(Starts here LINK)
My
Introduction
In 2013, friends invited us to a
week with them in Croatia. We were to be
there in May, and I did the basic investigation of surrounding area to scout
for some day trips. It turned out a
quick trip to Mostar was possible. All I
knew about the city was news about the very famous bridge that had been
destroyed in the Bosnian War and it had been rebuilt. But history had been made there and that was
enough to set me of on my way.
And with that deep level of
understanding, we drove to Mostar. The
change from Croatia into Bosnia Herzegovina is rather unremarkable. The border crossings are easy, the landscapes
similar and the people dress and look the same.
Our first sign of a difference was subtle. There was a lot of graffiti on many road signs. Then on every road sign.
Upon investigation, it turns out it wasn’t
general graffiti. The government had
posted signs in both Latin characters and in Cyrillic characters. And the Cyrillic had been spray-painted over
on almost all signs in this part of BiH.
The drive itself was lovely and very Mediterranean, with the occasional
castle or historical city ruins popping up everywhere. Most overlooked, lacking the crowds and
markings I have come to expect from European historical sites.
Arriving in Mostar itself was
breathtaking. The old city, the mosques,
the old bridge (rebuilt) were out of a picture postcard. It was absurdly picturesque, with souvenir
shops, riverside restaurants and craftsman everywhere. It was only after the first breathtaking
moments that you began to notice the anomalies.
A great many buildings were rubble or pot-marked, still standing only by
habit. The old town, which sits astride
the rushing river Neretva, was open and bustling, but a quick glance up showed
the bullet holes on the second and third floors of nearly every building.
With a little investigation I discovered
Mostar’s recent history. In it’s most
simplistic outline, which is all I had time for on that first day trip, during
the Bosnian War the ethnic Serbian forces tried to take the town of
Mostar. Blocked by the ethnic Croat and
Bosniak (Muslim) forces, and then pressured by the UN, they withdrew.
In the absence of the Serbian forces, the
ethnic Croatians turned on the Bosniak Muslims, attempting to drive them out of
the city. The ultimate desire of the
ethnic Croats was to unite within a “Greater Croatia”, and so they killed
thousands of Bosniaks. Mostar, this
beautiful city I was growing enamored with, had then be ethnically
cleansed. And now Croat Bosnians and the
Bosniaks lived in two very different sections of the city.
The story broke my heart. The divisions, such as they are, are almost
entirely religious, albeit longstanding.
Ethnically, these are all (including Serbians) southern Slavic people. Even the name, Yugoslavia, means the nation
of the southern Slavs. The people were
uniformly nice. We spent a lovely time
in the historic Mosque both visiting and speaking with the Imam. Across the river, the old Catholic churches
were almost as welcoming.
I was shocked that a country could be allowed
to stage a civil war in the heart of Europe in the 1990s. European War was history to me, and yet these
people had not only lived through it, but were trying to work to get past
it. And a Religious War was unfathomable
in Europe. I remembered the Northern
Irish terrorist attacks, but they had never escalated into civil war (as it
turns out, I was wrong there too). I
didn’t understand how Catholics, in the 1990s, could turn to a religion to
justify killing others. I was baffled.
Moreover, I spotted something painfully
universal in it. I fear that the United
States (my country) is tearing itself apart over small differences that are
being exploited by hate mongers. And so
I wanted to understand and to learn from Bosnia Herzegovina and Mostar.
Instead, I fell in love with the country.