Peace and Stability in the Balkans

Chris Law Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Bone. I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for securing this vital and timely debate. I also thank the eloquent speakers who have contributed to the debate for their experience and insight into the Western Balkans. Next month the world will mark the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Balkan war—a war that resulted in up to 100,000 people being killed, caused 2 million people to be displaced and saw, horrifically, the first genocide in Europe in 1995 since the second world war, where over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica by Serb forces.

I too have memories of that time, not because I was in Bosnia, but because I was living in the Netherlands. I lived with a community of refugees who came from each of the six states of the former Yugoslavia, who were all fleeing for the same reason: because on the ground it was unbearable to live. Neighbours were fighting with neighbours, and family members were fighting with each other. They saw horrific consequences, so this subject touches me.

It is a great tragedy that, as we speak here today, there is war in Europe once again. Images of Russia’s brutal, bloody and barbaric invasion of Ukraine, with the systematic targeting of civilians and public infrastructure, have been incredibly distressing to see. The suffering of innocent people, including pregnant women, children and newborn infants, must never be normalised or accepted. Our urgent and completely justified focus on the war in Ukraine must not distract our attention from other conflict areas of concern in Europe, and we must not lose sight of the precarious political climate in the Balkans.

Just three days before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the EU Foreign Ministers had to meet to discuss crisis-averting in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell commenting:

“The nationalist and separatist rhetoric is increasing…and jeopardising the stability and even the integrity of the country”.

In November, the international community’s High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Christian Schmidt, warned that the country is in imminent danger of breaking apart and there is a “very real” prospect of a return to conflict. The Dayton accords, which brought the Bosnian war to an end in 1995 and created a complex political system for Bosnia and Herzegovina to manage ethnic tensions, are being undermined. That poses a huge danger to the stability of the region.

As we heard, threats by the Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, to boycott the country’s major institutions—including the armed forces, top judiciary body and tax administration, to be replaced by several new bodies—and secede the Republika Srpska, are a clear violation of the peace accords. The fact that that was in response to an announcement, by a former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, that anyone who denied that genocide or war crimes had been committed during the 1990s would face jail time, is huge cause for concern.

Yet, despite increasing tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina since summer 2021, the UK Government have been slow to respond. That is indeed alarming. The Magnitsky sanctions are a powerful tool in the UK’s diplomatic arsenal, but the Government’s web- page devoted to UK sanctions relating to Bosnia and Herzegovina has not been updated since December 2020. The US Treasury sanctioned Dodik for significant corruption and destabilising activities in January of this year, and a leaked internal document from the EU has recommended that sanctions are imposed on Republika Srpska and that financial support is withheld, if the crisis continues in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Moving on to some questions, will the Minister commit to increasing the Magnitsky sanctions regime against hostile actors within Bosnia and Herzegovina? If so, will the UK Government commit to making those decisions through scrupulous discussions with international allies? As with the war in Ukraine, it is vital that we maintain close alignment with the EU on matters of European security, as has already been suggested here today.

We also cannot ignore the malevolent role of Russia in fuelling the instability in the Balkans. It has been argued that Vladimir Putin considers NATO intervention in Kosovo a most important recent international event, and wants the state to fail to show that NATO success was temporary, as it was in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia has not recognised Kosovo’s independence and has blocked it from joining the United Nations.

Russia has allied itself with Serbia on this issue, and has been accused of using Serbia to destabilise the region. Although Serbia has declared support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and voted in favour of the UN resolution condemning Russia’s actions, it has not aligned itself with EU sanctions against Russia.

Given that context, it is not surprising that there have been reports that Milorad Dodik tried to prevent Bosnian officials from voting to condemn Russia’s actions at the UN. It has been alleged that Dodik sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General, through the Russian mission, stating that the Bosnian UN ambassador should not vote, as the Bosnian presidency had not agreed a joint stance on the matter.

There is evidence of Russian interference in the Balkans from the recent past, when it condemned Montenegro’s accession to NATO. I should also point to news reports yesterday that the Russian-backed parliamentarians in Montenegro are pushing for advance elections to try to turn their minority into a majority in Parliament, so that it can leave NATO. Two pro-Russian politicians and nine Serbs were subsequently sentenced for staging that coup, with two alleged Russian agents tried in absentia.

