When thinking of Bosnia & Herzegovina, it is difficult not to focus on the Yugoslav wars that blighted the Balkan region for much of the 1990s. At a loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, huge landmass was shredded into civil combat. Much of Bosnia & Herzegovina's landscape is still riddled with mines, and ramshackle buildings loll across its towns and villages. However, the country remains beautiful, and its winding aqua rivers have lost none of their lustre.
Modern-day Bosnia formed when the territory expanded southwards to absorb the province of Hum (now Herzegovina). As a province
of the Ottoman Empire, much of the population converted to Islam but, as a frontier province, the country was the first line of defense against incursions and consequently suffered recurring invasions. Then, under expulsion of the Turks in 1876, Bosnia was assigned to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and an influx of non-Muslims from the north brought Bosnia close to its present-day ethnic mix. Vienna's decision to fully annex Bosnia in 1908 produced a destabilizing chain of events that triggered the First Balkan war and World War I. Serbia eventually annexed Bosnia as part of the new ‘Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’, renamed ‘Yugoslavia’ in 1929.
After Yugoslavia’s dismemberment during World War II, the area was incorporated into a so-called ‘Independent State of Croatia’, ruled by the fascist Ustasa movement. This resulted in genocide against the local Serbs. Concomitantly, the area was the major battleground of the Yugoslav civil war proper between royalist Chetnik forces and Partisans, led by Tito. Following Communist take-over in 1945, Bosnia & Herzegovina became a constituent republic of the new Yugoslav federation.
Communist rule largely suppressed ethnic rivalries. However, they resurfaced once the Yugoslav federation began to unravel circa 1990. With a population split almost equally between Serbs, Croats and Muslims, Bosnia was always likely to be the centerpiece of the struggle for influence. Serbia's initial dominance floundered when the UN imposed sanctions on Serbia because of racial atrocities, and, in 1995, NATO aided the Croat and Muslim armies in retaking much of Bosnia's Serb-occupied territory. Robust American diplomacy split Bosnia between Serbs and Muslim-Croats. Since the end of war, the Dayton Accord has been reasonably successful in returning Bosnia to normality.
Although economic stagnation and international isolation is yet to be overcome, there is non-negative history in abundance, from stunning old mosques to amphitheaters and Catholic shrines. Countryside varies from woodland to mountains to rolling hills. Perhaps most wonderful is the rebuilt bridge in Mostar - what used to be a pre-war ancient overpass. Now re-opened to the public, it is hard not to walk across it and hope it symbolic of new beginnings.
GeographyRoughly triangular in shape, and the geopolitical center of the former Yugoslav Federation, Bosnia & Herzegovina shares borders with Serbia & Montenegro in the east and southeast, and Croatia to the north and west, with a short Adriatic coastline of 20km (12 miles) in the southeast, but no ports.
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