PEACE

MAGAZINE

The Desire to be One BY A LEXEI G AVRIEL

Unity, Nationalism, and Fragmentation in ex-Yugoslavia
Jasenovac, Prijedor, Sarajevo,
and Mostar are cities which sum-
mon particularly traumatic
memories from the Balkan wars
of the 1990s (and from earlier
wars as well). Despite this histo-
ry, there is still a strong desire to
overcome hatred and fragmenta-
tion, as Alexei Gavriel discov-
ered.

JASENOVAC, CROATIA
During the Second World War, the
Nazi-allied Croatian Fascist govern-
ment took on a campaign to “cleanse”
Croatia of its unwanted elements. A
death camp in the town of Jasenovac was
constructed and run by Croatian
Ustashe forces and became the final
resting place of hundreds of thousands
of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and political dissi-
dents. The killings were particularly
brutal and carried out with “cold
weapons” including knives and ham-
mers (as opposed to the “humane”
methods of killing, by gas and burning,
used by the Nazis).
A memorial was constructed at
Jasenovac under the direction of
Marshal Tito in remembrance of the
atrocity and to reinforce that people are
better when they are united. A museum
was developed around the memorial
where groups of Yugoslav school chil-
dren were brought to understand their
history. The site served as a reminder to
never let anything like this happen
again.
Ironically, Jasenovac was the site of
fighting and ethnic conflict in 1991
after the Croatian army occupied the
Mostar’s famous bridge, rebuilt in 2004 to symbolically link its Croatian and Muslim communities
across the Neretva river.
town. They laid mines around the mon-
ument and vandalized the museum in an
attempt almost to purge it of its memo-
ry. Jasenovac was later taken by the
Croatian Serb army, which occupied it
between 1991 and 1995. With a pre-war
population of 3300 people and essen-
tially 50/50 Serb and Croat, the town
currently has a population of only 1500
people: 80% Croat, 20% Serb.1 Most of
the Serbs who were not killed in the eth-
nic cleansing campaigns fled across the
Bosnian border into nearby Republika
Srpska.
When we arrived at the Jasenovac
memorial, we were greeted by a govern-
ment tour guide who showed us around
the memorial grounds. He told us he
was Serb and had lived in this area even
during the war. When asked if he was
persecuted as a Serb living in Croatia he
Alexei Gavriel
replied that this was not the case. His
family had stayed during the conflict. It
was harder for people who were return-
ing rather than those who stayed.
Our guide was perhaps the first person
we had been able to ask the grand ques-
tion of how could something like this
have happened. The reply he gave was
one I heard repeated throughout the
rest of the research in the Balkans:
“Maybe we are stupid people – we just
follow what people say. When Tito was
in power we believed we were united.
Later when it was Tudjman and
Milosevic, everyone listened again.”
He does not currently live in Jasenovac
proper; instead, he lives in a larger city a
half-hour drive away. We asked how the
local population felt living beside the
monument. I expected a general feeling
of remorse, guilt, or maybe even anger

OCT/DEC 2009

24

Posters in memory of the dead, from an informal
docks in Brcko, north-eastern Bosnia.
of having to be consistently reminded of
something horrible for which they
should feel responsible. I was surprised
by the answer that most locals view the
memorial positively as a potential
means of income for the community.
More surprisingly, when the camp was
PEACE
MAGAZINE
first demolished we proceeded with the tour.
after the Second The first point of interest was the
World War, locals Olympic stadium. During the civil war
had taken bricks in Bosnia, the Sarajevo Olympic
from the original grounds served as a point of shock to the
torture houses and world, who could not believe that im-
re-used them to ages they had seen on the news were
build their homes. coming from the same place that had
hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics.
SARAJEVO, Post-conflict and post-intervention, ef-
BOSNIA- forts have been made to restore some of
HERZEGOVINA the Olympic facilities, including build-
I met “N.T.,” a ings destroyed by hostile fire and fields
hotel worker, while turned into temporary graveyards. The
inquiring at the re- International Olympic Committee has
ception about areas been a major funder for this effort,
of interest in Sara- which of course carries symbolic weight
memorial at the river jevo regarding the for both the city and the Olympic move-
Alexei Gavriel civil conflict. N.T., a ment.
Bosnian Muslim, is a 29-year-old MSc As N.T. had grown up in the midst of a
student in forensics awaiting a one-year major operation in international armed
apprenticeship to complete his program intervention, I asked him how he felt
and move on to become a crime investi- about having foreign peacekeepers in
gator. his city. We discussed several events
Later in the day, when he had finished which had occurred, as well as several
his shift at the hotel, I met with him and failures of the mission — including the
OCT/DEC 2009
25

