Galić's Swiss Cheese Border

By: A. Vrabac

Zoran Galić has been the head of the BiH Border Police since 2014. His term was renewed in 2018. Since then, the BiH Border Police has been filling the media columns with numerous scandals within that police agency, which is the first in protecting the state border. The migrant crisis has been ongoing for the third year, and the head of this agency says "the border is as porous as Swiss cheese." After this statement, Galić should have either resigned or a procedure for his dismissal should have been initiated.

Galić also claims that the Border Police of BiH has not been staffed for years and that there are obstructions to reduce the number of management positions in order to get more field officers. He claims that politics has interfered in everything, and Galić himself was elected with the support of the HDZ, meaning he was proposed by that party. How important Galić is to the HDZ is shown by the fact that he applied for the director of the Federal Police Administration and is ranked first after the procedure was completed. The entire process has been halted because the FBiH Government has not yet been formed. The appointment of the head of the FUP would directly affect the election of the Minister of Internal Affairs, as they cannot be from the same constituent people.

If Galić had dealt with the migrant crisis in a timely manner, which he is obliged to do by law by "defining an operational strategy for successful border management," there would be far fewer migrants in BiH today, most of whom would remain in Serbia.

As early as March 2018, border police officers warned of an increased influx of migrants coming in groups with clear instructions on where to move in the eastern part of BiH. For months, mostly the same people were rotated at the border, and in some detachments, there were no changes for over a year. Only after the appeals of border police officers were published did replacements occur.

Incidents that occurred at the border with Croatia (Velika Kladuša, Bihać) involving migrants and Croatian border police entering BiH territory were almost regularly covered up until the media exposed them. The mayor of Bihać, Šuhret Fazlić, repeatedly stated that he had encountered armed Croatian border guards deep within BiH territory, but there were no official reactions. There were also no reactions to accusations that the Border Police was more concerned with protecting the Croatian and Serbian borders than the Bosnian-Herzegovinian one.

The work of the Border Police and Galić is also the subject of investigative bodies, and the Prosecutor's Office of BiH has several cases concerning the disappearance of ammunition and other equipment from the BiH Border Police warehouses, compromised processes within this police agency, the admission of cadets, promotions...

It is also known that a large number of police officers are leaving the BiH Border Police, so the question remains whether there will be anyone left to defend the BiH border, or whether those who "bump into each other in the corridors," as Galić described the situation in the BiH Border Police building, will finally start doing their jobs.

Incidentally, Herzegovinian portals have been warning for years about the validity of Galić's diploma, which he obtained expressively in 2006, having enrolled in university in 2005. This was at the Faculty of Service Business in Sremska Kamenica (FABUS), and he later obtained his master's and doctorate degrees in Banja Luka. The validity of his diploma has never been examined to this day.

It is an open secret that relations within the BiH Border Police have long been below any professional level, so what can we expect from the leadership of this agency, which blames the state, political structures, obstructions in Sarajevo, and Bosniak staff for its failures. Even after letters sent for years to the former BiH Minister of Security Dragan Mektić, and then to Fahrudin Radončić, about the problems within the Border Police, nothing was done. It is difficult to expect that Minister Selmo Cikotić could solve all these problems, especially since the migrant crisis is "sexy" or "fancy" to him, and migrants are tourists who spend and buy.