The bridge spans the Neratva river. It was built in the 17th century by the Ottomans, whe ruled the area at the time. Pasha (king) Suliman the Magnificient commissioned the bridge to promote trade between east and west. To the west of the bridge live mostly Croats, who were western Christians. On the east side of the bridge are the Bosniaks, who are Muslims. It is still largely like this today - Croats on the west side and Bosniaks on the east side. It very quickly became a symbol for the world - the bridge between east and west. The city lived like this in harmony for hundreds of years. The Mostari were the keepers and defenders of the bridge hundreds of years ago. When the town grew up around the bridge, they named the town after these men. Today Mostar is a thriving city, not just a tourist town. It is the largest city in the Herzegovina region, and its unofficial capital.
(warning - the next paragraph may be hard to read. It was hard to write)
In the 1990s as you all know, there was a war in this region. It was a particularly brutal war. These people had lived together mostly peacefully for hundreds of years (with the possible exception of when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a disgruntled Bosniak in 1914, sparking World War I), and share mostly the same ancestry and languages (they are all Slavs). But when Yugoslavia broke up, flames of old resentments and feelings of nationalism were fanned by some bad politicians. It became a three way war between the Serbs (eastern orthodox Christians), the Croats (western Catholics), and the Bosniaks (Muslims, descendents from the time when the Ottomans ruled this area). And because of the policies of these bad politicians, it evolved from a border dispute into a brutal free for all, complete with "ethnic cleansing". The stated purpose of these policies ( ethnic cleansing, "rape camps," etc.) was to ensure that these people could never live together peacefully again. Whole villages were killed, mass graves have been found. We still don't know how many people died in these wars. America and the UN eventually came in againt the Serbs, but atrocities and ethnic cleansing were committed by all sides. There were no good guys.
We visited a cemetary where every grave was from 1993, the year I graduated highschool, and the most terrible year for Bosnia-Herzegovina.
This brings us back to the bridge. It was shelled by the Croats from atop a hill, and fell into the water. Because of the type of mortar used by the builders hundreds of years ago, it turned the river red. The residents later said their old friend was bleeding. This was all caught on a shaky home video, which is shown at the bridge museum. It was a strategic move, but also deeply symbolic.
At the end of the war, these bad politicians were voted out of office. Slobodan Milosivic tried to claim that the vote was rigged, but a huge rally of Serbs in Belgrade ensured that the Serbian people peacefully took back their country. They were tired of war. I don't know exactly how peace was made, or how the borders were drawn, but somehow it happened. Now what once was Yugoslavia is the separate countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1997, two years after the war ended, the Bosniaks and Croats who live in Mostar comissioned a new "old bridge". They decided to do it in the same way as it was originally built - with the same tools, and by hand cutting the stones. It took longer to rebuilt the bridge in the 1990s than it originally took to build it in the 1600s. The bridge was once again a symbol, this time of reconciliation.
Today reconciliation seems to be taking hold. There are invariably still feelings of resentment, but these people are once again living together peacefully. Serbs and Bosniaks spend their vacations on the Dalmation coast in Croatia. Beyond a minor rivalry over who can build a taller mosque minaret or church bell tower, I did not sense any bitterness between the Bosniaks and Croats in Mostar.
I understand little about this region (most of the above was paraphrased from a Rick Steves travel book and from visiting a few museums), but I am optimistic for the future. There are signs of the recent war, such as buildings that have yet to be repaired and bullet marks and morter holes. But the old bitterness seems to be giving way to the even older sense of brotherhood (again, these people are mostly all Slavs, who migrated to the region from eastern Europe over a thousand years ago). In such a beautiful part of the world, it's good to see peace and reconciliation taking hold. And the old bridge is the symbol.
-- Post From My iPhone
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