Two US fighter jets flew over Bosnia on Monday in a gesture of support for the country on the eve of a military-style nationalist parade planned by Serb separatists at a time of high tensions.
The American embassy in Sarajevo said that the flight by the F16 planes was a joint training exercise with Bosnian forces, as well as a “demonstration of US commitment” to ensuring Bosnia’s territorial integrity in the face of “secessionist activity”.
The jets flew over the north-eastern towns of Tuzla and Brčko but could reportedly be heard in Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serb capital to the west, which will be the focus of Tuesday’s planned commemorations marking the 32nd anniversary of the proclamation of Republika Srpska as a breakaway state.
The celebrations, involving a parade of paramilitary forces, are a gesture of defiance against Bosnian statehood. They have been banned by the country’s constitutional court as being discriminatory against non-Serbs. The declaration of Republika Srpska in January 1992 triggered a civil war and a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats, in which 100,000 people died.
Milorad Dodik, the Republika Srpska president, shrugged off the F16 flights, joking that they would contribute to the anniversary ceremonies. In a speech on the eve of the holiday, the separatist leader restated his longstanding position that the “the aim of the Serb people is a Serb state in these areas.”
Dodik received support from the president of neighbouring Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, who announced a firework show will be held in Belgrade on Tuesday night, synchronised with displays in Banja Luka and other Republika Srpska towns.
This year’s parade comes amid an increasing number of attacks and threats against returned refugees, particularly Bosniak and Croat returnees to Republika Srpska. On Sunday, two Serb men were arrested for firing guns as they drove past a Bosniak community in Srebrenica, scene of a 1995 massacre of over 8,000 mostly Bosniak men and boys, judged to be an act of genocide by a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The men were released on Monday after Serb protests led by Orthodox clergy and Srebrenica’s Serb mayor.
“There’s a real sense among the returnees of something that we’ve feared for a long time, that Dodik’s political adventurism and brinkmanship is beginning to beget violence,” said Jasmin Mujanović, a political scientist and the author of a recent book, The Bosniaks: Nationhood After Genocide.
In its statement on Monday, the US embassy said Washington “will act” if anyone tries to secede from Bosnia in violation of the state constitution and the 1995 Dayton peace agreement which ended the Bosnian war. However, Dodik has frequently been able to defy the constitution and Bosnia’s western backers, who have few means of enforcement. An EU stabilisation force has shrunk in the past two decades from 7,000 to just over 1,000.
“This is a deterrence problem,” Haris Imamović, a political analyst and former adviser to the Bosnian presidency, said. “These western decision-makers simply don’t have deterrence mechanisms. They don’t have hard power.”
Mujanović said the F16 flights were a welcome but insufficient signal of US resolve.
“I don’t think this signifies meaningful change in US policy,” he argued. “But at the very least it is some kind of recognition on the part of American officials that they’ve lost the PR battle, in the sense that no one really takes American threats very seriously anymore.”
He said US credibility had been sapped by a policy of appeasement towards separatist Serbs and Croats in Bosnia, for example endorsing the creation of a state government last year which gave them significant power and put the security ministry under the control of one of Dodik’s political partners.
Mujanović also faulted Washington for failing to condemn Vučić for the rigging of Serbian elections last month.
Dodik has been sanctioned by the US for corruption, and by the UK for undermining the “legitimacy and functionality” of the Bosnian state.
“Whilst the joint operation between the American air force and Bosnian military is welcome as a deterrent we need to go further,” said Alicia Kearns, chair of the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee who led the move to sanction Dodik in 2022. “I want to see the UK rejoin EUFOR, Nato troops stationed in Brčko and the EU finally join the UK and US in sanctioning Dodik and his cronies.”
