tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-233013312024-03-13T11:53:09.903-04:00Americans For BosniaIn Bosnia, a war was fought between civic nationalism and individual liberty versus ethnic nationalism and collectivism. Bosnia's struggle was, and is, America's struggle.
Dedicated to the struggle of all of Bosnia's peoples--Bosniak, Croat, Serb, and others--to find a common heritage and a common identity.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.comBlogger685125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-36958959118613464402015-07-10T09:45:00.000-04:002015-07-10T09:45:25.712-04:00Belgrade Bans Srebrenica Anniversary GatheringsAnd so the ultranationalists have won this round:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/belgrade-srebrenica-/27120466.html" target="_blank">Belgrade Bans Srebrenica Anniversary Gatherings</a><br />
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The "security concerns" rhetoric is so transparently disingenuous I am frankly surprised they bothered.<br />
Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-38153544740153803362015-07-08T09:22:00.000-04:002015-07-08T09:22:00.593-04:00Nearing the 20th Anniversary of SrebrenicaI've been meaning to kick-start this blog for some time, and there's no better reason to resurrect it than to begin commemorating a horrific anniversary. This Saturday, July 11, will mark twenty years since the Srebrenica genocide.<br /><br /><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/live-news/articles/2015/7/6/saturday-marks-20-year-anniversary-of-srebrenica-genocide1.html" target="_blank">20 Year Anniversary</a><br />
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Given the prevalence of armed conflicts involving "failed" states such as Syria and Iraq, or of fragile states with restive minorities being supported and manipulated by a larger neighbor, such as Ukraine, it is very clear that the Bosnian War was indeed both a warning of the challenges the post-Cold War era would bring as well as a test the international community in general and the West specifically. It seems increasingly clear that whatever lessons were learned were the wrong ones, and that the legacy of Bosnia for policy-makers has been distorted and misunderstood. Perhaps this stark reminder of the human cost of moral indifference and strategic fumbling will lead to some healthy re-evaluation of priorities and interpretive frameworks.<br />
Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-76806065648250248422014-02-16T11:25:00.000-05:002014-02-16T11:25:40.372-05:00Great Source for Information on Bosnia ProtestsThe <a href="http://bhprotestfiles.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Bosnia-Herzegovina Protest File</a> is a great resource for following events in Bosnia right now.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-52882035983772832522014-02-16T11:14:00.000-05:002014-02-16T11:14:09.111-05:00Analysis of the Protests in Bosnia, by a participantPlease see <a href="http://malatesta32.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/on-the-protests-in-bosnia/" target="_blank">this excellent blog post</a> about the situation in Bosnia.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-64391482180125961342014-01-09T22:15:00.001-05:002014-01-09T22:17:37.790-05:00"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [7]<span style="font-size: large;">So It Was Foreseeable: <i>Afterword by Roman Arens and Christiane Schlotzer-Scotland</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
This brief afterword first establishes a fact which Bosnian revisionists have been trying to deny ever since the war first broke out--that the bloodshed in the Bosnian war was the product of deliberate planning. This diary is an eyewitness account of the early stages of the genocidal war which would engulf the country. Vuksanovic's diary stands as a witness to the ground-level implementation of a well-planned, if morally bankrupt, dismantling of a multinational society in the service of fascism.<br />
<br />
<i>"Power interests were the aim, ethnically grounded hysteria was the motor leading to this aim."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
This basic point--that "ethnic hatred" was a tool of those who caused the war rather than the cause itself, is the central fact one must grasp in order to understand the war in Bosnia. And all the prevarication and dissembling in the world cannot match the clarity and directness of this document.<br />
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The afterword ends with a brief explanation of how the diary came to be translated (into German) and published--a chance encounter between Vuksanovic and a publisher named Nenad Popovic, who was also involved with the German organization Journalists help Journalists. Given how often Vuksanovic railed against his former colleagues in the field who turned to nationalistic propagandizing and lying, this connection is especially apt.<br />
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In the end, there isn't much else for me to say about this book. It is intensely moving and unforgettable. It deserves to be better known; a lonely and desperate witness to evil by a man who refused to surrender his moral sense to the tidal wave of madness and hate that destroyed the town he loved and the country it was in.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-43423346776182285772014-01-08T22:16:00.002-05:002014-01-08T22:16:47.463-05:00"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [6]<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">16 May to 15 July 1992 [<i>pp. 124-165</i>]</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;">Although Pale, as a town inhabited by people living in houses and walking on streets past shops and cafes, will continue to exist, the Pale that Vuksanovic knows, the once-tolerant place inhabited by Serbs and Muslims is dying right before his eyes. In the final pages of his diary, he records the final death throes of what used to be his home. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;">Cease fire agreements and the takeover of the airport by the United Nations briefly give hope, but within a few days he writes </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><i>"It's the easiest thing to recognize fools here--they're the ones who believe in the latest cease-fire agreement."</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;">There is no longer any question about any future for Vuksanovic and his wife in Pale; the madness is spreading into every nook and cranny. More and more hungry Serbs from elsewhere in Bosnia show up to take possession of abandoned homes, and increasingly they are not waiting for these homes to be vacant. Nationalist former friends show up late at night bearing weapons and vague threats; they stay and drink the Vuksanovics' booze while railing against "jihadists", "ustashe", and disloyal Serbs--Serbs like Vuksanovic, who recognizes that his last name and his ethnicity won't protect him much longer.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;">A friend comes to stay in the house, hiding for days on end. Other Muslims come on the night before they are to leave. A Serb official and a Muslim collaborator come to the house to "assure" them that they could have slept in their own house that night, as it is known they are leaving the next day. The threat is implied.