Bosnia and Herzegovina – Srpska East (Bijeljina, Trebinje) May 13-14, 2019
After Goat Bridge just east of Sarajevo, I headed to the Goražde area with plans to continue onto Srpska East (Bijeljina, Trebinje) to see some of the sights there. It took 1¼ hours to drive the 61 km to Goražde, a good road for half of it, then up and over a mountain. I descended onto Goražde from high above and had great views down to the town.
Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, Višegrad. This historic bridge in over the Drina River in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina was completed in 1577 by the Ottoman court architect Mimar Sinan on the order of the Grand VizierMehmed Paša Sokolović. UNESCO included the bridge in its 2007 World Heritage List. It is characteristic of the apogee of Turkish monumental architecture and civil engineering. It numbers 11 masonry arches, with spans of 11 to 15 meters, and an access ramp at right angles with four arches on the left bank of the river.
The 179.5-meter-long (589 ft) bridge is a representative masterpiece of Mimar Sinan, one of the greatest architects and engineers of the classical Ottoman period and a contemporary of the Italian Renaissance, with which his work can be compared. The UNESCO summary states: The unique elegance of proportion and monumental nobility of the property as a whole bear witness to the greatness of this style of architecture.
History. The Višegrad Bridge was commissioned by Grand Vizier Mehmed Paša Sokolović, who exercised power over a long period at the summit of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of three sultans as a tribute to his native region and a symbol of trade and prosperity. Construction of the bridge took place between 1571 and 1577. Major renovations of the bridge have taken place in 1664, 1875, 1911, 1940 and 1950–52. Three of its 11 arches were destroyed during World War I and five were damaged during World War II but subsequently restored.
In the middle is a wide column with 2 marble plaques written in Arabic script opposite a U-shaped bench. The bed of the bridge has new limestone paving. It is pedestrian only but surely could be driven on as it is at least 5m wide.
After Visegrad, my goal was to reach Srebrenica by dark. But the 115kms was predicted by Google Maps to take 2½ hours implying slow roads. And it soon became obvious that the locals don’t drive between these two towns. I met one car in 2 hours. Initially, the road goes up countless switchbacks to the top of the mountain, then through a high plateau with fields, sheep, cows and lots of potholes. I then had a choice, both 80kms, one on a poor-looking road, the other on a 3m wide road with good pavement. I asked a farmer which was better. After considerable heeing and hawing and repeatedly saying “GPS?”, he pointed to the narrow road. The road traversed the lovely mature evergreen forest, then more farms staying high up on the plateau. I then understood the GPS as there were choices to be made. Google Maps at one point directed me down a poor dirt road. I finally stopped and had dinner.
The day had been cold and rainy and visibility dropped to a few metres in the cloud. Traffic was going 30kms/hr on a good road but things improved after a huge descent.
Four kilometres from Srebrenica, I stopped at a car wash, did a fair job but there was no brush and washed the floor and carpet in the back. Next to the car wash was a great parking area with covered picnic tables and I spent the night there. In the morning I washed my dishes and cleaned the rest of the inside of the van. This finished off a long day – I saw the rest of Sarajevo, bought groceries, cleaned the van and did a lot of driving.
SREBRENICA
This town and area has three NM sights. The XL rating is for the Srebrenica “panhandle” being as far east as is possible in B&H.
Srebrenica genocide (Srebrenica massacre), was the July 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War.
The killings were perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of Ratko Mladić. The Scorpions, a paramilitary unit from Serbia, that had been part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, also participated in the massacre. In April 1993 the United Nations (UN) declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica—in the Drina Valley of northeastern Bosnia—a “safe area” under UN protection. However, the UN failed to both demilitarise the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) within Srebrenica and force the withdrawal of the VRS surrounding Srebrenica UNPROFOR’s 370 Dutchbat soldiers in Srebrenica did not prevent the town’s capture by the VRS—nor the subsequent massacre.
In 2004, in a unanimous ruling on the case of Prosecutor v. Krstić, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in The Hague, ruled that the massacre of the enclave’s male inhabitants constituted genocide, a crime under international law. The ruling was also upheld by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2007. The forcible transfer and abuse, of between 25,000 and 30,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly which accompanied the massacre was found to constitute genocide when accompanied by the killings and separation of the men.
In 2005, Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations described the mass murder as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War, and in a message to the tenth-anniversary commemoration of the massacre, he wrote that, while blame lay “first and foremost with those who planned and carried out the massacre and those who assisted and harboured them”, the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, describing Srebrenica as a tragedy that would haunt the history of the UN forever.
In 2006, in the Bosnian Genocide case held before the International Court of Justice, Serbia and Montenegro were cleared of direct responsibility for, or complicity in, the massacre, but were found responsible for not doing enough to prevent the genocide and not prosecuting those responsible, in breach of the Genocide Convention. The Preliminary List of People Missing or Killed in Srebrenica compiled by the Bosnian Federal Commission of Missing Persons contains 8,373 names. As of July 2012, 6,838 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves; as of July 2013, 6,066 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potočari.
In April 2013, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić officially apologized for the massacre, although he stopped short of calling it genocide. In 2013 and 2014, the Netherlands was found liable in its supreme court and in the Hague district court of failing in its duty to prevent more than 300 deaths.
On 8 July 2015, Russia, at the request of the Republika Srpska and Serbia, vetoed a UN resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre as genocide. Serbia called the resolution “anti-Serb”, while European and U.S. governments affirmed that the crimes were genocide. On 9 July 2015, both the European Parliament (EP) and the U.S. Congress adopted resolutions reaffirming the description of the crime as genocide.
On 22 November 2017, Ratko Mladić was convicted of various crimes at the United Nations tribunal, including genocide for his role at Srebrenica. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The judgment is currently under appeal.
Srebrenica Memorial: In the NM “Dark Side” series, this memorial park and cemetery commemorate the 1995 genocide where 8,375 mostly Muslim men were killed over 3 days. There is a polished granite fountain surrounded in a semicircle by the names in alphabetical order and year of birth of the victims (dating from 1938-1978), and the cemetery with square column grave markers with the name, date of birth and town marked and a mound behind each) – these are on the flat and climb a hillside, a granite cube dated July 1995, and a rock with the names of 17 towns and the #8372. There are also two ablution fountains.
For a complete description of the events: Srebrenica Genocide
Zvornik/Mali Zvornik. In the NM “XL” series, this riverside town sits on both banks of the river. A new church on the highway had an extremely high narrow dome and lovely fresco in the apse. Just upstream is a large dam that creates a reservoir you drive along.
The road from here for the next 100 km seemed to be an almost continuous town with slow traffic and reduced speeds of 50-60km/hour. It was slow going the whole way.
May 15 was an unbelievably successful day. I slept at a sports hall with good, free wifi. Badly in need of a shower, the security guard was unusually vigilant but the Olympic Swimming pool in Banya Luca had great showers. M16, the road between Banya Luca and Jajca followed the spectacular Vrbas River – narrow with steep limestone walls. After aggressively passing 5 cars and 2 large trucks, the twisty road was a fast drive. Upstream in a reservoir, I have never seen so much garbage in a river/lake – rafts of floating plastic sometimes covering half the river. The sides of the roads were little better.