92 years since the birth of the first President of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović

On this day in 1925, the first president of the independent and sovereign Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović, was born, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria. By laying flowers and reciting the Fatiha at the Kovači cemetery, the 92nd anniversary of Izetbegović's birth is being marked. A forum on the topic „The Person and Work of the late Alija Izetbegović“ will be held in the amphitheatre of the Kovači Memorial Centre, starting at 12:45.

He was born in Bosanski Šamac, into a family of farmers who moved from Belgrade to Bosanski Šamac in 1868. The Izetbegović family came to Sarajevo in 1928, where Izetbegović completed high school. During his schooling, he joined the anti-communist organisation "Young Muslims", and during the Second World War he engaged in humanitarian work (helping refugee and displaced civilians, protecting and hiding persecuted Bosniaks, and repairing mosque ruins). Suspected of involvement in the founding of the Islamic magazine "Mudžahid", and due to his membership in the "Young Muslims" organisation, he was arrested in 1946 and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release from prison, he began studying agriculture, and from 1954 he continued his studies at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo, which he completed within two years.

After completing his studies, he worked as a legal advisor for several Yugoslav companies. In 1970, he wrote the Islamic Declaration - a general discussion on politics and Islam. This very study, written in the 1960s, would often be taken as evidence of Izetbegović's political inclination towards Islamic fundamentalism.

The Islamic Declaration was banned in Yugoslavia. Until 1980, when his second book, Islam Between East and West, was published, the Islamic Declaration was almost unknown in Yugoslavia. In his second book, he attempts to define the position of Bosnian Muslims, Islam, among other ideas, and the differences between European and Islamic culture. Because of the Islamic Declaration, in a political trial in 1983, he was charged, together with twelve Muslim intellectuals, with planning the creation of an Islamic state and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Although the book mentions neither Bosnia and Herzegovina nor Yugoslavia, the Declaration was one of the significant pieces of evidence in court. Following political changes in Yugoslavia, he was released after five years in 1988.

In 1990, Izetbegović, together with Fikret Abdić, Adil Zulfikarpašić and several other politicians, founded the Party of Democratic Action (SDA). Due to the then-proposed law banning political parties with a national prefix, the SDA did not have a nationally defined name, unlike the other two newly founded parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS).

In the 1990 elections for the Assembly of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina and the elections for a member of the seven-member Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Party of Democratic Action won 35.85% and thus the largest number of votes. Fikret Abdić won first place in the presidential elections, but after internal discussions within the party, Abdić ceded the position of President of the Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina to Izetbegović. Following the secession and declaration of independence of Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia in 1991, Izetbegović saw Bosnia and Herzegovina's place in the remainder of Yugoslavia, in a so-called healthy federation, which would, through political reorganisation, succeed the former state. Until the decisions of several European Union governments on 15 January 1992 to politically recognise Slovenia and Croatia, Izetbegović tried to avoid criticising the Greater Serbian policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Politically awkwardly ignoring the conflict and destruction of the village of Ravna near Trebinje, with the statement "...that this is not our war...", the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina tried to avoid open conflicts with the JNA and Serbian politicians from the then Presidency of Yugoslavia. With the war in Slovenia and Croatia, and the strengthening of military activities of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a decision was made to hold a referendum on the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the referendum held on 29 February and 1 March 1992, about 90% of Croats and Bosniaks in municipalities where the SDA or HDZ had won the elections voted for independence, while in municipalities where the Serbian Democratic Party or the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) had won after the 1990 elections, the referendum was boycotted.

He found his work in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina increasingly difficult to bear; he lacked freshness and concentration. Before the elections in September 1998, he seriously considered not running. In May of that year, he wrote a letter addressed to „my friends“ and sent it to about thirty addresses. He expressed a desire to step down. However, party colleagues considered the pre-election period unsuitable for this act. He decided to step down on 2 June 2000. He called his good acquaintance Senad Hadžifejzović, editor of RTVBiH, and asked him for a time slot to announce important news. It was Tuesday, 6 June 2000. Izetbegović appeared on the TVBiH News at 19:30 and read the following statement:

- Dear citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I wish to inform you of my decision to withdraw from the Presidency upon the expiry of my current term as Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which means on 12 October this year.(...) There are several reasons for my withdrawal, the main ones being my age (I turn 75 in August) and my health. The job of a member of the Presidency under these conditions requires physical and nervous stamina which I do not have. I thank all those who have supported me over the past ten difficult years of our history. I wish for the dream of Bosnian patriots of a whole, democratic and prosperous Bosnia and Herzegovina to come true."

Alija Izetbegović died on 19 October 2003. That day, and the following one, it was as if the sky had poured down on the Bosnian capital. Long columns of people, Bosnians and Herzegovinians, as well as numerous delegations from around the world, wished to pay their last respects. Alija Izetbegović was buried at the Kovači Martyrs' Cemetery in Sarajevo. 

The „Alija Izetbegović“ Museum, opened exactly four years after his death on 19 October 2007, preserves a lasting memory of Izetbegović's character and work.