American gangsters and Bosnian waste!

By: Rasim Belko

Interest, always and forever the only stable currency of all political relations, on a micro and macro level.

Only for us, geographically, politically and demographically small, does this interest too often appear as a mirage of great powers' friendship. And when the diplomatically polished surface is scratched, interest is always in the background, to our detriment.

At the end of November 2024, I attended a public hearing on the private initiative to build a World Trade Center in Novo Sarajevo. The drama was at its peak, at times threatening to escalate into an incident, and it concluded with a clear stance from the academically strong profession, professors, and citizens that building such a facility was unacceptable for several reasons. Those whom the citizens of Novo Sarajevo municipality pay with their taxes, from Mayor Benjamina Karić, councilors, to officials in departments, tried their best to explain to us how good it would be and how we would profit. When asked how this would happen if it were a private company, they shrugged.

Two years later, in online media acting as cushions for the big American backside, I read praises about the very WTC that the citizens of Novo Sarajevo, and indeed the entire city, rejected. The praise reads: “World Trade Center Sarajevo will contribute to opening new jobs, attracting investments, and positioning Sarajevo as a growing regional business center.” If they can name just one foreign investment that was announced in the same way and turned out to be true, I will delete this text!

They won't find one, no matter how good the PR is. For example, the company that extracts ore from Bosnian land in Vareš and takes profits far from Bosnia and Herzegovina has stolen Bosnian land (a new appeal has been filed with the Constitutional Court of BiH), destroyed forests, and poisoned the drinking water and blood of the inhabitants of that area and beyond. And now all this is to be ignored for a few dozen jobs, can you imagine.

And the story of the Southern Gas Interconnection will be no different. They will bring us LNG gas instead of liquid Russian gas. They will again take our state property, because the Americans, like Dodik, don't care about our state's property. And they will take it by force, just as they forcibly compelled political subordinates from Sarajevo to pass the law. And then they will tell us: “The Southern Interconnection will bring you investments, create jobs, provide benefits, and free you from relatively cheap Russian gas.”

Then, at some point, we will wake up and realize that there is no more cheap Russian gas, that the poor cannot afford to heat their homes because the American gas is expensive, that there are no jobs, that there is no property.

Even so far, these 'American allies' have not deigned to explain their relationship with Milorad Dodik and their agreement with him. Because that agreement lifted sanctions on Dodik and the people around him, but not a single problem in BiH has been resolved.

And the public will again ask how it is that our most important foreign policy partner is turning us into slaves in the 21st century. Because the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina thinks with difficulty, and understands even less that geopolitics is not charity or Caritas, but an interest in dominance that first breaks over the small. BiH politics does not think; it is fine as long as it gets rich, and it doesn't give a damn what will happen tomorrow.

According to that policy, America will continue to be our most important partner, even though this world power has turned into a trading gangster, stealing resources around the world under the guise of democracy, investments, and similar deceptions. Like a thief who steals your wallet, then returns your ID card and says, “There, now you're fine.”

A country that has been killing Muslims in the East for years for resources like oil and gas, that creates chaos in Central America using drugs as a resource, that has kidnapped the president of a sovereign state of Venezuela, still somehow presents itself in the world as the greatest advocate of democracy and all that it entails. It is a mad world, and thank God it has clearly reached the stage of collapse, because no one's robbery and violence lasts until dawn.

The speech by the Prime Minister of Canada is circulating around the world. Mark Carney has defined the starting point of the collapse of the world order as we know it, because the world is fed up with American thugs, as well as other thugs who steal whatever they can around the world, pretending to be friends to everyone.

“In recent times, great powers have begun to use economic integration as a weapon. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot 'live in the lie' of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes a source of your subordination. As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains,” Carney stated, targeting America and then everyone else in turn.

A handful of idiots whom we, the unfortunate people in BiH, call politicians may have read Carney's message, may have understood it, but it is unlikely to reach their minds to understand that the projects that foreigners bring us here are not our interest, but theirs. Let them calculate how much profit has left the country just from the ore in Vareš, and it will be clear to them. I don't believe they will become brave enough to say that this cannot continue. Because that handful of idiots has turned us into American subjects, so we are no longer in a position to judge what is right and what is wrong.

Due to all of the above, our fate is as uncertain as a gambler waiting for the last number in a lottery where they have staked their last penny. Because what is called politics here is nothing more than gambling with the fate of the country and its citizens, and the roulette wheel of survival is held by characters with pockets full of walnuts who have neither learned nor understood politics, but it has fallen to them.

No one asks why the Southern Interconnection is not in the RS, why some foreigners are not offering investments, “jobs, prosperity,” why they are not digging for ore there. Why does everything pass in Sarajevo without resistance and almost without questioning its validity? No one asks why the Americans are guarding Dayton like an unwanted bastard in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

And they will not understand, because we do not have a Mark Carney to tell them how close the point of collapse of the global order is and how important it will be for us to continue digging our ores as our ancestors did, for us to produce our food as we have produced it for centuries, for us to manage our land and form alliances in which we will also have our own interest!

That is called politics, and that defines Carney as a statesman, bold and courageous enough to explain the truth that everyone sees but no one dared to utter, to America and the whole world.

Let's find a Carney for Sarajevo before they bury us in the waste of our ores!