TWO EVENTS, ONE DECISION The state of Bosnia is not at the table where its destiny is being decided!

By: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

In the Sarajevo valley, the horizon has long ceased to exist, replaced by the fog of self-importance and the smoke of cheap intrigues. While the world is shifting, cutting, rearranging, and deciding, here we are still debating who stole whose idea for an election poster.

Important news from the horizon barely reaches this valley of the deaf, as it is drowned out by local complications and the eternal question of "who belongs to whom." The future of the state is slowly being shaped outside our view, which many are happy about – because it requires less thinking and more complaining. After all, it's always someone else's fault that we are where we are.

Our politicians have not failed, because we haven't actually had any for a long time. We have entrusted our destiny to an infantile group that would search for lost and tied goats for months on paper, let alone endanger a state exposed to storms from all sides. Those that directly hit us and those that accidentally brush us, all equally break this rotten threshold on which we sit and wait for someone else to put out the fire. And we, as always, are busy with more important matters – counting whose ten decagrams of evil are heavier.

The media and so-called political thinkers are a special, almost tragicomic story. Blinded by the daily need to prove to their own egos that they still matter in this ideological chaos, the media stumble between ownership interests, budget patching, and a wide spectrum of intelligence networks that roam Bosnia and Herzegovina as if it were their own backyard.

Instead of charting paths of public opinion of state-building importance, they mostly chart paths to new grants and sponsors of objective and independent journalism that depends solely on donors. Political thinkers – although this is a pathetically pretentious term for the local salon-clique, street-smart intelligence – have long been sitting under the backsides of the same infantile group we call politicians. However, the chairs they sit on are well-padded with lucrative fees and jobs for their close and distant families, making it difficult to generate any serious thought from that position.

While epic debates are still raging here about who said what to whom on social media and how far whose son has progressed in a public company, two things have happened almost unnoticed, but they will hit us harder than our local wise men can concoct a new conspiracy theory.

Gathering of European People's Party members in Sarajevo

In Sarajevo, like a thief before dawn, a delegation of European People's Party members passed through – the same group as Ursula von der Leyen – and our domestic "state-builders" (SDA, HDZ, HDZ 1990, PDP) rushed to the meeting like schoolchildren for a sandwich, while SDS, the eternal candidate for something, sat aside, just like BiH on its European path.

In parallel, in Belgrade, a group from the "Serbian world" gathered, strategists and cartographers of new maps for this backwater, with a speech title that doesn't even try to be discreet: Bosnia and Herzegovina at a Dead End – 2025. The Year of Resolution. All, of course, wrapped in a thick fog of secrecy, because why spoil people's day with the information that someone is already writing the script for their future.

When you connect the names of Nenad Kecmanović, Tanasković, Ćeranić, and other political prophets on one side, and the local power brokers on the other, in that puzzle, it becomes clear that the soup is being prepared, and we, as always, are the last to sit at the table.

The timing of events is crucial. But it is also devastating – almost ominous – that Bosnian, or rather Bosniak, political thought not only lacks clear and planned actions but is completely blind to events that have been clearly indicating a path to deep crisis and potential state collapse for days, if not years.

It's as if decades of lessons from political defeats, which followed earlier Belgrade meetings and agreements of pan-Serbian wise men, have been erased from collective consciousness. Instead of reacting seriously to them and finding strategies to protect the state and its vital interests, we are again sinking into the same political mud, unable to escape the vicious cycle of inertia and superficiality.

If we connect the two mentioned events – the invisible but crucial visit of the European People's Party members to Sarajevo and the parallel Belgrade forum – it is difficult to speak of any positive resolution to the internal crisis. At the same table, on one side, will be parties from Sarajevo and Mostar, with the support of the Banja Luka opposition, while on the other side will sit Dodik, with an already well-known and precise strategy – demand everything, take what you've planned... This division is not just a political problem – it is a precursor to a final resolution that could be fatal for the state.

The question is whether political, legal, or other academic spirits will finally appear in Sarajevo – people who are not only ready to react to this challenge but also to formulate clear, long-term strategies and plans for a state that, paradoxically, today depends on everyone except those who consider it their homeland. Without such vigilance and readiness for action, we may face a far greater catastrophe – the disintegration of the state and the loss of sovereignty.

Every new postponement or ignorance of reality will not only prolong the agony but also increase the price that our state, its citizens, and future generations will have to pay. The time for vigilance, responsibility, and true state-building is not over – on the contrary, it is now or never.

Either we will finally face reality and embark on the path of protecting our country and its future, or we will accept the fate of observers of our own downfall.

While decisions about Bosnia are made behind closed doors, we are the ones who have chosen to be voiceless and invisible. This is not just an oversight – it is a suicidal march on our own state. If we do not show strength now, soon there will be neither Bosnia nor us to lament about it.

Ignorantia voluntaria! It is more dangerous to choose not to know, despite being aware of all the forces attacking.