International mining companies, with the collaboration of corrupt local politicians, ravage the hills and rivers of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Local and regional construction companies add to the despoilment of the rivers by building mini-hydroelectric dams by the dozens. Contrary to worldwide trends, new coal mines are established in many parts of the country, compounding the pollution of Bosnia’s air, soil, and water. This series of six articles will examine these problems in depth, with a focus on the local and nationwide response to environmental destruction.
Part III, “’Leave While We Are Still Polite’ – Interethnic Cooperation and Resistance to Mining around Mt. Ozren” provides an update on the struggle to prevent harmful nickel and cobalt prospecting on Mt. Ozren, introduced in the author’s two-part essay published on LeftEast last year. The article goes over some wartime history in order to contrast that bitter conflict with today’s attempts at collaboration between former enemies, in defense of a region that is important to all ethnicities. An enduring spirit of resistance on the mountain galvanizes the population to stand together in opposition to the plans of the mining company Lykos Metals.
Following from Part I and Part II, the series continues with Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.
Local communities in resistance, scattered throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, are coalescing into a movement. Attention from international media plays a part in encouraging Bosnian environmental activists and furthering their cause. We hope that the present series of articles will add to the international audience’s understanding of the destructive effects of Europe’s exploitation of Bosnia in furtherance of its agenda of “green transition.” Indeed, for Bosnia there is nothing “green” about this new form of colonialism.
Part III: “Leave While We Are Still Polite” – Interethnic Cooperation and Resistance to Mining around Mt. Ozren
Take a country the size of West Virginia, half of it covered by mountains. Say those mountains contain thousands of tons of lithium, zinc, lead, nickel, cobalt, and many other strategic minerals. That country, also, is home to hundreds of rivers. That is not a rich country. That is a country under a curse: the threat of destruction from cold-eyed profiteers from within and without.
I traveled to Maglaj, a historic north-central Bosnian town on the River Bosna, in the Croat- and Bosniak-controlled Federation. It is quite near the border with the Republika Srpska (RS), south of the city of Doboj. My mission was to meet a few environmental activists in Maglaj and then move on across the entity boundary to Mt. Ozren, the location of a resolute grassroots struggle against prospecting by an international mining company. In Maglaj I met activists Davor Šupuković and “Denis” (not his real name). Denis is a native of Maglaj, and Davor came from the nearby village of Fojnica (not to be confused with the more populous town of the same name near Sarajevo). Denis and Davor had accepted the task of shepherding me into Ozren and connecting me with a few people there.
Davor is a leader in the respected environmentalist group “Udruženje Fojničani” (Association of Fojnicans). I asked him how he became involved in environmental activism. He recalled the devastating floods of spring 2014 that struck many parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina; the mixed Croat and Bosniak settlement of Fojnica was not spared. “People started by fixing up houses that had been destroyed, and then we just kept working together, focusing on environmental matters,” Davor told me. “We realized that the cause of the flooding was our relationship with nature. For example, cutting down the forests is an attack on nature, and our forestry companies do not manage that well.”
The territory uphill from Maglaj, immediately across the entity boundary, contains the mineral deposits that are attractive to international mining companies. The hills and rivers of that part of Ozren, with peaks nearly 1,000 meters in height, are thus under grave threat. Davor’s Fojnica association, together with other environmental activists throughout Bosnia, have taken a strong interest in helping to defend Ozren.
As in other places under threat, biologists have spent time investigating the plants and animals of Ozren. Davor told me,
With the biodiversity studies that we have been doing for the last three years, we are helping the Serb NGOs document endemic plants and species that need to be protected. In this way, when we document the “zero state” of nature, we are documenting endemic species. We are trying to develop documentation to file an official request with the RS government to declare parts of Ozren Mountain, most of the area that is located in the RS, a nature reserve. We are trying to turn Ozren into a meeting point for people from Doboj, Maglaj, Žepče, and other towns from both entities. In this way we are helping Serbs to protect their land.
People describe the geography of Ozren in different ways, calling it a “mountain,” when it is, more accurately, a region with peaks and flat areas as well. The Serb part of the population has a deep history in the area going back to medieval times. Fighting raged there during the 1990s war.
As he came of age for military conscription during the 1990s war, Denis participated in the defense of his town as part of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine). As the three of us sat in a local restaurant for lunch, Denis pointed through a window and showed me the apartment he had lived in during the war, then pointing out various hills above the town, explaining which side had held each location. “They were shooting and bombing us from over there,” he said.