Srebrenica massacre, where Dutch sol-
diers had allowed General Ratko
Mladic’s Army of Republika Srpska to
push past their position and ethnically
cleanse the population within their
United Nations Protectorate Area
(UNPA). He told me “It must be under-
stood that for the first two years they
were here they didn’t do anything but
defend themselves. They would see
someone kill someone and then they
would close up their vehicles.” Even in
the issue of Srebrenica, he agreed that it
was less the fault of the Dutch than of
the United Nations. “The lightly armed
soldiers could not do anything. In 1995
it was good when NATO bombed and
strong-armed [the Serbs]. Then we
started to notice change.”
We got out of the car at one of four or
five “Sniper Alleys” located in the city.
He stared down the street silently for an
extended moment before he turned to
me and said, “You could cross but you
weren’t guaranteed to pass.
“It was difficult to cross. We would put
up blankets and people would try and
walk through without the snipers seeing
them. Many people we knew were killed
in these alleys.
“One minute I would be talking to you
here like we are now. Then you would
go, turn the corner, and be killed. Right
in front of me.”
His childhood is filled with memories
of death. “Death was very common. It
was like eating snacks — it happened
every day, all the time. Soon we were
used to it. It always happened.”
PRIJEDOR, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
(REPUBLIKA SRPSKA)
Before 1991, Prijedor was an ethnical-
ly mixed area with a population of
112,000, of which 44% identified as
Muslim, 42% Serb, 5.7% Yugoslav, and
5.6% Croat.
During the war, all of the Muslims in
the region were either killed or expelled.
Their homes were deliberately targeted
and destroyed in order to prevent their
return. Some of the most brutal atroc-
PEACE
MAGAZINE
ities of the conflict took
place at a number of con-
centration camps in
Prijedor municipality – no-
tably in Prijedor proper,
Omarska, and Sanski Most.
In the Muslim village of
Kozarac, it has been re-
ported that 5,000 out of a
total population of 15,000
were killed in summary ex-
ecutions in an attack
launched by Serb forces
and paramilitary groups. In
one notorious incident,
over 200 residents of Train tracks leading one-way into a former concentration camp in
Partisan Street were exe- the northern Prijedor municipality in Bosnia — a literal last stop
cuted in a single night, and for many civilians who died within.
over 100 homes destroyed.
Although Prijedor is now in Republika
Srpska — the majority-Serb entity
within Bosnia-Herzegovina — Muslim
former residents have been returning in
recent years. New houses and housing
developments are being built on for-
merly destroyed Muslim neighbour-
hoods under United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)
supervision. Although all the mosques
were destroyed during the conflict, sev-
eral new mosques have been built or are
nearing completion.
According to locals, most of the
Muslims have returned to the area.
However, there is still conflict between
the Muslims and the Serbs. Children do
not get along or play together and when
the different groups are in the same bar,
a fight usually ensues.
MOSTAR, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
(BOSNIAN FEDERATION)
Prior to the Civil War, Mostar was an
attractive, historic European city with a
vibrant multi-ethnic community. Its
pre-war population was 35% Muslim,
34% Croat, 19% Serb, and 10% Yugo-
slav. The famous Mostar Bridge, uniting
the Muslim east bank and Croatian west
bank, was destroyed in 1993 but was re-
built in 2004 and now serves as a symbol
of Balkan reconstruction.
OCT/DEC 2009
26
Alexei Gavriel
I arrived late in Mostar at a hotel right
beside the infamous bridge. For Friday
night it was peculiarly silent. Although
most European cities seem to flourish
with a vibrant nightlife, Mostar was still
and silent. Only the sounds of a few dis-
tant groups at the private cafes, a
garbage truck, and the flowing water
could be heard. I was the only person in
the streets.
In the morning, the town centre flour-
ished with life, hardly resembling the
desolate city of the night previous. All of
the shops were open and accommodat-
ing tourists with all sorts of Bosnia and
Mostar souvenirs. Tourists were on the
Mostar Bridge taking photographs.
There were even two young men in
swimsuits charging to get their photo
taken diving off the historic bridge.
Few people visiting the bridge seemed
to pay any attention to the “Don’t
Forget ’93” slogan carved in a piece of
original stone at the Mostar Bridge’s en-
trance; notably, the inscription was in
English rather than Serbian-Croatian-
Bosnian.
Alexei Gavriel is coordinator of the
Cultural Intelligence Project (www.cultur-
al-intelligence.net) based in Vancouver.
Note
1 Unless otherwise stated, all demographic and casualty
figures are taken from “Prison Camps in the Former
Yugoslavia Report”. United Nations Commission of
Experts Final Report. (27 May 1994)