Let me show you the world in my eyes

 My deepest suspicions are true: in that place during that time I would not have lived. I would be dead. From mortar shells, from sniper gunfire, from execution, from dehydration, from hunger, from exhaustion, from rape, from torture, or from much worse. It does not matter how, but the truth remains the same. The fate of my immediate family, extended kin, and beloved friends would remain unknown. How easy is it to think about the past and contemplate what you would do to escape a war? Targeted persecution? The face of evil? How easy is it to believe that you would be the one to be saved, to possess super human strength to survive, to beat the odds and live to tell the harrowing tale?

         

 I came to Bosnia i Herzegovina (BiH) for two reasons. One was to conduct research at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center for my master’s thesis on the relevancy of memorial sites as a way to connect past atrocities with contemporary issues. The other was to reconcile my historic categorization as the other with my emerging identity as a visible and empowered global citizen advocating equality, human rights, and tolerance for all.

        But first things first. My journey to BiH began with my acceptance as one of 15 participants taking part in the inaugural Summer Research University (SRU) sponsored by the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center. On this trip are a mix of master’s and Ph.D. students, researchers, and professors from countries including Montenegro, Australia, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ireland, Italy, and the United States (US).

        In the parts of the countryside I have seen to date, signs of war, shells, bullets, and destroyed buildings abound. Reconstruction is most definitely visible. But for a newcomer to BiH, the destruction is overwhelming. Everywhere you look there are reminders of war. Houses that have not yet been resurfaced look as though they have severe acne. Marks on buildings from bombs and mortar rounds look like deep splatters and ‘bear claws’ as Christopher Hutchins describes. After studying the war in BiH for many years, and in-depth in my graduate coursework, nothing could still have prepared me for the realities on the ground. No amount of research can approximate my experiences here to date, both negatively and positively.  

        BiH is one state with two political entities: the Federation of BiH (mostly inhabited by Bosnian Muslims aka Bosniaks and Croats) and Republika Srpska (RS), dominated by Bosnian Serbs. For example, while there is one army and a single currency, there are different educational and telecommunication institutions. While BiH has a new flag for the entire country, the territory of RS features many Serbian nationalist symbols including its own flag and religious three finger hand moniker. The reality is more complicated as resettlement programs initiated by the international community have resulted in a mix of these three ethnic groups. This is despite the fact that returning refugees encounter a terrain that no longer resembles the homes of their memories. 

        This three week in-country immersion features two components. The program’s first half was a 110KM three day peace march (Marš Mira) attended by over 6,000 people throughout the BiH countryside (primarily in the territory of RS) between 8-10 July 2010. The other portion of the program is to meet with survivors and staff from the memorial center as well as with local, regional, and international experts about the war and the reconstruction challenges and opportunities within this post-conflict landscape. So far we have met with a legal advisor from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); a police investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY); the head a civil-society organization, and a former soldier from the Dutchbat 3 (Dutch Battalion) peacekeeping mission. This does not include the myriad of people we have met along the way who survived the genocide, fought in the army, and/or remain deeply affected by the aftermath of war.

        Marš Mira took us through the woods, mud, steep hills, corn fields, gravel roads, and local villages. It is described as “to freedom via the route of death” and considered a peaceful protest attended by national and international participants of all ages. Residents along the route came to watch the marchers and at many homes coffee, tea, juice, snacks, and water were freely distributed.

        We camped for three nights. The first evening outdoors (prior to the start of the march) was in a small field surrounded by the woods with approximately ten houses nearby. Upon our group’s arrival, complete with a pile of backpacks and rolling luggage (for reasons to difficult to explain), we discovered that men outnumbered women by 50 to one (or so it seemed). The group could not have looked more conspicuous and ridiculous. Our luggage and laptops were eventually evacuated to a more secure location. We could se se nearly everyone, including the Bosnian army, staring at us, as though we were aliens arriving from another planet. Large tents housing 60 persons each were set up by the army. After being heckled out of one of these massive tents, a kind soul came out to welcome our group, putting us somewhat more at ease. My single person tent stood out as though adorned in neon. Needless to say, one of the men in our SRU group used it instead.

