Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik turned up in Moscow this week, after the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina on March 27 requested that Interpol issue an international arrest warrant for him. A pro-Russia agitator and genocide denier, Dodik has led Republika Srpska, the majority-Serb entity of Bosnia, for 20 years, repeatedly pushing for its secession and fueling fears of renewed conflict because the Balkan wars of the 1990s had grown out of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Dodik was convicted in State court in February of defying rulings by the international envoy who oversees implementation of the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war. The envoy, High Representative Christian Schmidt, had blocked the implementation of two laws adopted by the Republika Srpska authorities – one preventing the enforcement of state-level Constitutional Court rulings in the entity, and another amending legislation on publishing official acts. Despite this, Dodik and his allies continued legislative procedures in defiance of Schmidt’s decisions. But in the past month, Dodik has doubled down, taking steps toward de facto secession, including drafting a constitution to re-establish the Republika Srpska Army.
The idea of a “Serb-only” army takes me back to 1992 and my hometown of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia, where some of the most horrific crimes of the Balkan wars were committed, including mass executions, mass rape, torture, and the burning of people alive on two separate occasions in June 1992. These atrocities claimed the lives of many, including my family members.
So these actions by Dodik today, which may seem esoteric to an audience far away, are not abstract for Bosnians of my generation; we know exactly what awaits, because we remember the crimes committed against Bosniaks in what is now Republika Srpska.
Attack on the Constitutional Order
On Feb. 26, the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina convicted Dodik and sentenced him to one year in prison and a ban from holding political office for six years. Dodik had been indicted in 2023 for enacting laws that defied rulings by Bosnia’s Constitutional Court and the international community’s peace envoy, Christian Schmidt. Rejecting the verdict, Dodik vowed to curtail the authority of the Bosnian State in Republika Srpska (RS), banning the State prosecutor, the court, and the State-level intelligence agency. He began implementing the moves immediately.
“There is no more Bosnia-Herzegovina as of today,” Dodik declared to a crowd of supporters in Banja Luka on Feb. 26, following the ruling. “I need the support of the people, and I will go to the end.” He dismissed the verdict as “politically motivated” and driven by “racial and national hatred against Serbs.”
That same day, next door in Serbia, President Aleksandar Vučić, along with Hungary and Russia, expressed support for Dodik. Vučić flew to the Republica Srpska entity capital Banja Luka to attend a rally backing him, condemning the verdict as “unlawful, anti-democratic, and aimed at undermining Republika Srpska.” Meanwhile, in Belgrade, Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić portrayed the conviction as part of a broader Western attack on the RS, aimed at eliminating it.
The next day, Feb. 27, the Dodik-controlled Republika Srpska parliament passed a law rejecting the authority of Bosnia’s judiciary, prosecutor’s office, and other State agencies within its territory, and setting prison sentences of up to five years for any RS officials who fail to withdraw from Bosnian State institutions. This unilateral abolition of State jurisdiction over part of Bosnia and Herzegovina constitutes a direct violation of the country’s Constitution, an offense punishable by up to five years in prison under the Criminal Code.
Despite the legal consequences, Dodik signed decrees enacting the laws passed during the National Assembly’s Special Session. However, on March 7, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina issued interim measures temporarily suspending their implementation.
International Condemnation
Since then, Dodik’s attacks on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional order have faced strong international condemnation. On March 6, the European Union issued a statement urging the political leadership of Republika Srpska to “refrain from and renounce provocative, divisive rhetoric and actions, including questioning the sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.” The following day, on March 7, the EU reinforced its peacekeeping mission in the country as a proactive measure to support stability.
On March 8, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the ongoing political crisis, warning that Dodik is actively undermining State institutions and threatening the country’s stability. The Untied States called on regional partners to join in pushing back against Dodik’s dangerous and destabilizing actions. Due to his continuous separatist activities and efforts to undermine the U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement, Dodik and his close allies have been subjected to U.S. and UK sanctions. He also has faced accusations of corruption and aligning with pro-Russia policies.
Support for Dodik
Yet Dodik continues to receive support from both local and international enablers, who embolden his actions and legitimize his destructive agenda. On March 6, Vučić met again with Dodik. Following their meeting, Dodik escalated his inflammatory rhetoric, claiming that Bosniaks from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina “want war.” He further alleged: “Their motivation comes from their decades-long efforts to take revenge on Serbs, believing they must eliminate every Serb who does not fit into their projections.”
This is a textbook example of manufacturing a crisis and deflecting blame, a strategy Dodik has repeatedly employed over the past two decades. While actively dismantling Bosnia and Herzegovina’s State institutions in the RS, he simultaneously accuses Bosniaks of fueling tensions and seeking conflict.