“The war was fierce here around Maglaj,” Denis told me.
This was a key strategic point, under constant shelling. It lasted four years, with ongoing military operations for territorial control. My mother and my ten-year-old sister spent the entire war hiding in the basement. We had no electricity or running water for four years. I was 16 at the time.
There were snipers 400 meters from there, aiming directly at my apartment and the entrance to my building. Inside, I moved carefully, staying below the window openings. I even placed my bed beneath the window so that stray bullets from the front line wouldn’t kill me in my sleep. In the mornings, I would count the bullet holes in the wardrobe on the opposite wall.
Whenever I needed to go out, I had to avoid intense shooting by jumping from the balcony of my ground-floor apartment, pressing myself against the wall, and then moving along that wall until I reached a safe spot at the end of the building.
Denis told me that he had learned to distinguish each bomb or missile by its sound, which also told him just how many seconds he and his comrades had to escape. He commented, “I must have carried dozens of dead and wounded people out of the streets in those months.”
Meanwhile, Davor had fought with the Bosnian Croat army (the Hrvatsko Vijeće Obrane—Croat Defense Council). Denis explained to me,
Davor is a Maglaj Croat, and I am a Bosniak. Davor was in the HVO, I was in the Bosnian army. There were times when we were on opposite sides in the war. Our two brigades were in alliance against the Serbs at the beginning of the war. Then when fighting broke out between Croats and Bosniaks in Herzegovina, that affected our operations here as well.
At the war’s end, the Croat- and Bosniak-run Federation controlled about two-thirds of Ozren. Today, Denis and Davor organize together with the Serbs whom they had fought.
The two activists drove me up into the hills of Ozren, ultimately taking me to a visitor center to stay the night. As we hit the highway they pointed out a couple of huge scars in the hillsides, where excavators had taken out rocks to use in highway construction. According to Davor, local Serb residents in nearby villages blocked the road last year in protest against the mining operations. The company responsible was owned by someone connected to the ruling political elites. Heavy trucks, loaded with stones, were damaging their roads and homes, and endangering the children as they walked to school. In response to the protest, the Republika Srpska authorities sent inspectors to examine the quarries. Their report asserted that “all was in good shape.”
Worry about landslides is justifiable, especially after the flooding in early October of 2024. Rushing waters above the hamlet of Donja Jablanica had dislodged mud and stones from a neglected quarry, which came crashing down on the village and killed 19 people. Davor told me that there are more than 200 quarries in the Federation alone.
In the spring of 2023, the Republika Srpska Ministry of Energy and Mining granted the Australian-owned Lykos Metals Company permission to explore on Mt. Ozren for zinc, nickel, copper, cobalt, and other minerals. Nickel, copper, and cobalt are among the 17 minerals that the European Union’s Critical Raw Materials Act lists as being strategically important.
However, numerous studies have shown that nickel mining is a hazardous undertaking that pollutes both the groundwater, the soil, and the surrounding air. Davor told me that the biggest nickel deposits are in the RS-controlled part of Ozren. “Nickel is one of the most cancerogenic elements,” he told me. “The dust from an open-pit nickel mine gets spread by the wind in a radius of 100 to 150 kilometers. Maglaj, Gračanica, Lukavac, Tuzla, and other cities would all be jeopardized by the mine.”
On the way to my lodgings we stopped at the historic Sveti Nikola Orthodox monastery, where we met local activist Zoran Poljašević. The monastery’s history goes back to the medieval period, and it was restored in the mid-16th century. During the Ottoman period, the occupiers had not allowed the construction of a bell tower; the zvonik was created when the Austro-Hungarians took over the territory.
We—a Bosnian Croat, a Bosniak, a Serb, and an American—strolled around the well-kept monastery grounds. Soon we met Abbot Gavrilo, a strong presence in the anti-mining movement. The monastery is known to be near one of the largest deposits of nickel in the area. Gavrilo has expressed determination in the face of the mining threat, saying that if mineral exploration goes ahead in the area, the monastery may even be forced to move.
Many times in the course of my visits around Bosnia-Herzegovina, I experienced a sense of militancy among activists when they expressed determination to resist the onslaught against the environment. Some people are naturally combative, but most of the activists are driven to militancy by the pressure of the destruction that they see. Davor is one of those.
