“Everything in life is gray, you know.”
I haven’t taken the time to put my thoughts into words over the past few days. I’ve written about this before…mostly that it’s a product of my oft inability to put complex thoughts and feelings into words.
This one is a doozy.
From my senior year of college on, I’ve considered myself an aspiring pacifist. Imperfect, yes. But aspiring, absolutely. If I’ve ever been committed to a cause, it has been to stand against becoming violent in order to eradicate violence. I can’t quite remember being so deeply convicted about anything, as I was the myth of redemptive violence. And this conviction has landed me in Sarajevo for the summer.
I expected this value to be challenged, but I never expected it would be challenged this deeply, this quickly. It is well known that, though the siege of this city lasted nearly four years, it took NATO all of about ten days to stop it. And on Friday, I heard the stories of two people who lived through the war, and fought in various ways to preserve their livelihoods. Each day brought hope that someone was coming to help, as they valiantly accepted their circumstances day in and day out. For months and years. And when someone came, it took a matter of hours to restore at least a marginal level of peace. Hearing the stories of pain and survival, and watching the emotional recollections of the storytellers moved something in me. Why did it take so long when it could have ended so quickly? And with that, one of my most characteristic beliefs found itself on rocky ground.
I suspect that this one will take some time to work through and figure out. As a starting point, I’m re-reading Christopher Hedges’ War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. When I return home, I’ll probably pick up Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers once again, and end my summer reflecting on the ideas that led me to pacifism in the first place. But for now, I feel a bit uncertain.
What I do know is that regardless of where I end up, philosophically speaking, nothing need hinder my commitment to devoting my life to alleviating dehumanizing violence. Tomorrow, my first job with a peacebuilding organization begins, and I couldn’t be more eager.
“And thought it’s been a long time, you’re right back where you started from. I see it in your eyes, and now you’re giving up the gun.”
Bullet ridden
by Sarajevo
I arrived in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina at 5am on the 15th of March via the overnight bus from Belgrade. It was freezing cold when I stepped off the bus and I really had no idea how to get to the centre of town. The buses from Serbia arrive in the far eastern Sarajevo bus station, part of Republika Srpska, the semi-autonomous Serb dominated area of Bosnia & Herzegovina. I managed to ask someone in broken Serbian how to get to the centre of town and they pointed down the road to a local ‘trolley’ bus station. I found my way into town and came across the hostel I was planning on staying at, luckily they had a bed available so I settled into the hostel before starting to explore Sarajevo!
Standing in the spot where Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serb gunman, setting in motion the wheels that began World War 1
For those not familiar with the recent history of the city, during the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995, Sarajevo was a city under siege. The entire city was surrounded by Serbian nationalists, armed with weapons from the Serb dominated Yugoslavian Army. Artillery and tanks surrounded the city on the surrounding hills and mountains. The Bosniaks, Croats and even a small number of loyal Sarajevan Serbs defended the city for the entire duration of the war. Its a long and difficult history to convey over a blog, but I’d love to talk about it with anyone in person.
One of the only places in the world where you can be looking up at a Christian Orthodox Church, down the road from the Catholic Church and Jewish Synagogue, and start hearing the call to prayer at a nearby Mosque. They call Sarajevo the Jerusalem of Europe
Out the front of the tunnel museum. Because Sarajevo was surrounded on all sides by the Serbs, the Bosnians had to find a way to allow food and weapons into the city. They dug a tunnel underneath the United Nations held Sarajevo International Airport into free Bosnian territory. They were able to keep the tunnel location secret from the aggressors for the duration of the war. It it had not been for this tunnel, the defenders of Sarajevo would have run out of supplies within months
Looking down ‘Sniper Alley’. Parliament on the left and the Holiday Inn on the right
Sniper Alley was a section of the main road to downtown Sarajevo. During the war, the Serbs controlled the tall buildings on the left you see above the tram. From these positions they set up snipers that shot at anything that moved on the main road. The problem was that the citizens of Sarajevo needed to move across these areas to continue living their lives. They often used trams and cars as places to run to and from to avoid the snipers.