Sunday, October 21, 2018

Kennan Institute Alumni Conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia

Long time, no blog.

Mackenzie and I have had lots of changes over the past year-and-a-half: the birth of our twins, Greta and Benjamin, and the passing of my mom and our cat Milo. My work has taken something of a back seat, particularly since the end of June. As we get our feet under us with the twins, I will start to ramp back up with the research including some domestic and international travel.

The first step in this process was a trip from October 10 to October 17 to Sarajevo, Bosnia for the Kennan Institute's Alumni Conference on the theme "Conflicting Memories, Unreconciled Narratives." I applied for the conference soon after the twins were born; we thought that everything would be under control by three and a half months of age. Well, it didn't quite work out that way, as we found out when I was gone for a week. But that is a story for another time.

On the way to Sarajevo, I made a quick stop in Cambridge to meet my post-doc who is assisting on research related to Kalmykia. We walked around town and I met with some academics at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, where ongoing projects include the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project.

At King's College Chapel

Punting on the river
After a day in Cambridge, it was on to Bosnia. Surprisingly, jet-lag wasn't a problem--clearly one of the benefits of baby-induced sleep deprivation. I arrived in Sarajevo on Friday afternoon. The host city for the 1984 Winter Olympics and today the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo was subject to the longest siege of a capital city in the last two centuries of warfare (and longer than Leningrad during World War II by a year). From April 1992 until February 1996,  Bosnian Serb forces occupied the heights around the city and launched artillery, mortar, and sniper attacks on the civilians below. There is extensive and excellent literature about the history and experience of the siege; I recommend Barbara Demick's Logavina Street to give a sense of what life was like in the city at this time.  

Graffiti on one of the side streets

Looking southeast towards the old town and the heights above the city

View from my hotel room

During my initial walk around the city, I climbed up to one of the many cemeteries where those who died during the siege of the city from 1992-1996 are buried. At sunset, there was a beautiful view to the west that encompassed the whole city.

Looking over the cemetery and the city.
A panorama of Sarajevo at sunset.
The next day, I traveled to Mostar--Herzegovina's administrative center--with one of the other conference participants. Mostar is best known for its reconstructed Ottoman-era bridge. First built in the 16th century, it was destroyed in November 1993 after shelling from Bosnian Croat troops supported by the Croatian state (one recommended documentary is linked here). Today, the bridge has been reconstructed, although tensions are still apparent in the city between Bosnian Muslims in east Mostar and Croats in the west. A shop-owner spoke of Croatian nationalists living in Mostar who had never seen the old bridge despite living in the city their whole lives. Despite these tensions, Mostar is an historic and beautiful city that attracts many tourists. One of the highlights is watching the locals jump from the bridge once they collect enough money from onlookers--the going rate is 30 Euros (about 40 dollars). We took the evening train back from Mostar to Sarajevo along a scenic gorge and through the mountains of Bosnia.

A view of the old bridge (Stari Most) and the heights from which Bosnian Croat forces shot down on the city during the war (marked by the cross). 

The old bridge and its environs are a World Heritage Site

Another view of the Old Bridge

The spire of a recently constructed church in west Mostar and the cross on the hill in the background

One of the locals preparing to jump 24 meters (about 80 feet) into the water (about 5 meters deep) below the old bridge. We didn't stick around to see if he survived.

A view of the old town on the west bank of the river.

The train to Sarajevo arriving in Mostar.

A view from the train.

Another view from the train.

Two days of conference activity were punctuated by touring the city and visiting a local museum. One of the most important historical sites in Sarajevo is the place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip in June 1914. The assassination led to heightened tensions between European powers and the start of World War I a little over a month later. The Latin Bridge is today preserved; the historical narrative about Princip has changed over the years, depending on who was in control of Bosnia. Another notable site is the War Childhood Museum, which houses a rotating collection of artifacts donated by children who survived the siege of Sarajevo. 

A view of a sniper's line of fire from the mountains to the south of Sarajevo onto the square in front of the Catholic church.

A Sarajevo Rose - a memorial site to someone killed by a mortar attack. The scar in the concrete has been filled in with resin and painted red.  

Our group in front of the historic mosque in the Ottoman part of Sarajevo.

At the Latin Bridge, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. 

One of the exhibits at the War Childhood Museum
The caption for this exhibit. The contributor was born in 1979, like me.

The final part of the conference was a day trip to Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia. Srebrenica is located within the Republika Srpska, the majority-Serb territory in the shape of a boomerang in the country's north and east. Srebrenica was the site of the mass killing of 8,372 Bosnia Muslim men and boys (age ~14 and older). A number of those complicit in the genocide--most notably the Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic--have been found guilty of genocide on the basis of their actions at Srebrenica. Because the bodies of those killed were buried and then moved and reburied, the process of identification is difficult. Srebrenica was particularly powerful for me because I remember exactly where I was when the massacre was just starting; on July 10, 1995 I turned sixteen and we were visiting Lillehammer, Norway (site of the 1994 Winter Olympics).
 
The cemetery in Srebrenica where the victims of the genocide were buried


Graffiti left by the Dutch soldiers at the UN base at Srebrenica

A view of the UN base in the Srebrenica safe area where Bosnian Muslims gathered after the offensive by Bosnian Serb troops the second week of July 1995 

Srebrenica today

One of the killing sites, a factory in a town to the west of Srebrenica

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