Bosnia Part II – Central Bosnia – May 2017

Sarajevo – where East meets West  

I approached Sarajevo from the East, traversing across the flanks of Trebević mountain.  The Mountain towers over central Sarajevo, and was made notorious during the 4-year siege of the city by Bosnian Serb forces in the Bosnian War (1).  It was one of key artillery positions from where they carried out their campaign of indiscriminate shelling and sniping of the besieged city.  I arrived at a spur of the mountain called Vidikovac late in the afternoon, as the sun was getting low and bathing the city with golden light.  I have seen a lot of attractive views during this walk, but I still marveled at the beauty of the city spread out before me, with its terracotta rooves, nestled in a bowl of mountains.  I also marveled at the hatred which must have motivated those who ordered, and those who carried out the shelling, sniping and starving of the civilians below.   How can a hatred of ones neighbour’s be raised to such a fever pitch that the killing of civilians and children seems rational and reasonable?   It is a question that I would love to see being publicly examined in Bosnia by all nations, with a view to preventing its repeat – but it is one that politicians seem resolute to stay away from – as they continue to rely on narrow nationalism to sustain their vote and to help blind their electorate to their gross corruption.  This is not a uniquely Bosnian problem, and is present to some degree in all former communist countries of central and eastern Europe.  But it is in Bosnia where the cynical manipulation of people’s nationalist passions by their leaders has had the most catastrophic results in the past, and the gravest potential to spur further conflict.

I descended to the city along the derelict and war damaged bobsleigh track left from the Sarajevo winter Olympics of 1984.  Such remains from the Olympics cover the hills surrounding Sarajevo, their stark grey skeletal concrete exteriors, invariably pockmarked by bullet and shell holes, provide powerful reminders of the death of the peaceful co-existence that existed before the war tore it bloodily away.  The bobsleigh track is particularly unusual and striking.  You can walk down the entire length of the concrete track, which is covered in graffiti of excellent quality.

I stayed at the excellent ‘Hostel For Me’ hostel right in the heart of Bascarsija, the old town.  I spent some days enjoying the sight, sounds and smells of the city.  I was enjoying immensely being in a city for a change, and not having to walk all day as per usual.  I find central Sarajevo particularly magical and unique, as tourist destinations go.  It is crammed full of the minarets of mosques and churches of all denomination’s, souks (covered markets), oriental style coffee shops where you can get thick Turkish coffee, and delicious pastry and sweet shops where you can get all the burek and baklava (2) the heart could desire.  The combination of eastern and western influences over the city is pervasive and invigorating, the rich history and historical remains fascinating.  There simply isn’t a city anywhere in Europe like it.  I just hope that in time, the divisions of the city can be healed, and the centuries-old tradition of peaceful co-existence renewed and rejuvenated.

I spent the most significant portion of my time in Sarajevo holed up in the common room of the hostel furiously writing up my Serbian blog post on the computer that they had there.  I tried to get out and about as much as possible – I visited a museum about the siege of Sarajevo that I remembered as being particularly informative on my previous visit to the city – as a fresh-faced teenager more than 10 years before.  I was dismayed to find that exhibits had not been updated once in that time – they were in bad condition, as was of the building itself, so far gone that it was beyond simple maintenance, bits of masonry missing from the outside, spreading damp within.  I believe that all museums in Bosnia have a fearfully hard time securing funding.  Huge sums of development money have been spent, and continue to be spent by international community on Bosnia, but it seems that the remembrance of the past is not high up on their list of priorities.  It is either that, or the preposterously unwieldy and inefficient system of government erected by the international community following on from the Daytona Peace treaty which ended the war in 1995, is wasting so much of it that only a trickle gets through to where it’s really needed.  I also visited an exhibition in another part of town on the Srebrenica genocide, which was in much better condition, but is only one small part of the story of the war.  There was a small museum at the Sarajevo Tunnel (3) which I did not manage to visit.  But I found that the museums that I did get to were not answering the questions that I had – Namely, how did the war happen?  Why was it so brutal? Why was it allowed to continue for so long?  What state was the country left in after the war? and in what state was it now?  For these questions I found that the internet provided partial answers, which were filled out by the literature, and one excellent documentary series from the BBC.  If you are interested in the same, please see the selected media at the end of my Bosnia blog part III.

