Absence of Children's Wisdom in the Bosnian Conflict

Absence of Children's Wisdom in the Bosnian Conflict

“There was never a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword”(1). In the films, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, No Man’s Land, and The Fourth Part of the Brain, the Bosnians were not particularly nationalistic or savage, rather; they were normal people whose leaders led them into a violent struggle with their friends and neighbors, which was exacerbated by a lack of effective assistance from the international community and the UN. These films depict the majority of combatants as either people who did not entirely support the war or people who supported the war because they had been misinformed. Furthermore, the mindless atrocities, which became an unfortunate characteristic of the Bosnian War (1992-1995), were not the results of mass xenophobia or collective hatred amongst Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Moslems, who had lived together in relative harmony for generations. Rather, these acts of senseless violence resulted from a combination of socio-economic and political factors that created a climate of fear, which radical Bosnian political leaders and their imperialistic neighbors exploited to benefit their respective countries and ethnic groups.

The multi ethnic and religious composition of Bosnia would appear to indicate that underlying xenophobic and racist sentiments may have existed before the war and contributed to its outbreak. Although the Slavic population of Bosnia shared a common language and a very similar ancestry, there were minor ethnic differences between them. Bosnian Slavs were part of an early migration of Slavic tribes into the Balkans that occurred in the third century C.E., Croats and Serbs migrated...

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...to remember that a friend is a friend regardless of their ethnic composition. It is a shame that the people who fought in the Bosnian conflict did not have the simple wisdom of children, such as those from The Fourth Part of the Brain.

Quotes

(1) General Ulysses S. Grant

Works Cited

The Fourth Part of the Brain. Nenad Dizdarevic. Bosnia, 1996.

Malcom, Noel. Bosnia: A Short Story.

“The global menace of local strife.” The Economist. 24. May, 2003.

No Man’s Land. Tanovic, Danis. Bosnia, 2001.

“The poorman’s curse.” The Economist. 24. May, 2003.

Powel, Samantha. The Atlantic Online. “Bystanders to Genocide.” 15. June, 2003.

Pretty Village, Pretty Flame. Dragojevic, Srdjan. Yugoslavia, 1996.

Rogel, Carole. The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia.

Schom, Alan. Napoleon Bonaparte. First Harper Perennial, 1998.