June 8

Today I was able to attend the UWC sponsored presentation on the political and economic analysis of the conflict in BiH by Srecko Latal, Balkans Analyst for the International Crisis Group. He argued that there is no difference between the middle ages of Germany, France, the Former Yugoslavia, or anywhere else in Europe. Nationalism was everywhere. It was not the cause of the break-up. However, the Kosovo battle of the 1300’s can be found as a reason behind the atrocities because of Milosevic’s misinterpretation in a famous speech to the people of the Yugoslav federation. Milosevic was basically saying to the Serbian people that the battle of Kosovo ended with a Serbian military defeat from the Ottoman Empire (the Turkish people who were Muslim) and Serbs were forced to succumb to the will of the Muslims. However, Sreko Latal, Balkans Analyst said that the Kosovo battle was a tie. It was not until 70 year later that the Serbians succumbed to the Ottoman rule.

Another major reason for BiH’s current deadlock state after the fall of Yugoslavia is because the mourning and reconciliation phase was suppressed. It was suppressed after WWII by the Communist/Socialist regime and after the fall of Yugoslavia divisions were eminent and no dialogue was used between the different groups which snuffed out any reconciliation.

When looking at reconciliation in other countries such as France and Germany after WWII, reconciliation was a government driven process; it was not suppressed by the government like in the former Yugoslavia. By the end, both Germany and France worked together to print a joint text book of the history of WWII. BiH still has different historical text books for each ethnic group which only deepen the divide between the communities. In BiH, Latal says people are focusing on the end result too much. The process of reconciliation is the most important part. Basically what Latal was saying is that Europe and Yugoslavia have different concepts. Europe was working towards reconciliation and democratization while Yugoslavia was working for brotherhood, unity and socialism.

Latal gave another example of reconciliation in Rwanda to compare to BiH. He argued that Rwanda’s reconciliation was much faster than in the Balkans because in the Balkans reconciliation was not supported by dialogue. In Rwanda, one million people were killed in 10 days in 1994.These numbers would be shocking to anyone. However, they had the largest human rights index increase and economic growth by 2000. BiH on the other hand is currently in a deadlock position after their war ended in 1995.

As far as the international community is concerned, Latal said that they never had common view on the Balkans. In the end, they did sponsor the Daton Peace Accord which was basically a truce that ended up creating a “Frankenstein monster” when it came to the political system of BiH. The Daton Peace Accord only focused on short term goals which are now hindering BiH more than ever.

June 10: Today I worked with NDC on a presentation and activity to present to the United World College summer school. Elvir, the co-cordinator for NDC presented information that focused on the importance dialogue and reconciliation. Later, we separated into two groups for an activity to better understand these terms. I worked with about 30 students to facilitate the activity called Dialogue about Dialogue. They were given a list of words related to dialogue and asked to put them in a hierarchy as a group. This way, they were learning the terms and trying to abide by the terms as they were putting them into categories. After the activity, the kids were brought together again to present to the rest of the class. Everyone was very engaged with the activity so it worked well. After, Elvir presented a real life project (their student integration project in Stolac) to incorporate the terms and concepts learned earlier into a real life situation.

In the afternoon I received material from another member of NDC to proofread. It is about 40 pages so I think I will be working on this more next week as well.

June 13: At NDC today I finished all of the edits because they had to be put into the computer right away… it took up my whole day.

June 14: Today I went on field visit with GAP to have a meeting with the Mayor and review the cities work on implementing a better water system in Nevesinje (which is about an hour away from Mostar) and building a road that connects them to other cities leads to a historical bridge that was built during the Ottoman empire (for tourists business hopefully). I'm so excited!! This will be my first major project with GAP. I also received some documents from the GAP Sarajevo office to proofread. Wahooo!!!  Ha… kind of weird to be excited for but I kind of like doing that stuff :)

June 15 and 16: The past couple days in my internships I have been editing documents (success stories) in English and doing some research. Tomorrow I will be going to Sarajevo to meet with GAP members stationed there as well as meeting with the gender equality team for further internship work. Also, on Monday, the directors of our internship are coming on Monday to visit and see how things are going.