A few weeks ago the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy: Per Curiam published a piece whose obvious aim was to rehabilitate the person and political program of the Chinese and Russian backed Bosnian Serb secessionist Milorad Dodik and his regime. Worse, the text suggested that Dodik, who began his career as a communist apparatchik, was somehow a kindred spirit of the broader Atlantic conservative tradition. I am grateful to the editors of Per Curiam for allowing me to publish a response to this text, which argues that the broader efforts underway by some in Washington to rehabilitate Dodik are based on faulty legal reasoning with respect to the complex Bosnian constitutional regime; ignorance of how the major conservative figures of the late 20th century in both the US and UK positioned themselves towards the horror of the Bosnian War; and, above all, a most profound misunderstanding of America's own core strategic interests in the Western Balkans. You can read the piece in its entirety here: journals.law.harvard.edu/jlp…

Today’s newly released @HouseForeign report “Pay to Play in the Balkans” (first reported in @semafor) is a landmark development in Congressional oversight of U.S. policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Western Balkans. Not since the end of the Bosnian War (1992-1995) and the signing of the U.S. brokered Dayton Peace Agreement has Congress released a report of this depth and political significance. @USRepKeating and his colleagues on the @HouseForeign deserve immense credit for recognizing how wildly U.S. policy in the region has flown off the rails in the past two years, and the need for Congress' intervention. The report is a complex read and weaves together at least three distinct controversies which the @HouseForeign (correctly) concludes are all part of a singular campaign: the U.S. decision to lift sanctions on Sino-Russian backed secessionist Dodik and his Banja Luka regime; the extraordinary incorporation of a U.S.-registered shell company, AAFS, into the energy law of the Federation entity, a company operated by Joseph Flynn, the brother of Dodik's registered lobbyist Michael Flynn, and Trump family lawyer Jesse Binnall; and the U.S. role in pushing out Christian Schmidt as @OHR_BiH in seeming coordination with secessionist Dodik, and with an eye towards fast-tracking the construction of the Southern Interconnector (SIC) natural gas pipeline. The report is more than thirty pages long and includes recommendations for the U.S., EU, and Bosnian civil society. It even includes a passing but timely rebuke of Croat nationalist separatism (and renewed chatter about efforts to create a “greater Serbia”) (pg. 6). But its centerpiece is are the series of recommendations to Congress to compel “testimony of administration officials regarding...policies towards [Bosnia], the removal of Dodik sanctions, the facilitation of the SIC pipeline contract, and the present-day implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords”; calls for investigations into “AAFS Infrastructure and Energy LLC for its corrupt practices in [Bosnia]”; and for Congress to “compel testimony from Michael Flynn, Rod Blagojevich, and other lobbyists working on behalf of Dodik regarding their connections with administration officials and their lobbying efforts to facilitate Dodik’s delisting.” In sum, it is an unprecedented rebuke of the White House's post-war Bosnia and regional policy, which has by Washington standards been traditionally marginal, and broadly bipartisan. No more, it seems. A final point: journalists, researchers, and civil society activists on both sides of the Atlantic have worked on this issue for more than a year. This report represents validation of their tireless efforts. It is also an important signal to folks in Sarajevo, in Washington, in Brussels; rule of law still matters. It may have frayed; it may be weaker across the board than it was a decade ago, but it still matters. The U.S. Congress has sent a clear signal with this report that Dodik's delisting is anything but settled policy. Read the full report here: cdn.sanity.io/files/ifn0l6bs…

A few weeks ago, we had the example of Dodik regime propagandists in Srebrenica falsely using the photograph of a boy murdered in Serbia in 2008 as a purported example of a ‘Serb victim’ a fictitious pogrom of the Serb community in eastern Bosnia during the Bosnian War. Now, we have one of the most prominent Serb nationalist disinfo accounts on this platform falsely using the image of Captain Nusret Sahanić of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a “[warrior] against Radical Islam”. These are not accidents. Yes, they are examples of a disregard for actual victims of war, including actual Serb(ian) civilians. But that disregard is intentional because the Serbian nationalist propaganda narrative actually depends on misinformation and the peddling of, at best, half-truths. That’s how you end up with paintings passed off as photographs during the 1990s, photographs of Bosniak refugees misappropriated by the highest levels of the Serbian government in 2023, and the actions in question here. And hundreds of similar instances. These are intentional efforts to muddy the facts of the genocide in Bosnia, and the broader nature of the Bosnian War to legitimate the political goals of the regimes in Banja Luka and Belgrade. Contrast that to the scientific and scholarly efforts undertaken by actual experts. Works such as “The Bosnian Book of the Dead” by @MTokaca which remains the standard reference text of the total death count of the Bosnian War; the work of @TheICMP, which revolutionized the use DNA in the identification of Bosniak victims in Srebrenica, identifying other Bosnian victims from other Bosnian killing fields, and today far beyond; or the scholarship and memorialization work of @SrebrenicaMC, arguably the premier genocide and atrocity research institution in Europe today. The contrast is stark at every level. But at base it is between the sorts of lies peddled by the account below, and those struggling to preserve the truth - against ongoing regime repression.