International peacekeeping duties in Bosnia are currently the task of a residual EU force Eufor that is strong. Nato retains a formal toehold with a headquarters in Sarajevo. The Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, is threatening to pull out of state-level institutions, including the national army built up with international assistance over the past quarter century, and reconstitute a Serb force. The high representative said it was possible there would be clashes between Bosnian national law enforcement agencies and Bosnian Serb police.
On Wednesday, the Republika Srpska assembly adopted a law establishing its own medicine procurement agency, the first of its proclaimed agencies to operate separately from the state-level one. This is secession in all but name. Dodik openly threatens to use violence in the upcoming steps aimed at the secession of RS. Bosnia had a lot of crises since , but what we are witnessing these days is by far the most dangerous one since the '90s.
Partners who accepted the duty to protect peace 26 years ago and have the power to take action must do so, Ismail Cidic, head of the Bosnian Advocacy Center, told Al Jazeera. The country cannot move forward while many of its institutions and leaders remain invested in whitewashing history. The system established under the Dayton Agreement brought the war to an end but divided the country.
It created incentives for politicians to stoke the flames of ethnic tensions and made it possible for them to indulge in widespread corruption without losing office. Meanwhile, the international community — mainly the US and the European Union — has gradually lost interest in funding state-building efforts in the region.
Many commitments were made in the immediate aftermath of the conflict but since that time, crises in Syria, Ukraine and, most recently, Afghanistan have required both responsiveness and resources. This has seen promises to integrate Bosnia and Herzegovina into the EU lose momentum.
For the past 15 years, there has been no vision, no enthusiasm and little hope for a better future. In this complicated context, Bosnian Serb leaders, primarily the long-dominant politician Milorad Dodik, have raised tensions by threatening to establish a Bosnian Serb Army, pull out of joint state institutions — effectively dismantling the state — and declare independence. The last time nationalists tried to have an independent Republika Srpska, there was bloodshed and the widespread, systematic persecution of non-Serb communities.
The Bosnian Serb Army was the force that shelled and sniped the civilians of Sarajevo for four years. Its security and intelligence officers were largely behind the Srebrenica genocide.
Criminal accountability at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in the Hague, as well as in the courtrooms around the country, was supposed to provide justice and deterrence. Bosnians facing this current crisis are not feeling confident. The pace of trials to convict war criminals has slowed in recent years, leaving killers and rapists at large.
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