'Normalization' as a Hidden and Well-Packaged Weapon of BiH's Destruction

• The undermining, abandonment, or betrayal of state institutions through the model of 'agreement of the peoples' has been normalized.

• 'Normalization' is an eminently imposed process by which this society has been captured and subjugated, by which its development has been halted and the vision and mental image of a country that wants to live in accordance with Western standards has been made impossible.

By: Fuad Đidić

We are entering the final phase. This is the phase of normalization. All cards are now on the table. There is nothing left to hide. The conflict is over. The 'reconciliation of the peoples' has ended. The end of all diplomatic games has been announced.

First, Dodik announced the solution to the Serbian question through the 'Greater Serbia' project. Then, Čović confirmed the project for the solution of the 'Croatian question' through the fragmentation of the country and the formation of a 'third entity'. The Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Grlić Radman, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Dayton, stated that 'two schools under one roof' is now a model for the 'entire country'.

These statements have put an end to any hiding. Nothing is in the dark anymore. All masks have fallen. The entire system will function on the principle of apartheid, division, differences leading to final separation. This is what the so-called 'guarantors of the Dayton Agreement' say. In such a system, everyone has the opportunity to choose their representatives. A new model has been reached in the spirit of the conventional word 'normalization'.

The destruction of state institutions is happening under the guise of this 'normalization'. Attacks on the state are being normalized, diluted, as right-wing, radical political forces use state institutions to impose norms, rules, laws, to discipline, isolate, and punish. The undermining, abandonment, or betrayal of state institutions through the model of 'agreement of the peoples' has been normalized.

There is no sufficiently intelligent and strong opposition in the country to energetically oppose these processes. Bosnian politics is confused and, paradoxically, convinced that by 'normalizing' the situation, this country is being defended, and not destroyed.

'Normalization' is the consequence of decades of weakening of Bosnian society. This weakening first occurred in politics and ends in the social sphere and distorted individual beliefs and values. We have been brought to a state of general social apathy and political anesthesia.

Any hope for the possibility of change in the country exists only as a faint impulse and as exhausted enthusiasm. Every Bosnian idea is being exposed. Every vision for the renewal of the ideals of a normal, civic country is being taken away. All actors and processes of the Bosnian cause are marginalized, and key proponents of these ideas, like Slaven Kovačević, are receiving death threats.

Radical right-wing politics feels safe, superior, and comfortable in the public space of Bosnia and Herzegovina; it encourages, mobilizes, and engages. The media and 'great' journalists are in its hands. It has its public terminology, such as 'coexistence' or 'joint institutions'. It is the 'oath of the day'. Its most important task is to stifle every form of Bosnian-Herzegovinian patriotism.

On an individual level, an emotional contempt has been created for every symbol of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the moment when Čović and Dodik announce the end of the 'diplomatic game', a whole 'army' of destroyers of Bosnian symbols is active on the ground. They no longer need to be motivated 'from above'; they are sufficiently well-trained to react 'on their own' when they encounter symbols of the state of BiH or the Bosnian discourse.

Monsters have become super-men. Mental garbage has become an ideal of values. A new generation of political subjects lives 'abnormally' as 'normal'. The best word to describe these propagators of abnormal contempt for the state of BiH is - 'national onanists'. They have their rituals, their truths, and they most often reach their climax in stadiums with fire and celebration or in the streets, with columns of cars in depopulated returnee towns during their religious or national holidays.

Well-known political centers of power, the very ones that have already revealed their political cards, have actually imposed this logic of the 'normal' through the phrase 'best friends'. They, the 'friends', from both the East and the West, have created these well-controlled groups or individuals, freed from responsibility, who are not subject to any punishment or sanctions, so that they can be nominated as bearers and examples of 'normalization'.

These incorrigible 'normalists' and 'onanists' overwhelmingly propagate mechanisms of 'stability', convincing us that it is completely normal for some to live as 'masters' and others as 'servants'.

It has become completely commonplace, a standard, a convention, that the 'majority nation' should take care of the 'minority nation', that it should cede the same, if not a larger, share in power, that it should constantly prove its democracy, its loyalty to the so-called European path, that it should retreat, yield, respond to blackmail with new concessions, and so on.

'Normalization' is an eminently imposed process by which this society has been captured and subjugated, by which its development has been halted and its vision and mental image of a country in which it wants to live in accordance with Western standards has been made impossible. Normalization is this predominant process that thrives on brutal 'facts', on how everything in Bosnian politics should be predictable and controlled in advance under the guise of stability and security.

Through the lens of 'normalists', leaders who advocate for and defend the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina are described as 'unitarists' or 'Greater Bosniak fundamentalists'.

Croatian 'normalists' find their place between Bosnian 'unitarists' and Serbian 'secessionists'. Or on the other hand, 'normalists', most often like Vučić or Dodik, generously call for an 'agreement of the peoples' outside and beyond the institutions of BiH.

Both strategies of the 'normalists', equally from Zagreb and Belgrade, consist of isolating the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and denouncing its advocates and defenders to the international community, portraying them as a 'deviant' political group.

Under the guise of such 'normalization', the right to a 'grand vision', to constitutional reforms, to opening a second and different projection of the country, to alignment with the currents of Western civilization is being challenged.

Only a small number of our intellectuals or a small number of organizations like Krug 99, which are the moral conscience of this society, refuse to look at the future of this country through the prism of 'normalization'.

'Normalization' is the final phase of overcoming Bosnia and Herzegovina, the institutionalization of abnormal political intelligence.

This model of 'normalization', which is actually destroying Bosnia and Herzegovina, reaches the Euro-Atlantic political discourse and exerts a strong and, one might say, decisive influence on it.

When Christian Schmidt uses the term 'normalization of relations', he thereby convinces the international community that everything can be resolved within the standard paradigm of 'agreement of the peoples', and that therefore no additional external intervention is needed.

Behind the persistent suggestions of leaders like NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte or Kaja Kallas about the necessity of an 'agreement of three sides' or an 'agreement of three peoples' lies also the borrowed logic of 'normalization' and the stubborn belief that, 30 years later, we are still a post-conflict, rather than pre-conflict, society with a pronounced political-security crisis.

The decisive question for Bosnia and Herzegovina lies in encouraging NATO and the EU to critically evaluate 'normalization' as a hidden and well-packaged weapon of BiH's destruction.

With the genuine recognition of the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the political sovereignty of the currently predominant concept of 'normalization' ceases to be valid.