Faces of the dead line the main road into Srebrenica, but they are not photographs of the 8,000 Muslim men and boys massacred by Serb forces in and around this town in eastern Bosnia 30 years ago.
They are pictures of hundreds of Serbs allegedly killed by Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) troops in this area during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Placed on the approach to the vast Srebrenica burial ground ahead of Friday’s commemoration events there, they are also part of Serb attempts to relativise or deny the genocide that have not diminished over time.
The refusal of Serb officials to acknowledge the genocide is the most emotive of many obstacles to reconciliation in Bosnia, which still labours under a postwar political framework that paralyses decision-making and only entrenches ethnic divisions.
“Those pictures are of soldiers, veterans of the Bosnian Serb army, so the message is the same as always – it is still denial, and they are glorifying those people,” says Camil Durakovic, a Bosniak former mayor of Srebrenica who still lives in the town.
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“Now it’s 30 years and I don’t see progress. In fact, I see us going backwards ... This government is reversing anything good that was done since the war ended,” he adds. “Facing the past is still our biggest problem.”
Durakovic is referring to the government of Republika Srpska, the Serb-run region linked by a weak central government in Sarajevo to Bosnia’s other “entity”, the Bosniak-Croat Federation. The federation is subdivided into 10 cantons, each with its own government and parliament.
Bosnia also has an international high representative – with broad powers to issue edicts – who oversees implementation of the Dayton Accords, a 1995 peace deal that imposed this convoluted administration on the shattered former Yugoslav republic after fighting had killed about 100,000 of its people.
Western capitals and a series of high representatives in Sarajevo have tried for three decades to make Bosnia more cohesive by strengthening state institutions, and by holding out the promise of eventual European Union membership if reforms succeed.
Yet Republika Srpska resists attempts to transfer any of its powers to the state, and its long-time leader, Milorad Dodik, frequently threatens to seek secession for the region rather than allow its deeper integration in the Bosniak-majority country.
Alongside leaders of neighbouring Serbia and with support from Russia, Dodik and his allies in Republika Srpska deny that Serb forces committed genocide in Srebrenica, flying in the face of international court rulings and the convictions for genocide at a United Nations tribunal in The Hague of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, respectively the wartime political and military chiefs of the Bosnian Serbs.
“Serbs in Srebrenica did not commit genocide,” Dodik said on Saturday, while describing the July 1995 massacre as a “terrible crime” but also calling himself a “comrade” of Mladic and Karadzic.
He was attending an event in the town of Bratunac, 10km from Srebrenica, to honour thousands of Serb civilians and soldiers that locals say were killed by Bosniak forces in the area during the war. Although Bosniaks and Croats were convicted at The Hague, many Serbs believe their crimes have never been adequately punished and are overlooked or diminished by the Bosnian state and the West.
“They know everything, just as we do ... All we can conclude is that Sarajevo is defending the crime committed here in Bratunac,” said Dodik.
“They tried to portray Serbs as criminals and other nations as victims. I no longer trust them at all,” he added, noting the absence of western diplomats at the commemoration. “They are not here today – even if they were, I wouldn’t know what to say to them. I am proud of the Russian ambassador, who is always with us.”
Before Russia launched armed aggression against Ukraine in 2014, the countries of former Yugoslavia were the main European arena for geopolitical rivalry between Moscow and the West.
Russian volunteers fought for the Bosnian Serbs during the war, and the Kremlin later opposed Kosovo’s independence from Serbia and blocked a 2015 draft resolution in the United Nations to recognise the Srebrenica massacre as genocide.
Dodik is a frequent visitor to Russia, and has continued to travel there since a Bosnian state court gave him a one-year jail term in February and banned him from politics for six years for defying decisions from the high representative. A verdict on his appeal against the conviction is expected in the coming weeks.
Already under US sanctions for alleged corruption and undermining Bosnian statehood, Dodik rejected the authority of the court and the high representative, and his allies in the Republika Srpska parliament barred state police and judicial authorities from acting on the region’s territory.
Dodik (66) has found support from the Kremlin’s other allies in the region – Serbia and Hungary. Budapest sent up to 300 members of a police special forces unit to Republika Srpska for unannounced “training” that coincided with the February court verdict, in what could have been a show of strength or preparations to protect him from arrest.
Last week, Republika Srpska deputies voted to create an auxiliary police force. Dodik’s allies say the reserves will help the region cope with emergencies, but critics say it is another step towards creating a police state dedicated to protecting the region’s president.
“I wouldn’t exclude that some are thinking about him as a kind of politically destructive player, on strings. I hope he is wise enough [to see that] normally this is not healthy for those playing this game. These are not reliable partners,” Christian Schmidt, Bosnia’s current high representative, says about Moscow’s closeness to Dodik.
“I see that there is a challenge from Russia, perhaps coming to use the western Balkans as a second-level playing field, maybe somehow to draw attention from Ukraine,” he warns, while insisting that the “situation is manageable.”
Balkans expert Jasmin Mujanovic describes Dodik as an “eager, pliant proxy of Russia” who “remains the most significant threat to peace and security” in Bosnia and the region.
“But his political power has also weakened significantly in recent years,” says Mujanovic, a non-resident senior fellow at the Washington-based New Lines Institute. “He is not strong enough to dismantle the state, but the relevant authorities in Sarajevo also appear to lack the courage to use the full weight of the legal-security apparatus to bring him to heel.”
After defying the national authorities for months, Dodik made a surprise appearance for questioning at the prosecutor’s office in Sarajevo last Friday. A court then lifted an arrest warrant and ordered him to report regularly to the state authorities.
“The deal he made with the public prosecutor is obviously a slap on the wrist and the [Bosnian] public is, rightfully, aghast,” Mujanovic says. “Yet it also shows he was not able to simply ignore the state authorities, nor could he secure his desired secession from the state.”
Durakovic, now a vice-president in Republika Srpska, also believes Dodik is running out of options and can no longer be certain of support from Serbia, where autocratic president Aleksandar Vucic is under pressure from massive student-led street protests.
He thinks the crunch will come if Dodik loses the appeal against his conviction and is banned from holding office in Bosnia.
“In a month we’ll have a different situation,” Durakovic says. “Then we’ll see what direction we’ll go. Let’s hope it’s positive.”
