Sarajevo pays tribute to 20th anniversary of Bosnian War

Earlier this year on April 6, 2012 thousands of people in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina paid special tribute to the 11,541 people who lost their lives during the longest siege of a city in modern history.  The nearly four-year Serbian siege of Sarajevo began on April 6, 1992.

The 380,000 residents of the city were under the constant threat of mortar and gun fire.  Additionally, residents lost electrical power, water, and heating for 3 years, 8 months.  Children, men, and women died in the war. 

Associated Press reporter Aida Cerkez described the beginning of the war in a news article that appeared in The Boston Globe on April 7, 2012.  “On the fateful day of April 6, 1992, about 40,000 people from all over the country – Muslim Bosniaks, Christian Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic Croats – poured into a square further down the red street to demand peace from their quarreling nationalist politicians.”  The spark that ignited the conflict occurred when Serb nationalists shot and killed five people in the crowd that were gathered in the square.  Serb nationalists began destroying the city with mortar shells and eventually they forced all non-Serbs out of the areas of the country that they had taken over.       

All three groups of people spoke the same language and had been living in the same area for years.  However, their religious beliefs divided them.  Over the almost four years of intense fighting more than 100,000 people were killed and 2 million civilians were displaced leaving ½ of the population homeless.  In addition to the deaths of soldiers, there were instances of ethnic cleansing and mass rape during the bitter conflict.  These overwhelming statistics made the Bosnian War the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. 

Cerkez detailed the suffering that the war inflicted by writing: “[w]hile remembering the dead, many also cannot forget feeling that the international community had let them down during the war.  All the world did was condemn the horrors in Bosnia and send food packages.  What Sarajevo residents really wanted was an end to the death and destruction, the restoration of electricity, water and heating, a halt to the shelling and sniping every day.”

The Bosnian War, also known as the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina began as the result of the dissolution of the Republic of Yugoslavia.  The interethnic civil strife came to a close on December 14, 1995 when the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina was signed in Paris. 

For those who survived the war, it is difficult to forget the fighting that cost so many lives.  “The international community that did not help us during the war… it is a picture of the world somehow at that time.  But life goes on.  We have peace without justice,” said Bosnian vice president Ejup Ganic in the AP news article.

The war that started twenty years ago significantly altered the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  As an international community we should work towards not allowing bitter ethnic and religious disagreements to create war and destruction.  The War in Bosnia and Herzegovina serves as an example for us to remember the painful results of war.  Today in Bosnia, children learn three contrasting histories of their country.  Bosnian and international leaders should encourage unity and not division to create a better future.