Bosnia-Herzegovina — House of Lords, 2021-12-16
Topic: International Affairs
Nicholas Bourne (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I declare my interests as published in the register, in particular my presidency of the institution Remembering Srebrenica. I thank noble Lords who are participating in this important debate. We have a strong line-up of speakers, particularly my noble friend Lady Helic, who has personal experience of this like nobody else here does, my noble friend Lady Warsi, who has direct experience from the Foreign Office, and my noble friend Lady Mobarik, who was a Member of the European Parliament. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will come in during the gap; we very much look forward to that too, as well as hearing from many other speakers We have been here before. In the 1990s, we saw the horror of Sarajevo under siege. We saw victims held in concentration camps and atrocities committed across Bosnia. We saw genocide committed; that is at the root of the issues that we are confronting today. Genocide took place on European soil, 50 years after the Holocaust and the cries then of "Never again", yet it happened again. The events of the 1990s and the inaction, or certainly the slow action, of the West is a stain on the conscience of the West—of us all In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically murdered by Bosnian Serb forces. Let us not forget that. They were dumped in mass graves and later moved to secondary and, in some cases, tertiary mass graves, and their remains are still being identified today. War leaders were charged, convicted and imprisoned for unspeakable crimes, and Sarajevo, as I have said, was shelled under the orders of Ratko Mladic—to the point of madness, as he asked for at the time There followed the Dayton peace agreement of November 1995, which effectively split the country into two parts: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska, within Bosnia-Herzegovina, the area that was ethnically cleansed by the Bosnian Serb forces and army. The accords established peace, underpinned by a tripartite rotating presidency—a far from perfect arrangement, but it has, by and large, provided a durable peace in the time since I had the great privilege of visiting Sarajevo and Srebrenica as a Minister. For me, it was the most important political experience of my life. I met many survivors. I remember meeting in Sarajevo a doctor who had qualified just before the Bosnian war, who had decided that he did not want the hurly-burly of practice in Sarajevo and moved to Srebrenica, expecting to work as a general practitioner. His life took a very different course, and he had to deal with unspeakable horrors as a surgeon. That brought home to me what had really happened in that dreadful civil war. I remember also meeting a twin, Hasan Hasanović, in Srebrenica. He had been on the death march, which was for many people an attempt to escape the horrors of Srebrenica. He was on the march with his twin brother, and he never saw his twin brother again; he completed the march, but his twin brother disappeared I met, too, some of the incredible mothers of Srebrenica—survivors who had lost husbands, brothers and sons and who were determined that this would never happen again and that their country would come through this. They had the most incredible grace, serenity and goodness—and that, too, has stayed with me We now face a very serious threat from the Bosnian Serb president of that tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik, who is trying to create, in effect, a parallel state within Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bosnian Serb part of the country is undermining state institutions—the army, the judicial system, the intelligence agency and other parts of the state apparatus of Bosnia-Herzegovina. People are also up in arms about the law that was passed under the influence of the previous High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Valentin Inzko. It is worth pausing at this point to say that the name of the late, lamented Lord Ashdown—Paddy—still carries so much weight over there, because of what he did in establishing a strong presence as high representative. The outgoing high representative forged an important genocide denial measure, to say that any attempt to deny the genocide would be a crime, and the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Dodik in particular, is up in arms about that Behind all this, of course, we have the influence of Serbia and the malign influence of Russia, which casts a very long shadow, supporting what is happening. Ultimately what will happen if the West does not act is that there will be secession, which is why it is important that we do act, so we are not faced with the same situation that we were faced with some 26 or 27 years ago The West, NATO, the G7 and the EU must all act. We must use our influence. We cannot have the same shameful inaction that we had 26 years ago. The moral case is truly compelling, but so is the geopolitical one when one looks at the serious threat presented by Russia in Ukraine, the Balkans and, indeed, the Baltic states. Our country knows like no other that appeasement does not work I commend the Government and my noble friend the Minister on what has been done so far. The appointment of Sir Stuart Peach as special envoy to the region is certainly welcome, as are the recent visits of my noble friend the Minister and my noble friend Lady Goldie to Bosnia-Herzegovina; I look forward to hearing about them. That is obviously not enough. Like others, I met the Foreign Minister, Bisera Turković, who I know has met our Foreign Secretary. It would be good to hear the Foreign Secretary’s stance on this, because we have to up our game. More is needed I respectfully say that we need a commitment of more British troops to either the NATO force in the country or EUFOR; that is certainly possible, but it is not limited to EU forces. That is, I think, a sine qua non for progress; we need that commitment and show of strength to make it clear that we stand with our allies in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We also need to make clear our support for the current high representative, Christian Schmidt We need to look at and impose sanctions. We have the legal framework for this; a pre-emptive sanctions regime is anticipated in the Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020. This would provide for the freezing of assets and travel bans and would forbid financial institutions providing funds to Dodik and his allies. We really need to up our game and do that too. The Bank of England needs to work with other central banks from the G7 and the EU to ensure that Dodik and his allies are excluded from the SWIFT transaction system to prevent money circulating via international transfers. These things are vital and urgent In the longer term, there are things we need to do to provide for civic society and institutions of that nature being strengthened. But there is an imperative need in relation to dealing with the immediate threat, which is considerable, of secession and unsettling the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. We cannot afford a repeat, or anything akin to it, of what happened to this wonderful country, with which our own country has such strong, positive ties. We have those ties through remembering Srebrenica and institutions in Parliament, including all-party parliamentary groups Recently, there was a debate in the Commons that put many of these things on the agenda and in which many honourable Members, including Alicia Kearns and Bob Stewart, who has a direct interest and influence in Bosnia from being out there, spoke. They argued for many of the things I have argued for, as did other Members, including Yasmin Qureshi and Fleur Anderson from the Labour Party. This is something on which all political parties are united. That should strengthen the Government in doing what is needed If I may say so, we have an opportunity to make it much clearer than we have done how strongly we support the admission of Bosnia-Herzegovina to NATO. We are not in such a strong position to influence its admission to the EU, sadly, but that would help too; I suggest that we at least try to do that behind the scenes. If global Britain is to mean anything at all—I hope that it will—I certainly look to the Government doing more. Warm words may be important, but we need strong action at a time when we can see off this threat; it will not last for ever. There is a window of opportunity here where we can act firmly and clearly. The Government, the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office can show the mettle they are made of, and we can see off this dreadful threat to prevent anything like a repeat of the horrors that happened to an ally on our doorstep 26 years ago. I beg to move.