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Three abandoned and fateful places, testifying to the rise and fall of Yugoslavia help us to experience the aftermath of the bloody civil war that spelled the end of the multi-ethnic nation in the Balkans. We visit the military airfield Željava, set deep inside a mountain, the resort facility Kupar and the City of Mostar, which represents the trauma of the wars in Yugoslavia like no other city.
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00:01The forsaken places of history, ominous and mysterious.
00:06Yugoslavia, a socialist country but not part of the Warsaw Pact.
00:12A multi-ethnic state that keeps its ethnic tensions in check.
00:17Yet, eventually, it ran out of money and brothers became enemies.
00:22A secret military airbase, cut deep inside a mountain.
00:28The most expensive structure in Yugoslavia.
00:31When it came time to pay the bills in the 1980s, and that's what happened.
00:37A recreational resort for the Yugoslav people's army, open to foreigners and their currency, became a target in the civil
00:45war.
00:46Kupari.
00:51A legacy of the Ottoman Empire where diverse religions coexisted peacefully.
00:57Then, horrific killings.
00:59A trauma that still is felt today.
01:02Mostar.
01:09Places full of secret stories, in ruins and disturbing.
01:13No one expected to happen, that it will be possible.
01:20Painful memories.
01:22It was a difficult question.
01:25Every one of our lives is so sad that all...
01:30The people who had considered war, the first people were being a conservative.
01:51He skilfully manoeuvred his country between the East and the West.
01:55Socialism, yes, but dependence on Moscow, no.
02:01Where we really saw him elevated to this superstar was after the war,
02:08where all Yugoslavs were looking for peace and stability,
02:13and he was the one who was able to offer it.
02:18Yugoslavia's independence was guaranteed by its People's Army,
02:22the fourth largest military force in Europe.
02:25Secret building projects are started to secure its strike capability.
02:30The biggest one is the aerodrome Željeva.
02:52The USA supplies Yugoslavia with a fleet of thunder jets.
02:57But these aircraft are already outdated in the 1960s.
03:01As replacement for them, Tito buys Soviet mix
03:04and orders the construction of a bomb-proof airbase.
03:17The airbase is deep inside the mountain of Pleževica.
03:24The 73-year-old Hasan Imamović knows every inch of these mountain caverns.
03:29He was one of the first pilots here.
03:31From the aerodrome of Pležica, the first aerodrome of Pležica on 27th maja 1968.
03:45Every aircraft station had a constant fulfillment here, inside the object.
03:50He was ready to fly.
03:53That's how it is.
03:55Originally, the Soviet MiG-21 is designed as a supersonic interceptor.
04:01Their export version is more versatile.
04:03It can engage other planes and attack ground targets.
04:07Yugoslavia buys more than 100 MiG-21s.
04:11Only candidates who meet the most rigorous criteria can become pilots.
04:33The MiG-21 flies in extreme rangers.
04:38The highest width is 21,300 meters.
04:4321,300 meters.
04:45Then, there is a solution like for a cosmonautist.
04:49Construction work for the secret project started in 1957.
04:54Estimated costs back then, 6 billion US dollars.
04:58About 50 billion euros in today's money.
05:01Its completion was delayed for years.
05:03And what has affected the buildings here is that this is the Kraski Kraj and the same
05:09the planet is not a structural stone that is full, but it is preserved with a lot of
05:16trees inside.
05:17Today, the forests have reclaimed the pride of Yugoslavia.
05:21You can only see the runways.
05:23There are five of them, between 2,000 and 2,800 meters long each.
05:28At their ends, the three access points to the actual base.
05:42The solid steel doors weigh 100 tons each.
05:46There are three big caves inside the mountain, spacing up for three fighter jet squadrons.
05:52There are also supply rooms, commando centers, training and sleeping facilities, and a mess
05:58and a total of 3.5 kilometers of tunnel are blasted out of the mountain.
06:07This is more than just another prestige project for President Tito.
06:11Yugoslavia needs to be prepared for two possible war scenarios.
06:15The enemy could attack from the east or the west.
06:20have to be prepared for one type of operational position.
06:21This air bomb is located in one type of operational position, which was the best for Yugoslavia for the time.
06:28Because it was possible to go against the NATO empire against the war and against the
06:32Ukraine in the same time.
06:35Many people can be placed in the beginning of the day of the 70s, when everything was completely different.
06:43When the cold war was there, when the Soviet Union was there,
06:48all the pressure of the nuclear test,
06:53with nuclear weapons.
06:55I think that the construction of this object and many other special objects gave the opportunity to show their fingers.
07:06August 1968. After 11 years of construction, Zeljava is still not finished yet.
