What's going wrong in the Balkans?
Serb politician Milorad Dodik has threatened to pull out of Bosnia's state institutions.
Itβs been more than two decades since the war in Bosnia ended. It remains one of the darkest chapters in modern European history and cost over 100,000 lives. Since the Dayton Agreement was reached in 1995 a fragile peace has held, but last month the international community's chief representative there - Christian Schmidt - warned that conflict might return and the country is in danger of breaking up. Bosnia-Herzegovina's senior ethnic Serb politician, Milorad Dodik, has threatened to pull the territory he governs inside Bosnia out of state-level institutions including the army. The issue that drove so much of the war - Serb nationalism - now appears to be on the rise across the Western Balkans. Serbia has deployed armoured vehicles and aeroplanes along its border with Kosovo and is accused of stoking religious tensions in neighbouring Montenegro. So how dangerous is this moment in Balkans history? Are the EU and the US doing enough to diffuse tensions? And how much of the blame can be laid at the feet of Serbiaβs ally Russia?
Ritula Shah is joined by a panel of experts.
Producers: Junaid Ahmed and Paul Schuster.
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Contributors
Alida VraΔiΔ - Co-founder and head of the Bosnia-based thinktank Populari
Ivan Vejvoda - Head of the Europeβs Future programme at the Vienna-based academic institution The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM)
Charles Kupchan - Formerly Director for European Affairs on Bill Clintonβs National Security Council, Senior Director for European Affairs during the Obama administration β now a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University
Also featuring β¦
Milorad Dodik - Bosnian SerbΒ political leader
Vesna PusiΔ - Former Croatian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs
Photo
A man walks past a Serb nationalist mural reading βNever Surrenderβ over a map of Kosovo in North Mitrovica on October 24, 2020. Mitrovica is divided between a Kosovo-Albanian and a Kosovo-Serb area. Credit: Pierre Crom / Getty Images.
Broadcasts
- Fri 10 Dec 2021 10:06GMTΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
- Sat 11 Dec 2021 00:06GMTΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
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The Real Story
Global experts and decision makers discuss, debate and analyse a key news story.