Having fled Sarajevo as a child, I find it hard to tell refugees from Syria that they will be going back. I recognized Basel immediately when the shot cut to a group of refugees standing in the rain, and he turned to look briefly at the camera. I was at home a couple of months back watching a Sky News […]
Do we celebrate or commemorate twenty years of the Dayton Peace Agreement? This was something that crossed my mind when I was invited to come to Dayton and speak about post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. I do not feel like celebrating, to be honest, although to end a war is a tremendous human and humanitarian achievement. However, the sad truth is […]
Socrates: Our disagreement turns on this single point. Now what I want to know is this: Will a man who does wrong be happy if he is brought to justice and punished? Polus: On the contrary, he will then be most miserable. Socrates: By your account, if he is not brought to justice he will be happy? Polus: Yes. Socrates: […]
The verdict today by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) is that Radovan Karadžić committed genocide during his effort to create a Serb state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is yet another confirmation that the so-called “Republic of the Serbs” committed genocide at its founding. Genocide had to be committed, simply because it would be impossible to establish a Serb state on any territory […]
No one chooses his life: the pecking of boats at the ramparts. My messages to friends, my shame toward those whom we will conquer: you know the end and the beginning of everything, the words that led me to exile. We recuperated on Hvar, going there in winter and at night when the water was far from us, under the […]
Time and Place Tuesday, 22 February 1994 (Washington) It is difficult to arrange the days in retrospect, because time has shifted. We flew for nine hours on Sunday, setting off at 11:30 a.m. that day and arriving here in the afternoon at approximately 2 p.m. They say that it takes less time to fly back from here. The position of […]
Preface After the Vienna talks about the cantons and the final organisation of the Federation of BiH that took place from 8 to 11 May 1994, I stopped keeping a journal about the events that I was participating in. I had made a firm decision to no longer write out the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, believing that it had survived both […]
New Year’s Day. Snow overlaid the minefield. Adin Ljuca Translated by Keith Doubt
In the context of the continuing economic crisis the issue of where the Bosnian economics is today is often raised as well as the issue of whether it can act in concert with economic practices and contribute to finding adequate solutions to mitigate the effects and create a way out of the current economic crisis. The intellectual world, in the […]
Almost all the domestic film production in the ex-Yugoslav region inclines subtly to the ideological views of the country of origin and is set or reflected of war and the post-war period. One truly remarkable fact about the recent release of Hiljadarka is not just its genre as comedy but also its lack of any connection to the conflict and […]
She sheds a tear when no one is watching She feels the pain bottled in her chest She hopes the end is near She sheds a tear when no one is watching Her father, uncle, and cousins have not yet been found. Under her breath she speaks to a father she does not remember, To an uncle who would have […]
Chapter I A Shot In a fraction of a second there was no connection between Diki’s senses and his brain. He could not comprehend or explain to himself any of the things that were happening around him. He closed his eyes, reflexively, at the moment a shot was fired. The sound was deafening. He inhaled the pungent smell of gunpowder […]
Alexander, Ronelle. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. xxi + 464 pp. Alexander, Ronelle and Ellen Elias-Bursać. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Textbook: With Exercises and Basic Grammar, Second edition. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010. xviii + 510 pp. The present article is an abridged version of a longer review […]
It is July 9th today. On this day, 20 years ago, I was almost nine years old which are symbolized by these nine flowers of Srebrenica on my clothes today. I survived genocide. Once in life one can be the child which I never was. I will never know what a carefree childhood looks like. Because my childhood had been […]
How delicate and fragile you are How beautiful and pure Like every child when born Your hair silken and bedewed Like the leaves of a young plant’s stem in April Your lips are rose buds still to blossom Hands the blue intimation of dawn Legs as though you have none, you poor thing They are like two lilies for caressing […]
The National Museum in Sarajevo is a magical place. Four million exhibits. Yes, million. As you walk through its hallways and exhibit rooms, you journey through the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina: wooden objects our ancestors used several thousand years ago, swords once used to defend themselves from conquerors, animals they hunted in the thick forests, delicate fabrics and magnificent […]
An infographic guide to Bobovac, the nest of kings of Bosnia […]
For ethnic identities to disappear into one national identity, mechanical solidarity needs to be established. “The social molecules which can be coherent in this way can act together only in the measure that they have no actions of their own, as the molecules of inorganic bodies,” (Durkheim, 40). Mechanical solidarity prevents any sense of individuality. People in such a society […]
Nationalist discourses and political agendas often announce an objective of returning to a homogenous, self-contained society. Emile Durkheim’s concept of mechanical and organic solidarity provides a useful conceptual framework for understanding the binary oppositions that are advanced under the agendas and by the policies of nationalist political regimes. Nationalist programs strive to forcibly produce the homogeneity that Emile Durkheim characterizes […]
I’ve never anywhere seen a quince, but lindens bloom in Scandinavia also. Rinsed by the tea of rains, though, their scent is faint. Like a strong perfume, the scent of the Balkan linden tree in summer gets into both blankets and sweaters. Quinces rust on the wardrobes in cold bedrooms in the fall. In the Balkans both good and evil […]