HOLIDAY in Bosnia? I get incredulous looks when I say that I travelled as a tourist last month in that much fought over country.
Images of the horrific 1992-95 war that tore Bosnia apart still linger, and many Malaysians remember when Bosnia's Muslims were being killed every other night on global TV while the "international community" (read: the major Western powers, ie, the United States, Britain, Germany, and France) dithered and dallied.
Yet when I visited Sarajevo (pronounced Sara-YAY-vo), the country's capital, the trams were running, side walk cafes bustled, and Bizet's opera, Carmen, was being performed.
For Malaysians, apart from the sights, Bosnia's history also holds insightful lessons on preserving multi-cultural harmony.
Just as Malacca was the great pivot between China and India (and beyond), Bosnia was a historical crossroads between East and West.
Sarajevo was known as the "Jerusalem of Europe", the place where Muslims, Christians (both Catholics and Orthodox Christians), and Jews built mosques, cathedrals, and synagogues - today, a walking tour of the old town can cover all these beautiful old structures in one delightful afternoon.
Volatile mix
But being the crossroads of civilisations also means having underground fault lines.
The first was laid in the year 395CE when Emperor Theodosius divided the Roman Empire (at Bosnia's current border with Serbia) into Western (Latin-inspired) and Eastern (Greek-influenced) halves.
This was to foreshadow the later division between the Western Catholic church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox church.
Bosnia's tragic ethnic war destroyed this 500-year-old bridge in the town of Mostar. But the stone structure was restored in 2004 and now stands as a symbol of peace.
When the Roman Empire collapsed, Slav tribes comprising Croats and Serbs settled in the area. They eventually adopted Christianity, with the Croats becoming Catholics while the Serbs took up Orthodoxy.
Bosnia was the hotly contested territory that was home to these two peoples.
Then came the invasion of Ottoman Turks in the 14th century. Over the centuries, many Bosnians adopted Islam, yet other peoples geographically closer to the Turkish heartland (such as the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks) did not. Why?
Here again, that potent cocktail of politics and religion emerged.
Bosnians were initially Catholic, according to 25 Lectures on Balkan History by Steven W. Sowards, assistant director of Michigan State University Libraries in the United States (http://www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan).
But in the mid-13th century, to further their territorial claims, the Hungarians persuaded the Pope that the Bosnians were an ajaran sesat, or heretics, and Catholic crusaders were manipulated into invading it (unsuccessfully). The Bosnian church then cut off ties with Rome.
One theory then states that, after the Ottoman Turkish conquest, it was easier for the Bosnian church (which resented both Catholicism and Orthodoxy) to convert to Islam. Another theory is that the Bosnian nobility converted to Islam to preserve their privileges, and carried their subjects along.
Turkish rule featured religious tolerance - indeed, the clearest signs of this are the two synagogues of Sarajevo. These were built by Jewish refugees who found safety in the Turkish Empire after fleeing the Catholic Inquisition of 16th century Spain and Portugal.
However, by the 19th century, the dynamism of the Turkish Empire had decayed into corruption and oppression, as the Sultans had no accountability and were busier with harem affairs than state ones.
In 1878, Austria grabbed Bosnia away from a sick Turkey and ruled for 40 years. After Austria's defeat in World War I, Bosnia (along with Croatia and Serbia as well as Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro) all gained independence and banded together into a federation called Yugoslavia (the Land of the South Slavs in the language of the area).
Rich heritage to explore
Bosnia's rich historical past is a bonanza for visitors to Sarajevo.
This Turkish-style bazaar in Sarajevo old town is full of cafes and shops today, but during the war, snipers and artillery in the hills in the background killed 12,000 people.
You can browse for hand-made copper ornaments in the narrow lanes of its Ottoman-era Bascarsija bazaar; admire the magnificent, colourful domes of the Turkish style mosques, the soaring Catholic cathedral, the synagogues (now museums), and the gilded Byzantine-Serbian style Orthodox churches; or explore the Austrian-era buildings along pedestrianised Ferhadija avenue.
For breakfast, there's nothing better than Burek - filo pastry stuffed with either meat, cheese, spinach, or apple slices - at only 2KM per serving (2 convertible marks = about RM5). Lunch? Try Bosanski Lonac, a local cabbage and meat stew. Finish off with a dinner of succulent grilled Cevapcici (7KM or RM17), Bosnia's version of the kebab.
