As elections approach, the political atmosphere in the Republika Srpska, Russia’s tiny Balkan ally, is heating up. For at least the last ten years, color revolution turbulence has been the normal accompaniment of every electoral cycle there.

It began initially in 2014 as the Serb autonomous entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, as it was constituted under the Dayton peace agreement in the wake of the 1992 – 1995 civil war, approached its parliamentary and presidential elections. The consensus within the Euro-Atlantic alliance (the coalition of states roughly co-extensive with NATO and the EU) unmistakably was that the assertive local authorities headed by President Dodik and his political party were unacceptable and that a “regime change” operation should be engineered to replace them with a compliant cast of characters.

Local agents quickly set to work to reproduce the satisfactory results previously obtained with relative ease in other “color revolution” episodes. The usual set of grievances was improvised. They were dramatised through a combination of fake “NGOs” and a relentless propaganda barrage conducted through the media, which was partly owned by Western interests and partly susceptible to their emoluments. A major television station in the city of Bijeljina, with country-wide coverage, was suborned to relentlessly spew the color revolution party line, in the confident expectation of a certain electoral triumph.

But there was an unexpected hitch. The Republika Srpska government and ruling coalition supporting it nearly lost their heads when faced with mounting street agitation, but a group of local citizens supported by allies with international experience in these matters marshalled their limited resources to counter the onslaught. In spite of overwhelming odds they succeeded, the Balkan Maidan never materialised, and the coup de grâce planned for Republica Srpska was temporarily delayed.

The next opportunity to fine tune the scenario came just before the 2018 elections in Republika Srpska. The galvanising spark was the mysterious death of a young man by the name of David Dragicevic, the responsibility for which without any firm evidence was attributed to the authorities, or the “regime” in the parlance of the color revolution phalanx. All the usual mechanisms were again activated to generate a cause célèbre designed to discredit the government and dishearten its supporters. The coup almost succeeded. President Dodik squeaked through with barely an 8,000 vote margin, but the ruling coalition failed to win in Parliament a clear majority necessary to form a government. The matter was resolved in the tried and tested Balkan way – a couple of opposition legislators were generously rewarded to switch sides and the status quo ante was successfully restored.

With predictable regularity, the identical pattern is beginning to repeat itself as the country approaches the 2022 electoral season. New factors have emerged to complicate the political and social landscape. One is the Covid crisis, which has hit the Serbian portion of Bosnia relatively hard. The other is the grave constitutional crisis provoked two months ago by the outgoing EU High representative Valentin Incko. He arbitrarily ordered that a “genocide denial law” – clearly targeting all who question the Srebrenica “genocide” narrative, which is by now sacrosanct almost everywhere but in the Republika Srpska – be inserted in the Criminal Code, prescribing harsh punishment for unbelievers of up to five years. Since practically the entire population of Republika Srpska consists of religious sceptics and outright heretics in this regard, the country might as well be encircled with barbed wire and machine-gun turrets for at least the next five years.

While primarily designed to bring external pressure and internal demoralisation, “Incko’s law,” as it is popularly known, also acted as a cohesive factor by temporarily uniting the government and its opposition against it. But the pact which Western-supported elements of the opposition concluded largely for PR reasons is already seriously fraying and the Serbian political scene is returning to its old fragmented “normal.”

Emerging at the heart of the Incko controversy is the issue of whether the High representative, set up by the Dayton agreement to play a balancing role between the former warring parties (his official job is to “interpret” the peace agreement when the local parties fail to arrive at a common understanding of its provisions), has the authority to expand his powers to the point of imposing laws and altering constitutional arrangements. Banja Luka constitutional law professor Milan Blagojevic has argued forcefully and cogently that he does not. In a series of incisive analyses in his newspaper columns and television appearances he has expounded the view that the micro-managing authority claimed by a succession of High representatives is in reality an insolent bluff, unsupported by any of the provision of the peace agreement that established his office. In protest against what he has harshly denounced as “criminal abuse,” Prof. Blagojevic did something utterly unique in that part of the world. He resigned his parallel job as a District Court judge stating that his conscience forbade him to perform judicial duties in the milieu of lawlessness created by the illegal encroachment of the country’s foreign overlord. Hopefully he will impress other public servants by modelling a sacrificial example of professional integrity for their edification, but realistically no one should hold their breath.

Propelled by unanimous public rejection of what is justifiably perceived as the High representative’s tyrannous act, and perhaps also inspired by the upcoming elections, the government has ratcheted up its rhetoric to the point of openly raising a heretofore taboo topic – possible secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Simultaneously, in an evident bow to Prof. Blagojevic’s insistent arguments, it has mentioned the possibility of asking Parliament to annul all previous similarly illicit decrees issued by the High representative, going back at least twenty years. To top off the listed examples of disobedience, former President Dodik, who is now the Serb member of Bosnia’s rotating Presidency, refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the appointment of Incko’s successor, German politician Christian Schmidt, or even meet with him, because he was selected by a committee of NATO governments and not by the UN Security Council, as international legal norms prescribe. In that he has the firm support of the governments of the Russian Federation and China.

So now we come round to the emerging scenario for this season’s color revolution in the Republika Srpska. Clearly, something needs to be done and order must be imposed. The initial plan that was thought up by the Tavistock brain trust is the currently raging oxygen affair. Gene Sharp must be smiling in his grave. Briefly, upon the public spirited complaint filed by Transparency International, a solicitous outfit financed by USAID, alleging that a hospital in the town of Trebinje was using industrial instead of human grade oxygen for the treatment of Covid patients, health inspectors swarmed from Sarajevo (where Republika Srpska can scarcely expect to get any breaks) to determine that indeed there was something fishy about the oxygen formula being used. Gaining traction now are vague and non-evidence based assertions (recall the David Dragicevic affair) that the uncaring “regime” had a corrupt deal with the oxygen provider. The public, who predominantly do not consist of chemists, are being bombarded with highly technical and also politically condimented “information” about grave health risks (on top of the already existing pandemic) posed by the deliberately substituted inferior oxygen. Oddly, no proof of Covid fatalities or testimony of injuries accompanies these accounts of appalling official corruption. Readers with longer memories will remember the staged poisoning affair in Kosovo in 1990, when Albanian school children were instructed to complain of dizziness and stomach cramps provoked by nefarious substances injected in their lunch food by Serb authorities. They all miraculously recovered as soon as foreign correspondents had left. In Trebinje so far no spectacular performances to showcase the government’s public health malfeasance have been organised for the benefit of the international press, but surprises may be in store as the spin continues.

As relations between major geopolitical players steadily deteriorate the Balkans are acquiring increasing importance for NATO powers for exactly the same reasons that they were essential to Nazi Germany in the early forties, to the extent that it was willing to postpone the attack on the Soviet Union and divert its resources in order to first bring the entire area in its orbit. The Serb half of Bosnia is a major piece of the contemporary version of a very similar geopolitical jigsaw puzzle. Russian policy meanderings over the years in that part of the world merit at most a mixed assessment, and that is putting it charitably. Russia cannot afford to further degrade its regional position and security interests by losing Republika Srpska, not to speak of Serbia itself. All the more so because it is not really necessary to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to keep them both firmly and beneficially in its fold.

The outgoing “high commissioner” of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina Valentin Inzko’s Parthian shot threatens to unravel the restless raj he has haughtily ruled since 2009, amply rewarded for his generous efforts with an annual salary of half a million euros.

For several years Inzko has been threatening to impose in Bosnia a “Srebrenica genocide denial” law, relying on his presumed prerogatives under the Dayton peace agreement, unless that is the local lawmakers got his hint and passed the prescribed law motu propio. But of course as a lawyer Inzko should be well aware that in conditions of coercion there can be no motu propio. That knowledge did not prevent him, however, precisely from the exercise of coercion just days before his heartily desired departure, as if he deliberately wanted the coda to his rule to symbolize the general lawlessness of his office ever since it was set up in 1996, supposedly as a temporary measure to facilitate peace and reconciliation in a strife riven land. In the event, the “temporary measure” making Bosnia a full-fledged NATO protectorate has been in effect for a quarter of a century, and with no end in sight, but with increasingly determined resistance by Security Council members Russia and China.

