Balkan armies promise greater co-operation in catastrophes

Members of the BiH military and civil defence assist the civilian population during the catastrophic floods last May. [Bedrana Kaletovic/SETimes]

Balkan armies promise greater co-operation in catastrophes

Nine Balkan militaries agree to jointly assist the civilian population in times of disasters.

In the wake of damaging flooding in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) this year, military leaders of nine countries in southeast Europe are promising to work together to co-ordinate emergency response to future natural disasters.

Military representatives from Albania, BiH, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Turkey met last month at the B9 forum in Sarajevo. The B9 forum is a platform that the regional countries formed in 2007 to advance military co-operation.

The participants decided to meet at least once a year and tasked the forum's co-ordination group to determine the specific venues of co-operation and anticipated resources.

"This approach makes building partnerships and harmonising standard operating procedures. It also makes co-operation networks functional," said Metodi Hadzijanev, a professor at the Military Academy in Skopje, told SETimes.

"It became clear that natural disasters create serious security issues that used to be overlooked in the past. The fact that one country can hardly address such security challenges also necessitates such co-operation," Hadzijanev said.

Almost all Balkan countries were recently affected by heavy rainfalls, snowfalls, floods and fires, without a single country having the capacity to fully respond, said Anto Jelec, chief of the joint staff of the BiH military. "All countries attending the conference expressed willingness to define available resources and capacities to plan to use in shortened procedures in order to assist [other countries] during crisis and...

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