The Death of Yugoslavia

Stari Most Bridge, Mostar

I have always wanted to visit Eastern Europe to satisfy my curiosities as a student of modern History and we were both interested to learn about the impact of the war in the 1990s having seen the footage on TV growing up. Our first stop was Mostar.

Having arrived safely in Split we quickly left and caught the 6 hour bus along the coast of Croatia and into Bosnia. This is one of the most most spectacular bus journeys I have been on as the road snakes around the coast, rising sometimes to 200 metres above the sea and highlighting the spectacular clear blue Adriatic coastline.  We met an eccentric Frenchman, Vincent, who sounded as if he was from Hello Hello and kept talking at us for the duration of the trip about the danger of microwaves and how his job entailed going to peoples homes and moving their beds around to avoid microwaves and their subsequent stress & death. He was on route to the great pyramids of Bosnia outside of Sarajevo (who knew??!!) to help excavate them as a volunteer on the project and kept us entertained and fed with grapes for the duration.  We also ate a local pastry, a Burek, which tasted like a Greggs Cornish Pasty with classy pastry which kept me happy for the rest of the day!

Entering Bosnia it was apparent that although the infrastructure had been repaired there were still scars all over the towns as bullet holes littered the buildings and remains of destroyed houses and farms were along the road. Mostar itself was famous for the senseless destruction of its Stari Most Bridge over the Neretva river by Serbian forces. The old town of Mostar has been rebuilt since using similar techniques to the original methods used and the mix of Ottoman and Austrian buildings in the old town is beautiful although very crowded when the tour buses arrive from Dubrovnik. It was 40 degrees during the day and we did all of our exploring early and late as the narrow alleys are very hot in the day time. We went on a guided tour through i-house (An excellent local company with a variety of tours and hostel) called The Death of Yugoslavia. Mirjan, our guide, was an expert on the 60 year period and explained in depth the role of the partisan fighters led by Tito against the Germans and his subsequent election to leader for life following the allied victory over Germany. He went on to describe the high living conditions in Yugoslavia in the 1980s under Socialism and the impact of the death of Tito in 1980. When he went onto describe the war in the 1990's we were surprised that the nationalities given to people in the region were dependent on religion rather than origin (Bosniacs- Muslim, Serbs - Orthodox Christian and Croats - Catholic). He explained the growth of nationalistic movements of Slovakia and Croatia in part due to Serbia's increasingly dominant role in the Yugoslavian Federation and that both nations held referendums to break away from Yugoslavia in 1991 and 1992. Their subsequent independence led to war with Serbia who sought to unify all Serbs and their expansion into Slovak and Croation territory under Slobodan Milosevic. When Bosnia held a similar referendum Serbia invaded, taking up to 80% of the land and committing atrocities on the Bosniacs and Croats (although all sides committed murder on the civilian population) in an attempt to incorporate all Serbs into a greater Serbia.

In 1993 the Bosniacs found themselves fighting against the Croats as well as the Serbs following a secret agreement between the two to divide Bosnia and incorporate their respective religions into their own borders, leaving the Bosniac population to be removed. The graves in Mostar pay tribute to the murdered and despite UN intervention and subsequent aid Mostar is still a very divided city with Bosniacs on one side of the central boulevard and Croats on the other (Mostar is in the autonomous section of Bosnia known as the the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is Croat and Bosniac dominated although Mirjan informed us that since the war the government has released no official figures about ethnic population in Bosnia or the three sections that make up the nation in case of increasing tension). We found it very strange that all of the shops sold souvenirs made out of the shell casings that had only recently destroyed so many lives in the city but there was little apparent unease between the two groups living in Mostar. I still found it a strange atmosphere with the knowledge that ethnic cleansing had happened so recently and yet through a variety of loans and aid the tourist industry was still blooming alongside graveyards of so many young Bosniacs.