Banja Luka, back into Republika Srpska
After my pleasant stay in Babanovac, I kept heading in a northerly direction, along a long low ridge, having to take some care when passing over the old front line from the war, I could see mine fields marked all over the area on the minefield map I had obtained online from the Bosnia Mine action centre. Shortly after leaving Babanovac I passed from the Federation back into Republika Srpska. I will not lie, after what I had witnessed in the east of the country, I was not happy to be back in the Serb-dominated part of the country. But in the interests of balance, because I had spent time in Sarajevo and chatted extensively with the predominantly Muslim Bosniaks who live there, I wanted to hang out with Bosnian Serbs, maybe have a bit to drink, and to hear what they had to say about the past, present, and future.
I was heading up toward Banja Luka, which is the second largest city in Bosnia, and the capital of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity. I had a partly charming, partly worrying encounter, with an elderly Bosnian Serb Farmer, and his family, a day’s walk out from Banja Luka. There was an hour or so of daylight left, and I was already on the lookout for a handy secluded campsite. I was walking past the farm gate, when the farmer hailed me. He didn’t speak a word of English, but had decent German, of which I know very little, but more than I know of Serbo-Croat, and enough to make basic pleasantries. I managed to communicate what I was about, and he dug some cigarettes out of his pocket, then went into the house to find some beers, then called his daughter who could speak some decent English. They asked me if I was hungry and would I like some dinner. It was difficult for me to say no, even though I needed to find a campsite ideally before sundown, I was famished, and only had some instant pasta and a packet of dried soup to eat. His wife was summoned, and she came back soon with a plate of sausage, eggs, and bread, and another beer. We chatted amiably with the daughter as translator about what I was doing, about life in Yugoslavia in the old days, life in Germany, and in the UK, Brexit. The farmer had been working as a taxi driver in Germany during the Bosnian war, and so had missed the fighting. He appeared and sounded genuinely horrified about what had happened in the 90s, but when I asked him what he thought was in store for the future of Bosnia, his face darkened, and he said that unfortunately war was coming again. I said surely not, there are big problems of course, but did he really think they were bad enough to lead to war? He stood his ground and said absolutely, there is no escaping it. Shortly afterwards, with darkness rapidly falling, I thanked them profusely and said that I must be on my way. This was one of the first times I had hear such an emphatic prediction of war, and I wondered if it was related to the fact that I had passed back into RS (1). After 10 minutes walking I managed to find a copse of trees on top of a hill, where I was out of sight from nearby houses, but also had an excellent view of the surrounding valleys.
The next day I passed a few more burnt out villages, before climbing a low ridge and descending to Banja Luka. I booked into a guest house, and wandered round the centre of town. The contrast to Sarajevo is stark. Corruption is rife in both of Bosnia’s capitals, but Sarajevo has evidently been able to attract far more foreign direct investment than Banja Luka. Shiny new shopping malls and office blocks are everywhere in Sarajevo. Republika Srpska’s brand is so toxic, due to the unrepentant intolerance of its politicians (2), that the only countries prepared to invest in it are Serbia, and Russia, neither of whom are themselves in rude financial health. So, Banja Luka, despite not being significantly damaged during the war of the 90s, now looks rougher round the edges than Sarajevo, which was comprehensively destroyed. Such are the fruits of narrow nationalist politics.
