And then the Bastard shot me, in Dubrovnik

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It is unbelievable to think that anyone would want to bomb such a beautiful place. Dubrovnik is not very big (about 47 000 people live here, all of whom love Goran Ivanisevic and own scooters), but it’s surrounded by mountains, rests on the crystal Adriatic, and looks over sparkling islands. The Old Town is a marvel, built by the Venetians when Dubrovnik was the second most important city outside Constantinople, a center of trade and commerce in all of Europe. The walls that surround the Old Town are immense, thick and high, ready for siege. Nowadays the passages along the top are patrolled by thousands of tourists, shooting any view in their sites. Together with medieval churches, Dubrovnik’s Old Town could easily be the setting of a fairy tale, or many of the ancient cities described by Umberto Eco in his 11th century epic Baudilino, which I had just finished reading. Still, it is hard to imagine that Dubrovnik had been bombed in the Serb-Croat conflict that blew up the Balkans 15 years ago. Especially seeing as it had no strategic value whatsoever.
“Surely they’d want to keep it as intact as possible for the tourism?” I asked Matko as we made our way across the glistening sea.
“You are not thinking like the military, you are not thinking like the Serbs,” he replied, bitterly. “They bombed the Old Town, they set fire to the hills, they had snipers shooting innocent people walking the streets.” The war is still very fresh in people’s minds, and our apartment in the upmarket neighbourhood of Lapad still displayed external repairs for bullets and shrapnel.

Says Danilo, an American who has been living in Dubrovnik for over 30 years: “After seeing what happened in this region, I’m a reborn atheist. The things these people did to each other…” Yet, he was inspired by former enemies becoming friends, and slowly, peace and trust are returning to a region that somehow manages to repeatedly bring out the worst in humanity. Ironically, it was the bombing of Dubrovnik that finally captured the attention of the west to intervene in the conflict. When Milosovic went after one of Germany’s most popular holiday destination, he crossed the line. NATO got involved, and now the little tyrant sits in The Hague, awaiting trial for war crimes. Nobody is under any illusion that this will every actually take place. He was, after all, invading the region because it was in the best interests of his people. One might argue that George W. Bush used the same argument with Iraq, especially if one were a defense attorney.

“The Balkans would shape the end of the 20th century,” writes Robert Kaplan in his excellent Balkan Ghosts, “just as they would shape the beginning.” It’s the Middle East of Europe, and that’s why I decided to go paintballing, to get in touch with my inner soldier.

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