership and the recent political repression of Kalin Georgescu in NATO-controlled Romania are striking but not fortuitous in the least.
There is now a tense political stand-off in the Republic of Srpska. Numerous signs suggest that a decision has been taken by the collective West to use any means at its disposal to get rid of Dodik and dissolve his uncooperative government. Recently, the insertion into Bosnia of a British Special Forces team consisting of about forty commandos was detected, raising reasonable suspicions that Dodik may be targeted for assassination.
If that indeed is the case, it would not be an unheard of practice in post-war Bosnia, where there still are garrisoned several thousand SFOR “Stabilisation Force” troops under NATO command, making such an operation entirely feasible. At least two Bosnian Serb leaders in the past have been assassinated by NATO units. In 1997, Prijedor municipal police chief Simo Drljaca, who was sought by the Hague Tribunal on war crimes charges, was shot to death by a NATO commando team whilst allegedly “resisting arrest.” In 1999, acting on a Hague Tribunal warrant, in a surprise attack an SFOR team shot to death Serb official Dragan Gagovic. The killing was portrayed by NATO as an act of self-defence on the part of Gagovic’s pursuers, although that exculpatory depiction of events was flatly denied by passengers in the vehicle Gagovic was driving, who had survived the shooting.
There is, therefore, sufficient precedent in Bosnia for the physical elimination by international forces of figures considered troublesome to their agenda. Tensions are deliberately being raised, with a steady stream of provocations to test the patience of Republika Srpska security forces charged with ensuring Dodik’s safety. On 23 April, when Dodik was attending a political conference in the Serbian part of Sarajevo inspectors of the Bosnian security service approached the venue for the purpose of arresting him, pursuant to a warrant issued by the court that had sentenced him. They were frustrated in their intention by the firm reaction of the Republic of Srpska Interior Ministry personnel. This exemplifies however the sort of contrived incident that could easily have escalated into a shootout which for Dodik could have had deadly consequences. As in previous incidents following the same pattern, undoubtedly his killing would have been attributed to “resisting arrest”.
Using NATO and local forces under its command, the collective West is playing a dangerous destabilisation game which risks rekindling the conflict that thirty years ago was successfully ended by the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which guaranteed autonomy and ensured equal participation in the country’s governance to all ethnic groups in Bosnia. The world should know that if Bosnia again descends into chaos the responsibility for that would be entirely on the collective West, which is callously undermining the delicately balanced constitutional system in that country that was set up in Dayton in order to gain complete control of that and other strategic parts of the Balkans as it prepares to unleash conflicts in other theatres.