Inzko’s decree was just another in a long train of routine humiliations for the supposedly independent and sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Like all previous occupiers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Inzko and his NATO brethren have found the Serb element a very hard nut to crack. In the present situation, the contentious issue is the foreign cabal’s insistence that Bosnian Serbs, whose political embodiment is one of the country’s two entities, the Republic of Srpska, humbly admit that they committed genocide on their Muslim neighbours in July of 1995. Either that, or stop denying that they did, which is practically the same thing. Except for some usual suspects from the ranks of local Western-financed NGOs few takers have been found, which infuriates the international overseers immensely. Moreover, due to Bosnia’s post-Dayton constitutional structure a “national interest” issue such as this cannot be given legislative effect without a consensus of all three constituent ethnic groups. Republic of Srpska’s determined opposition to the self-incriminating Srebrenica genocide denial initiative has effectively squashed all attempts to pass such a law using regular legislative procedures. That is when “high representative” Inzko stepped in to do the job.

Pointedly, Milorad Dodik, the Serbian representative in Bosnia’s collective presidency, commented that the imposition of this law is the “final nail in the coffin” of the failed state of Bosnia. (He would have said “the final straw” had he been talking in English, which he does not speak.) He was obviously alluding to the title of a book by Bosnian Serb academic, Prof. Nenad Kecmanovic, “Bosnia, the impossible state,” which takes a very dim view of its subject’s viability.

The principal points in the current controversy are the unreasonably long persistence of the office of the “high representative” in Bosnia (supposedly he “represents” the European Union, of which Bosnia is not even a member) and the actual extent of his powers.

Putting and keeping their man on the vice-regal throne in Sarajevo (individual officials have changed over the last 25 years but the general political direction of their office has invariably remained the same) is invested with obvious geostrategic logic, which is to secure the empire’s Balkan rear for the Ostfront, when the time to open it is deemed ripe. In the meantime, by hook and by crook the empire and its local “high representatives” have pursued obstinately three single-minded goals. These are to dismantle the loose confederation agreed upon in Dayton in favor of a centralised state ruled by their satraps from Sarajevo, to incorporate Bosnia into the crumbling European Union, and to make it join the NATO alliance. A fundamental obstacle to the achievement of all those goals is an empowered Republic of Srpska, with its stubbornly retrograde population whose unanimous affections in their entirety flow in the opposite direction, to … well, you know who, but it is neither Brussels, London nor Washington.

In that context, the actual powers under the Dayton peace agreement of the “high representative,” whose task is to make all the above happen, are a core issue. Those powers, it seems, have largely been based on an insolent bluff, the so-called “Bonn powers” supposedly delivered to the Bosnian viceroy at a meeting of Western Alliance officials in Germany in the late 90s, much akin to the fraudulent Donatio Constantini and other similar medieval swindles. The entire fraudulent scheme was debunked in detail and with great effectiveness by British academic John Laughland some time ago. But alas! Balkan politicians do not seem to have grasped Dr. Laughland’s memo because they are not very fluent in English. Besides, their not wholly unjustified inferiority complex makes them susceptible to the most preposterous claims, especially when they are delivered by stern Western officials in pin striped suits, to whose impertinent demands “Yes, bwana” is always the only possible answer.

Inzko’s imposition in Bosnia of a country-wide Srebrenica genocide denial law, in clear defiance of the Serb half of the country, is already provoking exactly the sort of destabilising reactions that were probably envisaged by those who inspired it. There is talk of the Serb entity walking out of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not recognising the credentials of Inzko’s successor, not enforcing Inzko’s arbitrary decree on its territory, and so forth. In short, the planned exacerbation of Bosnia’s permanent crisis has so far been an outstanding success.

Add to that the recent “Srebrenica denial” spat in neighbouring Montenegro which further undermined the already wobbly post-Djukanovic government and the campaign in Serbia, clearly inspired by Western services and their agents of influence, to further discredit the unsavoury current regime and nudge it closer to recognizing Kosovo secession in return for a let-up on the political pressure, and all the ingredients for a toxic Balkan brew have been assembled.

A “Balkan Spring,” perhaps a bit late in the year, but probably welcome any time, may well be in the early implementation stage. It is difficult to conceive that all the elements of a perfect storm in the three central Balkans statelets have been planted fortuitously, without the guidance of a single strategic concept or operational centre.

July 11 this year will mark the 26^th anniversary of the tragic events that took place in 1995 in the east Bosnian district of Srebrenica. With each passing year the ceremony loses some of its luster and pomp, as genocide fatigue sets in. The inquirer into these matters will get radically different answers and interpretations, mainly depending on the ethnicity of the local informant. As Diana Johnstone accurately observed, in the Balkans truth generally lacks a transcendent or ontological dimension, it tends to be purely tribal.

That axiom of Balkan epistemology being out of the way, the question still remains whether there are any solid facts, or “hard data points,” to – as my contracts professor in law school used to say – “hang your hat on.” Regrettably, again, it really depends on who you talk to.

For the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srebrenica has been successfully shaped into an identitarian founding myth, a rallying cry and a device potently used by their self-perpetuating governing class in Sarajevo to drive them into a sheep corral of which they, the elite, would be self-appointed gatekeepers. For the NATO crowd, Srebrenica has been a rich political bonanza, a gift that literally keeps on giving. By driving what at present appears as an eternal cleavage between the two largest Bosnian communities, the Serbs and the Muslims, Srebrenica has provided the Western alliance with a seemingly unassailable pretext to keep strategic Bosnia under its interminable protectorate lest, so their narrative goes, the hostile ethnicities quickly go for each other’s throats, causing another ugly carnage that the decent and civilised folks in Washington, London, and Brussels simply could not abide. But more realistically, the bonanza that Srebrenica has given to those decent folks is just the right rationale that they had been looking for. After Srebrenica, they may wage their “right to protect” [R2P] interventions wherever a poor and defenceless nation catches their eye for sitting on a pot of gold, oil, strategic minerals, or anything else they may want to help themselves to, or its ruler become disobedient and turns into a “dictator who is killing his own people.” SCF readers are too sophisticated to require specific illustrations, but just for the record Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, and Libya come to mind.

What is supposed to distinguish Srebrenica from other ugly episodes of the civil wars that engulfed the former Yugoslavia is its unique status as the “first genocide in Europe since the end of World War II”. (What Professor Lemkin might have to say about it, for obvious reasons, we shall never know.) That status was first conferred on Srebrenica by the Western media, reporting in lockstep on the conflict in Bosnia. Right on cue, it was later duly confirmed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), an ad hoc court which, many suspect, was specifically set up for that very purpose. Contemporary media charges of “genocide” in which 8,000 Muslim POW “men and boys” were slaughtered by Serb forces after marching into Srebrenica received miraculous retroactive judicial confirmation once ICTY got seized of the matter and began delivering its boiler plate verdicts.

In the event, ICTY verdicts became an effective substitute for hard facts which they supposedly were based on, much as gold paper certificates, in the perception of simpleminded investors, became more solid than physical gold itself. The advocates of parliamentary “Srebrenica genocide resolutions” and “Srebrenica genocide denial laws” in various countries have been quite insouciant about providing hard facts to sustain their claims; after all, the last time we checked, it was still the rule that the burden of proof was on whoever was asserting something. But if it ever existed in the normative universe of the decent folks of the Western world, that rule was notably suspended in the case of Srebrenica. According to the Srebrenica lex specialis, an ICTY verdict is all the evidence needed to prove the commission of the horrendous crime of genocide, and Srebrenica genocide denial laws which are already on the books in numerous countries are conveniently applied to shut up anyone who undertakes to question such a course of reasoning. Never mind that the Hague Tribunal itself is an institution of questionable legitimacy, the authorisation to set up a court not being found anywhere in the UN Charter. Even to raise that issue is itself a violation of the genocide denial rules.

