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Otvoreno pismo: ZajedniÄki odgovor na prijetnje Beograda po sigurnost Zapadnog Balkana
Otvoreno pismo: ZajedniÄki odgovor na prijetnje Beograda po sigurnost Zapadnog
Naše organizacije i zajednice preduzele su ovaj istorijski zajedniÄki apel jer je prijetnja toliko velika da smo prepoznali da samo naša kolektivna akcija može sprijeÄiti VuÄićev režim da ostvari svoje najzlokobnije spletke.Open Letter: A Joint Response Balkanahttp://instituteforgenocide.org/bs/otvoreno-pismo-zajednicki-odgovor-na-prijetnje-beograda-po-sigurnost-zapadnog-balkana/
Towards Belgrade’s Threats to the Security of the Western Bal
Our organizations and communities have undertaken this historic joint appeal because the nature of the threat is so great that we have recognized that only our collective action can prevent the Vucic regime from realizing its most sinister machinations.http://instituteforgenocide.org/open-letter-a-joint-response-towards-belgrades-threats-to-the-security-of-the-western-balkans/
Open Letter: A Joint Response Towards Belgrade’s Threats to the Security of the Western Balkans
As leading advocacy organizations and community leaders from the Albanian-American, Bosnian-American, and Montenegrin-American communities, we have come together — in a novel pan-Balkan diaspora appeal — to collectively express our grave concern and alarm regarding the growing militancy of the government of Serbia towards Kosovo but also, increasingly, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. We believe that this is a matter of utmost concern to the U.S. because it directly imperils the peace and stability of the Western Balkans region and with that peace in Europe as a whole.
Over the course of September 2021, we have seen an alarming and escalating sequence of threats to regional security and stability by the Belgrade-based government of Aleksandar Vucic. The most alarming scenes have been in Kosovo, where Serbian tanks, combat aircraft, and armored vehicles were deployed in close proximity to the Kosovo border. These dramatic maneuvers resulted from Belgrade’s sudden decisions to renege on a license plate agreement which the EU had negotiated with both Serbia and Kosovo nearly a decade ago.
This disturbing escalation follows a major security crisis in Montenegro prompted by the enthronement of the new Montenegrin Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The event was conducted by the Church and the Government in Podgorica, whose close ties to Belgrade are well-known, in an inflammatory fashion, provoking ethnic tensions across the country. During this same time, Vucic’s closest regional collaborator, the Serb member of the Bosnian state presidency Milorad Dodik, has maintained a months-long boycott and obstruction campaign of BiH’s state institutions following the imposition of a genocide denial law by the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina in response to more than a decade of explicit and vulgar denial of the Srebrenica Genocide and the broader Bosnian Genocide by Dodik and his associates. Dodik has also repeatedly and overtly threatened to initiate the secession of the Republika Srpska entity (RS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, even threatening to reform the so-called “Army of the Republika Srpska” to accomplish this goal, whose leadership orchestrated the Srebrenica Genocide.
Each of these instances are only the most recent manifestations of what has become the now stated policy of the government in Belgrade to undermine the regional security order. The Serbian government calls its new policy “the Serbian World” (Srpski svet), which aspires, according to the country’s Minister of the Interior, towards the formal political and institutional “unification” of all ethnic Serbs in the Western Balkans, with Aleksandar Vucic as their leader. This is no more than a reboot of the Milosevic-era “Greater Serbia” project which led to the worst violence and the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War.
We note also that all of Serbia’s expansionist activities to date have come with the explicit support and backing of the Russian Federation and, to that end, Moscow has actively deployed intelligence and para-criminal assets throughout the region to further escalate tensions and embolden the regime in Belgrade. In 2016, a Serbian-Russian backed coup attempt aimed to assassinate the country’s key leadership on the eve of Podgorica’s NATO accession. Moscow has likewise explicitly backed the secessionist pretensions of Milorad Dodik and thereby directly undermined the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In fact, the Serbian World concept is as much a facsimile of the Greater Serbia motif, as it is of Vladimir Putin’s “Russian World” foreign policy in the former Soviet Union region.
The situation in Kosovo is Vucic’s most dangerous gambit to date. It represents a definitive turn from even the pretense of dialogue and negotiation and demonstrates that Serbia now seeks to use force, or at least the threat of force, to create new facts on the ground. This is a categorical threat not only to the security and sovereignty of Kosovo but, in fact, the entire Western Balkans and therefore represents a significant risk to U.S. and NATO economic and security interests in southeast Europe.
The U.S. was instrumental in securing the sovereignty of Kosovo and bringing peace through the implementation of Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it has for decades been the primary guarantor of regional security and stability. As the prospects for EU enlargement have all but disappeared, a return to U.S. leadership in the Western Balkans is urgently needed.
