A Balkan Odyssey

There are some song lyrics which have rested heavily on my mind over these last few weeks as I’ve travelled through the Balkans. In his 1993 song, “Cold War” Les Holroyd of Barclay James Harvest issued a plaintive cry, “Nothing’s going to change”. The song was written and released for his cousin in Yugoslavia as it fragmented into violent ethno-religious wars. Marshall Tito had many faults -  he was no liberal humanitarian, but he had managed to keep a lid on the underlying tensions which had repeatedly ripped through the Balkan states since at least the time of the Ottoman Empire’s incursion in the 14^th Century. Following his death in 1980s and the fall of communism across the continent a decade later, the old rivalries and hatreds boiled up. Travelling through these lands of staggering beauty and shocking savagery, the words “nothing’s going to change” wailed like a lament in my mind.

The beautiful old city of Mostar, was once the place where Serbs, Croats and Bozniaks mixed the most. They went to school together, and married each other in surprising numbers. With effectively two wars ripping through the city in the 90s, it was first encircled, and then divided. As an ancient city, snuggling on the banks of the Neretva – where rocky bluffs facilitated the construction of the iconic Ottoman bridge – it is ringed by hills. These sweeping landscapes are beautiful, and where mine-clearance has been completed, provided us with some stunning hillwalks. “They echo the  songs of the Partisans” – Holroyd sang. And the hills of Bosnia – Herzegovina saw Partisan action in WWII. Croatia was an Axis power, but the Serbs were Allied. WWII ended for most of Europe in 1945, but the collapse of the Third Reich didn’t bring peace here; the Partisans and Chetnicks then turned their fire on one another – Tito’s communists, finally gaining power. The things these hills have witnessed…

There is vegetable seller in Mostar with haunted eyes. He says to my friend, “I have seen things no man should see.” In the second round of fighting in Mostar the front line ran through the city – and is still visible in shattered buildings, bullet holes and mortar impacts that rained down from the hills, still evident a quarter of a century after the Dayton Accords silenced the guns – and postponed the next round of bloodshedding. Our guide, an Englishman who has lived here for a decade tells us that London recovered quickly after the Blitz because rapidly rising population created huge demand for land, and housing. But here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the population is dropping. The highest unemployment rates anywhere in the European continent ensure that a steady exodus continues every year. It means the skyline is still haunted by unused buildings. I tried to imagine growing up thinking that bullet-ridden buildings are normal. They are not.

The train to Sarajevo rolls through the most amazing scenery; rivers, gorges, lakes forests and mountains. The brutal communist-era stations at either end stand in stark contrast the flowing beauty found between them. Communist architects (of all types) seemed to love huge statements in concrete – and to prefer function over form. Clearly beauty was seen as an unnecessary decadence. In Tito’s day trains left for all over Yugoslavia, but current attempts to revive some of the connections falter at the boundaries of bureaucracy and mistrust. The vast stations sit empty for much of the day – miles of trackbed rusts silently all over the former Yugoslavia.

In Sarajevo; Mosques, Orthodox Churches, Synagogues and Catholic Churches rub shoulders in the old city – the capital of Bosnia. The city looks like an archaeological dig turned on its side. The Ottoman city is old, the Hapsburg city is next to it and vast – the communist architecture next – followed by the mixed variety typical of free markets after that. The place where Gavrilo Princip fired the shot that launched WWI is in the centre of the town, as are constant reminders of the awful siege that the city endured in the mid-1990s.

In 1984 Torvill and Dean had stunned the world with their ice dance routine. The first ‘communist’ Winter Olympics, had been a triumph. The ice arena in the city-centre is now a gig venue (Sting was there last month), but the ski-runs and toboggan tracks are up on the hills which overlook this ancient place. Easily accessible hills, overlooking the city make the perfect set-up for Olympians, and military commanders who wish to pound populations into submission

Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into two parts. The Bosnia-Herzegovina federation and Republika Srpska. Crossing from Bosnia to RS has no international boundary and no passport control – it is all ruled from Sarajevo. Yet it the “Welcome to Republika Srpska” sign is in English, Russian, and several other languages – but not in Croatian/Bosnian. This is chilling because it was here that Karadzic and Mladic pursued the worst of the so-called ‘ethic cleansing.’ We saw a village where a mosque was left, but surrounded by smashed and overgrown houses surrounding it. What horrors happened here?

Driving across Republika Srpska we paused at the genocide memorial at Srebrenica. Here, thousands of Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by the Bosnian Serb Army, which the international tribunal at The Hague called the worst genocide in Europe since WWII. The Srebrenica UN 'safe enclave' proved to be nothing of the sort, the women and children were abused and transported, the men executed - while the international community did too-little too-late. The sight of elderly women still there mourning the loss of sons, brothers and husbands was a stark reminder that this was so recent an atrocity. I am used to reading of these things in history books, where ancient facts are appropriately recorded. But here, the sorrow is as palpable as the evil present. I saw a dew covered spider's web hanging from a tree there, trapping insects in the cloudy morning breeze. It struck me as a poignant image of sorrow hanging in the air, catching memories.

Travelling across the Balkans is to visit countless memorials and museums remembering violence, horror and depravity; cycles of hate and retribution stretching back centuries. 8,372 is an enormous number, but each individual life lost matters greatly, and no amount of 'whataboutery' can reduce the truth of that - or should reduce the life sentences of those (wretchedly few) who were convicted of war crimes.

