In the time when the Ottoman Empire was waning over our lands, over the land called Bosnia and the land called Herzegovina, which today they singularly call, even though they’ve always been two, and plural, everyone wished for the Turks to leave as soon as possible.
Well, not everyone. Let’s say those who then called themselves Turks and today are called the foundational people of this country, born in the hotel, the people with four stars.
And the Turks left, but they left behind great evil and devastation. Backwardness. The peoples of these lands never received compensation from the Turks. Not even to pay us daily wages for those glorious days of uprising, when under voivodes Ivan and Mihajlo and our princess of freedom Merkusova, we drove them out of our land.
Of course, one shouldn’t judge the soul. The Turks left behind splendid architectural structures. Let’s take Lakešić’s harem, for example. World tourism began in Lakešić’s harem. Even today, the world talks only about that supreme work of Ottoman burial. When the first Korean tourists came there to be painted by local artists in front of the Turkish signs, pardon me, in front of the pro-Bosnian ones, then you know what time it was.. They were so touristically attractive. The word tourism, for those who don’t know, comes from the word Turks. And it began in Lakešić’s harem.
In the time when the Austro-Hungarian Empire flourished here, establishing a system of plundering our treasures, just when it built stations for the purchase of tobacco, wagons for transporting precious metals, and when they returned estates to the begs to calm potential revolutions, in the time when our greatest son, Princip, was preparing the most glorious days of our history, we all wanted the Habsburgs to leave, well not everyone, there was some quisling jactation among our old good servants of the occupiers, the ahdnams, they disliked seeing life being broken in the eyes of the Habsburg heir in the middle of Sarajevo. They cried for him.
But the Austro-Hungarian Empire was driven out from here just like the Ottoman one. By a bullet. The day came and it left.
But it left behind the First World War, around 130,000 houses throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina lost something of their own in those wars, regardless of nationality. And again, they lost that war.
Then came a new, stronger, German empire, and we all wanted it to leave. We fought against it. Well, not everyone. Some slept through that war, and some stood by the German occupier on the big tank. Claiming that they were greater Croats than us. If someone protested, our guys from the German tanks would throw them into a pit.
But they were also driven out. They left like cowards. And our guys after them. And they claim they were the Croatian army. And even now, in 2024, when asked “What were they doing at Bleiburg if they were the Croatian army?” they can’t give us an answer. Such a simple question, one that anyone could answer. But they just won’t.
And again, neither the Austro-Hungarian occupier nor Hitler’s empire left us anything, not even for daily wages, for those days when we drove them off and sent them home. And horror remained after them. Grave next to grave. Tear next to tear.
The day is approaching when the OHR empire will have to leave our homeland. But if this time we allow them to leave just like the Turks and the Germans, without paying us compensation and fixing what they messed up, then we are truly in the same mental backwardness as our ancestors.
OHR, in addition to robbing banks, expelling people, did something it shouldn’t have – it trampled on international law and the constitution of this country. Without any right to do so.
All implementations of the unconstitutional Constitutional Court, which it made and changed as it pleased, it could only do in a way that did not interfere with the international peace agreement, the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in a way that ensured that the amendments it imposed did not violate the conditions of peace, incorporated into the constitution, which gave this country a new chance and behind which stand all three constituent peoples by the signatures of their representatives.
And that applies to 100% of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because by that new agreement, 100% of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina is covered. Which makes Alija’s appeal lose in logic.
If we look at everything OHR has done, one glaring thing stands out. Setting aside all other amendments, OHR, specifically Petritsch, a representative of the Habsburg house for the area of “their favorite colony”, namely us, annulled the peace terms of the Washington Agreement.
In 1994, Croats were not so naive as to simply exchange territorial federalism for institutional, in a federal, consociational alliance with three times as many Bosniaks, without getting brutally strong protection from the hegemony of the former wartime enemy.
That protection was abolished by Petritsch’s, OHR amendments in 2001, and Croats were declared a legitimate target to be disciplined.
Therefore, the departure of the OHR from our country, without correcting this anomaly and without calling on the EU and USA to establish an international fund for the endangered peoples of Europe, where BH Croats should be placed at the forefront, due to repeated EU and USA attacks on us, is nothing more than a hasty escape of burglars.
The departure of the OHR empire is desirable, and we all look forward to it, but those criminals should be squeezed, by any means possible, to correct the evil they have done.
No one, not even the OHR, has the right to touch the core of the Dayton and Washington Agreements.
Neither the UN nor anyone else after signing a peace agreement after a war has the right to install an institution to which the power to unilaterally amend the signed peace agreement is assigned.
But if they insist on that, good luck to them.
The Pandora’s box of unpredictable evil is opened in that case.
If the EU and USA think it’s okay for the OHR to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina without apologizing for trampling on international law, and contrary to all conventions, tampering with the constitution, which they weren’t supposed to do, they should just say it publicly. And deal with it later.
Russia has already used one precedent of the West. (Kosovo) Do they want to give them another with this omission? So they can violate international law indefinitely.
Just like Austria, USA and EU violated it in Bosnia and Herzegovina.