I noticed that a festival was being set up at the Banja Luka Fortress, and made enquiries. It was a motorcycle festival, motorcycles, beer, and rock music, being the main elements, it sounded right up my street. I attended a few days later, checking out the bikes on display in the afternoon, before settling down to a few beers to help me pluck up the courage to approach some the gangs of hard looking guys in leather jackets who made up the bulk of the attendees. When I managed to do so I was rewarded to find that the crowd was very international in character, with bikers having come from all over Europe to attend. They were extremely friendly and welcoming, and it wasn’t long before we were all dancing along to the quality local bands. There was no hint of the intolerance that such an appearance and dress would suggest, but then again, it wasn’t really the right occasion for a deep political discussion, so who knows, maybe my welcome would have been diminished if I were not white? Impossible to say. What I can say, with confidence, is that when I finish my walk I intend buy another motorcycle, and am considering living in a hot country so that the riding of it is more pleasurable (I sold my previous motorcycle when I moved to Scotland and it became apparent that the climate would mean riding it was positively masochistic for at least two thirds of the year)
Over the next few days I met a variety of Bosnian Serbs from young to middle aged, and they were without exception, polite, friendly, and welcoming. As a rule, they deplored the corruption and dysfunction of their government, reminisced warmly about Yugoslavia, and expressed horror at what had happened in the war. But you can’t help but wonder…. Their elections are not free and fair, but neither is there huge electoral fraud, and yet in the last election 32% of them voted for an extremely nasty ultra nationalist party, which had the majority and was able to form government. When I asked gently, about what happened during the war, Bosnian Serbs, of all ages, would generally tense up and say something formulaic along the lines of “Yes, the war was terrible, but it is important that you realise that: Wikipedia is all lies, and all sides did awful things, all of them”(3). I think that this is a serious ducking of responsibility, and represents a failure to accept what happened, and to try to come to terms with it. I was not hoping for people to spontaneously open up to me about the horrors of the war, and to admit sole responsibility for every terrible thing which happened; but I was rather hoping someone might express some impersonal contrition, something like “I am ashamed and appalled about what was done in the name of the Serb Nation during the war”, or “I am revolted by the actions of the Bosnian Serb Forces during the war”, but nothing of the sort was forthcoming (and I spoke to a lot of people in RS). I believe that a substantial number of Bosnian Serbs are in a state of denial about what happened in the war, feel unfairly victimised by the international communities’ interpretation of the events, and therefore have receptive ears to the ultra-nationalist bile spouted by their politicians. The politicians themselves have aided and abetted the feeling of unfair victimisation with their dominance of the media, using it to wilfully distort history. Despite all this, I had a good time in Banja Luka, and can recommend going there. RS is an international pariah, and therefore you will certainly not feel overwhelmed by the numbers of foreign tourists, it’s got some great bars, and I found it very interesting chatting to the locals, and mulling over potential solutions to the gorgonian knot of the difficult history, shitty political set-up, and shittier politicians.
A long, parched road across the karst with a crystal-clear azure river at the end of it.
After a few days, I left Banja Luka to begin a punishing walk across the north of the country to get to the city of Bihać in the north-west corner of the country. I set myself a relatively tough schedule to get to Bihać, as I wanted to try to get to the Croatian coast before I certain date when I planned to break from the walk to attend a family gathering. I plotted as short a route as I could which ran on minor roads through rolling karst countryside. Summer had really started with a vengeance, day time temperatures of 30-35 deg C, and lack of shade making walking unpleasant, and potentially dangerous. There was precious little surface water due to the limestone geology (4), so you had to be careful to fill up whenever you came across one of the magical and ornate česma’s (fountains) that you passed or you could come up a cropper. You sweat out your water pretty fast in 35 degree heat, and once or twice I ran out of water and had to go begging at isolated farm houses, where my welcome was not always warm (This part of the country also suffered extensive ethnic cleansing, with many empty villages, people have a lot of traumatic memories).
I was delighted however, when my road degraded to a dirt track, and I could see an ancient looking road surface exposed in many places where the dirt had been worn off. It was certainly old enough to be ottoman, but my feverish imaginations went further, and wondered if I was walking along an old Roman artery through their province of Illyria. Walking is so slow, that you generally pick direct routes between population centres, and are quite tolerant of steep gradients and even mountains which lie in your path. Cars and trains are much faster, and route construction over or under mountains and hills is expensive; so modern transport corridors frequently make big detours around obstacles in their paths. Prior to the 1800s, all transport was by foot, or horse; slow; and so direct routes favoured. The upshot of this is that when walking long distance, you often find yourself walking on the remnants of ancient routes, often it is evident that the route was much more important in the past, but has fallen out of use. I feel a connection to those ancient soldiers, merchants, and itinerants and often wonder: who might have sat on this particular rock, whether this jumble of stones was a raucous inn, or what did the countryside looked like to those ancient eyes. This connection with the past is amplified by the fact that I am also walking, using the slowest form of transport. I measure the distance between towns in days, between cities in weeks, and across countries in months, as they did. It brings you a pleasant new perspective on the pre-railway past, and helps to bring ancient remains a little more to life.
