Conclusion

FINAL THOUGHTS: IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION According to former High Representative Paddy Ashdown, the “dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the toppling of Saddam’s statue,” and “the deliberate destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar” have been the critical destructive moments of the past two decades. 1 Iconic images of these events have been widely circulated and grandiose symbolic associations have been associated with these moments of architectural destruction. Each has been emblematic of major shifts in the course of recent world history. Among these, Berlin’s wall and Mostar’s bridge have served specifically as architectural metaphors for division and unification within broad contexts. Just as the opening of the wall epitomized the end of the division of Berlin, of Germany, and by extension of Europe during the Cold War, the Old Bridge’s destruction - four years to the day later - symbolized the division of Mostar into two sides, of Bosnia into two autonomous entities, and of Yugoslavia into six separate states. Despite the fact that both were small events within multi-year sequences of change, the complex social and political phenomena of which they were a part have in each case been reduced to and understood in terms of these symbolic architectural moments of destruction. In Berlin the symbol of division “fell” before the actual physical barrier could be removed and political unity could be administratively achieved, but in Mostar, the symbolic separation continues despite the recreation of physical connections and political unity. 1 Paddy Ashdown, “Bosnia, the Balkans, Europe and Islam” (lecture, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford, UK, November 18, 2004), http://www.ohr.int/ohr-dept/presso/presssp/ default.asp?content_id =33523 . 410 Ten Years since Dayton Ten years after the Dayton Agreement ended the hostilities and established a framework for peace and rebuilding throughout Bosnia-Hercegovina, the country has one army, one customs and border administration, and one universal passport. In addition, over a million prewar homes had been returned to their former owners. Bosnia-Hercegovina has also moved forward on the path to economic and physical recovery, and most of those responsible for the war are no longer in politics due to death, retirement, or being indicted for war crimes. Mostar has returned to its position as an internationally recognized historic city, made official with UNESCO’s designation, and its Old Bridge and Old Town had been beautifully restored. Mostar’s administrative partitions had been removed and its unified, multicultural government successfully controls its entire territory. On the other hand, ten years after Dayton, Bosnia’s unified state institutions remain weak, unemployment is still at 43%, and nearly half of its population lives at or below the poverty level. 2 Despite the billions spent on both state and identity formation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, CBS News correspondent Morley Safer argued in 2003 that “so far, there is barely a hint of a nation being built,” and summed up the international community’s role in postwar Bosnia as in truth being “more ‘Mission Impossible’ than ‘Mission Accomplished.’” 3 Ten years after Dayton, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina still voluntarily stress their differences in every possible capacity and at nearly every opportunity. Despite its progress, inter-group tensions indeed 2 3 “Bosnia, Rebuilt but Still Divided,” The Economist, November 23, 2005, http://www.economist .com . “Nation-Building (Mostar),” 60 Minutes, CBS, October 19, 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2003/10/17/60minutes/main578648.shtml . 411 remain high in Mostar, and despite the extensive rebuilding and international funding, it remains the most extensively devastated Bosnian city.4 This mixed report card for Bosnia-Hercegovina and Mostar after ten years of postwar recovery in part results from the shortcomings of the Dayton Agreement itself, whose “uneasy mix” of integrationist and separatist principles have been interpreted in different ways by different constituencies.5 For the international community, as well as for local Bosnian patriots, it was seen as an integrating agreement, in large part because Bosnia-Hercegovina still existed within its former borders. But for separatists among the Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, the Dayton Agreement confirmed their individual status and in some cases, their separate territory. Thus, while some have advocated shared symbols in the past decade, others developed symbols reflecting their distinctive identity Architecture since Dayton has reflected these integrationist and separatist trajectories and therefore how postwar reconstruction and competing national identities are related. This dissertation revealed how overtly unifying and inclusive postwar projects, including the Old Bridge and the Bruce Lee Monument, can be seen as divisive through the controversies they inspired and the varied reactions they evoked. Conversely, this dissertation also revealed that potentially unifying aspects and interpretations were present within even the most seemingly divisive projects and sites. The Gymnasium and the Liska Street Cemetery, for example, betray the existence of shared space in the city, however forced or begrudged. 