SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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Bosnia update, Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Bosnia and Iran; Protests in Sarajevo; Bosnian football victory; Orban's Hungarian defeat; Repeat elections in Republika Srpska

This month (April, 2026), the Italian on-line publication Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa  published my new series of four articles on environmental resistance to international mine companies invading Bosnia. See the whole series here. The series is also available in Italian and, not too long from now, in Bosnian.

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The matter of what is news, what looks like news but isn't, what is good news, and what is bad news (therefore, maybe not really news) in Bosnia-Herzegovina is often on my mind. In the last few busy months, each of the above variants have filled the news platforms. In a way, the good news seems to tip the scales ever so slightly this time. But let me start with an item that's bad for everyone.

Iran War

Trump's and Netanyahu's war against all Iranians hurts just about everyone in the world; people are surely feeling the pain here in the US. In Bosnia, already an economically afflicted country, a few fenigs' increase in the price of a liter of petrol hurts so much the worse. The price of oil and derivatives quickly jumped by 20%, with gas prices in some places increasing by 50% over February's level. Profiteering at the gas pumps has been noted in both entities. Some operators in the Republika Srpska were fined 10,000 KM for this practice. Prices for local and domestic transportation also jumped correspondingly.

Meanwhile, the war-related disruption of international transportation has shut down the significant tourist traffic to Bosnia. Much of the traffic that comes from Australia, Iran, UAE, and eastern Asia transits through Dubai and Doha, where there has now been chaos at the airports. Arab visitors and others constitute an important part of the tourist population.

At the beginning of the aggression against Iran, hundreds of Bosnians had trouble evacuating many parts of the Middle East. Many of them were stranded in Dubai without a way to leave. While neighboring Croatia and Serbia controlled their own airlines, Bosnia did not have this resource.

Extended Unrest in Sarajevo

In mid-January, a tragic accident took place in Sarajevo, when a streetcar jumped the tracks near the National Museum and plowed into a group of people waiting at a bus stop. Erdoan Morankić, 23, was killed, and young Ella Jovanović, 17, was gravely wounded. She survived, but her leg had to be amputated. Four other people were injured as well.

There is something about serious accidents, unsolved killings, and other kinds of violence that deeply unsettles people in Bosnia—especially young people—and spurs them to action. This was the case with the "random" killing of Denis Mrnjavac on a streetcar in 2008, and with the mysterious killings of Dženan Memić in Sarajevo (2016) and David Dragičević in Banja Luka, in 2018.

In all these instances in different parts of the country, and with other fatal car accidents, as with cases of femicide, people have gathered for extended protests. You'll recall my earlier descriptions of the "Justice for David" protests in Banja Luka, and the long-running protests about the Dženan Memić case, with the murder suspected to be perpetrated by police officials.

The recent streetcar accident caused people's anger to boil over once again. The sense of insecurity on the street combines with general resentment about the regime of corruption that prevails from top to bottom throughout the country; with disgust over the carelessness in maintenance of infrastructure; and with the lack of transparency and slowness of prosecution of offenders.

After the accident thousands of protestors gathered right away on the plaza in front of the National Museum. For the next 10 days people marched from that location towards the central part of Sarajevo and back. An informal, horizontal activist structure reminiscent of the Occupy movement in the US took shape, with no one pushing forward to become a media personality. This is, in my opinion, a significant evolution for activism in Sarajevo. No "leader"—no one to be co-opted.

The protests were dominated by students who had walked out of classes. Here was a new generation of activists under the slogans of a "struggle for justice"; a "better tomorrow" and "we want change!" One protest sign read, "If you kill us all, who will you steal from?" Another: "There is blood on your hands." Lists of demands included the right to free association; the achievement of truth and justice; responsible behavior by the government; security on the streets; and a state that is in service of the citizens. Students additionally demanded that their teachers and professors not punish them for walking out of school to the protests.

In Banja Luka, in a show of solidarity with the other entity (by no means the first time), the organization Oštra Nula held a demonstration of support for Sarajevo. Demonstrators in both cities asked, "How many more young people have to disappear for the system to be changed?"

In Sarajevo Muriz Memić, the father of Dženan, attended some of the protests, as did the parents of some young women who had been killed by a reckless driver. Dženan Memić, in a case that was never solved, was mysteriously murdered on the outskirts of Sarajevo ten years ago. Taking a lesson from his own family's experience, Memić declared, "This state has a legal para-system, where there are different laws for different people. No one should be above the law."

The esteemed Asim Mujkić, professor of sociology and progressive commentator, attended some of the protests and called on his fellow academics to support the demonstrators, saying, "If we won't be with our youth here and now, then who are we with? Supporting the students who are fighting for the right to freedom of expression is the obligation of every professor."

The student demonstrators called on the heads of the state-run public transportation agency GRAS to resign, and he did so a couple of days after the accident. Around that time damning evidence of GRAS's carelessness came out when it was revealed that the company had allowed a driver involved in a separate accident to operate without a license for several months.

