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This is part two in a series of two. Part one is entitled Bosnia: why we just can’t learn.

There is no one act of rebuilding after conflict, just as there is no linear path. In Bosnia’s case in particular, beyond the personal experiences of conflict and reconciliation, there are national and international political issues to be reckoned with. 

What path out of conflict?

One thing this talk emphasised — something I feel should be emphasised more around the subject of life post-conflict — is that rebuilding and reconciling are processes, not events. What’s more, these processes are unique to the conflicts they serve to resolve — or, depending on your view, absolve. 

For Pervanic, the admission of involvement is critical: people need to tell their stories without fear of being attacked of judged. They need to say, ‘yes, we did this’ in order for all parties to come to an agreement of what happened, and then move on. To me, there is something very personal about this take on reconciliation.

For Ashdown, the focus is less on personal experience and more on the mechanisms of societal transition. Education — “the thing we fought the war for” — is a force of change, but it’s a slow process hampered by the beliefs and nomenclature children absorb everywhere outside of the classroom. The creation and maintenance of multi-ethnic spaces is also a huge part of this process.

And this is a fundamental difference between the two viewpoints. Ashdown, perhaps because his involvement was less personal and because he isn’t still penalised for his nationality, as Pervanic maintains he is (Bosnians face restricted travel in Europe), is willing to let things take a little longer, whereas Pervanic — again, likely due to his own very immediate involvement — isn’t willing to wait and hope and see. His stance is that education and other grassroots efforts are not enough — that change must come from leadership.

Several weeks ago I attended a typically, irritatingly thought-provoking discussion at the Frontline Club. I am a huge supporter of the club — indeed I am applying for membership — but the one down side to the mind-bendingly intelligent debate I get to absorb at the club is this panging, demi-nostalgic sneak of a yearn that goes something like, “What would my life be like if I had become a war reporter/foreign affairs correspondent/listened to my aunties and done that Master’s degree after all?”

— but I digress.

Bosnia: Will the uncertain peace deal hold? was a fundraising event for Most Mira, a Bosnian charity founded by Kemal Pervanic, a thirtysomething Bosnian man who has truly lived through hell: he is a survivor of the Omarska concentration camps, and he has grown to forgive those who imprisoned and tortured him. 

Pervanic was joined on the panel by Lord Paddy Ashdown, the former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and an authority on the politics and policies of the region. Allan Little, a BBC correspondent whose beat for a long time included Yugoslavia, chaired the event (and did an exceptional job of it).

In keeping with the theme of this blog — social change and the ideals and mechanisms that enable it — I’d like to pick up on some of the personal and political issues (not now, feminists) that emerged during the panel, and explore them on their own and through the prism of Sunday’s 15th anniversary of the genocide at Srebenica. I will do this in two posts — this is the first.