        At dusk, it began to pour while consumption of alcohol flowed throughout the crowd, even though this was strictly prohibited. Nothing about that first night indicated the sentimental journey to follow in the coming days. “God is crying for Srebrenica,” a new compassionate acquaintance told me. His parents unable to secure US visas for him and his two brothers, the three boys were forced to return to BiH and lived here with relatives throughout the war.

        During the darkness, especially when the army’s floodlights were turned off, the rowdiness of the crowd intensified. So did the aggressiveness of the men towards the women in our group. That is not to say that there were not gentlemen or soldiers present who were willing to strongly shoo away our determined and over-stimulated suitors. A few older women and children from the neighboring village came out and invited us to spend the night in their homes. It was a blessing from above after having had my nerves utterly shattered. During this night, I began smoking cigarettes to quell my intense anxiety and fear. I was visibly shaking unable to hold the smoke, as a fellow female SRU participant later told me.

        At dawn the following day, the march began in earnest. Thousands of men, women, and small children marched body to body for a long time in the intense heat. A water tanker followed us and bread and high caloric snacks were provided at key junctures from the Tuzla Canton’s Red Cross. I found it extremely difficult to walk and was overwhelmed with the irony that the now peaceful, lush, and gorgeous countryside was a death trap in 1995. The walking sticks I balked at purchasing back in the US were the primary reason I was able to march at all. (More on that later).

        Interspersed throughout the walk were small printed signs denoting numerous locations of mass graves. The signage indicated both primary execution sites as well as secondary pits where the remains of those massacred were moved by the Bosnian Serbs in an effort to destroy forensic evidence. At all times the path we took was within sight of mountainous areas that had sheltered snipers determined to kill those fleeing during the war.

        Over the course of three days, the march took us from a small village in Nezuk back to Potočari. The path retraced the steps – in the opposite direction – of the thousands of Bosniak men who fled Srebrenica and Potočari in an effort to reach Tuzla, part of the ‘free’ territory during the war. This route became a journey of death for the thousands of men who took to the hills in an effort to escape. Despite the cover of trees and foliage, this human column was surrounded by Bosnian Serbs who subsequently captured and murdered a significant number of male refugees. The fate of thousands, mostly men and boys, remain unknown to this day. The vast majority of persons executed were males aged 12 to 75.

     A separate mass of people–some 40,000, including men, women, children, the infirm, the elderly, and the newly born–all fled from surrounding villages first to Srebrenica and later to the industrial center in Potočari as the Bosnian Serb army continued to ethnically cleanse the area. It is at Potočari where the primary United Nations (UN) compound is located. This massive site was declared by the UN Security Council’s Resolution 819 a ‘safe haven.’ (UNSC Resolution 824 later extended this categorization to Tuzla, Žepa, Bihač, Goražde, and Sarajevo.) History proved otherwise. Men, women, and children were separated from one another at the Potočari site, which included an old battery factory. Women and children were put on buses and sent to Tuzla via a harrowing journey throughout hostile territory and constant harassment from armed Bosnian Serbs demanding cash and goods. Eight thousand men and boys suffered a more gruesome and genocidal fate.

        The march ended in the commemoration of the fifteenth anniversary of the genocide that took place in and around the Srebrenica enclave on 11 July 1995. The event was attended by international diplomats, BiH government officials, and well over 20,000 local visitors. These included families, an overwhelming number who were women, mourning their beloved sons, husbands, grandfathers, uncles, neighbors, and friends. Approximately 750 persons were buried, whose remains were recently identified. The iconic images of a two rows of men passing these green coffins from the battery factory several hundred feet to the cemetery across the street was humbling, numbing, and intensely emotional. Interspersed were international photojournalists looking for the perfect shot of women crying and praying for their loved ones. Even members of the SRU group, including myself, confronted the ethical dilemma of taking pictures to document the experience while trying to respect the intense mourning that engulfed us.

        More installments, including happier encounters, to follow.

Background on the Srebrenica Genocide:

http://www.srebrenicagenocide.org/

http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/

Marš Mira:

http://www.Maršmira.org/en_Maršmira.php

Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center Summer Research Institute:

http://sru.potocarimc.ba/cat_2010.php

UN Security Council Resolution 819:

http://www.nato.int/ifor/un/u930416a.htm

“The 10 Worst U.N. Security Council Resolutions Ever” by Colum Lynch

(Foreign Policy Magazine, 24 May 2010) 

http://tinyurl.com/3ahxry8