Balkan leaders have made stark warnings. Šefik Džaferović—I hope I have pronounced that correctly—the Bosniak member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s presidency, said,

“Dodik is trying to take advantage of the fact that the attention of the west is focused on Ukraine”.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, added,

“I fear that the longer the war lasts in Ukraine, the greater the chances of spillover in the western Balkans. And that is because it is in the interest of the Russian Federation to have new battlegrounds.”

We need to heed those warnings, as any proxy ethno-nationalist war in the Balkans would be devastating, as history has shown us repeatedly.

The Minister for Europe and North America has previously said,

“we see the hand of Russia at play here”.—[Official Report, 9 November 2021; Vol. 703, c. 178.]

If that is the case, we need to know what the FCDO is doing about it. What assessment have the UK Government, along with our EU and North American allies, made of that influence, and how has that changed since the invasion of Ukraine? Do we have a strategy for a proxy conflict scenario erupting? Are the UK Government actively investigating Kremlin-linked entities in the UK contributing to political destabilisation in the Balkans? Will there be a broader sanctions package to sanction Russian individuals promoting or enabling conflict in any part of Europe?

A return to violence is not inevitable but the warning signs must be responded to. For years, voices in civil society and Select Committees of this House have called for a cross-governmental atrocity prevention strategy, yet it still does not exist. The integrated review promised that this would be prioritised, yet in December the UK Atrocity Prevention Working Group wrote to the Prime Minister, voicing concerns that the UK systems capabilities and policies toward Bosnia and Herzegovina still lack a focus on atrocity prevention, grievance and political marginalisation.

Protection Approaches has stated:

“Bosnia is the test case of the promise made in the Prime Minister’s Integrated Review to prioritise atrocity prevention. The UK is well placed to lead a coalition of Bosnia’s allies in a coordinated preventative effort and fulfil its promise made.”

Where do the responsibilities lie for articulating and co-ordinating the UK Government’s approach to the atrocities, and the ongoing risk of further atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the western Balkans? How is the UK mapping the motivations and interrelations of potential perpetrators and the coalitions that can help to prevent violence? Do the embassies in Sarajevo, Pristina and Belgrade have emergency communications protocols in place? When will the UK publish a national atrocity prevention strategy?

I recommend that those responsible for answers to those questions read the book “Architectures of Violence” by Dr Kate Ferguson. It was published just a few months ago, and shows that when these acts of mass atrocities happen, it is systematic and calculated, not spontaneous. It is also preventable. It is clear that we still do not yet have a strategy mapped out.

Finally, I visited Bosnia and Herzegovina last month with the International Development Committee. I returned last night from a visit to Derry, where I was joined by a Bosnian delegation. The Bosnians I met were shocked and surprised that we actually have our own challenges and tensions within these islands. The message was clear that peace and security is only achievable with those on the ground working in partnership, and putting in the hard work and steely determination to resolve the issues. I pay tribute to all the women and men on the ground at grassroots level who work hard to build peace and solidarity across the divides in their communities, often risking their own security in the process. Without them, we have no peace and security.

I also pay tribute to all those in British embassies working in partnership with local NGOs and volunteers to strengthen peace and security in the western Balkans. I pay tribute to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which through its fellowship programmes has created opportunities for people from the western Balkans to see for themselves the hard-won victories that have built peace on our own islands. We have a duty and responsibility in our own national interest and security to work for and invest in peace and security in partnership across the western Balkans for now and into the future.

Conflict and instability are neither innate nor inevitable. Equally, peace and security are not easy—there is no quick fix and they do not grab headlines—but one thing is for sure: failure to invest will come back and bite us all badly. The world’s eyes are quite rightly on Ukraine right now, but this war has been going on for eight years, not the three weeks that the media and UK Government keep repeating. There is an invaluable lesson in this: prevention is far better than a cure, and the early signs need to be acted on coherently, strategically and, most importantly, continuously. The alternative is unconscionable.