Issues such as whether or not genocide occurred in Srebrenica in July of 1995, and whether or not the Hague Tribunal is a legitimate forum entitled to pronounce on the subject, have been discussed and analysed from every angle ad nauseam (here, here, and here). In fact, hard data points challenging the Srebrenica genocide narrative do abound. There are strong indications that autopsy reports which supposedly document the execution of the “8,000 men and boys” are not all that they are cracked up to be. The DNA evidence subsequently summoned to fill that gap and prove the massive scope of prisoner executions, on closer examination, also raises more questions than it answers. Inconvenient evidence has also emerged of huge combat casualties that have been stealthily incorporated into the execution statistics in order to bolster the genocide death toll (also here). Though much of the scepticism regarding the established Srebrenica story in fact does rest on impressively objective foundations, we shall not insist on it in order not to ruffle any tribal feathers.

Instead of “disputing” or “denying”, we choose to mark this year’s anniversary by affirming. The atrocious destruction of the Serbian community in Srebrenica between 1992 and July of 1995 has scarcely ever been noted or acknowledged by the Srebrenica moralists de jour, so we will briefly perform their neglected task.

According the Bosnia-Herzegovina census of 1991, on the eve of the war, a quarter of Srebrenica’s population, or 8,315, were Serbs. When Serbian forces retook Srebrenica in July 1995, not a single one was left. A thousand, or more according to some estimates, were murdered, their villages attacked and razed to the ground; the remainder were expelled to Serbian-controlled territory surrounding the enclave.

The remains of Serbian villages attacked from inside the Srebrenica enclave

The beastly methodology used by armed gangs from the enclave to intimidate and expel their Serbian neighbours is depicted in the fate of little Mirjana, a Serbian girl raped and murdered by soon to be, in 1995, Srebrenica genocide victims, mourned by much of the free world.

Question: Did Serbs expelled by their neighbours have the right in 1995 to return to their homes and at least bury their dead?

Few would venture to say “no” to a question so starkly put. So sweeping the appalling pogrom of the unmourned Serbian community of Srebrenica under the rug, to avoid provoking such an embarrassing question, makes perfect, albeit somewhat twisted, sense.

We will soon be lucky enough to learn the answer to one of the few remaining mysteries of the Yugoslav Tribunal at the Hague. At this point it is entirely irrelevant how you choose to call it, ICTY or The Mechanism (the latter being the official, sinister-sounding name of its final incarnation). The issue concerns the appellate judgement in the case of General Ratko Mladic, commander of Serbian forces in the 1992 – 1995 Bosnian war. He stands accused, and in the trial verdict was found guilty, of the long list of usual heinous offences, topped by genocide and Srebrenica, that a person of his stature and ethnicity would normally have to face at the Hague Tribunal. On June 8, at the end of the appellate phase of the proceedings, we shall find out what the appeals chamber think about it.

The interesting thing about Mladic’s appellate chamber is that, in contrast to past practice, it is not composed of “good ole boys” drawn mostly from NATO countries. It is a chamber whose complexion, at least since the surprisingly successful recusal in 2016 of good ole boys Meron, Agius and Pocar, after a defence complaint of bias, BLM would probably approve (though the unsuspected presence of Uncle Toms can never be entirely discounted). Still, the new set of Mladic appellate chamber judges have solid Third World credentials. How that will impact their ruling, we shall soon find out.

But by far the most interesting member of this group is its presiding judge, Zambian jurist Prisca Matimba. In 2012 she sat on the trial chamber of General Mladic’s right-hand man, General Zdravko Tolimir, whom the majority found guilty and packed off to life imprisonment. Mrs. Matimba, however, sent shock waves by composing a fascinating dissenting opinion in which she compellingly argued that there was no evidence of Gen. Tolimir’s guilt on any of the charges laid against him (see chapter XIII of Judgment) and that instead of being sent to prison the defendant should be sent home. In the best British legal tradition, Zambian judge Matimba turned the tables. She supported her conclusion with a brilliant legal analysis reinforced by a panoply of lethally formulated First World arguments. But her singlehanded bravado performance failed to make even the slightest dent in her majority colleagues’ determination to reach a diametrically opposite result. Nevertheless, she in effect demolished not just her fellow-judges’ legal findings in the Tolimir trial but implicitly thrashed her institutional employer, the Hague Tribunal, as well.

Theoretically, on June 8 judge Matimba could tweak the Tribunal’s tail again by repeating her memorable 2012 performance. There is no ostensible reason for her to now take a different position in the Mladic case. Not only are all the basic charges the same as against Tolimir but, more importantly, so is the evidence, for whatever it is worth. Major witnesses are much the same and the crime base, as alleged by the prosecution, is also virtually identical, certainly in the key segments of genocide and Srebrenica. But before getting one’s expectations too high, worth pondering is the career of another ICTY judge, Christoph Flügge, who also briefly got out of line and then had to fight hard for “rehabilitation” (meaning job, salary and benefits).

Following the apprehension of Radovan Karadzic, Flügge was appointed a pre-trial judge in that case. But in 2009, in an inexplicable outburst of nonconformism, he told Der Spiegel that the term “genocide” in his view was no longer judicially viable: “Which is why I believe that we should consider devising a new definition of the crime. Perhaps the term mass murder would eliminate some of the difficulties we face in arriving at legal definitions. It would also work in Cambodia, where Cambodians killed large numbers of Cambodians. What do you call that? Suicidal genocide? Sociocide?” Still, as a properly repentant German, he concluded his academic musings on this delicate subject by maintaining that “strictly speaking, the term genocide only fits the Holocaust”.

But it turned out that the Tribunal would have none of Flügge’s new definitions and Massenmoerder nonsense because it understands all too well the nature of its overriding political task. It is to aim straight for the jugular, which in plain terms is genocide. After this incautious interview, Flügge promptly vanished from the Karadzic pre-trial panel. It is a matter of speculation in which political re-education camp judge Flügge spent the next year or so of his life (the ones in Xinjiang had not yet been officially opened) but after some time he emerged as a totally new and right-thinking man. He even apparently managed to regain a modicum of his employers’ trust, which included the privilege of serving on the Mladic trial chamber. And after his remarkable genocide epiphany he was happy to sign the verdict, in which the “genocide” charge evidently no longer bothered his delicate conscience.

The Flügge precedent is therefore something well to keep in mind when calibrating expectations from judge Prisca Matimba, without derogating in the least from the significance of her extraordinary dissenting opinion in the Tolimir case. No matter what, that will remain a unique and inspiring expression of professional integrity and can still be inhaled as a rare breath of fresh air in the miasmic swamp of the Hague Tribunal.

On June 8, General Ratko Mladic’s appointed judgment day, we will find out if there are any limits to the power of the Hague Tribunal to reengineer recalcitrant human souls. Should it succeed in whipping into line even the brave Zambian lady and superb legal professional Prisca Matimba, that will come as a sad disappointment indeed but also as another ringing confirmation of the inherent fallenness of human nature.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab sounded jubilant as he commented on the impending transfer of Radovan Karadzic, the former President of the Bosnian Republic of Srpska entity, from the Hague to Great Britain. But no, Great Britain is not preparing to host Dr Karadzic for a state visit, including an audience with the Queen. The plan is to transfer him to that country as a prisoner (or, as Karadzic pointedly put it in stating his vigorous objection to such a disposition, as a “prisoner of war”) to serve the rest of his life sentence in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Raab may have some personal as well as official reasons to gleefully anticipate the indicated decision about Karadzic’s final destination. As BBC Diplomatic correspondent James Landale observes, “One of the young lawyers who drafted the legal procedure to transfer Karadzic to the UK was a certain Dominic Raab, who is now the Foreign Secretary – and who ultimately agreed to the request from the UN that the former Bosnian Serb leader should serve out his term in a British jail.” But as Landale lets on, there may also be an official dimension to British glee at having bagged that particular guest: “British intelligence played a role in his capture in Belgrade in 2008 after 13 years on the run. British judges and lawyers were involved in the trial against him at a United Nations tribunal that the UK helped to set up.” So it would be a really nice way to wrap it all up by hauling the man to a British gaol to do his time, right? There is no discernible conflict of interest in all of this, of course.