Most of central Sarajevo has been restored since the recent war but some scars - the gutted National Library for instance - remain.
Nearby stands the infamous bridge, on which "the shot heard 'round the world" was fired. Here, Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the Austrian Emperor's brother) was assassinated by Gavrilo Princep, a Bosnian Serb radical, sparking off the madness of World War I (1914-18).
An unequal partnership
How did a country that had mosques, churches, and synagogues co-existing peacefully for centuries become a byword for the horrors of a religious war? As usual, the answer lies in unfair and unequal treatment.
According to the Bosnian Institute (bosnia.org.uk), the population of 4.36 million people (1991 census) comprised 44% Bosniak (Muslims), 31% Bosnian Serbs, and 17% Bosnian Croats.
All three are actually of the same Southern Slav racial stock - physically, they are indistinguishable. And they also speak one language, which was formerly known as Serbo-Croatian. But, amazingly, they have since been "patriotically" reclassified as Bosnian, Croatian, or Serbian, depending on which community controls the particular area!
"Bosnian is almost identical to Croatian," notes the Lonely Planet guidebook on the Western Balkans, while the kind of Serbian spoken in Bosnia sounds more like Croatian instead of the Serbian spoken in Serbia itself!
So it was not race or language that divided the three peoples. It was religion, and, perhaps more crucially, economics.
The federation of Yugoslavia was an unequal partnership: Serbia dominated the administration and army, prosperous Croatia contributed disproportionately more to federal coffers, while Bosnia was treated like an economic step-daughter.
With these tensions, Yugoslavia began breaking up in 1990.
In Bosnia, Croat- and Muslim-based "nationalist" parties won the elections, forged an alliance, and declared independence from Yugoslavia in late 1991.
On April 6, 1992, Bosnia was internationally recognised as a member of the United Nations (UN); yet the very day before, the siege of Sarajevo had begun.
The Serbs were naturally unhappy about losing their ketuanan, or dominance, of the federation, so they began a war (using the "federal" army) to create a "Greater Serbia" that would encompass all the ethnic Serbs living in neighbouring Bosnia. They also unleashed the infamous "ethnic cleansing" campaign of house burnings, rapes, and killings to chase out all Muslims and Croats from Serb-dominated areas.
The Croats inside Bosnia at least had some military assistance from neighbouring Croatia itself. But the Muslims had to fend for themselves.
Life under siege
In Sarajevo, I climbed into a musty beat-up van for a back packers "war zone" tour.
We saw how the bob-sled racing track used for the 1984 Winter Olympics (Sarajevo's moment of glory) had been destroyed - not for any strategic military reason but simply out of malice.
And we visited the city's saviour: a tunnel desperately dug with hand tools that connected it to "Free Bosnian" territory, allowing food, petrol, and weapons to be brought in.
"The tunnel was our life line. We were fighting for our lives in Sarajevo," relates Edis Kolar, a former Muslim soldier who now runs the Tunnel Museum.
"If the Serbs had managed to take over this city, we would all have been killed. And then all the United Nations could say would be, "Oops, sorry", just like what happened in Srebrenica," he says bitterly.
(In 1995, in a region in Bosnia called Srebrenica, 7,500 Muslims were massacred in an area that had been declared "safe" by the UN.)
That tragic incident disgraced the "international community", which had sworn "Never Again" after the horrors of World War II Nazi "death camps" like Auschwitz, where Jews, gypsies, and so-called "sub-human" Slavs were killed. But alas, Bosnia has no oil.
Life was desperate during the city's three-year siege, which killed 12,000 people and wounded another 50,000.
According to the Sarajevo Survival Guide (ISBN: 978-1563056888) written then, one lunch package provided through US aid had to feed five people, and it had to be supplemented with leaves from parks and gardens. A "war cookbook" emerged spontaneously.
"Everything becomes edible. Everybody in Sarajevo is close to being an ideal macrobiotician, a real role model for the health-conscious, diet-troubled West," it states with black humour.
Before the war, Sarajevo had a reputation for being an arty, bohemian place, so it's not surprising that artists, too, played their part in the war.
One famous act of cultural defiance during the siege was started by Mirsad Purivatra, who used to run Obala, the celebrated theatre group. During the war he took a projector into a cellar and started showing movies - and despite the bombs and sniper fire, people came to watch.
Others sent another 20 films to that cellar - and, hence, was born the landmark Sarajevo Film Festival (details at sff.ba online).
