VI Bosnia and Hercegovina: It’s a Long Way to
Medjugorje
On the morning of Friday 12th March, dedicated to
Bl. Joseph Tshang-ta-Pong[1],
the official on the Croatian side of the Bosnia-Hercegovina border took an
evident dislike to the Russian visas in my passport, but let me through. It was
the 10th anniversary of St John Paul the Great’s ‘Day of Pardon’, when on
behalf of the whole Church throughout history he asked forgiveness for sins
committed by his co-religionists against Jews, other non-Christians, indigenous
peoples, other Christians, women and children, heretics and migrants. It
happened also however that I was stepping outside the confines of Nato
territory, exactly ten years after the publication of a Sunday Times article by
Tom Walker and Aidan Laverty, ‘CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army’, whose impact
was deliberately and professionally blunted by a BBC documentary broadcast at
9pm on the same day, ‘Moral [sic]
Combat: Nato at War’. From the latter:
Dugi Gorani, Kosovo Albanian Negotiator: “The more
civilians were killed, the chances of international intervention became bigger,
and the KLA[2] of
course realised that. There was this foreign diplomat who once told me ‘Look
unless you pass the quota of five thousand deaths you’ll never have anybody
permanently present in Kosovo from the foreign diplomacy.’”
And the former:
“Central Intelligence Agency officers were
ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and
giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the
Yugoslav army and Serbian police.
“When the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which co-ordinated
the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before airstrikes began, many of its
satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the
KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with Nato and
Washington. Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley
Clark, the Nato commander.”
I was
amused by Bosnian border guards who, after I told them I was walking to
Jerusalem via Medjugorje, seemed to be asking “Where's your horse?” Later I
learned that a Frenchwoman was riding her “magaretz” (donkey) along a similar
route to mine, a few days ahead of me. People in that part of Bosnia,
accustomed perhaps to Medjugorje pilgrims, were very friendly; one chap
summoned me into his home for a tasty lunch, others offered food or insisted I
needn’t pay for teas and coffees. I was also struck by the apparent prosperity
of villages I passed through. That night I was to be found sleeping soundly
among piles of sticks at the back of a shed that looked suitably unfrequented,
then on the next afternoon, Saturday 13 March, I arrived in Medjugorje.
The parish
church in Medjugorje is dedicated to the Apostle St James the Great[3].
After paying a visit to Our Lord there I found the Mary's Meals café, where I
was hoping to intercept a new pair of boots and my kilt among other things, but
found it closed for the weekend. The prospect of a couple of days rest in
Medjugorje became all the sweeter however, when I phoned a friend who knew the
owners of a really lovely place to stay called “Pansion Kata”; I wasn't allowed
to pay because my hosts were too kind. I unburdened my conscience in the
Sacrament of Reconciliation, attended Mass in English and the ‘international’
Mass on Sunday evening, and it was not least wonderful simply to be able to ‘unwind’.
After Mass
on the Monday morning I came back to the Mary's Meals café, where a delightful
Belgian lady handed me packages sent from home. These contained among other
things the kilt, which I had in mind particularly to wear in the company of
Serbs, and my folks had also put another pair of charity shop boots in.
This contrasted with BBC documentary-makers in 2000 however, who conspicuously failed to “put the boot in” with their craftily sanitised weekend special ‘Moral [sic] Combat: Nato at War’. On the Wednesday after transmission, two replies Allan Little gave to correspondents in an online Question and Answer session help to explain why this was so. Doug, USA: “I am struck by the refusal of the US-led international community to accept the Albanians as the aggressor in this war. Why have we (the US-led international community) sponsored the Albanian movement?” Allan Little: “This is very complicated. I have argued for the last decade that the principal aggressor and root of instability in the Balkans has been Milošević and the nature of the Milošević regime. It would be hard for me to turn round now and say that’s no longer the case. I don’t think the Albanians are the aggressor, I don’t think there’s any real doubt about that [emphases added].” This may usefully be seen in conjunction with the reply he makes to ‘Michael Ranson, UK’: “Is there ever a time when a BBC reporter should use his position to actively speak out against the British government?” Allan Little: “No, I don't think that actively speaking out against the British government is necessary or appropriate. That said, it is equally unnecessary and inappropriate to speak out in favour of the British government. I don’t think that either of those things is needed.” The first point Little makes here cannot but leave him open to charges of double standards. It is not “necessary or appropriate” to speak out against the British government – but apparently it’s OK to “argue for the last decade that the principal aggressor and root of instability in the Balkans has been Milošević and the nature of the Milošević regime”. The programme’s title is further clear evidence of discrimination in favour of western powers. ‘Moral Combat: Nato at War’ echoes precisely the type of sanctimonious drivel spouted by Tony Blair (a man now widely regarded as a war criminal) in the opening sequence: “The moral purpose was very simple. A gross
injustice had been done to people, right on the doorstep of the European Union,
which we were in a position to prevent and reverse, and we had to do that…”
A tiny bit
sorry to have to leave Medjugorje, nonetheless I was resolved to put more
“heart” into my onward Christian soldiering. After dark I reached the crest of
a hill and saw numerous lights in a valley which I supposed must be Mostar; but
the road continued to wind its way round the slopes until I was suddenly
confronted with a dramatic view of the real Mostar – much bigger than I
remembered it, as a day-tripper twelve years before. Finding a discreet place
tucked against the wall of the cathedral to sleep, I was then glad to be up in
time for 7am Mass.