But there are some very serious safety concerns at least in this otherwise impeccable plan. British prisons, with their diverse (to put it politically correctly) population are not the most suitable repositories for inmates accused of committing red flag crimes such as “genocide” against the Bosnian Muslim coreligionists of many of the prisoners who would be sharing common space with Dr Karadzic. Putting aside Landale’s pious explanations such as “Officials say the reason the UK agreed is because it is on the list of UN members willing to detain those found guilty of global crimes, and it wished to show its continued support for the international rules-based order” (for more on the particulars of that “order,” see here), the hard reality of the matter is that there already was a precedent for precisely the sort of potentially lethal incident that it is feared could involve Dr. Karadzic.

In 2010 another high profile Serb prisoner, General Radislav Krstic, was shipped from the gaol of the International Tribunal in the Haag over to the British gaol of Wakefield to do his sentence. Krstic was brutally assaulted by some British prisoners who wanted to express their religious solidarity with Krstic’s alleged victims in Bosnia, with intent to slash his throat and improve on the excessively mild 35-year sentence imposed on the general by ICTY. Fortunately for Krstic, his agonized cries for help attracted the attention of the guards, who arrived just in time to rescue him. But the incident prefigures a likely scenario that might at some point befall Dr. Karadzic as well, as he relaxes to spend the last days of his life in merry old England.

All of which is not to suggest that ICTY judges (or the Secretariat, or whoever makes these arrangements at the Hague), or their British counterparts, sought wilfully and deliberately to cause Dr Karadzic’s premature and violent death. But there are plenty of reasons to suspect that neither are they are overly concerned by such a possibility, and that such an outcome – should it occur – would not greatly perturb them.

Though not a lawyer (he is a psychiatrist), contrary to the Tribunal’s well-intentioned advice, Karadzic insisted on exercising the right to represent himself instead of entrusting his fate to one of the “approved” and accommodating attorneys from ICTY’s lawyers’ list. Dr. Karadzic, who is an intelligent guy and apparently a fast learner, then mounted a courtroom performance that should put many a weak-kneed and vacillating “approved” Hague defense counsel to shame. Fortunately, in its infinite arrogance, convinced that publicly proving prosecution cases would be a piece of cake, ICTY miscalculated and set up an imperfect but on the whole acceptable video and transcript system which now preserves its embarrassing legal perversities for posterity. It preserves also much of the defense evidence and arguments, regardless of how systematically ignored they may have been by the chambers in composing their politically mandated verdicts.

Even so, the Karadzic trial chamber could not entirely bypass, for example, pro se defendant Karadzic’s vigorous challenge to the prosecution’s use of the Joint Criminal Enterprise mechanism. JCE is a catchall device to magnify the defendant’s alleged guilt by arbitrarily adding supposed co-conspirators so as to – Vishinsky-style – vastly expand the circle of his alleged associated miscreants. In a discrete admission at paragraph 3460, page 1303 of the Karadzic Trial Judgement, the chamber felt compelled to grant that “there was no sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan” [to create territories ethnically cleansed of non-Serbs]. That was a painful admission in the Karadzic case because this statement explicitly undermines one of the Tribunal’s main doctrinal postulates, that the leaderships of the Republic of Srpska and Serbia were linked by a common conspiratorial design to establish a “Greater Serbia” by resorting to criminal methods such as ethnic cleansing and genocide.

In the course of his continually improving cross-examinations, Karadzic managed to deliver quite a few other blows to the prosecution’s (or the Tribunal’s, since they are inseparably merged) case. It is enough to cite just two.

In his cross-examination of Dr. Thomas Parsons, a forensic specialist for ICMP, the agency set up to collect and process Srebrenica mass grave exhumation data, on 22 March 2012 (p. 26633 in the trial transcript) Karadzic extracted from the prosecution witness the notorious truth that Srebrenica victim DNA profiles, helpfully assembled by ICMP and used by the prosecutor to allege thousands of “genocide” deaths, in fact, all featured a crucial deficiency which voided their probative value. The DNA profiles, Dr Parsons was compelled to admit, spoke nothing of the manner of death, at most being able just to corroborate that the individual in question was dead. Whether death occurred by execution, as it had to for the Srebrenica genocide case to stand up, or in combat, as at the same time and in close proximity an entire division of the Bosnian Muslim army was fighting its way out of Srebrenica in combat formation, Dr Parson granted that this important question his evidence could not properly answer.

Dr Karadzic scored more direct hits in his cross-examination of prosecution’s sole allegedly percipient witness-perpetrator in Srebrenica, Drazen Erdemovic, on 27 and 28 February 2012. Genocide, it should be recalled, is a specific intent crime. It can be found to have occurred only if there is proof that the killing was committed with intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part. Asked by Karadzic whether he took part in the execution of Muslim prisoners with the intent to destroy them in Bosnia as an ethnic group or to exterminate them as a nation, Erdemovic was firm in his reply: “No, Mr. Karadzic.” That does not leave much room for the specific intent necessary to prove genocide.

Under continued cross-examination, Erdemovic disclosed that his commander was corrupt and was paid several kilos of gold by unidentified sponsors for arranging the use of his men in the execution of prisoners.

The plain suggestion of that testimony is that someone had bribed Erdemovic’s corrupt commander to lend his unit for the criminal purpose of executing prisoners. Why would a bribe in gold be required if the order to commit the crime came down through the Serbian Army’s chain of command, where the defendant Karadzic himself was commander-in-chief? Wouldn’t a simple order and regular soldiers’ salary be enough?

The Tribunal and its enablers obviously have plenty of reasons to bear a heavy grudge against the Bosnian Serb psychiatrist who outmanoeuvred and often humiliated their best legal minds in the courtroom. Whether their justifiable resentment rises to the level of deliberately setting the stage for his violent death in a British prison may be disputable. But that they will not shed any bitter tears if it occurs there, that much is certain.

By Robert HAYDEN

As befits a successful peace agreement, the November 1995 Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian war were marked on their twenty-fifth anniversary with a flurry of international conferences. Oddly enough, even though a general acknowledgment that the accords have kept the peace, most recommendations call for radically “revising Dayton,” on the grounds that Bosnia’s institutions are too cumbersome, prone to corruption and politically unfair to minorities. Even more oddly, many proposals have been made to address these problems by dismantling the very structures that have brought and maintained peace. Instead, NATO forces are supposed to impose upon the Croats and Serbs of Bosnia, half the population and majorities in 60 percent of its territory, the centralized state that they went to war to prevent. Since there are no indications that many Croats and Serbs will accept this, NATO troops would likely be regarded by them as an occupying force, a role that has not worked well in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The constitution of Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H) that was included as annex 4 of the Dayton agreement is certainly complex. It divided the country into sub-territories, almost all of them dominated by only one of the country’s three main ethno-national communities: Bosniaks (known until 1993 as Muslims), Croats and Serbs.  These ethno-polities are linked in a confederal structure, with the central government holding very little authority, and even that conditioned on rarely achieved consensus from the representatives of the three communities.  Almost all governmental power resides at the levels of the ethno-territorial “entities”, one Serb, the other Bosniak and Croat, and within this last, among ten cantons, five Bosniak, three Croat, and two mixed.

Yet constitutionalizing the ethno-territorial separation of these three communities was the key not only to ending the war but to keeping the peace. The year 2020 was also the thirtieth anniversary of the free and fair elections at the end of communism, when the population of B&H partitioned itself into three mutually exclusive constituencies, Bosniak, Croat and Serb. A single party of each won almost all votes from that community, while those promising a social democracy of equal citizens did very poorly.  Since Bosniaks comprised 43 percent of the population, Serbs 34 percent and Croats 17 percent, forming a joint state would only be possible if the members of these communities agreed to it. Tragically, but not surprisingly, they did not: while Bosniaks wanted a strong central government, Croats and Serbs fought the war in order to avoid having such a centralized state imposed upon them. They accepted inclusion in B&H at Dayton only because the central government has very little authority over them.

Critics argue that this system of ethno-territorial power-sharing is undemocratic because it blocks citizens from forming non-ethnic majorities and makes it impossible for minority members to run for some offices. They also argue that corrupt ethno-national elites exploit the weakness of the central state in order to enrich themselves. And finally, they assert that the ease of blocking consensus prevents the central government from taking supposedly necessary decisions, notably joining NATO.

