1. Introduction
A photograph of a father with his daughters is on the wall of a dilapidated shack. At the corner is a suicide note that reads: That gang of criminals came here to rob the house. And the next day, they killed my dear daughters. And I shot them all. I hid the gun in the backyard. If you get this letter… Don’t even try to look for me.
Terrified by the unexpected presence of intruders, an old man in the quiet house begs desperately: “Please do not take away my wife’s medication.” The looters are unresponsive. Why should they be alarmed when there is nothing that two unarmed old people can do to them? They take everything. After a couple of days, they return to the house and find the two old people dead in their beds.
Smiling at his little girl, a father promises, “I will definitely narrate a bedtime story to you tonight.” The next day, he dies while attempting to bring a toy for her. He fails to return. The little girl awaits the return of her father and marks her daily routine through crude drawings in chalk.
They are using their limited supply of medicines to treat their wounds, but you and your group members are already injured, who should take the medicine now? Your friends haven’t eaten in three days now and without food, they won’t be able to survive, so who should get the last bit of food?
Even when the war ends, civilians must rebuild homes, institutions, and relationships while living with long-term psychological consequences. Research on Sarajevo residents has found that cumulative wartime trauma and postwar stress remained associated with substantial psychological distress more than a decade after the conflict (Comtesse et al., 2019).
This was from the video game “This War of Mine”. In this game, you’re not playing as a soldier, you’re playing as a weak civilian. You don’t have an endless supply of ammo. You can’t just breathe easy and heal your wound. Every resource is so scarce that every decision becomes an ethical dilemma for you. What was the need of 11 bit studios to make such a survival game? There are many ways in which they could have made this game’s level and story.
Their goal is to recreate, as faithfully as possible, the real conditions civilians face in wartime.
The game is inspired by a historical event – the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. With the announcement of the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Serbs had decided to carve out their own separate Serb republic. There were some 13,000 troops occupying the hills above Sarajevo, who conducted random shelling of civilians using artillery and mortar fire, as well as sniping from those heights. Everyday movement became dangerous, and warning signs such as “Beware of Snipers” reflected the constant threat on exposed streets. This historical setting helps explain why scavenging in This War of Mine is generally safer at night than during the day (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [ICTY], 2003).
2. Siege of Sarajevo
The siege lasted from April 1992 until February 1996—1,425 days—making it one of the longest sieges of a capital city in modern warfare; it was three times as long as the Battle of Stalingrad and even a year longer than the Siege of Leningrad. In total, 13,952 civilians lost their lives in the course of the siege, including over 1,500 children. (Ball et al., 2007) The UNICEF report shows that at least 40% of Sarajevo’s children have been directly fired at by snipers, 51% of them saw a person killed, 39% saw their relatives killed, 73% have been living in shelled or attacked homes, and 89% have lived in underground shelters. (Stuvland et al., 2001)
Sammi Cheng’s Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo has its basis in such events that occurred in the past. The lovers whom the song honors hailed from Sarajevo, with one being a Serbian male while the other a female of Bosnian descent. They were shot dead when attempting to escape the besieged city. First, the young man was shot dead instantly while the woman was killed shortly afterward. He crawled toward his lover and embraced her body. In the next fifteen minutes, she died too. Both of them were just twenty-five years old. Due to their death in an area controlled by both conflicting groups, each group claimed that the other had started shooting first. (Schork, 1993)
In 1995, tragedy struck again. The United Nations Security Council had declared Srebrenica a “safe area,” but the Bosnian Serb army ignored that designation. Radovan Karadžić, president of Republika Srpska, issued instructions to make “Srebrenica unbearable, with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants.” After Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica in July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered and tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people were forcibly transferred. International courts have legally recognized the killings as genocide (International Court of Justice, 2007)
3. The Balkans
The Siege of Sarajevo and the massacre at Srebrenica are merely two incidents in the broader tragedy of the Yugoslavian wars. For behind both these incidents was a history of centuries of ethnic strife, cultural rivalry, and territorial disputes, to the extent that it may sometimes be difficult to clearly attribute responsibility for what took place. To fully comprehend the troubled history of the Balkan region and its enduring problems, one should start from the beginning. “The Balkans” is not only a geographical term, but also a geopolitical and cultural one; its scope extends beyond the peninsula in the strictly physical sense.