Accordingly, we call on Congressional leaders, and the Biden administration, to immediately initiate steps to rebuff the attempts by the government of Serbia to unravel the region’s peace and security. A strong signal must be sent to Belgrade that the use of force will never again be allowed to dictate the nature and direction of Western Balkan politics. America invested too much of its own resources into this region to allow revanchist actors to decimate nearly a quarter century of progress.
We also call on U.S. leaders to reinvigorate NATO enlargement as a priority for the region, in particular as concerns Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The inclusion of these two polities in the Atlantic alliance would definitively foreclose the threat of Serbian (or Russian) aggression, and finally allow socio-economic priorities to come to the fore. This is of vital importance because NATO’s significance in the region has only increased as the prospects for EU enlargement have dimmed. This will also necessarily involve America convincing the handful of European allies which have not yet recognized Kosovo’s sovereignty to do so immediately. We are convinced that a bipartisan effort to this end could be successful.
Our organizations and communities have undertaken this historic joint appeal because the nature of the threat is so great that we have recognized that only our collective action can prevent the Vucic regime from realizing its most sinister machinations.
In short, we are convinced that absent a turn to American leadership and primacy in the Western Balkans, the government of Serbia will feel emboldened to further inflame regional tensions, with an aim towards using the resulting mayhem to further its geopolitical aims via the use of force. This cannot be allowed to happen. But it can only be prevented through greater and more directed American engagement in the region.
The official letter was published here and contains the full list of endorsements.
Otvoreno pismo: ZajedniÄki odgovor na prijetnje Beograda po sigurnost Zapadnog Balkana
Kao vodeće organizacije i lideri iz albansko-ameriÄke, bosansko-ameriÄke i crnogorsko-ameriÄke zajednice, okupili smo se kako bismo zajedno izrazili našu ozbiljnu zabrinutost i poslali upozorenje zbog rastućeg ratobornog ponašanja vlade Srbije prema Kosovu, Bosni i Hercegovini i Crnoj Gori. Vjerujemo da je ovo pitanje od najveće važnosti za SAD, jer direktno ugrožava mir i stabilnost cijelog Zapadnog Balkana, a time i Evrope u cjelini.
Tokom septembra 2021. godine, bili smo svjedoci niza alarmantnih i eskalirajućih prijetnji regionalnoj sigurnosti i stabilnosti od strane vlade Aleksandra VuÄića iz Beograda. Najalarmantniji prizori bili su na Kosovu, gdje su srpski tenkovi, borbeni avioni i oklopna vozila bili rasporeÄ‘eni u neposrednoj blizini kosovske granice. Ovi dramatiÄni manevri rezultat su iznenadnih odluka Beograda da odustane od sporazuma o registarskim tablicama koji je EU pregovarala sa Srbijom i Kosovom prije skoro deset godina.
Ova uznemirujuća eskalacija uslijedila je nakon velike sigurnosne krize u Crnoj Gori, potaknute ustoliÄenjem novog srpskog pravoslavnog patrijarha u toj zemlji, što je na najzapaljiviji mogući naÄin sprovela vlada u Podgorici, Äije su bliske veze sa Beogradom dobro poznate. U isto vrijeme, VuÄićev najbliži regionalni saradnik, Älan Predsjedništva Bosne i Hercegovine iz reda srpskog naroda Milorad Dodik, nastavio je višemjeseÄnu kampanju bojkota i opstrukcije državnih institucija nakon što je visoki predstavnik meÄ‘unarodne zajednice u BiH nametnuo zakon o poricanju genocida, kao odgovor na više od deceniju dugog eksplicitnog i vulgarnog negiranja genocida u Srebrenici i BiH od strane Dodika i njegovih saradnika. Dodik je takoÄ‘er u više navrata otvoreno prijetio da će pokrenuti otcjepljenje entiteta Republika Srpska (RS) u Bosni i Hercegovini, prijeteći i reformom takozvane “Vojske Republike Srpske”, Äije je rukovodstvo organiziralo genocid u Srebrenici, radi postizanja ovog cilja.
Svaki od ovih politiÄkih ispada su samo manifestacija onoga u šta se pretvorila politika vlade u Beogradu u remećenju regionalnog sigurnosnog poretka. Srbijanska vlada svoju novu politiku naziva „srpski svet“, koja teži, prema rijeÄima ministra unutrašnjih poslova zemlje, ka formalnom politiÄkom i institucionalnom „ujedinjenju“ svih etniÄkih Srba na Zapadnom Balkanu, sa Aleksandrom VuÄićem kao njihovim voÄ‘om. Ovo nije ništa drugo do ponovno pokretanje projekta „Velike Srbije“ iz doba Miloševića, koji je doveo do najgoreg nasilja i najvećih zloÄina u Evropi od Drugog svjetskog rata.
