After blocking reform of the country’s broken election law, Bosnian politicians’ clashes and zero-sum games – which have continued to intensify as October’s general elections draw closer – now start threatening the country’s security and financial stability.
Bosnia’s security system, which has been struggling for years under growing political pressures and influences, over the past few weeks has been shown to be incapable of dealing with the escalation of the migrant crisis in the country.
Faced with a looming humanitarian disaster involving thousands of illegal migrants who have over the past few months gathered in the capital Sarajevo, where have been living in parks and abandoned buildings, Bosnia’s Ministry of Security and Office for Foreigners at the beginning of May scrambled together a plan to move a few hundred of them to temporary accommodation.
Government officials’ first choice was an abandoned military barracks in the eastern part of the Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska, RS.
But this plan was thwarted by the reaction of the RS government, which on May 13 held an urgent session dedicated to the migrant crisis, at which the government stressed that it will not allow the accommodation of any migrants in the entity.
Migrant crisis reveals breakdown of security system
According to government sources, it was clear that the RS authorities were ready to deploy police and even use deadly force if necessary in order to prevent any transportation of migrants to the entity.
Unwilling to risk a potential conflict between different police forces, state institutions switched gears and decided to move the migrants to another centre in Salakovac near Mostar on May 18.
Although this plan was announced in advance to all police and security institutions, the transportation was abruptly blocked by a special police unit of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton near Konjic after the local police received a phone call from one of the leading Bosnian Croat politicians – who is also close to one of the leading RS politicians.
After several hours, the tense situation was resolved after a series of frantic phone calls between police, top government officials and US and EU diplomats, after which the migrants were eventually moved to the Salakovac centre.
But few days later, on May 24, the Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Dragan Covic, who heads the ruling Croat party, the Croat Democratic Union, HDZ, had a meeting in Mostar with Croat prime ministers, interior ministers and police chiefs from predominately Croat cantons (Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, West Herzegovina Canton and Canton 10) as well as two mixed Bosniak-Croat cantons (Central Bosnia and Posavina Cantons), at which they stressed that the security situation in the country’s Bosniak and Croat-dominated Federation entity was “solely” cantonal responsibility.
They added that no further action related to migrants – nor any other security-related operations – would be allowed without direct cantonal and municipal consent. Many local and international officials saw this statement as a “small coup” and a major threat to the constitutional and security integrity of the Federation and Bosnia as a whole.
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