Behind an unmarked white door on a graffitied backstreet in Sarajevo sits the registered office of AAFS Infrastructure and Energy, a company that is reportedly on the verge of securing contracts worth more than one billion dollars. The concession in question would allow AAFS to build and operate a pipeline carrying liquefied natural gas shipped from the United States across the Balkans, displacing supplies that have historically been sourced from Russia. Senior Bosnian officials, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of ongoing negotiations, have described the project as potentially the most consequential piece of infrastructure their country has ever undertaken. What AAFS appears to lack in relevant experience, it may compensate for in political proximity to the Trump administration.

Among its representatives are a Washington attorney who has acted for the Trump family in election-related litigation, and the brother of a former national security adviser to the president — both of whom were involved in efforts to contest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. A Guardian investigation drawing on leaked documents, corporate filings, and interviews with current and former officials on both sides of the Atlantic has sought to examine how the company came to occupy such a prominent position in a geopolitically sensitive energy dispute. The broader stakes extend well beyond questions of commercial enrichment. Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a fragile state, still shaped by the 1995 peace agreement that ended a war in which an estimated 100,000 people were killed, among them Bosniak civilians massacred by Serb paramilitary forces.

Ethnic political rivalries have never fully subsided, and observers warn that heavy-handed external pressure could destabilise arrangements that have held for a generation.