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;">It probably was not necessary--the last Muslims of Pale, except for one elderly woman and one other woman who is married to a Serb man. The rest sell what they cannot carry, and queue up for buses taking them away. More and more Serbs show up to take their homes; some of them move into Vuksanovic's mothers' home. The new owners take everything that the former occupants left which they do not want out in the yards and streets and burn it all. The air is choked with the fires.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;">Vuksanovic and his wife get passes to leave, and one for the friend staying with them as well. They get the good news that their son has also received his papers at the same time. In the meantime, a Serb refugee family from Zenica has shown up to take their house; Mladen and his wife show them around, explain how the heater works and which plants are planted in what part of the garden. The house his parents built and the garden his mother created are about to be turned over to strangers. A Serb family takes in the last two puppies. His home is now his past.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;">The final couple of entries summarize their successful trip out of Pale and out of Bosnia; first to Serbia and Belgrade where the friend they sheltered is reunited with his wife. Then on through Hungary, Slovenia, and finally Croatia. Istria, their final destination, is just ahead. And here the diary ends.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"> ***********************************</span></span><br />
There is a short afterword which I will review next; I'll give my final thoughts on the book in that post as well.<br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.91499900817871px;"><br /></span></span>Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-36215828983615524182014-01-07T22:26:00.002-05:002014-01-07T22:26:34.750-05:00"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [5]<span style="font-size: large;">16 May to 15 July 1992 [<i>pp. 85-124</i>]</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
The final part of the diary covers his final two months in Pale, beginning with the return of his wife and daughter from Sarajevo (as noted before, the son stayed in the city while waiting for an opportunity to leave through the Jewish Community). His joy at being reunited is soon tempered by the growing despair and disgust by the continued slide of his community into total fascism.<br />
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On her first day back, his daughter tells him she would rather be back in Sarajevo. A visit with friends convinces her she will go crazy in Pale.<br />
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There is very little narrative here; just the slow, tedious tightening of the noose as the remaining Muslims of Pale lose their phones, their electricity, and their homes, until finally they are told that the Serb authorities can no longer "guarantee their safety." Vuksanovic allows Muslim friends to stay with him, particularly on the night after two Serb soldiers are killed and reprisal atrocities are widely expected.<br />
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More and more bearded chetniks in the streets. More and more hostile stares. Guns fired at Muslim homes at night. Soldiers show up to search his late mother's house without a warrant. Some old acquaintances turn out to have gone to the nationalist side. Being Serb will soon no longer be enough; one must be a "good" or "loyal" Serb to be truly safe.<br />
<br />
The daughter leaves for Hungary, and as she leaves she begs her parents not to stay too much longer. The dog gives birth to three puppies; Mladen is delighted but wonders how to feed them.<br />
<br />
One night their Muslim neighbor Mina, who deals with her fear by talking incessantly (Vuksanovic gets irritated with her then feels a little guilty for it) is staying with him and his wife; he notes that<br />
<br />
<i>"She talked non-stop all evening to dispel her fear, but fear is like water, it fills every crevice and finds new outlets."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Every page, every day brings yet another entry in this almost numbing catalog of a society being torn into a nihilistic wasteland; new indignities, new moral outrages, new betrayals--all shot through with a thickening atmosphere of fear and death. On the night of June 13 (page 124), he writes:<br /><br /><i>"I feel somehow that my life hasn't become just a past, that a future exists too.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>These vampires </i>[the Serb nationalists] <i>have neither. That's why they destroy and kill. They won't for long. The penalty must be paid."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
******************************************<br />
<br />
In the next post I'll summarize/review the final 40 pages of this section. After that, there is a short afterward.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-13309578133685923132013-12-25T17:06:00.001-05:002013-12-25T17:06:41.103-05:00"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [4]<span style="font-size: large;">Recollections of Jadranka Vuksanovic</span><br />
Vuksanovic's wife Jadranka left for the city on April 29th for what was supposed to be a two-day trip to visit their daughter and bring their son his papers so that he could leave the city. As noted already, those plans didn't work out as the bridge in Brcko--the last way out of the city--was destroyed the next day. In the end, Jadranka's two-day stay turned into a stay of over two weeks. This brief section is her "recollections" of that stay. Although written as a diary, with almost daily entries, it's not clear whether she actually kept this diary live or wrote it upon returning to Pale at the request of her husband. At any rate, if it is the latter she must have done so almost immediately; this section certainly has the feel for mundane day-to-day details that a more polished memoir might lack.<br />
<br />
Mladen Vuksanovic's diary is written entirely from Pale and the perspective of being behind the Bosnian Serb lines; the terror being inflicted on Sarajevo can only be surmised. Therefore, the decision to insert Jadranka's recollections in the heart of the text is more than a desire to share his wife's experiences or to keep her "with him" in the narrative. Her experience of being jumpy from incoming sniper fire, hiding from bombardment in basements, growing quickly all-too used to the experience of hearing exploding ordnance all serve as a sharp contrast to the creeping horror that his diary recounts. This is more elemental stuff--underscored by the degree to which her account becomes a record of the efforts taken to acquire bread. Some days, the only "news" she has is "bought bread."<br />
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She also notes the sadistic nature of the bombing, which occurs at irregular frequencies seemingly designed to taunt the residents of Sarajevo; sometimes at predictable intervals, otherwise oddly quiet when one has grown to expect shelling. She witnesses an ambush of retreating soldiers. She sees an incident which might have been a settling of an old feud with the war as an excuse. And there is the surreal experience of being able to come and go because of her Serb surname--at the end, she is able to leave the city and rides back into Pale with her daughter (the son was left behind, waiting for the Jewish Community to arrange for a excavation) on a truck loaded with young Serb soldiers. Another reminder of how fratricidal and bizarrely intimate the war was.<br /><br />They return to Pale on May 16. Now that his wife's narrative has rejoined his, Mladen Vuksanovic picks up from thereKirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-70609861542970178652013-12-15T18:03:00.001-05:002013-12-15T18:03:55.424-05:00"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [3]<span style="font-size: large;">Pale Diary - 5 April to 16 May 1992</span><br />
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This first section of the diary covers the period from the beginning of Vuksanovic's confinement to Pale and increasingly to his house, to the reunion with his wife (who left for Sarajevo on April 29 in order to help their children--still stuck in the city--get out) on May 16. The text of the diary is largely unedited and only annotated with occasional footnotes to explain references in the original which would not be clear to the general reader.<br />
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As a result, the text is somewhat impressionistic, referring to immediate circumstances, events, observations and conversations; sometimes giving a reaction, sometimes not. Vuksanovic never dwells on any one incident or observation for more than a paragraph. I suspect this is partially because the slow-motion horror is too much to bear.<br />
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Several motifs develop over these fifty-plus pages. The craven and criminal nature of the local authorities of Pale in action; whatever their rhetoric, and whatever is actually going on on the "front lines" (Vuksanovic reminds the reader how absurd the very idea of a "front line" in a multi-ethnic city suddenly wrenched along crudely nationalist lines), the reality on the streets of Pale are stolen cars without plates and shuttered homes waiting to be looted.<br />
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Another motif are the many personal betrayals and friends and colleagues suddenly reveal themselves as arch-nationalists firmly committed to an insane cause; a cause that commits them to destroying their own city and murdering their own friends. It's one thing to study the rise of nationalism and xenophobia in the abstract; Vuksanovic illustrates what is it like to experience that process on the personal level.<br />
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I used the phrase "slow-motion horror" above, and that is as close as I can come to explaining the overall feel of this section. Vuksanovic is not in Sarajevo, experiencing the bombing, the snipers, the growing desperation firsthand. Instead, he experiences the war through his radio, through reports from passers-by and neighbors, and most surreal of all through his telephone connection to Sarajevo, which is still working through the entire war. Nothing can illustrate how perverse a reversal of the normal order this war is better than the frequent references to his use of the telephone to call people he knows in the city a few kilometers away; people who are being attacked daily by the same soldiers Vuksanovic can see walking by his house in broad daylight. The Bosnian Serb government is not unaware of this connection--rather than shut down all telephone lines, they subject phone users to a constant barrage of nationalist music and radio broadcasts, so that both parties must listen and talk over this Orwellian audio backdrop.<br />
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Vuksanovic does not try to analyze the growing horror or to rationalize it in the larger context of politics and history. He simply expresses disgust and a growing fear that he has damned his family by not acting sooner to get his children out of the Old City. When this section ends, his wife and daughter have finally made it to the family home to join him--the son stayed behind for fear that he would certainly be drafted into military service if he was found. Vuksanovic notes that he has asked his wife to record her impressions of her two weeks in the Old City; those impressions form the next section of the book.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-49541454066792214292013-11-27T23:39:00.002-05:002013-11-27T23:39:59.321-05:00"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [2]<span style="font-size: large;">"It Began in April" [<i>forward by Joschka Fischer</i>]</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
Fischer is a German leftist who recognized that the Left in general often failed to recognize the situation in Bosnia for what it was. As a man of the Left, he very clearly feels a responsibility to remind his readers of the need to take a stand against fascism, no matter how petty and sordid its manifestation, no matter how pro-Western its victims. He points the the example of Peter Handke, who somehow twisted the language of the Left to defend overt nationalist expansion.<br />
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Fischer also explicitly draws a comparison between Vuksanovic's wartime diary and that of Viktor Klemperer, which was just published as the nightmare in Bosnia was coming to an end in 1995. While Fischer states that the experience of the Holocaust and Nazism were unique, he still notes commonalities between the experience of Klemperer, a German Jew living in Dresden and writing about the madness around him, and of Vuksanovic in Pale. Fischer does not say so, but the then-new eyewitness look at the rise of Nazism was surely a record of a moral burden that could not be shrugged off, even so many decades removed. Surely he understand that Europeans like Handke have no right to deny the Klemperers and Vuksanovics the right to be clearly heard.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Author's Preface</span><br />
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This brief Preface simply gives the context--Vuksanovic explains that he had worked for Sarajevo Television but refused to work for the Bosnian Serb station in Pale once it was established; and due to the fact that his mother had been a Croat he was doubly suspected of not being a loyal Serb. As a result, he lived under de facto house arrest for 110 days, until he was able to make his out--smuggling this diary with him.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-8409763919085412322013-11-21T09:39:00.001-05:002013-11-21T09:39:27.258-05:00Peter Lippman's latest Travel JournalI've been so remiss in keeping this blog up (I'm an avid soccer fan, but haven't even posted about Bosnia's first-ever trip to the World Cup next summer!) that I haven't been posting Peter Lippman's travel journal entries as he sends them out. His latest series, recounting his most recent trip to the region, is up to entry #8. Given that he started sending these out in September, rather than reposting all eight of them now I'm just going to share the link for them at the great <a href="http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/" target="_blank">Balkan Witness</a> blog:<br /><br /><a href="http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/journal.htm" target="_blank">Peter Lippman: Reports from Kosovo and Bosnia</a><br />
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Thanks as alwasy to Peter for sharing these; I strongly encourage anyone reading this to go to the link above and read all of Peter's excellent reports.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-17513351661067218362013-10-27T13:01:00.000-04:002013-10-27T13:01:06.972-04:00"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [1]For a few months in 1992, author Mladen Vuksanovic was trapped in the Bosnian Serb "capital" of Pale, a victim of his refusal to be a "good Serb" and go along with the implementation of ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a fascist mini-state within Bosnia. During those harrowing weeks, he kept a diary of what he saw, heard, thought, and felt as he watched his fellow Bosnian Serbs dedicate themselves to a project of hatred and madness, and as news of the war that project created trickled in. The diary was published in Zagreb in 1997, and an English translation was published in 2004.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/From-Enemy-Territory-Pale-Diary/dp/0863567266/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382892894&sr=8-1&keywords=pale+diary" target="_blank">From Enemy Territory: Pale Diary</a> offers an eyewitness account of how society became warped in the process of carrying out a genocidal war, of how fascism is implemented at ground level, and how that subsequently warps social relations and personal psyches. I will begin my review in the next post.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-28055137552340431342013-10-22T14:58:00.000-04:002013-10-22T14:58:33.339-04:00Bosnian Student needs help finishing last semester of college<a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mirela-s-last-semester--2" target="_blank">Mirela's Last Semester</a><br />
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Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-51672351613344517002013-09-27T11:59:00.000-04:002013-09-27T11:59:01.498-04:00Two Decades On, the Lessons of the Bosnian War Remain UnlearnedWhen I started this blog several years ago, I had two goals in mind. The first was simply to apply myself to developing a better understanding of the conflict. I had followed the news at the time and had relatively strong opinions on the matter, but I had not made the effort to deepen my understanding. I regretted that, and finally after finishing my first Master's degree in 2005 I had the time to read more widely, and this blog was the tool I used to document that process and provide a framework for systemic reading. Although I am not as involved in that project as I was, I did succeed in making myself more deeply informed about the issues at stake.<br />
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The other reason was that I believed then--and now--that the tentative and too-long delayed Western intervention in the conflict was a warning to the West of how not to handle international crises in the post-Cold War world. The Bosnian War was allowed to go on too long because of misguided anti-interventionist beliefs as well as realpolitik concerns that there was nothing at stake. I believed that one way to redeem the suffering of Bosnia would be for the United States and its allies to learn from our mistakes in Bosnia.<br />
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I was under no illusions that I had any significant role to play in this process, but I imagined that I would be participating in a broader conversation, and hopefully a productive one. I hoped that as policy makers, scholars, journalists, and the general public studied the sequence of events in the former Yugoslavia, a new consensus about the limits of state sovereignty and a new understanding of the role of international justice would begin to take shape. <br /><br />Unfortunately, I have concluded that there has been little, if any, progress in that regard. And today, I read this story:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/world/middleeast/deal-represents-turn-for-syria-rebels-deflated.html?pagewanted=1&src=recg" target="_blank">Deal Represents Turn for Syria; Rebels Deflated</a><br />
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The Obama Administration has truly failed the people of Syria, and the cause of international justice in general. But this failure did not occur in a vacuum--the American media have been typically glib, shallow, and reactive in their reporting, giving the already intervention-averse public precious little appetite for even modest intervention in Syria. With the exception of a handful of leaders such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Republicans were largely content to score political points by playing to the anti-interventionist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and libertarian wings of their party. But ultimately, this is still Obama's failure. He clearly has no appetite for confronting genuine evil, and the way in which he has thrown the opposition under the bus while allowing Putin to score a significant foreign policy victory on behalf of Assad's regime will likely haunt policymakers for years to come. <br />
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I will probably continue with this blog, particularly in between semesters, but the optimisim and zest I brought to this project back in 2006 are largely gone. <br />
Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-5266850636932779942013-08-27T10:55:00.000-04:002013-08-27T10:55:05.762-04:00UpdateJust for the sake of getting a post in before the end of August...<br />
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As noted before, between graduate school and family matters, I just have not been giving this blog the attention that I used to. I realize that the sun continues to rise in the east, and that nobody turns to "Americans for Bosnia"* for breaking news on Bosnia or expert analysis, but all the same I do know that a handful of people who do care about the issue would turn here from time to time and for that reason alone I feel obligated to keep this blog going. I would hate to feed into any notion that the world has "moved on."<br /><br />But over the past couple of days, I've had an exchange on the subject of Syria with an acquaintence, and in the course of the discussion I brought up the parallels with the situation in Bosnia in the 1990s. It was immediately clear that his understanding of what happened in the former Yugoslavia is fundamentally different from mine. Specifically; like many well-meaning progressives, he has accepted the narrative that the war was about "ancient hatreds" and that there were no clear distinctions to be made between the different actors. <br />
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And so I was I reminded that the battle over the history of the Bosnian conflict is not yet won. There is still work to be done, and for those of us with any investment in the argument over the meaning of the Bosnian war, we really cannot pretend that it's OK to stop talking, writing, reading, and advocating for a rational and fact-based history of the conflict. Allowing the revisionists, apologists, "anti-imperialists", nationalists, and tribalists to have the last word would be a moral abdication. So I apologize for my relative inactivity, and in spite of my busy personal life and current doctoral studies, I will do my best to reengage with the literature and the dialogue around it.<br />
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*Truth be told, I wish I could rename the blog. When I first started, I really didn't have an idea exactly what I'd be doing, but I vaguely intended some sort of advocacy and outreach. Now that the blog has morphed into "book reviews from the perspective of a reasonably informed layman", I realize that the name is not only ridiculously overreaching, but also inaccurate. But hey, legacy and all that.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-68002610197731022652013-06-22T17:40:00.000-04:002013-06-22T17:40:55.351-04:00"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [12]<span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 10: A Loser's Peace</span><br />
With the international reaction to two well-publicized incidents where large numbers of civilians were killed by mortar fire came the beginning of the end of the war in Sarajevo. Under extreme pressure, even from their Russian allies, the Serb nationalist army finally agreed to pull back their heavy weapons and essentially end the siege in exchange for promises that the Bosnian army would not counter-attack.<br />
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But while the shooting, shelling, and killing were over, it would be very wrong to say that life was "returning to normal." What had been normal in prewar Sarajevo was gone. The city, like Oslobodjenje, had survived, but the cost had been high. Many residents had trouble adjusting to postwar life, including the radical reworking of social relations. The rise of the military as an important institution, the replacement of many former residents by conservative rural refugees, and the increasing power of Muslim nationalism and the SDA all contributed to a new social order in which angry teenage gangs roamed the streets and Serbs who had remained loyal to the Bosnian state found themselves being ostracized simply for not being Muslim.<br />
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Oslobodjenje continued publication, now increasingly as an opponent of the government rather than a supporter. Ethnic cleansing continued in Serb-held parts of Bosnia. Ethnic separation would not go away once the war ended. Sarajevo, and Oslobodjenje, survived, but the values both had embodied were not so certain to return.<br />
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*************<br />
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This is the end of the book. There is no epilogue or conclusion, and since the book was published in 1995 it ends before the war--and the final orgy of genocide in eastern Bosnia--did. I regret that this review took so long--the book is actually a brisk and enjoyable read; it's only my own distraction with graduate school and family life which has dragged this out so far. I highly recommend this book to people interested in either life in Sarajevo during the war, or the role of a free press in wartime or when democracy and secular freedom are under attack.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-88161590004803994202013-06-16T18:24:00.000-04:002013-06-22T17:05:40.104-04:00"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [11]<span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 9: The Wounded City</span><br />
By 1993, the more than the physical infrastructure of Sarajevo was damaged. The fragile, multicultural unity of the city was also deeply wounded. For that matter, so was the will and the morale of thousands of Sarajevo residents, including the staff of Oslobodjenje. The continuation of the war and the validation of ethnic division by the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan had the effect of strengthening Muslim nationalism, which could only further undermine what remained of Sarajevo's prewar cosmopolitanism.<br />
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Izetbegovic refused to support the plan but felt that he needed to present it; because it was for a Muslim state he called a special Muslim-only assembly to vote on the measure before it was passed on to the National Assembly. The forces of Muslim nationalism seemed to be on the rise; Mustafa Ceric became outspokenly so. In the meantime, the staff of the paper kept a low profile and focused on the goal of surviving to the newspapers' 50th anniversary.<br />
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Ultimately, the measure was defeated--even among the Muslim majority, believers in inclusive secularism still held the upper hand. Oslobodjenje managed to publish a special 50th anniversary edition. And while the staff bickered more and more, and disagreements increased in frequency, they never broke down along ethnic lines. A new government formed in the wake of the defeat of Muslim nationalism, and it quickly cracked down on the gangsters who used their position in the military to exploit the population, leading to an outpouring of public support and overt expressions of approval from the paper.<br />
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But while these were welcome developments, things were not good. The paper still struggled. Kurspahic moved himself and his family to New York City to raise funds for the paper, leaving some staff angry and an overwhelmed Gordana Knezevic in charge. Electricity became harder and harder to come by. A promised Sarajevo film festival was completely undermined by United Nations refusal to cooperate and Serb shelling. Residents found themselves wearying of the everyday struggle to meet basic needs while avoiding death.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-48775174950537344262013-06-13T22:16:00.002-04:002013-06-13T22:16:47.735-04:00"Sudden Nationhood" by Max BergholzThe latest issue of The American Historical Review--the quarterly publication of the American Historical Association--includes an article by Max Bergholz, an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. The article is entitled "Sudden Nationhood: The Microdynamics of Intercommunal Relations in Bosnia-Herzegovina after World War II". The article approaches the subject of nationalism at the local level, specifically the Kulen Vakuf region in northwestern Bosnia during the 1950s and early 1960s. This was an area of mostly Serbs and Muslims, with a small Croat minority, which had been scarred by violence and atrocities during World War II. First, a number of local Serbs had been murdered by a group of Muslims who had joined the Ustasa. According to Bergholz it seems most of these killings were carried out for personal rather than ideological or racial reasons. This led to wider-scale retaliatory killings by Serbs even as the Partisans tried to build multi-ethnic solidarity in the region. This is a familiar story throughout Bosnia in World War, but the context is important because the author is arguing that the wartime experience of particular individuals heavily influenced the way in which they, and their immediate descendants, would conceptualized these "nationalist" incidents in the immediate post-war era.<br />
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Bergholz utilizes source documents from League of Communists reports about incidents of "national chauvinism" and inter-ethnic violence to determine patterns of ethnic violence between individuals or groups in the region. The article is a micro-level examination of how nationalism "happens."<br />
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The idea of nationalism as a process which happens rather than a fixed identity is crucial here; the incidents Bergholz studies describe situations in which often petty (and sometimes violent) incidents involving individuals are conceptualized as conflicts between national groups either by the participants or members of the surrounding community. Yet these conceptions often do not dictate day-to-day interactions within those communities. Rather, conflict triggers an automatic and seemingly unconscious configuration of a particular conflict into generalized, national-group defined terms. National identities, at least in terms of defining relations between groups and between individuals of different ethnicity were not fixed, nor were they the determining factor in communal relations. Rather, incidents of violence or conflict would sometimes trigger this "sudden nationalism."<br />
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Also of note--the author's contention that contrary to conventional wisdom (heard all too often from Western observers during the Bosnian War), it is not true that ethnic violence is the product of antagonistic national identities. Rather, incidents of violence create those opposed national identities; and that individuals will sometimes revert to those identities in times of conflict or strife. Bergholz also suggests that the Titoist focus on national coexistence might have had the counter-productive effect of encouraging Yugoslavs to conceptualize personal, social, and political disagreements in nationalist terms.<br />
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It's a well-researched and well-reasoned article, and I recommend it to anybody who has an interest in Bosnia, or in the development of nationalism and national identity in general. The citation is below:<br /><br />Max Berghoz, "Sudden Nationhood: The Microdynamics of Intercommunal Relations in Bosnia-Herzegovina after World War II". <i>The American Historical Review, </i>118, no. 3, June 2013, pp. 679-707.<br />
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<br />Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-79011627718279127072013-06-08T22:23:00.001-04:002013-06-08T22:23:32.393-04:00"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [10]<span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 8: War, <i>Oslobodjenje</i>, and Democracy</span><br />
Oslobodjenje's record as a staunch defender of independent journalism and a free press during the fall of the Communist regime and one-party rule was truly inspirational, and earned the paper plenty of international plaudits. Its record during the war was decidedly more mixed.<br />
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By Spring 193, Bosnia was fighting for its life while the international community did little more than wait for its government to accept ethnic partition as the price of peace. In this environment, the staff--who had come of age personally and professionally under Communism, when the role of the press was to faithfully "report" the party line--found themselves torn between their professional, civic, and patriotic duties. The compromises weren't always neatly defined, and they were often quite understandable given the circumstances, but they were compromises all the same, and the idealism the paper inspired in the early days became quite tempered and muted, if never completely muzzled.<br />
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While the paper no longer followed an official party line handed down from the state, old habits of following some overriding editorial approach died hard. Many members of the staff expected the editorial board to set a "party line" for the newspaper to follow. And in effect, this happened to large degree--as the war progressed, it became more and more evident that unlike some other independent media outlets in Sarajevo, Oslobodjenje was not inclined to criticize the government or even to report news which might undermine the war effort. Even when a couple of reporters from the paper were forced under threats to spend several days digging front-line trenches under the orders of some of the gangsters-turned-military leaders who operated as de facto warlords in their parts of Sarajevo. These gangsters were abusing the rights and freedom of Sarajevo residents and lining their pockets with extortion and the control of the black market; but still, Oslobodjenje said nothing.<br />
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At the same time, the paper was not the official organ of the government, and often found itself getting the cold shoulder for refusing to completely report the "news" the way the SDA-led government would have preferred. This left the paper in a no man's land where it was simultaneously punished for the very independence it was often criticized for not having enough of.<br />
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Some staff members were torn; others, accustomed to life under Communism, saw nothing wrong. Gordana Knezevic was unapologetic for putting patriotism ahead of professional ethics. The Bosnian state had to be saved; that was more important than doing first-rate journalism. As a Serb, she had an existential reason for saving multi-ethnic Bosnia. As a mother who had sent her children away, she had a personal one--she wanted there to be a country for them to be from, even if she ended up being buried there.<br />
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Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-52195914532608761092013-05-26T22:33:00.000-04:002013-05-28T22:09:17.775-04:00"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [9]<span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 7: Winter</span><br />
The opening sentence of this chapter is something of a shock:<br />
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<i>"I returned to Sarajevo in January 1993 after a six-month absence and was astonished at how wretched a place it had become."</i><br />
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All of the earlier scenes of struggle and survival, the reader is reminded, were from the earliest months of the war. At that point, Sarajevo had yet to experience the deprivations of winter. In this chapter, we see how the grinding, relentless struggle to survive in a city under siege was wearing people down, and eroding the sense of community in the process. Society wasn't fracturing on ethnic lines, but rather atomizing into a collection of families and households, each able to do little more than look after their own.<br />
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The cold, the darkness, the lack of adequate food, the constant work involved merely in acquiring water, the loneliness, the isolation...the nobility and spirit of Sarajevo was being reduced to grim day to day scramble for firewood, rations, shelter from sniper and mortar fire, favorable relations with the inconsistent UN officials who were the only conduit to the outside world.<br />
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Ivo and Gordana's son lost his only friend, an older neighbor boy who shared his love of hard rock, when that neighbor--serving as a soldier in the army--was killed. On average, Oslobodjenje gave over a quarter of each issue to obituaries, which now served not only ceremonial purpose but also informational, as people around the city often had no other way to learn of the fate of family members, coworkers, and acquaintances around the city.<br />
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The Cyrus-Vance plan legitimized the ethnic division of the country, scoring a victory for Bosnian Serb propaganda and triggering the Muslim-Croat civil war of 1993. The war in Bosnia took a step closer to being a self-fulfilling prophecy, the three-way war between "nations" that Karadzic and company always claimed it to be.<br />
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Gordana was able to travel to New York City for a few days to receive an award. The guilt at her temporary escape coexisted with the sense that if she allowed herself to get used to the comforts of life in a city not at war, her return to Sarajevo would be unbearable. And indeed, when she returns, she finds that the cold was worse than anyone expected; her bathroom shelves are gone, having been used as firewood.<br />
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It is only January.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-73783387637308363512013-05-21T21:46:00.000-04:002013-05-21T21:46:03.681-04:00"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [8][<i>Sorry it's been such a long break--almost two full months--between posts. I couldn't give much free time to anything but graduate school.</i>]<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 6: Fighting Together, Falling Apart</span><br />
Sarajevo was a cosmopolitan, multicultural city that was a bridge between different worlds--the East and the West; the capitalist world and the communist; Christianity and Islam; Orthodoxy and Catholicism. The population was mixed, and during the Yugoslav period the city had a very high percentage of mixed marriages between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. The demographics of the city were very mixed. Therefore, the fact of Sarajevo presented a challenge to the Serb nationalists which was both pragmatic and existential. They wanted to divide this thoroughly mixed Sarajevo on ethnic lines for military reasons; they needed to divide the people of Sarajevo against each other in order to validate their own ideology.<br />
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Therefore, the siege of Sarajevo had a dimension beyond the military, because the Bosnian Serb Army wasn't merely trying to conquer the city but to destroy its social fabric. And as the war dragged on, the bonds which connected people across ethnic lines were tested frequently. Many thousands of Serbs stayed loyal to Bosnia and suffered along with their fellow Bosnians--and one absolutely cannot assume that a decision by all Serbs was a sign of support for the nationalist cause. Many, Ljiljana Smajlovic, had complex feelings about their Serb identity but did not join the nationalist cause. And human nature being what it is, many simply took advantage of the opportunity to escape. And some, it must be said, probably left because life as a Serb in besieged Sarajevo was not easy.<br />
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It was not easy for anyone, of course. But for Serbs who stayed, it was hard to escape suspicion, as some of their fellow Serbs had indeed betrayed friends, family, and neighbors to join the forces tormenting their own hometown. Senka Kurtovic wrote a piece for Oslobodjenje, an open letter to her ex-boyfriend turned Serb nationalist Dragan Aloric, which touched a nerve because so many in Sarajevo had felt the same betrayal. At the same time, in the early days of the war the militias which defended the city never shed their origins in the criminal underworld, and it was much easier to justify preying on "suspicious" Serbs when the inclination to loot and otherwise "acquire" goods took hold.<br />
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Many resisted the temptation to give in to sectarian fear and hostility. But as the siege dragged on, old loyalties continued to wither in the face of paranoia and suspicion fueled by nationalist propaganda and accentuated by every sniper's bullet, every mortar shell.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-8550895256051569372013-03-24T21:01:00.000-04:002013-03-24T21:01:02.695-04:00"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [7]<span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 5: Hatred</span><br />
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Hatred of the other has to be learned. And even once learned, it needs constant reinforcement. Hatred is a powerful motivating tool if you are willing to accept the consequences, or remain blind to them.<br />
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The leadership of the Bosnian Serb separatists desperately needed the outside world to believe that Bosnia was a land riven with ancient, immutable hatreds. To believe so made the war seem inevitable and beyond the scope of international concern. It also legitimized ethnic partition. Many in the international community were willing to oblige; none more enthusiastically than Lewis MacKenzie, who mocked any possibility of a peaceful solution and seems to have arrived in Bosnia with his mind already made up. It is worth noting that Gjelten makes note of the fact that MacKenzie was offered financial compensation by the American advocacy group SerbNet to give two speeches propagating such views to the American public. This book was published in 1995. The only people who ever took MacKenzie at his word on Bosnia in the years since he was there were people who were clearly not paying attention.<br />
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The Bosnian government, and the Muslim plurality, just as desperately needed the world to believe that there was a long tradition of coexistence and tolerance in Bosnia. Not a strife-free, utopian paradise like MacKenzie so contemptuously accused those who differed with his "they all hate each other" condemnations, but a land of long-standing intermixing and cultural sharing. It was an argument grounded in both history, and demographic facts--particularly in Sarajevo. It was a compelling argument, and an inspiring one. It should have carried more weight with the Western democracies. But the Bosnian Serbs had tanks, and heavy artillery, and an overwhelming military advantage. If they couldn't find hatred already existing, they would will it into existence with propaganda and violence.<br />
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Because they didn't just need to convince the outside world. They needed to convince the people of Bosnia, Serbs and non-Serbs alike. It wasn't enough to win territory; the Muslims needed to leave and never come back. The culture of this new Bosnia--a Bosnia devoid of that special ethnic and religious mix which made the country what it was--needed to be cleansed just as thoroughly as the demographic map needed to be. Mosques needed to be dynamited and bulldozed from memory. Orthodox priests needed to sanctify racial violence and ethnic segregation. Bosnia's Nobel-Prize winning author Ivo Andric needed to be remembered for the violence he wrote about, but not the historical continuities which framed that violence. Remember the hatreds he described, but forget that the Bridge over the Drina was, indeed, a bridge that connected people to each other.<br />
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Keep teaching that hatred, because otherwise ordinary Serbs might forget it and make the unforgivable error of thinking that they can trust their neighbors and stand by their fellow Bosnians. Oslobodjenje was targeting because it was a symbol of the cosmopolitan tolerance which Sarajevo represented; both needed to be destroyed. The Serbs who stayed in Sarajevo, the Serb reporters who continued writing for its beloved newspaper, were obviously failed Serbs. How could they be otherwise? They had failed to learn to hate.<br />
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Perhaps the Bosnian Serb leadership got to them too late. That mistake was not repeated with at least one 12 year-old Serb boy in the newly-cleansed town of Hadzici. Echoing the same sentiments of thousands of Bosnian Serbs who had learned how to hate, he told a reporter "I do not miss my Muslim classmates one bit. It has been explained to me that while we were playing together, they were actually plotting behind my back."<br />
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Gjelten lets that boy have the last word in this chapter on "Hatred." And so shall I.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-84542876023842830302013-03-22T09:48:00.001-04:002013-03-22T09:48:24.766-04:00Bosnia vs. Greece in Crucial World Cup Qualifier TodayWhile it's true that I let graduate school keep me from blogging as much as I'd like, its takes more than research papers and comprehensive reading courses to keep me from following the beautiful a whole lot more than I can honestly justify. And being that today begins a five-day stretch of official FIFA international dates, and that means World Cup qualifiers all over the globe. The USA has a home match against Costa Rica tonight, but the match that matters as far as this blog is Bosnia's home leg versus Greece.<br />
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This is a big match--Bosnia and Greece are tied at the top of Group Seven with 10 points apiece, with Bosnia holding the tie-breaker right now on goal differential (+13 for Bosnia to +4 for Greece; a very comfortable cushion at this point). The first leg, in Greece, was played on October 12 last fall, and ended in a 0-0 draw. That's a crucial road point; if Bosnia can now win their home leg in the series that could potentially decide first place in the group, qualifying Bosnia for the World Cup outright and sparing them the second-place playoff which has led to so much heartbreak in recent World Cup and Euro Cup qualifying campaigns. <br />
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If Bosnia wins today, the battle is hardly over--Bosnia is no footballing giant, and can't afford to take any opponent for granted. Greece has already won their away leg versus Slovakia, the country nipping at the co-leaders' heels with 7 points and one Bosnia has yet to face in this campaign. And over half of that impressive goal differential was due to an 8-1 thrashing of poor Liechtenstein, whom Greece have yet to face. Still, if they manage 3 points tonight the prospect of seeing Bosnia in an international tournament for the first time will be much brighter. Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-65564178221756639272013-03-07T19:10:00.001-05:002013-03-07T19:10:46.759-05:00"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [6]<span style="font-size: large;">Chapter 4: Humiliation</span><br />
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This chapter opens in the suburb of Dobrinja on May 2, 1992. Young Oslobodjenje reporter Senka Kurtovic is huddling in a bedroom with several of her neighbors as they comfort each other singing Bosnian folk songs while the entire neighborhood was subjected to one of the most intense Serb artillery bombardments yet. Senka lives in an apartment in this newish suburb, in a small apartment her parents bought her. The neighborhood is on the front line of Serb efforts to cut Sarajevo in half in order to achieve permanent ethnic partition. </div>
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The title of this chapter is apt--cruelly so. Mixed in with the violence, the hatred, and the physical hazards of Sarajevo under siege, were endless humiliations little and big. The humiliation of living without running water. The humiliation of hoping that your ex-boyfriend the Serbian nationalist might be able to help you get permission to walk from your home to your workplace without being killed. The humiliation of being forced to crawl on your belly through tall grass because of snipers. The humiliation of standing in line to receive an inadequate quantity of basic foodstuffs from the very United Nations which treats you like a prisoner in your own country. The humiliation of having to kiss up to that same arrogant United Nations because it decides what basic supplies--such as newsprint--will be allowed to enter your own city.<br />
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The story of Oslobodjenje is the story of Sarajevo, and Bosnia, writ small; but it is also a reminder that a "genocide" is made up of thousands of individual atrocities and outrages. While a genocide is an effort to destroy, in whole or in part, a people defined by race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion, it is still experienced by individuals.<br />
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The multiple humiliations suffered by the staff begin to add up in numbing detail. They become a demoralizing "new normal" as the idea that one must dodge sniper fire in order to travel from one's home to one's place of employment becomes accepted by the international community standing by watching as if this all is some grotesque freak show carried out by some exotic species rather than fellow human beings being subjected to cruelties not of their own making. Gordana Knezevic interviews General Lewis MacKenzie, who Gjelten portrays as a glib, arrogant man who brings his preconceptions about the nature of the war with him and never lets facts or the realities on the ground shake any of them. (Keep in mind this book was published in 1995; MacKenzie's career as a craven Serb nationalist apologist-for-hire is in the future). He is as ungracious (scheduling the interview at a time when it will be especially dangerous for Gordana to travel) and amoral as he would later prove to be.(he not only refuses a request about the aforementioned newsprint, he also refused a personal request for a mere two liters of petrol for her car--all in the name of strict neutrality, of course).<br />
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In the end, all this humiliation--all this sustained, deliberate, targeted dehumanization of the "other"--can only lead to one inevitable result. Death and suffering stalk the staff of Oslobodjenje just as it does the rest of Sarajevo's population. The final section of this chapter is simply entitled "Some Who Died."<br />
Zeljka Memic, the wife of editor Fahro Memic, is killed by a shell. Senka Kurtovic's mother suffered the same fate. Kemal Kurspahic is seriously injured in a car crash while racing through the unregulated streets of Sarajevo, trying as always to avoid the snipers. The humiliations continue.</div>
Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23301331.post-64163538950637966062013-03-01T20:27:00.003-05:002013-03-01T20:27:34.710-05:00Bosnian Independence DayA very belated, late-in-the-day recognition that today is the 21st anniversary of Bosnia's independence.Kirk Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06879908614214050994noreply@blogger.com1