Entry 5: Eduring Effects

Enduring Effects of the Bosnian Genocide

          

When one country invades another it affects the whole world.  Other countries compromise their citizens by sending soldiers and peace keepers to aid the war torn area and people.  The United States didn’t lose any soldiers during the conflict, but the same cannot be said about the United Nations (UN) peacekeepers. Virtually every country that is a part of the UN sent peacekeepers to Bosnia, a total of 39,000 people, of which, 320 were killed. 

I know that it is important to help others in need, but at what cost?  Besides other countries sacrificing their sons and daughters, outside countries also feel the impact their economies.  It costs money to take in refugees, and that’s on top of sending money abroad to help the countries. For example, the United States spent about $1.65 billion dollars during the Bosnian war.  $1.5 billion of that went to the cost of deploying troops.  Not only are the affects felt on other countries, but Bosnia itself, and the citizens of the country will never be the same.  With such horrible history and bad blood between the different ethnic groups, I think it’s only a matter of time before something sparks another revolt.  With such lengthy drawn out trials, of which the worst criminals were never properly sentenced, many of the Muslim Bosniaks feel like justice was never dealt.  

Many of the refugees still haven’t returned to their homes.  The country is living at peace now, but is peace living within the hearts of the ethnic groups that were affected by the genocide? “The ethnic violence that occurred in the former Yugoslavia during the mid-1990’s has become one of the defining events of recent history” (Ethnic Cleansing Yes: Genocide No).  Reports show, that on a political level, the divided country is still struggling to come together.  

Does History repeat itself?  It would seem that the Serbs in Bosnia were going to be sure that it didn’t.  This conflict is rooted back in the time of the Ottoman Empire and their attack on the Balkans in the 13^th-15^th centuries A.D.  You see, because of the hardships that the Ottoman Muslims inflicted on the Christians of the area, the majority of them converted to Islam. This caused hatred amongst the people in the region against the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks). The Christians who refused to convert during that time frame became known as the Serbs and the Croats. With Yugoslavia in the middle of breaking up into different countries, it is my opinion that the Serbs felt that the time was right for them to get revenge on the Muslims for the actions that occurred many hundreds of years prior. The Genocide happened because Ottoman Muslims were greedy and wanted more land and invaded Bosnia, and then the Serbs couldn’t let go of the past and justified their actions by committing the worst case of genocide since the Holocaust.  It makes me want to yell, “It was 400 years ago, GET OVER IT!” 

   
Learning about the Bosnian Genocide is important because our generation needs to see just how cruel and evil humans can be, and then vow to never be like that.  If the future generations can see how wrong it is to kill an ethnic group just because you didn’t like their great-grandparents, then hopefully history will not repeat itself.  We should learn from history so that we don’t make the same mistakes as our forefathers, but dwelling on the horrible things that happened throughout history only leads to anger, ignorance, and intolerance. 

Milena Rudez

Everyone needs to live by the golden rule and treat others the way you want to be treated.  In closing I would like to share with you a poem by Bosnian poet, Milena Rudez: “Where do you come from? I come from Bosnia. Are you a Muslim? No, I am not. Then you are a Serb.  No, I am not. Then you must be a Croat?  No. So what are you? Homeless.”