Sarajevo Canton's Prime Minister Nihad Uk also resigned, in an exemplary display of moral obligation. A member of the progressive political party Naša Stranka, Uk was in no way implicated in the accident nor in the carelessness of GRAS, but he wished to demonstrate that public officials, all the way to the top, could in fact show a sense of responsibility.

On social media, Sarajevo activist Svjetlana Nedimović gave a forceful pushback, thus: "The party faithful have launched an attack on the youth. This one is 'problematic'; this one is not young; this one is uneducated; this one doesn't speak grammatically (as if the accusers do)...but see this: whatever you lay on the youth, there is the unavoidable fact that they did not send a damaged streetcar among the people to kill them, and they did not create landfills that fill up people's houses with stench, and they did not host the Israeli sports team, and they did not allow the hillsides under the tycoons' new buildings to slide into the neighborhood of Širokača...and they aren't building skyscrapers in Marindvor, and they aren't selling airports...I'll leave it at that," ending with a juicy curse on all the profiteers and corrupt politicians of the land.

Sports

While the streetcar accident is a heartbreaking tragedy, the ten days of demonstrations that it catalyzed are a positive turn, because the expressions launched from these events moved the consciousness of the community forward—a hopeful development.

Meanwhile, while the behavior that takes place around sports events is often bad news, at the very end of March an uplifting, if symbolic, victory occurred on the football (soccer) field. On March 31, the Bosnian representation defeated the Italian national team at Zenica, with penalty kicks resulting in a 4-1 victory. This put Italy, usually one of the strongest teams in Europe, out of the running for the World Cup, and placed Bosnia in that tournament for the first time in 12 years, and only the second time in the postwar period.

It was Esmir Bajraktarević who kicked the prize-winning goal. He was born in Wisconsin, the son of Srebrenica survivors who came as refugees to the United States. Their ancestors had survived an earlier massacre of Bosniaks (Muslims) that took place in Montenegro in 1924, in the village of Šahovići.

As it happened, six of the team's players are descendants of survivors of the Šahovići massacre. Some of the players are Bosnian Croats. Customarily, the team does not pay attention to the ethnic background of the players, and they—a team, after all—get along well.

The public response, especially in Sarajevo, was elation, with people pouring out on the streets and creating crowd scenes reminiscent of the No Kings III demonstrations that took place all around the United States a couple of weeks earlier. A song by the popular Bosnian hip-hop/ska/punk band Dubioza Kolektiv, composed in 2011, was immediately revived:  "U.S.A.," whose first line goes, "I am from Bosnia, take me to America." You can hear the song here, and read the lyrics here.

While the expression of "unlimited joy" (as one commentator put it) was dominant in the Bosniak-populated cities and towns of the Federation, there was exaggeration about how much this victory "bridged ethnic divides" throughout the country. In the Croat-controlled parts of the Federation, the response was lukewarm, and in the Serb-controlled RS, there was no response at all.

Orban's Hungarian defeat

The resounding defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Sunday, April 12, has significant implications not only for Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also for all Europe, and the United States as well.

Oslobodjenje editor-in-chief Vildana Selimbegović described Orban's 16-year rule as an "era of despotic populism," accompanied by "xenophobia, rampant corruption, enrichment of the bosses and cronies, threats and persecution of dissenters, revenge, racketeering, and suppression of the freedom of the people and the media." Orban championed himself as the promoter of "illiberal democracy."

As a member of the European Union under Orban, Hungary was a wild card, favoring Russia in its aggression against Ukraine. He isolated his country from the EU, thwarted EU unanimity in its drive to help Ukraine defend itself, and drew economically damaging sanctions from the supra-national body.

Along with those sanctions, the system of corruption that pervaded Hungary's political functions significantly damaged the country's economy. Former US Ambassador to Bosnia Eric G. Nelson commented, "Corruption marks the fall of autocracy." Analysts agree that it was the population's anger at Orban's corruption that led to his defeat. One columnist mentioned the vast luxury estate belonging to Orban's father in a posh area in the northern part of Hungary; next door, the property of Orban's best friend was home to a pair of zebras.

Outrage against this ostentatious living in a downwardly mobile economy echoed the resentment that had built up against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, ousted in 2014 by a mass movement of furious citizens.

Indeed, the electoral upheaval against Orban rhymes with Ukrainian history in other ways. It is a puzzling anomaly that Orban could continue to be cozy with Russia for so many years—the same Russia that, with a tank invasion, put down a mild-mannered Hungarian movement for reform in 1956. How did Hungarians support that Orban-Putin relationship for so long? But by this year, it was over. Orban tried to frighten voters with the far-fetched notion that the Hungarian opposition to Orban was a Ukrainian-orchestrated provocation, also that the EU was going to drag Hungary into the war in Ukraine.