On March 7, Vučić had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the conversation, Vučić conveyed a message from Dodik, and a Kremlin statement reported that Putin expressed “solidarity” with Dodik.
Dragan Čović, president of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) and a long-time Dodik ally, has tacitly supported these actions. In response to the latest escalation, Čović issued a vague and noncommittal statement on March 8, calling for “dialogue and an agreement among the country’s three constituent nations as a path toward stability.” However, he took no concrete action to oppose Dodik’s moves or support Bosnia and Herzegovina’s institutions.
His carefully worded remarks avoided condemning Dodik’s attack on Bosnia’s constitutional order while subtly reinforcing HDZ BiH’s longstanding policy of obstructing the country’s functionality — potentially as an opportunity to advance its own separatist agenda.
A New Constitution: A Path to Secession
Despite repeated warnings from the international community over the years, Dodik has continued to enforce decisions that undermine the country’s constitutional order, deepening the political crisis. His actions have escalated tensions and further destabilized an already fragile region.
On March 12, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Prosecutor’s Office issued arrest warrants for Dodik, as well as for Prime Minister Radovan Višković, and National Assembly President Nenad Stevandić for ignoring a court summons to answer allegations that they had committed an “attack on the constitutional order” of the country. Dodik had declared that he would “never answer the call” for questioning by State prosecutors and dared authorities to “try to arrest” him. He also publicly urged officers of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) not to act against him. In a further escalation, RS Interior Minister Siniša Karan announced that the entity’s police would “protect” its officials, deepening the institutional standoff and threatening the rule of law.
The next day, March 13, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska adopted a draft of a new Constitution, which introduces several highly controversial provisions. The Draft Constitution asserts that RS has the right to self-determination, allowing it to establish special parallel ties, form complex State unions — federal or confederal — with neighboring States or a group of States, and potentially alter its status.
Such action would mark a notable shift from the country’s existing framework, as it grants dramatically expanded decision-making autonomy to the RS, including the explicit possibility of holding a referendum on secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The draft also allows for referendums to redefine the border between the RS and the majority-Bosniak and Croat entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
One of the most alarming provisions in the draft constitution is the re-establishment of the Republika Srpska Army, with a separate law governing its organization and command structure, which would be under the direct authority of the president of the RS, a position currently held by Dodik ally Stevandić. Additionally, the draft constitution grants the RS the power to declare military neutrality or enter into military alliances with other States. Further escalating the situation, on March 17, Dodik announced the establishment of an RS border police force, yet another concrete step toward de facto secession.
Despite the arrest warrant, both Dodik and Stevandić, have crossed the State border of Bosnia multiple times without any obstruction. Dodik appeared in Belgrade on March 24, where he stood alongside Vučić at a state-organized rally marking the anniversary of the start of NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia. That was an intervention aimed at halting the Serb persecution of Albanians in Kosovo, and Serbian nationalists have long seized on the bombardment to further their portrayal of themselves as the victims in that 1999 war.
On March 25, Dodik once again defied the international arrest warrant and flew from Belgrade to Israel for an official visit to attend a conference on combating antisemitism, organized in Jerusalem by Israeli Diaspora and Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli. The event had already drawn criticism due to its inclusion of far-right European politicians, and Dodik’s presence sparked further opprobrium because Dodik himself has promoted denial of the Bosnian Serb genocide of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) at Srebrenica in 1995. Following the March 27 reports of the international warrant, Israeli officials reportedly informed Dodik that he was no longer welcome at the conference, prompting him and his entourage to leave.
But Dodik by that time already had sat for an exclusive interview the day before at The Jerusalem Post’s offices in Jerusalem. “Serbs and Jews have suffered together,” he declared. “We understand what it means to be targeted, to have your history rewritten, to be blamed for everything. That is what is happening to us in Bosnia, just as it’s happening to Israel in the world.” This narrative is a familiar feature of Dodik’s propaganda, echoing the rhetoric he has repeatedly employed.
As Menachem Z. Rosensaft noted at Just Security in 2021 in response to the denialist report issued by the so-called “Independent” International Commission of Inquiry that was established at Dodik’s behest, that report framed Bosniaks as aggressors and Bosnian Serbs as victims. Rosensaft warned that this revisionist narrative is disturbingly reminiscent of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ efforts to justify German antisemitism.
Dodik and his allies, through a series of unilateral actions apparently intending to lead to the de facto secession of the Republika Srpska entity, are actively threatening Bosnia’s fragile peace. His separatist rhetoric has reignited deep fears in a country still haunted by the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia, which began when Bosnian Serbs rejected Bosnia’s declaration of independence from the former Yugoslavia and sought to create a breakaway State with the goal of unification with Serbia. That war claimed 100,000 lives and displaced millions – including members of my own family.
