Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 5/11/2025; Author: Nerma Šehović
The narrative of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a refuge for radical Islamists and terrorists has become one of the political tools of the SNSD, the ruling party in Republika Srpska. In the media, it is built with the help of statements by “experts” who warn that BiH is at the top of the list of countries that represent a terrorist threat. The facts say that such an image is exaggerated.
On 29 September 2025, the portal Novosti (.rs) published an article about recent incidents in the Una-Sana Canton in which “radical Islamists provoked Serbs”. These incidents were placed in the context of the “political climate” in BiH and the “hunt for Serbs” allegedly initiated by “political Sarajevo”.
The incidents used as a pretext for this article occurred in September 2025. One took place during the marking of the 30th anniversary of the liberation of Bosanski Petrovac, when former members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) shouted “Allahu akbar.” In the other, a certain Adil Ćenanović harassed a Serb family in Bihać by shouting “tekbir” and “Allahu akbar” in front of their house, after which he was arrested. Other media also reported on these events (1, 2, 3).
For interlocutors on radical Islamism in BiH, Novosti chose the self-proclaimed “terrorism and security expert” Dževad Galijašević and the dean of the private Faculty of Security and Protection and former colonel of the Army of Republika Srpska Slobodan Župljanin, who is on trial before the Court of BiH for war crimes in Kotor Varoš.
The interlocutors in the article claim that Bosnia and Herzegovina is at the top of the ranking of countries that pose a security threat to peace and stability in the world in the context of terrorism, and that there are a hundred “Wahhabi” settlements and dozens of para-jamaats in BiH.
The article also states that the authorities in BiH appease or cooperate with radical Islamist terrorists.
The claims from the Novosti article were relayed by the websites Večernje novosti (.ba) and Nacionalist.
Inventing links between BiH and terrorist attacks in Europe
The Novosti article states the following:
Slobodan Župljanin, a security expert, says that it is common knowledge that radical Islamist movements operate in the Federation, which often resort to planning and carrying out terrorist actions in the country and abroad. He pointed out that in recent decades every terrorist attack in Europe and the world has been connected to Islamist movements in BiH.
This places BiH at the very top of the list of countries that represent a security threat to peace and stability in the world – Župljanin emphasizes.
He stressed that the benevolent attitude of the authorities and judiciary in BiH encourages Islamist movements to act more radically.
The claim that every terrorist attack in Europe and the world over the past decades has been connected to BiH, which places the country at the top of the list of countries that pose a security threat to the world, is entirely factually unfounded.
The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (EUROPOL) has, since 2001, published annual reports on terrorist activities and trends in Europe. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22). These reports list terrorist attacks and present findings on terrorist cells, plans, and networks, as well as information about groups under surveillance. Bosnia and Herzegovina is mentioned in them several times. The 2003 report states that radical Islamic teachings, i.e., the so-called Salafi ideology, are becoming increasingly popular within part of the Bosnian diaspora in Austria. Nevertheless, as stated, the investigation did not show that there was a terrorist network in Austria. The 2005 and 2007 reports mention the arrest of several men in Sarajevo (most of whom were not Bosnian citizens or of Bosnian origin) who were planning a terrorist attack at an unknown location. The 2016 report states that a jihadist of Bosnian origin was arrested in Prague while attempting to travel to Istanbul with a fake passport. The 2017 and 2018 reports mention information about the travel of some BiH citizens to the battlefields in Syria and Iraq to fight for the terrorist organization ISIL, and the 2020 report states that a court in Germany convicted a citizen of BiH for spreading jihadist propaganda.
When it comes to terrorist attacks carried out in Europe since 2001, for none of them is it stated that they were committed by a citizen of BiH or a person of Bosnian origin, although the reports often state the origin or nationality of the perpetrators of attacks.
