FEATURE-Mostar: one family, three armies, a divided city

[Serbian]

FEATURE-Mostar: one family, three armies, a divided city

02 Apr 2012 15:33

Source: reuters // Reuters

* Bosnian city still deeply divided

* One city, split between Croats and Muslims

* Iconic Old Bridge destroyed, then rebuilt

* Division works to advantage of political rivals

By Daria Sito-Sucic



MOSTAR, Bosnia, April 2 (Reuters) - Like Bosnia, Zoran Laketa has a complicated past.

An ethnic Serb, he fought for the Catholic Croats in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, against his brother in the Muslim-dominated Bosnian army, and against the Orthodox Serb forces that drafted their father.

Ask him what he is, and he'll reply "Mostarac", a man of Mostar, the southern Bosnian town split by the emerald waters of the Neretva river.

Laketa epitomises the complexities of the Bosnian conflict that kept the West dithering over intervention in the face of mass ethnic cleansing.

Twenty years since the start of the war, ethnicity is still a deep dividing line - no more so than in Mostar, where Croats hold the west bank, Muslim Bosniaks the east, in an uncomfortable co-existence that has resisted foreign efforts to promote reintegration.

A town of 72,000 people, it has two electricity companies, two phone networks, two postal services, two utility services and two universities.

Croat and Bosniak children go to separate classes, learning from different textbooks.

Mirroring the rest of the country, Mostar's budget is creaking under the strain of duplicate institutions and ethnic politicking that has paralysed the city more than once.

Ethnic divisions feed two systems of political patronage. Unite the two sides, and someone is out of a job.

"All the talk about national quarrels is just aimed at public consumption, so the (Bosniak) SDA party and the (Croat) HDZ can share the governing of the city," said Mirsad Behram, a Mostar journalist for the Starmo web portal.



OTTOMAN-ERA 'OLD BRIDGE'

Quick-witted and carrying a scar over his left eye from a bar brawl, Laketa is a true child of Mostar, once the most ethnically diverse city of socialist Yugoslavia and named after the guardians of the Ottoman-era Old Bridge that spanned the Neretva.

The 16th century bridge was destroyed by Croat firepower in 1993, as Croats and Bosniaks - once united against the Serbs - went to war against each other and Laketa and his younger brother found themselves on opposing sides of the river.

Their father had already been drafted into the Serb forces at the outbreak of the war, but the brothers felt little affiliation with the Serbs, whom Laketa likened to paramilitaries.

Young men of military age, Laketa joined the Croats, and his brother the Bosniaks.

"We had to be in the army to survive," he said.

"When I look at it today, I actually shot at my brother, I shot at my best friends, but those were the times - soldiers are soldiers. I didn't choose it, and nor did my brother."

"Imagine it - one family in three armies."

In August 1993, Laketa's brother was killed aged 23. Laketa, then aged 25, was wounded a month later. Their father fought until the end of the war in December 1995.

"It was destiny," he said. "I survived, at least to tell this story so that such evil never happens to anyone again."

Bosnia's foreign overseers have repeatedly tried to bridge Mostar's division, quite literally when they rebuilt the arched Old Bridge in its original style at a cost of 10 million euros ($13.28 million).



NATIONALIST POLITICAL RIVALRY

The new, Old Bridge was opened in 2004, and hailed as a symbol of healing. But the divisions persist.

Two years ago, rubbish piled up in the streets and unpaid fire-fighters blocked roads as rival nationalist parties argued after the city budget.

Now, a local election scheduled for October may be postponed in a row between Bosniaks and Croats over how the city mayor should be elected.

Among ordinary Mostar residents, there are those who mingle, and others who have not crossed the bridge since the Croat and Bosniak armies agreed to a peace in early 1994.

They were joined into a Federation of Bosniaks and Croats, which together with the autonomous Serb Republic makes up postwar Bosnia, an unwieldy state of Byzantine complexity and strict ethnic quotas.

"The advantage of Mostar is that people here meet, they can have direct contact every day, whereas in other cities they don't meet at all," said a Western diplomat stationed in Bosnia.

