MOSTAR, Bosnia, 20 July 2004 — The walls in Alica Jakirovic’s gallery in Mostar’s Ottoman-era Old Town are covered with dozens of oil and water-color paintings depicting a bridge which he says is his life.

“I grew up with it, lived with it, dived from it, painted it...,” said the stocky 48-year-old Bosnian Muslim. “I was here when it was destroyed too. That destroyed me.”

Seconds later he beamed as he looked at the 29-meter long white-marble span erected in the place of the famous 16th century Old Bridge (Stari Most) that Bosnian Croat artillery sent plunging into the water almost 11 years ago.

“I am so, so happy. Just look how beautiful it is,” he said of the new bridge and two reconstructed adjacent towers that will be unveiled on July 23.

“I know it is a new bridge but for me it’s the same and this town is much more Mostar again.” The elegant structure rising 20 meters above the River Neretva is the ultimate symbol of the southern town of 105,000 people. Its name translates as the “bridge keeper”.

While some cast doubt on the new bridge’s importance for restoring connections between Mostar’s divided Bosnian Muslim and Croat communities, others say it is at least a good starting point, together with a new Western-sponsored plan to unify the town.

The new Mostar statute, imposed by Paddy Ashdown, the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia in January, will merge three Bosnian Muslim and three Croat municipalities and the city council into a single unit and administration, abolishing parallel power structures.

“With the statute and now with the bridge, the invisible, psychological barrier has been removed between the two parts of Mostar,” said Miroslav Rasic, editor in chief of the Dnevni List daily from the Croat side of the southern town.

Mostar hopes that tourists, gradually returning to what was once one of old Yugoslavia’s main tourist attractions, will now come back in bigger numbers to help its struggling economy and further boost ethnic reintegration, he said.

Although the bridge is located in the eastern, Bosnian Muslim part of Mostar, its destruction symbolically sealed the division between the city’s Roman Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who started Bosnia’s 1992-5 war as allies against Orthodox Serbs.

Legend says it took the Ottoman architect Mimar Hajrudin nine years to complete the Old Bridge in 1566.

He fled before the scaffolding was removed fearing death threats by Suleiman the Magnificent, who ordered the construction, if it crumbled.

In fact, Stari Most survived centuries of wars and invasions to become a symbol of Mostar’s ethnic and cultural diversity.

It was also known for displays of high diving by daredevils, more than 20 of whom died in the war, some defending it. But they and a shield of old tires could not protect the bridge from Bosnian Croat tank shells and it succumbed on Nov. 9, 1993.

Initial work started in 1997. In the last four years, the United Nations cultural body UNESCO has led a $15 million project to rebuild the bridge and its surroundings, funded by Mostar, the World Bank, Turkey, Croatia, Italy, France, the Netherlands and the Council of Europe.

Turkish engineers helped by experts from many countries used marble from the original quarry nearby as well as a mix of old techniques and new technology to make a replica.

For Veteran Balkans watcher Marcus Tanner, now editor at the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), the new bridge will only remain a “beautiful copy”.

“... no one should kid him or herself with loose talk about rebuilding lost communities on the backs of architectural projects. Long live the new-old bridge. But it will not bring back the old Mostar,” he wrote in London’s Independent newspaper in April.

Unlike before the war, Croats, who enjoy a slight overall majority in the city, are dominant in the western part. Muslims are on the eastern side but some remained in or returned to the Croat area. Serbs are now only a tiny majority.

Bosnian Muslims and Croats still watch different television stations, their children go to separate schools and they support different soccer clubs. Most Croats back the national soccer team of neighboring Croatia which many see as their homeland.

Their wartime statelet Herzeg-Bosna was dismantled after the war and most have toned down their calls for autonomy.

The level of ethnic tension between the two Mostar communities has also gradually reduced in recent years.