In the aftermath of ethnic war, reconciliation can be extremely difficult – especially when those involved have strong and differing opinions on what happened during the conflict.
During these situations, even dialogue that is meant to be constructive can turn into a debate over which ethnic group was the most victimized. This can create immense social barriers.
But this process is even more challenging when there are physical barriers to confront in addition to the social barriers.
I found this out firsthand while studying abroad in Belgrade, Serbia, for four months this spring.
Serbia was once one republic out of the six that made up the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which disbanded in the 1991 war.
For many years, Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic state where Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Albanians lived peacefully. But border disputes between power elites during the country’s separation led to violent ethnic conflict, especially in Bosnia, a republic that was home to many inter-ethnic marriages. The conflict in Bosnia has since been declared genocide by international courts.
Even though it’s been close to 20 years since violence in the region ended, it is still difficult to travel in and around the former republics.
After the six republics became independent, borders had to be created, but because of financial restrictions, there were only so many that could be instated, and not always in the most convenient of places.
I was traveling with a friend from Belgrade to Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast, for example, when we got stuck at a border crossing for seven hours.
We had pulled up at the border behind a line of 10 or so buses like ours, and the line did not seem to be moving at all. My friend and I were confused at what was taking so long, but our fellow passengers hardly reacted. They either got off the bus to smoke a cigarette or take a walk outside.
My friend and I realized that travelers in this region have learned to expect border crossings to be a long and arduous process. For some, perhaps, it’s all they’ve ever known.
Because it can take hours to get from one place to another, people rarely frequent other countries or even other cities within their own countries.
In Bosnia, which is now split into Serb, Croat and Bosniak Muslim territories, as called for in the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, people hardly ever venture out of their allotted territories.
When I was in Bosnia, I visited Srebrenica, where there is mass grave site for the 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men who were killed there by Bosnian Serb forces around 1995. But when I spoke with Serbs I met in Belgrade and in Bosnia, many of them expressed skepticism that genocide had ever happened there. Some radical nationalist Serbs even claim that the graves are empty, or that Serbs are actually buried there secretly.
But despite having such strong beliefs about people of other ethnicities, or about the Bosnian genocide, if you ask a Serb whether they’ve ever been to Srebrenica, or any Muslim or Croat territory of Bosnia, they will most likely say no.
Because people in the former Yugoslavia are geographically stuck where they are, it’s easier for them to become reluctant to empathize with others’ experiences, especially across ethnic lines, which is an important step toward reconciliation.
Here in the United States, we are privileged to have a powerful passport that allows us to travel most places with ease. Many people in the world aren’t so lucky. Traveling abroad for those in the former Yugoslavia is easier than traveling within the region itself, but it is not easy.
Until 2009, Serbian citizens wishing to travel in the European Union had to have a visa to do so. For a citizen of Serbia to travel to the United States, even if only for a one-week vacation, that person must also apply for a visa. Because the United States does not have an understanding with the Serbian government, would-be travelers are required to apply for “B visas,” which require 60- to 90-second applicant phone interviews.
In that 60- to 90-second window, applicants are often profiled for efficiency. Certain demographics, specifically young adults, who are single and unemployed, (especially in Serbia, where the unemployment rate is about 20 percent) almost never receive visas. About one in five Serbian applicants for a United States B visa get denied every year.
For this reason alone, the chance of one of my Serbian friends going on a study abroad trip for four months is little to none. These circumstances are in addition to the astronomical cost of travel, which is not affordable to most.
The country in which one is born – and the travel opportunities one has because of that – can profoundly impact quality of life. It is unfortunate that most world leaders’ instincts are to close borders to prevent conflict instead of opening them and letting people know their supposed “enemies.”
(Leah Willingham, a Monitor summer intern, spent four months studying journalism and peace and conflict studies in the Balkans this past spring at the SIT Study Abroad School for International Training. She is a rising senior at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass.)