Sarajevo ~ an introduction

Note: I am still trying to work out a cohesive and not thoroughly boring way to convey my thoughts on this immensely complex subject of Sarajevo to you all, so this entry will be completed in installments. This is the first and I will have more to share with you soon.

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Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enem est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur?

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is a man's lifetime unless interwoven with the memory of earlier times? ~ Cicero

Sarajevo is a place that perfectly exemplifies Cicero's notion of living with a constant awareness of the past in tandem with being completely present. I have found that it is impossible to try to understand Sarajevo, indeed Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), without understanding and learning about its recent tragic history. To provide some assistance for those geographically challenged among us, BiH is a Balkan country surrounded by Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo and Montenegro, and it used to be part of country formally known as Yugoslavia.

As you might be able to see on this map (depending on your contact/glasses prescription), there are two main "federations" in BiH. One is Republika Srpska and the other is the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. One can think of them like states with their own "functioning" political system and laws, and their own representatives at the national level. The word "functioning" is in quotation marks because BiH currently has no federal government. Their national elections were last year, but for reasons that I do not fully understand, no government has been instated since that point. Throughout our trip, we met quite a few Bosnians and all of them, regardless of age, gender and country of origin spoke quite candidly about the amount of corruption at every level of the government and state-run facilities. For example, one music student I met very fervently pointed out that she had not known anyone at the national music academy and did not have to bribe anyone to get it, unlike many of her classmates. The lack of a functioning government, let alone a trustworthy one, is a problem that infuses many aspects of Bosnian society and is something that I will return to later.

The hotel where we (the entire Stanford in Berlin program) stayed was in the Old City, which looked something like a cross between Istanbul and Vienna. Most of the Old City was rebuilt after 1995 (the end of the war) and is quite beautiful and cozy feeling.

However, I would say that most of the city looked more like this:

During the war (1992-1995), the city of Sarajevo was under attack from troops supplied and financed by Serbia and Croatia. From April of 1992 to February of 1996, Sarajevo was under siege -- food, water, electricity and other vital supplies were cut off from its inhabitants. On average, over 300 shells made impact in Sarajevo PER DAY of the siege. It is estimated that over 10,000 people in Sarajevo died during this period. Bearing this history in mind, it begs the question of whether or not a functioning government was, is, or should be the priority of peoples whose lives have been so severely traumatized. Quoting our tour guide, Senan, "What use is a deputy secretary of finance when your children had to eat grass for vitamins for over three years?"

Up next: Bosnia and the EU, Islam in Sarajevo and "the Jerusalem of the Balkans"