SOTT Exclusive: The attack on the police station in Zvornik, Bosnia and the latest fear-mongering in the Balkans

© Amel Emric, AP
Zvornik, area around police station

    

On 27th of April 2015, a suicidal lone gunmen shouting "Allahu Akbar" (where have we seen this before?) carried out an attack on a police station in Zvornik, Republika Srpska which is one of two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina bordering Serbia. The attacker was identified as a 24-year-old Nerdin Ibrić, while some media outlets actually (still) report that he's a 60-year-old, and according to social media, there were actually 3 attackers. Whatever the case, the media finally reached consensus. The attacker stormed the station with an automatic rifle, killed one of the officers, wounded two others before he himself was gunned down. Reports state that he also allegedly knew the timing of the shift change, which is when there's a high number of police present.

Weeks before the attack, Bosnia's intelligence service apparently received information pertaining to a potential terrorist threat. From whom or how they've received this report is not disclosed. Milorad Dodik the president of Republika Srpska blamed the state intelligence agencies for the attack and said that Republika Srpska may withdraw from Bosnian state security structures and establish parallel agencies, which some claimed could "mark a concrete step towards the effective dissolution of Bosnia." Republika Srpska Interior Minister Dragan Lukac said that the attack "could be the start of much worse happenings in Bosnia-Herzegovina," basically adding fuel to the fire.

According to reports Nerdin Ibrić had a cousin who joined a Wahhabi group, he started growing a beard a few years ago and had recently started to 'act stragely.' His neighbours and family say that he rarely left the house, was reclusive, unemployed, lived with his mother and that he "fell under the influence of religious radicals who had fought with Islamic militants in the war in Syria." He was also recently given permission for the acquisition of firearms, no explanation is given as to why.

Not long after, there was a bomb threat in Zvornik, prompting an evacuation of a courthouse, no bomb was actually found. Bosnian intelligence also received reports about new possible terror attacks in the country from certain partnership officials in the region. In light of all this, EU warnings of a partial presence of a 'Balkan Caliphate' in the region is surely doing nothing to help the situation, and they were once again quick to call for closer EU-Balkan ties that "should include the enhancement of intelligence cooperation and information exchange among member states," while they are set to allocate 10 million Euros "to help the Western Balkan countries to cope with the Islamic radicalization and influx of terrorists."

On the 6th of May 2015, and following the attack in Zvornik, Republika Srpska started their Operation Ruben:

Operation Ruben is an ongoing police operation against radical Islamists launched on 6 May 2015 within the Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina following the 27 April 2015 shooting in a Zvornik police station. Several people were arrested, a week after the terrorist attack in the police station that left one police officer dead.

According to reports, the operation is being used to harass Muslims under the pretext of rooting out Islamic extremists. This certainly wouldn't be the first time that the Muslim community bears the brunt because of the actions of the so-called 'Islamic' terrorists.

Camil Durakovic, a Bosnian Muslim, said Thursday that Serb police from outside town stormed the homes of Muslims who returned after Bosnia's 1990s ethnic war, and carried out arrests without explanation. He called it a "form of repression."

"Terrorism is a serious global problem and we must all fight against it, but you cannot use it as an excuse to send masked, armed men to search houses of Bosnian Muslims and arrest people without any evidence," Durakovic said.

Looking at the the attack on Zvornik and the subsequent 'anti-terror operations,' ethnic and political tensions and closer EU-Balkan integration under the auspice of 'anti-terrorism,' it seems that it's all actually playing into the hands of the US-NATO axis and their so-called 'strategy of tension', playing different sides against each other, which is responsible for the partitioning of Yugoslavia and promoting ethnic tensions and economic devastation in the first place and will now only serve to further destabilize the functioning and unity of the institutions inside Bosnia, which can have lasting consequences for the region.

Concerning ethnic and political tension following the incident, it should be remembered that blaming the actions of individuals and their handlers, whoever they might be, on entire nations, ethnicities and religions is absurd, to say the least.

The latest terror mongering should also not take away attention from the upcoming IMF 'loan' to Bosnia. The further economic ruin that IMF austerity measures will impose on Bosnia will be nothing compared to what happened in the tragic incident in Zvornik.

While the officials are quick to use the situation caused by the attack to further their political interests and take away attention from the real issues, it's is paramount that we do not succumb to the paranoia switch and calls for something to be done or to blame this or that group. Maybe we should precisely be doing nothing, that is, not so much a passive resistance as much as a kind of quiet active resistance.

Ante Sarlija

Born and raised in Croatia, Ante joined the SOTT editorial team in 2014 and currently helps run the Croatian SOTT. He is also a part of the Croatian SOTT translation team.