Journalist, author, broadcaster
At just 17, Nedžad Avdić was convinced his life was over. After days walking bare-footed, starving, thirsty and exhausted through the verdant Bosnian countryside near Srebrenica he was captured by Bosnian Serb forces and loaded onto a lorry alongside thousands of other Muslims. The convoy stopped in a remote field. Nedžad was told to get […]
Around midnight on July 11, 1995, word reached Srebrenica that Dutch peacekeepers had abandoned their observation posts on the outskirts of town. The soldiers had arrived in the Eastern Bosnian “safe haven” just over two years earlier, ostensibly to provide a buffer between local Bosniak Muslims and encircling Bosnian Serb forces. When 19-year-old Hasan Hasanovic […]
Senior forensic anthropologist Dragana Vucetic of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) works to identify the remains of a victim of the Srebrenica massacre [Dado Ruvic/Reuters] Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina – The violent breakup of Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold War left a painful legacy. It is estimated the conflict claimed over 100,000 […]
The longer any online discussion goes on, the greater the probabilitythat someone will make a comparison involving Hitler or the Nazis.This maxim – known as ‘Godwin’s Law’ – is so widely accepted that ithas even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. So today I wouldlike to propose an #indyref equivalent (but please don’t call […]
Twenty years after the war, mass graves containing the bodies of Bosniaks continue to be found [AP] Carakovo, Bosnia – Sudbin Music has a problem: He needs to bury 50 bodies. “Where can we put them?” Music, 40, wondered aloud as he stood on the edge of a graveyard in the northwestern Bosnian village of Carakovo. […]
A bold new political platform is arriving in tiny Kosovo: Corruption should be legalized and serious diseases outlawed. A Formula One racing track should be built around Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. Urinals should be installed in the foyer of every public building in the city. These are just some of the policies proposed by a new, tongue-in-cheek politics […]
Kosovo‘s prime minister has issued a last-ditch appeal to Kosovan Serbs to vote in critical elections this weekend that are widely seen as a make-or-break moment for the republic. In an interview with the Guardian, Hashim Thaçi said that the abandonment of polling after attacks in northern Kosovo earlier this month was a result of […]
On Sunday November 3, Kosovo held local elections. Across the country turnout was moderate-to-high — except in four majority ethnic Serb municipalities north of the Ibar River, the de facto border between north and south Kosovo. In Zvecan, just 11.2 per cent cast a ballot. Leposavic and Zubin Potok were a little better – 22 […]
Mitrovica is a Kosovan city divided in two: Serbs live in the north, Albanians in the south. It’s the flashpoint for Serb reluctance to be living in a Kosovan state. Back in the days of socialist Yugoslavia, Mitrovica was a rather prosperous city. On the outskirts of town, the vast Trepeca mines were one of […]
North Mitrovica, Kosovo – In this city politics is literally written on the walls. On the main street of this predominantly Serb town in north Kosovo, a brightly painted mural declares, “This is Serbia”. Nearby graffiti calls for the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo to “go home”. Once a prosperous, ethnically mixed city, […]