Bosnia’s many problems, however,  are not due to the Dayton constitution, or to its lack of accession to NATO. On Transparency International’s 2109 Corruption Perceptions Index, BiH scored better than NATO members Albania and North Macedonia, only slightly worse than Serbia and NATO founding member Turkey, and far better than Iraq and Afghanistan, where the long-term U.S. occupations have led to less viable states than B&H. None of these other countries has the Dayton system, though perhaps Iraq would have done better if then-Senator Joe Biden’s 2006 proposal to use Dayton as a model for its restructuring had been implemented.

And those putative anti-nationalist citizens who are disenfranchised by Dayton’s ethno-confederalism are very rarely found outside of debates in policy circles.  In the 2013 census, nearly 97 percent of the population declared themselves Bosniak, Croat, or Serb. Only 1 percent declared themselves to be ethno-nationally neutral “Bosnians.” The three mutually exclusive ethnonational constituencies thus accurately reflect the social divisions of the society.

The war that was ended at Dayton was fought by three ethnoreligious armies and for three different countries: the overwhelmingly Muslim Army of B&H for all of Bosnia, including those places with few Muslims; the Army of Republika Srpska for a Serbian Fatherland composed of only parts of B&H, and the Croatian Defense Council for a Croatian Homeland that included only other parts of B&H. The territorial divisions at Dayton mainly followed the front lines between these forces, whose dead are now commemorated separately, and rarely in the same town, as Muslim “martyrs” (šehidi, from Arabic), or Croat “defenders,” or Serb “fighters.”

The Dayton constitution essentially proclaimed this house divided to be a condominium, despite two of three tenants rejecting co-ownership. The condominium can be continued only if those two tenants, the Croats and Serbs of B&H, are satisfied that the third one will not try to take over their parts of the house. Most of the proposals being made by denizens of U.S. think tanks to “fix Bosnia” are to have NATO help the Bosniaks in such a takeover, by imposing a centralized government on the Croats and Serbs. It is difficult to imagine a better way to destabilize Bosnia. It is even more difficult to find a defensible reason for such proposals.

Bosnia isn’t the way it is because of Dayton; rather, Dayton is the way it is because of the nature of Bosnian society. The Dayton system has kept the peace for twenty-five years. Why destabilize Bosnia now?

nationalinterest.org

There is a Serbian saying that when an idle priest can think of nothing better to do he entertains himself by baptising goats. Bosnia’s High Representative Valentin Inzko apparently finds himself in a similarly absurd position. Oblivious to the Great Reset issues gripping the world around him and even of the dire condition of his own Bosnian raj, Inzko was busy over the last couple of days composing a letter to Nedeljko Čubrilović, speaker of parliament in the Republic of Srpska, Bosnia’s Serb-run entity. Inzko’s message conveyed the preposterous demand that the parliament strip former Republic of Srpska officials, Radovan Karadžič, Biljana Plavšić, and Momčilo Krajišnik of their medals and awards on the ground that they are “war criminals,” duly condemned as such by the Hague Tribunal.

To make sure that everyone grasped the seriousness of the demand he was making, Inzko gave the parliamentarians three months, until the end of April, to comply. The awards and honorable mentions for the condemned individuals had been voted by the parliament of the Republic of Srpska in October 2016, for their signal contribution to the entity’s establishment during the 1990s, a reality that is historically incontrovertible.

Inzko is, of course, cheerfully oblivious of the fact that the people of the Republic of Srpska, about a million of them, do not give a hoot for the judgments of the Hague Tribunal, which they despise. Naturally, they have their own criteria for assigning merit to their country’s historical figures whom they deem worthy of such recognition.

Inzko’s seemingly petty ultimatum to Serbian parliamentarians is actually part of a broader game plan for destabilizing and undermining the Republic of Srpska, Russia’s steadfast ally in the Balkans. Crude attempts over the last couple of years to ignite street disorders by following the Gene Sharp color revolution playbook had failed miserably because the coup leadership selected by Western special services was abysmally incompetent and the public were properly enlightened to see through the entire scheme. Now a new, subtler approach is being taken. A Navalny wannabe, trained “anti-corruption” demagogue, has managed to con citizens of Banja Luka, the country’s capital, to elect him mayor and he is using his bully pulpit to the hilt to enact a sophisticated political performance. As for Inzko, he is working from the same script in coordination with the fifth column to intimidate and humiliate the country’s institutions and leadership.

With Inzko’s threat to use the High Representative’s fictitious “Bonn Powers” to impose a Srebrenica “genocide denial” law in the background, the current campaign actually started some months ago when he demanded that a student dormitory in the war-time capital of Pale, named after Republic of Srpska’s first president, Radovan Karadžić, be renamed for all the obvious reasons. After weeks of defiant refusal, the government foolishly rolled over and finally agreed to Inzko’s demand, just to keep the peace, presumably. Never lacking in a sense of humor, university students informally renamed their facility after “Dr. Dragan Dabić,” which was Dr Karadžić’s nom de guerre while hiding in plain sight in Belgrade from Hague Tribunal’s arrest warrant.

Encouraged by that ill-considered concession, Inzko and the elusive “international community” which issues his marching orders (not that we don’t know who they really are) now scent weakness, so predictably are demanding more. The demand to strip the founders of the Republic of Srpska of their honorific awards is but a prelude to the projected imposition of the Srebrenica “genocide denial” decree, a provocation already announced by Inzko. That is additionally made clear by the truculent language of Inzko’s letter which minces no words in attributing to the Serbian people collective war crimes responsibility. By caving in, Inzko told Serbian parliamentarians, they “will remove the collective responsibility of the Serbian people, and by removing collective guilt and eliminating the burden of the past the entire nation would gain relief…” Inzko, who is Austrian, may have made a Freudian slip, and possibly was actually thinking of the Volk, including his fellow-Austrians, the ethnic stock of the Großdeutsches Reich of recent memory. But the language and the plain reference in the letter are clear enough and it prefigures much additional bullying to come.

There is little doubt that once the “honors-for-war-criminals” affair is over, Srebrenica denial legislation will be the next logical pressure point on the agenda. While this time round Inzko has not specifically invoked the “Bonn Powers,” the threat of doing so is implicit in the three-month ultimatum to the deputies to come to heel, or else. Setting aside the inspiring “rule of law” paradigm such a threat sets, the natural question is what the “or else” could possibly be other than a High Representative dictate, embodied by the Bonn Powers?

Here, a short digression is in order. The Bonn Powers are an entirely fictitious concoction nowhere mentioned in the Bosnia peace treaty agreed in Dayton and signed in Paris in 1995, not unlike the Joint Criminal Enterprise doctrine, which also is not mentioned anywhere in the Statute of the Hague Tribunal but has been used effectively to undergird decades-long prison sentences. Both devices were contrived out of whole cloth to facilitate the fraudulent implementation of specific imperial political objectives. In the present case, it is to enable Bosnia’s High Representative to issue binding interpretations of the Dayton peace agreement in accordance with his whims and the instructions passed on to him by the foreign power centers which control him. The myth of the non-existent Bonn Powers was brilliantly exploded quite a few years ago by the British scholar and at the time Director of Studies at the Paris-based think tank Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, Dr. John Laughland.

After a detailed study of the issue, Dr. Laughland concluded that “it is highly anomalous for the High Representative to invoke both Article 5 of Annex 10 and the so-called Bonn powers when justifying his controversial decisions to annul the decisions of parliaments or sack officials. Yet he does invoke both these very regularly. It is controversial because these are not ‘powers’ in the usual sense of the word. They are not specific executive competences which have been delegated but instead enabling clauses which allow him to interpret his own powers and which are therefore wielded without any judicial, political or parliamentary control.” Need more be said?