On the other hand, he said, "this place becomes a flashpoint because the people live together."

It was with foresight that, at the height of the war, Laketa and his ethnic Serb wife named their two newborn daughters Danea and Dea, names untypical for any of Bosnia's rival communities.

In their late teens now, Laketa says he sees no future for his children in Bosnia, where he is among the estimated 26 percent of the workforce registered as unemployed.

"We gave them neutral names so that nobody could recognise them," he said, "so nobody could put them in any of these ethnic boxes and say that by their names they are Bosniaks, Croats or Orthodox."

"It's been 20 years since the war started, and the guardians of these three ethnic cages have robbed this country of everything."

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/f...a-divided-city

[Serbian]

1993, Croat forces destroying the old Mostar bridge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfWyKJY1wc8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfWyKJY1wc8

[Jimmy McQuade]

Been there. The Croats there are hardcore. Same with Široki Brijeg.

[Serbian]

Originally Posted by Jimmy McQuade

Been there. The Croats there are hardcore. Same with Široki Brijeg.

What year were you there?

[Jimmy McQuade]

1996

[Jimmy McQuade]

I spent most nights in Vionica which is near Medjugorje. Very nice countryside. Reminded me a bit of Ireland. Old, old land. Ancient.

[Serbian]

That would have been just after the signing of Dayton with the city still fully divided. Did you go to the eastern muslim section?

The thing with Mostar is that at the beginning of the war in 1992 the muslims and Croats joined forces and killed or expelled all the Serbs from the city. Unfortunately when hostilities began between these former allies the Serbs didnt use this opportunity to regain control of say east Mostar, but instead allowed the muslims to survive there. The BSA could have easily taken east Mostar during the most heavy muslim Croat fighting, sure there would have been NATO air strikes on its positions but that happened anyway so it was really a mistake not to take it. The river Neretva is the natural border between Serbs and Croats, there should be no place for muslims in the city of Mostar or anywhere else in Herzegovina for that matter.

[Jimmy McQuade]

And I got to see Zrinjski play way back when they were sort of a Sunday league team.

[Serbian]

Originally Posted by Jimmy McQuade

I spent most nights in Vionica which is near Medjugorje. Very nice countryside. Reminded me a bit of Ireland. Old, old land. Ancient.

Herzegovina is much harsher, with plenty of rock and mountains.

[Jimmy McQuade]

Hell no, I didn't go to the eastside. There were rumors (?) of snipers picking off anyone on our side. I didn't go anywhere near it.

[Serbian]

October 26, 2012 | 15:41

Bosniaks Muslims request new municipalities in Mostar

Source: Tanjug

Mostar -- Bosniak councilors in the Mostar City Council, the city mufti and 40 NGOs have launched a petition requesting that the city be divided into six municipalities.



The Bosniaks want Mostar, which is dominated by its Croat and Bosniak (Muslim) communities, to be divided into several local-self government units. According to them, this is the only way to guarantee Bosniaks’ equality in the city. Muslims still want full control over the entire city

They demand that Mostar be organized in accordance with the Annex of the Agreement on the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina that was signed in Dayton on November 10, 1995, which is a part of the Mostar Transitional Statute which was drafted by EU Administrator for Mostar Hans Koschnick.

Head of the Bosniak councilor group in the City Council Salem Marić has said that the Bosniak parties in Mostar will continue their joint action and that heads of all town boards of all Bosniak political parties will hold a meeting in Mostar next week.

“We agreed to call all leaders of all Bosniak and pro-Bosniak parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina to meet in Mostar in order to send a clear message about Bosniaks’ unity, just like it was done in Srebrenica,” Marić said and stressed that “talks about Mostar need to be held in Mostar”.

Mostar Mufti Seid Smajkić said that Bosniaks were discriminated in the city.

“Bosniaks have been put in an unequal position with the abolition of Bosniak municipalities and we want to protect the rights of Bosniaks in Mostar, as a center of Herzegovina, through municipalities. We want everybody to see Mostar as their center, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs there haven't been any Serbs in Mostar since 1992 when they were all expelled or killed and others,” he explained.

