The War in Yugoslavia

I have been wanting to go to Sarajevo since the war in 1992. I can also clearly remember the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo and they were the games where I first really got interested in the Olympics. I can’t really explain why I’ve wanted to see the place but the war occurred when I was around 22-years-old and it outraged me then just like it still outrages me today. At the time in '93 I did have a desire to go and do something after I got out of college. I just did not know exactly what and I am sure my parents are quite happy that I did not understand how others had gone over as freelance journalists. Having just graduated and a keen interest in reporting I may have tried it had I understood how others were making their way over.

The city has always been in the back of my mind over the years and while the passion of the time may have faded some, my interest in the city and area never really has gone away. So when I decided to take this trip one of the places I guaranteed myself I would go was Sarajevo and I am glad that I came.

 

Seeing the area first hand just reinforces my disgust for the Bosnian Serb  soldiers who simply killed and destroyed everything they came across. From what I have seen and heard, it was as horrible as reported and probably even worse. There is no real justification for the way the acted during the war and it even makes less sense when you consider that they wanted Bosnia and prized the city for a “greater Serbia” and eventually annex into Serbia itself. But they went about it in a way similar to Sherman’s march to the sea through South Carolina, in that they killed and terrorized everybody and left almost nothing standing. But I don’t think even Sherman’s march through South Carolina was as brutal and senseless as what the Bosnian Serbs did to the local population. It is even worse when you consider that they were friends and neighbors of the people they killed only a year before the war. Sherman was not friends with the people whose homes he burned and he did not indiscriminately kill men, women and children. Some of my southern friends may take issue with that but this is about Bosnia, not Sherman.

Building in the Old Town section of Sarajevo. It is still possible to find buildings like this in the main business district.

Bosnia has never fully recovered from the war and is behind the other countries in the region. Croatia has done a good job fixing the damage and moving on but their war only lasted for around 1 year before they pushed the Serbs out, probably mostly into Bosnia. My guide, Samer, told me that Bosnia used to be the industrial capital of the former Yugoslavia and they made furniture, cars, airplanes, and all sorts of things here before the war. But all of that collapsed and was destroyed by the war and even today they have no real industry. There are also large areas of the country that are largely empty of people, either because they were either driven or killed off or that any opportunities there have been completely destroyed. The north is particularly this way and from what Samer told me, Croatia has similar issues in the northern part of the country.

Mostar about a year after the war ended.

The area is also largely forgotten by the world community today as there are new wars to deal with, so there is no more money to continue reconstruction. In Sarajevo and Mostar, just about every building was damaged and the money to repair them has often come from outside the country. For example Qatar built a big library for Sarajevo in the Old Town. For that matter all of the Trams in Sarajevo were destroyed and what you see today were donated by other cities from their old and rusting trains.

 

The historical buildings need to be rebuilt in the same way as before the war, which is not cheap, and the money to do this is largely gone so the buildings still damaged stay that way. Also once you get out of the old parts of the city the damage is even more prevalent. Sarajevo is in better shape than other communities, for example Mostar still has bombed out buildings mixed in with the repaired ones at a rate greater than Sarajevo. But even Mostar is a big city and the smaller ones in the country sometimes sit largely abandoned.

The peace agreement in Bosnia left in place that anybody could return indefinitely to their former property. This is good but at the same time creates other problems as there is property where the residents are gone so it sits abandoned and bombed out indefinitely too.

 

The grave yards are all full here too with new white grave markers packed in. While stuck in the traffic jam while trying to exit Sarajevo one of the large cemeteries was off to my right. I was struck by just how many gleaming white headstones covered the hillside, compared to the old stones, and how tightly packed in they were. There are ever present reminders of the war that you can’t escape.

Pre and post war sections of one cemetery in Sarajevo

The war in Bosnia was particularly brutal and it is hard for me to comprehend how a population could turn on itself so quickly and brutally. It is very reminiscent of how the Nazi’s and Germans turned on the Jewish population in the 1930’s and how it extended beyond just the politicians but was tolerated and participated in by the community as a whole. The violence here was particularly brutal and I would say was full of personal vendetta. It was not simply a war with killing, it was ethnic cleansing at its worst and has left indelible scars on both the landscape and the people that will likely take another generation to fully heal.

