I am from Bosnia, and as you know, it was hell down from 1992 to 1995. For 1 year I lived and survived in a city of 60,000 inhabitants without electricity, oil, running water , Without traditional food and consumables distribution services, and without any governmental organization.
Our city was surrounded by armed forces for 1 year, and in that city it was shit.
We did not have any police or organized army. There were armed groups, and those who were armed defended their houses and their families.
When it all began, some of us were better prepared than others, but most of the neighboring families only had food for a few days.
Some of us had pistols, and very few of them had AK47s and rifles.
After 1 or 2 months, the gangs began their destruction: hospitals for example, quickly became slaughterhouses.
Police forces were no longer present, and hospital staff absenteeism was over 80%.

I was lucky, my family was wide at that time (15 members in a big house, 6 pistols, 3 AK47), and so we survived ... at least most of us.
The Americans swung MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) every 10 days to help encircled cities like ours, but it was never enough.Some houses had small vegetable gardens, but most did not.

After 3 months, the first rumors of death by starvation began ... but also the deaths by exposure to the cold.
We dismantled all our doors, framed the windows of abandoned houses, our floor ... and I also burned all our furniture to keep us warm.
Many died of diseases, mainly because of water (2 members of my family), we mainly drank rainwater, we ate pigeon and even rat. The currency quickly became crap ...
We were bartering;For a box of beef you could have a girl for a few hours (it's hard, but it was reality), I remember that most women who sold their bodies were desperate mothers.
Firearms, ammunition, candles, lighters, antibiotics, oil, batteries and food ... we were like animals for that.
They also apparently didn't teach you how to count.
25 year rule.
Benjamin Robinson
In a situation like this, everything changes, and most people become monsters ... it was ugly.
Strength was in number.If you were alone in a house, it was only a matter of time before it was looted and killed ... no matter if you were armed. I and my family are ready now;I am well armed, I have a good stock and I am "educated".
It is not important what will happen;Earthquake, war, tsunami, extraterrestrials, terrorism, scarcity, economic collapse, riot ... the important thing is that something will happen!
From my experience, you can not survive alone, strength is in numbers, be close to your family, prepare with it, choose your friends wisely and get ready with them too.
1- How did you move safely?
In fact the city was divided into community streets.In our street (15/20 houses) we organized patrols (5 armed men each night) to keep an eye on gangs and enemies.
We traded between us in the street.At 5 kilometers there was a very organized street for the trochus, but it was too dangerous to get there during the day because of the snipers.In addition we were more likely to get striped down than to barter, and I only went there twice, and only when I really needed something special and important (he mainly speaks Medicines, in particular antibiotics).
No one used cars in town because roads were blocked with debris, or other abandoned cars ... and oil was worth gold!
If I had to go somewhere it was night.Never move alone, but never in large group either (2/3 men may be).Always armed, very quickly, and always in the shadows through the ruins, never in the streets.
There were a lot of organized gangs, 10/15 people, sometimes 50 ... but there were also people like you and me, fathers, grandfathers, people long before the shit, now killing and pillaging.
There were not really good and bad guys ... most of them were in between;That is, ready for anything, good or bad.
Nicholas Price
not OP but it´s almost 25 years, also there had been a lot of balkan war threads. Let this one for humanities value
Aaron White
1992 to 2017 is literally 25 years you fucking idiot
Lucas Long
>He says while it's still 2016 and the OP is clearly talking from 1992-95.
Dominic Long
>it's still 2016 Yeah for 2 weeks
Christian Gomez
And the siege of Sarajevo, of which I am presuming the OP is talking about, started in May.
Xavier Bell
Oh wow so you mean it's not 25 years ago but 24 years and six months? Gee you sure showed me. shut the fuck up
Liam Morris
>Be wrong >Acknowledge you're wrong. >Tell people who point out how you're wrong to shut up.
You're even worse than /pol/ cancer. At least they think they're correct in their idiotic, muddled way.
