Tuesday 14 June 2011

Rest of the course

Friday 10th June

Today we started with with a talk from a guy from the Nansen Dialogue Centre, an NGO working on improving dialogue between the different ethnic groups in BiH and also the region as a whole. It was very interesting when he pointed out the difference between dialogue and debate. Although obvious I had never really thought about this before, that for example when you are in a dialogue you listen to see what the other is saying, when you are debating you listen to see how you can respond with your point. Essentially debate is point scoring and selfish, since you always think about whether you look good, or whether your point of opinion has 'won', whereas in dialogue it isn't bad if you change your opinion, in fact it is a sign of maturity to accept when you are wrong and when something else makes more sense... I think many politicians could learn from this.
After lunch Annukka led a session on transitional justice, the difference between retributive justice, which looks back on what's happened, versus retroactive, which looks back as well as forward, engaging conflicting parties in dialogue. This obviously is quite relevant with cases such as Mladic being arrested... Following this we had a talk from a woman from the OSCE, the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe, about education as a security measure, which also linked in to stuff the man from the Nansen Dialogue Centre had said about how schools can be used as great ways for resolving conflicts, or at least trying to, for example previously how following the war schools were all completely and utterly divided, whereas now they are starting 'Two schools under one roof' in BiH and even some occasional shared lessons (the UWC in Mostar is a great example of this as it also shares a building with one of these systems, so in effect there are three schools under the same roof - Croat, Bosnian and UWC). The final talk was from an american man, Kendal Palmer, who in fact talked about the Northern Ireland conflict and specifically Belfast as a divided city. This was especially interesting to me as theoretically I should know about it yet in schools in the UK we are taught literally nothing about it...

Saturday 11th June

Today we went on a field trip to visit Sarajevo. After a two hour drive through spectacular mountains and lakes we got to the city where we picked up our tour guides. It's very interesting how the first thing they said was how they didn't like to be talking about the war, but since our tour was about Sarajevo in the war they had to. I suppose it makes sense, but stuff like that shouldn't be forgotten or brushed under the carpet...
First we visited the tunnel that connected the city of Sarajevo to the rest of free Bosnia during the seige by Serbian forces, where all people, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks of Sarajevo were victims. We were able to walk in 25 metres of the tunnel, but it actually went originally for 800 metres. It was about a metre wide and a metre and a half high and was literally incredible that every single thing, electricity, armaments, food, all had to be brought through here. We watched a video on what life was like during the siege and it was quite powerful. Since the Serbian forces surrounded the city, there was one central part of Sarajevo known as 'sniper's alley'. This was essentially a region of Sarajevo where Serbian snipers were on the hills on both sides and so could shoot anyone who crossed, which was necessary as there was only one point to get water, the brewery, where natural spring was, and people on the east side had to walk 8km to get it. The video saw people running in zig zag so as to avoid fire, almost like a game as the sniper tried to keep up with the person. It is scary what people will do when they are simply 'following orders'. And it is also remarkable how resilient humans can be. After this we explored Sarajevo's Ottoman old town, where we went to the national historical museum of BiH and also had lunch in traditional style Turkish restaurant. I bought the all important thing, a BiH football shirt (a fake, but good one... and actually what's bigger here is Man Utd and Liverpool shirts...) Afterwards we carried on exploring the streets, and moved into the newer areas, and I can say that Sarajevo seems a very pleasant, cosmopolitan city, and although there are still scars it seems to be recovering well.

