SARAJEVO, 24 August 2003 — In a self-mocking style typical of the Balkans, posters plastered all over Sarajevo recall insulting graffiti ascribed to Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica who left the UN-declared safe haven at the mercy of Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.
“She has no teeth, she has a mustache, she smels like shit? Bosnian girl!” the posters declare in poor English.
The original words were scrawled on a wall at one of the barracks occupied by Dutch soldiers who left the enclave shortly before the Serb forces summarily executed over 7,000 of Srebrenica’s Muslim residents. The poster was designed by local artists on the occasion of the recent 8th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. The insulting text is splashed over a picture of a Bosnian model.
“To my taste Muslims are ready to forget too guickly, but I have to admit that this attitude is helping the reconciliation,” said Zijo, a philosophy student at Sarajevo University.
Eight years after the end of the country’s 1992-95 war that claimed over 200,000 lives and left some two million refugees at the time, Sarajevo, still bearing scars of the brutal siege, is slowly rising from the ashes.
The bone-shaking Zastava cars, made in the former Yugoslavia, are joined on the streets by flashy new automobiles imported from the West.
The legendary Holiday Inn hotel, which was filled with foreign journalists during the three-and-a-half-year siege of the city by Serb forces, has been reconstructed.
But shell- and bullet-holes are still visible on many buildings in the town.
One such is a 20-story building in which only the first three floors are occupied; the higher floors left to decay.
However, the new glass-metal edifice of a Western bank branch shows that the town with some 350,000 inhabitants, has started to change its face.
The Markale market, where on Aug. 28, 1995 a mortar shell fired by Serb forces massacred some 40 Muslims is, once again, the Sarajevans favorite spot for shopping. Vendors from nearby villages loudly peddle their products in the open-air market.
A kilogram of tomatoes costs 0.75 euros ($0.85), a kilo of potatoes one euro ($1.10) while the price of grapes can reach 1.5 euros ($1.75).
“Prices are too high,” complains Avdullah, a man in his fifties shopping at the market.
The average salary in Bosnia is 300 euros, but the economy in the country, where unemployment stands at 40 percent, is still largely dependent on foreign aid.
The international community has injected some $5 billion into Bosnia since the end of the war. The city center is lively and noisy and Ferhadija street in the pedestrian zone filled with people until late in the night.
Nearby Bascarsija sqare is invaded by pigeons so accustomed to human presence that they land on the shoulders of delighted passers-by.
The city’s symbols that were spared from the destruction still stand as reminders of Bosnian cosmopolitanism.
The synagogue overlooks the minarets of the mosques, the round domes of the Orthodox chapels and belfries of Catholic churches.
“You see, this is the wealth and the future of Bosnia, its multiethnic and multicultural character,” Zijo explains optimistically.
And while international justice is still searching for those responsible for the massacres, youngsters in Sarajevo use humor again to settle some old scores.
They are exchanging on their mobile phones a picture of wartime Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, indicted of warcrimes by the UN court, asking worriedly: “Has anybody asked for me?”