War Memories
I was only six years old when the searches, captures, and disappearances of Bosniak civilians in my hometown of Višegrad intensified. Even at that age, I vividly remember the fear and despair etched on my parents’ faces as they made the agonizing decision to separate our family. My mother and I parted ways with my father, my 17-year-old brother, and my 13-year-old sister – they were among the first to be targeted, men and boys because they were considered threats and women and girls for sexual violence that became one of the horrific signatures of the war.
While they fled Višegrad and managed to reach Crni Vrh, a village between Višegrad and Goražde that had not yet been captured by Serb forces, my mother and I sought refuge in her parents’ village near the border with Serbia. Even as a child, I grasped a painful truth: the adults around me could not protect me. That realization shattered my sense of safety — one I have never fully regained.
Even in my mother’s village, we quickly realized that we were not safe — nowhere truly was. My grandfather, along with other men from the village, fled to Srebrenica, about 82 miles from Višegrad, hoping to escape the violence. Instead, he became one of the more than 8,000 men and boys murdered in the Srebrenica genocide. His partial remains were recovered from a mass grave near Zvornik in 2009. In 2020, one of his missing arm bones was exhumed from another mass grave.
A few weeks after we had fled Višegrad, my mother, grandmother, and I managed to escape and miraculously reunite with my father, brother, and sister. But that moment of relief was short-lived. Just days later, while conducting reconnaissance with a group of men as part of the Bosnian Army, my father was ambushed. We never saw him again.
In the chaos of our escape from Višegrad, we were forced to leave behind my paternal grandmother. She couldn’t walk due to severe asthma, and there was simply no way to carry her through the mountains. For years, we didn’t know what had happened to her, though we always feared the worst. Then, in July 2010, the man-made Perucac Lake on the Drina River was drained for maintenance of a hydroelectric plant in neighboring Serbia. As the water receded, human remains began to surface on the dried-up lakebed. Eventually, about 500 bone fragments belonging to “at least 97 people” were recovered and identified. Among them was my grandmother.
Reopening of Wounds
We continue to search for my father’s remains, just as many other survivors search for more than 7,500 still-missing victims, including 1,200 who were killed in Srebrenica alone. Meanwhile, Dodik, along with other high-ranking politicians in Republika Srpska and Serbia, continues to deny the genocide and other war crimes, while openly glorifying the perpetrators. He persistently manipulates the fears of genocide survivors, exploiting our trauma to extract political concessions and further erode the institutions of the Bosnian State.
These escalating tensions do more than stoke a general fear of renewed conflict — they rip open the deep wounds left by past atrocities. We have lived through it. We have buried our dead — or are still searching for even the smallest fragments of their bones, just to give them a proper burial, to prove they once lived.
Just as our grandparents understood what awaited them in the 1990s because they had survived the atrocities of World War II committed by the Chetniks, a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement responsible for numerous war crimes still openly celebrated in Višegrad, we now carry that same dreadful certainty. They lived in constant fear of another war, their lives shaped by the ever-present expectation of displacement. In every home, there were quiet signs of that impermanence — decisions not to buy new furniture because it wouldn’t be needed when the time came to flee. The only certainty was that home would eventually have to be abandoned, that escape was inevitable.
But how many more times can we endure this fear?
For the sake of our security — and the security of the entire region and Europe, the response from both domestic institutions and the international community must be firm, coordinated, and unequivocal in preventing and deterring further assaults on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional order. Dodik, along with others who have actively contributed to its destabilization, must be held accountable through legal and institutional means.
This is not only about Dodik. It is about sending a clear message to all current and future separatists who resort to threats and manufactured crises whenever they feel empowered. Without accountability, we remain trapped in a perpetual state of fear, forced to relive the unresolved traumas of the past. However, on April 3, Interpol rejected a Bosnian court’s request for an international arrest warrant against Dodik and Stevandić.
“We have been informed that the Interpol General Secretariat, following our protest note and Interpol Belgrade’s explanation, concluded that the request does not comply with Article 3 of the Statute, and the conditions for issuing the warrants have not been met,” the office of Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić stated, according to Reuters. And Dodik is back in Bosnia.
We survivors fear that once again, secessionists, genocide deniers, and their enablers are deceiving the international community – and encouraging its silence. And we know that, once again, we will pay the highest price.
If the denial that our loved ones ever existed is a way of killing the victims a second time, then the ongoing threats of war, coupled with the appeasement of secessionists and the glorification of war criminals, amounts to the slow killing of survivors and their children, holding us hostage in an endless cycle of fear and trauma.