The Balkan Peninsula is located in Southeastern Europe, situated between the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa and thus acts as a land link between the two continents of Europe and Asia. The word Balkan is of Turkish origin, meaning “mountain,” and thus the entire region consists of mountains and plateaus with very little flat land. Most of the geographical formations on the peninsula consist of karstic terrain. Thus, it has not always been easy to have agricultural practices and efficient transport in the region.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, due to the influence of the Ottoman Empire, the name “Turkey in Europe” was used most often in reference to the area. However, due to the formation of national states like Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro, the name “the Balkan Peninsula” started being used more recently. Nevertheless, not only does “the Balkans” have a geographical meaning, but the term itself is also negatively perceived by the culture. For the Western Europeans, this far away place in southeastern Europe represented violence and primitiveness. British author Rebecca West, in her travelogue Black Lamb and Grey Falcon said: “Violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans: all I knew of the South Slavs.”
Following the fall of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, the ongoing civil wars in Yugoslavia have not only reinforced these stereotypes, but created new ones even more deeply embedded in peoples’ consciousness, such as authoritarianism, ethnical differences and long-standing historical conflicts between religions and cultures. The geopolitical concept of “Balkanization” – disintegration of a state or territory into several mutually hostile states or territories – is certainly one of them. (Todorova, 2009)
4. History of the Balkan Peninsula
Strategic role of the Balkan Peninsula can hardly be overstated. Through entire history, this peninsula occupied an immensely important strategic position. It was always perceived as a place of contact of civilizations and geopolitically important area. Here comes together Orthodoxy and Catholicism and here is the point where Islam and Christianity meet each other. In the era of Roman Empire, the line dividing the Eastern part of Rome from the Western part of it was drawn right through the Balkans; and this line divided this region artificially and predetermined its tragic fate as well as divided cultural zones and also Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy.
The movement of the Slavs heralded the emergence of the modern ethnic composition of the peninsula. During migrations of the Sixth century AD, when masses of people were moving across Eurasia, the Slavic tribes settled down in the Balkans. Due to their numerousness, they gradually assimilated most of the local Roman inhabitants. As a result of their migrations, these Slavic tribes were formed into separate nations: Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, and Bulgarians.
During the subsequent centuries, different parts of the area were controlled alternately by Croats and Hungarians. The twelfth century witnessed the liberation of the Serbs from the dominance of Byzantium and their declaration of independence. Gradually, the Serbian kingdom grew and in 1331 when Byzantium was struggling against the threat from the Ottomans, Serbia defeated the Bulgarians and Byzantines and turned out to be the dominant empire of the Balkans. It was in this century that the concept of “Greater Serbia” was conceived.
This was the Golden Age of Serbia. At its peak, Serbia controlled nearly two-thirds of the peninsula. However, at the end of the fourteenth century, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into the Balkans ended Serbia’s dream of the unification of the peninsula. The Serbs defended themselves fiercely against the Ottoman invasion. In the well-known Battle of Kosovo, the combined forces of the allies including Prince Lazar, murdered Sultan Murad; however, they were finally beaten by the Turks. Declining Serbia fell to the Ottomans in 1459.
The legacy of the Ottoman Empire was strong in the Balkan Peninsula. The Turks introduced Islam to the area, resulting in a religious balance between Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Islam. Consequently, the whole peninsula was partitioned among Western European Catholic culture, Slavic Orthodox culture, and Turkish Muslim culture, sharply increasing the religious conflicts within the area.
Ethnic conflicts among the Serbs, Albanians, and Croats were used by the Ottoman Empire for consolidating its power over the Balkans. Wars also entailed massive population migrations. As a result, various nations with incompatible cultures started to coexist on one territory, and the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans emerged in this way.
The Balkans were ruled both by the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg dynasty in the sixteenth century. The Habsburgs managed to defend Vienna from the Ottomans in 1529, which resulted in the containment of the Turks in Europe and the expansion of the influence of the Habsburg dynasty into Slovenia and parts of Croatia.
During the following two hundred years, the two Empires continued to battle over the Balkan territory. It is the tug-of-war that can be compared to the confrontation of two huge grindstones. The nations inhabiting the peninsula were drawn into military confrontations between the Empires, separated by spheres of influence, and their existence was crushed during the collision of interests of the superpowers.
