War in the Balkans

The war in Croatia started in 1991. That means that many of the adults here lived through it. I asked Duje if he remembered the war. He said that Split was hardly affected by the war. They were bombed once. He was 10 years old. He remembers going to the bomb shelter. As soon as the bomb sirens went off, they got out and then the sirens went off again and they had to go back in.

Being a child, the significance of it was lost on him at the time. The kids were playing soccer in the bomb shelters.

When he told the story he only mentioned his mother. When I asked him about this he said it is because all of their dads were off at war. The fathers would come home every three months or so. They would bring with them shrapnel and bullets and the kids would trade them like baseball cards.

Looking back on it now, it all seems so surreal, but at the time, they thought nothing of it.

Duje thinks that there will be another war in the Balkans at some point in the next 20 years (not in Croatia, but probably in Bosnia). My companion from the plane ride to Sarajevo, Ninet, would likely agree. Ninet's current job is to work on easing the tensions in Bosnia and he said that the tensions are all still there just as present as they were before the war. I later learned that Bosnia (and Kosovo, for that matter) has a really strange form of governance. They have three presidents who form a presidency and together they serve a four-year term.  One is a Bosniak, one is a Croat, and one is a Serb. We were told that currently the Serbian member of the presidency is a complete jerk and it seems that since warring for land didn't work, that his strategy is to be such a jerk that the rest of the country will want to be rid of the Serbs and let them join with Serbia. It seems to me that this plan was a great idea to work with the three ethnicity, but at the same time, it perpetuates division. It just seems like everyone we talked to wouldn't be all that surprised if Bosnia ended up at war again. In fact, it almost seems expected.

Another issue of worry, is that when Bosnia rebuilt Mostar all of the minarets and mosques were paid for by money coming in from Muslims from other parts of the world. I don't think that this is inherently problematic - but all these years later - que ISIS. I think ISIS is entirely likely to be a problem. In fact, my cousin Wayne said that they saw someone wearing an ISIS tee shirt in old town Sarajevo. To be so bold... Also, the unemployment rate of youth in Bosnia (along with the rest of Europe) is very high which makes the young Muslims in Bosnia more susceptible to be recruited by ISIS.

Nationalism is hard for us to wrap our heads around in the U.S. because although we have an overwhelming amount of nationalism, our country is rather isolated. Canadians aren't trying to take us over or expand their country and neither is Mexico. In the Balkans, it is a little different. It sounds like Serbia, in particular, has a strong nationalism sentiment. Because of this, they can feel like people who aren't Serbian do not need to exist or are not as superior as the Serbians.

Siege

Another thing this trip has made me think about that I have never before considered is siege. I don't know any place in the U.S. or Canada that has been under siege in my lifetime, so I don't give the concept much thought. But Sarajevo was under a nearly 4 year siege. Dubrovnik was under siege during the Croatian war during that same time period. No electricity, no food, etc. These things happened within my life time. It is hard to comprehend, but siege is a real and, at least in some places, a modern thing.

Right to Bear Arms

In Bosnia, as with all of the former countries of Yugoslavia, there had been an arms embargo imposed by the U.N. prior to the war. In one of the books I read, all of the Bosnian men got together to try to fight the Serbs, but they didn't have weapons with which to defend themselves. They didn't have a militia. Hence, the genocide where tens of thousands of people were extinguished overnight happened with little defense against the armed Serbs.