So the stage is being set in the Republic of Srpska for what in Texas they call a double whammy. While the new, and it must be admitted cleverly selected, crop of agile fifth columnists are burrowing from within, High Representative Inzko is aiming his artillery fire at the Serbian entity’s institutional infrastructure, to soften it up. Very soon, the graduated pressure being applied will reach the critical point of Srebrenica. The hybrid warfare game plan does not require a rocket scientist to decipher. Once the founders of the Republic of Srpska are successfully ostracized in their own land as “war criminals,” the principle of collective responsibility for alleged war crimes is established, and by Inzko’s illegal decree disputing the fabricated Srebrenica “genocide” narrative is made a punishable offense, the final assault on the Serbs’ remaining relatively free patch of land in Bosnia will not be far behind.

As it turned out, the visit did not disappoint, with the highlight being a staged diplomatic incident made to order for the Russia! Russia! Russia! crowd and their media support puppies, perhaps even more alarmed by the air of easy, unapologetic confidence with which Lavrov handled it while breezing through Sarajevo, Belgrade and Zagreb.

Lavrov’s main message, repeated at each stop, was to reiterate Russia’s continuing support for the two major peace agreements that served to at least freeze the conflicts arising from the ugly breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s – the Dayton Peace Agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995) and UN Security Council Resolution 1244 regarding Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo and Metohija province (1999). Ironically, although these two agreements were brokered by the U.S. and its main EU vassals as a way to at least partly secure the fruits of their interventionism, for the past couple of decades it has been Russia that has been their main champion and defender.

That is not as paradoxical as it appears at first glance. It fits into Russia’s approach to international relations, as an arena in which peace agreements and UN resolutions are to be respected if one wants to avoid Darwinian global disorder and free-for-all. (Respect for what is signed… What will those dastardly Russkies think of next?) Pragmatically speaking, this approach is also the best currently available vehicle for at least partially restraining Western unilateralism and “exceptionalist” arrogance, by which agreements and treaties are to be honored only so long as it serves one’s purposes, after which they’re to be expeditiously changed or discarded, with no dissent tolerated, and new rules imposed. That, in a nutshell, is what the collective West means when it speaks of the much-touted “rules-based order”.

In any case, as it seems to be its fate, and the fate of the Balkans in general, B-H was once again turned into a proving ground and the place where opposing worldviews clashed. Fortunately, this time only on the diplomatic front. In short, Mr. Lavrov’s scheduled meeting with the over-bureaucratized country’s three-man presidency was boycotted by two of its members – the Muslim representative Sefik Dzaferovic and the (faux) Croat representative Zeljko Komsic, leaving the Serb representative, Milorad Dodik, as the sole host of the meeting.

The main reason given for these theatrics was the Russian foreign minister’s alleged “disrespect” for B-H, since the B-H flag was not on display during his previous day’s visit to the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska – one of the two federal “entities” that currently make up B-H, the other being the Muslim and Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), where he was also hosted by Milorad Dodik. The second reason was Lavrov’s endorsement of the Serb Republic parliament’s resolution on military neutrality, as this is something that supposedly only the joint institutions at the central level can decide upon.

Lavrov’s pithy response to the incident, given a day later at a press conference during his Belgrade stop, was nothing if not direct:

“I think the politicians who made that decision are not independent, and clearly acted on someone’s instructions. They most likely express the interests not of their voters, but of external forces that have no interest not only in the development of Russian relations with Bosnia and Serbia, but in general of the Western Balkans countries exercising their right to develop mutually beneficial cooperation with all external partners.”

Furthermore, recalling the words of former EU foreign policy commissioner Federica Mogherini who called B-H an exclusive interest zone of the EU in which Russia had no business, the Russian foreign minister added:

“This is a philosophy deeply rooted in the ancient colonial and half-colonial legacy of many European countries. We can’t do anything about it, obviously, except counter this absolutely unacceptable line and mentality.”

Of course, it can hardly be concluded that Lavrov deliberately picked B-H as one of the first places to showcase Russia’s disillusionment with the West and a more assertive foreign policy. For it was the said boycott that provided the perfect occasion to talk about local politicians serving foreign agendas or reminisce about Europe’s colonial ways. So, in a way, it was precisely this gesture done in the name of “independence” and “lack of respect” that provided the necessary foil for the Russian foreign minister to drive home his point.

And that point is actually just a logical extension of Russia’s consistent foreign policy approach over the years. While Russia – together with the Serbs both in B-H and Serbia itself – insists on strict respect for the Dayton Peace Agreement, it is also a champion of doing away with its frankly (neo)colonial aspects, which were expected to wither away in time in any case – the so-called High Representative, practically a Western viceroy claiming the right to interfere in B-H politics at any time, and the presence of foreign judges in the country’s supreme court. (While we are on the subject of neocolonialism, the B-H flag over which much of the tiff was raised, is actually a bland, unpopular, non-descript piece of cloth with absolutely zero connection to its people’s history, imposed by the High Representative more than two decades ago.)

On the other hand, the Bosnian Muslims adamantly oppose Bosnia’s decolonization. After all, it was the Western states, led by the United States, that supported their radical Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, in his quest to not only separate B-H from the former Yugoslavia but also to, as clearly stated in his Islamic Declaration, gradually transform it into a majority Muslim state, in which Christians would necessarily become second-class citizens.

Now why would the proud Western democracies support such a project? The short answer is – Russia! Russia! Russia! The West’s three-decade long feelgood Bosnian project is and has been just a geopolitical extension of Brzezinski’s Afghanistan strategy, whereby Islamists of various degree of militancy are used to box out Russian influence and weaken local Russian allies. Underneath all the “pro-democracy” and “Euroatlantic (read NATO) integration” talk, that is the crux of the matter. In the 1990s, the U.S. facilitated the arrival of jihadists to B-H, while the EU for the most part politely held its nose and averted its eyes. Today, the collective West just as firmly supports Izetbegovic’s successors, led by his son, Bakir. The goals haven’t really changed – keep the Russians out at any cost – only the rhetoric. And tried and true Western colonial methods and structures are still needed to achieve them.

Naturally, the Russians are wise to what’s happening, as are the Serbs. The new wrinkle is that the Croats (who are Roman Catholic, while the Serbs are Orthodox Christians), both in B-H and Croatia, are also showing increasing willingness to come at least partially aboard, as their wartime shotgun marriage to the Muslims, brokered by both sides’ U.S. patrons in order to strengthen the regional anti-Serb coalition, is turning increasingly sour. Not only are the much more numerous Muslims less and less willing to take into consideration Croat vital interests, they now take it for granted that they can use their superior numbers to elect the Croat member of the B-H presidency on a regular basis, as is the case with the current “Croat” member of the presidency, Zeljko Komsic, whom Zagreb considers to be “legal but not legitimate,” as his election runs afoul of the Dayton architecture by which the three constituent peoples are supposed to be represented by their own elected representatives.

That is why, in addition to the traditionally warm welcome he received in Belgrade, Lavrov was also able to visit Zagreb for the first time in more than 16 years and have quite cordial meetings with Croatia’s otherwise traditionally Russo-skeptic leadership. For, lacking any significant sympathetic ear among their EU and NATO allies, the Croats are obviously seeing benefit in at least a partial turn towards Russia or, more precisely, its principled B-H policy. It is now music for Croat ears when Lavrov speaks not only of respect for the Dayton Agreement, but for the main principles upon which B-H has been constructed under it: one country, two entities and three equally constitutive peoples.

To sum it up, 25 years after the signing of the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina is still a Western protectorate. The Western powers want to keep it as such, until it becomes a Muslim-dominated state that, together with a Greater Albania whose formation the Western powers are also encouraging (hence their insistence on recognizing the secession of Kosovo from Serbia), would form a stout bulwark against the dreaded Russian “malign influence.”

Just as the West’s faux prosperity, based on endless money-creation and markets permanently addicted to various “stimuli,” is now being fully exposed as a rigged game in which the rich only get richer while the rest descend into various degrees of debt slavery, so is the West’s feel-good “democratization” mantra of the past three decades being exposed for what it truly is – a cynical, zero-sum geopolitical game, in which, as always, the ends justify the means and lofty-sounding goals are used as the cover.

This is especially the case with the humanitarian-interventionist West’s poster child, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In contrast, as everywhere else, Russia’s goals in B-H are comparatively much more modest and reality-based. The goal is to maintain the stability of a country based on internal, interethnic consent and consensus, without foreign “high representatives” and such. And, of course, without NATO membership.