I asked Davor if he felt that there is a substantial movement of active people who are prepared to protect Bosnia’s land. He answered, “Yes, there are not only activists, but also residents. We hope that any time machinery comes, a thousand people will be ready to mobilize and set up roadblocks.” I asked if resistance had come to this point yet on Ozren. He answered, “Machines have not come yet. We hope that they will not come at all.” But, he answered calmly, “In case they try to go there, we will stop them.”
Gostilj: There are people in this world who cannot be bought
I spent the night near Donja Paklenica at Naša Maša, a visitor center offering accommodations and a restaurant, designed for both domestic and international tourists and local vacationers. While the visitor center is a lovely place to relax, have a meal, and enjoy the natural setting, a network of activists often converges on the park. Denis had even brought fellow veterans from the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina there. Davor told me that the center was a good place for environmental campaigning among people of all ethnicities.
In the morning, I walked up a steep hill behind the residential complex. From there, one could see Ozren in every direction, viewing its idyllic farmlands and its Vermontish hills covered with green forests. Then, Zoran Poljašević picked me up and we drove to the protected mountain called Gostilj, 733 meters in height. It was not the highest summit on Ozren, but it had the best view.
We walked up the easy grade, passing through alpine forest to a clear area. Along the way, Zoran pointed out a variety of plants and trees such as fir, spruce, and pine. He demonstrated to me the difference between the White Pine and the Black Pine. Zoran told me that the municipal spatial plan for Ozren called for it to be a protected nature reserve: “Nearly one hundred square kilometers should be protected, or at least eighty.” At present, only the very top of Gostilj is designated as a national park.
Zoran reminded me, as many other environmentalists had done, that only around three percent of Bosnia’s territory is under official protection. Recalling that about 60% of Ozren lies in the Federation, he said, “Our wish and our goal is that part of Ozren in the Federation also be protected—the whole area, not half of it. Not half a river, or half a field. It is one entire, huge ecosystem. This environment should not be divided by entity; it should be under the state authority.” We talked all the way to the top of the hill, with Zoran telling me about his life and his community’s struggle to remain safe from the dangers of mining. Along the way we passed signs that read, “You’re selling land, but no one asked us,” “We do not want a mine,” and “Ozren is sacred land.”
We arrived at an area of fields above the tree line, and Zoran showed me a local plant, the Iva Grass. He told me that the herb is considered sacred, and that it is used for cleansing of the body and as a cure for many different ills. The people of Ozren pick the plant on one day a year; that special day is celebrated with traditional dancing and singing.
From the top of Gostilj we saw Doboj to the west, Gračanica to the east, and below us to the north stood the village of Boljanić, Zoran’s home. We also saw Bosniak-populated villages further to the north, just across the boundary between the Republika Srpska and the Federation. Zoran started discussing relations between Serbs and Bosniaks:
We were divided before the war. Muslims lived on that side of the river, and Serbs on this side. But we had good relations. We worked over there, and they worked over here. We associated with each other, and everything was okay. However, mixed marriages were a rare thing. That’s because of religion, it is clear. Now, plenty of our people work in the Federation. When I go shopping, sometimes I go to Gračanica. They have the biggest supermarkets. Everything functions normally. But the leaders raise tensions. Our leaders support division and disunity. It is easy to manipulate people when they are disunited. The politicians’ biggest fear is that these three peoples unite. The best thing would be for us to decide on matters of our environment and other aspects of governance together, but it is difficult. It is my hope that my generation, and those younger than us, will overcome our differences.
Leaving Gostilj, we drove along rudimentary, curved roads between steep, forested hills. We stopped at a spot where there were some ancient, pre-Ottoman stećaks, tombstones the size of a compact car. Thousands of these monuments are found throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina. Zoran noted that people had taken away some of them for use as building materials. One of the stećaks we were looking at was leaning over to one side; Zoran told me that, according to popular belief, a tilted stećak leans in the direction of the home of the deceased.
Moving along, we stopped at a forested stretch in a low area between the hills. The river Prenja was rippling down through the woods, joined by a couple of tributary streams. Zoran, only six years old when the war broke out, told me that as a child, he had come with his family to this picnic spot. And during the war, they took shelter there because the surrounding hills protected the place from bombardment. As we were touring, Zoran mentioned that he had an emergency meeting with fellow activists from the town of Sočkovac at 7:00 p.m. He had received news from one of his colleagues who told him that the local police had called him to the station for questioning. This was not particularly surprising, as the police frown upon the protests of the activists.
