Bosnia must shed its war-torn label

Vesna Maric
April 7, 2012 - 3:00AM

THERE are many ways a curious traveller can choose to visit Bosnia-Herzegovina in the year that marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the war.

There's the normal option of flying to Sarajevo; or going there via Croatia, paying less and getting a glimpse of the Adriatic Sea. Or, as I recently discovered, one can opt for something called a ''political tour'': a journey that, according to its organisers, promises to deliver ''current affairs at first hand''.

Among trips to ''Libya - Post Revolution'', North Korea, Ethiopia and Georgia, there is an option to visit ''Bosnia & Serbia''. There is lunch to be had in the mountains overlooking Sarajevo, from where the city was shelled to cinders, a picnic en route to Srebrenica, dinners with genocide survivors, plus bus tours along the old front lines.

There is even an optional trip to Mostar, where doubtless the war tourists stand on the dividing line, with a local guide telling them how ''this side is Muslims, this side Croats''. At a visit to the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina, politicians introduce the current political crisis as the continuation of the 1990s war, which itself was a product of the region's previous wars, and will probably be a forefather of many wars to come. I picture the visitors, £2400 ($A3700) lighter after their nine-day trip to the region, ingesting horror stories with their lunch and dinner, and finally, on their flight back home, finding relief in an airline meal free of the tang of cyclical conflict.

The anniversary-pegged release of Angelina Jolie's film In the Land of Blood and Honey, written and produced shortly after the Hollywood star's visit to Bosnia in 2010, felt like a venture in a similar vein. Presumably swept by a wave of sentimental indignation at the horrors of war and injustices of postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jolie vacuum-packs the cliches that put the country, and the region, in the ''beyond help'' category.

Apart from the commendable highlighting of the largely ignored wartime rape camps, Jolie renders her Serb protagonist a reluctant villain overpowered by a father made rotten by the historic ethnic hatred with which Yugoslavs from all sides are so often tagged.

In a bewildering sequence, a Muslim baby is thrown out of a building by a carer demented with fear over a violent break-in by Serb forces. The film's message, echoing the general view of Bosnia-Herzegovina, is clear: the people here, if not killed off at the start of their lives, are stuck in a cycle of violence, their ability to love one another reduced to a mistrusting bitterness and sadism that seems to have no outcome other than more violence for generations to come.

It's sad that, 20 years on, Bosnia-Herzegovina still has nothing but the labels ''war-torn'' and ''troubled''. One of the numerous articles written after the film's release stated that it ''put us back on the map'', as if, like a child starved for attention, anything was better than being ignored. For some countries, which have been lucky enough to have the ability to move on, war becomes part of their history, with other events putting it in chronological order, moving it further back in the past.

But for Bosnia-Herzegovina, no phoenix has risen from the ashes - instead, the quotidian recounting of suffering combined with apportioning blame and political and economic dysfunction has meant Bosnia- Herzegovina's history is like a pair of cement shoes its people have to wear.

Held down by an inadequate and corrupt state infrastructure - an unscrupulous justice system, high unemployment and a politicised education sector - as well as an exaggerated emphasis on religious and national belonging, there is little opportunity for those interested in progress and true reconciliation. Positive signs, such as attempts at forming political parties that strive for the rule of law and multiethnic co-existence, are too often obscured by flag-wavers whose rhetoric permeates every aspect of life.

As an old Balkan saying goes: ''When everyone says you're drunk, you'd better start rolling around on the floor.'' This may be a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. If the politicians of Bosnia-Herzegovina don't do anything to change their divisive rhetoric and tackle the perception that its people are warmongering nationalists, the idea that the only spark that is flickering 20 years on is that of ethnic hatred may well prove to be true.

Vesna Maric is the author of Bluebird, a memoir charting her arrival in Britain as a teenage refugee from Bosnia in 1992.