Voice of Russia
February 16, 2014
Western color revolution architecture activated in Bosnia-Herzegovina – Stephan Karganovic
John Robles
Photo: EPA
The color revolution that is being carried out in Ukraine is not the only recent attempt to overthrow a government by Western architects, color revolution architecture was also recently activated in Bosnia-Herzegovina by groups using the giveaway OTPOR symbol.
The “uprising” staged by almost entirely young thugs started and ended suddenly, a clear sign that it had been orchestrated. According to Stephan Karganovic, a geopolitical specialist and the President of the Srebrenica Historical Project, whoever was directing it concluded that it was not bearing fruit the way it had been set up and so they told everybody to go home. Mr. Karganovic is certain that intense consultations and analysis are currently taking place and that another attempt will be made soon to get rid of President Dodik and to derail the Republic of Srpska and the leadership in Sarajevo. The West want to bring the country into NATO and integrate it more closely within the western structures. That is their goal and they will not stop. Mr. Karganovic says: “… be prepared, and keep your eye on the ball.”
This is John Robles. You are listening to an interview with Stefan Karganovic. He is the president of the Srebrenica Historical Project. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com.
Robles: Hello, sir! How are you this evening?
Karganovic: Hello, I’m fine. I hope you are also.
Robles: I’m very well, thank you very much for agreeing to do the interview.
Karganovic: My pleasure.
Robles: Thank you. A lot of things going on in Bosnia and Ukraine simultaneously. I don’t know if one is supposed to distract from the other or what is going on?
I’d like to ask you some questions about the correlations that you see between what is happening in Ukraine right now, what happened in Serbia, in the former Yugoslavia with color revolutions and in particular a logo that was used by the group OTPOR which the world has come to know was the US’ instrument for implementing the color revolution there? So, anyway…
Karganovic: Exactly.
Robles: What is going on there in Bosnia right now, please?
Karganovic: Well, right now, today not much is going on, but plenty was going on a few days ago. And basically what happened is that a color revolution type uprising erupted last Friday and it lasted for about two and a half days.
The interesting thing about it is that it started suddenly and ended suddenly. And that, in and of itself, I think strongly suggests that there is a guiding hand behind it because a spontaneous uprising by people who are hungry, disaffected for various reasons, and so forth, probably would have started more slowly and gradually and would have gone on or would have tapered off more gradually.
What we have seen in Bosnia was a sudden upheaval that ended just as suddenly and it is only my assumption that it ended suddenly because whoever was directing it concluded that it was not bearing fruit the way it was set up and so they told everybody to go home.
And I’m sure that right now there are intense consultations and analysis going on as to why the plan didn’t work as anticipated and what can be done to improve it for the next time around.
So I anticipate that within a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two we will have the same situation again, probably with a slightly modified scenario reflecting the lessons learnt. But what we have to bear in mind is that the objective continues to be the same, and in Bosnia what I discern are two fundamental objectives: the main one is to destabilize the Serbian entity, the Republic of Srpska, and to get rid of its president Milorad Dodik, who has led a very independent minded policy and a policy of friendship with Russia.
When I say independent minded that is slightly ambiguous, we can debate whether he has in mind ultimately independence for the Republic of Srpska, but the policies that he is pursuing are his own, they are not policies that he is just implementing as dictated from abroad or somewhere else. In that sense that is the main sense in which I use the word independent when I describe him and that is of course a no no that has to be taken care of because it is a bad example for other countries, especially small countries.
He has been defiant for too long. I can perfectly understand from the standpoint of the organizers of these upheavals why they want to get rid of him. But the slightly surprising aspect of the violence in Bosnia is that apparently the goal is not just to get rid of Dodik and to derail the Republic of Srpska, but also to get rid of the leadership in Sarajevo which is surprising because unlike Dodik it has been very cooperative.
So why would they want to get rid of it? Well, I see an analogy between that and the Shevardnadze case in Georgia in 2003. He was very cooperative but it was obvious by that time that his luck was running out, the Georgian people were getting tired of him, he was not delivering the goods. So, it was probably a preemptive strike when they organized a color revolution in Georgia and brought in Saakashvili who of course was their guy also maybe even more so because he was educated in the West. But the idea was to change the ruling team while you had an opportunity to control the process. So the change wouldn’t come from below.
And of course that this artificial color revolution change comes with all kinds of promises and slogans for better life and blah-blah-blah so that duped masses think that something is going to happen to improve their lives and it gives the new regime a new lease on life.
