THE class war has erupted in Bosnia with a vengeance as youth and workers rise up in action, uniting all religions and nationalities in a war against mass unemployment of over 42% and a much higher 63% youth unemployment rate.
Workers in Tuzla are fighting against privatisation while angry workers, unemployed youth and war veterans have risen in solidarity, burning cars and government buildings across the Bosnian Federation, including the presidential palace.
They are demanding jobs and a living wage for all as well as the resignation of the Federal and cantonal governments.
The graffiti on the walls spelling out, ‘He who sows hunger reaps anger’, is the writing on the wall for a ruling class that was placed in power by the intervention of the imperialist powers to destroy the Yugoslav Workers Federation and substitute it with a workless society split and divided by sectarianism.
Currently, 63% of under-24s are jobless, while society is dominated by the handful that enriched themselves from the looting of the state sector and the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation by the imperialist powers and their local allies.
As in the past, these ‘dark forces’ are looking to the imperialist powers for an armed intervention to save them.
Valentin Inzko, the High Representative (Dictator) of the Western Powers, told Central European TV: ‘If the hooliganism continues, EU troops may be asked to intervene.’
Meanwhile, the Director for the Coordination of Police Units in the Bosnian Federation, Himzo Selimoviç, has tendered his resignation and, after admitting the inability of the police to ensure the safety of members of the Bosnian Presidency, has called on the UN and the European Union to deploy military forces in Bosnia if the eruption of the class war continues.
Inzko and Selimoviç have revealed that the EU is the guarantor of the rule of the Bosnian ruling class over a vast army of the youth unemployed.
Meanwhile, the other half of the sectarian divide, Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska (RS), has publicly congratulated the citizens of the Serb entity for not being ‘provoked’ into action alongside the worker and youth protests sweeping the Bosnian Federation.
Alexander Vuãiç, First Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia, has also called in party representatives from RS to warn them not to cause any trouble, showing the fundamental class solidarity of the Bosnian political ruling class.
The ruling classes of Bosnia and the EU, who stand together in defence of privatisation, have also been imposing an IMF austerity programme, now in its fifth year, to make the workers of both entities pay for economic collapse.
Under the two Stand-by Agreements, budgets have been frozen, public sector pay cut repeatedly, consumption has collapsed, growth flatlined and external public debt has doubled, reaching 32% of GDP.
Normally unable to agree on any federal legislation, the federal government last year passed the IMF-inspired Global Fiscal Framework (GFF) for 2014-16, which set the parameters for the entities’ budgets and savage cuts to reduce the budget deficit for the next two years.
Now the IMF admits in its latest report that none of this will actually restore revenues, and it is planned to raise the pension age, increase labour flexibility, and continue with privatisation.
The Bosnian ruling classes are united in their determination to impose the savage reforms on which accession to the EU has been made conditional.
In fact, the popular uprising will spread to the Republika Serbska and right across the Balkans.
The way forward is to end the imperialist Protectorate of Bosnia, defend the equality of the peoples of Bosnia, and support and spread the workers’ uprising to the point where the working class takes back the power that was wrested from it in the 1990s.
This will be the first step in the historic struggle to reunite the peoples of the Balkans to restore the Yugoslav Federation that was destroyed by the imperialist powers as a workers’ federation of united nationalities, with the right to secede.
This is the only way to restore the equal rights of all of the Balkan nationalities, and provide prosperity and jobs for all.