Camden Fisher
How am I wrong? you're retarded
Kevin Butler
Yeah man, who wants to hear cool stories about life in a war zone, fuck that, let's just argue about arbitrary board rules!
Charles Powell
You're wrong in claiming that it was "Literally 25 years you fucking idiot" a la post
John Morales
ARTILJERIJA
Hunter Ortiz
No i'm not. It was 25 years ago
Levi Hall
interesting, care to go on OP?
James Cook
>Today's date, December 14th, 2016. >Siege of Sarajevo, starts May 10th, 1992.
That is not 25 years, and you fucking admitted it here.
Dominic Gray
Calm your autism down, and let the poor man speak
Xavier Wood
How can you be such a pointlessly pedantic fuckhead and not know that the Siege of Sarajevo started on April 5? just fucking neck yourself dude you're wasting your time
>literally being obsessively autistic and wanting to delete cool historical threads because they miss the arbitrary board cutoff point by a few months
I don't think this semen slurping board is for me
Carter Cooper
No, stay. I like your mentality.
Jeremiah Clark
>mfw I live in nyc and realize how precarious it all really is
Jason Scott
Why the fuck would anyone live in that cesspit is beyond me. Tell me you're at least a billionaire trustfund babby living in UES and not someone from a shithole like Brooklyn.
David Torres
I remember reading a graphic novel called Safe Area Goražde in High School. It was written/drawn by a war correspondent who lived for a few months in one of the besieged cities during the Balkan wars (The aformentioned Goražde).
I remember it was my first exposure to the conflict and what the breakdown in society looks like, so it was really eye-opening.
There is one scene where a resident of the town talks about being inside the local Hospital when it got shelled, and most of the patients were killed. It was pretty graphic and disturbing at the time I read it.
I also recall the author stating that the towns folk would ask him to bring Levi Jeans, a type of Sarajevo made cigarettes, VHS tapes, and Times magazine, any time he was leaving the City.
They also really liked Bill Clinton apparently.
Dominic Baker
Born and raised here, entire family is here, and there are a lot of coding jobs here. I don't really have anywhere else to go and probably would have ended up here anyway because of the way the economy is. Besides, nyc has been a "nice" place to live since the early noughts and is nothing like it was in the 70s and 80s.
Hunter Hall
I've spent a week in a place in Rockaway beach and it was literally the worst place I've ever been to, and I've visited Detroit and Cleveland before.
Elijah Brown
is it true that foreign intelligence services airlifted the bosnians weapons to lift the seige? I heard it was the CIA or the ISI which smuggled weapons to the bosnian fighters
Jose Robinson
Dude, I'm from Vancouver there's gunna be a cataclysmic earthquake/tsunami in my life time without a doubt. Just hope that a nuke in a shipping container doesn't go off in your harbor.
Cooper Green
>nukes are transported in commercial shipping containers and can randomly set off Why is every leaf a fucking retard
Colton King
I'm talking about a terrorist attack
Jaxson Taylor
Someone read the sum of all fears
Julian Brooks
You from Srebrenica m8?
James Diaz
Nope. Wasn't it Baltimore in that book?
Alexander Wilson
Stupid questions from an ignorant neighbor of former Yugoslavia Why didn't you just surrender?
Why did Bosnia try to just secede thinking there would be no backlash from the center and from the Bosnian Serbs?
Zachary Diaz
Honestly nothing of value would be lost if someone managed to nuke Baltimore.
Angel Evans
Ahahaha
Justin Hall
>Why didn't you just surrender? Not OP, but
Did you miss the part where the Serbs were literally slaughtering every Bosnian man and raping or killing ever Bosnian woman?
Are you not familiar with the whole "attempted genocide" part of the Balkan wars?
And on a different note, would you willingly submit to another ethnic/cultural group, despite the fact that you outnumber them in your province/country or whatever? Particularly when the group you are submitting to have thousands of extremely fucked up historical reasons to want you dead?
Luis Sanchez
>Particularly when the group you are submitting to have thousands of extremely fucked up historical reasons to want you dead?
