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Mostar: A river runs through it

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  Quote Mila Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Mostar: A river runs through it
    Posted: 03-Dec-2005 at 13:21
MOSTAR bosnia and herzegovina
A  R I V E R  R U N S  T H R O U G H  I T



The Neretva River, said to be the bluest river in the world, has been cutting a path through southern Bosnia and Herzegovina for an inconcievably long time. The deep, fast-flowing waters have inspired the greatest love stories, poems, and folk songs.

From the city of Konjic, south of Sarajevo, the river winds through beautiful cities, towns, and villages until it crosses the border into Croatia, spans out across the Neretva River delta, and spills into the Adriatic Sea.

The Neretva River delta has been an important place of human habitation since the most distant, primitive of ages. The Neretva River has been an important means of travel for the same length of time.

Near Mostar, the River established a flood plain across a wide, deep valley. Surrounded on all sides by a high plateau, it has provided an ideal place of habitation for countless peoples throughout the course of history in this area - almost.



None of this made the location of the current city of Mostar an ideal place for settlement. In fact, the area was intentionally avoided during the Illyrian, Roman, and Independent Bosnian era. This is because the exact point where Mostar is located is where the Neretva River squeezes into a deep and high rocky canyon, it's most narrow point in the whole of its length.



It was not until the Ottoman Empire conquered this region in 1463 that this trecherous point in the Neretva River was even considered as a worthwhile place to stop and relieve yourself in the bushes. Say what you want about the Ottomans but one thing they were not afraid of were unusual challenges against both Man and Mother Nature.

In the same way the Blue Mosque was built to face Hagia Sofia in an attempt to say "Ha! Beat that, m-th-rf--kers!", Mostar was established as an intentional confrontation with Mother Nature - with the intent to demonstrate both to the Ottoman Empire as a whole and to its newest subjects that the Sultan was a powerful and impressive man.

Shortly after the first homes and an inn for travellers were built, work began on the now-famous bridge. It was not always easy.

"Such a mess of scaffolding was erected on both sides of the River Neretva that for a long time the people thought the bridge would be made of wood. Those who lived in the area of passed by it on their travels certainly laughed at the dirty, dusty, chaotic settlement. The monstrosity on both banks of the Neretva looked like anything you could imagine... but not a bridge."
Ivo Andric

It was built in 1565 by Mimar Hajrudin (a student of Sinan). It was perfectly curved, 4-meters wide and 30 meters long, and dominated the river from a height of 24 meters. To this day it remains the longest, oldest, and highest stone bridge in Europe.

Two fortified towers protected it: the Helebija tower on the northeast and the Tara tower on the southwest. These buttresses were called "Bridge Keepers", or Mostari - from which the city is named.



More civilians from other regions of the Ottoman Empire settled in Mostar than in any other city in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Turks, Greeks, Croatians, Bosnian Christians, Serbs, Persians, Arabs, and others all came together to form a rich ethnic and cultural mix in the city's early years.

The city grew out from the bridge as if it were a plant's root. Most of the main roads in Mostar lead to that 4-meter span crossing the Neretva. With the expertise of cultures that can claim many of the world's greatest accomplishments, of course they found the most practical and functional use for the new bridge.







For more than 4 centuries residents of Mostar have gathered to jump from the bridge in a tradition that has grown to become a symbol of civic pride. The people of Mostar have not missed a single year since the tradition started, not even in the darkest times of war.

But the city became much more than just a bridge. Ottoman carsijas, or marketplaces, stretched out to meet mosques, churches, and residential districts in all the various architectural styles the city's population brought with them.











With time, Mostar became the most powerful, influential city in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina. With time, all Bosnia's various ethnic and religious groups began to blur. All Muslims came to be considered Bosniaks, all Roman Catholics came to be considered Croats, and all Orthodox Christians came to be considered Serbs - not that it mattered much anyways.

Mostar had more mixed marriages than any other city in the Empire and everyone had a brother or sister who had fallen in love with someone who went to a different religious building on the weekends. When Mostar became a part of Yugoslavia, the city had a higher percentage of people declaring themselves ethnically 'Yugoslav' on the periodic census than any other city in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

How quickly things can change.

Between 1992 and 1993, the town was subject to a nine month siege. Serbian forces first attacked the city on April 3rd, 1992, and over the following week gradually established control over a large part of the town.


