Bosnia Herzegovina
By the year 2000, I'd spent 14 years in the Harbor Police & to be quite frank with you, things were getting pretty old hat. The same old thing every day & I was ready for some adventure in my life. I was surfing the web one day & came across the DynCorp recruiting site for the UN Mission in Bosnia Herzegovina, aka: UNMIBH. The site was busy recruiting retired or leave of absence US law enforcement officers for the International Police Task Force, aka: IPTF, with the UN in Bosnia. The UN already has a police agency, known as Civilian Police, or CivPol, but the IPTF was established specifically for the Bosnian UN mission under the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords.
I thought about it for some time & decided to give it a shot. I sent my online resume in & shortly after, was contacted by a DynCorp recruiter. Before I knew it, I was accepted, at least for the week long orientation in Fort Worth. I didn't burn my bridges with the HP, so I took a 2 week leave to attend. Prior to my flight to Fort Worth, I got into reasonable shape, dieted & lost about 20 pounds, so I thought I was good to go.
I left for Texas in mid February 2000, with the understanding with my agency that if I screwed the poop & didn't make the cut, I'd come back to the HP with my tail between my legs. Fortunately, I did make it, although the 6 foot wall was my Mount Everest. But just like Sir Hillary, I did conquer it & before I could even pronounce "Zidravo", I had my resignation letter sent to my Chief & I was on a charter flight to Sarajevo with about 50 other lucky former US police officers & deputy sheriffs. Thus my adventure into the heart of the Balkans began.
We arrived in Sarajevo on February 29th just following a major snow storm. Things were warming up some, but it was still COLD, at least by Louisiana standards.
The Black Hand sought the unification of all Serbs into a Greater Serbia, using violent means to force the Austro-Hungarian Empire out of Yugoslavia. Princip, along with other conspirators, plotted the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Empire & his entourage during a visit to the Balkans & Sarajevo in 1914. On June 28th of that year, Princip succeeded in the task, shooting & killing the Archduke & his wife Sophie as they drove by in a motorcade. As history buffs know, this set into motion World War I & it's bloody aftermath. It could be said that this spot is where WWI began. Princip was considered a hero in Yugoslavia prior to the 1992 war.
As I was very quick to learn, violence, radical Serb nationalism & ethnic intolerance are still an intergral part of this beautiful but tragic country's history.
This is the great man, President of Yugoslavia, Marshal Josip Broz Tito. His death in 1980, eventually led to the most recent Bosnian tragedy. Slobodan Milosovic assumed total power in Yugoslavia in the late 1980's & his goal was, again, Serb unification to the exclusion of all other entities. His actions resulted in Bosnian Serbs nationalist militias rising up with the help of the Yugoslav army, causing the bloodbath of the 1992-95 war.
The Marshal was & still is, a beloved & repected hero to the Yugoslav people. He was Croatian & led the Yugoslavian Partisan forces during World War II, fighting the Nazi invaders of the Balkans. Tito was a Communist, but broke away from Soviet domination once he assumed power. The Marshal ruled Yugoslavia with an iron hand, but during his reign, Yugoslavia grew into a strong independent nation. He crushed any attempt at Serb, Croat or Muslim nationalism & forced his countrymen to consider themselves as one people, Yugoslav.
This statue stands outside of Tito Barracks in Sarajevo, a former Yugoslav army HQ & it's regularly adorned with flowers of tribute. Tito Barracks was our base for processing once we were in-country. We spent about 1 week there, learning about the country, taking UN driver's license tests & english exams among other mundane administrative tasks. At Tito Barracks, we learned where we would be assigned to work in UNMIBH.
Built for the 1984 Winter Olympics to house the participating athletes, this structure was heavily damaged during the Bosnian War. It was obtained by the UN & remodeled as the UNMIBH Headquarters. It was opened in early 2001. The former HQ was in a building across from the PTT (national telephone service) building. It's located on the infamous "Sniper Alley", where Bosnian Serb snipers killed many Sarajevo residents during the terrible Serb seige of that city.
I'll conclude this tour of Sarajevo with the CNN Tower. Built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, it served as a broadcast center for the event. As you can see, it too was heavily damaged during the war & unfortunately under the debris, are the bodies of many. In the basement, is a still functioning newspaper. The Bosnian government will allow the structure to stand as a war memorial.
If you'd like to visit where I was stationed in
Bosnia Herzegovina, click the right arrow.
For maps of Bosnia Herzegovina, click the left arrow.