THE BRIDGE

 Since I came to the states I met a lot of architects and, even more,
construction workers from so-called former Yugoslavia. I wondered why the
construction profession suffered such a high exile rate. Well, they told me -
there ain't no jobs for us over there. There is no need for us. Nobody builds
there anything any more. It's a demolition time.

And that's the truth. What on earth would for example an architect do today in
Bosnia? Watching the TV I asked myself if there is any building in entire
Bosnia and Hercegovina that was spared from the destructive touch of war.
Would anything please those creatures, that are so committed to evil, short of
absolute devastation? Where will be the end, for those who were able to say
that they would build prettier and OLDER Dubrovnik (a Serbian commander)?

They hate bridges. Bridges in Bosnia in particular. I think there is no more
functioning bridges in the entire Bosnia and Hercegovina. In Croatia they hated
churches more. They destroyed more than 400 church towers there. I didn't
even know there were ever built as many. Why churches in Croatia? Why
bridges in Bosnia? 

Because the target of hate is always a belief. Belief is passion. Passion is love.
Hate cannot stand existence of love. So it has to hurt the object of passion first.
Hate believes that when it destroys the objects of passion, people will become
soulless and uninterested to resist further. Croats, fighting for independence,
fought under nationalist agenda. That agenda often pronounced the distinctive
cultural background of Croats, which is highly connected to their catholicism.
A lot of young Croat fighters, although maybe not religious before the war,
trusted in being somehow protected in their pursuit by that belief. Therefore,
their enemy destroyed churches mercilessly. 

In Bosnia, troops loyal to the government of Sarajevo, are fighting under
different agenda - they fight as Bosnian nationalists, and Bosnian is a civil,
rather then ethnic (like Serb or Croat), category. Being Bosnian is like being
American: you may be Croatian-Bosnian, Serbian-Bosnian or
Catholic-Bosnian, Orthodox- Bosnian, Muslim-Bosnian or simply
Bosnian-Bosnian (a WASP equivalent?). To embarrassing surprise of the whole
world, the U.N., the U.S. and the E.C., there still are Bosnian hardasses who
believe in coexistence of three ethnoreligious groups. They always talk about
the bridges, about the necessity to build the bridges over the rivers of blood
that divide us, so that we can again reach each other. The history of Bosnia
was being a bridge between east and west cultures. Even the most important
writing of a Bosnian author (the only Yugoslav writer who received the
Nobel-prize) was about the building of a bridge. They fight for those bridges. 

The existence of those bridges gives them this very last slight hope that their
fight is not a desperately lost cause. Therefore, their enemy (or enemies?!)
destroy bridges consistently. Now, they destroyed the old bridge over Neretva in
Mostar. I don't remember when Turks built it, but I remember they needed
decades to spin such a bridge without reinforced concrete. Most of bridges built
under "communism" in so-called former Yugoslavia collapsed out of bad
construction work (stolen cement from the work site) not waiting to be shelled.
This old one stayed in spite of regular shelling. It took a deep commitment to
destroy it. 

I recall old days when once a year guys jumped from the top of the bridge to
Neretva river. It was an exciting challenge. I think it was a 28 meters (84 feet)
fall in a 6 meters (18 feet) deep cold river. Some of the guys died. Before I left
for America, this bridge was one of the rare things in what was then Yugoslavia
that I felt sorry that I haven't visited. I always wanted to try a jump. Now, it's
obviously too late. I hate them because of that. 

They destroyed that bridge so thoroughly, that you don't even see that there
was any bridge there ever. They just zapped it. In dust and ashes. I wonder if
they, who destroyed the bridge, are at least happy now. Pleased with their
useless mischief. There is more and more people from so-called former
Yugoslavia around me. I bet in 10 years there were be no more people there,
except for those who would never get tired of their privileges. They will stay and
repeat their rants on their TV stations day after day until they run out of fuel
for power plants, or they maybe, just maybe, die. However, there will be no
people to watch their television any more. The old guard does not quit.
Remember Romania? Look at Somalia. Look at USSR. Look at Haiti. They'd
rather kill their own people and destroy their own country than to give up their
privileged lifestyles. 

Was Yugoslavia any different? Only more sly. Instead of having Yugoslav Army
installing military rule in 1990, we got a part of Yugoslav Army Officers to
become Croatian Army Officers, a part to become Bosnian, a part Slovenian
and a part to remain Serbian/Yugoslav, and then to wage war against each
other on the expense of vast impoverished underclass. Rarely one of them died
or was even wounded. The same goes for the political leaders of both newly
independent states and the greater Serbia conquistadors. Guns miraculously
shut up when one of them comes to the frontline. They made sure not to
become victims of their war. 

