Agrokomerc was a food company headquartered in Velika Kladuša, Bosnia and Herzegovina with operations extending across the entire area of former Yugoslavia. The company became internationally known in the late 1980s due to a corruption scandal known as the Agrokomerc Affair.[1] During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Fikret Abdić, the chief executive officer of the company, used his wealth and political influence to create the state of Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia.
Agrokomerc is located in an area that was put in an economic blockade by the Yugoslav Communist party immediately after World War II. At the time the company was one farm located just over the border in Croatia. In the seventies with its new president Fikret Abdić, Agrokomerc started to grow by making connections with farmers in surrounding areas, building chicken farms and providing jobs for thousands of unemployed people in the region that would have otherwise moved out.
Shortly after, Agrokomerc became the main subject in all aspects of local life. With positive influence on employees and the public, as well as with its own investments, Agrokomerc made this region in one of most advanced regions in Yugoslavia. With its own resources Agrokomerc built roads in the farthest parts of the region, provided water supplies to almost every house in the region, invested in the school system to get high educated employees. By the 1980s the company had millions of chickens, thousands of turkeys, thousands of farmed rabbits, mayonnaise production, liquor production, chicken, turkey and rabbit meat, salami and luncheon production, chocolate production, mushrooms production, and owned cold and dry storage. With over 13,000 employees, its own trucks for distribution of products, a bus service for employees and the public, huge reputation for quality of products all over Europe and further, Agrokomerc was considered to be a successful company.
When the war broke out in the 1990s, Abdić created the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia a de facto independent entity that existed in the northwestern corner of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1993 and 1995. The capital city of Western Bosnia was Velika Kladuša (located in the territory of present day Una-Sana Canton).
According to journalist Anthony Loyd, in 1993, Fikret Abdić decided to carve out a little state for himself and succeeded in recruiting enough followers to make his dreams a reality. Abdić was able to hold power over his mini-state by using cult like propaganda techniques over his followers and Serbian arms and military training. "Talking to his autonomist followers was much the same as speaking with cult converts anywhere in the world: a wooden dead-end dialogue hallmarked by the absence of individual rationale and logic."[2]