Dodik, the former compromise man who is now inflaming Serbian ultranationalism

It is difficult to find, on the European continent, a leader who has changed ideology and political line so radically as the Bosnian Serb Milorad Dodik. Thirty years ago he was a pupil of Ante Markovic, the last prime minister of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. A moderate reformist, a modernizer, a liberal. Today, at the age of 62, Dodik is an ultranationalist, intent on guiding the Bosnian Serbs on a path along which they have already ventured in the recent past, with catastrophic results: identity claims, separatist victimization, secession.