Suljagić: While BiH sent weapons to fight ISIL, Croatian weapons found their way to terrorists

SARAJevo, (Patria) - Former Deputy Minister of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina Emir Suljagić, now political advisor to the Civic Alliance, explains that during his tenure at the ministry, Bosnia and Herzegovina sent significant quantities of weapons to Iraq to fight the ISIL group (self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), making the statement by the President of HDZ BiH Dragan Čović, who said that a civic Bosnia and Herzegovina would mean the creation of an Islamic state, nonsensical in this context.

“I respect those who want a civic state. However, today in BiH, saying civic state means classic unitarism, in some form, a theoretical form, it basically means an Islamic state,” Čović told reporters during a visit to Zagreb, alluding to Bosniaks, the most numerous nation in the country.

Suljagić, in a comment for the Patria news agency, says that after Čović's statement, he sees no way to continue negotiations with the HDZ president regarding further European processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Suljagić assesses that there are two processes at play in BiH; one is the process in which Čović occupies public space with dangerous statements about an Islamic state, and the other, the essential one, is that he is simultaneously trying to abolish democracy in the country.

“Čović and HDZ are exerting brutal pressure on the Constitutional Court in the case of the appeal filed by Borjana Krišto with the ultimate goal of suspending the democratic order in the country, and for Milorad Dodik and him to govern Bosnia and Herzegovina through the Constitutional Court, not a democratically elected parliament,” says Suljagić. He adds that BiH sent weapons and ammunition to fight ISIL as a member of the global network against that organization, while weapons from Croatia's military surplus simultaneously found their way to terrorist formations in Iraq and Syria.