My walk from Banja Luka to Bihać took 4 days, during which I passed from RS back into Federation territory. I awoke each day an hour or so before sunrise, and got going as rapidly as possible, to walk as many kilometres in the coolness of the morning, before the baking heat of the day. On the fourth day, the mercury hit 35 degrees, and I found myself having to stop frequently to sit in the shade of trees, or at the odd bar/general store that I passed, for a shandy. I got to Bihac in one piece, thankfully, and marveled at the beauty of the crystal clear blue river which passes through the town. The Una (the one), it is called, purportedly because a roman legionary, upon seeing it for the first time, fell on his knees proclaiming, “it’s the one, the only one!”. It is certainly arresting; difficult to take your eyes off when you are next to it. It slides graciously and gorgeously through a city which suffered immensely during the war. In 1992 at the outbreak of war, Bihac sat in a small pocket of Bosniak dominated territory, completely surrounded by Serb dominated and controlled territory (including a break-away Serb region over the border in Croatia – the Republika Srpska Krajina). It was totally cut off and besieged for 3 years. An important transport hub, the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs made concerted and intense efforts to take the town. The Serbs came very close to taking the city, but heroic defense by the underequipped and underfed Bosniaks just about held them off. The intensity of the bombardment still shows on the fabric of the town, the odd empty or battle-damaged building incongruous next to the graceful and timeless beauty of the river.
The river is a bit of a mecca for Bosnian tourists for white water rafting, but outside the country remains largely unknown, like the city itself; despite its numerous charms. For the three days I spent at my hostel, I was the only person there, I had the entire place to myself. Bihac is just one days walk from the Plitvice Lakes National Park, across the border in Croatia, which receives over a million tourists a year, and is even considering measures to limit numbers, so great is the strain on the national park. And there I was in Bihac in the shoulder season, next to a gorgeous river, surrounded by opportunities for exciting natural tourism, all by myself. If only a fraction of those million could be tempted across the border, off the main tourist trail, to a region with natural beauty almost to rival that of Plitvice, they could have stunning locations largely to themselves; and could spend some tourist dollars in a region in sore need of some foreign cash. But the vast majority of tourists seem unwilling stray from the beaten track, to take the risk of visiting Bosnia, and mores the pity for them. After a few days enjoying the delights of Bihac alone with the locals, I sloped off across the border into Croatia, and entered another world…
Conclusion – Thoughts on suggestions for more satisfying travelling
One of the over-riding learnings I have got from the walk up to this point, is not to be afraid of countries and peoples of which/whom you have read/heard predominantly negative things about from the media, or from people who have not actually been to the country in question. Time and time again I have been pleasantly surprised by the welcome I have got in generally maligned countries; so really, I should have known better than to fear Bosnia, despite its recent history. I am pleased to report that I was, indeed, wrong to have doubts as to how I would be received. With a very few exceptions, I felt strongly welcomed wherever I went. It is important to understand that everyone is the hero of their own story, and that includes nations which have carried out acts of such grotesque barbarity, that the outside observer struggles to understand them in any other context than that of pure evil. So, the foreign tourist is generally welcomed everywhere because each side of this recently frozen, but not yet fully resolved, conflict wishes to be the most hospitable to show the outsider – and to reinforce to themselves – that they are good guys.
Bosnia doesn’t get that many foreign tourists, and those that do come here overwhelmingly stick to just 3 main hotspots; Sarajevo, Mostar, and Medjugorje. Therefore, I have found the reception that I received outside of these hotspots tended to be all the warmer; people were surprised to see a foreign tourist, especially a walker, and were invariably pleased that I was exploring their part of the country.
Throughout this trip I have found that its often in the countries with the worst reputation, the ones that people warn you not to go to that you tend find the warmest welcome, and the most genuine experiences. I wrote up some of my Bosnia blog from a tourist honeypot of a town in on the Croatian coast. The location was to die for, a picturesque walled medieval/renaissance era town, the clear warm waters of the Adriatic wonderful for swimming in, and breath-taking views out to the islands in the bay of Kvarner. But the restaurants were overpriced, of relatively low quality, and the staff cold and indifferent to their customers. Equally the owner of the apartment I was holed up in, whilst not exactly unfriendly to his guests, was clearly completely disinterested in them. I do not blame him in the slightest, I’m sure I would be cold and disinterested if I saw 1000s of tourists every year (and I would probably start to despise them a little after having to respond to their pampered whims for years on end). So, if you the reader are tempted to get off the main tourist drag, but are nervous because of the prevailing wisdom being to avoid that region due to high crime, supposedly unfriendly people, or traumatic recent history; then I reckon you should take the (generally vastly overstated) risk, and go for it. You will likely be much rewarded with more genuine hospitality, and more connections and interactions with local people who really are happy to see you. This was certainly my overall experience in Bosnia.
