The Crescent bridge that divides the communities
Fly to Sarajevo and take the train to Mostar itself.
There are a lot of politically interesting towns in the former Yugoslavia, the region that collapsed into conflict in the 1990s. There's Sarajevo itself, for centuries a center of “multi-faith” harmony, laid siege to for long, cold and hungry months by Serbian militia based in the hills. Before rushing to Mostar, the traveler can pass a few pleasant hours puttering around the marketplace in which a score of people died when it was shelled.
Disinformation pointAt the time, the Serbian authorities explained that the Muslims themselves had shelled the marketplace in order to discredit the Serbian forces. But the practicalities of the incident, let alone the theoretical aspects, pointed the other way. The whole conflict was based on a vast media barrage of misinformation that is only now beginning to be dispelled.
Or over on the Croatian coast, there's the old sea wall at Dubrovnik, which still sports pockmarks as a legacy of its shelling from the sea by the Serbian navy. This too had some sort of defensive justification by the Serbian government, but I forget now what it was. But perhaps the most obvious symbol of how communities can very quickly come to hate each other is the four hundred year old bridge in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Mostar Bridge, “a crescent in stone,” as one travel writer called it, is a very pretty one, over the steep banks of the Neretva River connecting the two communities of Mostar. It was originally built in 1566 on the Emperor Süleyman's orders to replace a highly alarming chain bridge. As the new one was quite safe, a tradition soon evolved of jumping off it into the fast-rushing river below. (The tradition was revived on the occasion of the re-opening of the bridge.) It is also the practical and symbolic link between the predominantly Muslim community on the left bank, and the mainly Catholic community on the right bank. For centuries it was a very practical symbol of peaceful co-existence between these two religious and culturally distinct communities. And so, because of this, it was deliberately blown up during the Balkan conflict, in this case by Croatian nationalists. It became instead a symbol of how easy it is for politicians to divide communities.
The Adriatic coast is a very scenic region, full of fine old buildings, bridges and churches. Despite the Balkans' reputation for “ethnic conflict,” towns like Mostar and Sarajevo have been peaceful for centuries, and that is the message that their architecture reflects. Cities beset by conflict tend to lose not only their citizens, but their finest buildings too.
When Serbian nationalism, historically the spark for the great bloodletting of what Europeans call “The Great War” of 1914-18, spluttered back into life (after lying dormant under the iron rule of President Tito's communists), a lot of people preferred to “look the other way.”
A strange political alliance of the right, such as the British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, together with the “Left,” who saw in Serbia a socialist Deacon, managed to muddy the issues to the extent that Mr. Hurd was allowed to create a strategy of a “level killing field” by imposing an arms embargo on the two sides. That is, no arms to the heavily armed Serbian forces and no arms to the more or less defenseless Croat and Bosnian communities. The policy prevailed over concern at repeated reports, some indeed televised, of civilians being bombed by the Serbian air force and driven from their homes and executed by Serbian soldiers.
Eventually, the Western strategy of leaving the Serbs to finish off their “opponents” fizzled out, as the Serbs, and indeed the Croats and Muslims, even began to fight each other too (which is where Mostar comes in). In a few weeks of its trademark indiscriminate bombing, the US under President Clinton collapsed the Serbian military and the dream of recreating a “Greater Serbia” stretching from Turkey to Hungary to the Adriatic.
In a fine piece of peacemaking and international symbolism, the “Stari Most,” or Old Bridge was carefully rebuilt, each stone cut in the traditional way by local craftspeople. As Amir Pasic, the man in charge of restoring the bridge, said rather lamely in 2004: “It's beautiful, it's simple, it's symbolic because crossing the river is something, you know.” Alas, the other effects of the bloodletting and racial discrimination are not as easy to correct. Mostar's communities continue to be divided, fearful and bitter.
A lucrative part-privatization of Serbian telecommunications took place at the end of the war in 1997, giving just under half of the company to Italian and Greek investors. It was negotiated with the Serbian President, Mr. Milosevic, by (the now) Lord Hurd in a new job as deputy chairman of one of the biggest UK banks, NatWest Markets. Investigators later discovered that the bank received over £10 million ($17 million) in commissions for its role, an exceptionally high rate of return, as its advertisements for the public might say.
But the privatization was always a little controversial because the billion-dollar windfall came not only after the return of “ethnic cleansing” to Europe, but also after mass demonstrations against the President were taking place in Belgrade. Today, officials in Belgrade also complain that the deal provided Milosevic with cash for the following year's campaign against Kosovo's Albanian population.
Anyway, the contracts came from a now infamous “working breakfast” that the two peacemakers had in the summer of 1996, that is just a year after Mr. Hurd quit as foreign minister and only a few months after the formal end of the Bosnian war. Dame Pauline Neville-Jones joined Lord Hurd in this important mission. She had been the British official on the six nation Contact Group dealing with Yugoslavia and the top British representative at the Dayton peace negotiations.
Depending which community you come from, only one side of the bridge is safe, years after the end of the war.