The Ottoman Empire started to deteriorate during this period. The Treaty of Karlowitz signed in 1699 with Austria marked the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. The Tsarist Russia did not miss the opportunity and appeared on the Balkan scene as another great rival force advocating the theory of Pan-Slavism. The Russian Empire was fighting against the Ottomans many times. During the reign of Catherine II, the Crimea was annexed and the expansion toward the Black Sea and the Balkans took place. Other Empires also joined the competition. In 1878, in order to restrain Russia and settle disputes over the division of spoils, they convened the Congress of Berlin: Bulgaria was split into three parts, Russia retained Bessarabia, Britain gained Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina was effectively placed under Austro-Hungarian control, and the independence of Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro was recognized.
The Congress of Berlin carved up the Balkans. It did not resolve the national problems that already existed but instead generated new problems of territory and ethnicity. After this event, the Balkan peninsula became popularly referred to as the “powder keg of Europe.” A history of oppression and injustice resulted in radical nationalism. A series of national liberation movements took hold in the region, and the peoples of the Balkans gained their freedom from either the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Greeks gained their independence in 1829; Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Romania in 1878.
These new nation-states were, on the one hand, manipulated and interfered with by the great powers, and on the other, locked in territorial competition with one another. All of them agreed in principle on forming some kind of unified multinational community, yet each wanted its own nation to play the dominant role. This expansive nationalism was vividly displayed in the two Balkan Wars. In the First Balkan War, the Balkan League—an alliance of four nation-states—partitioned the remaining Ottoman territory in Europe. Yet despite their military success, disagreement soon broke out over control of Macedonia. Backed by Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria declared war on its former allies, triggering the Second Balkan War, and was ultimately defeated.
As a result of these wars, Serbia emerged even stronger. It sought to recover the glory of the fourteenth century, and nationalist sentiment surged at home. This alarmed Austria-Hungary, and the hostility between the two countries became the fuse of the First World War. Defeated Bulgaria, meanwhile, turned toward revanchism and joined the Central Powers when the war broke out.
5. Modern Era
On 28 June 1914, in Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. It turned out to be an immediate trigger of the First World War. Austria-Hungary got what it had long desired – the excuse to declare war on Serbia and ignite the “powder-keg” of the Balkans without realizing that the explosion would also destroy its empire.
Amid the debris, the nations of the Balkans formed an independent state as never before. Thus, on 1 December 1918, King Peter I of Serbia announced the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which later became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
However, the new state was immediately beset by political difficulties from the moment it was established. The problem of ethnic strife between Serbs and Croats became its main national issue. The new regime pursued the concept of “Greater Serbianism” as its basic national doctrine, and the constitution recognized the supremacy of the Serbian dominant group in the kingdom regardless of the glaring inequality among different nations in terms of politics, religion, and economics. Frustrated and demanding autonomy, the Croats protested and assassinated. Undeniably, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia not only did not solve the ethnic issues which it inherited, but it made them even more serious.
During the Second World War, the Axis powers invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This fragile and fragmented country was defeated and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria.
Germany ruled over the Balkans by various ways. One of them was genocide. For each wounded German soldier, there were fifty Yugoslav soldiers executed. For each German soldier killed, there were one hundred Yugoslav soldiers executed.
Another approach was the setting up of puppet governments. Through their support of the so-called Independent State of Croatia, the Nazis exacerbated inter-ethnic animosities and increased conflict. The Croat pro-Ustaše and Serb pro-Chetnik forces killed each other, and many Croats and Serbs were killed. With the threats of national annihilation and occupation looming before them, Tito rallied the Yugoslav Communist Party in an arduous anti-fascist fight, asking the peoples of Yugoslavia to join together in forming a national front. Tito restored Yugoslavia with the help of the Soviets, making Yugoslavia the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, comprising six republics – Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Macedonia – and two autonomous regions, Kosovo and Vojvodina, each with extensive autonomy. Since the second Yugoslavia practiced the policy of national self-determination and recognized the separateness of its national groups, the Balkan national question was partially resolved for some time after the war.
6. The Socialist Republic
New country, new hope, new challenges: one federation, two alphabets, three religions, four languages, five nations, six republics, seven neighbors. Not long after the end of the war, Stalin and Tito were at odds politically. Russia continued in its previous pattern of meddling in the Balkans and attempted to make Yugoslavia a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Tito himself wanted to dominate the Balkan Peninsula, planning a Balkan Federation where Yugoslavia would annex Albania and Greece and integrate Bulgaria to form a bloc outside the reach of Moscow.