According to Bosnian media, Smajkić has called on Croat political parties to stop acting as if they own Mostar and added that Bosniaks are offended by such behavior. because they want to own Mostar

Bosniak veterans’ associations of Mostar representative Suad Muharemović claims that he will not allow “Mostar to be a Croatian capital”.

The Office of the High Representative (OHR) is involved in the solving of the issues in Mostar and it has started negotiations in order to find a solution for changes of the City Statute and the Bosnia-Herzegovina Election Law which were ordered by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina last year.

The implementation of the new Election Law in Mostar has not started yet so local elections were not held in the city.

Croat and Bosniak parties have different stances on the issue. The Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZ) wants Mostar to be a single electoral unit while the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) advocates that the city be divided into six municipalities.

a few comments


The Croats and Serbs need to stick together.They are being played in Bosnia.
(IVO, 26 October 2012 17:06)


Where do we start, Mostar is a divided city in all but name, Croat west, Muslim east and it shows. Why do the muslims keep moaning about discrimination when in reality they have marginalised the Croats and demonised the Serbs. Remember that contrary to American propaganda, Bosnia,s christians are the real majority in this land. When i was in Sarajevo i did not feel that i was in europe, i felt i was in a down market Istanbul. Where are all the Croats, Serbs of this city..?. The so called international community still pretends that this is a multi ethnic city...i rest my case.
(rrudi, 26 October 2012 18:03)



this is the end for croats ,if croats dont wake up and be closer to serbs the croats will disapear from bosnia.bosniaks are 2,000,000 and serbs there is 1,700,000 and croats about 400,000 .so who do croats want to be closer to islamic fanatics or christians.1 way or another croats have to make a choice live in bosnia or disapear.
(tommy from croatia, 26 October 2012 18:32)



"this is the end for croats ,if croats dont wake up and be closer to serbs the croats will disapear from bosnia."

If enough Croats know that, and are worried for the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then why don't they organize to help them more and put more pressure on their government and other Croats who aren't doing anything? It seems as if the majority of Croats hate Serbs so much, they will keep silent on this, worrying that Serbs would get a boost if they work against Muslim domination in Bosnia. And I know Croatia has a lot of info on Muslim government atrocities against Serbs they are keeping back.
Croatia is still holding the friendly, moderate, and once most popular Muslim Fikret Abdic in jail. Croats should push for Fikret Abdic to be released from jail.
(ida, 27 October 2012 00:05)



Lenard

You commets is proof of desperation! You sound drunk! Why don't you just admit that croats are the biggest biggots in the Balkans. There is a muslim party in RS but ordinary muslims don't have basic rights in the croat part of Bosnia. And if you are part of the federation why do you raise the croatian flag in Herzeg Bosna? You are a hypocrite, a desperate hypocrite. If you are a bosnian croat you should know that the croats in Bosnia were saved from muslims during the war by serbs. You can repay us by accepting a free RS.

"Croats flee victorious muslims"
[link]
(MikeC, 27 October 2012 00:08)

[Serbian]

Another jewess makes up more anti Serbian lies concerning Mostar, a city which has been thoroughly ethnically cleansed of its Serbian population. According to ZOG when Croats and muslims kill each other it is the fault of Serbs.



Jewish Woman Helped Bosnian Muslims in the Besieged Mostar

Posted: November 3, 2012 in Bosnian Muslims and Jews, Jews and Bosniaks, Jews and Bosnian Muslims

Tags: Angel of Mostar, Mostar, Sally Becker



In Sunflowers and Snipers, Becker describes what happened when Serbian nationalist extremists attacked Mama’s village. which village?

“They systematically began to force out the residents at gunpoint or flush them out by setting fire to their homes. Many had been burned alive, trapped in the basements where they had sought refuge. Some of the men were arrested and taken off to camps but Mama’s husband and son had been shot in front of her.” Who is this Mama? a made up person, just like this whole bogus dramatic story the jewess pulled out of her stinking semitic ass

JEWISH WOMAN FROM BRIGHTON TOOK SACRIFICE TO SAVE BOSNIAN MUSLIMS IN THE BESIEGED MOSTAR DURING THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA IN 1990s The jewess wants the uninformed western readers to believe that Mostar was beseiged/destroyed by the BSA when in fact it was destroyed by muslim and Croat forces shelling each others parts of the town.