Zoran is an environmental engineer; before there was talk of Lykos prospecting on Ozren, he had already succeeded in fighting off a direct environmental threat to his hometown of Boljanić. It was for this reason that activists from the nearby town of Sočkovac called him for assistance when, in 2021, they learned about the threat of mining by Lykos.
In 2016 in Boljanić, as Zoran recounted, an investor was preparing to open a factory to recycle tires via pyrolysis. This high-temperature process separates the components of tires into steel wire, fuel oil, and other byproducts. It is not in wide use because of carcinogenic emissions—and Zoran and his neighbors did not want to be subjected to this pollution in their comfortable town. They organized, put up a sustained resistance, and in the end the investor gave up. Instead of the tire recycling factory, he established a machine shop that is still in operation today.
In a comment on social media where Zoran recalled this history, he compared the attempt to operate a pyrolysis plant in Boljanić to similar incidents in “the poorest African and Asian countries, places without rule of law, with extremely high corruption. This is similar to the situation with mining and processing of cancerogenic substances… in the last 10 to 15 years they have been shoving the dirtiest projects to our region, in every possible way.”
Zoran assessed the legal situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina bitterly, saying,
We have a highly developed set of laws, but our judiciary is in complete chaos. Today there is no rule of law; if there were, everything would turn around. In fact we are a protectorate, under the influence of Europe.
And what does Europe get from this? It gets a work force. You know that people are fleeing from here. That suits Europe. That is one thing, and another thing is that it leaves an empty space here, and the companies can come here and take out minerals that much more easily.
Zoran continued with a wry comment about international tensions between the East and West:
They say of us that we’re under Russian influence. What Russian influence? There is very little Russian influence here; what can the Russians do here? Nothing. To say that Russia has some influence, that they are blocking our way to the EU, that is not the case. Part of the fault is here, with the powers in the Republika Srpska that have created a kind of feudal aristocracy. President Dodik is preparing his son to take over. That is terrible; it has nothing to do with democracy.
The activists of Sočkovac reported to Zoran that in 2021, “investors were coming to our door, wanting to drill. They did not say directly what they were looking for; there were only rumors.” Zoran noted that the investors started talking about gold, because “people accept that more easily; they think they will get rich. But excavating for gold is not less dangerous than for nickel, which, as it turned out, was what Lykos was mainly looking for.”
The head of Lykos was Milan Bošnjaković. Bošnjaković had previously directed Adriatic Metals, a British company that had opened a notoriously destructive mine near the central Bosnian town of Vareš. He was a Bosnian Serb who lived through the war in Tuzla, and ended up in Australia. “He showed up here and said that he wanted to prepare to do some exploratory drilling. People called around, asking each other what they should do to prevent the damage. That is when they called me, as someone who is trained in that field, and who knows how much a mine would endanger our health.”
Zoran threw himself into a campaign of resistance against prospecting by Lykos. He and the Sočkovac association, now called Ozrenski Studenac (Ozren Springs), found that Lykos had violated the requirement to obtain written permission from a landowner before drilling. They also learned that drilling of rocks produces toxic dust that can spread in a radius of half a kilometer, and is thus prohibited in any settled area. The activists wrote letters and filed complaints in Doboj, the administrative center of this part of the entity. Zoran recounted that Mr. Bošnjaković “gave an interview on TV, and he said that it is not true that the mining is dangerous. A thousand people saw this, and that compromised him completely. We saw that he is a manipulator and a liar.”
In early 2022, officials from Lykos arrived at Ozren for a public presentation, with the intention to promote their plans to explore for minerals on the mountain. Some 500 activists and local residents showed up in protest. They disrupted the meeting by blowing on whistles, and held a banner that announced, “The plan for Ozren designates it as a nature reserve.” This refers to the prostorni plan, the regional spatial plan that called for the preservation of the green-forested hills of the mountain, the clear streams, and the fresh air of the small towns and villages that populate the place. Protestors also held a banner that read, “Leave while we are still polite.”
There followed a series of four public gatherings organized by Ozrenski Studenac. The organization received support and solidarity from both sides of the entity boundary. The Fojnica association participated, as did the prominent activist Hajrija Čobo from Kakanj. The broad network of environmental organizations called Eko BiH helped as well. The gatherings were a strong expression of community opposition to mining.
