33 quotes found
"When you go to Sarajevo what you experience... is life."
"In Sarajevo, I ate a lot of sweets, drank plenty of water and read Nero Wolfe."
"The people of Bosnia -- meaning Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs -- could each say they're speaking their own, individual language. They say that it's their national language, and that it's not for Europe, Belgrade, or Zagreb to decide differently... The same is true for Montenegrins. If they think Montenegrin is a distinct language, then basically it is. If on the other hand they decide to share a language with Serbs or Croats, that would work just as well. But the tendency here is to see each of these languages as special and distinct."
"Sarajevo had the best organized Winter Games in Olympic history ... Goodbye dear Sarajevo."
"This is the flag of the future. It is a flag that belongs in Europe."
"I respect the official flag in the way I respect all laws, but for me this flag has no meaning... I am not sure what those stars and colours are representing at all, and I preferred the old one that we used with the lilies."
"Some people told me that I shouldn’t have the flag with me in Banja Luka because it might be seen as a provocation but I told them – this is a flag for all of us. Why should I make exception here? ... Carrying the national flag meant a lot to me. I feel like I am doing something for my country, and I have a flag with me whether I am abroad or in Bosnia and Herzegovina"
"I am not sure I know anyone here who likes the state flag enough to use it on cars on wedding days or similar... In most such cases, the Republika Srpska flag is used or sometimes Serbia’s flag... We didn’t choose this flag. Someone just decided that we need to use it, and I believe this is why we are in this situation... I am not sure what the colors or the stars on the flag mean, probably something connected with the EU."
"That flag just doesn’t make any sense. It looks like some EU flag and for sure we are not in the EU. If you have three nations, it is hard to hope they will respect only one flag... I am not saying that I like or dislike the flag … but we can see that this flag isn’t that popular."
"Back then, you wouldn’t even ask questions about the national flag, but today I can understand that for many people the flag has no meaning at all since we devaluated everything."
"Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years."
"I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth."
"My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut."
"Bosnians may have gained their independence in the three-year civil war, but many have struggled to cope during the 22 years of peace."
"I am Bosnian by nationality... [T]he fact that my mother gave birth to me at a hospital in Belgrade does not mean anything."
"Why did this particular political murder have such vast consequences? Part of the answer is that when the Archduke was shot he was driving along one of the world's great fault lines - the fateful historical border between the West and the East, the Occident and the Orient. From the fifteenth century until the late nineteenth, Bosnia and neighbouring Herzegovina had been parts of the Ottoman Empire. Many of their inhabitants had converted to Islam, the better to serve their Turkish rulers and to reap the full benefits of Ottoman rule. But Bosnia was never an entirely Muslim country; there were also substantial populations of Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats, to say nothing of Vlachs, Germans, Jews and Gypsies. To one Victorian visitor, the River Sava between Bosnia and Habsburg Croatia seemed to be the dividing line between Europe and Asia. Others saw the Miljacka, which runs through Sarajevo itself, as the border; or the Drina, which runs through Visegrad to the east. In truth, with the protracted decline of Ottoman power, the whole of Bosnia became a contested frontier. In 1908 Austria-Hungary had formally annexed Bosnia, over which it had enjoyed de facto control since the Congress of Berlin in 1878. When Francis Ferdinand visited Sarajevo just six years later, he was touring a new imperial acquisition, in which considerable sums had been invested on new roads, railways and schools, but where thousands of Austro-Hungarian troops still had to be stationed to maintain order."
"Milosevic realized that he could not rule Yugoslavia. Instead, he decided to build a powerful Serbia that would include all Serbs living in the other republics. To that end, he launched a war against Croatia, destroying frontier cities, occupying territory and supporting the large block of Serbs in the Krajina region. The biggest problem was Bosnia, which declared its independence in March 1992. It had a hopelessly mixed population of Serbs, Croatians, and Moslems but Milosevic wanted to dominate it. Rather than sending in the army, he operated behind the scenes by organizing and supplying paramilitary units who embarked on a programme of 'ethnic cleansing', which involved expelling or killing Moslems and establishing concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands fled as the Serbs occupied 70 per cent of the country and mercilessly shelled its capital Sarajevo. The violence culminated in the massacre of 6000 men and boys in the Moslem enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. The Bosnian war turned the West against the Serbs. The UN imposed an economic blockade, the costs of the war led to hyperinflation, and the Serbian economy faced collapse. Despite constant demonstrations against his policies, and erratic attempts to achieve stability - most notably choosing a rich American Yugoslav as Prime Minister - Milosevic was re-elected in 1992, with the help of vote rigging. He realized it was time to make peace - the situation was growing desperate. By 1995 NATO was backing the Moslems and Croats who pushed the Serbs out of Krajina and much of Bosnia. Milosevic ditched the Bosnian Serbs and went to Dayton in Ohio for discussions that produced an agreement to divide Bosnia among the three communities. He was praised abroad as a peacemaker, but the Serbs saw the agreement as a defeat."
