We all watched Sarajevo's 'sniper alley' with citizens running from one street corner to the other... it made great TV coverage. The bullet holes in the buildings remain as a reminder of a sad period in Bosnian history. The fighting is over... memories are still too fresh and painful to forgive... but new generations push through with motivation and optimism. Each side of the conflict can provide a simplified history that allows blame to be allocated with a broad brush. If you take a long term perspective of history, people movement and the pattern of resolving differences in the past, the issues being resolved by breaking up the Yugoslav state were never going to be settled by politics alone.
After the war... how do you survive? What Bosnian had in large supply was spent ammunition shells. Those with an artistic bent found clever ways to make works of art from items of destruction. Would you like a pen fashioned from gun shells used to kill civilians going about their daily routines? How about a milk jug from a rocket launcher that blew up the local library? Coffee grinders... salt and pepper shakers... there is no limit to the imagination. Of course, the tourists bought the items in large volumes.
One way to add realism to the Sarajevo experience is to get the tourists onto the battlefield... or in our case, under it. Our guide (Adass) took us to a war museum where we looked at memorabilia... sat through 15 minutes of video depicting the war... and then we were sent to walk in a tunnel only 1.5 metres high and 1 metre wide... that ran for 800 metres under the airport (we walked only a few metres. Adass said it took only 4 months to build the tunnel with no digging equipment... but it has taken the post-war government 15 years to build its first motorway. Adass took us to the ancient Jewish cemetery where Serbian soldiers were positioned to fire at the civilians shopping in the market below. All this is recent history... we are not taking millennia... we are talking about history less than 20 years old!
Sarajevo is doing it tough at the moment... 30 percent unemployed... wages already low... no export opportunities to develop... a population that is conservative and likely to resist a period of rapid change... and a lingering doubt about whether there are scores still yet to be settled before the long chapter on Balkan conflicts can be closed. The young are seeking employment opportunities abroad... hopefully to gain experience and new perspectives that they can bring back to this beautiful city.
Australia... you don't know how lucky you are!
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