Milorad Dodik, the former president of Republika Srpska, called for President Donald Trump to support the independence of his country from Bosnia-Herzegovina in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In the 1990s, after the fall of Yugoslavia, several wars produced new nations that suffer from ethnic strife to this day, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, which includes the autonomous region of Republika Srpska. Dodik told the DCNF that Bosnia-Herzegovina is an impossible state and called for the creation of a new, free country, Srpska.
“We are the people who need our freedom and liberty,” Dodik told the DCNF through a translator. “And, we deserve our freedom and liberty.”
“And that would be the great, historical act of President Trump in the Balkans,” Dodik told the DCNF. “To support our liberty, freedom and independence. In the history of Serbs, then, he would become one of the most prominent figures.”
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During the Obama administration, the U.S. government leveled sanctions on Dodik personally pursuant to an Executive Order released by George W. Bush. The Obama administration claimed that he was impeding the Dayton Accords.
The Obama administration announced this in a press release on Jan. 17, 2017, three days before Trump took office. The Biden administration doubled down on this, sanctioning Dodik on Jan. 5, 2022.
“I would like to say that the previous presidential administrations of Clinton, Obama and Biden have systematically harmed my people, Serbian people,” Dodik told the DCNF.
Despite Dodik’s appeals, the Trump administration said it firmly supports the Dayton Accords.
“President Trump has worked tirelessly to promote stability in Bosnia Herzegovina, and to preserve the peace afforded by the Dayton Accords,” a White House official told the DCNF on background in an email.
“The United States supports the Dayton Peace Agreement and the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” a State Department spokesperson told the DCNF. “The United States continues to use its diplomatic tools to support BiH’s stability and oppose actions that undermine stability. We encourage all BiH leaders to focus on delivering the stability and prosperity their citizens deserve.”
The official 2013 Republika Srpska census stated that nearly 85% of the population was Christian.
He explained that during the Christian genocide in the Bosnian War, elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were participating in the genocide of Christians and gaining military experience.
IRGC members were operating in Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to a U.S. Senate intelligence hearing.
“We should see that our capital city, Banja Luka, and our Republika Srpska, with all our hearts, support President Trump,” Dodik told the DCNF. “And, even today, in these moments we stand with President Trump and the United States against Iran.”
‘An Impossible State’
German politician Christian Schmidt, the international peace overseer for Bosnia-Herzegovina, announced his resignation in a statement from his office on Monday. Allegedly, Schmidt’s resignation has ties to U.S. interests in a pipeline between Croatia and Bosnia, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.
“We were fighting for the Dayton Agreement,” Dodik told the DCNF. The Dayton Accord is the peace agreement that ended the 3 1/2-year-long Bosnian War, signed on Nov. 21, 1995.
“This deep state always wanted to show that the Dayton Accord was just a temporary solution,” Dodik told the DCNF. “They just wanted to make that Serbs become a minority and Christians become a minority in our country.”
In the exclusive interview, Dodik wanted to remind the world that during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, 34,000 Serbian people were killed, 9,000 of whom were civilians.
The combined casualty count for all citizens, militia and troops reached over 200,000 in 1995 after four years of genocide and war following the breakup of Yugoslavia, an International Committee of the Red Cross report states.
“Bosnia-Herzegovina is an impossible state,” Dodik told the DCNF. “We were never meant to be a part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from the very beginning.”
Dodik also said that he supports the state of Israel and denounced the actions of the terrorist group Hamas. He referenced the crimes committed against Jews during the Bosnian War.
“We would become a small minority,” Dodik told the DCNF. During the exclusive interview, Dodik said that if Republika Srpska does not gain independence soon, the Christian population would be oppressed by Muslims, as Christians are in Syria, Jordan and Egypt.
“And one pretty normal question is, how somebody could say that we can live together with those Muslims in the same country,” Dodik told the DCNF. “Maybe somebody who is not good-willing towards us could say something like that.”
He explained to the DCNF that Bosnia-Herzegovina is like a “small Yugoslavia” and suffers from the same ethnic conflict as the now-defunct Yugoslavia. Except now it is nonviolent oppression rather than war.
The Hague Tribunal was an international criminal tribunal where war criminals from the Bosnian War and other conflicts from the Yugoslav Wars were tried. United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia statistics indicate that 161 people were indicted and that 16 people died either after trial or during their sentences.
“But the Hague tribunal never convicted the Muslim members of the community for all those things that they committed in the war,” Dodik told the DCNF. “They were convicted only in total for about … 40 years.”
“[The Hague tribunal convicted] members of my [Serbian] people for more than 1,000 years in jail,” Dodik told the DCNF.
‘They Have Bombarded My People’
Dodik expressed his distaste not only for prior U.S. administrations but also for bureaucrats in Brussels.
“I think that the European Union is falling apart,” Dodik told the DCNF. “There is no one you could say is a leader in Europe, European Union.”
The European Union “destroyed the idea that is called Europe,” he said.
NATO, which participated in the bombing of his nation, has become an offensive organization rather than a defensive alliance, Dodik told the DCNF.
“NATO has made many evil things to my people,” Dodik told the DCNF. “They have bombarded my people with the bombs who had uranium inside. And today, many newborns and our children today are having a really serious diseases today because of that.”
NATO admitted that over 10,000 depleted uranium shells were fired by NATO aircraft during the Bosnian War, according to a briefing from Jan. 10, 2001.
Dodik said NATO is a war machine and that it is no longer a defensive alliance.
“We also believe in the remarks of the President Trump when he says that there wouldn’t be a war in Ukraine if he was the president at that time,” Dodik told the DCNF. “And only because of that NATO positions and expansionistic nations of the NATO that was the only reason why the Russian Putin decided to defend themselves and defend their nation, Russian nation.”
“God bless America and God bless Republika Srpska,” Dodik said.
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