The Balkan War

I've struggled with how to start this post, as the war in Bosnia is incredibly complicated and, for me at least, difficult to come to terms with.  I attended university in Scotland with an amazing group of people who had their lives torn apart by the war.  And it made me see the conflict differently.  It wasn't Serbs vs Croats.  It was war-mongerers who made people choose sides.  I have Serb friends who were as badly affected by the war as my Croat friends were.  Everyone found themselves caught in the middle.  If you were able to get out, as many of my friends did, you often had to leave without your parents and take up exile in another country until the conflict was over.  So, to summarize the conflict is very difficult. 

Basically, the Balkan countries are composed of three populations: Croats (who happen to be primarily Catholic), Serbs (primarily Eastern Orthodox), and Bosniaks (Muslim, holdovers from the time when the Ottoman empire ruled the Balkan area).  The conflict, however, has not been a religious one, but rather a struggle for power and land.

The Bosnian war of 91-95 was primarily between the Serbs and the Croats, but the Bosniaks got caught in the middle as well.  And to be clear, it wasn't really 'between the Croats and the Serbs'- it was the brainchild of one maniac (Slobodan Milosevic) and his cronies who were able to work people up into a ferver.  But many Serbs under Milosovec were actually forced to fight, so it isn't entirely accurate to call the war a Serb-Croat war.    And really, it started much earlier. 

The Beginnings of Yugoslavia...

Basically (simplified version), after WWI, the European map was redrawn and the small Balkan nations knew they would be absorbed into other non-Slavic nations unless they united, so they formed a single state "Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes" later known as Yugoslavia.  But of course within this nation of Yugoslavia there was jealousy and struggles for power.  And the Serbs were more numerous than the Croats so this led to stress, eventually leading to the shooting (during a parliament session in 1928) of the nationalistic Croatian politician Stjepan Radic (statues to him can be seen throughout Croatia).  After this, the Serbian King abolished parliament and became dictator of Yugoslavia.  Six years later, this king was shot by Croatian separatists as well.  

WWII

Then we come up to WWII.  Many Croatian nationalists saw a way out of Yugoslavia by siding with the obvious winners of a looming conflict: the Nazis.  Unfortunately, the Nazi Ustase's puppet party led a cruel extermination campaign in Croatia, murdering hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma.  And then at the end of WWII, the rest of Eastern Europe was 'liberated' by the Soviets, Yugoslavs retained their independence, pushed out the Nazis and formed their own communist government under the one man who could hold Yugoslavia together: Joseph Tito.

Tito's Yugoslavia

Tito had a compelling vision for Southern Slav unity within Yugoslavia.  And for the most part, it was true.  Tito's own past shows how he was able to hold together the various identities under one (socialist)  nation.  He had a Slovene for a mother, a Croat for a father, a Serb for a wife, and a home in Belgrade.  True, he was ruthless.  But, he also let each republic manage their own affairs.  Nationalism was discouraged and the country was able to avoid a boiling-over of nationalistic feelings under his brand of communism, which was separate from Russia.  Yugoslavia was the most free of the communist states.  Large industry was nationalized, but Tito allowed small businesses & a market economy.  Tourists were welcome and Slavs were allowed to travel.  However...

Things fall apart after Tito's death....

With Tito's death in 1980, things began to unravel.  It began in Kosovo, with squabbles between the Serb minority and the ethnic-Albanian majority.  The Serbs consider Kosovo the cradle of their civilization, the site of their most important monasteries and historic sites, and a site they lost to the Ottoman invaders.  Slobodan Milosevic saw how this conflict could be used to his (and Serbia's) advantage and proclaimed Kosovo part of a greater Serbia.  This made the other nations within Yugoslavia afraid that Milosevic would 'claim' them as well and it started a chain of secessions from the union: Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina & Croatia all fought for independence against the Yugoslavian army (previously THEIR army).  Slovenia only fought for 10 days and was granted freedom.  Croatia and BiH did not gain their freedom until the end of the war in 1995.  The main battle for land centered around the capital of Sarajevo, but most of Bosnia's land seems to show the remains of this brutal war.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina:

