Bosnia in the News

The Guardian in England has come out with an article saying what many people here believe and are now talking about openly -- Bosnia is splintering apart.

As the October elections approach, talk is more and more open that there is no real state of Bosnia, just two entities existing side by side not all that happily. Milorad Dodik, former beloved of internationals now as head of the Republika Srpska, is talking so openly about splitting that Serb part of the state from the rest some wonder why he isn't being punished. The Office of the High Representative, the European appointed overseer of Bosnia, had adopted the same attitude as the rest of the international community, which is: It's been more than a decade since the end of the war, we're done, all is fixed, let's move on.

It's depressing and a little scary to see and hear this.

That's why the news reports I am following more avidly these days are about Richard Gere. The superstar hottie arrived in Sarajevo this weekend 9/10/06 to begin filiming Flak Jacket, a movie about reporters trying to find Bosnian war criminals still on the loose. It's taken from a magazine article by reporter Scott Anderson and while fiction, it's pretty close to reality.

Friday night Hawley and I went to see Road to Guantanamo, the documentary about a group of English young men picked up with Taliban fighters in the bombing right after 9/11 and kept in detention and tortured for two years. The film is not great. The beginning is confusing and unfocused, the whole thing exaggerated and overheated. But the cruelty and stupidity of American anti-terrorism policy is unmistakable and powerfully repellent. Strange to watch it in this Muslim city and to be cheering against the US.