During the later days of Orban's campaign, the US vice president was brought in to stump for him. This didn't help, and may have hurt Orban's results; in the end, the opposition candidate Peter Magyar won a resounding 69% of the vote, putting his Tisza Party in an unobstructed position to undo damage that Orban had done to the Hungarian Constitution.

Orban and the US president have indeed been on the same wavelength for years. The Hungarian premier served as a source of inspiration to the MAGA movement. He participated avidly in numerous Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) that took place in Hungary. CPAC is more than a conference; for decades organized by the American Conservative Union, this major gathering of right-wing ideologues, media figures, politicians, and policy groups carries on the discourse of reaction and autocracy over the years, and transmits it across borders among like-minded movements abroad.

It is just coming out that Orban saw to it that the Hungarian government financially supported the CPAC conferences. In this and other ways, he had power well above the significance of his own country.

Under Orban, Hungary bridged the axis of authoritarianism between Putin and Trump, while also wholeheartedly supporting Republika Srpska's former President Dodik, and Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić.

In losing Orban, Vučić and Dodik have lost a significant source of support and patronage. Dodik had visited Orban in Budapest even more often than he visited Putin in Moscow, and Orban had pledged hundreds of millions of euros in grants and loans to shore up the ailing Republika Srpska economy. In addition, Hungary surreptitiously sent special police forces to operate in the RS when, for a short while last year, Dodik was on the lam. Most of them came across the border into the RS in plainclothes, and they set up an "anti-terrorist" training center in Zalužani near Banja Luka.

There was, reportedly, a plan for these forces to spirit Dodik out of the country, in the event that he was threatened with arrest and imprisonment by Bosnian authorities. This never came to pass. Dodik has been removed from his position as president of the RS, but he still rules (see below), as leader of the SNSD, the strongest Serb party in Bosnia. When Orban was defeated, Dodik said of Orban, "I'm sorry this happened. He was my friend, and will remain so."

The repercussions of the removal of Orban are not completely predictable, other than that there will at least be a reduction in corruption and an increase in personal freedom. Democratic procedures will be better observed, and there will be a "return to the EU path," as everyone is saying. Most likely, Orban's removal will free up a projected EU credit of 100 billion euros to support Ukraine.

Beyond that, there are questions about Peter Magyar. Analyst John Feffer remarked that Magyar's victory does not exactly represent a "swing of the political pendulum." He was, after all, long a member of Orban's party, until just a couple of years ago. His now ex-wife was Minister of the Judiciary under Orban, until she was ousted in a flagrant corruption scandal. Commentators say that Tisza campaigned not on ideology, but against corruption and in favor of returning to the EU fold. That, and voters' revulsion with the Russian "embrace," made the difference. Tisza has been described as a center-right party, and Magyar's background is Christian Democratic.

Meanwhile, conservative populist rulers are still in place in Slovakia and Czech Republic, but they lack the spread of influence and power that Orban had.

Things will be better in Hungary, easier in the EU, and more difficult for Orban's cronies in Bosnia and Serbia. His ouster may even shake up the MAGA movement a bit.

Partial repeat elections in Republika Srpska

You'll recall from my last two blog entries (December 3, 2025 and January 13, 2026) that after Milorad Dodik was removed from office as president of the Republika Srpska, there were special elections last November. In those elections, Dodik's man Siniša Karan defeated Branko Blanuša, but there were widespread assertions—generally believable—of the customary blatant finagling and electoral engineering that are the hallmark of elections in the RS. After a month of clamor, and deliberation by the Central Election Committee, that body called for a partial re-run, at 136 polling stations in 17 municipalities.

The repeat elections took place on February 8, with Karan winning, again, in an approximately 60%-40% split. As just about always, there were reports by impartial observers of vote-buying, "family voting," interference with observers, illicit participation by party members in the polling station committees and at the very poll booths, and various kinds of pressure on the voters—the usual maneuvers.

It did not help that the opposition was disunited and their candidate lacking in name recognition and support.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Sergey Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, were quick to congratulate Dodik. Blanuša conceded, and Karan remains prime minister of the entity. Karan picked up where Dodik left off, announcing that the "Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina is falling apart," and that "it cannot survive without legitimacy."

Dodik, still the real power in the Serb-controlled entity, called for independence for the Republika Srpska and said that he had "great expectations from Trump" (this was, of course, before the US president pretty much blew his effectiveness to smithereens with his Iran misadventure). As was his habit, in his lobbying junkets in the US, Dodik presented the Serbs as Christians under threat, saying that a clash of civilizations was taking place in Bosnia.

The recent elections were a holding maneuver to keep seat of the RS presidency warm until regular national elections happen this October. Last year the Central Election Committee promised vote-theft prevention measures such as biometric scanners and computerized voting. However, no law has yet been passed to fund such measures, so there is no promise that the next elections will be any cleaner than previous ones.