Fikret Muslimović
Fikret Muslimovic, retired Major General of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), was born on December 9, 1948 in the village of Rasljeva, near Gracanica. He completed elementary school at Bosansko Petrovo Selo, Secondary School of Economics in Doboj, Millitary Academy – Artillery Division in Belgrade, in 1971, then Higher Military-Political Academy, which he completed according to its postgraduate program in 1980, also in Belgrade, as the first in his rank.
While serving in the former Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA), he performed command duties in the artillery units, and later on management duties in the military security of the high command of the YPA units, and therefore he gained significant command and staff experience, especially with regard to integrating security and intelligence into the overall role and tasks of high and their subordinate commands and units. With such experience, in 1991 he was sent to the War School in Belgrade, which was preparing personnel for duties of a general. In September 1991, he left the Yugoslav People’s Army.
He responded to the call from the RB&H Territorial Defense forces, and from April 9, 1992, was assigned to the post of Chief of the Military Security Service of the Territorial Defense of the Republic of B&H, and then to the post of advisor for military issues in the Presidency of the Republic of B&H. In the second half of the war – the defense of B&H against armed aggression, he was the Chief of the Directorate for Morality at the General Headquarters of the Army of B&H and the chief Bosniak representative at the Joint Staff of the Army of B&H and HVO.
Following the signing of the Dayton Agreement, he was tasked, as the Bosniak’s chief representative, with participating in negotiations with the Croat and Serb representatives to define an agreement on military trust-building measures. He was a signatory to the agreement with leading representatives of the VRS and HVO. From the beginning of 1997 until April 2000, he held the high operational-staff position of assistant for preparation of defense to the Secretary of Defense. In the meantime, he launched the journal Defense, initiated and coordinated the work on the development of a student textbook for the subject “Defense” at universities in B&H, in which his co-authored paper on defense and security issues was published. He had a similar role in the development of textbooks for high school students for the subject “Security of a Democratic Society”, which included his co-authored text on the defense and security system.
He retired on April 1, 2000.
From 1994 to 1996 he was a member of the Main Committee of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA). Since the inception of the Council of Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals in late 1992, he has been a member of the Executive Board of that organization.
As a military-political analyst and publicist, he authored the following published books: How They Lied to Us (1993), Defense of the Republic (1995), Aggression (1995), War and Politics (2000) , The Balkans in the Whirlwind of Politics – in Bosnian and English (2001), “Crises and Security in Globalization” (2004), “Arguments and Memories of War” – Book One and Book Two (2006), “Special War ”(2011),“ Endangering and Self-Endangering Muslims”- with Professor Mustafa Spahić (2012),“ Liars and Murderers ”(2013),“ Thinker and Statesman Alija Izetbegović ”in Bosnian and Turkish, with Professor Dr Selmo Cikotic (2016), and “NATO and Security of Europe” with Professor Dr Selmo Cikotic (2018). He is the author of numerous analytical texts published in magazines, daily and weekly newspapers in B&H. He regularly publishes analytical texts in the weekly journal “Stav” and the magazine “Korak” published by the Association for the Protection of the Defense of BiH.