Sunday 12th June

The final day. If I'm honest we probably should've timed it so that the field trip to Sarajevo was the last thing, like a reward, also since it was the end of the week everyone was exhausted, but since it was a Sunday there would be stuff closed (there are many churches as well as mosques) so it didn't make much sense to visit then...
Anyway we started with a presentation from a very interesting talk from Sasha, an activist and organiser of 'Women in Black' on both sexism and the phenomena of rape in conflicts. She used the example of how demilitarisation is the one of the best ways to achieve equality, for example in Serbia, where militarism encourages patriarchy and vice versa, and often the church is used as a centre for encouraging this militarism. She also very interestingly pointed out that the strongest militarisation often occurs in peace time, and this is why it is so dangerous. The group she worked for led an ultimately successful campaign to remove conscription in Serbia and now there is a professional army, so no longer is everyone exposed to the patriarchal system.
After lunch one of our facilitators Alen, from BiH, led a workshop about the role of youth in peace building. He talked about his experiences prior to UWC with Save the Children and we looked at how young people and children are better placed, since they have not had the same scars as their parents, to bring peace to post conflict zones.
Faced with a depleting number since so many people had already left, we had our closing ceremony in the afternoon and then spent the evening relaxing in a cafe by the river.

Monday 13th June

Departure day. The college arranged for four of us to be picked up by car where we were taken to Sarajevo airport and then me to the bus station, where I was picked up by my co-year Nikolina, and her dad, who drove me to their house in the nearby town of Pale. Interestingly enough this town, which is part of 'eastern Sarajevo' part of the autonomous 'Republika Srbska', is where family of both Mladic and Karadzic, two Serbian war criminals, live. It was also the capital of Republika Srbska during the war. We had a walk round and now it is a fast growing new town, with a pleasant central square but if I'm honest it was a bit too new to have much character. Although at least there is still plenty of cafe culture. We met some of Nikolina's friends and had a nice stroll around, past her school and the Serbian university there.


I'm writing this on Tuesday 14th June, and this afternoon we will go to Sarajevo, and then in the evening I will get the overnight bus to Pristina, in Kosovo. Because of problems with my second year in Belgrade, I am staying an extra two days in Kosovo.

Monday 13 June 2011

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ok, this post isn't about what I did, but important and hopefully interesting information about why Bosnia and Herzegovina has such problems and why the college is there and why I was there.

What exactly was I doing in Mostar? Well, I was attending what UWC call a 'short course', which does exactly what it says on the tin. They are basically ways that UWC can spread the movement of UWC to more people and hopefully spread the values and ethos, of peace and a sustainable future. These short courses vary massivly in shape and size, this one I was doing was organised by the UWC College in Mostar, one of the newest (and most interesting in my opinion) colleges of UWC, with only 5 years of existence. It was originally founded as a five year NGO, an educational project in an ethnically divided, conflict-scarred zone, however due to its successes at helping to heal wounds (I will go into this in a bit) it has now been established as an official school. The school is the only UWC to be located in a proper urban area (my college in Duino is near Trieste but actually in a small village. There is also a new UWC in Maastricht in the Netherlands but this is not what I would consider to be a UWC, like the one in Singapore many of the students simply paid their way in, and this spoils the UWC experience for those that got in on merit... I digress) and as such reflects massively the culture and feel of Balkan and Bosnian life. There is a very high proportion of local (as in from BiH - Bosnia and Herzegovina) students, and I know that there can be problems of the locals just hanging out with each other since there are so many, but this is not all of them and the problem is decreasing and does not stop others from having an amazing experience. Fellow geordie Megan is my co-year there and she absolutely loves it.
Going back to short courses, as I was saying this one was organised by UWCiM and the Finnish Cultural Foundation, who paid our travel expenses and funded all the speakers and activities. It was on the subject of Peace and Conflict Resolution, bringing together UWC students and local high school students of Croat, Serb and Bosnian ethnicity to try and help us to learn about the subject in a very real situation. Other short courses are organised by UWC national committees (the bodies in each country responsible for making selections to send students to the various UWCs) or other colleges. Some have UWC students facilitating, taking part, or both, such as this one, and always include young people from the local area.

