'Parade Horses' and a Quick Response into Thin Air!

By: Rasim BELKO

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Who is sexy to whom and why is a matter of privacy and sympathy. For one man, migrants are sexy tourists. In the spirit of European recommendations and rights, we will neither dispute nor object to that.

There would be no problem with seeing migrants as a sexy group of tourists if that's not how the state's security minister, responsible for resolving this migrant crisis, sees them.

No one cares how Selmo Cikotić feels about migrants; he is paid to work and has sworn to protect the state, and that's what he's paid for.

The growing anger of the population of Bosanska Krajina, but also other areas, speaks volumes about how he works. However, international organizations financed in a dubious way, as well as NATO and EU military elements in our country, participate in the inaction and abandonment of BiH citizens to deal with migrants.

These days, the "Quick Response" operation is underway, whose main goal is to respond quickly to all challenges in order to maintain a stable security situation.

And the security situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been far from stable for three years. If you ask the citizens of Sarajevo, Zenica, Tuzla, and most of all Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin, you will know that a significant portion of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not feel safe.

In a continuous state of fear, EUFOR organizes exercises in which it fights against glass bottles and fake demonstrators in Višegrad, and at Sarajevo Airport, it recovers a hijacked and mined aircraft.

It is clear to everyone in this country that aliens, Martians hijacking a plane at Sarajevo Airport are more likely than terrorists to do so. And every year we have exercises to rescue a plane from fake terrorists.

This year, we had another, much bigger lie, called the State Crisis Team. The conceived organization of key people for the aforementioned situation illustrates how incapable the system is here. In a situation where security challenges follow one another, the organizers of "Quick Response" must invent a State Crisis Team.

What if a real security threat occurs at the airport or elsewhere? Will we wait for the team conceived yesterday to gather and react, or will we have a team ready?

We have already had such a situation. Mevlid Jašarević pulled out an automatic rifle in the middle of Sarajevo and opened fire on the US Embassy. Whether he was a terrorist or just a fool, Jašarević paralyzed the system of Bosnia and Herzegovina in seconds, caused general chaos, injured police officers...

No one knew who was where and who was making decisions. Can we expect a similar situation not to happen at the airport in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, in a shopping center in Bihać...

We can, and we have more and more reasons to fear. Because unknown persons with unknown motives are arriving in this country in columns. They set buildings on fire, break into houses, carry weapons, rape, threaten.

Simply put, these people sow fear in every environment where more than three migrants gather.

Why, then, did the State Crisis Staff, as they called it, and EUFOR not organize exercises against a completely real, even likely, security threat called migrants?

They had plenty of opportunities. The eastern border of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not porous, but open for the arrival of anonymous people from the east, with unknown intentions. Why was "Quick Response 2020" not directed at protecting the eastern border of this country.

At the same time, we would have both an exercise and good preparation, considering that historically, most troubles come from the east. On the other hand, migrants in Krajina are causing big problems for the population, the police of USK are exhausted, so EUFOR teams, British special forces, and domestic forces could have gone to the BiH border crossing towards Europe. There is a lot of work there, and opportunities to practice.

Thus, when looking at the course of the exercise so far, it appears that the biggest security threats to Bosnia and Herzegovina are demonstrators and terrorists.

And what are the security and defense ministers Selmo Cikotić and Sifet Podžić doing in all of this? The aforementioned duo should know every weak point of the security system. Instead of influencing and securing some visible benefit from the "Quick Response" exercise, these two and the rest of the defense and security system are behaving like "parade horses" controlled by foreign structures.

There is no more time or patience; the response to the migrant crisis was too clumsy and slow, and it is clearly not a sufficient challenge for "Quick Response". Therefore, the question is what will happen when the army from the Middle East becomes a division and moves towards state institutions. What will happen when Milorad Dodik's Gendarmerie opens fire on migrants, and the prepared Krajina residents send them towards Sarajevo.

Will we be ready to respond quickly then?