4 5 “Zukić: Mostar is Still the Most Destroyed City in BiH,” FENA, December 9, 2005, http://www.fena.ba/ . Roger Mac Ginty, “Mobilizing for Destruction and Reconstruction: The Symbolic Power of Buildings in Conflict Situations” (paper presented at the James Marston Fitch Colloquium Target Architecture: The Role of Old Buildings in the Management of Global Conflict, Columbia University, New York, February 22-23, 2002), 5. 412 Figure 90: Graffiti on the parapet of the New Old Bridge, March 2006 and rocket damage to the Jasenica Mosque, October 2006. (images: Bljesak.info, Mostar and Oslobođenje, Sarajevo). It remains to be seen whether the reunification of Mostar’s government and the decreasing role of the international community in Bosnia-Hercegovina will change the course of architecture and urbanism either towards more overtly unifying tendencies or towards greater tolerance of different symbols and varied interpretations of those symbols. So far, the more frequent postwar trend towards divisiveness and intolerance and the propensity for heritage sites to be contested still appear central in Mostar. Even as I am trying to conclude this dissertation in 2006, two attacks have indicated continued conflict on the “architectural front” in Mostar, including graffiti on the Old Bridge in March and a hand-propelled rocket shot through the façade of a recently reconstructed mosque in October (fig. 90). 6 So while for some sites and in some 6 Reuters, “Missile Hits Bosnia Mosque ahead of Ramadan Meal,” October 10, 2006, http://today.reuters.co.uk ; “Missile Hits Bosnian Mosque,” Islam Online, October 11, 2006, http://www.islamonline.com/cgi-bin/news_service/world_full_story.asp?servcie_id=2554 ; F. Vele, “Teroristički napad na Džamiju u Jasenici” [Terrorist Attack on Mosque in Jasenica], Dnevni Avaz, October 11, 2006, 1; N. Dedić, “Zoljom na Džamiju” [With a Bazooka on a Mosque], Dnevni List, October 11, 2006, http://www.dnevni-list.ba/?mdls=1&mdls_tip&nid=6785 ; D.P. “Teroristićki Akt u Jasenici kod Mostara” [Terrorist Act in Jasenica near Mostar], Oslobođenje, October 11, 2006, http://www.oslobodjenje.com.ba/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49213 =& Itemid=44; “Rocket Attack Targets Mostar Mosque,” SETimes, October 11, 2006, http://www. setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/newsbriefs/2006/10/11/nb-02 . 413 minds the period of reconstruction is coming to a close, destruction continues at others. Though the precise motives of the perpetrators of these recent crimes is unknown, we can perhaps assume there is some connection to identity politics based on the nature of the sites selected and the crimes committed. Like the destruction of the Old Bridge itself, both recent attacks have been locally interpreted in this way. The graffiti on the bridge includes the word “Zrinjsko,” the name of the new Croat soccer team in Mostar – revealing something about the identity and allegiances of the perpetrators. And though perhaps just an adolescent prank better classified as vandalism than iconoclasm, the graffiti writers could have chosen to spray-paint their message somewhere else. Their choice of target and willingness to deface the Old Bridge reveals they do not respect and value it in the same way as others in the city. The rocket attack on the mosque in the Mostar suburb of Jasenica was more explicitly identity based, especially considering the history of the site, whose reconstruction had been fiercely contested in 2005 by the mostly-Catholic Croats in the surrounding neighborhood. Both the selected weapon and target indicate an iconoclastic motive. The attack on the mosque, as well as the graffiti on the Old Bridge, demonstrate the potential for renewed violence directed against Mostar’s heritage, as has been clearly demonstrated in long contested cities such as Beirut and Jerusalem, where citizens barely have an opportunity to resettle and repairs are barely completed before renewed attacks occur. In a press conference after the damage to the Jasenica mosque, the OHR condemned it as well as condemned damage inflicted on gravestones in a nearby Catholic cemetery the following night. The OHR also appealed for calm, responsible 414 media reporting, and quick investigations of these incidents “to ensure that they do not degenerate into a tit-for-tat cycle of violence.” 7 Representing Competing Identities The title of this dissertation was meant to call upon the interrelated concepts of representing identities and competing identities. Different conceptions of self, attitudes about one’s country, and interpretations of the recent war have competed within Mostar in the past decade. But Mostar actually reveals a matrix of contestations: not only do different identity groups compete, but conflicts also clearly exist within these “sides.” This was revealed by the historical tensions between the Franciscans and the Bishop, manifested recently through competing bell towers on the Mostar skyline. This propensity for intra-group conflict was also apparent within the difficult to distinguish positions of Bosnian Muslim nationalists and Bosnian nationalists. These subtleties were perceptible in east Mostar’s tensions between increasing the number of minarets on that same skyline versus maintaining the prewar status quo. This dissertation also revealed how many historic sites are multivalent and how contests for supremacy among the multiple interpretations of these sites and the various visions of the city reflect yet another form of competition in Mostar. What I have called contested or multivalent sites, Ashworth and Tunbridge described as dissonant heritage, and as these two theorists have argued, all heritage is to some extent contested. 