Bosnia’s Hopes Fall With Historic Bridge in Mostar

When the white limestone arch of the famed old Turkish bridge at Mostar tumbled into the teal-blue waters of the Neretva River this week, hope for salvation of Bosnia-Herzegovina may have succumbed with it.

The 16th-Century Stari Most (Old Bridge) that gave Mostar, Bosnia’s southern tourist attraction, its name was the most cherished monument of the multiethnic republic and one of the last important traces of more than half a millennium of Ottoman Turkish rule.

Bosnian Serb and Croat nationalists bent on erasing the Islamic heritage of the republic that they have overrun in a 19-month-old quest for ethnically pure territory have already destroyed ancient mosques, minarets and tile-roofed bazaars from the gateway city of Zvornik to the capital of Sarajevo.

With the loss of the bridge, which fell Tuesday after being struck by at least 40 artillery shells fired from Bosnian Croat positions, the destruction of Bosnia’s Ottoman heritage is virtually complete.

Yet in one of the ironies that the bloody Balkans war has in abundance, Serbs, Croats and Muslims have been united in their grief over the loss of a cultural treasure that symbolized what were once thought to be unbreakable bonds between Christian and Muslim, East and West.

Columnists and common citizens from throughout the former Yugoslav federation have spoken with a single voice in denouncing the bombardment of the bridge, and outraged cultural figures from the West have joined them.

“The perpetrators of this disgraceful act are trying to eradicate the history of a country and its people,” declared Federico Mayor, director general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization that had been at work to add Stari Most to its roster of protected international treasures.

“It is an attack against the values cherished by the international community and dear to the lovers of freedom,” Mayor said Thursday from UNESCO headquarters in Paris. “The destruction of the Stari Most Bridge has robbed all the communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina of a symbol of hope, ruptured their links with a time of peace and struck at the very roots of their cultural heritage.”

A front-page editorial in the Croatian daily Vjesnik described the collapse of the bridge as “symbolic of the passing of multi-ethnic, multi-denominational Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

Bosnian Radio described the attack as a wound to Bosnia’s soul.

Even state-run TV Serbia, which has never mentioned dozens of incidents in which Bosnian Serb forces dynamited centuries-old mosques, carried extensive coverage, including aerial footage of the span that has been shorn from its moorings high above the Neretva.

“I felt sick when I saw the pictures. No one has the right to destroy our history,” lamented Dragan Petrovic, a Belgrade student.

Bosnian Croat forces have sought to explain their attacks on the bridge by arguing that it was a legitimate military target used to spirit supplies from the Croat-held left bank to the right, where 55,000 Muslims have been expelled and are pummeled daily by Croatian artillery.

But even the Zagreb government, which armed and instigated the Bosnian Croats, expressed revulsion at the attack on Stari Most.

“It is a tragic loss for everyone, not just the Muslims but for the Croats who live there as well,” said Dino Milinovic, an official with the cultural preservation office of Croatia’s Education Ministry. Part of the tragedy for the Croatian people, he added, is that “everyone will think that we did it.”

Willful destruction of the bridge, which was built by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566 to join Christians on the Neretva’s left bank with Muslims on the right, has caused many in the savage conflict to pause for reflection over their continuing acts of self-destruction.

But some point to the emotional outcries as disturbing signs of indifference to human suffering.

“The Mostar bombing has sparked another round of debate over whether the world is more interested in preserving stones or people,” said one European diplomat, noting that a similar international cry was raised after Serbs shelled the walled Adriatic city of Dubrovnik in 1991.

“The real tragedy with Mostar is that neither side seems to be winning the debate,” the Belgrade-based envoy observed. “As the war drags on, much of the outside world seems to be losing interest in protecting either Bosnia’s old stones or its people.”