How to counter the Serbian world

Last week I said Europe will not be whole and free anytime soon. Serbia has chosen to be on the eastern side of a line that will be drawn through the Balkans. The question then is how keep the other Balkan countries on the western side of the line.

This is in part a question of what they should do about the ethnic Serb populations within their borders. Serbia is pursuing a “Serbian world” strategy intended to gain as much leverage on the neighbors as possible. Belgrade is also positioning itself so that it could demand secession of neighboring Serbs if geopolitical conditions in the region and the rest of the world would permit it.

Bosnia on the spot

This puts Bosnia and Herzegovina in a difficult spot. Forty-nine per cent of its territory constitutes “Republika Sprska” (RS). Serbs make up perhaps 37% of Bosnia’s population, most of them in the RS. Many of their political leaders since the 1992-5 war have promised to separate, either de facto or de jure, from the other 51% of the territory. Milorad Dodik, who currently holds the presidency of the RS, has dominated the entity’s politics for more than 15 years. He has salami-sliced RS to within a centimeter of independence. He has also stolen a lot of its revenue and sought to cooperate with Belgrade in making the “Serbian world” a reality.

Dodik also cooperates with ethnic nationalist Bosnian Croats, in particular Dragan Covic, in his anti-constitutional political, and corrupt economic, enterprises. The Bosnian Croat political leadership seeks to echo the RS. It wants a “Third Entity” that would provide to Croats whatever de facto or de jure separation the RS achieves. This would split the Bosniak-Croat “Federation,” which occupies 51% of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s territory. It would also leave a rump Muslim entity that would create serious problems for its neighbors, Europe, and the US.

The risk is clear: if either Dodik or Covic secedes, the Bosnian state would be fragmented in three. Instabiliity and likely war would decide the lines between them. The State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Europe, Jim O’Brien, has made it crystal clear that the US opposes these secession ambitions. He hopes the latest European Union cash will prevent it and promote meaningly reform. But there is a long history of ethnic nationalists in the Balkans pocketing the money and doing the opposite of what the EU would like. We’ll have to wait and see whether future implementation can match O’Brien’s clarity and forcefulness on the main issue. Bosnia must remain a single, multiethnic, democratic state.

Montenegro is already in Serbia’s maw

Close to 30% of Montenegro’s population regards itself as Serb. Belgrade has successfully parlayed recent elections there into formation of pro-Serbia national governments. This has happened despite the country’s entry into NATO in 2017. The trick was to use avowedly pro-EU politicians against a dominant political party and politician, former President Djukanovic, who had governed for too many decades, with support from ethnic minority allies. The Serbian Orthodox Church and Russia’s security agencies pitched in to help. They have reaped handsome rewards, the former church property and the latter influence.

Though much-criticized for supposed corruption, President Djukanovic presided with dignity over the alternation in power. His successors have not proven their corruption accusations against him. It remains to be seen whether the more liberal democratic coalition that he formed can revive and regain power. Its pro-EU credentials were stronger than those who are now participating in a coalition that includes explicitly pro-Serbian and pro-Russian politicians, who improbably claim also to be pro-EU. Their failure to deliver what Jim O’Brien terms “benefits to citizens” could lead to another alternation in power.

Kosovo needs its Serbs

In Kosovo, the Serb population is the largest minority, but only constitutes at most 6% of the population. The Kosovo constitution provides the Serb minority with extensive protection and powersharing arrangements. But most Kosovo Serbs remain separate from the majority Albanians. Their languages (unlike the dominant languages in Bosnia and Montenegro) are incompatible. The Serbs south of the Ibar River live mostly in Serb-majority enclaves. But they appear to have made their peace, at least for now, with the Albanian-dominated institutions in Pristina. Like Albanian-majority municipalities, Serb-majority ones have extensive powers over local governance.

The northern four Serb-majority municipalites contiguous with Serbia are far less integrated than those south of the Ibar. Using its military, economic, and political leverage, including intimidation by its secret services and their organized crime partners, Belgrade has successfully ensured that they refuse to accept Pristina’s authority. The northern Serbs have boycotted municipal elections and withdrawn from Kosovo institutions.

Serbia wants the Serb-majority municipalities to form an Association. That would enable them to govern jointly and separately from Pristina, as in the RS. In the right geopolitical environment, the Association might also act as a vehicle for the four northern municipalities to secede from a state Belgrade still does not recognize. It was a similar association of provincial authorities that led to the formation of the RS before its attempted secession in 1992 from Bosnia.

What to do about Kosovo

Countering this requires a difficult maneuver from Pristina. It needs to convince the northern Serbs that they will be better off as Kosovo citizens (even if they retain their Serbian citizenship as well). Some are moving in that direction, as suggested by their increased willingness to get Kosovo license plates, identity papers, and passports. But many of the Serbs in the north have been among the most belligerent, and sometimes violent, opponents of Pristina. Belgrade has succeeded in making outreach to the northern Serbs far harder than outreach to Serbs in the municipalities not contiguous with Serbia.

Prime Minister Kurti is making a point of speaking more in his fluent Serbian. All Pristina authorities should be more careful than they have been in the past to display the country’s ethnically neutral flag, rather than the ethnic Albanian flag (also the flag of Albania) many of them prefer. Implementing the many power-sharing arrangements in the constitution is not easy, but still necessary. So too is financial support for the Serb communities and implementation of the Constitutional Court decision on the Decan/i monastery, which Pristina has refused so far.

While I don’t know the merits of the specific issues cited here, it certainly sounds like the police action described is counterproductive:

What to do in Montenegro

In Montenegro, only the constitutional political process can decide whether to allow Serbia to continue to dominate political outcomes. But NATO will need to protect itself if Russian penetration of Podgorica’s security establishment continues. With war still raging in Ukraine, the US and EU need to be far more attentive than in the past to Moscow’s use of Montenegro to compromise NATO security. The West should redouble support to truly independent civil society in Montenegro, ensuring that it exercises the same vigilance over the current government that it did over the previous one.

What to do in Bosnia in Herzegovina

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is no substitute for ridding the political leadership of those who oppose the country’s unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. The EU and US have waited too long for the Bosnians to do it on their own. They need help. No more international funding should go the RS while Dodik is in charge. The High Represenatative should be ready to remove him from office if he continues illegal RS moves. Brussels and Washington should be pressuring Zagreb to facilitate bringing Dragan Covic to justice for corruption. Strengthening EUFOR’s troop presence in the northeastern town of Brcko is also vital. No Serb secession can occur without Brcko.

Bolder and better are the right directions for the international judges in Bosnia and the High Representative. While maintaining the Dayton peace settlement is vital, it will not suffice for EU accession. A recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights is where Bosnia should aim to go: towards a civic state rather than ethnonationalist powersharing. Moving it in that direction should be the EU and US objective.