OPINION:
The Balkans are simmering again, and it’s threatening NATO.
“Don’t push us to war,” former Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric warned at a recent panel event marking 30 years since the war ended between Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Muslims, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats. The outburst was in response to pushback from Serbs and Croats against Muslim efforts to weaponize their slight majority population into centralized government power under their control.
As the world focuses attention on Ukraine, Iran and Venezuela, NATO faces an emerging threat on its southern flank. We know the sad fate of persecuted Christians in majority Muslim states, but this is not the Middle East. It’s the middle of Europe.
Bosnia’s joint capital, Sarajevo, is not the celebrated model of cosmopolitan multireligious coexistence the world saw during the 1984 Olympics. Women now cover their hair. Full-bodied niqabs reminiscent of Afghanistan are not uncommon. Gulf-financed mosques dot the city skyline. Former Sarajevo Cardinal Vinko Puljic lamented that “Sarajevo has become a solely Muslim city.”
On Christmas, foreign Islamists traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina to claim lands Christians have called home for 1,000 years.
Antisemitic incidents spiked last year. Sarajevo’s mayor canceled the long-planned Conference of European Rabbis, calling their presence “morally offensive” as “the occupier [Israel] … commits genocide against the innocent population of Gaza.”
That was followed by the national museum’s decision to sell its famed medieval Haggadah to support the Gaza Strip, prompting American Jewish Committee condemnation. Forty-seven Israeli tourists were stranded after their passports found their way from the hotel to the city landfill.
Bosnia and Herzegovina Muslims maintain strong ties to Iran, which supplied them with foreign fighters during wartime, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Days before Israel and the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Muslim defense minister hosted an Iranian general “to strengthen BiH-Iran military cooperation.”
Radio Free Europe exposed a radical Iranian-owned school near the capital to highlight continued ties to the Islamic republic. Mr. Ceric defends the regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters by dismissing them as “not the authentic voice of the people.”
As national elections approach, Muslim leaders have rejected Croat and Serb calls for political equality. The Islamist Party of Democratic Action, or SDA, is the strongest opposition party vying for Muslim votes. The 1970 Islamic Declaration of its founder, Alija Izetbegovic, called for a pan-Islamic state spanning from Morocco to Indonesia, including Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It earned him prison time from the communist authorities. In a previous government, SDA’s foreign minister, Bisera Turkovic, met with Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was banned by the Egyptian government. The Trump administration has designated the Brotherhood as a global terrorist organization.
Today, the Muslim-dominated Social Democrats, the former League of Communists, control the government. In 1971, the communist regime constitutionally recognized “Muslim” as a distinct nationality, striking a lasting loyalty among Bosnia and Herzegovina Muslims. In 1993, Muslims rebranded themselves as Bosniaks. Though electoral opponents, socialists and Islamists both seek a majority-run Muslim state.
Cardinal Puljic blames Sarajevo’s Christian purge on the United States and Europe, “who are careful not to irritate Muslims.” Indeed, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s foreign overseers have favored Muslims over Christians for decades. Only 1.8 million strong, they have leveraged their (legitimate) status as victims of genocide to win global support in breaking the peace agreement’s promise of political equality for each of the country’s three peoples: Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
That betrayal is at the core of the Serbs’ constant threats of secession. Croats, forced to share power with the more numerous Muslims, face gross discrimination, leading to a 60% drop in their population. The one-man, one-vote system imposed by our State Department empowers Muslims to elect who represents Croats. The loss of the Croats, the only pro-West community, would leave NATO facing a country divided among pro-Kremlin Serbs and Bosnian Islamists.
Political Islam is a choice for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Muslims. Neighboring Albania and Kosovo are mostly Muslim but have resisted the dangers of religious radicalism. Kosovo, Europe’s most pro-U.S. state, recently moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Albania is also pro-Israel and pro-America.
The Trump administration ended Bosnia and Herzegovina’s failed nation-building project and created space for interethnic negotiations without one-sided interference by foreign bureaucrats. Continued intransigence by Bosnia’s Muslims could risk the ire of President Trump, whose commitment to persecuted Christians was a key policy pillar during his first term.
It was more recently demonstrated by his military strikes against Islamic terrorists massacring Nigerian Christians.
With NATO’s stability also on the line, Sarajevo would be wise to stop repressing its Christian neighbors.
• Max Primorac is a senior research fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation.
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