The people I have met here don’t really talk much about the war, if anything I get the impression that everybody just wants to forget. For example the 50 something guy I met one night at a restaurant that talked about how he lived in L.A. for 10 years, starting in 1993, but not explaining why he moved there. He returned to Sarajevo for “sentimental reasons.” Also from what Samer told me about how the people of Sarajevo would not go up into the forests around the city until very recently out of the memory of what the Bosnian Serbs did up there.

Not that I can blame them, it is almost like post traumatic syndrome where people just want to black it all out, not so easy to do when you have buildings with bullet holes or totally bombed out and still have land mine warning signs.

I have also notices that I don’t really see many locals my own age here, everybody seems to be 35 or younger or 55 and older. In that respect it seems almost that an entire generation of Bosnia has either been killed or moved away and never returned. Gen X here does not really exist and I suspect that once they left most have never returned. On my way into the city I talked with one guy around my age who now lives in Zurich but “is a Bosnian at heart”. He did not tell me but I pieced together that he left Sarajevo during the war, I’m sure as a refugee in his 20's. He does business in Sarajevo but does not live there any more.

But as sad as some things are, there are other things that are hopeful too. For instance there seems to be a large population 35 and under that were children at the time of the war or born afterwards. In fact I would say there are a lot of people here in their 20’s, possibly Bosnia’s own Baby Boomer generation. There also has been a lot of reconstruction here. When you see pictures of Sarajevo or Mostar in 1995, everything had been devastated and it is amazing to see how much change has occurred in 20 years. While there are still a lot of reminders, there has been a lot of reconstruction and new construction as well. Buildings still show the scars but they are back in use for the most part, amazing given the condition most were in. The tourist population has also slowly started to increase too as Bosnia slowly gets back onto the radar of Europeans. However, as Samer told me, there is still the concern of safety in the region that has been Green Visions biggest challenge in getting people to come in to visit.

I have also heard stories about Bosnian Serbs who would not take part in all the killing that occurred and actually fought back alongside the Bosnians to try and repel them. This must have put a big price on their heads and I am sure the Bosnian Serbs looked on them as traitors. This is not something I really knew about and it is good to hear that even in the darkest times some people do the right thing in the face of it all.

What I have found here is a city and nation that is slowly on the mend. There are still deep scars that may never heal as long as there are people who were alive at the same time, but there is also a new generation of Bosnians who have little or no recollection of the war and things are moving forward giving hope for the future.

The people of Sarajevo also seem to be slowly reclaiming their city and taking back the places that they once enjoyed before the war but have stayed away from since.

I leave with some mixed feelings. I still have a resentment for Bosnian Serbs and the Serb government and the horrendous things they did here. Watching video of the war at the museums is horrifying and stirs old feelings. At the same time I have less of a resentment to Bosnian Serbs and have to remember to look at them as individuals and not stereotype them all. How to understand the roots of something like this are important to ensure it does not repeat itself in the future but I also recognize that people have been trying to understand this kind of thing since WWII and likely long before that. The war seemed to be based in nationalistic ambitions and petty grievances that the conflict allowed individuals to take advantage of.

All of the mosques were destroyed but have since been rebuilt. The destruction was indiscriminant and all the Christian and Jewish churches were targeted and destroyed too.

I can't find any before pictures but the Gazi Husrev Beg's Mosque in Old Town was heavily damaged during the war but has been fully rebuilt today.

I don’t really understand it any better than before but recognize that not everybody acts this way and that given the right set of circumstances, the United States would not be above this. I would like to think that there is no way this could happen in America but it does seem that this type of thing has a habit of repeating itself and that the people who perpetrate this are not so easy to identify as criminals but are normal people who get caught up in the conflict and loose themselves and their sense of right and wrong. Perhaps this can help explain why when there is rioting in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, South Carolina, and so on, there is this group think that happens and people who would never riot get caught up in everything. 

Before the war here everybody lived together very well and turned on themselves overnight. The same can probably be said about Germans during WWII and one can possibly say the same about the average Japanese too. I am not so sure that Americans are that different and it seems that the right set of circumstances can set off the worst in humanity. Something to remember as we practice or politics of discourse with each other.

It is hard to see in the photo but Sarajevo from a distance looks like most any other city today, you don't see the scars until you get up close.