States

Bosnia-Herzegovina

68 articles

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5 August 2015
In 2012, jihadists acquired land in Bosnia-Herzegovina, at Gornja Maoča, Ošve and Dubnica, to set up training camps under the command of Nusret Imamović.
Originally affiliated with al-Qaïda, Nusret Imamović has become the number three of its Syrian branch, the al-Nusra Front. Today he has joined the Islamic Emirate (Daesh), and the Bosnian jihadist communities have followed in his footsteps.
The Bosnian jihadists are divided into two groups :
On the one hand, the ex-fighters of Oussama Ben (...)

Ratko Mladić and the Pandora’s Box of the Bosnian War

by Slobodan Despot

6 June 2011
General Ratko Mladic’s arrest and his extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia satisfied the prerequisites for Serbia’s membership in the European Union. As expected, the western media have tagged the defendant as the "Butcher of Bosnia" and piled on as many charges against him as possible, thereby masking NATO’s role in Yugoslavia. But there can be no reconciliation without truth, which, as Slobodan Despot observes, is far more complex than the Manichean account given.

Srebrenica — Neither Massacre, Nor Genocide

by Alexander Dorin

2 March 2010
Former leader Radovan Karadzic is on trial at The Hague facing eleven criminal charges, including the alleged massacre of up to 8,000 Bosniak men and youths in Srebrenica. Swiss researcher Alexander Dorin denounces the media’s distorted account of those events which prevails to this day. The facts were allegedly fixed around Washington’s policy of having to justify NATO’s military intervention in the conflict, marking the Organization’s first post-Cold War deployment and the first intervention outside its original purview.

The Yugoslav Caldron

Jürgen Elsässer: “The CIA recruited and trained the jihadists”

by Silvia Cattori

14 August 2006
In his latest book, “How the Jihad Came to Europe”, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing himself on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch, and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.

European Union declaration on the adoption of the constitutional law in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Brussels (Belgium) | 24 April 2006
In light of the upcoming vote of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the constitutional amendments proposed by the BiH Council of Ministers and endorsed by the BiH Presidency, the European Union welcomes the recent adoption of this important reform package by the Constitutional and Legal Committee of the BiH House of Representatives.
The EU reconfirms its support for the constitutional reform process in BiH which is a key element in the establishment of a modern, (...)

Javier Solana’s interview with the Bosniak newspaper Dnevni Avaz

7 December 2005
From a security point of view, how do you see situation in Bosnia?
BiH has achieved a historic milestone: 10 years after the end of the war, BiH has transformed itself; and it will continue thanks to the Stabilisation and Association process. This is a long-awaited transition. The focus is now on how to secure prosperity, development and good governance.
Among the new key challenges that BiH faces now, there is the strengthening of the state level security institutions such as SIPA and (...)

“10 years after Dayton II: Lessons for fixing failed states”

by Paddy Ashdown

2 December 2005
How to prevent declining States from being refuges for terrorists? How to turn them into functional democracies? How to effectively intervene in those countries? A decade of work in Bosnia has the answers to these questions.
Ten years ago, the situation in Bosnia could have turned it into a black hole, into a base for international terrorism and organized crime. But today, it’s a stable democracy with a flourishing economy willing to join the European Union and NATO’s Partnership for Peace (...)

“Ten years after Dayton, Bosnia is not a democracy”

by Srdjan Dizdarevic

2 December 2005
Nationalist parties of all tendencies (Muslim SDA, Croatian HDZ and Serbian SDS) do their best to block any evolution for they fear the loss of power. The religious authorities usually support them. The authoritarian tradition of the State is still strong in Bosnia and those who favour change, the non nationalist parties and the still emergent civil society, have a hard time trying to make themselves heard.
Nationalism and corruption are tightly linked here. According to a Bosnian (...)

“In Bosnia, Europe is a cohesive factor to unite the three peoples”

by Wolfgang Petritsch

2 December 2005
With the imminent beginning of discussions about the accession to Europe, the EU has an instrument to progressively replace the powers of the High Representative. The numerous reforms and adjustments which are necessary to enter Europe will very soon blow up Dayton’s incomplete framework. That is a trump card we should exploit since experience tells us that the three Bosnian populations have at least a common vision: the accession to Europe.
The distribution of roles based on ethnic (...)

“The Balkans, a gap to be filled”

by Miodrag Lekic

2 December 2005
While the historians’ answer is still awaited as to whether Yugoslavia died of natural causes, whether it was killed, whether it committed suicide or whether others made it “commit suicide”, the anniversary of its long disintegration and agony will be celebrated in 2005.
In the geopolitics of anniversaries, we commemorate this year the beginning of two “protectorates”: Bosnia-Herzegovina, which dates back 10 years ago and the 6 years of the protectorate of Kosovo. The Dayton Agreements put (...)

“Bosnia, 10 years after the Dayton Agreements”

by Mohamed Khalaf

2 December 2005
Ten years after the signing of the Dayton Agreements, Bosnia does not hide its anguish and fear over an uncertain future; a fear that increasingly rises with the multiple U.S. attempts to impose a new constitution that has nothing to do with these agreements, with the pretext of establishing a political cohesion appropriate to domestic changes and the new balance of forces existing in the country.
These agreements, no matter how limited they might be, have obviously impacted the history (...)

“The Iraqi Constitution, from Dayton to Baghdad”

by James Dobbins

2 December 2005
Ten years ago, U.S. diplomats brought together in Dayton representatives from the different religious communities of Yugoslavia. At that time, such representatives were called in to draft a constitution in order to find a solution to the “civil” war being waged in the country.
The enactors of the Dayton Agreements were able to put an end to the war in Bosnia, but failed to implement a plan to administrate the country. This would also justify the fact that Bosnia is still under the (...)

“The Bosnian War Was Brutal, but It Wasn’t a Holocaust”

by Diana Johnstone

2 December 2005
On November 17, the Guardian offered its apologies to Noam Chomsky and repaired the mistakes made concerning my work and that of Emma Brockes. However, despite the retractions, the impression persists that my work consists of denying the atrocities committed.
My book Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions, published in 2002, is a documented analysis about the historical and political context of the Yugoslavian disintegration wars. It insists on underestimated issues such as (...)

Yugoslavia: commemorations and a bad memory

by Voltaire Network

Paris (France) | 2 December 2005
On November 21, 1995, the Dayton Accords put an end to the violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and created a hybrid state entity, based on the division into communities, which validated the main claims of nationalist factions under international control. International media takes this opportunity to wonder about the lessons drawn from this agreement. Except for some rare exceptions, the tendency is to deny that the division of Yugoslavia gave birth to a speech about the “duty of interference” that is reflected today by the remodeling of the Middle East.

“Ten years after Dayton I: Bosnia still has a way to go”

by Carl Bildt

2 December 2005
Ten years ago we negotiated for three weeks in a base in Ohio and despite all the difficulties, an agreement on Bosnia was signed in Dayton. The important thing is not to know how we did it, but why such agreement was not signed before. In 1995, Washington believed an agreement was necessary and this is what made it possible. It’s true that the military action in the autumn had an influence, but the decisive element was the political compromise.
Today, we have no achievements if compared (...)

Adoption by UN Security Council of Resolution 1639 on Bosnia and Herzegovina

New York (USA) | 22 November 2005
The UN Security Council on November 21 unanimously adopted resolution 1639 extending the mandate of the European Union’s stabilization force (EUFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) for another year.
Notably, this Council decision coincided with the 10th anniversary of the initialing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in BiH. In the course of the implementation of the Agreement the consequences of the war have for the most part been overcome, the conditions provided for the return (...)