Forgotten Wars: A Journey Through the Remains of Yugoslavia
Thursday, January 15th, 2004
The plaque reads: From this place on 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrown Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia.
When I first told people that I was going to Belgrade, I expected the most common response to be, “Why?”
Why are you going to a country we fought a war with less than five years ago? Why do you want to see a city your country’s Air Force bombed while you were in high school? Why do you so desperately want to see hollowed-out buildings and the ruins of a Chinese embassy that was “accidentally” destroyed? Why on earth are you going to Belgrade?
I was over-generous in my expectations.
The most common question was, “Belgrade. Where is that again?”
We have forgotten another war. A decade of genocidal conflict has disappeared from American memory. While all eyes are focused on Iraq, we have forgotten another war from just five years ago. We have forgotten Yugoslavia. (more…)