Stari Most: The (Re)built Memorial of the Yugoslav Wars

When reading the articles for this past week and having discussions on memorials in class, I connected to a personal example of a “memorial landscape.” My mother’s side of the family is entirely Croatian; both my mother and I went to Croatia and other surrounding Balkan countries in 2012 to see some family. While the “memorial” that I will be talking about is not particularly Croatian, it encompasses a rich and complex history of the entirety of the former Yugoslav Republic.

For some concise overview, Yugoslavia was a socialist state created in southeastern Europe after World War II, and included a range of ethnically and religiously different groups including the Catholic Croats and Slovenes, the Orthodox Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Serbs, and the Muslim Bosnians. This region has had a long history of strife between these groups (that is a bit too long to detail here), but, Yugoslavia remained relatively peaceful under the leadership of its first president, Josip Broz Tito, from 1953 until 1980. Unfortunately, Tito died in 1980, which reignited buried tensions between the country’s ethnic groups. Nationalist groups in each sect rivaled for state independence from Yugoslavia, with Croats and Slovenes declaring independence in 1991. During this time, the Yugoslav army was largely controlled by the country’s Serbs, who immediately entered Croat and Slovene territory and killed thousands who desired autonomy. After a brief UN ceasefire in 1992, Muslim Bosnians next declared their independence from the state. However, Bosnia’s Serb population resisted, and declared a bloody civil war if Bosnia’s Muslim and Croat population tried to flee. Despite referendum, war began.

In this period of Serb-driven ethnic cleansing, over a million Bosnian Muslims and Croats were taken from their homes. Families were split, men and children were often killed at the hands of Serb soldiers, and women were routinely raped by the armed forces. During this time in the early 1990s, the Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian Muslims (who had previously been in alliance against the Bosnian Serbs) started to create tensions between one another. Tensions between the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims resulted in the Croat-Bosniak War, or a “war within a war” during the wider Yugoslavian conflict. Two cities were caught under siege during this time: Dubrovnik in Croatia and Mostar in Bosnia. Bosnians and Croatians bombed each other’s cities heavily, and it became an utter culmination of the years of tension, war, and ethnic genocide between these struggling populations. The battle between the two cities came to an alarming head when Croats, via airstrike, demolished Stari Most, a beautiful 1500s Ottoman bridge that connected the two river-divided sides of Mostar. The fall of Stari Most was both the physical and metaphorical wanton horror of the Yugoslav Wars.

All was not lost, though. During the end of the Yugoslav Wars later in the 1990s, plans were made to rebuild the historic and prestigious Stari Most bridge, both as an act to rebuild the war-torn city, but also to reconstruct the cultural memory of one of Bosnia’s most prized pieces of architecture. This “memorial landscape” became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and underwent reconstruction in 2003, 10 years after more than 60 Croatian air shells destroyed it. During its rebuilding process, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Croatia offered funds to the Bosnians for the reconstruction of the beloved bridge. By July 2004, Stari Most again stood prominently over the river Neretva and the city of Mostar.

What is Mostar like now? How has the rebuilt Stari Most contributed to the legacy of the brutal civil wars that occurred in this region 25 years ago? When I was in Mostar with my mother five years ago, one can immediately tell that it was a city riddled with grief. Even 19 years after the bombings, Mostar was still rummaged with bullet holes, crumbling ruins, and visible bombing damage. Parts of the city are still abandoned, and some of those who are still there are poor, homeless, and begging for change. I remember walking through many of the street-side bazaars to have little Bosnian children chasing after tourists for money or for food. There is a visible disparity in the livelihoods after all this time. However, most of the Bosnians who are there are friendly and welcoming, and a local tour guide my mother and I had was more than eager to discuss the brutalities his people had went through two decades prior. When walking through Mostar, Stari Most is one of the most prominent architectural pieces on the landscape. Stari Most is a pedestrian bridge, and even though it was only nine years old when I was there, the stone was so smooth from thousands of walkers that it was almost difficult to walk the arches because it was so slippery! Now, it’s interesting to see a city like Mostar cope and move on from its former identity as a war-torn hellscape. Bosnians memorialize and respect their place in their recent violent history; this is apparent through the reconstruction of Stari Most. And, while Stari Most may be nowhere near as “shocking” a memorial as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum or the Auschwitz Memorial, the bridge serves its purpose as a daily remembrance of recent atrocities in the region’s recent history. Interestingly, Stari Most has gained views in popular culture recently with Red Bull and bridge jumping (the bridge has been used for “sport diving” for quite a while now).

Pictures:

Stari Most - Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina - taken June 2012

One of the local bridge jumpers getting ready to go - this is a common sport on this bridge, as well as a tourist phenomenon. To watch the jumper go off the side, a tourist has to pay around $5. If you're standing on the other side, like me, then it's free.

Back up on the bridge from one of his dives

Slippery steps leading up to the bridge!