‘Most’ is
the word for ‘bridge’ in Slavic languages, but I passed up an opportunity to
see Mostar’s eponymous crossing point, forgetting that when I visited in 1998
it was only a bomb-damaged ruin (courtesy incidentally of Croat ordnance). So
without having seen perhaps the most famous landmark in the Balkans, I set
straight off along the Neretva “kanjon”, reaching in the evening a place to
sleep on a train station platform at Dreznica.
On the
feast of St. Patrick the weather was fine, the scenery beautiful and I enjoyed
the best-tasting coffee of my life, because I’d had to walk for several hours
before it was available. Reaching the outskirts of Konjic I slept well in a
rather scruffy neglected chamber under a car park. There were more great vistas
next day as I ascended into mountains again, and memorably lizards could be
seen scampering about amid shrinking patches of snow. At the other end of a
longish tunnel however I found myself back in the depths of winter; everything
covered in thick white stuff and the sun no longer with its hat on. As darkness
fell I reached a village largely if not entirely populated by Muslims, hearing
their call to prayer for the first time on my walk. On the far edge, a local
pillar of the community bustled me into his nice warm café and produced
complimentary coffee, a big sandwich and a bar of chocolate before I was
allowed to leave. It was around this time that I started making use of the
indispensable phrase “In-sha-Allah” or “God willing” in Arabic; “Ierusalim, In-sha-Allah”. Sleep that night
was a bit of a shambles because neighbourhood dogs were disturbed by my
presence in the doorway of an empty-looking building; after an hour or two of
their barking I conceded defeat and moved to a nearby station platform.
On 19th
March, St. Joseph’s Day, I made a bid for Sarajevo, but having got thoroughly
lost in trying to avoid a dual carriageway I reached only the western fringe of
this huge and elongated city. Early next morning the Sarajevo PD[4]
found me sleeping in a narrow space between two high-rise buildings; moving on
I attended Mass, before following the letter of their instructions by sitting
down for a coffee in the beguiling old town. Sarajevo is a place where, over
the centuries, different cultures and religions have been able to meet, mingle,
engage, even serenade, but also, sadly, fight.[5]
[1] Chinese
catechist, martyred in 1815.
[2] Kosovo
Liberation Army
[3] Patron
saint of pilgrims, whose symbol is a scallop shell as worn by pilgrims to Santiago
(St James) de Compostella in Spain.
[4] Police
Department
[5] The scant biographical details of St Vitus include
information that he was born in Sicily and suffered martyrdom in the
persecution of Diocletian, around 303AD. For Serb Orthodox Christians his
feast, known as ‘Vidovdan’ and celebrated on 28th June (15th June Old Style),
is associated with a number of key historical events, most important of which
is the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. On Vidovdan in 1389, both the
Ottoman Turkish and Serb armies are understood to have been all but annihilated
on the Kosovo Polje (Field); though
the Turks emerged strong enough to overrun the remaining Serb principalities in
succeeding years.
On Vidovdan,
28 June 1914, a Bosnian Serb student, Gavrilo Princip, was part of a five-man
team of assassins sent by Serbian secret society the Black Hand to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary.
Having pledged their readiness to die for what became the Yugoslav cause, all
were issued with cyanide pills to swallow in case of arrest. The pills had
expired however, being potent enough only to sicken both Princip and another of
the conspirators who was captured. So Princip survived, and being a few weeks
short of his 20th birthday, he couldn’t be executed under Austro-Hungarian law.
What is perhaps interesting however is that before dying from malnutrition and
skeletal tuberculosis at the prison camp of Theresienstadt in modern-day Czech
Republic, his right arm had wasted away and had to be amputated (indeed the operation
is understood to have aggravated his condition and hastened his death).
Assuming he was right-handed, few limbs in history can have committed a blacker
crime, unleashing as it did horror on a never-before-seen scale. Therefore,
although one can imagine that his death in captivity may well have been awful,
perhaps Princip nonetheless had reason to be eternally grateful both that the
cyanide pill had expired and that he had been too young to hang. In his 1999
book, East European Nationalism, Politics
and Religion, Peter Sugar reports that before his death in 1990 (aged 93)
the youngest and last surviving conspirator Vaso Čubrilović had disavowed the
extreme nationalism of his youth and expressed regret over the assassination:
“We destroyed a beautiful world that was lost forever
due to the war that followed.”
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