A supporter holds a banner showing Bosnian Serb member of the Bosnian Tripartite President Milorad Dodik that reads: “Never again!”, During an anti-government protest in Banja Luka, region dominated by the Serbs in October.
File photo Radivoje Pavicic / AP
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File photo Radivoje Pavicic / AP
A supporter holds a banner showing Bosnian Serb member of the Bosnian Tripartite President Milorad Dodik that reads: “Never again!”, During an anti-government protest in Banja Luka, region dominated by the Serbs in October.
File photo Radivoje Pavicic / AP
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina – He was once described in Washington as a “breath-breath” anti-nationalist in the carnage, scarred Balkans of ethnically divided Bosnia.
How time changes.
This week, Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik, now a separatist who denies the genocidal regime, was hit with new US sanctions over alleged corruption. He responded in typical fashion, saying that the days when the United States and other Western democracies “modeled Bosnia to their taste” are long gone.
Dodik declared allegations that he had corruptly amassed huge fortunes for himself, his loved ones and associates as “monstrous lies”.
“America is a great power, but they are also big liars,” he said.
Dodik thinks the West is punishing him for championing the rights of ethnic Serbs in Bosnia – a dysfunctional nation of 3.3 million people who never really recovered from the fratricidal wars of the year. The 1990s became the name of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Dodik brags, sanctions will only help Serbs to escape Bosnia in the eager arms of their “true friends” – Russia, China, champions of illiberal democracy in European Union and neighboring Serbia.
The 63-year-old political science graduate first rose to fame in 1998, as a moderate reformer elected regional prime minister of Republika Srpska, one of two post-war administrative divisions of Bosnian. NATO-led peacekeepers besieged important buildings guarded by police loyal to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic – was later found guilty of wartime genocide and crimes against humanity – to make sure Dodik is controllable.
Shortly after he was elected prime minister of the Republika Srpska region, one of Bosnia’s two postwar administrative divisions, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that she “felt like a breath of fresh air was blowing.” across the room.”
File photo of Al Behrman / AP
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File photo of Al Behrman / AP
Shortly after he was elected prime minister of the Republika Srpska region, one of Bosnia’s two postwar administrative divisions, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she “felt like a breath of fresh air was blowing.” across the room.”
File photo of Al Behrman / AP
Soon after, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with him and “felt like there was a breath of fresh air in the room”, according to her spokeswoman at the time.
But in 2001, after losing the presidential election in Republika Srpska, Dodik changed course, considering himself a hardline nationalist and separatist. He gradually gained control of all levels of Republika Srpska’s government, and in 2009 expelled foreign judges and prosecutors from the Bosnian court system – amid reports reports that he is being investigated for corruption and the erosion of democracy.
The 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, brokered by the United States, which ended more than three and a half years of Bosnian bloodshed, established two separate governing entities – Republika Srpska and one predominately Muslim Bosnian , more than half of Bosnia’s population, and is dominated by Catholic Croats.
They are linked by common, state-wide organizations, and all actions at the national level require the consent of all three ethnic groups.
In the years immediately following the war, the international community forced Bosnia into a reform process, pressuring its leaders to give up hate speech and accept painful compromises. in exchange for financial and other support. But more than a decade ago, the international focus shifted to other global crises. Only 600 of the 60,000 international peacekeepers deployed in 1995 remain. Bosnia is largely left to its own equipment, under the growing influence of Russia, China and Turkey. States, and widespread corruption and economic decline.
Over the years, Dodik has weathered numerous accusations by national and international rights and media freedom groups of curbing media independence and disseminating vile rhetoric against political opponents. rule of all races. He famously defended the 2008 approval of a regional development bank for a favorable $2 million loan to a company co-owned by his son, saying that “it is better to let[people]youth) drug addiction.”
His family’s net worth is difficult to estimate, but in 2019, Dodik reported an annual income and assets worth more than 1.2 million euros ($1.36 million), including a villa worth 800,000 euros in the Serbian capital Belgrade. Dodik says his children’s claims of wealth are maliciously inflated by his political opponents.
One of the harshest of them, Drasko Stanivukovic, mayor of Banja Luka, Republika Srpska’s largest city, countered that the family has stakes in at least 70 companies – including those company owned by their “relatives, friends and business associates”.
Dodik frequently downplays the 1995 massacre by Bosnian Serbs of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in the eastern Srebrenica region, even calling it “a fabricated myth”.
In recent months, he has repeatedly expressed hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban will act as his bulwark against the “tyranny” of Hungary. Western democracies, warmly welcomed Orban’s December content that the EU’s main challenge for Bosnia was “how to manage the security of a state of 2 million Muslims.”
After serving 15 years as president or prime minister of Republika Srpska, in the fall of 2019 Dodik was elected to the multi-ethnic presidency of Bosnia, which includes a Bosniak and Croat official.
Last summer, with tacit support from Moscow and Belgrade, Dodik led a Serb walk from Bosnia’s multi-ethnic organizations – thereby blocking decision-making – to protest against the High Representative. international high in Bosnia’s denial of extrajudicial genocide.
Dodik and Serb officials under his control said they would no longer respect the decisions of the High Representative, a post created under the Dayton deal with broad powers, including impose laws or fire officials who undermine the fragile post-war ethnic balance.
This winter, Dodik stepped up his separatist campaign, pledging to create an exclusive Serb army, justice and tax system. He described the Bosniaks as “second-class people” and “betrayal converts” who sold their “original (orthodox Christian faith) for dinner.”
Officials in the US, UK, Germany and other Western countries recently began accusing Dodik of inciting ethnic tensions to distract from the corrupt practices of him and his accomplices.
But Dodik says the sanctions won’t stop him from “fighting for the rights of Republika Srpska.”
“No matter what they do, they can’t stop me,” he said.