I realise that my account of my time in Bosnia may come across as anti-Serb in its tone, and content. I set out into Bosnia wishing to have an open mind on the conflict; not to be prejudiced against any nation, to hear people’s stories, their views, and to make up my own mind. That my account now reads as it does, is a result of the shock of arriving in Višegrad and seeing the effects of a Serb takeover of a religiously mixed town. After Višegrad I visited three towns/cities that the Serbs besieged for the duration of the war (Gorazde, Sarajevo, and Bihac), subjecting their populations to 3-4 years of indiscriminate shelling, sniping targeted at men, women and children, wilfully cutting off food, water and medical supplies to the civilians within. I will not lie, the experience did begin to harden my mind against the Bosnian Serb nation, and the inability of the Serb’s who I met to apologise, even indirectly, for any of it, hardened it further. I sincerely believe that unless we try to accept the past, to own up for it, and to try an explain it, then we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes again. I saw very little acceptance, or even any attempt at it, on display in Republika Srpska. (5)
My experiences walking across Bosnia changed me irrevocably. Nationalism and bigotry exists within all three of the Bosnian national groups, and it continues to harm reconciliation efforts, and reform of the political system, to this day. When seeing the medieval brutality unleashed by extreme nationalism allowed to run its course, it has made me profoundly against nationalism in all its forms. Appeals to, and manipulation of, nationalist sentiments by politicians are almost always done cynically, as a form of subterfuge, to distract the electorate from the corruption and abuse of power of individual politicians, and to discourage rational debate of emotive policies. The encouragement of nationalism, ends up weakening states, stifling debate, and dividing populations. Bosnia is now profoundly physically and mentally divided along nationalist lines. It would take generations of sustained effort by the politicians to break down these divisions, but right now they seem determined to strengthen them, to shore up their own power. The long-term outlook for Bosnia looks bleak; war seems unlikely, but sustained economic malaise and stagnation brought about by political paralysis and gross inefficiency difficult to avoid.
Suggested Media for those who wish to find out more about Bosnia, and the Bosnian War:
Note, these are only sources that I read/watched since beginning my walk in January, there may well be other excellent media which I have missed out through ignorance
TV
- The Death of Yugoslavia, A BBC documentary series first broadcast in 1995. It is an extremely well made and unique documentary, including extensive interviews with all the major leaders involved, being extraordinarily candid to the camera. Many of these leaders were subsequently prosecuted for War Crimes, and others died before the charges could be brought. It is all up on youtube.
Books
- The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War, Misha Glenny, an excellent book by a journalist who specialises in South-Eastern Europe, and who personally covered the wars of the break-up of Yugoslavia. The book contains eyewitness account of the fighting, and of the authors extensive interviews with the key personalities of the war, and his analysis of the causes of the war.
- Love Thy Neighbour: A Story of War, Peter Maas, 1997, A very readable eyewitness account of the war as a journalist. Not as analytical as the Fall of Yugoslavia, but gives you a good feel for some of the absurdities and horrors of the war.
- The Bridge on the Drina, Ivo Andric, 1945, An epic novel spanning 4 centuries where the central character is the beautiful Mehmed Paša Sokolović bridge in Višegrad. It paints a vivid picture of life in a small Bosnian town and how the fates of the inhabitants are utterly altered by external historical events beyond their control. A vision of a religiously mixed Višegrad which was swept away by the war in the 90s.
- The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804-1999, Misha Glenny, 1999, A well-researched, readable account and analysis of the history of every Balkan country during the period mentioned in the title. It is a remarkable achievement, and is a must read for someone who is struggling to understand the long history of the Balkan region, how that history lead to the brutality of the 1990s, and a decent record of the lies and deceit of the politicians from the region during the war. This book has been labelled as pure lies by extremists from all three Bosnian national groupings, and this fact alone suggests that the author is close to the truth. The best history book I have read in a long time, and my new yardstick for judging the merits of others.
