Roads to Reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia
Four peace activists from the former Yugoslavia spoke at UMass Amherst on October 29, 1998 about their struggle for reconciliation in the wake of genocide.
The delegation, representing each of the major ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia—Serbian, Croatian and Muslim, plus a leader of the Jewish community of Sarajevo—visited the Five-College area October 29-30, 1998 as Scholars-in-Residence.
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During their visit they met with members of the local Bosnian and Yugoslav communities, visited classes at UMass and other colleges, and gave a public presentation about their experiences reaching out across ethnic boundaries in the midst of war and genocide (so-called "ethnic cleansing").
Defying the hatred and enmity encouraged by many political leaders in the Balkans, these courageous activists have taken extraordinary risks to oppose war and ethnic hatred, and in so doing have given us a model for how to build bridges across "enemy" lines.
The was the first of two dialogue programs sponsored by the Office of Jewish Affairs, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, and Friends of Bosnia, exploring "Roads to Reconciliation: Peacebuilding in the Former Yugoslavia and the Middle East."
Old hatreds complicate the fight for peace in the former Yugoslavia
By Steve Pfarrer
Hampshire Gazette
October 31, 1998
In the former Yugoslavia, building a lasting peace means not only healing the divisions that led to war in the earlier part of the decade, but also overcoming ethnic hostilities that have existed for centuries.
As four speakers from the war-torn area told an audience at the University of Massachusetts [on October 29, 1998], that task remains a daunting one, given the physical and economic damage left over from the 1991-95 conflict and continued strife in the area, most recently in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Yet the diverse ethnic groups that make up the region—Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Muslims—must learn to live together if the area is ever to heal, the speakers said.
“Bosnia is like bread, and the Bosnian bread has been baked for 500 years,” said Jakob Finci, the head of a Jewish humanitarian organization in Sarajevo. “And just as it is impossible to divide flour, water and yeast in bread, we can’t divide Croats, Serbs and Bosnians.”
“Roads to Reconciliation: Peacebuilding in the former Yugoslavia” was jointly sponsored by the UMass Office of Jewish Affairs, the Friends of Bosnia, and the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding. About 100 people, some of them former Yugoslavs who now live in the United States, attended the event.
The four speakers, three of whom represented the major Yugoslavian ethnic groups (Croats, Serbs, and Muslims), are all involved in efforts to promote peace and help the victims of the war, which began in 1991 following the end of communist rule in the former Yugoslavia.
All had stories to tell of their own involvement.
Lidija Obad, a Croatian university professor, said she was initially unconcerned when war broke out between Croatia and Serbia, thinking it couldn’t possibly come to her own town.
“I wasn’t worried as long as (the war) wasn’t knocking at my door,” said Obad. “Then it did ... I ended up sitting in the cellar of a neighbor’s house.”
Obad left Croatia at one point to live in Austria, then felt she had to come home, even though her town [Osijek] had been heavily damaged by fighting and Croatians and Serbs there were consumed with hatred for each other. She decided she needed to help both groups try and overcome their anger and work together to rebuild towns and cities.
“If you want to live in a democratic society, you have to fight for human rights for everyone,” she said.
Mirha Kratina, a Bosnian Muslim and psychologist who works with children affected by the conflict, remembered watching television reports about the fighting between Croatia and Serbia and telling her friends it wouldn’t happen in Bosnia. Then it did, and schools such as the one she had worked at became shelters for war refugees and victims.
“People were starving to death ... there was no heat, no shelter for many,” she said.
Today she works to help younger children, particularly those who were born during the fighting, overcome the trauma of war. “Our children forgot how to play-all some of them knew was the war,” she said. “We need to give them back their childhood.”
Despite all the talk of reconciliation, Serbian psychologist Dragan Popadic, who lives in Belgrade and works with peace groups there, admitted he was very pessimistic about any immediate solution to the problems in Kosovo. For months, Serb troops have been fighting with ethnic Albanians, killing thousands and forcing many to flee the area. Serb troops [had only recently withdrawn] from many of their positions ... under threat of NATO air strikes.
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Popadic said nationalism still runs rampant in Serbia, fed in large part by a media tightly controlled by the administration of [former] Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic; he said the media have blamed the Kosovo conflict on Albanian terrorists, saying they’ve committed atrocities on their own people to make it look as though Serb troops were responsible.
Speakers also said economic and social problems have persisted throughout Yugoslavia, in some cases because the international peacekeeping forces in the region haven’t worked well with grass-roots organizations. Obad cited a case where regulations put in place by peace-keeping forces have prevented the cultivation of fields in Croatia that have lain fallow for several years.
Though Obad also praised the help that relief organizations such as Friends of Bosnia have contributed to the region, Finci noted that ultimately it would be up to the Balkan people themselves to solve their problems. “It’s clear that the world can’t bring any solution,” he said.
This article used with permission of the Daily Hampshire Gazette. All rights reserved.
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Download press release with detailed biographies (PDF)
More information about the companion program, "Roads to Reconciliation
in the Middle East."
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