The article is all the typical stale unoriginal rehashed liberal lies and propaganda that we have become accustomed to concerning the Bosnian war.

By Gerald Jacobs
The Jewish Chronicle

When former Serb leader Radovan Karadzic recently claimed at his war crimes trial in The Hague that he should be “rewarded” for his actions in the 1990s Bosnian war, Sally Becker suggested on Twitter that an appropriate reward would be a nice “rest” at the Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

Twenty years ago, it was from there that Serb snipers targeted defenceless civilians. A long siege and 11,000 deaths followed. Today, Karadzic’s welcome at the hotel would be more than warm; it would be infernal.

Becker’s own place in the blood-soaked modern history of the Balkans is genuinely deserving of reward. For her heroic efforts in raising money, delivering aid, rescuing injured children and alerting the world to the devastation of a historic city in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this Jewish woman from Brighton became known as the “Angel of Mostar”.

These days, Becker is a goodwill ambassador for Children of Peace, a charity dedicated to “breaking the cycle of violence between Palestinians and Israelis” by bringing together young people from both sides.

Worthwhile work, certainly, but serene in comparison with dodging bullets or being incarcerated in a Kosovo prison.

Yet, for all her encounters with violent destruction and heart-rending human damage, Becker is keen to play down her bravery. “I don’t think I’m different from other people,” she insists. “It just happened that I was there, so I did it.”

How she did it, and the horrors, frustrations and occasional bright times she experienced, is described in her book, Sunflowers and Snipers, in which she writes: “Tough I am not”. But, given that she returned to the frontline time and again, hadn’t she developed a taste for war?

“Some people do say that war can be addictive,” she concedes. “You’re living on the edge. Life is more colourful, more meaningful. But it frightened me so much, there’s no way I would call that ‘getting a taste for it’. Every time I was in danger, I was terrified. It was just that, having done it, I felt I had to go on doing it.

“I think,” she proffers, not entirely flippantly, “it’s to do with Jewish guilt. I learnt about the Holocaust as quite a young child. And I certainly felt a sense of responsibility, because people died while the general population turned a blind eye.”

She also identifies a more literary inspiration.

“I read Nevil Shute’s novel, The Pied Piper, when I was about 12. It’s about an Englishman on holiday in France in 1940 who is asked to take a child home with him because of the approaching danger of the Nazis.

“He ends up going from place to place gathering children to bring out. It was my favourite book so I’m sure that something of it lodged in my subconscious.”

It was during the first Iraq War in 1991 that Becker’s subconscious duly delivered its irresistible mix of idealism and chutzpah. She joined the Gulf Peace Team, an assembly of people intent on protesting within the very theatre of war. They met in Jordan and made their way into Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — without Becker.

“When they found out I was Jewish, it was decided that I shouldn’t go,” she explains. “I was asked to stay in Amman and take care of PR. One day, there was a telephone call to say the whole team was trapped in the El Rashid hotel in Baghdad. They had no funds and, anyway, the taxis had all been commandeered by the press, who were leaving fast.

“I thought: ‘I wonder if King Hussein of Jordan’s wife, Queen Noor, would help’, and so I sent her a fax.”

Queen Noor responded immediately and arranged for two buses and a car to take Becker to the Iraqi border and pick up the stranded volunteers.

“After that,” she says, “I felt it was time to do my bit for my own people.” So she went to Israel, where she “spent a lot of time in air-raid shelters helping children with their gas masks”.

She was already familiar with Israel — and danger — having spent several months on Kibbutz Hanita, close to the Lebanese border, after leaving school. On March 11 1978, there was a PLO rocket barrage. Becker and the other volunteers spent the night in a shelter.

The following morning, with Katyushas still falling, she volunteered to run to the kitchen to bring back food to the shelter.

