Army, justice and taxes | Bosnian Serb Parliament takes a step towards separation

(Sarajevo) The Bosnian Serb Parliament on Friday launched a controversial process of withdrawing from common institutions, especially the military, despite warnings from the West against separatist aims in the country divided along fault lines ethnic.

Gathered in the northern city of Banja Luka, capital of the Republika Srpska (RS), the Parliament of the Bosnian Serb entity gave the federal government of Bosnia six months to organize this departure from three crucial institutions of the central state: the army, justice and taxes.

Shortly after the vote, the embassies of the Western powers, including those of the United States, France and the United Kingdom, denounced “a new escalation” caused by a decision “which aims to create parallel institutions in Republika Srpska”.

“Continue on this dead end road […] threatens the stability of the country and the entire region, ”add the embassies in this joint statement.

Earlier in the day, the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, told elected officials that it was “the moment of the conquest of freedom for the Republika Srpska”.

“Bosnia is going in a direction that we did not agree when signing the Dayton peace agreement,” said the 62-year-old politician, currently a Serbian member of the Bosnian collegiate presidency, who tirelessly insists that the country that he co-directs is “impossible”.

He has been brandishing the threat of secession for years, but this time seems determined to take the plunge.

The Bosnian and Croatian members of the Bosnian presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, for their part called on the justice system to “protect the constitutional order” and “prosecute those responsible”.

“The attack on the state and against the constitutional order is the attack on peace,” said Sefik Dzaferovic, quoted by the Fena agency.

The Dayton agreement in 1995 ended the conflict, which left 100,000 dead, but consecrated the division of Bosnia into two entities, the RS and a Croat-Muslim entity.

In the years that followed, a weak central state equipped itself with common institutions, army, justice, taxes and intelligence, under pressure from the Western powers.

“Dangerous” route

Milorad Dodik affirms that it concerns, in total, 140 decisions of transfer of power from the entities to the central government, and that he wants to take everything back.

Formerly a moderate protégé of the West, today a nationalist supported by Russia, he accuses the former of having weakened the RS over the years by strengthening the central state through imposed reforms.

If he managed in the past to unite all the political forces in the RS, Milorad Dodik was not unanimous this time and the opposition deputies boycotted the vote.

“I think that whoever believes he can do that without the war is greatly mistaken,” said Mirko Sarovic, one of the leaders of this opposition. “The path you have chosen, Mr. Dodik, is dangerous.”

“This is equivalent to secession without proclaiming it,” the High International Representative in Bosnia, the German Christian Schmidt, said at the beginning of November in a report to the UN.

The President of Republika Srpska, Zeljka Cvijanovic, assured Friday that “war and secession are not on the political agenda” of the RS.

The announcement by Milorad Dodik in September of the creation of an RS army had alarmed Washington, which has dispatched several diplomats to Bosnia in recent weeks to reiterate American support for its territorial integrity and its central institutions.

Mr. Dodik appeared on Friday to leave a door ajar, saying he was ready to “discuss” a possible 50% reduction in the strength of the joint armed forces. This hypothesis, which he made a condition for renouncing the withdrawal of the Serbs, has a very good chance of being rejected by the Bosnians.

“This period will show whether Bosnia can survive. I think she can’t. She does not have the inner capacity to survive, ”said Milorad Dodik.