8 But there are sites, especially those caught up in territorial or 7 8 OHR, “OHR’s Statement at the International Agencies’ Joint Press Conference in Mostar,” October 11, 2006, www.ohr.int/print/?content_id=38257 . Gregory Ashworth and J.E. Tunbridge, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996). R. Jones and B.J. Shaw agree these 415 identity conflicts, for which disagreements about meanings have more serious consequences. These are the conflicts that lead to violence – both against heritage and against the human populations who value those sites. Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall and Iain Borden note that representations of urban identity are always reductive because of “the very size, complexity and ever-changing nature of the city,” but argue that though all interpretations omit and simplify, “that does not mean that representations are wrong.” 9 But it also does not mean that articulating or privileging these interpretations as the defining way of understanding the city or a particular site is a productive enterprise, especially in conflict-prone contexts where the goal is reducing tensions. In Mostar, each side has not only suggested different meanings for sites, but has tended to hold these as exclusively valid and argued vehemently that other positions are illegitimate. For example, the Jubilee Cross on Hum Hill and the bell tower of the Franciscan Church, two of the most controversial sites in postwar Mostar, have been understood by Bosnian Muslims and the international community as symbols of Croat nationalism and therefore as antagonistic to reconciliation and multiculturalism in Bosnia-Hercegovina. But is this in fact a contradiction? Is Croat nationalism diametrically opposed to a multicultural Bosnia? Or is the construction of both churches and mosques in fact a true reflection of the city’s and the country’s multiculturalism since it demonstrates the simultaneous flourishing of multiple cultures? Indeed, are separatism and reconciliation mutually exclusive? Can reconciliation not also be conceived of as resulting from acceptance of the expression of different ideas and identities and the 9 terms are synonymous. Contested Urban Heritage: Voices from the Periphery (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1997), 2. Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall, and Iain Borden, City Cultures Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), 193. 416 building of sites associated with them? If this potentiality is to be explored, instead of condemning projects of the Croat Catholics as divisive, the validity of Croat fears of being a minority imposed upon by hegemonic ideas they disagree with should be recognized, and their desires to celebrate their identity should be respected. 10 At the same time, many factors about the cross and bell tower, especially including their sites and scales, suggest they were indeed intentionally provocative. Though one might hope that projects seeking validity, respect, and sensitive understanding would also exude these same qualities, this is not always the case. Accepting that some antagonism is undoubtedly present in any multicultural context is a possibility that must be considered. David Lowenthal has argued that having a “national identity requires both having a heritage and thinking it unique,” and that processes of differentiation and distinction inherently include aggressive assertions of superiority or primacy. 11 Anthropologist Robert Hayden has argued therefore that rather than assuming cities such as Mostar are sites of “positive tolerance” the concepts of “competitive sharing and antagonistic tolerance” better grasp their complicated dualistic nature of tension and cooperation, conflict and harmony, sharing and challenging. 12 This dissertation has actively sought to rethink dissonant heritage to demonstrate how it is possible to reconceive a violently debated heritage site, such as the Old Bridge, so 10 11 12 Heiko Wimmen argues this point not only in terms of architectural projects, but more broadly suggests the need for solutions (such as cultural autonomy, and power-sharing not based on population percentages) that reduce Croat fears and bring them into the political and cultural process of the country without assimilating them. Wimmen, “New Nations, Imagined Borders: Engineering Public Space in Postwar Mostar / Bosnia & Herzegovina” (paper presented at the “Berlin Conference for Public Spheres,” Beirut, Lebanon, October 22-24, 2004), 5. Lowenthal, and “Identity, Heritage, History,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 47, 53. Hayden, “Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites in South Asia and the Balkans,” Current Anthropology 43 (2002), 217. 