Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has not given up plans to take the Serb half of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serb Republic, out of the country but is just waiting for the right moment, he said on Sunday, warning that he would continue to obstruct central institutions in the meantime.
“For the first time in history, Serbs are biding their time. We have to be patient. Europe is in a confusion of its own problems, and I pray to God that Trump returns to power in America,” Dodik told a ceremony marking a Bosnian Serb army operation that secured a corridor connecting the RS with neighbouring Serbia in 1992.
“We have never given up on the Serb Republic being what it was on 9 January 1992,” he said, referring to the date when local Serbs, refusing to accept Bosnia-Herzegovina’s independence from Yugoslavia, proclaimed their own republic, the RS, just before the war in the country broke out.
The 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war, set up the country as a loose union of two autonomous entities, the RS and the Federation of Bosniaks and Croats. Almost 30 years later, the country remains highly dysfunctional, with a weak central government and lingering mistrust among the three main ethnic groups.
“We formed that republic as our own state and that is what we need,” Dodik said, adding that “we in the Serb Republic have been suffering inside BiH all these years. The success of our state is in halting the transfer [of authority] to the BiH level”.
Dodik, who the US administration has sanctioned for undermining peace efforts and rule of law, has repeatedly threatened to secede but has never taken concrete steps. In May, he called for a peaceful breakup of BiH, calling it unviable.
Last December, the Bosnian Serb assembly voted to withdraw Serb representatives from the country’s armed forces, tax system, and judiciary. However, earlier this month, the Serb government postponed by six months the withdrawal, fearing an immediate international backlash, including possible sanctions.