Caricatures and captured intellectuals: Breaking free from the shackles of 'what will the world say' is a prerequisite for Bosnia's survival!

By Rasim Belko

For twenty-five years, persistently and ever more quietly, we have been asking the same question: why is the policy that calls itself pro-Bosnian, Bosniak, or patriotic – lukewarm, feeble, lifeless, cowardly? Why does it constantly avoid risk, avoid clearly defined positions, avoid responsibility? And yes – the largest part of the responsibility lies with those who lead that policy. Party leaders, their subordinates, and the yes-men they push into the system's institutions – not based on ability, but on suitability.

But if we stop there, we won't understand the whole picture. Because the leaders didn't fall from Mars. They are a product of the system. And that system has been systematically producing mediocrity, passivity, and obedience for decades – both from party ranks and from university halls. Our higher education, with rare exceptions, has been systematically accumulating academic sludge for 25 years: people without courage, without vision, without the will to engage in any serious analysis of society and political thought. Instead of being drivers, creators of ideas, development strategists – our professors and academics are mere commentators of others' narratives. And that's if they even decide to say anything.

That is why today we are led by people who are neither leaders nor politicians – but administrators of their own positions. They did not emerge from the people to at least compensate for their lack of knowledge with charisma, nor were they intellectually shaped to understand the complexity of the moment. Their reflex is subservient, their logic is bureaucratic, and their ambition is exclusively personal. They do not take risks because they were not raised for it – neither in the party, nor in the educational system, nor in a society that values silence more than thought.

And where are the patriotic intellectuals? Don't they exist? They do – but they are either bought by ambition or blackmailed by comfort. They are trapped in their own calculations, in fear of losing a scholarship, a position, a grant, their peace. They hide in the shadow of semi-literate leaders, they are silent when they should speak, they write when they should shout. Their loudest analyses concern the war in Gaza, the elections in the US, or Chinese demographics – while Bosnia burns, and the political thought that could save it is nowhere to be found.

Any attempt to even start a conversation about a new patriotic political paradigm is nipped in the bud. Every idea, every concept, every bold thought is immediately met with the question: “What will the West say? How will the East perceive it? Will the Serbs be offended? Where do the Croats fit in?” In short – what will others say, not what will we say. And that is the essence of our defeat.

In that same period – SANU made at least two key strategic decisions that continue to shape Serbian policy in the Balkans today. In Belgrade, congresses are organized, advisors are gathered, goals are mapped out. It's similar in Zagreb, somewhat quieter, but equally decisive. And in Sarajevo? In Sarajevo, intellectuals are protecting the OHR's back more than they are protecting the vision of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Instead of being a corrective factor, they have become part of the decoration of an international protectorate comedy.

If we already know that we do not have charismatic, politically literate, and sovereign leaders – why don't our intellectuals try to be that change? Neither the OHR, nor Schmidt, nor ambassadors, nor Schmidt's spokespersons in domestic ranks will save us. Breaking free from the shackles of the mentality of “what will the world say” is the first and necessary condition for the survival of pro-state policy and the citizens it represents. Without it, BiH is increasingly becoming prey, and less and less an idea.

Time is not an ally. The backlog is already huge. And the pro-state, patriotic element is getting lost in the interspace – between the fear of shaking the status quo and the inability to define what it actually wants.

Therefore, the most urgent question today is: who will finally take responsibility to define a new, brave, self-aware patriotic thought? Who will break with petty bourgeois intellectualism that waits for history to resolve itself? And who will finally dare to say what everyone knows, but no one says: this cannot go on like this anymore.