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| Burnt out Minarets and Homes in Jajce |
Investigation
I spent the rest of vacation as you do,
enjoying the beach, relaxing by the pool, visiting Dubrovnik and cursing the
cruise ship crowds. But I did change my
reading. I dropped my science fiction
and instead read The Fall of
Yugoslavia, a fascinating book by Misha Glenny with was a remarkable
even handed look the Yugoslavian wars that followed the break up of the
country, but preceded the Bosnian War.
For more information about the tragic end of the country, I recommend
it. It doesn’t cover the Bosnian war,
but covers the Croatian and Serbian conflict in depth. Those two protagonists, when the war between
them stopped, continued their conflict in Bosnia. The combatants were ill served by their
leaders and lead horribly astray by a propagandist, hateful news source. It will surprise none of my friends that I
thought of them as Fox News, but in reality they were far far worse. They promoted true hatred and fear of the
other side. And since the Croatians and
Serbians got their news exclusively from these sources, they began to believe
the impossible.
Croatians honestly believed Serbians were
killing old people and children indiscriminately. Serbians believed that the old Croatian
Fascist government was again rising.
They felt threatened with their very survival, and so they were vicious
in attack. The end of the Croatian /
Serbian conflict did not end the hate.
Inflamed by misinformation, religious
righteousness and fear, the ethnically Serbian and Croatians in Bosnia turned
on each other and the Muslims. The
Serbians in particular used the land of Bosnia as a continuation of their war
with Croatia.
As a province of Yugoslavia, Bosnia was a
little more than 1/3 Bosniak - Muslim, 1/3 Serbian – Orthodox and a little less
than 1/3 Croatian - Catholic. In the war that followed about 65,000
Bosniaks were killed, more than half of them civilians. About 7,500 Croatians (1/3 civilian) and
25,000 Serbians (1/5 civilians) were killed as well.
Even now you find a surprising amount of
evidence of the war. Not just bombed out
buildings and scrawled road signs. The
Serbian flag flies at the entrance of many of the towns in the Serbian section
of Bosnia Herzegovina (a semi-autonomous area called the Sprska Republic).
Mosques, which were ubiquitous in BiH are still prevalent in the Croat
Muslim Federation area of BiH. But in
the Sprska Republic, the burned and destroyed mosques have not been
rebuilt. It is a little creepy.
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These are stećci, ancient grave markers. This group is just outside of Mostar.
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The
Tug of Bosnia
Leaving Bosnia Herzegovina did not diminish
my interest. I some how felt then, and
still feel now, a deep desire to understand what happened. This isn’t ancient history; it is war and
hatred and war crimes that happened within memory. It happened without any responsible action to
stop it for years. It was made possible
by the apathy of the European Union, the UN, the Americans, the Germans, NATO,
in fact everyone who had the capability to end it, ignored the war and its
effects. Investigating this horrible
inaction did not correlate to the wonderful people I met on that trip. It makes no sense. And so I returned to Bosnia.
In December of 2013 I returned to Bosnia for
a week. I traveled by myself for a week
to visit, to learn to try to understand.
This time I did more preparation.
I read a lot of books. Some were good, and some were drivel. Some of these were recent, others dating from
the time of Austria-Hungary rule (a partial reading list is in the appendix).
What I learned was both heartening and
heartbreaking. Bosnia Herzegovina sits
at the apex of too much history. It is
on the religious fault lines of the Catholic church, the eastern Orthodox
church and the furthest spread of Ottoman Muslim culture. Physically it sits where the Alps fade into
the Balkans and where the steppes of Eastern Europe give way to the Mediterranean
(via the Adriatic). And for centuries
the various people of Bosnia Herzegovina have lived together in a multicultural
society. Those centuries of peace serve
as a model for the future and give one a sense of hope. But all of that history, all of that internal
peace, all the centuries of goodwill was destroyed by a propaganda spewing
media (actually two different ones). So
can it survive? Can it pull itself
together and reaffirm an identity?
The Dayton Peace Accords, pretty much a
dictated peace by Bill Clinton and the Americans, have divided the country into
two administrative sections. The Sprska
Republic managed by the Bosnian Serbs and the Federation of Bosnia managed by
the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims).
There is a rotating presidency, multiple assemblies and a lot of
confusion. There was massive ethnic
cleansing and even more ethnic relocation.
Many cities that were multicultural have lost one or two of the ethnic
groups and sizeable amounts of population.
If they weren’t forced out or killed, then they often fled when cities
changed hands.
But visiting showed that this wasn’t the
entire case. In a few spots, neighbors
are returning. The country is trying to
become one. Bosnia Herzegovina made the
World Cup for 2014, and I found signs of support in every city, regardless of
religion. The team, like the country, is
the true tale of the underdog. The
question is can the country, like the team, thrive.