As a Christian, standing quietly paying my respects in this Islamic cemetery I felt physically sick at the thought that the perpetrators of these crimes claimed loyalty to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Utter disgust. Followers of Jesus must 'love their enemies' and 'bless those who persecute them' - according to Jesus. It is a stark reminder that "christianity" without Jesus can become monstrous. “I'm baptised in your prejudice, I'm confirmed with your hate, I'm ordained into violence” John Lees raged in his lyrics.  "Jesus Wept".

Simply as a human, I could not comprehend the stories. "we grew up with them, we went to school with them, we traded with them, and played football with them - and then they rose up and slaughtered us". I read stories like this, across the Balkans from all sides of the wars of the 1990s. How can this be? How can you murder half your own school football team? The depths of the wickedness of humanity is greater than I had faced since I stood in Berlin's Jewish Holocaust Memorial. Lord have mercy.

I will never forget Srebrenica.

The River Drina is a stunning water-course, one of the great rivers of South Eastern Europe. Its huge catchment area funnels masses of water down towards the Adriatic through a vast, spectacular gorge. It’s not as well-known as some rivers – but it should be. Here, today Serbia borders Bosnia. Over countless centuries it has also been the boundary between Catholicism and Orthodox – and between Christendom and Islamic power. It is said that it is foolish to live on a geographical fault-line, and what is usually meant by that comes from the world of physical Geography. It is probably more true in the world of political geography – for this fault line has seen many tremors and crises.

In Visigrad, a town famous for its beautiful and ancient bridge – the 1990s seem like very recent history indeed. Our communist-era hotel was stark in its’ aesthetic-free functionality – and was full of tobacco smoke, old men and suspicious looks. Old enmities die hard, but so do old friendships and Croatia is full of German number-plated cars, but in Serb areas, Russian cars were everywhere. Ivo Andric’s Nobel-winning “The Bridge on the Drina” is set here – and one can only think it is a mercy that he died before seeing the bridge become a slaughterhouse for Bozniaks in the early 1990s. It’s said the river ran red, and the hydro-electric power station got clogged with bodies at the height of the carnage. Yet, in a juxtaposition perhaps indicative of the contradictions in the human condition, we had a charming meal out – at scandalously cheap prices, from smiling friendly staff, joyful to teach us some of their language – while we passively smoked a thousand cigarettes.

Our first attempt to make it into Montenegro was unsuccessful. The mountain road that Google maps insisted was the correct route got increasingly precarious. As it narrowed and contorted, the surface fractured and our progress slowed to such a rate that we gave up and hammered our way South on better roads within BiH. When we finally found a remote border crossing post, the guard looked at us incredulously and said, “You want Montenegro?!” Indeed we did – and after stamping our passports on the wrong page, he let us through; far more quickly we noted than the huge shiny Russian number-plated Range Rover before us. Tiny Montenegro we soon discovered was much more wealthy and touristy than Republika Srpska, its beautiful Adriatic coastal towns having stunning old cities and garish resorts at every turn. The mountainous interior is very sparsely populated, the rocky ground is hard to farm, and the gradients severe. It is a stunningly beautiful country too. At the apartment the landlord welcomed us with plum Rakija and we soon discovered that we spoke a language in common….. football. Walking is a delight in Montenegro too, because while it was firmly allied to Serbia throughout the wars of the 1990s, there was very little fighting there, and so almost no risk of mines. The Adriatic in these parts is teeming with fish, and the seafood restaurants are wonderful. Even in the harbours, we watched small children and old grandpa’s pulling good fish from the water simply by lowering a single baited line off the side.

Our Balkan odyssey came to end with a long drive through Croatia, tracing its’ stunning coastline past Cavtat, Dubrovnik, Split and to our final destination in Zadar. Tito, of course, had been a Croatian – and it was interesting to speak to two older ladies who recalled him with a fondness that bordered on idolatry. His propaganda department had not wasted their efforts on these two, when they were girls. While acknowledging that he’d murdered many opponents, especially in the 1940s, they had both been to his grave to pay their respects to the man and his ‘golden era’ of their childhood. “I thought the world would end when he died” I was told. Titograd has long been renamed Visigrad, but the man lingers on as a living myth. 

As I lookback on our Balkan exploration, so many images jostle for my attention. The bomb damage in Mostar, the old bridge there too. The stunning mountains. The Bridge on the Drina. Sarajevo City and the Olympic Park. The mountains of Monetenegro. Sunset over the Adriatic. The little church we went to in Mostar where our friend from Burnley led the singing in Croatian. Srebrenica. And in the background, Les Holroyd’s voice lamenting, “Nothing’s Going to Change, Nothing’s Going to Change”. But is he right? Optimists point out that Croatia is booming in the EU, and is a stable, wealthy tourist destination. Montenegro appears to be heading that way too. Serbia’s desire to enter the EU would further promote integration. Bosnia Herzegovina has enjoyed the peaceful stalemate for a quarter of a century. Pessimists want to assert that conflict in the Balkans is never extinct, only ever dormant and that the historical tensions will inevitably boil over into violence again one day.

There is a prayer on a plaque in Srebrenica that says, “May Srebrenica happen to no one else, ever anywhere.” If the optimists are right, then these lessons will be grasped. But if the pessimists are, then “Nothing’s going to change”.  Another John Lees lyric sums it up, “Please lay down your pistols and your rifles…… God alone knows how we will survive”.