Croatia Looks Implicated in Serious Hybrid Warfare Against Bosnia

The location of the weapons cache, according to those involved, would be revealed by the same person who planted it.

This would then justify the previous statements of top Croatian officials such as President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic that Bosnia is a "hotbed of terrorism" and home to at least "10,000 radicalized persons".

On the wings of conspiracy theories originating in 2016 and widely published in the Croatian media, or since the beginning of the disinformation attack labeling the Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims, as linked to terrorism - such as the debunked narrative about terrorist camps - the information published by Zurnal and backed by Minister Mektic points to a carefully planned attempt to delegitimize Bosnia.

This marks the second incident this year related to Croatian representatives in Bosnia. In January, Croatian ambassador Ivan Del Vechio was withdrawn from his post after he attended the celebration of the Day of Republika Srpska, where he witnessed a posthumous decoration for Slavko Lisica, a Bosnian Serb sentenced for war crimes committed during the 1991-1995 war in Croatia.

The Croatian Consulate in Tuzla, meanwhile, has an earlier scandal to its name. In 2012, several employees of this consulate were suspected of selling Croatian documents for between 10,000 and 50,000 euros; those documents were then found in the possession of members of notorious Serbian criminal organizations like the Zemun Clan, among others.

But, let's go back to the incident at hand. Further details are quite sordid: a member of the Salafi community who spoke to Zurnal, known by his initials C.H., stated that members of the Croatian intelligence questioned him on multiple occasions while crossing the border into Croatia.