"Bosnia and Herzegovina is so important to us, it’s so sensitive, we have the three nations living there, and for you who live in democracies that are based on individual participation, it’s difficult to accept and to understand the concept of the three nations, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the functioning of that country, it’s so important."
"Bosnia should be a secular state. A non-secular Bosnia would be terror."
"How will you prevent everyone from being killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina?"
"The people of Bosnia -- meaning Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs -- could each say they're speaking their own, individual language. They say that it's their national language, and that it's not for Europe, Belgrade, or Zagreb to decide differently."
"In Bosnia, a neighbor means more than a relative. In Bosnia, having coffee with your neighbor is a ritual... [I]n Bosnia, if neighbors can again shake hands, if our children can again play games together, and if they have the right to a chance... It is too late for me now, but for the children living in Bosnia now, it's not too late... The spirit of this unhappiness still hovers over our Bosnian hills, which have suffered so much."
"It is very important to send a new signal of confidence and hope that this (Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo) accession (into the European Union) process is wanted by the EU (European Union) with great seriousness, and that it also has a realistic chance if everyone makes an effort."
"Not everyone in this country is a thief or corrupt. If I was, I would be a politician and be doing far better in life."
"The state cannot block the entity, but the entity can block the state."
"In early October 1995, combined European and American pressure finally resulted in a cease-fire, and on 1 November 1995, the leading figures—Tudjman, Milošević, and Izetbegović—met at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, under the forceful negotiating of Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. After more than two weeks, the parties finally came to a settlement. As a result of the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia remained in existence, its borders intact, its formal name now the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But internally, it comprised two separate entities, a Serb one, the Republika Srpska, and a Muslim-Croat one, the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to the constitution determined at Dayton, each entity is granted the right to establish “special parallel relationships” with neighboring states, and each was also a signatory to major aspects of the agreement. The central state is very weak, with major powers left to localities and to the Federation and the Republika Srpska. These were all major concession to Serbs, granting them in fact some of the powers, if not all the territory, for which Serb nationalists had fought. In the words of the political scientists Burg and Shoup, “the constitution institutionalizes the ethnic division of the state.”"
"Who are they for a whole nation to suffer for them, both in the Republika Srpska and in Serbia, because a certain Mladic has decided that he does not want to surrender and go to court? Or Karadzic? And then they say: "I love the Serbian people." The hell they love us. They are pushing us into ever deeper problems."
"The most murderous racial violence can have a sexual dimension to it, as in 1992, when Serbian forces were accused of a systematic campaign of rape directed against Bosnian Muslim women, with the aim of forcing them to conceive and give birth to 'Little Cetniks'. Was this merely one of many forms of violence designed to terrorize Muslim families into fleeing from their homes? Or was it perhaps a manifestation of the primitive impulse described above - to eradicate 'the Other' by impregnating females as well as murdering males? It would certainly be simplistic to regard raping women as a form of violence indistinguishable in its intent from shooting men. Sexual violence directed against members of ethnic minorities has often been inspired by erotic, albeit sadistic, fantasies as much as by 'eliminationist' racism."
"I regret that we did not make a stronger effort to drop the name Republika Srpska. We underestimated the value to Pale of retaining their blood-soaked name. We may also have underestimated the strength of our negotiating hand on that day, when the bombing had resumed. In retrospect, I think we should have pushed Milosevic harder to change the name of the Bosnian Serb entity. Even if the effort failed, as Owen and Hill predicted, it would have been worth trying."
"When Serb forces started to attack Bosnian Muslims, they tried to justify their unprovoked aggression by telling the world that they were yet again defending the Christian West against the fanatical East. The fact that Bosnian Muslims were not only largely secular but were mostly descended from Serbs or Croats was not allowed to stand in the way. Serb nationalists insisted on referring to them as Turks or traitors to the Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church. Croatians, of course, preferred to see the Bosnian Muslims as apostate Croatian Catholics. (Ironically, the effect of the war has been to make many Muslims in Bosnia much more devout.)"
"In my heart there's only one home,My republic is great in heart,In my heart the most beautiful star shines,My republic, Republika Srpska."
"To further weaken Pale, I proposed that the Dayton agreement include a provision moving the Bosnian Serb capital to Banja Luka. Milošević seemed interested in this proposal but, to my surprise, Izetbegović demurred. Even though he hated the leadership in Pale, he seemed to think he could work with them, especially his old associate from the Bosnian Assembly, Momčilo Krajišnik. Izetbegovic also saw value in keeping the capitals of the two entities close to each other so that Sarajevo remained the only important political center in Bosnia. He may also have feared that if the Bosnian Serb capital moved to Banja Luka, which is closer to Zagreb than Sarajevo, it would accelerate the permanent division of the country and strengthen Tuđman. Whatever Izetbegović's reasons for not wanting to close Pale, it was a mistake. The mountain town was solely a wartime capital, established by an indicted war criminal and his henchmen. It was the living symbol - and headquarter - of his organization. We should have pushed Izetbegović harder to agree to establish the Serb capital at Banja Luka. It would have made a big difference in the effort to implement the Dayton agreements."