417 that conflict is not inevitable. This is not accomplished simply by imposing rhetorical and symbolic pleas for unity and peace or assigning multicultural symbolism to a site, but rather by acknowledging the multiple readings and accepting the multiple associations as equally valid. Appreciating and respecting the diversity of ways of seeing these sites is a crucial, yet poorly studied and understood, component of the reconciliation process. 13 Superficial understandings of particular contexts that ignore or gloss over multifaceted realities are typically to blame for these quick-fix symbolic solutions, as oversimplification can result from deliberate or accidental ignorance of the context in which these projects are envisioned. This was true in the Bosnian case. For example, according to one commander of the UNPROFOR forces deployed in 1994, “the last thing that a peacekeeper wants to know is the history of the region he is going to. It complicates the task of mediation.” 14 Intimate background knowledge may complicate an international intervention, but knowing the various communities and their interpretations of history is necessary for seeing how projects can contribute either to the increase or to the reduction of tensions. In reference to the Old Bridge, Michael Ignatieff has argued that since Bosnia was “Europe and America’s premiere experiment in nation building in the 1990s” and 13 14 Though poorly implemented, this point has not been totally missed by international organizations. According to an unheeded special USIP report from 1995, reducing “the commercialization and symbols of the international community at the local level” was advised in order to improve the effectiveness of NGOs in peacebuilding in divided cities like Mostar. Julia Demichelis, “NGOS and Peacebuilding in Bosnia’s Ethnically Divided Cities,” USIP Special Report 32, June 1995, http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/early/ BosniaNGO.html . Major-General MacKenzie, UNPROFOR Bosnia, c.1994, quoted in Tunbridge and Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage, ix. 418 since “everybody want[ed] to go home,” there could be no “better end credit than that beautiful bridge” for the international community. 15 But Ignatieff continued: the key thing that Mostar tells you about nation building is beware of fantasies. Don’t think you can impose reconciliation. Bitterness runs very deep. You can’t plaster over that stuff. And we, because we have short timetables, cause we’re in a hurry, we often want symbolic results more than real ones. 16 Aspects of the much debated “national question” in the former Yugoslavia, and in complicated Bosnia-Hercegovina, are illuminated by this study on how identities have been created and reinforced through architectural and urban symbolism. National identities have shaped perceptions about the built environment, but wartime destruction, postwar reconstruction, and urban images have simultaneously shaped national identities throughout the region. Mostar does not just represent or reflect Bosnia’s multicultural identity, but according to the report nominating the city for World Heritage status, Mostar’s multiculturalism is argued as “one of the earliest sources for the identity and history of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole.” 17 This ICOMOS report suggests that the idea of Bosnia as multicultural is in part based on the image of its cities, including Mostar, as multicultural, but as this dissertation has shown, Mostar’s image as multicultural is in part derived from the idea of Bosnia as traditionally multicultural. Thus a chicken or egg question arises about which came first. On the one hand, cities predate nations and the long histories of shared urban spaces in Bosnia may indeed have led to an understanding of this country in this way. On the other hand, the image of Mostar and other Bosnian cities as consciously 15 16 17 “Nation-Building (Mostar),” “Nation-Building (Mostar),” ICOMOS, “Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina),” Evaluations of Cultural Properties. Report prepared for the 29th Session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in Durban, South Africa, 10-17 July 2005 (April 2005), 180. 419 multicultural is in large part a wartime and postwar construction projected backwards onto the prewar period. In either case, national and urban identities in BosniaHercegovina are clearly interrelated and mutually reinforcing and influential. In Mostar, this relationship between these two types of identities is complicated by a third level: architectural identity. Mostar’s image as a multicultural city is in part a conflation of the meaning of individual architectural sites like the Old Bridge with the newly conceived Bosnian national identity. The bridge, the city, and the nation therefore all took on these celebratory multicultural associations quite recently, a fact seldom recognized by those arguing the loudest for them. It is for this reason that I began this dissertation by suggesting Mostar and its