With a Google search, we were unable to find reports of a terrorist attack abroad committed by a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the EUROPOL report published in 2023, it is stated that in the Western Balkan countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, and Kosovo) “no large terrorist or violent extremist groups operate.” It is said that there are individuals and small local groups that are not hierarchically organized and that communicate with similar groups abroad online. EUROPOL sees a potential future threat in returnees from the battlefields in Syria and Iraq.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is not found on lists of countries with the most terrorist activity or countries in which terrorist organizations operate frequently. Such lists often include countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Iraq, and others (1, 2, 3).
Accordingly, the claim that BiH represents one of the greatest security terrorist threats to the world is a fabrication.
Where the problem ends, and incitement begins
The Novosti article states the following:
Dževad Galijašević believes that Bosniak society is “Islamist-radicalized and that some parts of it are integrated into certain terrorist organizations”, and points out that in BiH there are 100 Wahhabi settlements and dozens of parallel jamaats.
In BiH, 10,000 persons pass through security records as a source of terrorist threat – Galijašević stated.
There are elements in Galijašević’s claims, although they at the very least significantly exaggerate the real situation.
Salafism, also known as “Wahhabism”, is a movement that advocates practicing Islam following the example of Muslims who lived during and immediately after the Prophet Muhammad, rejecting “innovations” in religion. The movement originated in the 18th and 19th centuries in Saudi Arabia.
Within the Salafi school of Islam there are three dominant currents – apolitical, political, and jihadist – with the apolitical current promoting a politically neutral approach to faith, i.e., non-interference in politics and public life, and opposing violence. On the other hand, extreme proponents of political or jihadist Salafism, such as the terrorist organization “Islamic State” (ISIL), are willing to use violence against those whom they believe prevent the formation of a “true” Islamic society, whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims.
The emergence and relative “popularization” of Salafism in Bosnia and Herzegovina is often linked to the presence of mujahideen, i.e., foreign fighters from Middle Eastern countries during the war in the 1990s, as well as to teachings that in the post-war period were promoted by theologians of local origin who studied at universities in the Middle East (link).
In the decades after the war, Salafis in Bosnia and Herzegovina formed their communities and so-called para-jamaats, parallel organizational religious units that operated outside the framework of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some of these communities promoted violence and were linked to terrorist organizations. In the period from 2012 to 2016, it is estimated that between 250 and 300 people from BiH went to Syria to fight in the ranks of ISIL, a phenomenon that was at that time recorded worldwide.
Galijašević’s claim that today there are a hundred “Wahhabi” settlements and dozens of para-jamaats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, is not correct. Para-jamaats are not in accordance with the Law on Freedom of Religion and the Legal Position of Churches and Religious Communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, nor with the Constitution of the Islamic Community (IZ) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Accordingly, in 2016, when it was estimated that around 70 para-jamaats operated in BiH, the Islamic Community took measures to shut them down or integrate them into the Islamic Community. By 2020, the number of para-jamaats had already dropped to 11. Only ten to 30 people gathered in them, led by self-proclaimed imams, and according to claims by the Islamic Community from 2023, so few members of those groups remained that they would not be able to form a single compact jamaat.
With the exception of Gornja Maoča, a village in Tuzla Canton that in the early 2000s became a center of radical members of the Salafi movement and which is still inhabited and quite isolated (although, unlike in previous years, it is no longer considered a security threat), we did not find data on any other completely isolated “Salafi settlement” that currently exists in BiH, let alone a hundred such settlements.
Therefore, a certain number of Salafis live in BiH. However, that does not mean that all of them support violence and terrorism, and evidence of numerous parallel jamaats and communities in which the most radical members of this movement operate does not exist.
Both Galijašević and Župljanin claim that the authorities in BiH are benevolent toward terrorism, and even that they support and encourage it. There is no evidence for this either.
Since 2006, the Council of Ministers of BiH has adopted a new Strategy of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Prevention and Fight against Terrorism every five years, and in 2020 an Agreement on Mutual Assistance and Operational Cooperation in the Fight against Terrorism between all police agencies in BiH entered into force. Operational groups and departments for counter-terrorism in state and entity police agencies have been operating for decades. These groups have carried out anti-terrorism actions such as “Damascus” in 2014, when SIPA arrested 16 people in several cities suspected of terrorism and recruitment for ISIL, or “Light” in 2010, when police forces carried out what was until then the largest post-war police operation in Gornja Maoča.
