The Croatian government’s normalization of the neo-Nazi far-right is intrinsically linked to its undermining of democracy in post-war Bosnia, a country facing secession threats by a Bosnian Serb leader in its worst political crisis in peacetime, one that has profound security risks, given the ethnonationalist partitionist violence that sparked the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The far-right ideology expressed in July’s concert in Croatia and the sentiment reflected in subsequent Nazi graffiti there that went un-condemned by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) political party were the backbone of the Croatian ethnonationalist war of aggression against central and western Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Today’s leader of the HDZ’s sister party in Bosnia, the HDZ BiH, is alleged to have requested Bosniaks from Croat-run concentration camps to use as forced labor when he was general director of the Soko factory in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, an allegation he denies.

Croatia’s normalization of this ideology suggests it may be turning to the dark politics of the past to shape the Western Balkans of today. At the same time, the region has become fertile ground for Russian influence, including the Kremlin’s support of the Bosnian Serb separatist leader, Milorad Dodik, who regularly cooperates with HDZ BiH political figures and endorses their political objectives.

https://www.justsecurity.org/125043/croatia-far-right-western-balkans/