Bosnia and Herzegovina: Stability and Peace

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Flick Drummond

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) for securing this important and timely debate. She asked the Minister a number of important questions, on which I concur.

I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in September as part of the delegation of the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces. I am grateful to my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) for making the trip so successful. I am also grateful to the excellent ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Matthew Field.

It was an extremely useful visit, as I knew little about the country, apart from having followed the war in the 1990s. Such trips are essential if we are to understand what is going in other countries. We met Members of Parliament from Bosnia and Herzegovina and assured them of our support for future trade and diplomatic links. We were aware of the tensions, but they were well hidden during our meeting. Twelve UK Members of Parliament, I think, took four days out of their recess to visit the country to learn more about it. We learned about the Bosnian war, and I hope that that reveals the seriousness with which we take the events and people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We visited two sites of genocide, at Ahmići and Srebrenica—and it was genocide, despite the denial of Mr Dodik. We talked to local Muslim people about what they had seen, and heard some very moving testimonies from the mothers and wives of those who had been murdered. The UK Government have sponsored an excellent museum at Srebrenica that shows the atrocities in full. One harrowing video showed a man calling his son and others down off the surrounding wooded hills, as he had been assured by the Serbs that they would be safe. It was not so. The Serbs filmed everything and the language they used while tracking people in the woods through their sniper rifles was that of hunting animals.

Eight thousand men and boys were massacred in three days. The Serbs moved the bodies they had buried in mass graves ,so that they would not be spotted and the numbers of those murdered would not be known. That means that their body parts are now in different graves and families still do not have a whole body to grieve over.

We met people who had been teenagers in Sarajevo during the war. Previously, there had been no issue with the different religions or ethnicities and everyone had mixed happily. One day they were all in nightclubs being teenagers; two days later they were hiding in basements, where they spent three long years during the siege, not able to venture out for fear of being shot by snipers. Bullet holes are on practically every building.

Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot go back to those dark ages. We have heard from others about the importance of the Dayton peace agreement and of the compromise that has led to so many years of peace. Mr Dodik appears to want to tear that up by withdrawing Republika Srpska from key state institutions.

What of those Muslim families we met in the state, whose families have lived there for generations and are keen to work with others from all religions again, as before the war? Schools there are segregated and named after Serbian war criminals, and there are statues of those people too.

The 1992 war started by the Serbs was well planned. They dominated the armed forces and used army exercises to train Serbians and establish bases around Sarajevo and beyond. Genocide was well planned. The actions of Mr Dodik as he builds up allies like President Putin should not give us confidence that they are not doing the same again.

A war in Bosnia Herzegovina will destabilise the region and threaten UK national security. Bosnia is on the crossroads of east and west and is a centre for criminal gangs—ironically, they work seamlessly across ethnic divides within the gangs—as well as drugs and people traffickers. President Putin would like to disrupt any chance of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s joining the EU or NATO, which should be fast-tracked as soon as possible.

The US has asked us to lead in this area, alongside the EU, and we must shoulder that responsibility immediately, alongside the UN special representative. With my co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on women, peace and security hat on, I say that we must enable civil society, and particularly the many women who are working towards establishing relationships with other religions, to flourish. We must help them to get back to the pre-1992 situation, when everyone worked together regardless of religion or ethnicity.

[Alicia Kearns]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. One thing that most strikes me—she will know this from her leadership of that group—is that when we meet the widows of Srebrenica and the women of Bosnia, the systematic rape of these women is a silent issue. People do not speak up about what these women went through and what they see when they look into their children’s faces. It is important that we talk about that and do not force them to feel ashamed, as they do, about what they went through. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for touching on the importance of women in this situation, because so often when we talk about Bosnia that has been silenced.

[Mrs Drummond]

Absolutely, and it makes it even more remarkable that they want to move forward and start to form new relationships with their neighbours from different religions and ethnicities, despite what they have gone through.

Too many young Bosnians are leaving the country because they feel it is unsafe. Like others, I would really like to see more international troops on the ground to reassure the Bosnia and Herzegovina Government that we are there to deter any internal conflict or destabilisation by Russia or internal forces.

I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton for securing this timely debate. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.