What are some of the reasons, user?
Andrew Cruz
I don't think there would be reprisal if the government surrendered. At least noting that would be on the scale of things that came later.
Jackson Ward
Muslims were big friends of Croatian fascists. Also muh centuries of muh Turkish oppression.
t. Croat
Hunter Diaz
>extremely fucked up historical reasons to want you dead? No reason at all, other than they decided to secede, so to justify reprisal the government dug up everything that they could use to paint the muslims as traitors of the Serbs. Zizek gave a good talk about this.
Isaac Lee
I don't claim to be an expert but,
The Serbians were angry at the Bosnians for: - Mass converting to Islam during Ottoman occupation - Wielding more power than the Serbians in the Hapsburg Empire - Bosnian insurgencies and guerilla warfare prior to, during, and immediately after, WWI - Bosnian insurgencies and attacks before and during WWII - Having the audacity to demand their own government after Yugoslavia broke up
Etc. I'm sure a Serbian or Bosnian could give a shitload more, but basically the various parts of the Balkans have been fighting and hating each other since the Ottoman Empire days.
Yes, if the Bosnians had consented to being ruled by an extremely nationalistic Serbia that was literally spreading anti-Bosnian propaganda, surely nothing bad would have happened!
Jacob Parker
To clarify,
I don't mean Bosnia the country, but rather Bosniaks the people, and Yugoslavic Muslims.
Brody Turner
>would you willingly submit to another ethnic/cultural group, despite the fact that you outnumber them in your province/country or whatever?
It depends on the circumstances. It happened many times in history. And Muslims were barely the majority anyway. The point is that just a few years before 1992 the Muslims were citizens of the same country as the Serbs. Muslims could travel everywhere, Serbs too. At some point the Serbs weren't just killing Bosnian, but were together in the same army and police force. Bosnia itself was not a specifically Muslim or "Bosnian" state, but a state of all Yugoslavs Suddenly, "secession at all costs" and Bosnia is 100% Bosnian state with others as "minorities". How do you go from one situation to the other. This is hard to understand for a non-Yugoslav
Hudson Jenkins
thanks, friend.
Nolan Carter
>calling Bosnia "hell" Bosnian war was a joke compared to other wars during the time.
Kevin Cook
My understanding of the Balkans conflict is that basically, after Tito died, the Serbian republic (which was a semi-autonomous republic within Yugoslavia) saw their chance to take power within Yugoslavia, being that Serbs were the most numerous in the country. They elected a Serbian nationalist who quickly went from "Serbia should have the most say in Yugo affairs," to "Serbia should have ALL the say in Yugo affairs." Predictably, several ethnic minorities, the Croats and Albanians basically, who had already been agitating for independence even in Tito's day, said "Fuck it" and went full blown independence mode.
The Serbs struggled to get these outlying areas under control, and when the Serb lead Yugo government began to go full Serb nationalism, the Bosnians and Bosnian Muslims (including a not insignificant number of Bosnian Serbs) decided to make their own bid for Bosnian independence because they didn't want to ruled by a people they have so much bad blood with.
One thing leads to another, ethnic genocides break out, Serbs in particular turning on former friends (not to downplay Bosnian war crimes, because they were numerous as well), and the whole country falls apart and everyone starts killing everyone else, the Serbs just want to kill or remove anyone not a Serb, and the UN can only watch this horrible clusterfuck from the sidelines with a bewildered and ineffectual face.
The Balkans are called the powder-keg of Europe with very good reason.
Kayden Carter
What other wars? Gulf War and Chechnya? Those are very much comparable to the Yugoslav wars.
Elijah Brown
Especially Chechnya. Insurgents vs a (former) world power, who bombed the shit out of the whole country, killing ~100000 civiliians, 1/10 of the whole population
Lincoln James
Everyone forgets about Rwanda which was another ethno conflict happening at the same time.
