The Balkins

      As the evening national news begins, there is a somber statement about the war in Ukraine, and stories, some too dreadful to believe, of civilian men, women, and children being tortured and brutally executed by the Russians.  I do not understand a lot of the history that has led to the savage brutality unfolding in Ukraine.  It is a strange compulsion I have with history to try and learn a little more, to begin to understand a little more.  Maybe someday I’ll travel to the area when time has passed to learn and understand more.

     It was this compulsion that motivated me in May 2019 to travel with my wife on an 18-day tour of the Balkans (the former Yugoslavia) which has always been a source of historical mystery to me. 

Also known as the tinderbox of Europe where WWI started, the former Yugoslavia is now six independent countries, including Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia- all of which we visited.  During the tour, we learned a lot about the pain and sorrow of people who lived through the 1990s civil war there.  I still have difficulty understanding the conflict and depending on who you listen to - Croat, Muslim, or Serb- the story changes.  While there was resiliency in the people we met to seek a peaceful future, there was also an underlying pessimism about the precarious relations among the ethnic groups- predominantly the Roman Catholic Croats, the Orthodox Christian Serbs, and the Muslim Bosniacs.

     On our tour, Croatia, Slovenia, and Montenegro had some spectacular natural wonders and cities. 

Map of our May 2019 Tour

Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, was a sharp contrast which I feel is best described as a country of ethnic diversity and best known for its 1990’s civil war.  We started the tour in Dubrovnik, Croatia where steep hills plunge directly into the sea surrounding the walled 14th-century city. 

Dubrovnik May 2019

A speculative visual historical sight but also, as we learned, a city blockaded by sea and shelled from the overlooking hills for seven months by the Serbs in 1991-1992.  As with Ukraine, I still do not understand much of the history behind the former Yugoslavia conflict.  What I do know is a sense of the depth of feelings of some of the people involved in the war.  There are still unrepaired holes in city pavement and damaged city walls with identifying signs as reminders of the shelling.  Our Croatian tour guide described the damage and deaths caused by the shelling and the daily seven months of deprivation and fear of the city population.  Our tour bus then went to the area overlooking Dubrovnik where the Serbs shelled the city.  The artillery bombardment of Dubrovnik, especially the historic old town, had no concern for human life or for the destruction of priceless cultural heritage that occurred in the process.

     After a short day trip to Montenegro, the bus headed through Bosnia and Herzegovina to the capital city Sarajevo. 

Sarajevo airport tunnel 1992-1995

The whole region we drove through seemed economically depressed, as did the people.  Sarajevo seemed in the news daily in the early 1990s as Ukraine is today.  A city of a half million people, it was under siege by the Serbs from April 1992 to February 1996.  More so than in Dubrovnik, there are monuments and museums to the civil war.  Museum displays have photos of women during the siege braving the bombardment by walking in the streets in dress clothes and makeup in defiance of the danger and risk.  Observing and listening to the local people talk about that period, I could feel pride still evident in their resistance to the Serbs.

     On our second day in Sarajevo, the tour was arranged for groups of six to visit the homes of local families for dinner.  We went to a 7th-floor apartment of a Muslim family with a teenage daughter.  The apartment building was about 20 floors of communist-era concrete.  The family had lived there through the siege.  The wife talked about the city and daily life in 2019 which seemed normal- work, school, and activities.  When I asked about the war, the mother immediately became very serious and without hesitation said she would never allow her daughter to marry a Serb.  Her memories of the bombardment, the deaths, the murders, and the rapes she attributed to the Serbs seemed bone-deep and still fresh.  She told us that during the siege a sniper from her apartment building began to shoot people in the area randomly.  Later the sniper, who sowed so much fear and death, was identified as a Serb, her college professor, who was a neighbor she knew and trusted.  Her trust in any Serb was shattered by that sniper.  When I asked her about the future, she said she felt that conflict and war were more likely than peace.  It felt like the city was still in a truce.

     The next day my wife and I visited a museum in Sarajevo dedicated to the July 1995 genocidal killing by the Bosnian Serb army of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys east of Sarajevo in the town of Srebrenica.  Before the massacre, the United Nations had declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica a "safe area" under UN protection but UN troops on the ground and elsewhere did nothing to prevent the massacre- the museum tour guide said the UN “was useless.”

     The Srebrenica massacre was no “heat of the battle” war crime.  The museum photos of and commentary about the victims of the Srebrenica massacre told a different story.  It was a story of systematic targeting and selection of Bosnian Muslim civilian men and boys for torture and ethnic cleaning.  To the victims of war crimes, there is no difference between the “heat of the battle” and systematic killing by soldiers.  

     I believe that the lesson to be learned is that once the genie of war is released from the bottle those soldiers involved in war crimes may sincerely (but falsely) believe that what they did was right and obligatory.  There is no so-called “just war” for the soldiers who face a brutal reality on the battlefield once a war begins.  As for the Balkans, the memories of the civil war, which are passed down to the next generation, make it a tinderbox for a future European war.

     My memories of the Balkans are of spectacular scenery, cultural diversity, and for the most part very friendly natives.  Yet my most lasting memories are of ethnic divisions and deep historical resentments.