Bosnia & Herzegovina
Security & Intelligence Apparatus
The institutional unification of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as a precondition for the country's successful European and Atlantic integration affected the intelligence and security structures. The process which started with the merger of the Bosniak Agency of Investigation and Documentation (AID) and the Croatian National Security Services (SNS) into a Federation Intelligence and Security Service (FOSS), as well as the setting up of an Intelligence Reform Commission to further the establishment of a joint security apparatus on a national level continued in the year 2004 with the formation of a State Intelligence and Security Agency (OSA) which officially took over the duties from former entity intelligence agencies, the federational FOSS and Republika Srbska's Service of State Security (OBS), on June 1st 2004. Thus, for the first time since its constitution as an independent country BiH had a national, as opposed to entity, intelligence agency. A supervisory committee at the BiH State Parliament was tasked with monitoring OSA's activities, including evaluating their lawfulness. Almir Dzuvo was appointed first OSA Director in June 2004.
Another major development in the security sector was the adoption on June 15th 2004 by the State Parliament of the Law on the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), giving SIPA executive authority to investigate serious crimes, including terrorism, organised crime such as trafficking in weapons and narcotics, war crimes, and money laundering. Other functions of SIPA, which is first state-wide policing agency in BiH, include supporting the intelligence work, and protecting VIPs, government members and buildings. SIPA was to comprise 800 employees, hired on a broad ethnic basis.
A controversy over the alleged transfer of intelligence documentation, related to war crimes in committed in the period 1992-1995, from OSA to SIPA sparked a major controversy at the end of June 2004. The idea allegedly originated from Kalman Kocis, the international supervisor for the intelligence system in BiH. The information of such a development stirred the waters in the Hague, with ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte stating that SIPA is widely unreliable since on various occasions it leaked confidential war crimes related information in Bosnian press. However, Bosnian Prime Minister Adnan Terzic dismissed any speculations of transfer of documentation from OSA to SIPA as speculation.
To still further the security sector transformation, the joint military commission of BiH adopted on September 17th 2004 a task force report containing recommendations for the reform of the military-intelligence service in BiH. In compliance with NATO standards, it was proposed that in the course of the year 2005, the service at national level take over all military-intelligence activities from the ethnic entities. The report was the result of the five-month activity of one of the teams of the joint military commission, and, according to one of its co-chairman James Locker, envisaged the establishment of a centre for military-intelligence affairs to hire officers from both entities. The recommendations were to permit the state defence institutions to assume their responsibility in commanding, controlling and supervising all military-intelligence activities in BiH.
In line with the above-mentioned recommendations, in June 2005 Tomislav Limov, chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing the work of the intelligence services, confirmed that BiH would get two new intelligence services: the Counterintelligence Agency and the Military Intelligence Agency. The Counterintelligence Agency was to provide intelligence-related protection to all state institutions, and was supposed to be organised on the same principles that were applied to the organisation of OSA.
To enhance coordination of intelligence, security and police activities on June 15th 2005 fourteen BiH institutions met in Sarajevo to sign an agreement on the issue. The agreement set up a coordination body made up of relevant institutions at state and entity levels. The body was to hold sessions at least once a month, with those sessions being chaired in three-monthly rotation by the director general of the OSA and the director of the SIPA. In the first three months the sessions were chaired by the OSA director general. The newly established body held its first session on July 15th 2005.