Selim Ibraimi- NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Sekerinska met with officials from the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She participated in a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC).
During the meetings in Sarajevo, Sekerinska stressed NATO’s commitment to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the importance of lasting peace and security in the country and of stability in the entire Western Balkans for security in the Euro-Atlantic area. She said she remains satisfied with the exchange of views and the continuation of a strong high-level dialogue between NATO and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This is not the first nor the last visit of senior NATO or EU officials to Sarajevo and the Republika Srpska. What is missing from all the meetings is real assurance or guarantees that Bosnia and Herzegovina will remain the same in the years to come. Why this dilemma?
It may seem very easy to foreigners, but very difficult if, in this time of global uncertainty and declining interest, Bosnia and Herzegovina does not become part of the upcoming Balkan redefinitions.
Given all the events in Republika Srpska, it is clear that the state lacks unity in how to proceed. Bosnia and Herzegovina now needs a strong authority to combat the policies of Republika Srpska and other groups, which are trying to undermine the Dayton Agreement (1995).
For years, sanctions from the international community had limited effects. The former leader of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, although outside the government, was recently removed from the US sanctions list.
He is still on the EU blacklist, but when international partners do not work together, the situation remains complicated, leaving room for individuals like Dodik to operate from abroad. Therefore, foreign officials should address precisely these concerns. It is not only Dodik here; Serbia and Russia are also in the game to damage the Bosnian Federation. In addition to the internal activities of the collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia has a leading role in this regard. Since 1991 and onwards, Belgrade has underestimated the internal and external efforts to stabilize the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In addition to direct participation in the 1992-95 war, Serbia, together with the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, continues to remain one of the main threats to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Bosnian Federation. In order to carry out the old ideas and plans of expansion or Serbian influence, Serbia is buying a lot of weapons from abroad.
Serbia, with the modernization of its army with new equipment, will be one of the countries that will challenge official Sarajevo and its neighbors, including Kosovo.
Recently, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić boasted about the strength of the Serbian military during a speech in Belgrade. The NI Network reported that Vučić said that Serbia has received the most powerful weapons in the world from Israel.
“Today, they can no longer crush us like cockroaches.” Vučić added that Serbia now has “the most powerful weapons in the world from Israel” and could “shoot down 200 to 250 planes, not two or three” if a bombing campaign like the NATO airstrikes of 1999 were to happen again. The Bosnian Federation is going through many difficulties.
National elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held on October 4, 2026. Decades of political instability and separatist efforts by Serbian leaders continue to hinder reforms towards EU or NATO membership. Over 100,000 citizens lost their lives in the last war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The international peacekeeping forces of EUFOR and the International Civilian Representative are the main pillars of maintaining the fragile peace. International missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the beginning of 1995 to the present have evolved in numbers and names, starting with IFOR, SFOR, etc.
International visits without strong guarantees that the world will not back down from Serbian threats of the dissolution of the Bosnian federation can be assessed as protocol. Commitments should not remain only at the level of diplomatic promises, which in the current international situation are considered wrong signals for the Western Balkans region. As long as there is a transition from declarations to concrete sanctions, the risk of the dissolution of the Bosnian Federation will remain current.
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