Ahmed Hrustanovic, an imam and schoolteacher in the city of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina fears for himself and his family as the country faces its worst political and security extremity since the war in the 1990s.
In July 1995, Serb forces killed the 35- time-old’s father, both progenitors, four uncles, and other cousins during the genocide in Srebrenica, which had been declared a United Nations “ safe area”.
From 1992 until 1995, Bosnia was under attack by Serb and Croat forces aiming to divide the country into a Greater Serbia and a Greater Croatia, independently. Some people were killed and nearly two million people fled.
The conflict ended in December 1995, with the signing of the United States-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement which established Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state composed of two realities A Bosniak-Croat-dominated Federation reality and a Serb- run Republika Srpska reality.
Milorad Dodik, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb member of the triplex administration, which rotates every eight months between one Bosniak, one Serb, and one Croat member, has been hanging for 15 times for Republika Srpska to secede.
But in the once month, he has taken a significant way towards such a move, publicizing that Republika Srpska will pull out from crucial state institutions to achieve full autonomy within the country, in violation of the 1995 peace accords.
The extremity began in July when Valentin Inzko, also the high representative overseeing the perpetration of the peace accord, banned denial of genocide and established war crimes, as well as the glorification of war culprits.
Serb representatives responded by blacking the state’s central institutions.
Republika Srpska, along with abettors China and Russia, doesn’t honor the Office of the High Representative and has long requested for it to shut down.
Last week, Dodik blazoned Republika Srpska would be moving towards forming its own Bosnian Serb army, after pulling out of Bosnia’s common fortified forces. The advertisement has scarified numerous Bosniaks similar to Hrustanovic who sweat a return to the violence of the 1990s.
“ I can’t say that I ’m not hysterical and I can’t believe that after so numerous times and after surviving the genocide, you ’re still hysterical for yourself, your family, your life,” Hrustanovic told Al Jazeera.
People (in Srebrenica) are spooked. Moment, I met one of the Maters of Srebrenica (an activist group representing cousins of genocide victims) and she asked me,‘My son, what’s going on? Will, we’ve to run again?
It was the Bosnian Serb army along with Serb police, intelligence, and security who conducted methodical violence against Serbs in the former war.
The International Court of Justice in 2007 plant the Bosnian Serb army to be responsible for genocide in Srebrenica, located in the Republika Srpska reality near the border with Serbia.
Hrustanovic returned to Srebrenica in 2014, two times after he and his family buried the deficient cadaverous remains of his father and two of his uncles.
A father of four, Hrustanovic said he hoped his family would not have to flee – but didn’t rule it out.
“ The political situation was noway this bad (since the war), to the point where they ’re openly heading towards forming the Republika Srpska army which committed genocide,” Hrustanovic said. “ What a defeat of humanity this is to allow someone again to form an army that committed a genocide.”
When asked about the threat by Bosnian Serbs to recreate their own army, the Austrian commander of @euforbih tells @derStandardat "the join army is not anchored in the Dayton peace agreement." I suppose this is to reassure jittery Bosnians?https://t.co/mDMatIM685
In Zepa, located in Republika Srpska near Srebrenica, families of Bosniak returnees were also upset.
“ They’re genocide survivors, maters or seniors that live alone,” Munira Subasic, chairman of the Maters of Srebrenica association who visited the community on Thursday, told Al Jazeera. “ I was called to meet with them and talk, but I’ve no words of consolation because I, myself, can not handle what’s passing in Bosnia,” Subasic said.
“ This is a delicate situation. There is a lot of talks, bruiting, and stories circulating, just like it was in the 1990s before the war broke out. Dodik is doing his job, he’s not going back, but the transnational community which betrayed us in 1995 is trying to betray us again.
“ They should have done commodity a long time ago … They all say we ’re watching, we ’re observing, we ’re following’… but in reality, they’ve divided Bosnia,” Subasic continued, adding that maters would have to use their passports to visit the graves of their loved bones buried in Republika Srpska if the reality seceded.
On Wednesday, current High Representative Christian Schmidt submitted a report to foreign operations at the United Nations, advising the peace deal is at threat of unraveling and that “ the prospects of farther division and conflict are veritably real” if Dodik created a separate Serb army.
Dodik’s conduct are “ tantamount to secession without publicizing it”, he said, adding that Bosnia faces its biggest empirical trouble since the end of the war if the transnational community doesn’t step in to check the secessionist pitfalls.
For their part, the European Union and the United States have issued statements calling “ all political actors” and “ all parties” to abandon divisive and secessionist rhetoric and respect state institutions, rankling critics who contend that only one side has been violating the accords.
Yet, the commander of the EU’s peacekeeping force (EUFOR) in Bosnia Aleksander Placer said he didn’t see any military trouble following Dodik’s moves to produce a Serb army, adding that Bosnia’s common fortified forces aren’t anchored in the Dayton peace agreement.
“ The security situation in Bosnia is stable,” he said in a commentary published on Wednesday in the Austrian diurnal Standard, thwarting numerous Bosnians.
Kurt Bassuener, an elderly associate at the Democratization Policy Council, a Berlin-grounded think-tank, told Al Jazeera that the extremity would worsen if the transnational community continued to address it only diplomatically.
Schmidt in his report made it clear that it’s a security extremity, not just political, he noted.
“ It requires a security response,” Bassuener said, similar to buttressing EUFOR, which is stationed to ensure a safe and secure terrain but has been shrinking and below interference capability for further than a decade.
“ There’s further than enough artillery, and further than enough vulnerable people to allow commodity veritably bad to be,” Bassuener said.
“ The eventuality for misapprehension among the actors who have coercive power in Bosnia is veritably, veritably high.
“ I suppose it’s a veritably licit fear that unless this is addressed seriously with security tools in the immediate term – within days, weeks, not months – it’s even more likely that commodity bad will be that not might be planned but will lead to a commodity that will develop a dynamic of its own,” Bassuener said.
Meanwhile, in the central Bosnian city of Jajce, Samir Beharic said he was feeling nervous about the future for the first time in his life.
The 30- time-old said he was dissatisfied with the transnational community and didn’t anticipate “ unskillful foreign diplomats” to ensure peace as their “quick-fix results” don’t work.
Lately, he said, his mama had asked him if they would have to flee Jajce again – just as they had in 1992 after the Army of Republika Srpska seized the megacity.
“ She said she ’d rather die than live through a war again and she’s not the only one,” he said.
