How to Exit 1994 and Survive 2025 - Survival or Disappearance, Just in a Worse Way?

By: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

February 2024, but somehow the socio-political situation in the liberated areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina is still like that of 1994, when a good part of the war was behind us, and yet the days ahead were still crucial. Everyone was waiting for something, preparing, and hoping for something, but still uncertain if that something would come.

And today we are waiting, hoping, and wishing for the European Union and NATO, but instead of doing so reasonably to achieve a better future for Bosnia and Herzegovina, everything ultimately comes down to an attempt to defend the state from almost the same enemies as in that year of 1994.

It's not shooting, that's the only happy truth of our present day, but we as individuals are breaking under the pressure of the same war conditions we have been living for three decades after the somehow decisive year of 1994. On the paths to the EU and NATO, we have carelessly subordinated everything we had, and we are fully aware that both paths are distant and uncertain. And in that uncertainty, our chances of disappearing are enormous, perhaps even greater than those of becoming members of these two unions.

Not because it is primarily the goal of those to whom we travel with open arms, but because we forget the fact that 1994 never truly ended here. True, there are no more armed conflicts on Igman, nor is the Bosnian Krajina under attack from AP West Bosnia, there are no more Chetnik shells and Ustasha butchers. Incorrect, they are not there in the form they are registered in war crimes court files, but they are here. They are among us, but they are not commanding us to go into the killing line, they are not burning children, they are not shelling marketplaces.

Nevertheless, they command us. That is the most devastating fact! Both one and the other and the third are in command positions and clearly tell us: "we decide the path on which and whether Bosnia and Herzegovina will go to the EU and NATO!".

And they do it alternately, not even trying to move an inch away from those war criminal commands. Milorad Dodik and his SNSD today are that SDS from 1994, only without the paramilitary and JNA formations that were placed under the command of Ratko Mladić. Because, while sending doctors from UKC RS to treat the Chetnik and convicted war criminal Mladić, they decide which path Bosnia and Herzegovina will take to the European Union.

And that path, no joke, is led by Dragan Čović, who the other day calmly listened to the Hague recordings of Valentin Ćorić, happy that his mistreatment of Heliodrom prisoners and forcing them into slavery did not end up in a Hague indictment. Čović is happy when he meets with Dario Kordić, the one who put a three-month-old baby in an oven in Ahmići. And after reminiscing, Čović appears with European manners to tell us where and how we will go to Brussels.

Dodik and Čović are our guides, and their past, which they have never renounced, clearly tells Bosniaks, and indeed Bosnians and Herzegovinians, where they will end up on that path from 1994. And the whole world knows where Bosniaks ended up in 1995. And who forced them onto that path.

The overall tragedy of Bosniaks today, in the guise of 2024, is that they are in no way able to open their eyes and see that neither Dodik nor Čović could force them into 1995 if it weren't for those who, for an autonomous piece of power, saw new, European politicians in these two.

Because, however much this is 1994, Fikret Abdić has long been out of serious trajectories, but the autonomous province is very much alive. No, it's not in Velika Kladuša. Because, it's no longer AP West Bosnia, now it's more like AP Kasaba Sarajevo.

And in that province rule those who may not be similar to Abdić, but they are blinded by the same motive as him, so they have seen in the followers of war policies that tried to extinguish Bosnia and Herzegovina, policies that want to save Bosnia in the bosom of the European Union.

And to be clear, those blinded by power are not only from this tricolor bloc, they are the most numerous, but unfortunately, they are also in many other blocs, although they still hide well. And they are not few.

And as long as there are politicians among Bosniaks, Bosnians and Herzegovinians with Abdić's syndrome, the exit from 2024 will be no better than that of 1994.

Those with Fikret Abdić's syndrome will never be able to be guided by reason in the interests of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens, and that only adds strength to the followers of policies that almost killed Bosnia and Bosniaks in it in the nineties.

If Bosniaks, Bosnians and Herzegovinians want the exit from 2024 to be happier and better than that of '94, it is clear that they must primarily change the order of moves within their own ranks.

That order should in no case be based on the current principles of selecting cadres, and then politics. Because, the projection of long-term policies and goals must be the primary goal of all pro-Bosnian and Bosniak structures, as a prerequisite for surviving 2025. And only then the selection of cadres.

Otherwise, '25 will be '95, meaning disappearance, only this time perhaps in a worse way.