A Danger of Nationalism
By Emma Holmes
The scene: Around 21:00 on a weeknight, sitting in my host family’s living room in Osjek, Ilidža. N1 was reporting on the television as I sat cutting the peel off of the largest orange I have ever eaten in my life. My host dad sat across from me, also using a knife to peel his orange, but it was late enough that my host mom had already retired to her room to watch an episode of a Turkish drama before going to sleep. The news was in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), but it was from America; the announcement that a controversial politician would be put on trial had shocked the world. I gestured to the news and asked my host dad in broken BCS (he did not speak English, in fact the only English word I ever heard him say was “Sprint” and upon hearing it I was so shocked I forgot its meaning) what his thoughts were on the politician. I’ve remembered his response since then. “On je nacionalist. Nacionalisti su loši. Ne sviđa mi se.” He is a nationalist. Nationalists are bad. I do not like him. This comes from a man who was one of many refugees that fled to Germany during the ‘92-’95 Bosnian War. A war caused by poignant nationalism of three ethnic nations; the Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has a complex and long history. The small southeastern, European country has been a part of numerous empires, it’s own medieval kingdom, and a member of both the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Communist Yugoslavia. Throughout this time, under different regimes, some ethnicities would be given more privileges than others, giving leaders reasons to create grudges among followers. In the Ottoman Empire, Muslims (Bosniaks are Muslims, Croats are Catholics, and Serbs are Serbian Orthodox) were given more rights, while in Communist Yugoslavia the hierarchy was Serbs first and Bosniaks last. My language teacher told me an example about how the best apartments were given to the Serbs but the Bosniaks got the ones with the least insulations. This might seem to be a strange example, but if somebody has health issues in the harsh Bosnian winters and without widespread electric heating --my host family in the winter of 2020 used our fire stove for central heating-- it can cause long term problems.
After Bosnia left Yugoslavia, leaders used these grudges in propaganda schemes and so the war began. It was this war that brought about the term “ethnic cleansing.” Around 100,000 people were killed and over 2.2 million were displaced. The Srebrenica Genocide occurred in a UN “safe zone.” The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest of a capital city in the history of modern warfare, lasting from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996. The country has not been the same since. The government is full of corruption and with three parties --one for each ethnic majority-- that hate each other and keep a check on each other a little too well, nothing occurs. There is a large diaspora of Bosnians leaving for hopes of better lives in Germany, France, and other more economically stable countries. Politically and economically, Bosnia was destroyed by the war and they still have not recovered.
Socially, Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to some of the nicest people I have ever met. Talking to an elderly lady at the bus stop gave me a friend that allowed me to experience a little of Serbian Orthodox Christmas. Getting to know the owner of a sandwich shop got me a free dessert on New Year’s Eve. And the younger generations seem to have lost the hatred that was rampant during the 90’s; through student activism some schools have been desegregated and my friends have close ties to people of a different ethnic nationality than them. I hope that over time these ethnicities can grow closer and lose the toxic nationalism that caused the war in the first place.