The expulsion of the Yugoslav Communist Party from the Cominform in 1948 is regarded by Yugoslavs as the turning point when Tito managed to earn national dignity for Yugoslavia. Economically blocked, diplomatically isolated, and under military threat, Yugoslavia started searching for an independent path to socialism. Having made many efforts throughout years, it reached certain success in economic development and became one of the most rapidly developing countries in those times. Tito further went on to head the Non-Aligned Movement. His policies are called “Titoism” in total.
The notion of a Balkan Federation created some tensions between Yugoslavia and Greece, as well as between the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. Nonetheless, in the process of socialist reform, Yugoslavia faced a new problem of ethnicity.
Having broken its ties with the Soviet Union in order to break with the Stalinist system, Yugoslavia moved from a centralized federation to a decentralized one. Consequently, the authority of the federation was increasingly reduced, as each republic and autonomous region pursued its own policy independently. The 1974 Constitution strengthened the autonomy of the republics to such an extent that they acquired the right to veto federal decisions. Essentially, the federal parliament and government became the coordinating bodies of conflicting local policies.
The economic system had become too fragmented. First, the federal government was stripped of macroeconomic control due to decentralization, and second, due to reforms, the management and distribution of income became decentralized. The unified economy of the country split into separate closed economic systems of the regions, thereby destroying the economic basis of the federation as such. As an economic crisis came, there was nothing left to do for the federal government except waiting for help from the republics, whose desire to be independent increased along with anger.
Ethnic policy was also overcorrected in Yugoslavia. While striving to ensure absolute equality between nations, Yugoslavia paid little attention to the fact that these nations were economically and culturally different. Moreover, there was not enough emphasis put on interaction between different cultures, and identification with the federation was rather poor. Also, knowing some lessons from history, Tito paid a lot of attention to eliminating “Greater Serbianism,” and forgetting about other nationalisms.
7. Collapse
On October 8, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia led the charge in declaring themselves independent nations and formed their own armed forces. On November 20, 1991, the Parliament of Macedonia declared the republic as an “independent sovereign state.” On March 1, 1992, a referendum was carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which returned a vote for independence in overwhelming numbers. However, the Serbs boycotted the process, and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was declared independent. Finally, on April 27, 1992, the parliament of the now Serbia and Montenegro only country adopted a new constitution and declared the establishment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, aka Third Yugoslavia. In this way, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia established by Tito and the other Yugoslav Communists was dissolved.
Civil war first broke out in Slovenia and Croatia, and then spread to Bosnia and Kosovo.
The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was often called “a little Yugoslavia.” Its ethnic composition, religious affiliations, history, and culture were like a small version of Yugoslavia as a whole. In Bosnia, you would find Orthodox Serbs, Catholics, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims living together. The 1991 census recorded 43.5% of the population as Muslims by nationality (the category later generally identified as Bosniak), 31.2% as Serbs, 17.4% as Croats, and 5.5% as Yugoslavs. Despite having such an intricate ethnic makeup, Bosnia was able to maintain some sort of peace. In fact, even Tito used to praise Bosnia and said that “The greatest achievement of the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina – brotherhood, love, and unity – is also one of the major factors in the strength and stability of Yugoslavia as a whole.” (Burg & Shoup, 1999)
But each side wanted a piece of Bosnia. When radical nationalism came into the scene, all pretensions of peace fell apart. The president of Serbia, Milošević, resuscitated the concept of “Greater Serbia,” stating that Serbia had a duty to take care of the Serbs living outside of Serbia and that the areas populated by Serbs in Bosnia be annexed to Serbia. The same claims were made by the adherents of “Greater Croatia”: ” We turned toward Bosnia in order to compensate for the territories we had lost; through the Croats and Muslims of Bosnia we would accelerate this process.” Muslim nations did not lag behind either in this matter; they rendered all their political and financial help to ensure that their “Muslim brothers win this jihad.”
The gulf between Croats and Bosnians who supported independence and Serbs who were against them widened. Nevertheless, regardless of their opposition, both sides held the referendum for independence. The voting rate was 63.7 percent since the Serbs refused to take part in it, and 92.7 percent voted for independence. On this basis, Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed their independence. The Serbs were furious about it, and on April 6, 1992, they began massive military actions and created the state called “Republika Srpska.” It marked the start of the Bosnian War. (Ramet, 2006)
This war took place from 1992 to 1995 and can be divided into three phases.
