Mostar
Mostar
is the largest city in Herzegovina, the southwestern region of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Its
history may seem at first glance little different than other cities in the region. Illyrians, Romans, Goths, Slavs, Turks, and
Austrians all laid claim to the area at one time or another.
What made Mostar unique was that it developed into one of the most multi-ethnic
cities in the Balkans. In fact, by 1990, it
was one of the few cities in Yugoslavia which could claim a near equal number of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims),
Croats, and Serbs.
Mostar
was first named as a city in the 1400s during Ottoman rule.
Its name came from the “Mostari,” guards who manned towers on either side
of a wooden suspension bridge across the Neretva River. Although Mostar started
out as a small settlement, it soon became an important one based on its river location
along the trading routes between Sarajevo to the northeast, the Adriatic coast to the west, and towards Constantinople in the east.
The Ottoman period would also bring the construction of the Stari Most (“Old Bridge”) to replace the rickety suspension bridge. Aesthetically beautiful and architecturally strong,
this stone bridge would also come to represent the cross-section of cultures in Mostar.
Although Serbs and Croats had lived in Mostar for centuries, it
was not until the mid 1800s that churches joined the mosques in the city. By 1878, Ottoman rule came to an end in the region
and Mostar became part of Austria-Hungary. Trade expanded as the
rail tracks joined the rivers as a means of shipment between east and west and north and
south. As the Industrial Revolution hit
Mostar, it became noted for its textiles, tobacco, food-processing, and mining industries.
After
World War I, Bosnia-Herzegovina joined with Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia to form a unified state. This unity was threatened, however, during World
War II when an Axis-aligned fascist puppet government took over in Croatia and much of Bosnia.
The war would see bloody fighting between the fascist Ustashe (made up primarily of
Croats), the Cetniks (Serbian nationalists), and the Partisans (a communist resistance
movement led by Tito). By the war’s end,
the Partisans were victorious and Tito brought the countries back together to form a
unified Yugoslavia with
six republics including Bosnia-Herzegovina.
During
the socialist period, Mostar prospered and its population tripled. By 1990, there were over 63,400 people in the city
and over 126,000 in the entire metropolitan area. But
World War II-era hatreds – which had been suppressed during 45 years of socialism
– would come back to life following the death of Tito and the collapse of communism
in Eastern Europe. Free elections were held in 1990 and Mostar’s
political parties followed ethnic lines. When Slovenia and Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991, it would less
than a year before Bosnia-Herzegovina would follow.
As
had happened in Slovenia
and Croatia, the
Yugoslav National Army moved in to Bosnia-Herzegovina to help defend the unity of Yugoslavia. But where Yugoslavia easily gave up Slovenia with a
minimum of bloodshed and eventually concentrated its efforts in Croatia on the eastern
regions where there were significant populations of Serbs, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s
mish-mash of populations would make it the site of the most complex and ultimately
fiercest fighting.
Initially,
the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks of Mostar joined together to fight against the Yugoslav
National Army and Bosnian Serb paramilitaries. While
this cooperation helped them to defeat the Serbs in mid-1992, the Croats and Bosniaks soon
turned against each other. The Croats declared
their own Herzeg-Bosnia state – with Mostar as its capital – and sought to have
it unite with Croatia
(which was itself still at war with Yugoslavia). By the end of 1993,
Bosnian Croat forces had taken control of Mostar. As
if to underscore the reality of war, the symbolism of the city’s unity – the
350-year-old Stari Most, lay in ruins, its stones bombed into the Neretva below.
Although
Bosniaks and Croats formed a federation in 1994 and Mostar came under European Union (EU)
mandate, fighting continued and there would be much more to rebuild than buildings,
infrastructure, and the physical bridges. Like
other cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mostar was ethnically cleansed. By war’s end, there were almost no Serbs left
and the Bosniaks and Croats who remained lived a ghetto existence, with Croats on the
western side and Bosniaks on the eastern side of the Neretva. The city’s population was half of what
it had been prior to the war.
Even
by 1996, when the EU’s mandate ended and the city officially became part of
Bosnia-Herzegovina with a coalition Croat-Bosniak government, problems continued. Bosnian Croat extremists still dreamt of uniting
with Croatia and the
Croatian nationalistic parties continued to thrive even more in Herzegovina than in Croatia (where Croatian President
Franjo Tudjman’s HDZ party fell out power following his death in 1999).
Although the Stari Most is being renovated, the psychological bridges between Mostar's
residents may take far longer to rebuild.
Personal Accounts from Mostar
Uli went to Mostar to teach teenagers from both sides of the river
photography. She ended up learning as much as
she taught.
Do you have a Mostar Story? Share it Here.
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