This may be depressing. Then again, maybe not. No, it probably will be.
Not too long ago we had the good fortune to move into the eco-house we have been building for seven years. It was a rewarding and equally frustrating process. One I am most certainly grateful for.
I sat on the terrace to admire the view a few days back. Trebevic Mountain dominates our southern skyline. The peak of Bjelasnica veers into view to the southwest. We even get smaller peeks (no pun intended) at Jahorina and Treskavica. It was a sunny day. The birds brought the silent forests to life. We were finally home.
Then the chainsaws kicked into action. Several of them at once. The echo from the surrounding valleys tricking me as to their location. The sounds of trees being felled was soon dwarfed by the explosion of machine gun fire. Although I didn't have a visual and the echoes of rapid gun fire bounced back and forth across the valley, I knew the exact location and origin of this violent disruption.
Well over 300 trees, small and large, were illegally cut down this past winter in our little neighborhood alone. We all know the name and surname of at least one of the culprits. I have regular conversations with the police, who have - on several occasions - caught him in the act. The dispatcher sighs in annoyance when I call now. I call almost every day when I hear the chainsaws yanked into action. And promise to keep calling until it stops.
One of the culprits, a man named Enver Klico, pulled up to my house not long ago to apologize for stealing around 20m3 of wood from our little patch of forest. He said 'I didn't know it was yours.' My answer to him 'but you did know it wasn't yours?' He was confused by my rebuttal. Why would I care if he cut someone else's forest down, right? In the trunk of his car he had around 15 fresh logs. When I inquired about his load he said ' oh, this is from state owned land.' He asked me not to report him. I told him if I saw him again in this neighborhood I would call the police. He sneered 'zovne' (call them). Two hours later he was back with his unregistered car and driving his vehicle without a drivers license. The police caught him. He was back the next morning and again that afternoon cutting down trees. And most mornings since then. I still call the police almost every day.
Maybe I'll find myself in court again for naming names. But the truth has to mean something, n'est pas?
Donje Biosko, our little village of a dozen homes at 900 meters in the hills around Sarajevo, is a water protection area. The large karst field feeds Moscanica River in the valley below, which provides most of the Old Town with drinking water. The loss of forest cover from here will and does effect the quality and quantity of water that finds its way to the Moscanica source. No one seems horribly interested in this fact. Not for now anyway.
The rapid gun fire comes from the police shooting range down the road. The only open air range in Europe that is located in a residential area in the capital city. A residential area that survived 1,400 days under siege. Although every single resident of the neighborhood has signed a petition to stop the constant gunfire just a hundred meters from their homes, the municipality has issued a questionable 'concession' to the 'Green Berets Association.' These are supposed to be the men that defended the city during the siege. They have switched roles now, offering free and prolonged torture for all those traumatized by the longest siege in modern European history. It is a playground for police with heavy machine guns, right smack in the middle of town.
Now back to the terrace.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a large man walking a pit bull down our street. The pit bull had a heavy chain around its neck that dragged on the ground. He was severely undernourished. The pit bull that is. The man walking him more resembled the mountains around us in size. A neighbor later confirmed my suspicions that he was 'training' (aka starving and torturing) the animal for dog fights in Hladivode. Happy days.
I looked around at the handful of handsome homes in our idyllic little community from our perched terrace. Almost all of them had been robbed at some point in the recent past. Some more than once. The police regularly tell us it's a 'local job' and they 'have their suspicions' as to who it might be. Yet no one has ever been caught. None of us believe anyone ever will be.
This is most certainly a mere drop in the ocean in comparison to the monumental problems Bosnia and Herzegovina faces. I find it, however, rather indicative of the current state of affairs. Nothing seems sacred or safe. Not much of anything here is fair. It's a brutal and bitter reality that the citizens of this country have to swallow on a daily basis. And I wonder how long it will be until something gives way. When and if it does, it ain't gonna be pretty.