If this is “malign influence” – then bring it on!

In response to these unsettling revelations, the Russian Foreign Ministry very decorously announced that it was returning the icon so that Interpol might conduct an investigation into its origin.

The multi-layered scandal has the potential to muddy not just diplomatic relations, but also generate distrust between churches within the Orthodox world and, no less importantly, to undercut relations between the Serbian and Russian nations. A quick cui bono? question yields perfectly obvious answers, and they all point westward. Posing the more fundamental question of who might be the organizers of this unsavoury prank also points in only one direction. Suspiciously synchronized with Gen. Sir Nick Carter’s (Chief of Britain’s Defence Staff) noteworthy statement just days ago that “The way to win is to beat them [the Russians] at their own game, and that means beating them below the threshold of war,” the icon incident has the unmistakable fingerprints of Perfidious Albion. With all due respect for the trans-Atlantic acolytes, it was just too sophisticated for them to pull off.

What happened, essentially, is that as part of his Balkan tour Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov paid a visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina several days ago. His host there was Milorad Dodik, the long-time Premier and President of the Republic of Srpska, the Serbian half of the country, and currently the Serbian member of its three-man rotating Presidency. The circumstances underlying the Russian foreign minister’s visit to Bosnia are serious enough. The entire political and propaganda apparatus of the West, where Bosnia is concerned, is monomaniacally focused on a single issue: the restructuring of the Dayton Agreement by which the war was ended in 1995. The Agreement, at the time acceptable to all three sides and which continues to be acceptable to the Serbs, provides for a loosely confederated country of three constituent peoples and two political entities. While at the time this formula was reached in 1995 it suited the collective West’s momentary purposes as well, it no longer does. The Drang nach Osten, which no one is any longer even bothering to conceal, requires the same strategic preparations that impelled Hitler in 1941 to secure his Balkan rear. That means that Balkan statelets must be brought safely with the aggressor’s camp, or at least be reliably neutralized.

The joint military exercises scheduled to soon take place with the participation of units of Serbian and Bosnian armed forces are a case in point. In the Bosnian Defense Ministry announcement, the exercises are represented as designed to “promote bilateral relations and regional cooperation,” along with a plethora of all the other usual platitudes. But the key point is that their purpose was revealed to be to “implement the concept of ‘Operational Capability Concept Evaluation and Feedback,’“ the phrase in quotation marks being as cited, in English, in the original local language document. And, significantly, we learn that, strangely, these military exercises of two technically neutral and non-NATO countries will be conducted to test their “operational capabilities according to NATO standards.” What for, one may ask.

That is the broader context within which the diplomatic scandal involving the icon (by all appearances of St Nicholas, who is conveniently celebrated according to the Orthodox calendar on December 19, another nice and thoughtful British touch) was ignited.

But the even broader context is the relentless drive for the annulment of the irksome Serb entity Republic of Srpska, whose firm insistence on friendship with Russia and scrupulous observance of the Dayton accords, including the power to veto federal policies it disapproves (such as joining NATO) because they are contrary to its national interest, are an insurmountable roadblock which can only be removed by achieving its destruction.

Granted, President Dodik was not an art major nor is he a known art connoisseur, but perhaps he should have taken a closer look at the gift with which he intended to honor Mr. Lavrov:

Had he done so, perhaps he would have noticed the seal on its back, in the Cyrillic alphabet that he is perfectly capable of reading, suggesting that the gift item may have some links to the Ukraine, and that should have put him on alert. But it is all water under the bridge now.

As in the MH 17 case over the Donbas and the sordid Skripal and Navalny affairs, the pre-packaged spins were activated with lightning speed to speedily impose the perpetrators’ false narrative. The opposition PDP party, a local Bosnian asset of the formidable agency perched at Vauxhall Cross in London, demanded on cue Dodik’s resignation for “shaming” the Republic of Srpska with the negligence he so wantonly displayed. Another bought and paid for asset, the formerly patriotic BN radio and television network which had since switched sides, chimed in with the conspiracy theory that Russia was pushing Dodik under the bus and that it was Russian operatives who suggested this particular item as the most suitable gift for Lavrov precisely to grease the skids for his downfall. One of the more imbecilic conspiracy theories making rounds these days, indeed.

Last but not least, it was hardly conceivable that Ukraine should be involved in this affair without committing a tell-tale gaffe reflecting once more (think back to the initial stages of MH17) the comical professional incompetence of its special services and suggesting a high level of probability of guilty foreknowledge. The Ukrainian Embassy in Sarajevo was too impatient to sleep on it, as we say in America, so it officially demanded from the Bosnian Foreign Ministry the icon’s repatriation the same night that the scandal broke. That was, of course, as we also say in America, jumping the gun before any firm evidence was at hand or any forensic investigations could have been conducted, and at a time when no reasonable conclusions could be drawn.

As if that were insufficient evidence of a set-up, it should also be recalled that Dodik’s colleagues in the Bosnian Presidency, Šefik Džaferović and Željko Komšić refused to abide by their protocolary obligation to co-host minister Lavrov upon his arrival in Sarajevo, citing the most specious of reasons. Assuredly that was because they were part of the plot and their assignment was to make sure that all the blame fell on the Serbian member of the collective body and on the Republic of Srpska that he represents.

The striking implementation of Sir Nick’s “under the threshold” doctrine via the icon affair will not be a mortal blow either to the Republic of Srpska or the political fortunes of Milorad Dodik. But for the moment, at least, it casts a shadow on both as most likely was its entire original purpose, to undermine their capability to resist the ferocious pressure that is being constantly ramped up to replace the Dayton Agreement autonomy with a unitary NATO appendage state.

Beyond the cant about lofty humanistic motives, it became evident to perspicuous observers soon after the Tribunal started its sessions that in fact ICTY was brazenly fulfilling a political task on behalf of the states that organized and financed it. Its principal political directive was to wipe clean the nasty role of the Western powers, including Germany, in the violent destruction and dismemberment of Yugoslavia and to cast the defiant Serbs as the designated fall guy for the externally instigated carnage. It was in addition given the task, plainly awkward for an allegedly judicial body, to shape its judgments so as to rewrite history, not just of the Yugoslav conflict in the 1990s but, more ambitiously, to recast the history of the entire region, often going back centuries, to suit its sponsors’ current geopolitical designs and narratives.

Like the shabby B-movie that it is, the ICTY pseudo-judicial theatre also had to have its cut-out, cartoon character “good and bad guys”. One of its best known cut-out villains is Dr Radovan Karadzic, the war-time leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Media magic, buttressed by a generously garnished indictment relying on prosecutor-friendly tools such as Joint Criminal Enterprise, charged Dr Karadzic with every heinous crime in the book, up to genocide and beyond if possible. The soft-spoken Sarajevo psychiatrist and poet was handily turned into a model villain, perfect for the Tribunal’s publicity gallery.

Eventually, Dr Karadzic was sentenced to forty years in prison, but on appeal that severely lengthy sentence based on dubious and circumstantial evidence was malevolently enhanced to life imprisonment, no doubt just to rub it in, because either way it made no difference to a man of seventy-five. Incidentally, Dr Karadzic was not the only ICTY defendant who after making the mistake of filing an appeal ended up with an increased sentence, a practice that – to put it charitably – is most untypical for civilized jurisprudence. (Albania under Enver Hoxha had it, thus making the Tribunal not entirely unique in this regard.)

Assiduous ICTY watcher and our valued U.S.-based associate Andy Wilcoxson (and here) miraculously managed to arrange with prison authorities for a wide-ranging interview with Dr Karadzic. The interview yielded a number of insightful observations about the Yugoslav conflict and its background, some of which are shared here.

Speaking of the preparations for the bloody Yugoslav denouement, Dr Karadzic points out that “all the relevant governments and their services knew for decades in advance that it might happen after Tito’s death, but in spite of that, they instigated the war and carnage. Now, they are pretending to be innocent and searching for a causes in personal psychologies of leaders, as if it was irrational, imagined, unreal and exaggerated event. There was nothing like that in the Yugoslav, nor Bosnian crisis. In addition to that, all of our opponents in this crisis didn’t differ racially from us a bit. As a matter of fact, almost the entire Muslim community previously had been Serbs, but converted to Islam, mainly unwillingly and under duress, during the long Ottoman occupation. Many Croats also had been Serbs of Catholic faith, but after the Austro-Hungarian occupation, after the Berlin Congress in 1878, had declared their Croatian affiliation. (A Russian imperial diplomat Alexander Gilferding wrote a book about it in 19th century.)”