A bit about BiH. Located in the cradle of Croatia (our soon to be newest member to the club), with Serbia on its eastern border and Montenegro to the south. Following WWII, BiH was part of Yugoslavia. This was created by Josep Broz Tito, who led the resistance to Nazi occupation in WWII. Tito established Yugolsavia as a communist federation of 6 republics, formed because of historical (mainly mediaeval kingdoms)existences prior to occupation by the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires and also the existence of ethnic identities linked to these often poorly defined mediaeval kingdoms (in that no one knew exactly where the borders were, what made people different etc). These republics were Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Tito saw that to make a united, powerful Slavic state these ethnic tensions had to disappear. Although there had been problems between these ethnicities during the war, Tito and his regime brutally suppressed all talk or reference to any differences between peoples in Yugoslavia. Whilst most of the republics were quite ethnically homogeneous, BiH differed in that it had many Croats, Serbs and Muslims (Bosniaks).
Tito rejected Stalin and presided over the non-alignment movement during the cold war, consisting of nations that did not want to be part of either the west or the east. Being non aligned allowed Yugoslavia's economy to grow strong in the 60s and 70s and to promote socialism without being distracted by the cold war. The UWC of the Adriatic, the one I attend was founded in 1982, mainly because of its proximity to Yugoslavia, and the eastern bloc, in an attempt to bring young people together from a divided world. In the 1980s the economy began to stagnate as more and more money was spent on armaments and defence, for fear of either the west or east invading.
After Tito's death in 1980, and with the economy not so strong, Yugoslavia started its decline. Slobodan Milosevic, a senior communist was initially hailed as a saviour for Yugoslavia and became president of the federation in 1989. However, he basically pulled out the pin of the ethnic time bomb, when he made a speech saying that Serbs were being repressed by Albanians in the autonomous region (which acted effectively like a republic) of Kosovo, part of Serbia. This went against the taboo of not speaking of nationality or ethnicity in Yugoslavia, and effectively opened the floodgates to a tide of conflicts that had been building for quite some time, especially in recent years. Atrocities committed in WWII by various groups on others and ideas of glorious pasts, as well as fear spread nationalism and resulted in some hugely destructive ethnic wars during the 1990s.
BiH was where perhaps the worst atrocities were committed in the war between 1992 and 1995. This was caused by Serb political parties and Croat political parties declaring the relative independence from BiH, supported by the relative armies of Croatia and Yugoslavia (effectively Serbian). The democratically elected government of BiH did not accept these declarations of independence and so issued a referendum on secession as a WHOLE national sovereign state of BiH, including Serb and Croat peoples, from what remained of Yugoslavia. The people voted a majority in favour of secession, since a majority were Bosniak, or Muslim. Armies were mobilised by all sides and although Bosnian (I will use the term Bosnian, rather than ethnic term Bosniak, since there were both Serbs and Croats who fought for a united BiH) defence forces (who were poorly organised and badly equipped) in fact (according to the BBC) fired the first shots on some Serbian people, the Serbian army was the first to launch proper military action, moving to take control of all the areas of BiH where Serbs were the majority. Bosnian defences were really poor and effectively the government of BiH ceased to control the nation. Bosnian and Croat forces initially teamed up to fight against Serbia, however the Croatian army also turned against Bosnian forces as Croatia wanted land.
These conflicts, between all three groups, led to huge displacement of people (estimated at more than 2 million) and thousands of deaths, casualties and huge social scars which will lead the country divided for a long time. Perhaps the most (in)famous was the seige of the capital of BiH, Sarajevo. The city in fact had a very mixed population, with around 70% of mixed marriages between Serbs, Croats or Bosniaks. Serbian forces surrounded the city and under the command of Ratko Mladic, pummelled the city for three years. There was just one way in and out of the city, a small tunnel underneath the airport, which was UN controlled territory. This linked what remained of 'free' BiH to the city. Atrocities were committed by all sides. In 1995, the Dayton Peace accords were signed, mostly bringing the fighting to an end. This led BiH mostly as it is today, divided into two parts, Republika of Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These operate as generally autonomous regions of one nation.

Next blog I will return to normal diary mode.

Thursday 9 June 2011

The week so far...

Me again. I have had a fascinating, intense, exhausting three first days here at the UWC in Mostar. I'll try to recap them as efficiently (efficiently since I want to be short, but not cut corners, as in still make it interesting...) as I can.