"Sarajevo was always very different from the rest of Bosnia," Purivatra told Britain's Guardian newspaper in 2003.
"In spite of all the tragedies, (Muslim) Sarajevo never took any kind of revenge on the (Christian) Serbian people. All the city's churches were protected during the war. This way of thinking was the biggest victory of Sarajevo as a multicultural city."
A three hour train ride away from Sarajevo - through stunning mountain scenery - lies the town of Mostar. It is renowned for its stone bridge, built in 1566, in the heart of an old Ottoman quarter.
Daredevil youths regularly dive off the bridge into the icy-cold waters of the Neretva River (fresh from the mountains) in exchange for tourists' donations and a badge of machismo. I felt at home here, what with cheap food, pirated-CD hawkers, and shops that photocopy whole books!
Standing on the bridge, I could hear the azan (call to prayer) for sunset Maghrib prayers from three different mosques - and a wave of nostalgia swept over me.
However, I also saw many more bullet-riddled buildings in Mostar compared to Sarajevo. The war got even more complicated here because the Croats and Muslims, despite their "alliance", started killing each other in 1993.
The once mixed population separated into two separate halves divided by the river, and the lovely ancient bridge was destroyed. It was rebuilt in 2004, stone by stone, using the original Turkish methods, and now stands as a psychological symbol for peaceful co-existence.
Path to reconciliation
After three years of slaughter, Nato finally intervened in September 1995 and bombed the Serbian forces besieging Sarajevo. For the 250,000 war dead, it was, shall we say, a wee bit late. But, at last, the Serbs agreed to negotiate.
US President Bill Clinton mediated, and the parties signed the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord that gave Muslims and Croats 51% of territory in a "Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina", while the Serbs obtained 49%, in a "Republika Srpska" (pronounced ser-RUPS-ska) enclave.
Both sides have their own President, Parliament, police, and other government bodies, a de facto dissection of the country.
Overarching these two halves is a rather weak central Bosnian Government with a presidency rotated among the three ethnic groups.
"The Serbs fly the flag of Serbia in their areas, and the Croats fly the Croatian flag," remarks Kolar. "But they forget that they are all Bosnians who have lived in this land for centuries."
Even the official name of the country is divided. The federation, using Latin script, writes it as Bosna i Hercegovina, while the Serbs pronounce it the same way but write it in the Cyrillic alphabet. Go figure!
It seems as if the psychological scars of this war will take decades, perhaps generations, to heal. But then again, France and Germany were reconciled just one generation after World War II, thanks to policies of fair play, economic justice, attention to human rights, and, crucially, shared prosperity within a European Union framework.
In contrast, the misguided policies of revenge and economic deprivation stemming from racialism-nationalism after World War I gave rise to Hitler and World War II.
Hopefully, Bosnia will take the right path to reconciliation.
In the meantime, this is an excellent time to visit a reasonably-priced European country that combines the East and West as well as tragedy and heroism like none other. Why, we Malaysians might even learn something from its multicultural history.
Summary of the chaos
4000BCE: The Illyrians, the orang asli of the area that eventually came to be called Bosnia, establish farming.
1st century CE: The Romans conquer the area.
395: Emperor Theodosius divides the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern halves.
6th century: Two Slav tribes - the Croats and Serbs - settle in the area and eventually adopt Christianity.
Mid-13th century: Bosnian church cuts ties with the Roman Catholic church after politically-motivated accusations of heresy.
1463: The Ottoman Turks conquer the area. Many peoples in the area gradually convert to Islam over the next two centuries.
1878: Austria grabs Bosnia away from the crumbling Turkish Empire.
1914: Assassination in Sarajevo sparks World War I.
1919: Bosnia gains independence and joins Croatia and Serbia to form Yugoslavia.
1941: German Nazis conquer Yugoslavia and support Croatian fascists who then annex Bosnia and persecute Serbs.
Oct 15, 1991: Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat political parties declare independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.
April 6, 1992: Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia recognised by the United Nations. Thereafter, the Bosnian Serbs begin their "ethnic cleansing" war. The UN's Protection Force is later sent in but proves notoriously impotent.
July 1995: Massacre of Muslims at UN "safe area" of Srebrenica.
Sept 1995: Nato launches air strikes against the Serbs to force negotiation.
Nov 21, 1995: Muslims, Croats, and Serbs agree to Dayton Peace Accords. And Bosnia is, in effect, divided in half.
