Mostar, Then and Now

As we approached Mostar, our Tour Director told us more stories about the war in the Balkans. He passed along some black and white photographs showing the famous Mostar Bridge and the city’s main streets totally destroyed by the armed conflict. He told us to keep those images in mind when we see how the bridge and the city look like now.

Mostar is a lively little town that spans the deep valley of the Neretva River. It is the capital of the Herzegovina district and is the fifth largest in the country.

It was named after the bridge keepers (mostari) who, in the medieval times, guarded the Stari Most (Old Bridge), the most iconic symbol of this place until now. This bridge was built by the Ottomans in the 16^th century and is considered an exemplary piece of Islamic architecture in the Balkans.

Aside from the bridge, one can find a number of architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles that merged foreign aesthetic trends with the indigenous. This harmonious blending highlights how Mostar has, over the years, been at a crossroads of cultures – Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim Bosniaks – who all lived in seeming peace and unity before the war.

In the 1990s, Mostar became the poster child of the Bosnian War. First, the Croats and Bosniaks forced out the Serbs, then they turned their guns on each other, staring each other down across a front line that ran through the middle of the city. I recalled the photographs from the war that our Tour Director just showed us on the bus – utter devastation.

The saddest photo was that of the bridge, completely destroyed. It was said that across the world, people wept when the pummeled Old Bridge, bombarded by Croat paramilitary artillery shells from the hilltop above, finally collapsed into the river. It was as if all their hopes and dreams have also collapsed.

Driving around, it felt like any other vibrant town, but if one looks closely, one can see the remnants of that bitter war – bullet-ridden walls, severely-damaged buildings, collapsed structures – all a grim reminder of the terrors that happened here. This was especially evident when we reached the area that was the frontline during the war. The four-lane divided road, Bulevar Revolucije, is still lined with bombed buildings and several damaged war relics.

The most notable building is the Staklena Banka that served as a bank in the former Yugoslavia, and was turned into a “Sniper Tower,” where Croat snipers positioned themselves to shoot Bosnian Muslims. Nowadays, the building still lies abandoned, and street artists have painted graffiti on its walls.

There is also Spanish Park, a square which commemorates the 22 Spanish peacekeepers killed in that war. Down the street, there is another monument built in 2014 to commemorate Bosnian war casualties. It was vandalized a few days after its unveiling and still lies in ruins today.

One building, a former department store, we were told, has an interesting façade of concrete slabs with bas reliefs of animals and rural life, but is now full of holes and has missing walls. Our Tour Director said there were more buildings like this near the Old Town.

Mostar is still scarred, but like most Balkan cities ravaged by strife, it is slowly healing, though a little slower, compared to the other Bosnian city of Sarajevo.

Here, the local government seems to give little priority to reconstruction. This has partly to do with the division of the city. The former frontline still splits the city into two – the Bosnian Muslim side and the Croatian Catholic side. Even after the war, this invisible line, the main street cutting north-south (Bulevar Dr. Ante Starcevica), still divides them, as the two groups almost live separate lives and still politically never agree with each other. And for the most part, neither Croats nor Muslims dare cross the line.

The former frontline street also points to the summit of Hum Hill, where a 100-foot cross stands. It was built by the Catholic Croats in 2000 and it illuminates Mostar’s skyline at night. For the Christians, it is a symbol of faith and hope. But for the Bosniak Muslims, it is an offensive and painful reminder of a death and terror, for it was from this very hill where the Croats bombarded Muslim Mostar and destroyed the Stari Most, a structure highly regarded by the Muslims.

To further illustrate that religious conflict lives on even after the war, our Tour Director mentioned that when Stari Most was rebuilt and inaugurated, the Catholic bishops snubbed the event.

It is still a long way to complete healing, and the complex mix of fragile coexistence, political division, and gradual reconciliation following the conflicts of the 1990s is a work-in-progress.

In the bustling tourist areas of the Old Town, both communities interact daily through commerce, tourism, and shared public spaces. But despite daily interactions in this area, the city remains somewhat socially and institutionally segregated. The two communities even have their own separate utility companies, hospitals, universities, and even sports clubs.

However, for many citizens, there is an evident desire for peaceful co-existence and cross-community friendships. Nowadays, citizens engage in interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding efforts to bridge the gap between East and West Mostar.