Brussels (Brussels Morning) Bosnian-Serb leader Milorad Dodik announced on Tuesday that the country’s Serbian entity, the Republic of Srpska, is determined to form and organise its own army, separate from the armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Kremlin- and Belgrade-backed Dodik, the Serbian member of the country’s tripartite presidency, announced that a formal decision will come “in the next few days”, and that formation of the Serbian army could start within a few months.
Dodik’s latest announcement is exacerbating tensions in the Balkan country that were stirred up in July, when former international High Representative, Valentin Inzko, imposed a nation-wide ban on genocide denial.
Dodik and other Bosnian-Serb leaders, who often deny or downplay the extent and even the existence of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, reacted to Inzko’s edict with open defiance, and started boycotting the work of the country’s federal institutions.
In another Moscow-backed move, Dodik is resolutely denying both the legitimacy of Inzko’s successor, former German minister Christian Schmidt, and the legality of the genocide denial law, claiming it was imposed after Inzko formally announced he was stepping down.
The position of the International High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina was introduced by the international community overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Accord, which ended the war in the country between Orthodox Serbs on one side, and Catholic Croats and mainly Muslim Bosniaks on the other.
The treaty split the country into two main entities – the Serb-dominated Republic of Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. All three ethnicities are equally represented in the federal government, and each elects one member of its tripartite presidency.
The High Representative is granted executive powers to unilaterally impose laws and remove politicians from office, although the powers were seldom used, unless deemed absolutely necessary.