Three Lessons of Conflict and Peace from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sarajevo is a beautiful place. Beneath the rolling green hills, peppered with the red roof houses, stands the eclectic architecture of the storied and multi-cultured city. The old town sits quietly in the valley with its coppersmiths’ shops, cafes and ice cream stands, welcoming tourists with a quintessential languid, European charm. I visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in July, 2018 as part of a study abroad program led by Prof. Manojlovic to learn about peace and reconciliation in a post conflict nation.

During my short time there, I had seen the beauty the country had to offer as well as the legacy of war that it carries on its shoulder. The people there are kind, gracious and generous in their hospitality. Yet, underneath the mask of tranquility, division lives among the people. The war that tore the country apart in the 90s left behind its bitterness and animosity and those things hang over the three ethnic groups that make up the country’s population— they aren’t one Bosnian people, they are three separate groups, the Bosniaks, the Serbs and the Croats. Time does not seem to have brought much healing.

There were moments when I had been prompted to answer the question, “What interested you about going to Bosnia and Herzegovina? What do you hope to gain from your trip?” I couldn’t articulate well that what I wanted to see were the people who had lived through the realities of the war, the people to whom the terrors were neither fairytales nor simply the history of some distant land. In my sheltered and privileged life, I couldn’t understand war as more than an abstract concept. I wanted to learn about people’s experience and resilience. As I found myself among the people who walked beside me on the street, and welcomed me into their shops and restaurants, I suddenly realized that the fields of international relations and conflict resolution are about people. As scholars, we cannot disassociate ourselves from the fields’ humanistic function of creating a safer world for people by understanding and preventing conflict.

There are three lessons I took away from my trip which I present through 3 vignettes.

Storytelling as a way of bringing people together

Velma carried herself with the confident demeanor of a boss lady and her answers to our questions easily carried on into blusterous rants. She had a fierce passion and from the moment I met her, I knew I liked her. My kind of girl, I thought. She knew what she stood for and she knew what she wanted to do, and she had a cause she was determined to fight for against all odds. The odds, it would seem, are stacked against her, and her fight proves to be a difficult one.

Velma is the founder and President of the Post-Conflict Research Center an NGO that worked to document stories of people during the war, stories such as those about heroic actions taken by ordinary people, stories about small actions that made a big difference.

“I also think story telling is a powerful and intimate tool to help all sides see a conflict from the perspective of their enemies,” I said to her. There was a small part of me, in my naivety, that thought, perhaps, the key to peace and reconciliation was right in front of me.

“It can be,” she replied, I imagine she might have even hoped it would be when she first began her work. “Unfortunately, it’s not so easy.” The problem, she explained, was that it wasn’t easy to get people to to listen to the stories of their enemies.

Velma said, “We once tried to do a project that linked the stories of all three sides, side by side, and people were outraged. ‘You can’t tell the story of the Muslims, next to the story of the Serbs!’ they said.”

Strange isn’t it? The opportunity to heal is right in front of them, and still there are people who would speak out against it. What could be more important than peace? What values are there in the world, so worth protecting, that would make a person choose to continue to hate their neighbor, over the opportunity to reconcile? It’s a stark contrast to see that in this world there are people like Velma who wanted to save it, who would fight for peace, and stand against division. And then there are people who would stand against peace, no matter the cost and no matter the reason. That’s what makes peace so complex, humans and all the multitudes of values, ideals, judgment and reasoning, both logical and illogical that comes with being human.

Hope and Despair Intertwine

The Tunnel of Hope was a dangerous underground trek constructed during the Siege of Sarajevo in June of 1993.  In the midst of war the tunnel was built by the Bosniak Army seeking to create a passage through the Sarajevo Airport that would allow food, humanitarian aid, war supplies and weapons to be transferred into the city.

Today, the Memorial Complex Tunnel D-B is a museum, partially a tourist attraction, partially an educational resource. Our tour guide was a young woman who couldn’t have been much older than I am, but she had lived through the war, and through her stories and explanations an unfamiliar landscape came to life before my eyes. I could almost feel what it was like to spend a childhood in the backdrop of war.

“We didn’t have real eggs to eat during the war,” she said, “and my brother, who’s younger than me, he had never seen a banana until after the war ended. The first time he tried a banana he ate it with the skin still on.”

It seemed a small detail beside the stories of violence that I have heard much of in my time in the country, and yet the imagery of that seemingly trifling anecdote stuck in my mind, because to me, it was a picture of real life.

Peace Belongs to Those Who Fight For It

The Genesis Project, an NGO working towards peace and unity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, invited us to their office inside an old building only minutes away from our hotel in Banja Luka. Over the hum of the fan, futilely stirring the hot air in the room, I heard the story of a school in a town called Jajce. The regional government had made a decision to further divide the community along the ethnic lines that plagued it. The Bosniak and Croat students were meant to be separated into two different school buildings. But it was the children who rose up and fought against the segregation. They fought for a year, protesting against the division when at last their efforts were met with victory.

It was in that story that I learned that peace belongs to those who fight for it, and that the hope for peace can be found in unlikely places, in small towns and school children, and even in ourselves. Perhaps the responsibility to find the hope for peace in places where it seems impossible to be found is a responsibility that belongs to us all.