Sunday 5th June

I suppose breakfast kind of reflected the geographical location in which it was being served, as in not quite european (the two options consisted of bread and jam, and tea.) Now I know they're stingy with breakfast on the continent... actually for 15 euros it was pretty good.
I took the bus to Zadar bus station (sadly didn't get to see the sea organ) from where I took the 10 o clock bus to Split, Croatia's second largest city, further down the coast. After this (stunning - sea, mountains) journey I had a couple of hours for lunch in the ancient centre of split. My lonely planet informed me that the locals are proud of being the bearers of the Roman emperor Diocletian´s huge deathplace (literally, it´s basically a palace that he built to die and be buried in). I then took the bus from the bustling sea port to Mostar, another almost four hour journey. Sadly I didn´t get a stamp from the border guard, and I didn´t really feel like asking... It was really interesting the transition from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina (it´s official name is this, however for space let´s just call it Bosnia), almost as soon as you cross you can see that there is less money around, roads, buildings, cars. Also really oddly there are cars parked for kilometres upon kilometres (sorry guys, Europe´s turning me metric...) which have just been abandoned. I later asked a Bosnian, and they told me that since there is no infrastructure for disposal of cars, people just dump them. And then they use them for spare parts.
I arrived early in the evnening to Mostar bus station, expecting to be met. This was not the case, in the end I waited for a while, chatted to a young guy who went to Australia during the war, and then eventually resigned myself to walking to the college (luckily the college is pretty well known, and especially tourist places speak the lingo). Fortunately, as I was walking I bumped into a group of slightly out of place looking people, who recognised my UWC hoodie and all was well...

Monday 6th June

We started off with icebreaker games and introductions; in total there are 70 of us, about 20 UWC students (about half of whom - no idea if that´s grammatically correct - are from Bosnia or the Balkans) and the rest are all local high school students, with the exception of a handful of students from a government sponsored IB school in Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srbska, the other autonomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina (it´s incredibly complicated, I shall have a go at explaining at a later point). After lunch, Annukka, the Finnish organiser of the summer course (she is a graduate of UWC USA; the course is funded by a Finnish organisation)gave an introduction to Peace studies, and then we were thrown into the deep end by the college´s (acronomym UWCiM, literally UWC in Mostar) history teacher giving us a three hour talk on the history of the Balkan regions, from mediaeval times until today! In the evening we had a nice time relaxing at a local bar called ´Old Man´s´, so named because normally it is full of old men...

Tuesday 7th June

Annukka led the morning workshop, about tools for conflict prevention. In the afternoon we were joined by Janine di Giovanni, who talked to us about her career and reporting from conflict zones. We then analysed some of her articles in groups, and very bravely of her she asked us when we were all back together again in the hall to give our critiques. In the evening we ended up doing creative stuff, I chose to do some what´s known as ´Theatre of the Oppressed´, I have come across it before and it´s a really interesting way of raising powerful issues. Since we were being filmed for a documentary on the summer course, we didn´t do any potentially controversial issues, let´s say sexual abuse could be an example. We basically showed the scenario of a university Dean (I played the corrupt Dean,character modelled on Tony Blair crossed with Malfoy, not a nice fellow) getting his daughter good grades by putting pressure on the daughter´s teacher. But the twist is that we repeated our performance, and during the second showing, the audience could stop the play at any point to switch themselves with one of the characters (except the protagonists, the teacher or the daughter, so either swapped with me or one of the other students in the class) to try and resolve the solution, without a corrupted and/or conflict solution being the end result. In the end, no resolution was found, but at least it showed how effective this theatre can be at raising awareness of issues.