And I think that they have something similar in mind for Sarajevo because these guys are just very querulous, they are very narrow minded, they want to cooperate but they are not flexible enough. They do not fit into the new concept of governance which calls for a centralistically ruled Bosnia and Herzegovina, the entity is being gradually fazed-out and a trans-ethnic team is being installed in Sarajevo to rule the country under a simplified constitution and I agree that the present set up is cumbersome and not very functional. But they want to simplify it, not to make the lives of the people easier but to make it more easily governable for their own purposes which is to bring the country into NATO and integrate it more closely within the Western structures.
When you get rid of all these leaders who have ethnic ties to their own constituencies even if they are trying to be cooperative and you bring in the new people that you educated abroad like Saakashvili, I think a bunch of the Bosnian Saakashvilis are probably being trained somewhere and will be brought onto the scene pretty soon, then ruling the country becomes much easier.
Robles: I see. Now, most of these protests as I understand took place in the Muslim Croatian parts of the country. I’d like you to comment on that if you could.
Karganovic: Yes, well, that is one very interesting aspect of what happened because the conventional wisdom until a week ago literally, was that they would try to stir something up in the Republic of Srpska because that is their main objective right now to, let’s use the proper word, “overthrow” the Republic of Srpska and certainly to get rid of its leadership.
Instead they started in the federation and that is very interesting and susceptible to various interpretations. I would personally say that it was a clever move because first of all it points to what I mentioned earlier; that their goal is not just the removal of Dodik and his team but also of their satellites in Sarajevo and their replacement by a new group. So, for that you need pressure from below in the Federation but more importantly the idea I think was to stir up socio-economic trouble in the federation.
Initially they were not talking about political issues, but about the miserable economic and social conditions which truly are miserable and they are miserable on both sides of the entity lines, in the Federation and in the Republic of Srpska. So they probably counted on the Federation being a model for a similar uprising in the Republic of Srpska.
In other words they misread completely the psychology of the people, the ethnic component, the memory of the enmity from the war in Bosnia is still very much alive and while everybody likes the idea of living better, that is undeniable, the Serbs are very suspicious of anything coming from the Federation.
So they just didn’t take the bait, there was absolutely no movement even remotely resembling that in the Republic of Srpska. All that happened was that two western backed NGOs in Banja Luka staged a support rally which drew a huge crowd of about 50 people.
The same thing happened in Belgrade by the way, they had a support rally where more policemen were in attendance than people showing support for what was going on in the Federation.
So what we saw was, and I hate to sound as if I thought there was a big conspiracy, there is no conspiracy because if you are carefully watching the sides as I have been for the last year and a half, I could clearly see it coming and they were not even trying to hide it. So there is no conspiracy, it was all in the open, if you had eyes to see it but they were setting up the infrastructure of the color revolution going back about the year and a half that I could clearly see it in the Republic of Srpska.
So at the certain moment when the signal was given all these structures were activated, not only in the Republic of Srpska but in the Federation and even in Serbia and very curiously if you now follow the reactions the commentary in the Western press (a wide variety of media and analysts) they are saying: “Well, here, at last we are witnessing people of all ethnicities in Bosnia united by social concerns, they are forgetting ethnicity and they are all demanding a new constitution,” which of course by their definition has to be centralistic and doing away with the separate ethnic homelands, “… and they are all in it together. It is time to revisit the Dayton Agreement and to change it radically,” to conform to what is termed “the wishes of the people.”
But it didn’t work. So what happened, well, it is sad really, as I read the last couple of days’ comments from the Western analysts. They missed the fact that what started that way ended abruptly and in failure. They just didn’t notice that. They assumed that what started last week is still going on successfully, so they are writing, analyzing a fictitious reality. But that fiction has already been exposed as a fiction.
There is no common set of values uniting the people of all ethnicities in Bosnia. Sure, having a decent life and the job and a good income is something everyone would welcome, but there are other concerns as well, that are even more important.
So, at this point what was started last week, I think we can confidently say is a complete failure, but they are now analyzing their mistakes and they will be back in a very short time. So you have to be prepared, you have to keep your eye on the ball.
END PART 1
You were listening to an interview with Stefan Karganovic. He is the president of the Srebrenica Historical Project. That is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com. Thank you very much for listening and as always we wish you the best wherever in the world you may be.