Bosnian Minister Ramo Isak Urges Front Against Serbia

Ramo Isak, interior minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), called on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Croatia on September 7 to form a joint front toward Serbia, and asked the Council of the European Union to amend its sanctions regime so that the public glorification of people finally convicted of genocide becomes a separate ground for punishment. The proposal comes a week after Ratko Mladic’s funeral in Belgrade, which our newsroom covered earlier (five ministers attended the funeral service led by Patriarch Porfirije), and marks the first concrete request from a Bosnian official addressed directly to Brussels, not merely a condemnation.

Isak made the statement to Sarajevo media, saying that for him, as he put it, his “zero foreign policy and security priority is a stronger connection between BiH and Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and all other regional states that have an interest in making sure the Balkans never again become a place where territorial claims, ethnic nationalism and the rehabilitation of wartime policies turn into violence.” He added that he was talking “about creating a front against Serbia’s resurgent Chetnik ideology,” and said that “its political manifestations represent a direct threat to the constitutional and legal order, security, democracy and territorial integrity of BiH, Montenegro, Kosovo, Croatia and Albania.”

What the Bosnian minister is actually claiming

Isak’s central claim concerns the degree to which, in his words, the glorification of Mladic has grown into official policy rather than remaining a series of isolated incidents.

“In Serbia, and in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian entity, the glorification of war criminal Ratko Mladic has reached such a level of political, social and institutional legitimacy that it can no longer be described as marginal nationalism,” Isak said.

He added that such occurrences must not be treated only as a security challenge, but as a direct threat to the long-term peace, political stability and security of BiH and the entire Western Balkans.

A concrete request to the EU Council

Isak is not asking only for a political message, but for a legal instrument. He called on the EU Council to add a new, explicit ground for sanctions to the existing regime of restrictive measures: the public glorification of people finally convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as the denial of a finally established genocide and historical revisionism.

“That is why political statements from the European Union are no longer enough. The EU has made it clear that glorifying war criminals, denying genocide and historical revisionism have no place either in the European Union or in the candidate countries. That message needs to carry concrete consequences too,” Isak said.

The Bosnian minister also directed a request at his own country. He noted that BiH is a candidate for European Union membership, and that on its territory, particularly in Republika Srpska, the highest political officials have for years openly glorified war criminals with final convictions, so he asked Brussels to apply the same standards to Sarajevo as it does to other membership candidates.

“If the EU says there is no room for that kind of behavior in candidate countries, then that message applies to BiH as well. The difference is that Serbia has to confront an ideological continuity of nationalism and a revived Chetnik ideology that its political leadership stubbornly refuses to abandon, while BiH has to answer for the institutional inability of its own judicial bodies to enforce its own laws on its own territory,” Isak said.

Isak is not alone in Sarajevo

Isak’s request is not an isolated move. Bakir Izetbegovic, president of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), said the same day that introducing sanctions, both personal ones targeting Serbia’s leadership and ones aimed at the state itself, is “the only effective tool” against, as he put it, the leaders of policies that glorify Mladic on a massive and systematic scale. Izetbegovic called the Belgrade funeral, held with military and religious honors, a serious warning, and called on the European Union, the United States and the members of the Peace Implementation Council in BiH to, in his words, “react in a timely manner.”

What this means for Serbia and the region

The Council of the European Union had not commented on Isak’s request to amend the sanctions regime by the time this article was published. The proposal nonetheless shifts the tone of the reactions to Mladic’s funeral so far: instead of individual condemnations, a concrete legal proposal is now on the table in Brussels that, if the EU Council adopts it, would for the first time tie sanctions directly to the act of publicly glorifying people convicted of genocide, rather than only to individual acts or statements. For Serbia, that would mean the diplomatic pressure over Mladic’s funeral, expressed so far mainly through the reactions of individual embassies and European officials, would gain a formal legal framework at the level of the entire Union.

Isak’s proposal also raises a question for Bosnia and Herzegovina itself, given that, in his words, the same standard has to apply to Republika Srpska too. Whether the request reaches a formal debate in EU bodies, and how much support it gets from other candidate countries, depends on the coming weeks of diplomatic activity in Brussels.