Websites
Wikipedia provides a good overview of the country and of the recent conflict, with additional material accessible by following the links and references contained within.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnia_and_Herzegovina
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi%C5%A1egrad_massacres
Addenda
- Later, after a little digging I found out that yes, the media of Republika Srpska (RS) is dominated by the government of RS. This government is egregiously corrupt (the government of the Federation is little better), and appears to be doing the old trick of blinding people to the governments kleptocracy and simultaneously getting votes, by using the media to put out a steady stream of ultra-nationalist scare stories about the evil scheming Bosniak/Croat Federation, and imagined threats to the Serb culture and people. Evidently for those without access to the internet, or other sources of news, like the friendly elderly farmer, it was having its desired effect. This control of the media helps to explain how such a nasty, ultra-nationalist, xenophobic and corrupt government as that of Milorad Dodik, and the SNSD party, has managed to win the last three elections. The whipping up of nationalist sentiments by politicians in the cynical pursuit of power was the prime driver of the wars of the 90s, it is very distressing to see that it continues unabated to this day.
- The current president Milorad Dodik said in 2010 of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide (where more than 8000 unarmed Bosniak men and boys were killed in cold blood by the army of the Bosnian Serbs) “Republika Srpska does not deny that a large scale crime occurred in Srebrenica, but by definition it was not genocide as described by the international court in The Hague…..If a genocide happened then it was committed against Serb people of this region where women, children and the elderly were killed en masse,” (http://www.smh.com.au//breaking-news-world/srebrenica-massacre-not-genocide-20100713-1083q.html)
- All sides did do horrible things and yes, one does sometimes have to take things on Wikipedia articles to do with Bosnia with a pinch of salt, and to check the references used, and to make a value judgement thereof. However, the common statement by the locals that – “Wikipedia is all lies”, is too simplistic. The numbers of dead resulting from the war are highly politicised, and anyone seeing a number they don’t like, is apt just to ignore it or denounce it as a lie. But the research and Documentation centre, a non-governmental, non-partisan, Sarajevo based organisation set up to gather information on the conflict had the following figures, of the 38,000 civilians to die in the conflict, 81% were Bosniak, and 11% Serb. That’s a lot of Bosniak civilians who were killed. If you don’t trust the casualty numbers then one can look at the results of the 2013 census and compare it to the pre-war census. There are large areas and significant towns now contained within Republika Srpska which pre-war had a Bosniak majority, which are now >90% Serb in population. One of the postulated Serb explanations – that all these people left freely, and of their own volition, is not credible. These ethnic cleansings occurred very shortly after the beginning of the war, and before any postulated credibly verified atrocities by the Bosniaks or Croats, and so the excuse that they were a legitimate retaliation is not valid. This argument, that atrocities carried out were only in done in retaliation, and therefore excusable, is not a valid ever, in my opinion, but is a common one in the region. “We only massacred those unarmed civilians in cold blood, and systematically raped those women, because it was done to us (or even, “because they might have done it to us, given the chance”), is not a defence, and should never be used as such.
- Limestone is generally highly permeable, and so any rain that falls generally sinks into the rock and flows through it, underground, to the sea.
- The Bosnian Croats committed atrocities as well, and I should have strong words to say on their behalf, but I didn’t travel through the Croat south of the country, and didn’t have many conversations with the locals in the few Croat villages I passed through in central Bosnia. The Muslim Bosniaks committed some isolated atrocities, but they did not besiege civilian population centres, they did not repeatedly ethnically cleanse territory they held, and there are no credible reports of them setting up rape camps and seeing these as legitimate weapons of war. Serb inhabitants did flee from the Muslim/Croat advance in 1995 immediately before the end of the war, and few have returned to their homes. But it seems that they largely fled in fear in what would be done to them in retribution for the multiple sustained atrocities carried out by their own side in the 4 years of war. This fear of retribution was hugely magnified by the RS press of their side, to sustain the moral of the troops, and to excuse atrocities with an us or them narrative. This fear of “the other” is sustained by the RS press to this present day, and can go a long way to explaining the lack of return of many of the Bosnian Serbs to their pre-war homes. Babanovac was a Serb village, in the federation, where part of the Serb population had returned, and I saw no evidence that the inhabitants were living in fear of what their Bosniak/Croat Neighbours, or government would do to them.