Of War and Peace
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2008
1
10
Trip End
Dec 11, 2008
Sarajevo,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Monday, November 3, 2008
It's my 2nd Olympic city that I've visited (they hosted the 1984 Winter Olympic Games) and my first city visited that doesn't have a McDonalds (hooray!).
Some recent Sarajevo history (from what I understand of it. You can ask different people and get different stories, but this just seems to be a general picture of what happened)...
In 1984, Bosnia was a part of the country of Yugoslavia, a communist nation that also contained Slovenia, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (not to be confused with the neighboring Greek province of Macedonia), Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania. Pretty much all the slavic countries. Sarajevo was a moderm cosmopolitan city back then, and it was chosen to host the 1984 Olympic Games. Yugoslavia spent considerable time, effort, and money to make those games (in the words of the then chairman of the International Olympic Committee) "the greatest, most organized olympic games ever." Everyone was pretty proud of themselves, especially Sarajevans. Then the U.S.S.R. collapsed, and some tensions arose in Yugoslavia as Serbia began to get a little too aggressive and power hungry. A couple crazy Serbs came to power (Slobodan Milosovic) and Serb nationalize began to rise to frighteningly high levels. So a couple of the Yugoslavian countries decided to break away. Serbia was like 'no,' and war broke out. What kind of sucked for everyone except Serbia was that the Yugoslavian Peoples Army consisted of 80% Serbian troops. Slovenia had a devastating ten day war in which Serb troops didn't even cross the border into Slovenia. Croatia had it a bit rougher, their war lasted a couple years but they were able to shorten it by secretly holding meetings with Serbian leaders and making a plan to help Serbia attack Bosnia in exchange for a small piece of Bosnian territory. Despite the fact that Serbia had most of the JPA, Croatia and Slovenia both had their own armies to fend off the Serbs. Bosnia on the other hand, didn't have an army. The war began in 1992, and almost immediately the Serbs were able to take control of most of the country. However, they were unable to invade Sarajevo, and so they surrounded the city with tanks, snipers, landmines, and artillery guns. Thus began the longest siege in modern warfare, which lasted for about 43 months. During that time, an average of 329 shells rained down on Sarajevo per day, electricity was shut off, there were frequent water and food shortages that sometimes lasted for weeks, 11,000 people died, and the entire city was basically destroyed. The Bosnians, were however, able to keep the Serb troops out of the city, and after a particularly deadly shelling of a Sarajevan food market, NATO got involved and began bombing Serbian troops. About a month later a cease-fire was made.
Slowly, Sarajevo is recovering. Most of the buildings still have bullet holes in them, and I did see one Sarajevo Rose (shell fragments imbedded in the asphalt that are painted red), but the people in Sarajevo are pretty amazing. They lived through some of the most terrible conditions that people can live through, and it has created a sort of bond among the citizens of the city. Despite the hard economic conditions that Bosnia now faces, the people of Sarajevo know that it can be, and was, much, much worse. Children can play in the streets without worrying about sniper fire, don't have to risk your life waiting in long bread and water lines for basic neccessities. People in Sarajevo are happy just being able to spend time with their friends and family. The siege really created an atmosphere of brotherhood in Sarajevo.
Also, most of the small shops selling souvenirs and such have products that were hand made in Bosnia. They weren't manufactured in a factory in China. There was one street where every time you walked by you could here the clink-clink of metal workers hammering away making coffee pots and elaborately designed metal plates. And everything is extremely inexpensive in Bosnia, which is a nice relief.
Aunt Sara asked me what the election feeling is like over here. Every single European that I've met and have had the time to talk to about politics has been an avid Obama supporter. The attitude throughout Europe seems to be that its a no contest decision to vote Obama into office. If McCain had won the election I think everyone in Europe would have just smacked their foreheads and wondered if its possible to create a vaccine for the current stupid-virus thats ravaging the American population. Also, up until I came to Zadar, I didn't really have access to any consistent
news sources except for American internet sites. But I started watching
some Croatian news networks and then CNN International. Every single
night they ran a news story on Obama. I'm not sure if I ever saw
anything being reported on McCain. I must admit, I was surprised at how much the international community was paying attention to the election. All the newspapers all had headlines and front page stories on the American election almost every day. It's as big a news story here as it is at home. Just goes to show the incredible influence that the American government has on virtually everthing.