This phase took place from April 1992 until the year ended. In this period, there was bloody battles between the forces of Bosnian Serbs on the one hand, and the forces of Bosniak and Croat on the other hand. The former got support from Serbia, whereas the latter was supported by Croatia. Right at the start of the war, since the Serbs were equipped with advanced weaponry and military help from Serbia, but Bosniak forces lacked training, and the Croat lacked manpower, the Serbs managed to occupy more than 60 percent of the territory of Bosnia and besieged its capital, Sarajevo, for a period of three and a half years.
In May, the forces of Bosniak and Croat reached an understanding regarding creating a confederation with Croatia, and troops of Croatia entered Bosnia and started battling against Serb forces. Until the end of the year, the territorial balance among the three armed groups was formed, which consisted of 70 percent territory being under the control of Serbs, 20 percent under the control of Croats, and 10 percent under the control of Bosniaks. President of France Francois Mitterand visited Sarajevo during the siege, but the visit seemed rather a political show than anything else. The United Nations could provide humanitarian help, however, the UN did not have the right to interfere directly in the military operations. (Burg & Shoup, 1999; ICTY, 2003)
The second stage covered the timeframe from the beginning of 1993 till the end of 1994, when the international community started interfering more actively into the affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. First, Western European states tried to solve what they regarded as the regional European conflict without any outside help, however, the clear inconsistency of their attitude towards the conflicting parties just worsened the situation. In the end, the leading role in the international intervention was taken by the USA. In June 1993, the UN Security Council gave peacekeeping forces the right to use force for defending six designated safe zones. At the same time, anti-Serb Bosniaks and Croats started fighting each other for control over the territory, and Bosnia became involved into the tripartite war.
The Bosniak and Croat sides signed up to the “Bosniak-Croat Federation plus confederation” program proposed by America in March 1994, thus making their peace with each other. In August, under the pressure from the international community, Serbia severed relations with the Bosnian Serbs. By the end of the year, also under the auspices of American mediation, the Bosnian Serbs and Bosniak side came to terms about a four-month truce.
Stage three occurred from the beginning of 1995 to the end of that year, when the storm finally started subsiding. In February 1995, Bosnian Serbs and Croatian Serbs established military cooperation; in March, the Bosniak-Croat Federation entered into a military agreement with Croatia, too. With the expiration of the truce, the government army of Bosnia – predominantly Muslims – went on the offensive against the Serbs. By that time, the fighting was no longer restricted to Bosnia, but had also spread out to Serb-populated regions of Croatia.
On July 6, in response to the killing of Serbs by the Bosniaks, the Serbs invaded Srebrenica and massacred the Bosnian males there.
On September 8, in negotiations sponsored by the Americans, an agreement in principle was reached between Bosnia, Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia regarding a settlement of the Bosnian crisis. Ultimately, on December 14, 1995, the presidents of Bosnia, Izetbegović, of Croatia, Tuđman, and of the Yugoslav Federation, Milošević, signed in Paris the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this manner ended the Bosnian War, which had been raging for over three years.
8. Conclusion
The horror of Sarajevo, the tragedy of Srebrenica, the destruction of Yugoslavia itself – all these phenomena are manifestations of the sufferings experienced during the thousands of years of history of the Balkan Peninsula. The geopolitics of this part of the world has doomed its inhabitants to endless sufferings. For all the millenia, they have known little but war. Ever since birth, history has been pressing down on their shoulders. They live next to peoples that belong to different nations and religions and cannot comprehend them; they are governed by foreigners who will not defend their interests. Their complaints and protests at the destiny laid upon them can never reach the ears of the world community because their voice is too weak.
For some, it is shameful to forget the past, while for others, only through forgetting the past could they start anew. They did not forget the past; however, neither were they stuck in bitterness. They knew that someday, justice would prevail from the historical accounts. For thirty years now, Sarajevo has finally started to live again, full of life. Sarajevo is a place worth going to. Due to its multi-ethnic history, this place had not only seen conflict, but a diverse cultural scene as well. Built on ruins, the bullet-riddled walls and the Sarajevo Roses of this city serve as a reminder of the dangers of nationalistic extremism. And war? There has never been such a thing as a game with victors.