Wednesday 8th June

Our first lecture of the day was from Annuka again (by the way she has various degrees in Peace and Conflict studies and politics, in case you were wondering about her mandate...) on the subject of UNderstanding conflict and conflict management, focusing on how differently different people see conflicts, and that the only way you can hope to peacefully resolve one is by understanding (not necessarily agreeing with) all the viewpoints of the parties involved. THen we had a fascinating insight from a Balkans analyst, Srecko Latal, on the developments politically, economically and socially from pre war to the present day (he was interestingly highly critical of Paddy Ashdown, when he was UN high representative of the country, as Ashdown basically instead of letting Bosnians take control, added more layers of bureaucracy and took away control from the Bosnian people. He was much more complimentary of Lady Ashton in her recent peace efforts in the region as EU foreign representative) It seems like Bosnia has some interesting times ahead, especially politically (by the way I am forcing myself not to go into much detail, for example about political problems etc, for ease of reading, but if you would like to know more you can either post a comment or ask questions when we next see each other...) Following this we had the afternoon off, taking buses donated ´From the People of Japan´, to a truly spectacular place named Kravice. Basically it is a large waterfall area, where you can swim in the various streams at the foot of the cliffs and just have a great time, enjoying the sun and swimming in the crystal clear water of the river... In the evening programme we watched a (at times harrowing) documentary by an anthropologist following the lives of residents in a village in northern Bosnia during the war, showing how at first the Muslims and Croats were united against the Serb enemy (at the time Sarajevo, Bosnia´s capital was under seige from the Serbs)however for whatever reason, Croatia turned against the (majority in the country) muslims. We also watched the documentary when the anthropologist returned six years after the war to see what had happened to the people she met. It really showed just how devastatingly unnecessary and utterly destructive the war was. Although it was good, since it focused mainly on Croat attacks on Muslims, there was general consensus that we also need to acknowledge that the Muslims committed similar atrocities, as did the Serbs.

Thursday 9th June

The day´s proceedings were mainly taken up by people from the Red Cross, who were running workshops on International Humanitarian Law. Through a series of interactive workshops and scenarios we came to learn what IHL is, and what its purpose is. IHL basically is only applicable in times of armed conflict, and aims to protect the needs and dignity of those involved. Human Rights Law is what is applicable in peace time. Interestingly I had not realised how much the Red Cross´s work focuses on IHL in times of conflict. Following lunch, a graceful old gentleman came to talk to us about the importance of dignity and its role in avoding conflict. He spoke little English, since his work consists of training teachers and students around the country, but managed to engage us in thinking about ourselves and how important dignity is (the most effective thing was when we looked at the case of Elizabeth Eckford and Grace Lorch, the black student who was nearly mobbed by a crowd determined not to let her be the first student at a previously all white high school, and the white woman who led her to safety. By looking at why Grace Lorch did what she did, and cosnidering things such as making up Lorch´s biography, profiling why the conflict occurred, among others, it really made all of us think about compassion and dignity). After this workshop, which the man very tactfully finished an hour early (on top of the packed programme - from 8 till 8 most days we don´t go back to the residences where we´re staying, especially because it is quite a walk from the school to the residence - it was hot and people were tired) a big group of us (when I say ´us´and I am not talking about in the workshops or scheduled stuff such as the trip to the waterfall, I normally mean the UWC students, local UWC students from Mostar, and the students from the IB school in Banja Luka, with a couple of high school students) went to the old bank building. The school building the UWC uses is basically the ´gymnasium´(grammar school) which was completely bombed in the war, but was rebuilt with donations from various european governments (although not ours) and is now a truly magnificent building to study in. This is situated on ´Spanish Square´, a major junction in the road that seperates the Muslim and Croat sides of the city (prior to the war these divisions did not exist). Burnt shells of buildings can be seen on both sides of the road, still left over from the war. THis is normally because of lack of funds and/or ownership issues (many people left the country during the war and haven´t returned). In the case of the old bank building (or actually it was pretty new, it was only just finished at the start of the war in Bosnia in 1992), the bank is currently in turmoil and so has left it completely untouched. You can literally walk in the 15 (approx) storey building right off the street, into where the rotating doors should be, into what used to be a large welcome lobby. However everything is just burnt out or vandalised. The first floor is the only one that seems to have avoided being trashed, my supposition is that this was too low to be of strategic use (snipers easy to spot, trees blocked vision of gunners etc) so avoided being emptied. Or maybe it was the only floor in operation since the builidng was new. It is strewn with papers, computer manuals, smashed screens, desks, everywhere there is glass since the building was coated in glass. We went to the top and saw a spectacular view, Mostar is nestled in mountains, but you can still see the destruction, fifteen years on.
A great day was capped after dinner by a man from Finland who was part of the Finnish NGO, SaferGlobe, who gave a talk about the arms trade, not just on Finland (who is surprisingly bad on the arms trade) but the world. The man (whose name I don´t recall, the Fins are fond of their syllables...) was kind of young, in his thirties and was clearly dedicated to his work. And the work he does is really important. In broken English he managed to explain to us just how many armed conflicts there are in the world (this website shows all the ones as of 2009, and you can look at the world map showing all conflicts since 1975, and you can explore different types of conflict and look at the conflict histories of each country)we looked at how much money is spent on the weapons trade (this website shows the realtime increasing debt of the USA, there is also a link to other countries´. We discussed how powerful the armaments industry is, especially in suppressing awareness raising (becuase if more people were aware, there would definitely be much stronger political will to clamp down on these companies, as we have seen political will in Germany especially clamp down on nuclear power)and also the damages on societies following armed conflicts, as well as the impact on guns on society and also the growing ´de-personalisation´ of armaments, as weapons (for example a man sitting clicking a mouse to fire a missile from an unarmed drone does not really think about who he is killing). What makes me disgusted is that we have one of the world´s largest weapons companies, BAE systems in Britain, so really we are disgustingly hypocritical when talking about human rights, since we aid so many abusers of rights. Although the timing wasn´t great (evening was the only time since the guy had flown literally hours before to Sarajevo, and is going back six hours after giving the talk, as he is running a scout camp!) and the guy wasn´t so used to public speaking, it was a really insightful evening.