Oliver Peterson
Thanks, I appreciate the answer and trying to summarize the conflict, but I did want an opinion from an actual Bosnian.
For the most part i was presented with two versions: >official Western: Serbs were evil and attacked and killed innocent minorities >contrarian: Serbs were romantic heroes who fought to keep their country together I always doubted the first and leaned for the last, but now I no longer believe that one either. What I still think is that it wasn't inevitable, the whole "one thing leads to another" could have been prevented.
Nathan King
>100 000 civilians That's only the absolutely highest astimate, the most conservative one is around 35 000. Which is actually very comparable to Yugoslav Wars.
Anthony Cruz
It's interesting. The Yugoslav constitution of 1974 took many precautions to balance power. Specifically to limit Serbia's power. Serbia was effectively stripped of most authority over it's two autonomous provinces, which became 2 votes that were always opposed to the 1 Serbian vote.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-bureaucratic_revolution But then the system made to keep Serbian political power (stemming from population numbers) in check became the exact opposite, and gave Milosevic almost complete power on the federal level. Which quickly lead to Slovenia and Croatia leaving.
Matthew Reyes
Fuck off, it's historically relevant
Matthew King
Dirty Muzzie
Hunter Gutierrez
>around 35 000 Thats not true. It's kinda official that during the first Chechen war about 80 000 civilians died. And it's most likely that more than 80 000 civilians died since during both Chechen wars up to 200 000 civilians died.
Lucas Walker
I think you would be hard pressed to find someone from the Balkans with an objective view of the conflict (or the things that lead up to it) because of how relatively recent it was.
Serbians are always going to say they were faultless heroes saving the country, Bosnians will always make out Serbs to be heartless genocidal monsters, etc.
Your best bet would probably be to ask a Bosnian Serb, they would be the most likely to have an objective opinion about what lead up to the conflict.
Evan Robinson
>Bosnian Serb Like this guy right here.
Daniel Roberts
>"one thing leads to another" could have been prevented. The only way it could have been prevented was a military coup. They are bad in general, but if it resulted in avoiding the war, and either keeping Yugoslavia together, or splitting up with the stroke of a pen the result would have been much better. Yugoslavia crumbling without a war would leave about the same number of butthurt people, but a lot more people alive. I'd say the best people to ask would be centrists from any of the countries. There's a big divide in both Croatia and Serbia. With right wing people calling left wing people traitors, because they can be critical of the actions of their country (which needs to be tiptoed around if they want to get elected).
Michael Richardson
>nobody in this thread mentioned Alijia didn't sign the Lisbon agreement thanks to the eternal state department
Sebastian Gray
>The Yugoslav constitution of 1974 took many precautions to balance power. Which sounds bizarre. Serbs were numerous and widespread. Of course they were going to have a huge influence. It was legitimate. Those precautions caused a extremist backlash in the long run. I have no experience running a state with many populations but it didn't seem wise . The Soviet Union didn't become a giant Yugoslavia because Russians still kept a huge influence in the states that had large Russian populations, like Belarus, Ukraine or Kazakhstan. But this leads to those native populations being under Russian tyranny which is another problem.
Noah Cox
It's because of the way the first Yugoslavia, the kingdom of Yugoslavia was created. I'm not gonna go into detail Basically Serbia pressured Croats to join (because Italy and Hungary were going to take it's territory). Pulled some scumbag moves. Promised a federal/decentralized state. But then bribed Slovene and Muslim (later to become Bosniaks) politicians and voted in a centralized state without Croatian votes. And then Croats were the political opposition until 1939, when Serbian politicians accepted their demand for autonomy (mostly because of what happened to Austria and Czechoslovakia). Croats literally had no say in how the country was run for the first 20 years.
Ryan Watson
Just though about it a bit and the current situation in Ukraine and it is somewhat similar to Bosnia Mother Country helps ethnic rebels in former federal unit secede from the republic because they see themselves as being threatened by WWII fascists
Evan Brooks
Doessn't the balkans have an IQ on par with subsaharan africa? :thinking:
