Hey guys. This is again not gonna be like any of  my usual post and in this post I'm gonna talk about stuff that is gonna be very hard for a lot  of people to listen to.  Bosnian War 

 

 The Bloodiest War - BOSNIAN

So, this is the fourth post that I'm making  from the Balkans right now. In the last couple of post I've sort of sidestepped talking about the  Yugoslav wars because it's such a complex issue to talk about but I can't you know put it off any  further because these events were so important in shaping what the region is today and shaping the  experiences of the people who are still alive, who have survived these wars and people who are  even born after the wars that it's very hard for you as a viewer I guess to really understand  this region without knowing about these things.  

 

I've been reading about everything that happened  here in a lot of books for the last couple of years since my first visit to the Balkans so I  would recommend two books that I really liked on this in the video description so check them  out if you want to get a better understanding of it. One of them is the longer book which is  around a thousand pages which is one of the best history books I've ever read. I'd highly recommend  reading that to really get an understanding of what led to the situation that led to the crisis  in the 90s and all the wars where thousands and thousands of people died. The federal republic of  Yugoslavia was sort of made as a communist country that had six other communist states within it.

 

It  was Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina where I am right now in Sarajevo, Macedonia, Slovenia and  Montenegro. After world war ii, the leader who came into power, Josip Tito, was this communist  authoritarian figure who sort of brought all the countries together. He was half Slovenian  half Croatian and he set up the capital of Yugoslavia in Serbia. During that time unlike  essentially all other communist countries, the economy of Yugoslavia was prospering because  it wasn't allied with the Eastern Bloc of Stalin.it was doing things its own way. He was  applying sort of more of an open socialism.  

 

which was working. The citizens of Yugoslavia  were enjoying very high living standards, had a very strong currency, had decent jobs, had  a good passport, life was good until around 1980 when Tito died and there was really no one else  similar to him to replace him at that point. During Tito's reign he made active efforts to  sort of suppress any right-wing nationalist ,movements within the territories because he  realized that such movements could lead to the end of Yugoslavia, but once he died  all of that was back on the table again

 

Also at the same time the economy of  Yugoslavia really collapsed in the 80s. They racked up an insurmountable debt that they owed to  western countries, there was the oil crisis which adversely affected them to a great extent. Lots  of people become unemployed. The currency devalued very fast. The quality of lives for the people  or the citizens of Yugoslavia started getting a lot of worse and the different sort of nations  inside Yugoslavia started pointing fingers at each other and these right-wing nationalist movements  started to play a more prominent role in politics and then around the same time, in the late 80s  is when the Soviet Union started collapsing and all these other countries that were under the  Eastern Bloc, not in Yugoslavia but everything from basically the Czech Republic to Russia, they  started having their own independence movements which inspired these nationalist factions  within Yugoslavia even more.

 

So by the time it was the late 80s early 90s, it seemed the  splitting up of Yugoslavia was inevitable. For most of the other countries things weren't as  complicated as it was for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serbia had ethnic Croats and some other groups but  it was predominantly ethnic Serbs so there was no question of who would be running that country.  Same for Croatia, same for Slovenia, same for I guess Macedonia to an extent, but Bosnia was a  very very complicated state with a lot of history which had always been a very strong multi-ethnic  community and the three biggest players here were the Bosniaks who were essentially the Muslims  that lived in Bosnia, the Croats who were of Croatian descent but more importantly were  roman Catholics who lived in Bosnia Herzegovina and the Serbs who were of Serbian descent but  were orthodox Christians that lived in the region, and none of them had a clear majority.

 

In the  1991 census they found out that 44% of the people were the Bosniak Muslims which was a plurality but  not a majority. More than 32 percent were Bosnian Serbs which were people who identifies ethically  as Serbs but still live in Bosnia and then around 17 percent, if I remember right, were Croats  and it wasn't even as simple as you could split the country into three clean regions and separate  these groups. Inside regions, let's say that were predominantly controlled by Bosnian Serbs, there  were enclaves or there were cities that were full of you know Bosniak Muslims and inside those  cities there would be neighborhoods that would be filled with Croats, so it was a very complicated  question and people heavily disagreed on who should get to rule the country.

 

The Muslims who were the plurality, the Bosniaks, they were more in favor for an independent Bosnian country  where I guess they would have the largest stake in what happens. The Serbs and the Croats  on the other hand wanted to be allied with Serbia and Croatia respectively and so they did  not want that. So around the time the 90s started, there were a lot of tensions brewing  there were small incidents happening but no one living in Sarajevo and very few  people really expected it to go as far as it did

 

The different groups formed their individual  militias. Some isolated incidents of violence led to more and more violence and before  you knew it, there was civil war. There were militias of these ethnic groups going in wiping  out villages, killing people indiscriminately in different neighborhoods around the country just  because of their religion and their ethnicity. The ethnic Serbs for the most part were backed  by people in power in Serbia so they had a pretty big upper hand in the situation. The Yugoslav  wars were very brutal pretty much everywhere caused a lot of suffering everywhere, but Bosnia  Herzegovina definitely suffered the worst of it and Sarajevo as a city probably suffered the  worst out of any other place in the Balkans.  

 

So when you come to Sarajevo today you see it  surrounded by these picturesque hills that you want to go to the top of to get better views  of the city. This is where the Serb militia set up their base and their snipers and they went  on a three-year and 11 month siege of the city of Sarajevo. This is the longest siege in the history  of modern warfare, one year longer than the siege of Leningrad, multiple times longer than the  battle of Stalingrad, some of the most horrific battles that we talk about in world war ii and  the people here who were stuck are mostly Bosniaks, but there was also Serbs, Croats and Jews and  people from other ethnicities stuck in this mess too.

 

The Serb militia also took over some key  military checkpoints in the city, even though the city was mostly inhabited by the residents still.  One of the major tourist attractions in Sarajevo is this Olympic bobsleigh up on the hills  and it sort of encapsulates the sharp turn that this country took in the span of a decade. In 1984 Bosnia Herzegovina hosted the winter Olympics and the Olympics  by the way were a much bigger deal 30 years ago than they are now. Now no one  even watches them. Back then it was a big thing it was a very prestigious thing and there was  this bobsled track that went down the hill that you can go and visit, but for me the most  interesting thing is when you're hiking down past the bobsled you see these bullet  scarred buildings with walls just blown off completely.

 

I was there three years ago and  it's such an interesting juxtaposition there. You see mountains and hills, some of the  best things that mother nature created, through these blown-up walls and  the destruction that's caused by irrational human beings. It's one of the  craziest things I've ever seen and it's not just those buildings that are bullet-ridden and  blown up. This whole city was destroyed during that siege. So for almost four years the people of  the city lived through gunshots all day all night, snipers shooting through walls killing  people, trying to kill anyone on the streets mortars throwing shells all over the city.  There's around 200 spots in the city where you can see the remains of the damage that  was done by these shells on the pavement but honestly if you just take a walk and look  around you, this whole city is so bullet-ridden  

 

There's just these holes that you see all over  the walls which, if you don't know the history you might not appreciate, but those  are bullet holes from snipers. Some people have tried to cover it up better than  others and you don't see it in the new buildings but you cannot not see it when you're here. The rebels also blockaded the whole city to prevent any sort of aid from coming to them.  UN and some other agencies tried I guess providing food and ration but it was not the best help  so there were constantly food shortages, water shortages, shortages of fuel. Going out to get  some water to drink was a life-threatening task and people often died while trying to do that The days slowly turned into weeks, weeks slowly turned into months and the conflict kept  going longer than anyone ever thought.  

 

When winter came people had to start burning their  books and their furniture just to stay warm. On top of that there was someone you know dying every  day and these tactics that were uh that were used  by the militia, particularly here but everywhere  in the Balkans during the wars, you know makes you question the monstrosity that human beings are  capable of. There are videos of this. Often um  when kids would go out to get something, the  snipers would shoot the kids but not fatally and this was almost done as a bait tactic to  bring out the parent or the mother and then they'd kill them both. It probably looks like I'm  sitting in a park right now you know, but this is actually a cemetery that I'm at and right behind  me is this memorial that was created for the I think 1500 or so children that were  killed during the the Siege of Sarajevo Some of them were toddlers at the time All of them were probably people I'd be seeing today and having beers at the bar if they're  still alive and not killed in the conflict.

 

Genocide on a massive scale was  committed in various places but particularly at this one spot called Srebrenica  which is not too far from here. People in a refugee camp were lined up and all the boys and  men, or boys who looked over 15 was the standard, were killed by the militia in a manner that's  eerily similar to how the Nazis killed people in the concentration camp or near the  concentration camp in Nis 50 years prior to that.  

 

So it was history just repeating itself, this time  it was a different group of people being targeted. It's it's hard to get a real number on  the number of people that were actually survivors of sexual violence because it's  such an underreported crime but estimates are that up to 50 000 women were raped  and these were very systematic methods.There were rape camps set up all throughout  Bosnia, one notorious one not too far from here  

 

where they were kept as prisoners  and uh the stories that you read about these places are some of the most  disgusting things I've heard in my life Between April 1992 and February 1996 around 15  000 people died because of this siege. At the same time around 130 000 people in general were  killed during the Yugoslav conflicts. It's hard to find someone who's lived through that time here  and doesn't know someone who has died or doesn't know a lot of people who have been uh displaced,  separated from their families and homes forever because of this conflict. So around 1996 the siege  of Sarajevo finally sort of came to an end.

 

The UN could never really take action because Russia  had veto power over anything the other members were trying to do and Russia was a strong ally  of Serbia. Finally NATO intervened way too late in 1996 and the siege came to an end and  like a cease-fire peace treaty was signed and Bosnia Herzegovina, the country, was created  with three very different regions in it. Republika  Srpska on the east and northern sides where  mostly Bosnian Serbs lived. Sort of the central part where Sarajevo and Mostar is which is Bosnia  Herzegovina and on the west this part where Croats lived and following that there was a mass exodus  of people who didn't “ethnically belong” in these new carved off regions moving to newer places.  That's so evident when you spend any time in the  

 

Balkans or talk to people from the Balkans or  make friends, you soon start to realize that a lot of them their families have to move in the  90s from a different country just for the hope of a peaceful life and this new sort of fractured  government that was set up for these three regions in Bosnia Herzegovina was not really meant to be a  functioning full-time government. It was supposed to be more like a temporary agreement for them to  sort out something bigger but that never happened and this heavily fractured government with three  different presidents for three different regions, multiple different parliaments still stays  in place. It's not very effective just due to the nature of how it's set up. It's a part of the  reason this country and the people have failed to make too much progress in the 25 years since the  war ended. Tragically it seems like the system is probably not going to change because, from what  it seems like, the people who are in power, the politicians, are making a lot of good money  out of being politicians and it seems like they don't really have a financial incentive at least  to make the changes necessary to help this country move forwards. In places where different  ethnicities are still living together in proximity tensions can still run pretty  high. Not always, but often

 

One of my friends from Belgrade, she's actually  a Bosnian Serb, who grew up near Mostar and now she's going to school in Belgrade. She  told me that she couldn't even use her real name her whole life, her first name, because it's  a Serbian name she had to use a shortened version of that name to not raise suspicion  among strangers and to sort of protect herself from potential retaliation from people who are  still not over what happened. But you know..things are getting better. There might  be a silver lining to this cloud after all.

 

The younger generations are more aware  than ever of the potential dangers of this sort of right-wing nationalism and how pointless  everything was that led to these atrocities that changed the lives of everyone around them Just based on my friends that I made in the Balkans and mostly in Belgrade, I know a lot of  people whose parents are very much like people from the 80s and 90s who could not stand people  from other ethnicities, but my friends, the kids of these people, are some of the most open-minded  liberal people in the world and and that gives me a lot of hope.

 

 The international community  may be acted too late but it has acted more decisively in recent years and the people who  are in charge of committing genocide and these horrifying war crimes, a lot of them have now  been convicted and are now in jail and are I guess in a sense paying for what  they did if that brings any closure this reminds me of this one thing like a month ago, one of those war criminals  was was sentenced to life in prison and he was one of the people behind Srebrenica and a  (Serbian) friend of mine I was talking to was telling me that he was talking about this with his  mother and his mother said that "what would have..  

 

the mothers of those kids who died in Srebrenica..  what would have they done if they could only get life in prison for their kids instead of  (the kids) being slaughtered like animals?" But yeah, justice is being served, maybe not fast enough,  maybe not enough, but progress is being made. Both the Serbian and Croatian presidents in the  last two decades have come out and apologized for crimes committed in the names of their respective  nationalities in Bosnia, and it seems like people in general are just more careful, more wary of not  doing things or not doing anything that could lead to what happened in the 90s repeating itself  again. Even though the progress is slow we can't lose hope and it seems like people in  this region haven't lost hope at all. In fact, they didn't lose hope in the middle of this  whole mess right when the city was under siege for three and a half years or four years.

 

The people did their best to show that they have not lost faith in themselves. So people would you know stay out of the line of fire and do what's reasonable, but when  they had to go about their normal lives, they would go out in their best clothes Women would put on lipstick and makeup and their best outfits and go on like  they would if this wasn't happening. The reasoning behind this was that  they did not want to let these militias strip them of their identity because  that's when the militia would win, is if they lost hope in themselves. It's okay to come across major  challenges in life and fail when you face them.

 

There are circumstances we can't control but  it's never okay to lose the will to try to face these challenges. It's easier said than done  but it's doable and the people of Sarajevo, the people of Yugoslavia, have shown that in  the face of adversity and that sort of courage is essential because it's the only thing that will  help us move on to a better world. That was a lot I hope I was able to do justice  to the story of the city There's definitely a lot more about  this that you can learn, and I'll link appropriate sources in the video  description.

 That's it for this one guys  I'll catch you guys from the next post…