Now, after the bridge in Mostar is destroyed, Bosnians will blame either Croats
or Serbs or both for that. Croats will blame Serbs. Serbs will blame Croats. If
the U.N. forces find conclusive evidence that either Croats or Serbs are guilty,
the accused ones will blame U.N. for partisanship, and will come up with the
conspiracy theory claiming that Bosnians destroyed the bridge themselves to
bring world attention to them again. Of course, all of those scenarios are
possible, and, also, maybe none of them is truth. 

Maybe it is even irrelevant to think about which is truth if we realize that the
governments of three sides are maybe playing against each other as three slick
street hustlers are playing against each other in a game of finding the right
card, where one is moving three cards on the table, the other is jostling in the
crowd bragging how much he won, and the third is constantly winning the
same twenty dollars bill.   And they think they discovered free enterprise. 

Wrong. If they were smart they would make peace a long time ago, saved the
bridge in Mostar (and thousands of human lives, too), opened the Theme Park,
and organized bungee-jumping from the bridge. That's less neckbraking than
the jump without a bungee cord, so it would be in a reach of an average mortal.
And you can make money with this. You can actually, in a long run, make
more money with that than with the war. For example in Oak Beach Inn (Long
Island) they charge you sixty dollars for a jump and you get a complimentary
video tape. There would be, certainly, other things visitors can do there, too.  
Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia - those countries, that most Americans never before
nineties ever heard, are now a part of common knowledge about the world. 

The war made us really popular. We got a lot of attention. Time Magazine
brings the list of rap singers and the list of cities in the former Yugoslavia side
by side. They know now for Gacko, Gruz, Ruma, Stupni Do and Skofja Loka. In
Hard Target (VanDamme movie) Yugoslavia is used as a reference for
bloodshed. We became the part of the pop-culture. Now, it is time to start
selling that. A perpetual warfare interests nobody, except, maybe, arms dealers
and journalists. If the war continues the Yugoslavia would become a boring
pain in the neck of every news edition as Israel and Palestine and Lebanon are
for past ten or more years. Oh, god, how I got bored with that, now, as I
remember that from TV-news in Zagreb. I used to turn down the sound, leaving
just the picture, that was always the same shit - guns, bodies, rubble; bodies,
guns, rubble; guns, rubble, bodies; and more rubble, guns, bodies. I played
The Clash loud over it. Public get bored from unresolvable disputes.  So, Mr
Milosevic, and deputies, it will make really bad p.r. if you continue the war. It
is time to stop. I guess, there won't be any chances later.   

Now, I learned that reportedly Croats blew the bridge. As a Croat I admit I
would feel at least a bit more comfortable if Serbs did it. I just talked with a
friend, a young guy, Croat from Siroki Brijeg ("Broad Hill") near Mostar, who
lives here in New York. He couldn't believe it. What idiots would do it, asked he.
I am asking myself the same question. Western media wrote that Croats
admitted the crime. New York Times even quotes Vecernji List, the leading
Croatia's daily, saying that it was not the intention of Croatian forces to destroy
the bridge, but that it was "the tragedy that SOMEHOW just happened." New
York Times did not find words to comment that spin. There ARE no words for
this. However, as I said before, whoever did it, did it with the premeditation and
with considerate effort, because the bridge couldn't be "erased" in a single
accidental unfortunate tragical shot.   

It might be that the shooting was done without the knowledge of Croatian
forces high command, by a single unit with the lunatic commander, but it was
still the responsibility of the Croatian Council of Defense top brass to make it
sure that its ranks and files are mentally sane and emotionally stable people,
as that is the responsibility of any military command on the planet today.
Modern weapons bring that responsibility. What if the U.S. unwillingly
launched few nuclear missiles on the Soviet Union? Would the Russians, after
losing a few cities, accept that as a "tragedy that just somehow happened"?   

And what excuse does the U.N. have this time?! The UN protection force is not
there to stop the war or to protect the people from the disasters of war (well,
they do at least something to that extent), but to protect the Europe from that
war, to protect the interests of various European states on the Balkans. This is
a controlled warfare. UN is there to keep it going, and not to stop it. And
military intervention will never happen. Since the end of April Clinton
announced it eight times. Now, the US has enough problems with Somalia and
Haiti, where it is already involved, to think about Bosnia. The people who live
there have to decide to stop it. This is the only way.  

Ivo Skoric, December 1993