Fifteen years and one Iraq war later, she was once again a volunteer, this time with an aid convoy travelling to Bosnia, for what she expected to be a single, three-week stint. The first port of call was a camp housing hundreds of Muslim refugees where Becker was introduced to a woman known as “Mama”.

In Sunflowers and Snipers, Becker describes what happened when Serbian nationalist extremists attacked Mama’s village.

“They systematically began to force out the residents at gunpoint or flush them out by setting fire to their homes. Many had been burned alive, trapped in the basements where they had sought refuge. Some of the men were arrested and taken off to camps but Mama’s husband and son had been shot in front of her.”

Hearing this and accounts of other outrages, particularly where children were involved, ensured that this period in Becker’s life would amount to a great deal more than three weeks of hand-outs.

Having not even heard of Bosnia before leaving Brighton, she soon became aware of the desperate plight of the inhabitants of Mostar in the Herzegovina region in the south-west of the country.

Upon her return home, she made an appeal on BBC Radio Sussex. It worked: “People brought blankets, feeding bottles, nappies and anything else they thought might be useful.” The International Council of Jewish Women sent aid for Mostar’s isolated Jews.

So it was back to the Balkans, where Becker received a message from Zoran Mandlebaum, president of Mostar’s Jewish community, telling her he was sending someone to meet her.

This turned out to be 15-year-old Damir Rozic, whose 83-year-old grandfather, Haim Romano, had been stuck for weeks in the basement of Mostar’s overcrowded hospital with an infected wound. Throughout this time, his daughter — Damir’s mother — had daily defied snipers and rocket-propelled grenades to visit him.

When Becker, by determined resourcefulness, found she was able to get a consignment of antibiotics through battle lines, thereby helping to save Haim Romano’s life, she resolved to build on the experience, cultivating a passionate, can-do attitude.

The ensuing months saw her driving a range of vehicles through a range of places exposed to a range of dangers. She hustled, pleaded and cajoled individuals and institutions for assistance.

Though witnessing cruelty, deprivation and bigotry, she held off despair and stiffened her resolve in the face of cold intransigence and — perhaps inevitably after the “Angel of Mostar” tag — a backlash of personal criticism.

Constantly, she and her fellow aid workers had to negotiate their way through the confused mesh of Serbs, Croats, Muslims [Bosniaks], Jews and Catholics. All the time, the fate of the children was her overriding motivation.

This it was that took her eventually to Albania, where her apparent invincibility ran out. Along with the British government’s refusal to allow her to bring wounded children to the UK, Becker herself became a victim when she was shot in the leg.

She found herself in the care of a man with whom she had already fallen in love: Major Bill Foxton, a veteran British soldier who had lost part of his left arm in combat. Later, when Becker was having her wound checked back in Brighton and reported that she was experiencing nausea, the trauma specialist told her it was because she was pregnant.

But Foxton had a wife and two children in Britain. He did see Billie, his and Sally’s daughter born in 1999, a few times before he was off again — to Afghanistan. Then, in 2007, Becker learned Foxton was dead. Not on some remote battlefield but in England.

Having lost all his money in a Madoff scheme, his fearless resistance was at last broken. Bill Foxton was sitting on a park bench in Southampton when he put a semi-automatic pistol to his head and fired. The uplifting coda to all this is that Sally and her daughter, Bill’s widow and their children, have all now grown extremely close.

Earlier this year, Becker was included in the small, select group that carried the Olympic flag at the London 2012 opening ceremony. “As the flag was raised,” she recalls, “I said a prayer for the Israeli athletes killed in Munich. It was a very special six minutes.”

And another very special memory for this defiantly courageous woman’s collection.

‘Sunflowers and Snipers’ is published by The History Press at £18.99. www.sallybecker.co.uk

[Serbian]

14 Jan 13

Bosnian muslim Army War Memorial Blown Up

An explosion in the town of Mostar destroyed a monument to those who served in the wartime Bosnian Army, media reports said.

B92

Local police said that nobody was hurt in the incident that demolished the monument outside Mostar’s town hall on Sunday but refused to provide any more information while the investigation was ongoing.

