Crimea spurs breakaway threats by Bosnian Serbs

Friday 21st, March 2014 / 19:54 Written by Oman Observer

in Analysis

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Serbia, along with its key ally Russia, has never accepted Kosovo’s secession and warned that it could trigger a domino effect among separatist movements across Europe, notes Jovan Matic 
Russia’s annexation of Crimea has given new hope to Bosnian Serbs hoping to break away from control by Sarajevo, but analysts say they stand little chance of success. The March 16 disputed referendum in which Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, has been carefully watched in the Balkans, where the break-up of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars of the 1990s left several simmering border conflicts, just barely held in check by huge international missions.
Bosnia is the messiest of the countries that emerged from that period — a loose confederation of Serb and Muslim and Croat entities stitched together by chronically weak central institutions.
The Serb-run Republika Srpska in Bosnia was initially given considerable powers over its own affairs under the 1995 Dayton peace accord — including tax-collection and its own military — but these were gradually transferred to the Bosnian capital Sarajevo under international pressure.
Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik sees events in Crimea as a new chance to push for the return of these powers, once again raising the threat of a referendum on independence this week.
“Bring back to Republika Srpska the powers that it had under the Dayton agreement and it will not leave Bosnia,” he said after meeting the Russian ambassador to Bosnia Alexander Botsan-Khartchenko on Tuesday.
“If you do not bring the powers back, our conviction that we have to move on will get stronger,” Dodik said. He sees Bosnia as “a non-viable state” and described the Crimean referendum as “an example of respect for the UN Charter and the right of people to self-determination”.
Despite the bluster, analysts say there is little chance that he can go through with the threat of a referendum, not least because of the vast differences between the situation in Crimea and the Balkans.
“The context is not the same. Serbia does not have the same international authority as Russia and it is not currently in its interest to allow this referendum,” said political analyst Miodrag Radojevic of the Institute of Political Studies in Belgrade.
Sasa Popov, an analyst at Serbia’s Igmanska Initiative, a think tank, said a referendum on independence for Republika Srpska “is not realistic”. “The case of Crimea is different. There, Russia has used a dramatic situation in Ukraine to retake a territory that it previously owned. Republika Srpska has never been part of Serbia,” he added.
But the events in Crimea put Serbs in a delicate position full of awkward contradictions — particularly on the question of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
Serbia, along with its key ally Russia, has never accepted Kosovo’s secession and warned that it could trigger a domino effect among separatist movements across Europe.
Bosnian Serbs have tried to overcome the contradiction — and keep their own hopes of secession alive — by arguing that Kosovo should have held a referendum before breaking away. “If Kosovo had respected the same procedures as Crimea, I would have said it was a right of a people to self-determination,” Dodik said this week.
He did not comment on the fact that Kosovo held elections focused on the question of independence just a few month’s before 2008′s declaration.