What does Sarajevo have to do with Kyiv, what connects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine with the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina? During her visit to the Bosnian capital on Thursday morning, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock asked herself the question: “Why travel to the Balkans when war is raging in Ukraine?” And also gives the answer: “That’s exactly why I’m going to the Balkans right now.” Bisera Turkovic, her Bosnian colleague, says: “All the citizens of this country know only too well what the war and aggression entail.”
The escalation in Ukraine and the consequences it has caused in Europe “only complicated the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina even further,” she explains. The secessionist activities and the decisions of the parliament of the Bosnian Serb Republic undermined the state institutions and endangered the Dayton Agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia in 1995. That is why it is necessary to stop all “secessionist processes” in Bosnia immediately.
Turković alludes to the efforts of the Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who wants to separate the republic’s judiciary from the institutions of the Bosnian state, as well as the army, police, secret service and tax administration. She was of the “deep conviction” that the aggression against Ukraine “is part of a larger scenario that we have been observing here in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a long time” and that aims to destabilize the country – a little disguised criticism of the support for the Kremlin for Dodik.
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Baerbock derives from the suffering of the people in the wars of Yugoslavia the obligation that “these worst crimes against humanity, crimes against children, young people, old people, families in Europe never happen again” – Mariupol or Kyiv are the scenes today, Sarajevo and Srebrenica then. She reports on a classmate who came to her class at the time, and talks about people who had to experience fathers and brothers being shot and sisters and mothers being raped.
There are also happy moments when Baerbock walks through the old town of Sarajevo with Mayor Benjamina Karić, visits the Serbian-Orthodox cathedral, the Muslim mosque, the Jewish synagogue and the Catholic church. Bosnia’s capital is once again a symbol of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence.
But the memory hurts. When she is shown a house from which snipers killed passers-by. Or Baerbock visits the photo exhibition that documents the genocide in Srebrenica. 8000 dead. She speaks to representatives of the bereaved, the “mothers of Srebrenica”. The worst war crime in Europe since the Second World War “had a strong influence on her generation in Germany, too, socially and politically,” she had previously said.
In relation to the EU and the countries of the Western Balkans, this means for Baerbock: “Peace and freedom are the only way.” She speaks of a wake-up call to the EU and of the fact that Germany has not done enough in the past either. “The Western Balkans is the weak point of the EU and the place where the strength must show itself and the foreign policy role of the strongest bloc of states in the world,” agrees her hostess Turković, combining this with the demand for Brussels, Bosnia the status of an EU award to candidate countries and set a date for negotiations. That would be a “strong contribution to peace and stability in the region”.
Turković stressed the importance of the UN High Representative for the country and his “legitimate powers”, which are intended precisely for situations when the “constitutional order is threatened by a party in one part of Bosnia-Herzegovina”. The German Christian Schmidt holds the post, and after speaking with him, Baerbock points out that it is Russia that wants to abolish this post – he is endowed with great power. Schmidt could remove Dodik from his post as part of the three-person state presidency that Baerbock also meets with – the Serb leader is also there.
However, the Foreign Minister wants to send a positive message. “This country belongs to Europe,” she says. That is why we must work together intensively and more quickly on accession prospects. They want to work with all parts of the country, she says. But “without peace and freedom, without democracy and the rule of law and respect for international treaties, there can be no economic development”.
One must and will “stop those who are jeopardizing the peace here in Bosnia and Herzegovina out of selfish motives” and will not allow the security situation to erode. A message to Dodik and his followers. “But we can’t take an entire country hostage, millions of people, because of the decisions of individual politicians,” she says. It describes the balancing act that the federal government will have to manage in dealing with Bosnia.