ok, that´s me for now, sorry about the length,I kind of got progressively longer, I will try harder next time... but it´s just there´s so much to write about!
I will also include a brief summary of the causes of, events and consequences of the ethnic wars in 1992 - 1995, as it really is worth knowing about.

I will upload photos when I´ve taken ones of all the stuff I mentioned (eg school building).

Robin

Saturday 4 June 2011

Hello again everyone. Hmm well anyway I have decided to trial a new format of my blog (aka actually short posts) on my current trip. I am at the moment sitting in the very comfortable youth hostel in Zadar, Croatia. Today I got the plane from Stansted to Zadar airport (we were the ONLY plane - it seemed like the airport hadn't changed since communism...). I managed this despite the best efforts of both my train to stansted this morning... And just to describe what I am doing in this neck of the woods, I am on my way to Mostar in Bosnia, where I will be taking part in a short course (one week) on peace and conflict resolution organised by the UWC there, with other UWC students and local high school students. After that I will briefly stop off at Nikolina's house (my co year) in Sarajevo, and then Marko(my second year) in Belgrade before spending five days with my co year Egzon in Kosovo, and then come home...
Today after arriving I wondered through the surprisingly beautiful old town of Zadar and then found myself confusedly following Google maps' instructions to the youth hostel (with a bit of help from the good old lonely planet as well ;) ) and on the your's walk I found many a relaxed person bathing in the (much clearer than trieste) waters of the adriatic, to the backdrop of the Croatian islands. After finding my rudimentary but blissfully empty hostel dorm, I enquired about local eateries, and ended up eating at 'Nana Rima' a local pizzeria. Although I ordered a takeaway I in the end stayed talking to two of the waiters for over an hour. One of them the older one, Kruna, knew an astonishing amount about British history and was able to tell me more about the history of Elizabethan England than most average British people (including myself) would know. In my first day, although at times stressful (travelling with ryanair is never not...) I have found a really friendly place and people.
Tomorrow I get up early and I will try to see the famous sea organ of Zadar, however if not I will simply get the bus to Split (further down the Croatian coast) and from there to Mostar. Over and out.
P.s. apologies for the lack of nice, readable formatting, however since I do not have my laptop I am writing this on my phone (actually quite useful - with the hostel's WiFi I can access everything on my phone, meaning I don't have to lug (or worry about) a laptop...)