Something heartening I took from my researches, and also discussions with young Bosnian’s, including the staff of “Hostel For Me”, was that in the midst of the worst of the siege, when food was difficult to get hold of, the city’s water supply cut off, and hundreds of shells were landing on the city every day – in the middle of all that, civil society within the city did not break down.  The newspaper kept being published, even when paper became difficult to get hold of they somehow managed to keep up production.  Musicians held concerts in burnt out buildings, and in basements, even when the shelling was heaviest and winter at its worst.  Even more incredible, at the television studio, they kept producing programs, including some extremely dark comedies about the situation in the city in the middle of the siege.  These people, normal people, went to extraordinary lengths, and huge risks, to do anything to keep up a veil of normalcy, and to keep peoples spirits up.

Bjelašnica and Mount Igman

When it was time to move on from Sarajevo I made a detour way from my direction of travel to head to Mount Igman (1,510 metres) and Bjelašnica (2067 metres) two mountains to the southwest of the city.  I mainly wanted to get a significant peak in Bosnia under my belt before my route took me to the flatter north of the country.   I didn’t have any idea it had so many appalling remnants of the war, but it contained some of the most dramatic and poignant ruins I was to see during my whole walk across Bosnia.  Bjelašnica and Mt Igman were one of the main centers for the Sarajevo winter Olympics of 1984, and was also a hotly contested battleground in the war, as the only supply route for Sarajevo for most of the war was a small forestry road running over the mountains, which connected to an 800m long tunnel underneath the UN controlled airport.  When the Bosnian Serbs figured out that the inhabitants of Sarajevo had partially thwarted their blockade, and how they did it – they turned their attention to Mt Igman.  The forestry road down the flank of Igman, was in direct line of fire from Serb artillery positions, and was dubbed the most dangerous road in the world.  It was a lot more peaceful when I walked up it, it is so small, and flanked on both side by peaceful woodland, with the odd stunning view back towards Sarajevo, that it is very difficult to imagine the feeling of driving up it in war time, driving fast and furiously around hairpin after hairpin in full view of the Bosnian Serb artillery close by.

Once you gain the top of Igman and reach the meadows lying between it and Bjelašnica, however, it becomes easier to imagine the fury of the fury of the fighting here, as you pass a succession of bombed out buildings – A huge hulking hotel complex, bullet holes next to the windows with good fields of fire; what must have been a pretty chalet at the top of Bjelašnica, gaping wounds in its exterior; the original start gate building for the Olympic downhill events, to this day a military post, and still bearing the bullet and shell scars of battle; The Olympic medal podium, used as a prisoner execution site during the war; and the minefields which must be avoided on the way down to the West – all help in this regard.

From Bjelašnica, I headed west and then north west, passing through central Bosnia: Kiseljak, where a naturally carbonated spring provides the source for the eponymous fizzy water ubiquitous in Bosnia; Fojnica, where the local Bosniaks and Croats had gone to heroic lengths to prevent their communities descending to war with one another, after the national leadership of the nations had decided that this was to be so; and then to Travnik, with its important Ottoman era old town, and dramatic fortress towering over the town.  These were all attractive towns, set in pleasant valleys, presided over by tall mountains.  The tourist opportunities are myriad and of high quality, and yet are seldom visited by foreign tourists.  It’s sad to see so much un-tapped potential, and so much money which could be made, if only people could be convinced of the charms that Bosnia has to offer.

