Phalangization of the patriotic political pool – the most severe side effect of the Trojka project

By: Rasim Belko

The moment the frontal struggle for the bare survival of Bosnia and Herzegovina ceased and the struggle for its construction began, pro-Bosnian patriotism lost its strength. The veil that someone deliberately pulled over, paved the way for a phenomenon that would become fatal – pro-Bosnian phalangism.

This transition is difficult to chart with surgical chronological precision, but the framework is clear – from Dayton to the early 2000s. Until then, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian political fabric, though fragile, was unified. After that, it disintegrated into small phalanxes that did not need external enemies; they were sufficient to destroy everything that had been defended.

Under the guise of pluralism, in the transitional quagmire, every village and every tribe wanted its own phalanx and its own budget cake. True fighters for the state were pushed to the sidelines, and political pharaohs stepped onto the stage. Their rotation and reproduction lasted for two decades, all under a patriotic decor. There was less and less state, and more and more leaders, with salaries, cars, prostitutes, and endless privileges they received for their supposed fight for the state, while the people survived wartime and post-war misery.

However, the worst escalation occurs with the Trojka project. Michael Murphy and Christian Schmidt succeeded where the open enemies of the state failed. They hermetically sealed the remaining state-building fabric and neutralized pro-Bosnian political thought. Trojka gave the final seal to the phalangization of patriotic politics – not through strength, but through indifference, irresponsibility, and readiness to sacrifice the state for petty ambitions.

Today, we have a paradox where, as the separatist projects of SNSD and HDZ strengthen, the pro-Bosnian political pool expends energy on overthrowing cantonal governments and buying defectors. USK, ZDK, TK – attempts to overthrow are lining up, because Trojka, incapable of dealing with Dodik and Čović, tries to artificially create crises to show that it “controls the situation”.

In this futile game, NiP and Naša stranka are losing the most, because the price of political naivety in 2026 will be too high. But SDP, the old master of survival, uses its partners as a human shield. They jump, they get worn out, while SDP manages to maintain one of the most deceitful political halos – that of a civic party of brotherhood and unity, when in reality it is just a collection center for Yugoslav-nostalgic phalanxes.

And here we come to the core. The absolute biggest culprit for the disintegration of pro-Bosnian political thought, as the bearer of a multi-ethnic civic order, is precisely SDP.

It is a party with tradition, with infrastructure, with a base – and precisely because of that, it must not be absolved. It is the bearer of the Trojka project, it is the producer of phalangism in the patriotic pool.

The naivety of NiP and Naša stranka can be understood, of course not forgiven. The petty local calculations of DF and Stranka za BiH, however abnormal they may be, are still expected in such a society.

Just as expected, though brazen, is SDA’s attempt to absolve SDP of guilt for everything that is happening. If what we increasingly hear as an announcement happens, political cooperation between SDA and SDP after the 2026 elections, the patriotic political pool will be emptied and stripped of any idea for the defense of the state, and the phalanxes of red and green jerseys will unitedly ravage what is left to ravage.

Therefore, it is more than clear that finding a way out after the four-year mandate of Trojka will be much more difficult than in 2022. There are more and more phalanxes, under all flags, and their appetites have no limits. If the minimum pro-Bosnian political factor cannot be reassembled, Bosnia and Herzegovina will enter the most difficult period since the end of the war.

Those who still have strength and responsibility must understand that the task is not just to overthrow Trojka. The task is to return the state from the clutches of phalangism. And this is only possible if all factors of the patriotic political fabric, regardless of which of the parties mentioned in the text they belong to, snap out of it and stop hesitating to react. Only their stepping forward to confront the leaders of the phalanxes and politically clashing with them can open the space for the idea of defending, strengthening, and developing the state to defeat the idea of the tycoonization of what we call Bosnian politics.

And of course, there is serious potential for that in both SDA and SDP, but surely we have matured enough to finally learn from the mistakes we made before, thinking that watermelon coalitions would pull us out of trouble.

The state almost burned down once because of that watermelon; due to the events that will follow in the area of attempts to restructure Bosnia and Herzegovina, its internal organization, and Euro-Atlantic integration, it is necessary for us to have a political fabric that will keep the green and red phalanxes at a distance.

If they unite, may God help us.