All BiH citizens who returned from the Syrian battlefield were criminally prosecuted, and women and children were returned to their local communities.
Para-jamaats were for years under the supervision and investigation of competent authorities. On that, as well as other aspects of the fight against terrorism in BiH, the head of the Counter-Terrorism Department of the Federal Police Administration spoke to Radio Free Europe in December 2023:
“In cooperation with cantonal ministries of internal affairs and other institutions, since 2016 the Federal Police Administration has directed one of its lines of action toward collecting field data related to radical members of the Salafi-Takfiri movement, the micro-locations where they gather and live, as well as the para-mosques within which these members operate and spread their ideas and radical views,” the head of the FUP Counter-Terrorism Department told RFE/RL.
(…)
“In the territory operationally covered by the Federal Police Administration, there are no groups that could be characterized as terrorist organizations or cells on the basis of applicable domestic regulations, as well as on the basis of standards and directives of the European Union, international conventions, resolutions and legal acts,” they wrote in a response to RFE/RL to a question about claims regarding the existence of terrorist cells in BiH.
They state that they constantly exchange operational data via INTERPOL and EUROPOL with all foreign police agencies, but that they have not received a request to verify the information that was discussed in the media.
The RS Ministry of the Interior did not provide a specific answer to the question regarding active terrorist cells.
That the security situation in BiH is satisfactory and stable was asserted at the beginning of December by representatives of parliamentary security commissions, the Joint Commission for Defence and Security, and the Joint Commission for Oversight of the Intelligence-Security Agency of BiH after a meeting in Banja Luka.
With the exception of the attack on police officers in Bosanska Krupa, which in October 2024 was carried out by a 14-year-old under the clear influence of radical online jihadist propaganda, in Bosnia and Herzegovina no terrorist attack has been recorded for ten years.
Therefore, Bosnia and Herzegovina, like any other state, is not immune to terrorism, and it is certainly necessary to work as much as possible on preventing radicalization, especially among young people. However, Galijašević and Župljanin in their statements for Novosti do not focus on that, but on spreading paranoid conspiracy theories about links between the authorities in Sarajevo and terrorist organizations.
A propagandistic narrative known from before
This is not the first time that claims about a major terrorist threat in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been shared in the public sphere. Dževad Galijašević, close to the ruling coalition in RS, has for years been putting forward similar claims without concrete evidence. As explained in a Raskrinkavanje analysis from 2017, although Galijašević is often presented in the media as a “terrorism and security expert”, his expertise in these fields, whether academic or professional, has never been established.
The other Novosti interlocutor, Slobodan Župljanin, is a member of the Socialist Party and part of the ruling structure in Republika Srpska.
Moral panic about radical Islamism that is “flourishing” in the Federation of BiH with the help of the authorities is one of the political tools of the coalition gathered around SNSD leader Milorad Dodik (1, 2, 3). Thus, for example, RS Minister of the Interior Siniša Karan claimed in 2023 that a hundred para-jamaats operate in BiH and that there had not been a single serious terrorist act in the world that was not connected to BiH. These claims, which are not supported by a single piece of evidence, were at the time denied by the Islamic Community and the Ministry of the Interior of the Federation of BiH. It is not certain that Karan even knows what para-jamaats are, given that he said they are now integrated into the Islamic Community.
The constant repetition of these claims, refuted by evidence, coming from politicians and from “experts” and media close to them, indicates that this is a propaganda narrative whose goal is to deceive the public and spread fear and panic.
According to the facts, we assess the claim that all terrorist attacks in Europe and the world over the past decades are linked to BiH, published in the Novosti article, as fake news and a conspiracy theory. We give the same assessment to the claim that BiH is at the top of the list of countries that pose a threat to global security and to the claim that there are a hundred “Wahhabi” settlements and dozens of “para-jamaats” in BiH. We rate other publications of these claims as spreading fake news and conspiracy theory.
