Word: bosnia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina—Earlier this summer I remember sitting on the number four metro in Paris; I am nearly finished reading page 87 of Dubravka Ugresic’s The Museum of Unconditional Surrender. A single word strikes my fancy: “Kinder-Eggs.” I read on and finally realize that the author is not going to explain what a kinder-egg is. I smile in my secret delight. But the secret that I share with Ugresic does not last long...
Such is the secret of Bosnia. I am growing extremely fond of my home for a month, Sarajevo. There are millions of interesting, positive things to say about it. But do I really want hoards of tourists—for pleasure or on do-good missions—arriving? While in general I heartily support international travel and certainly greater tourism in Bosnia would be helpful to the economy, I cannot help but want to protect this place from the brash self-centered voyeurism that tourists of all nationalities tend to carry...
Eight years after its disastrous conflict, Bosnia, of course, has problems—especially with the drying up of European and American support as other regions have become more attractive aid recipients. But it is the growing normalcy that is most striking here. After a few weeks here, I was already convinced that all the shocked “why would you want to go there” people had to be shortsighted, and wrong. As Bosnians have argued to me, the everyday rhythms of life overshadow the problems of the past. It is these cultural gems that...
...blue helmets. True, some missions have been successful, like the Australian-led stabilization of East Timor. But from Somalia, where a humanitarian effort turned into a doomed attempt at nation building; to Rwanda, where U.N. forces failed to prevent a genocide, despite ample warnings that it was coming; to Bosnia, where the Dutch component of a peacekeeping contingent stood by while thousands of Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered in Srebrenica, the record of multilateral forces has hardly been distinguished...
...their oil" kind. We Americans should value the lives of our foreign brothers and sisters as much as we value our own. We started the war with Iraq at a time when there was no ongoing civil war, no uprising, no massacres. The situation was quite different in Bosnia and Kosovo: our troops ended years of bloodshed and prevented many more people from being killed, even though the conflict was not a direct threat to American interests. Laura Chiu Palo Alto...