There was ongoing backlash: the Republika Srpska Parliament had passed a law overriding local consultation regarding mining. This law even allowed the Ministry of Energy and Mining to ignore the sentiments of a municipality’s mayor, if it was deemed necessary. And soon, Zoran Poljašević was fired from his employment. Not long after this, Lykos attempted to co-opt his activism by hiring him, but he declined the offer.
Just before my visit, Zoran, together with an activist from the Banja Luka-based Center for the Environment, had traveled to Brussels to give a talk before the Parliament of the European Union. The European Environmental Bureau and the Heinrich Böll Foundation organized a panel discussion including activists from Serbia as well. Zoran and his colleague Vladimir Topić, from the Banja Luka–based Center for the Environment, acquainted EU Parliament members with the dangers facing ordinary people throughout Bosnia. Zoran focused on the Ozren region and the struggle of his community to protect their environment against “an invasion of geological investors.” Zoran told me that some figures with a shady social media presence have slandered him for his advocacy, saying that he “works against the Serb people,” or that he “collaborates with Muslims,” as if that is a negative thing.
A surprise “meeting” at Sočkovac
As we were talking and touring, the hour of Zoran’s emergency meeting approached, and he invited me to come along. We arrived at the Sočkovac mjesna zajednica, the modest local community administrative center that doubled as a meeting room for Ozrenski Studenac. As soon as we arrived, it became obvious that the story of a police “conversation” had been a ruse. Zoran’s colleagues had organized the meeting to honor him for representing their cause before the European Parliament. There were six men present from the association. In a touching reception, everyone shook hands with Zoran, and they presented him with a large wristwatch as a gift.
The reception was complete with customary Serbian liquid hospitality: rakija, a hard brandy, in this case jabukovača, distilled from the juice of apples. To fill out the repast, one colleague grilled and served several kinds of meat—more than the entire group could have consumed in several meals.
I noted that there were no women involved in this gathering. One of the members said that the women do not come to the meetings, but they support the resistance and come out en masse for protests and other actions. Later, I came in contact with other organizations where the opposite was true, and women were the lead organizers.
A television screen mounted on the wall was showing footage of Zoran’s presentation in Brussels. There were also clips of the rustic local folk songs, performed with Bosnian saz and violin. Amidst the eating and casual YouTube watching, there was relaxed conversation about the association’s work and goals. Zoran spoke of the mining company, saying, “Either we will go to jail, or we will drive them out of our country.” A colleague responded, “As long as they are non-violent with us, we will be non-violent with them.”
Among this group of Serb activists, I sensed no animosity toward other Bosnian ethnicities and indeed, as I have mentioned, there is mutual support flowing in all directions for each other’s environmental campaigns. The wounds of the war and the burdens of history are still there, spiritually and literally. One of the friendly men at the reception had lost a leg during the war, and another had been wounded in the hand. But guided by the fact that all decent people of Bosnia-Herzegovina have a common adversary, these men were focusing on the present struggle and looking forward to continued resistance.
The experience reminded me of a time, in 1999, when I visited a group of refugee return activists in nearby Doboj. They were members of a nationwide organization, the Coalition for Return. One of them, Aleksandar Šakota, showed me around the town and took me up a hill to an Ottoman-era fortress. From there, he pointed out the former front line, and said, “That is where we were fighting against the Muslim forces.”
I asked, “Isn’t it strange that you are helping your former enemies to come back home to Doboj?” He said, “No, I want my old friends to return. We visit each other now; I want them to come back, and they want to come back. The problem is with those people who stayed in the city here during the war, abusing citizens.”
I see possibilities for a movement that outlives the postwar, victimized frame of mind and moves away from the anger, the fear, and the hatred. The ability to overcome past injuries and collaborate with erstwhile foes varies from place to place, from time to time. But the melting away of destructive boundaries is visible enough to give one hope.
Postscript: A tentative victory
In early May of this year, the city of Doboj surprised activists with a turnaround in its policy towards environmental preservation on Mt. Ozren. Two years earlier, the City Assembly had granted Lykos permission to conduct mineral explorations on the part of Ozren that falls within Doboj’s boundaries. However, now the City Assembly has unanimously declared Ozren a “protected area,” allowing only “sustainable use” of natural resources. Clarification of this wording remains to be seen, and the category of “protection with sustainable use” is by far not the strictest available level of environmental defense that falls short of the stipulation for a nature reserve as mentioned in the entity’s spatial plan. But activists are hopeful that the decision represents a new direction for the defense of Mt. Ozren. They are calling on Doboj to cancel the two-year-old authorization of Lykos’s prospecting activities.