Thewesternbalkans
The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns paid a surprise and unannounced visit to three Western Balkan countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo) and spoke with their leaders and his counterparts.
The visit took place on 20 to 23 August without public announcements but with many indirect reactions from local actors. This particularly regards Burns’ first stop on his mini-Balkan tour, Bosnia and Herzegovina, a very complex political and security issue in the region still burdened with post-conflict divisions from the 1990s wars.
In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the CIA chief met with his counterpart, minister of foreign affairs and the three-member presidency, which collectively serves as head of state, and finds it very difficult to reach consensus on decision-making due to the mutual deadlock between the leaders of the three constituent nations: Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats.
It appears, however, that Burns’ target, and one of the more important reasons for the visit, was outside the three-member presidency—the long-standing political leader of the Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik.
His nationalist policy, which occasionally includes secession threats, has long sought to undermine Bosnia and Herzegovina’s joint institutions.
The last time he threatened a referendum on the secession of Republika Srpska, one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two state entities, was in June. Shortly afterwards, he announced that he had prepared a document on peaceful separation, which he would propose to the other two ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
During his visit to Sarajevo, there is every possibility that the CIA chief exerted pressure on the political leadership of the Serbian entity to abandon their secessionist rhetoric and plans, as this is how they have long kept the door open for destructive Russian influence in the post-conflict Balkans.
Although he did not attend the talks with William Burns in Sarajevo, Mr Dodik released a comment on the same day that appears to be a shift in his long-standing policy of destabilising Bosnia and Herzegovina: “We have never questioned the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and secession has never been our policy. But Republika Srpska has the right to a political fight for its status, in accordance with the letter of the Dayton Agreement”.
Shortly after Burns’ visit to Sarajevo, Dodik also stressed that the fight against terrorism was an obligation of the “entire free world”. Dodik added that Republika Srpska was committed to this fight and welcomed any cooperation in this area.
The relationship with the authorities in neighbouring Serbia will be particularly important for the future behaviour of the Serbian leader in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with whose president, Aleksandar Vučić, Mr Burns also spoke after his visit to Sarajevo.
Although he never supported the Serbs’ secessionist policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina but insisted on preserving the country’s sovereignty, Serbian President Vučić still has a decisive influence on Milorad Dodik.
In this respect, he will likely serve as a kind of guarantor to the USA, ensuring that developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina progress towards de-radicalisation. The Serbian head of state places significant importance on the partnership with the USA because of another pressing issue, Kosovo, where EU-sponsored negotiations have been stagnant for an extended period of time.
However, in order to maintain the partnership with the US, President Vučić is obliged to solve the almost-year-old case when heavily armed Serbian paramilitaries in Kosovo, led by his protégé Milan Radoičić, attacked the Kosovo police. One policeman was killed, another was wounded, and also three attackers were killed during the confrontation.
This crisis threatened to lead Kosovo into a new armed conflict and even drag the NATO-led KFOR mission into the conflict, opening up a new hot spot in Europe.
This unresolved post-conflict crisis has long been a space for the penetration of Russia’s destabilising influence, which would like to see a new conflict in the Balkans to divert a little bit the West’s attention from the Ukraine crisis.
According to the media reports, in Belgrad Mr. Burns was hosted by his counterpart the Director of the Serbian Security Information Agency, Vladimir Orlić.
Predrag Petrović, Director of Research at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, said for Danas daily that the visit of the CIA’s Director to this region was unusual.
“He is the Director of the most powerful intelligence service in the world. It is unusual for such a person to visit such small countries, given that the Balkans are not at the top of the list of priorities of American foreign policy”, Petrović remarked.
He pointed out that other areas are much more important to the US, such as Ukraine, China or the Middle East, but that in the annual Threat Assessment for 2024, the US intelligence community also includes the Balkans.
With this in mind, after his talks with Serbian President Vučić, Mr Burns travelled from Belgrade to Pristina for talks with Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani and Prime Minister Albin Kurti.
On August 22, Burns met with Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani and the head of Kosovo’s Intelligence Agency (KIA), Petrit Ajeti, according to a Face-book post by Osmani. In addition, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani said that “the alliance with the United States is a guarantee of security, peace and success. It was a pleasure to welcome the Head of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Ambassador William Burns”.
CIA Director William Burns held talks on August 23 in Pristina with Prime Minister Albin Kurti before concluding his two-day visit in Kosovo, the Kosovar government said in a statement.
Kurti thanked Burns for Washington’s continuous support for Kosovo and voiced Pristina’s dedication to deepening bilateral cooperation while reaffirming his country’s unwavering commitment to democracy, rule-of-law, and Euro-Atlantic integration, the statement said, calling Burns’ visit “historic.”
Burns’ visit to Kosovo follows concerns about the partnership between the United States and Kosovo, especially regarding the government’s handling of issues related to the country’s Serb minority.
Both Washington and its EU partners have long been dissatisfied with Kosovo’s attitude towards dialogue with Serbia and in particular the local Serbian community, which is why the EU introduced limited sanctions last year that are already having a significant impact on the weak local economy.
Burns did not make any comment at the end of his visit.
Comments: The crises in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as those related to Kosovo, are not only hindering regional progress, particularly the region’s accession to the EU and NATO, but they continue to provide an open path for Russian destructive influence to penetrate the region, a development that directly contradicts US’s interests in integrating the entire region into the EU and NATO.
To the extent that the EU has made the integration of the Western Balkans into the Union sufficiently clear and systematized, there are certain problems in relation to NATO both in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Kosovo is a special case. William Burns’s visit to only these three specific countries can be seen precisely as an attempt to trace their development of relations and, at a later stage, their incorporation into NATO.
Mr Dodik has been under US sanctions for years for corruption as well as for policies that are destroying Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional order, which is based on the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the civil war.
On the other side, Dodik has been a strongly pro-Russian politician for years, which became particularly evident after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the last two and a half years since the start of the war, Dodik has met with Vladimir Putin no fewer than five times, most recently in June during an economic forum in St. Petersburg.
In addition, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs has long been a brake on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s rapprochement to NATO membership, which the two other ethnic communities—Bosniaks and Croats—are striving for. Due to Dodik’s resistance, Bosnia and Herzegovina has not imposed sanctions against Russia, despite having committed to EU membership.
In an interview recently for the RFE/RL’s Kosovo Service, U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo Jeffrey Hovenier said the U.S. administration had been “challenged” by Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti and his government and the “quality of our partnership is not what we would hope it would be on some of these issues.”
The U.S. State Department has urged Kurti to return to “constructive and close engagement” with Washington, the European Union, and NATO.
As for Serbia, things are much more complex there, because President Vucic is dialogical and the country’s aspiration is to maintain normal relations with both Russia and the West. On the other hand, however, deepening relations with NATO and eventual membership of Serbia in the Alliance seem impossible at this stage.
