There had always been ethnic rivalries...

I have a lot of things on my mind at the moment. I wanted my second post to be about the war in Afghanistan, or about the UN’s damming report on the living conditions faced by many Indigenous Australians, or the piece of trash journalism on TV tonight about the Indigenous communities around Uluru (unfortunately I didn't watch enough of it, as my dad refused to watch "that propaganda").

I wanted to write about any global or contemporary Australian issue..

but here I am again, writing about the Former Yugoslavia.

I wonder what happened to make a neighbour turn against a neighbour?

In school I read that there had always been ethnic rivalries in the Balkans. I came home and told my parents this. They scoffed. What ethnic rivalries? They said. There were no ethnic rivalries-we lived there, we know.

It's an all too familiar story. It reminds me of a documentary I watched on Iraq. An Iraqi woman tells that before the war, no one cared who was a Sunni or Shiite-to do so was considered backward or primitive. And then at the outbreak of the war, the two groups turned on one another. The western media again play it off as, "there had always been ethnic rivalries."

To those who have never been in a war, or whose countries have never experienced such strife, it must all look a bit too barbaric. Of course it couldn't have been all alright..of course there must've been some rivalries..because if there weren't, how can you explain what took place?

Well yeah, I guess it must look that way. How can you explain what happened? Short answer: you can't.

My dad asks himself now, Was there really no hatred? Were we living in a bubble? Maybe it was different in the villages? But ask Ex-Yugo after Ex-Yugo, and they will tell you the same thing. They were drinking coffee with their neighbour one day, and at war the next. No one has a proper answer as to how things unfolded, where they went wrong.

When the propaganda started, my parents thought it would all die down. When the tensions started, my parents thought that they would eventually subside. Even when fighting broke out in Croatia, they thought that it couldn't happen in their own home town. These were people they grew up with, went to high school with, worked and laughed with. No matter what was going on elsewhere, it couldn't happen here.

I guess the lesson to learn with the Balkans is that propaganda is always dangerous. Always fight against it. You might think that those who stir the flames of ethnic hatred are idiots, but even still: never let them get to power.

My parents had their wedding in Omarska in '86. They were a "mixed marriage." There were Serbs, Croats, and Muslims present. Some in mixed marriages themselves. In the videotape I watch all are happy, singing, dancing, laughing. Who would think that a few years later, Omarska would be the site of one of the biggest concentration camps in Europe since WWII?

One man in that videotape, one of my parents' best friends, was murdered in the very same town where he once celebrated their wedding. The rest have literally been dispersed all around the globe; far away from their families, old friends, and what once used to be their homeland. What was one country, became 5; and now 7. Driving past Omarska last year, my dad asked my mum if she wanted to stop-go inside the restaurant where their wedding was once held. My mum answered, "And why on earth would I want to stop there?"