Bosniak and Croat politicians in Mostar have often quarrelled over the memorial, as well as another in the town that honours members of the Croat wartime force in Bosnia, the HVO.

A year ago, a Croat association built its memorial with the approval of the town's authorities, but Bosnian Army veterans’ associations strongly criticised it, and at one point unknown attackers opened fire on the monument.

In April last year, members of Bosniak veterans’ associations erected their own memorial only metres away from the one honouring the HVO.

After the war in the 1990s, Mostar remained informally divided between its eastern, Bosniak part and its western, Croat one. Inter-ethnic incidents are often reported, particularly during sporting events.

Mostar is located in the Muslim-Croat Federation entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The country's other entity is Republika Srpska.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=fCYkgjWxTDA

[Serbian]

Bomb destroys war memorial in divided Bosnian town

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:23 GMT

Source: reuters // Reuters

* Mostar saw heavy fighting during 1992-95 war

* Town still deeply divided between Muslims and Croats

* Peace overseer appeals for calm

By Maja Zuvela

SARAJEVO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A bomb blast destroyed a monument to fallen soldiers of Bosnia's Muslim-dominated wartime army on Monday in the southern town of Mostar, where divisions between ethnic Croats and Muslims still run deep.

Police said an "explosive device" had destroyed the lily-shaped monument in front of Mostar's city hall in the early hours of Monday morning.

Bosnia's international peace overseer, Valentin Inzko, said he was "appalled" by the attack and appealed for calm.

"This violence must not be allowed to spread," Inzko said in a statement.

Home to around 70,000 people, Mostar saw heavy fighting during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Despite Western efforts to encourage reintegration, the town remains largely divided between Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) on the east bank of the Neretva river and Croats on the west, where the city hall is located.

No one was injured in the explosion.

"Police are investigating the circumstances and hope to locate the perpetrator soon," Srecko Bosnjak, spokesman for the Mostar police, said.

The monument to the Bosnian army was built last year, next to a memorial in honour of Croat veterans of the conflict.

Post-war violence in Mostar has been largely confined to clashes between rival football fans, but political leaders continue to resist the efforts of Western overseers to unify the town.

Each community has its own utility services, electricity provider and education system.

Ethnic politicking has paralysed the town more than once, and in October last year Mostar was the only town in Bosnia where local elections were postponed due to a dispute over how to hold the vote. (Editing by Matt Robinson and Jason Neely)

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/b...d-bosnian-town

[Serbian]

January 22, 2013 | 14:40

New incident in Mostar: Planted bomb disarmed

Source: Tanjug

Mostar -- The police in the town of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday found and disarmed an explosive device planted in front of a restaurant.

An investigation is underway, while reports said that the bomb was "neutralized using a water cannon".

Federal TV is reporting that the citizens were upset by the incident.

This media outlet is also saying unofficially that the device consisted of "four fuses, with a cell phone as a trigger".

The device was found and reported by the owner of the establishment.

Last week, a memorial for the members of the wartime muslim Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina was blown up, while recently, another memorial - honoring members of the Croatian Council of Defense (HVO) - was shot at and damaged.

Ever since the 1992-95 war, Mostar has been informally divided into its Bosniak muslim and Croat parts, with numerous incidents reported from the town.

Mostar is located in the Muslim (Bosniak)-Croat Federation (FBiH), one of the two entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina - the other being the Serb Republic (RS).

[Jimmy McQuade]

It'll be interesting to see if this is a continuation from last week by the Croats, or an attempt at retaliation by the muzzies. Too bad the article doesn't give any clues as to where in the city this restaurant is.

[Serbian]

Originally Posted by Jimmy McQuade

It'll be interesting to see if this is a continuation from last week by the Croats, or an attempt at retaliation by the muzzies. Too bad the article doesn't give any clues as to where in the city this restaurant is.

There are little incidents in Mostar all the time and there is still tension in the city.

As for this case the owner of the restaurant was a muslim and the location is close to the center, the street is called Husnije Repca.