Babanovac, an island of tolerance and integration

The town that made the greatest impression on me in central Bosnia, however, was small ski resort called Babanovac perched high up on the mountain Vlašić, which I scaled after leaving Travnik.  I found the cheapest accommodation I could find, which had a comfy bar, and extremely hospitable hosts, one of whom suggested that we head out to a bar in the centre of town.  When we got there, I was introduced to a lively group of the local regulars at the bar.  Unfortunately, during the war, the three national communities of Bosnia became largely segregated, whereas previously the towns and villages were often peacefully mixed, the intensity of the religious hatred during the conflict drove the communities apart.  These days it is almost always possible to tell which nation a village belongs, by noting what brand of beer is served in the bars.  There are Bosniak, Croat, and Serb produced beers (nb. They all taste almost exactly the same) and people tend to be loyal to their nations in their beer of choice.  In the Babanovac bar, the beer served was a Croat one, and so I confidently asked my new friends if the town was Croat.  No was the answer, it was a Serb town, but it was also a tourist ski resort, which attracted people from all over Bosnia.  The barman was a Bosniak, there was a group of Croats, drinking steadily, and there were the people at my table, who were Serb.  Everyone was happily drinking together, and everyone in the bar joined in the fun.  I had not seen a scene like it since arriving in Bosnia almost a month previously.  I asked the bar if they thought this was unusual, and what they thought about it.  They agreed that Babanovac was special, and reckoned that being a tourist resort attracting people from all over Bosnia, everyone in the town constantly encountered people from the other nations, and in this environment, it is difficult to keep hold of prejudice and ignorance.

It was heartwarming, and instructive; nationalist populist politicians being so prominent world-wide at this current moment in time.  In every land where there is mutual distrust and suspicion between people of different religions and nationality (every country I can think of), and every country with large numbers of immigrants who need to be integrated into society, the answer to the problem must be active political policy to encourage the mixing of the communities.  I would argue the setting up of secular mixed schools to be a good starting place – with a view to creating a fully secular and mixed education system.  If communities are separated geographically (for example by house prices in London) effort should be made to bus them across district borders to achieve a good mix.  The French policy of not inquiring peoples race during census’s, and pretending, therefore, that there is no problem with racism in France because the state is “colour-blind”, is a non-starter, and a failure in my opinion (4).  Equally the British hands-off approach of letting society largely organise itself, results in effective segregation of education not just by religion and national background, but also by parental wealth, is also wrong-headed, and is just storing up problems for the future.  My experiences in Bosnia, led me to believe, that any modern state should be wholly secular, and the functions of the state, such as education, should reflect this.  Separation of communities, and especially of children, only allows intolerance to grow.

A small favour – I am using my walk to raise money for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).  These blog posts take a very long time for me to write, if you enjoy reading them and wish to support the author, you can donate to MSF via my fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/wanderingpaddy

Addenda

(1) The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. After being initially besieged by the forces of the Yugoslav People’s Army, Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was besieged by the Army of Republika Srpska from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 (1,425 days) during the Bosnian War. The Bosnian Serbs encircled Sarajevo with a siege force of 13,000 stationed in the surrounding hills. From there they assaulted the city with artillery, tanks and small arms. The Bosnian government defence forces (ARBiH) inside the besieged city, numbering some 70,000 troops, were poorly equipped and unable to break the siege.  A total of 13,952 people were killed during the siege, including 5,434 civilians. The ARBiH suffered 6,137 fatalities, while Bosnian Serb military casualties numbered 2,241 soldiers killed.  Information from wikipedia, for more information see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo.

(2) Bosnian Burek is a meat-filled pastry, traditionally rolled in a spiral and cut into sections for serving. It may be eaten for any meal of the day. The same spiral filled with cottage cheese is called sirnica, with spinach and cheese zeljanica, with potatoes krompiruša, and all of them are generically referred to as pita or pie. Eggs are used as a binding agent when making sirnica and zeljanica.  Baklava is a rich, sweet dessert pastry made of layers of filo filled with chopped nuts and sweetened and held together with syrup or honey.

(3) The Sarajevo Tunnel (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian: Sarajevski tunel / Сарајевски тунел), also known as Tunel spasa (Тунел спаса, English: Tunnel of rescue) and Tunnel of Hope, was an underground tunnel constructed between March and June 1993 during the Siege of Sarajevo in the midst of the Bosnian War. It was built by the Bosnian Army in order to link the city of Sarajevo, which was entirely cut off by Serbian forces, with Bosnian-held territory on the other side of the Sarajevo Airport, an area controlled by the United Nations. The tunnel linked the Sarajevo neighborhoods of Dobrinja and Butmir, allowing food, war supplies, and humanitarian aid to come into the city, and allowing people to get out. The tunnel became a major way of bypassing the international arms embargo and providing the city defenders with weaponry. (From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarajevo_Tunnel)

(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_censuses#France