On April 8th, Bosnian Croats founded the Croatian Defense Council (Hrvatsko Vijeće Obrane, HVO) as their military formation, which engaged the Serbian forces in combat. Serbian shelling damaged or destroyed a number of civilian objects - among them were a Franciscan monastery, their Cathedral and Bishop's Palace, with a library of 50,000 books, as well as the Karadoz-bey mosque, Roznamed-ij-Ibrahim-efendija mosque and twelve other mosques.


On June 12th, the HVO military force amassed enough weaponry and manpower (including Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs) to force the Serbian troops out of Mostar. The 4th Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the primary military formation of the Bosniaks, was founded the same year in Mostar. A siege ensued and the city was bombarded by Serbian forces from the mountains to the east.

In 1993, the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks began a long struggle for control of Mostar. The Bosnian Croats launched an offensive on May 9th where they relentlessly bombarded the Bosniak quarter of the city, reducing much of it to ruin, including numerous other mosques and homes from the Ottoman era, including the Kujundiluk.

During this conflict reprisals against Bosnian Serb residents of the city were common among both Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks, in part to force Bosnian Serbs from the city and remove any justification for Serbian forces to continue the siege. The city's Orthodox Church, the largest in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was destroyed. Rubble from the church was used to pelt Bosnian Serb civilians as they fled into the mountains on foot to Serbian-held territory. One 15-year-old girl was killed. It is assumed her parents never survived the war and she is still burried in an unmarked grave in Mostar.


On November 19, 1993, something happened that sent shockwaves across Bosnia and Herzegovina, even as war-ravaged as it was. Croatian forces pounded the Old Bridge for more than three hours until it collapsed into the Neretva River.


The destruction of the Old Bridge terrified Bosniak residents of the city. A common sentiment was "if they'll destroy that bridge, all bets are off. They'll kill us all". The bridge had survived numerous conflicts, including the Great War and the Holocaust, but never before had the city become the victim of such intense hatred.

"The day they destroyed the bridge was the worst day of my life. That bridge was as much a part of my body as any limb, any organ. I lost everything. It may sound silly to foreigners but I had no reason anymore for living. So I gave up, I left. I can't even look at pictures, I can't even... sometimes I still wish they had killed me. I would give anything to have died before that bridge came down, to not have to know it."
Svetlana Konstantinovic, refugee (Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

A ceasefire was declared in February of 1994 but the damage had already been done. The city's population had polarzied, with most Bosnian Croats living on the West Bank of the Neretva River, and most Bosniaks living on the East Bank. The city's small Jewish community had also polarized to join the Bosniaks as Croatian nationalism in the city had taken on strong Nazi undertones.

When all was said and done, roughly 1,200 Bosniaks, 450 Croats, 300 Serbs, and several dozen others had been killed. More than 25,000 people, among them 18,000 Serbs, had been forced from the city.

Soon enough the rebuilding process began.



Mostar remains, according to the United Nations, the most divided city on earth. However, there are signs of hope. Movement between the two halves of the city has been restored and both sides now share a single municipal government. Attacks against civilians who dare venture to the other side have slowed and a family returning to their pre-war home on the "other side" has not been murdered for several years.

Still there is more to be done. The city remains intensely divided between Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats:


The Bosniak side of the city, which includes virtually all of the old town and the Old Bridge itself, has once again become a tourist Mecca. It is the only district in Bosnia and Herzegovina currently funding its own reconstruction using its own industries. The money has been used to rebuild the district's Synagogue, but no plans to rebuild the Orthodox Church have been fruitful.

Less than 3,000 Bosnian Serbs have returned to the city and most of these returnees are either half-Bosniak or half-Croat, married to a Bosniak or Croat, or pretending to be a Bosniak or Croat.

Grafitti in and around the city, though, is showing young people are anxious to move beyond the hatred and establish a viable future. No longer is the side of every building plastered with:

SIEG HEIL!

YOUR GOD IS DEAD!

WE F--KED YOUR MOTHER IN *Insert concentration camp name*!

Now they say things like "I love my city".


Bosnia and Herzegovina: I LOVE YOU!


Anti-War.


While it may not seem like much - an advertising campaign featuring Miss Bosnia and Herzegovina 2004, Njegica Balorda (an ethnic Serb) - has been installed in the city without incident. This would never have happened as recently as three years ago.


Little Bosniak, Bosnian Croat, and Bosnian Serb children play together once again in the backstreets of Mostar. It is the single most important expression of hope and the best possible way to end this thread.




Edited by Mila
[IMG]http://img272.imageshack.us/img272/9259/1xw2.jpg">
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  Quote Ikki Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Dec-2005 at 14:15
Great city of Mostar, all the spanish have good memories of the people. We built a small bridge where the ancient was, right?
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