One day, the call to prayer from the younger Arnaudija and the older Ferhadija mosque will meet in front of the grammar school in Banja Luka. A teacher of fine arts will speak louder about the presentation of God in order for students to better understand the task they are given. In the classroom opposite to it, their peers will […]

The attack on Srebrenica began on the 6th of July in 1995. It ended five days later when the Army of Republika Srpska entered the town, under the command of general Ratko Mladić. At the time Mladić stated that he is in “Serbian Srebrenica”, and that he is giving the town over to “the Serbian people”, that the “time has come […]

Photo: Nenad Vukelić It was my second time traveling to Priština. The bus was stuffy, crammed and before we even left Belgrade it became clear that the bus company had sold more tickets than there were seats, so some of the people on board were condemned to stand the entire way. A girl from Belgrade is sitting next to me, […]

In 1999, I was nine years old. I don’t remember seeing U.S. news coverage on the war in Kosovo. In fact, I wouldn’t learn about Kosovo or the war until nearly a decade later.              I first visited Kosovo in 2010. A shopkeeper asked me where I come from. “North Carolina. The United States.” “America! […]

This is what this looks like: Good afternoon, madam, how are you today?  I am fine, dear, how are you?   I am fine. I need the xx certificate, please.   What is your name? Ajna Jusić. Father’s name? Please, madam, write the name of my mother, Sabina.  I cannot do that Ajna, we need your father’s name. Unfortunately, I […]

Fhoto: Ana Vilenica In Serbia today, the history of the wars of the 1990s is bureaucratized, privatized and urbanized as a politically and economically instrumentalized past which is produced so that a new globalized history of capitalism can exist unhindered in its identity crisis phase. It is a history based on privatization, de-industrialization, the emergence of new elites which became […]

Photo: Remy Ourdan The recently passed life sentence for Radovan Karadžić at The Hague Tribunal, has all but been forgotten in Serbia no more than a month later. That would certainly not have been the case, had the actors on the political scene wanted otherwise, or seen some political potential in that great finale. Truth be told, as a citizen […]

The International Criminal Tribunal is expected to hand down its final ruling in the case of Radovan Karadžić on Wednesday, March 20. The ruling will end the process that has been ongoing for almost a quarter of a century. International law experts, numerous accomplices of Karadžić and families of even more numerous victims have been waiting for the ruling for […]

A few days ago we remembered Anton Çetta. More than just Anton Çetta, we evoked the Reconciliation of Blood Feuds and the 20th anniversary of the initiative that reconciled Albanians and released them from enmity, freed them from the prison they had been in for years, from the enslavement of solitude, from the isolation of younger generations, and from their […]

Conflicts and wars never and nowhere happen accidentally, although their motives and justifications might seem sudden, hasty and completely banal. No matter how much peace advocates are appalled by this fact, wars have their internal logic, they are deliberate, even in those cases when we believe that complete psychopaths initiate them. It is important to keep in mind the truth […]

The maps of region, which used to show the borders of the former common state Yugoslavia, are now full of thick lines marking the borders of independent states as well as thin lines marking their internal units (entities, cantons, regions). Dilemmas are still present in case of the thickness of the line framing Kosovo and it is uncertain whether such […]

CONCEPT The concept of transitional justice emerged from the international human rights movement and became popular in the last two decades. Initially, the term transitional justice referred to the judicial processing of human rights violations committed by dictatorial regimes during transition to a democratic society. Lately, the term transitional justice has begun referring to the prosecution of war crimes and […]