20 years ago, in April 1992, I left Sarajevo where I was studying economics at the time, with only a bag full of dirty laundry, and took the last train from Sarajevo to my hometown. I thought the horror that had begun would settle down in the next few days. Gosh, was I wrong. I spent the next three and a half years carrying arms, in the hills and forests of Bosnia, passing through the areas I never knew existed, which were drawn onto the topographic maps with extreme precision (it was convenient for both construction and devastation, don’t surveyors and gunners know it all too well?).
The time before the war I spent as an exemplary socialist youth, full of ideas implanted into my mind, with an inevitable touch of nationalist-chauvinistic overtones (for the eradication of which the party¹ had no recipe), which escalated during the war and gave me a clear guidelines towards the tribe I belonged. I have to confess that it was something I did not complain about too much at the time.
My coming to CNA is the sequence of events that had started 9 years ago, with the first contact with people from the team and my first participation in the training for former combatants that took place in Bjelašnica (Bosnia and Herzegovina). What followed were the basic and advanced training events in peacebuilding, training events for veterans, various educational workshops and conferences. Now, when I think about what I was like when I first started this journey of ideological self-detoxification, I think about the processes that were going on inside of me for the first time, while I was facing both my own as well as other people’s prejudices against everything that was being taken for granted in our societies. Once we’ve touched upon societies, the matters of identity, conflict, sexual, racial and all other types of segregations open up. For the first time I was faced with the form of activism which is capable to exert pressure upon institutions and individuals in charge by applying nonviolent methods and offer models for overcoming disagreements and problems that (and I’m convinced of this) huge majority of people from the region of former Yugoslavia think are solvable by sending people to Goli otok² , to long-term prison sentences or even more simply by sending the opponents and those unlike-minded to the firing squad.
Now that I’m a member of the CNA team, I’ve finally got the opportunity to encourage more directly and with a wider manoeuvring space the changes our societies are awaiting and to be one of those who usually deal with things no one else wants to (with a few honourable exceptions), even though they should or with things that are believed to sort themselves out while someone else makes all the decisions. Living among these people (of course I mean the entire region, because I was lucky enough to travel all around it and meet quite a lot of people who either live in it or are somehow tied to it) I haven’t got the impression that they are completely relaxed and that they got rid of the ghosts of the past. They are more like little children who squint when they are afraid and believe that what they do not see can’t hurt them. I believe they need to have their eyes open and be put in front of the mirror so they can recognize themselves and their own responsibility, so they can see again and again how they treat the past and the neighbouring countries, nations and neighbours, their own families and people in general, animals, plants, soil, water. I’m tired of listening for ever how there’s always someone else to blame, laments over the misery of one’s own existence from people who fantasize about being stronger while aligning themselves with their tribes , whereas their chiefs are sucking away both their lives and the resources of the country they have occupied. I know that they are far more confident about being so much different from “the others”, then they can ever be convinced about being the same as they have been for the past several thousand years, when it comes to genetic material. But it’s okay, they have a choice.
Now I intend to dig and poke at taboos, run into the time machine and search for answers, so we can see what it is that has happened to us (it almost has the status of permutation with proper time determination). Is there an alternative to searching for facts, the truth, for seeking and receiving forgiveness, and finally offering peace to the dead and their families? I do not want to see something rotten being given a makeover in order to get closer to Europe. Neither Europe, nor we have any interest in a mummified corpse that does not know what has hit it.
Fortunately I fell in love with Sarajevo when I was a little boy from the small town. Now when I get caught in a clinch with all the problems mentioned above, I will have its streets and parks to revive the spirit tired by this reality.