Bosnia had it bad, mostly because of its ethnic diversity.  It's population was primarily Muslim Bosniaks, but also with large numbers of Serbs and Croats.  Sarajevo prided itself on being a Western city where ethnicity and religion did not matter.  Milosevic made it matter when he encouraged Bosnian Serbs to secede and proclaim their own state within BiH.  This started a chain of really horrific warfare between all three groups and mixed families were forced to choose sides.  I've heard numerous stories of families with a Serb mother and a Croat father where the kids chose (or were forced) to fight for different sides under the threat of their parents or grandparents being killed.  And in the beautiful Sarajevo, a valley city surrounded by mountains, the Serbs took possession of the hillsides and started a sniper campaign.  If you were seen on the streets of the non-Serb territory of Sarajevo you were shot, regardless of who you were.  Their goal was to isolate the city, promote fear and to 'claim' it is as Serbia's.  Unfortunately, war prospectors encouraged a brutal campaign as they figured out how to extort money and good from the trapped citizens.  They cut off power and water to the city and for FOUR years the citizens lived in fear and waited for help from outside.  NATO was not able to help as they were not allowed to 'intervene'. 

Within Sarajevo, morters and bullets rained down for four years.  It is estimated that nearly 12,000 civilians were killed or went missing in the city, including over 1,500 children. An additional 56,000 people were wounded, including nearly 15,000 children. The 1991 census indicates that before the siege the city and its surrounding areas had a population of 525,980. There are estimates that prior to the siege the population in the city proper was 435,000. The current estimates of the number of persons living in Sarajevo range from between 300,000 to 380,000^.

And now....

Finally in 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords carefully divided Bosnia and Herzegovina among the different ethnicities.  There is a Serb part of Bosnia, a Bosniak and Croat part of Bosnia, and another district which covers a mix of ethnicities.  In the Republika Srpska you see Serbian flags and roadsigns written in Cyrillic script.  In the other district you see Bosnian flags and road signs with the Serbian script spray-painted out.  The country is still beautiful and the people are friendly and you feel safe.  But the future is unclear, as the tension between the districts is palpable.

Sarajevens are calling these morter blasts 'roses' and filling them with a red fill.  On the sidewalks it is disconcerting to walk on them, and especially disconcerting to hear them referred to as Serb atrocities.  Technically true, but these roses being filled with red fill also serves as a reminder and an encouragement towards continued ethnic tension.

Walking into the home that during the siege functioned as the end point of the Croatian-built tunnel into UN-held territory.  It was this tunnel that allowed the city to stand up to the assault from the hills, and get food, people and weapons in and out of the city.
The tunnel was 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) in height and about 1m in width, and ran for approximately 960 metres (3,150 ft) in length. During the time it was used, it is estimated that 20 million tons of food entered the city, and 1 million people passed in and out of it.

In the tunnel.

The City War Museum:

This museum, previously a city Sarajevo museum, now holds remembrances of the siege.  The exterior of the building is pock-marked with bullets and mortar holes, and the inside is filled with remembrances of the siege.  We were the only ones in the museum.  People who lived through the siege don't want to be reminded of it.  Tourists are interested, but there aren't many tourists anymore...

There was a very interesting assortment of home-made stoves.  During the siege, people had to be creative.  With no electricity, stoves were created out of coffee cans and discarded metal.

The siege meant that people had to stay away from their windows, if they looked out towards the hills.  And to conserve heat, many families moved into the kitchens and covered the windows.  This room showed how a family would have survived the 4 years of being cut off.

The Children's Memorial of Sarajevo:

This memorial shows two ice-green forms appearing to embrace, yet never actually touching.  It is embedded into concrete that shows the outlines of footprints.  Near the memorial are the 1,500 names of kids who lost their lives during the siege, most from starvation or snipers.