Dr Karadzic continues trenchantly that “since we are living in a ‘post-truth era’, facts are not relevant any more. Simply speaking, the international media, under governmental direction (not the other way around) create an image needed for their purposes, and the process goes on unhindered. All the technological advancement of human kind is (ab)used for the worse. So, the ‘Serbian cause’ was the last defense of a nation’s very survival, not the killing innocent and anonymous people in mosques or on beaches. One may observe what happened to the Serbs in Kosovo, in Croatia, in the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation (the Muslim-Croat part of Bosnia) and what is happening to them now in Montenegro. There are almost no Serbs left in Croatia, because out of more than 600,000 now there is about 100,000 left. There are almost no Serbs in Kosovo, or in the Muslim-Croat part of Bosnia. By September 1992 there wasn’t a Serbian settlement on Muslim/Croat territory that was safe, they had already been destroyed, while nothing of the sort happened on the Republic of Srpska territory, where many Muslim or Croat settled places, villages or towns, were untouched. Serbs had never attacked any Muslim or Croat village unless they had previously been attacked from it, and if attacked, the Serbs demanded perpetrators to be handed over to the security forces. If there was a skirmish, civilians might have been hurt only accidentally, and after such a skirmish the rest of civilians would help the Serb forces to collect killed and wounded terrorists, who anyway were not a proper army, but acted deep within Serb territory as terrorists. On the other side, the Muslims, and to a lesser degree Croats, attacked every Serbian village they could reach, killing everyone, even animals, and burning everything. This is all well documented, and there can’t be any doubts about it.”

About his “media image”: “Pertaining to me, Radovan Karadzic, the media had been even more harsh and deceitful than with the denigration of the Serbs. All the negotiators had very correct relations with me, some were even friendly and understanding, and they all certainly realized that it was a civil war with many rogue elements. Even the main European powers were saying the same. Many of the mediators and ‘peace keepers’, including generals Nambiar, Morillon, Rose, McKenzie and others, had seen for themselves what was going on. Many of them reported that media were mistaken and biased, that all the sides are committing atrocities, but only the Serbs admit it, while others deny.”

On the important subject of Richard Holbrooke’s role in the final stages of the Bosnian war: “Most astonishing of all was Holbrooke’s transformation: together we created the Dayton Agreement, in Belgrade, in the presence of Presidents Milosevic and Bulatovic, and our associates…We cooperated well, with mutual understanding, and parted amicably. In June 1996 Mr. Holbrooke led a campaign for my stepping down from office, promising immunity, telling that there will be some rhetoric against me, but no trial. The main concern of the internationals was whether I would run for another term in Presidency in the forthcoming elections. I kept my word. However, he didn’t deliver, maybe he couldn’t, his part of the agreement, while I did deliver my part. This included my absence from public life and media… By keeping me far from the media, they insulated themselves from any of my reactions, comments or denial, and could continue to denigrate me without any risk. Finally, Mr. Holbrooke called me a ‘European Bin Laden’, and said that he regretted that there was no death penalty. Meanwhile, I was informed that many his friends, some obscure individuals, were instigating through NATO to eliminate me by killing me.”

And a very instructive insight into how easily provincial leaders with an inferiority complex fall into the trap of misjudging Western colleagues based on the latter’s proclaimed standards of integrity, instead of relying on their own objective experience and common sense: “When we concluded this agreement of my stepping down, President Milosevic told me that it would be improper and impolite to expect that such a big power’s representative should not be trusted, and to demand from him to sign what was agreed to. ‘If they are not to be trusted’, President Milosevic told me, ‘then they wouldn’t be a great power anymore.’” Did Milosevic remember that conversation as he was being hauled off to the Hague? One wonders.

Concerning the imputation of genocidal enmity toward Muslims and Croats: “The vast majority of [my business associates] had been Muslims, one of them a Croat, and none of them Serb. My internist was a Croat, while my optician, my dentist, both of my lawyers, my tailor, shoemaker, hairdresser, barber, and all other suppliers had been Muslims. (I have published this information, with their initials, and nobody denied it!) Even during the war, I had people of Muslim and Croatian ethnicities as close associates, many of them serving in our Army, where there was even a completely Muslim unit (The ‘Mesa Selimovic’ brigade).”

About the coming world realignment: “Nations that may be targeted by NATO and its member states are looking for new alliances, and seeking new ‘mentors’ that are less dangerous and more useful and reliable. I already said in some interviews than in many cultures there are two main archetypes of female figures: a mother and step mother, a good aunt or fairy and evil witch. Immediately after World War II we in the Balkans perceived the U.S. as a good aunt, while now small nations see China and Russia as good aunts, while the U.S. they see as an evil witch. So, intimidating the entire world is not fruitful strategy and tactics, and it will fail very soon.”

Why were the Serbs selected for exemplary punishment as the “bad guys”?: “First, because of ethnic and cultural closeness with Russia, it is envisaged in the West that they wouldn’t join any action against Russia. Furthermore, President Milosevic was seen by the West as the last Communist dictator, which he really wasn’t. He was a leftist, and he was an autocrat, but he was considered to be very close to America. He was convinced that Clinton would be a great President, and that nothing would spoil traditionally good relations between the two nations. Also… the Balkans had always been of the greatest interest to powers which wanted to keep Russia far from the ‘warm seas’ and to deny it free access to Middle East resources.”

What interests predominated in the decision to attack Yugoslavia in 1999?: “Germany wanted revenge for the two World Wars and to take the region back to the ‘status quo ante’; different circles in the U.S. had an interest to destroy the Yugoslav military industry, since Yugoslavia had 7% to 10% of the world market, particularly in the third world and non-aligned countries; others didn’t want to be out of this affair, or couldn’t resist the pressure of the mentioned powers. The middle range officials in these countries, our allies in all the wars in the 20th century, neglected this long lasting friendship and devotion of the Serbs to the Anglo-Saxon nations (Great Britain and U.S.) and France, smashing Serbia to smithereens, which may be forgiven, but not forgotten, ever. And that is an enormous loss for them, much higher than any benefit. Therefore, this was not in their national interest, but in the interest of small groups and lobbies within these countries… Still it puzzles me – why the U.S. and other Western powers didn’t support some of the secular Muslim parties instead of the fundamentalist SDA.”

But there were, by all accounts, personal pecuniary motives as well: “What makes this ‘business’ even more disgusting is a sort of private interest of the high officials, like the mentioned lady [Madeleine Albright], particularly in Kosovo. Some of them, after playing a disgraceful role in the war, went on to establish their private businesses there, participating in the privatization of resources and assets. Finally, they knew exactly the nature of the conflict in Bosnia, they knew who was doing what, but they did something unimaginable, by forging facts and influencing the media, covering up exculpatory evidence, exerting pressure on judicial institutions… Mr. Holbrooke himself confessed that the main benefit of the Indictment against me was to prevent me from going to Dayton, allowing them to alter the Agreement that was previously reached by the two of us with the assistance of our respective teams.”

Asked how it feels to be perceived as a “war criminal”: “What crosses my mind when they label me a war criminal? As when Mr. Izetbegovic, a friend of Al-Husseini and Hitler, labels his Serb colleagues in the Presidency as “Nazis”? I am not surprised by what the architects of this crisis say about me, because it is inherent to everything they had done. I can hardly believe how many serious, intelligent and educated people are so lazy, sluggish and ready to accept the media presentation of a contemporaneous event. Reading some of them I sometimes think they may be drugged, because they write about the Bosnian crisis as if they had been there all the time, while the majority of them had never been there.”

And, finally, turning with respect to the interviewer, Andy Wilcoxson: “We can see how extraordinary are alert, curious and responsible persons like yourself, who do not take the media truth for granted.”