TakoÄ‘er napominjemo da su se sve dosadašnje ekspanzionistiÄke aktivnosti Srbije dešavale uz izriÄitu podršku Ruske Federacije i da je u tom cilju Moskva aktivno rasporedila obavještajnu i para-kriminalnu infrastrukturu u cijeloj regiji, kako bi dodatno podigla tenzije i ohrabrila režim u Beogradu. Pokušaj državnog udara koji je podržala Srbija i Rusija 2016. godine imao je za cilj atentat na kljuÄno rukovodstvo zemlje uoÄi prijema Crne Gore u NATO. Moskva je isto tako izriÄito podržala secesionistiÄke pretenzije Milorada Dodika i time direktno narušila teritorijalni integritet i suverenitet Bosne i Hercegovine. U stvari, koncept “srpskog sveta” je isto toliko kopija velikosrpskog motiva, koliko je „ruski svijet“ vanjska politika Vladimira Putina u regionu bivšeg Sovjetskog Saveza.
Situacija na Kosovu je VuÄićeva najopasnija igra do danas, te predstavlja konaÄan zaokret i pokazuje da Srbija sada nastoji upotrijebiti silu, ili barem prijetnju silom, za stvaranje novih Äinjenica na terenu. Ovo je kategoriÄna prijetnja ne samo sigurnosti i suverenitetu Kosova, već, zapravo, Äitavog postjugoslovenskog državnog sistema na Zapadnom Balkanu i stoga predstavlja znaÄajan rizik po ameriÄke interese na ionako nestabilnom jugoistoku Evrope.
SAD su odigrale presudnu ulogu u osiguranju suvereniteta Kosova i postizanju mira implementacijom Dejtonskog mirovnog sporazuma u Bosni i Hercegovini, kao što su desetljećima bile kljuÄni garant regionalne sigurnosti i stabilnosti. Dok su nove prijetnje i prioriteti nužno preusmjerili pažnju Amerike na druge dijelove svijeta, situacija na Zapadnom Balkanu se, kao rezultat toga, znaÄajno pogoršala. Budući da su izgledi za proširenje EU gotovo nestali, hitno je potreban povratak ameriÄkog liderstva na Zapadni Balkan.
Imajući u vidu navedeno, pozivamo Äelnike Kongresa i administraciju Predsjednika Bajedna da odmah pokrenu korake za suzbijanje pokušaja vlade Srbije da potkopa mir i sigurnost u regiji. Beogradu se mora poslati snažan signal da se više nikada neće dozvoliti da upotreba sile diktira prirodu i pravac politike zapadnog Balkana. Amerika je uložila previše vlastitih resursa u ovu regiju da bi omogućila revanšistiÄkim glumcima da desetkuju gotovo Äetvrt stoljeća napretka.
TakoÄ‘er pozivamo ameriÄke lidere da proširenje NATO-a na regiju postave kao prioritet, posebno što se tiÄe Bosne i Hercegovine i Kosova. UkljuÄivanje ova dva politiÄka društva u atlantski savez definitivno bi sprijeÄilo prijetnju srpske (ili ruske) agresije i konaÄno omogućilo da društveno-ekonomski prioriteti doÄ‘u u prvi plan. Ovo je od vitalne važnosti jer se znaÄaj NATO-a u regionu samo povećavao kako su izgledi za proširenje EU oslabili. To će takoÄ‘er nužno ukljuÄivati Ameriku da podstakne preostale evropske saveznike koji još nisu priznali suverenitet Kosova da to uÄine odmah. Uvjereni smo da bi dvostranaÄki napori u tom cilju mogli biti uspješni.
Naše organizacije i zajednice preduzele su ovaj istorijski zajedniÄki apel jer je prijetnja toliko velika da smo prepoznali da samo naša kolektivna akcija može sprijeÄiti VuÄićev režim da ostvari svoje najzlokobnije spletke.
Ukratko, uvjereni smo da će se, ako ne doÄ‘e do povratka ameriÄkog vodstva i primata na Zapadnom Balkanu, vlada Srbije osjećati ohrabrenom da dodatno rasplamsa regionalne tenzije s ciljem da nastali haos iskoristi za postizanje svojih geopolitiÄkih ciljeva upotrebom sile. To se ne smije dopustiti i može se sprijeÄiti samo većim i aktivnijiim ameriÄkim angažmanom u regiji.
Orginalni tekst pisma sa listom potpisnika se nalazi ovdje.
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