Izetbegovic Sparks Uproar Over Bosnia Civil War Remark
Bakir Izetbegovic's description of the Bosnian war has drawn sharp rebukes from Narod i Pravda and SDP, while SDA says his words were taken out of context.
The leader of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Party of Democratic Action, Bakir Izetbegovic, has triggered a sharp backlash in Sarajevo after describing the 1990s war in terms that, according to three parties in the ruling coalition of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, downplay responsibility for the aggression, chiefly by Serbia and, during part of the war, by Croatia. He made the remark on August 28 at a session of the SDA Presidency in Kiseljak, at a moment when convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic is still openly glorified in Serbia and in the Republika Srpska entity, a backdrop that gives any discussion of the war’s character added weight far beyond Bosnia’s borders.
Speaking about the country’s postwar transition, the shift from a one-party system to multi-party democracy, and the economic processes that followed the war, Izetbegovic, reading from a prepared text, said:
We had shattered relations between peoples through a civil war, through a war that takes on elements of a civil war, through aggression when it partly turned into that.
That phrasing, “civil war” and “a war that takes on elements of a civil war,” set off a wave of reactions from the Bosniak parties that make up the so-called Troika governing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Narod i Pravda, the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDP), and Nasa Stranka.
Narod i Pravda was first to respond, saying in a statement that the remark had caused serious concern, particularly because, according to the party, part of the speech was captured on camera by media covering the Kiseljak event. The party stressed that Izetbegovic read the disputed passage from a script, which in their view makes it harder to explain away as an accidental slip.
We therefore call on Bakir Izetbegovic, as leader of SDA and a candidate for the BiH Presidency, to explain to the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina this statement and this characterization of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina as a civil war.
Narod i Pravda also invoked rulings by domestic and international courts, as well as the Dayton peace agreement, arguing that these confirm the conflict was an international armed conflict rather than an internal clash. The party further questioned whether such rhetoric was Izetbegovic laying the groundwork for a possible future alliance between SDA and SNSD or HDZ, parties that openly dispute the characterization of the war as aggression.
The Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina reacted even more sharply, saying Izetbegovic has no right to rewrite history. SDP argued that using the term “civil war” is neither an innocent slip nor a matter of semantics, but a relativization of the aggression against the internationally recognized Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a conflict marked by war crimes, the sieges of cities, mass graves and the genocide in Srebrenica.
Genocide was committed in Srebrenica. That is not a matter of partisan taste, it is an established fact.
SDP also asked whether this signals a new political line for SDA, and whether Bakir Izetbegovic’s party is prepared, for the sake of pre-election interests, to adopt the rhetoric of those who, in the party’s assessment, have spent decades denying the aggression and the genocide. SDP called on SDA to publicly distance itself from characterizations that could be used to relativize crimes already established by court rulings.
SDA dismissed the accusations as, in its words, cheap spin from the Troika aimed at diverting attention from the current government’s record. The party maintains the remark was taken out of context, and that the broader address was actually about how Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the war’s consequences, kept making progress right up until the Troika took power. SDA also pointed to Izetbegovic’s earlier public statements, in which he spoke of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, the genocide, and the joint criminal enterprise behind it.
No edited clips, no statements pulled out of context, no tendentious interpretations of Izetbegovic’s and SDA’s positions will help this disastrous, imposed government.
SDA also used the moment to criticize the current Federation government, citing the stalled European and NATO path, shuttered industrial plants and rising public debt as problems it considers far more significant than the interpretation of a single sentence from a longer speech. The party fired back with its own criticism of the Troika’s relationship with SNSD and HDZ, pointing to earlier contacts and political cooperation between representatives of those parties.
Why the dispute is escalating now
The exchange of accusations comes ahead of general elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, scheduled for October 2026, in which Izetbegovic, according to SDA’s own announcements, is expected to run for a seat on the BiH Presidency. In that context, any statement about the character of the 1990s war carries political weight well beyond the interpretation of a single sentence, since it goes to the heart of the question of responsibility for the aggression, a theme both SDA and the Troika are building part of their campaigns around.
For Belgrade, the dispute in Sarajevo matters for two reasons. First, any relativization of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, as Narod i Pravda and SDP read it, points primarily to Serbia’s responsibility, and partly to Croatia’s. Second, the row is unfolding at a time when the glorification of Ratko Mladic, convicted by a final ruling for genocide in Srebrenica and for war crimes, still persists in the public space in Serbia and in Republika Srpska, so any new formulation about the war’s character in the region immediately feeds into an already tense debate over historical memory across the former Yugoslavia.
Tanjug reported on the reactions on August 31, and as of that point neither SDA nor the Troika parties had signaled any intention to take the dispute beyond public statements. How the “civil war” phrasing plays out in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s election campaign will become clearer in the weeks leading up to the October vote.