bridge offered an opportunity to study the process of symbol-making. In turn, Mostar has also revealed the complex ways these symbols influence that which they are meant to represent: in this case national identities. Implications, Limitations, and Future Directions The ways in which architectural, urban, and national identities interrelate which are raised in this dissertation beg for further theoretical exploration and explanation, indicating one potential future direction for this study. There are other important threads and limitations within this work that also point to possible ways it could evolve in the future. The identity debate made visible through architecture in Mostar offered an opportunity to explore a wide range of symbolic issues, but at the same time prevented examination of others. Mostar is a key city in Bosnia-Hercegovina, both in 420 terms of its political, demographic, and cultural significance as well as its role as a bell weather of inter-group tensions. The numerous sites in Mostar with which symbolic associations have been made and the frequency of public discussion about their potential meanings allowed for a thorough exploration of this one city, and provided more than enough information to fill a dissertation. In addition, within Mostar the relationship between architecture and identity is at once blatantly obvious as well as nuanced and intricate: crosses and church towers make the presence of certain identity groups clear to even the most casual visitor to the city, but at the same time, the changed color of street signs more subtly reinforces and delimits difference for the well-informed. Thus Mostar offered an opportunity to explore the layered character of these interconnections between identity and the built environment. Examining just Mostar allowed me to offer an in-depth study which discussed the Old Bridge in full detail, but also allocated sufficient attention to the city’s numerous other interesting sites. But competing identities are observable in the postwar architecture of every Bosnian city, and studying only Mostar limited this dissertation to an examination of only one of the many fault lines of the Bosnian conflict: the tension between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian multiculturalism. Exploring the postwar reconstruction process in other Bosnian cities would allow deeper study of other competitions of national identity simultaneously taking place in Bosnia-Hercegovina. For example, in Sarajevo the tension and ambiguity between the identity categories of Bosnian and Muslim is the primary contest being played out in the built environment. In Banja Luka, recent architectural projects and policies have demonstrated the exclusiveness of contemporary Serb national identity and its dominance over other identities in the Republika Srpska. In short, Bosnia’s three main 421 cities have all been envisioned as formerly multicultural places that have become Croat (Mostar), Muslim (Sarajevo), and Serb (Banja Luka) during and since the war. Therefore important aspects of the multifaceted identity conflict in BosniaHercegovina and major points of contention can not be addressed in a discussion of only Mostar. This limitation indicates another important potential new direction for this work. As one of the few focused, scholarly studies on the complicated role of architecture and cultural heritage in the overall reconstruction and reconciliation process of a postconflict society, this dissertation has implications for other similar contexts well beyond Bosnia-Hercegovina. Since architecture has so often been targeted and manipulated during recent wars, better understanding these connections could improve the effectiveness of international interventions, which are increasingly being followed by long-term commitments to peacekeeping, nation-building, and social reconstruction. The better understanding of the relationship between reconstruction and identities that this dissertation described serves as an argument for why context is crucial. By acknowledging both the role of architecture and the importance of intimate contextual knowledge in conflicted societies, more informed decisions can be made by both intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations regarding which projects to support and encourage in order to promote reconciliation and lasting-peace. Because of the nature of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, both as having polarized identities and as having incorporated architectural symbolism into this process, it is a tall order to ask that the rebuilding of sites destroyed in its course do anything other than continue to reinforce division. Even if those responsible admit their guilt, apologize, and/or are punished, even if the ‘truth’ becomes a matter of 422 public record, and even if today’s Bosnian Croat leaders separate themselves from the bridge’s destruction, the New Old Bridge would probably still have difficulty serving as a tool for reconciliation. But whatever potential this site, at one time beloved by all Mostar’s, Bosnia’s, and the former Yugoslavia’s residents, might have had was increasingly eclipsed as the international community co-opted both the project and its meaning. 423