07:12Suddenly, an order is issued. The base has to be made operational immediately.
07:17The reason for this could be found only 800 kilometers to the north.
07:21In Prague, 2,000 Warsaw Pact tanks, backed up by 250,000 soldiers, invaded Czechoslovakia.
07:29Yugoslavia's ruler Tito is afraid that the troops' mission was to first take over Prague, and then Belgrade.
07:56The bunker airbase Zeljava is declared finished by executive order.
08:03...
08:07...
08:09...
08:09...
08:09...
08:11It was interesting that, without a doubt, that this situation was the case, but the Russians
08:15had given it to us.
08:17As it was written, they had given it to us.
08:23Hasan Imamovic retired in 1986, six years before Zeljava is destroyed.
08:38Croatia, the Adriatic coast, a cultural landscape going back thousands of years.
08:44In the 1920s, a luxury hotel is built near the city of Dubrovnik, the Grand Hotel Kupari.
08:51To this day, its ruins have been witness to the magic that attracts vacationers from all over the world.
09:00I am Ante Maštrapa from the last time of this disaster from 1975 to 1991.
09:09Today, all that's left of the Grand Hotel is rubble, a memorial to an era in the Balkans
09:16when the dream of a multi-ethnic people living together in peace is kept alive by an iron fist.
09:26This is the most beautiful part of the hotel.
09:29It's only to return to the time when it was a real function.
09:35Now it's...
09:37Here, the trees grow up.
09:40Yugoslavia is founded after World War I.
09:43Up to this point, the peoples of the land had been living under various rulers.
09:47Austria, Hungary, Serbia and the Ottoman Empire.
09:51In 1918, Yugoslavia was created on the basis of close-up or identity of language.
10:00So, South Slovenians, ethnic and linguistic close-up.
10:05Yugoslavia was found in the same time, especially, that it was a real name.
10:11Slovenians, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians all belong to the Southern Slavs.
10:20Plus, there are large communities of Hungarian and Albanian minorities that also live in the country.
10:27Yugoslavia itself is divided into six constituent republics, which don't always correspond to the ethnic groups living there.
10:34And that should prove to be a fatal fact in the course of history.
10:40After World War II, President Tito turns Yugoslavia into a socialist country, which, however, is allied neither with the Soviet
10:49Eastern Bloc nor the West.
10:50This wasn't a Democrat. Tito was a communist.
10:54He wanted to get rid, marginalize and have control.
11:00The Yugoslav People's Army that Tito built is meant to guarantee Yugoslavia's independence.
11:05Its officers belong to society's upper crust and enjoy many privileges.
11:12Coupari, the luxury resort on the Adriatic coast, is converted into a military resort.
11:18We were able to take excursions and representatives of the country.
11:25We were able to take excursions and representatives of the country.
11:39Yugoslavia in the 70s is an open country and more affordable than Italy or France.
11:45And so, more and more tourists flock from the West.
11:48Three million in 1965.
11:51But in 1970, it's five million already and ten million in 1980.
11:55The Autocamp was a part of the war.
11:58So, in one day, we had 8000 people here.
12:02We were in 1987.
12:04In 1987, somewhere, after half of the month, we had a million nights.
12:13There was no difference.
12:14There was no difference.
12:18There was no difference.
12:18There was no difference.
12:19There was no difference.
12:20There was no difference.
12:20There was no difference.
12:22There was no difference.
12:23Revenues from tourism keep the rundown planned economy of Yugoslavia afloat.
12:27Yet the country spends more money than it can make.
12:30The government takes out loans in the East and the West.
12:35At the beginning of the 80s, the multi-ethnic country is deep in the red.
12:42In the Yugoslavian socialism, there was no question in the right way,
12:49because it was known that it would always pay the other one.
12:52So, we won't pay it.
12:53We will always pay someone else.
12:55We will always pay attention to the rest of the world.
12:55That way, 45 years of unresolved records
13:00led to a catastrophic end.
13:08The general director of the Grand Hotel leaves Yugoslavia
13:11and starts a new chapter at a hotel in Libya.
13:16And so, Ante Maštrapa is spared the eruption of violence in Kupari.
13:29Bosnia-Herzegovina, a constituent republic in the heart of Yugoslavia,
13:33with a rugged landscape and a grand history.
13:37In Mostar, opportunities and problems are thrown into particularly stark relief.
13:42The city centre, cultural heritage of the Ottoman Empire.
13:46In the 1970s, socialist architecture was supposed to rejuvenate the city.
13:51Outside the old city of Mostar, a bank building is erected.
13:55Designed by one of the most prominent architects in the country.
14:01It only comes from itself.
14:03You know, when you look at one decision, another decision, etc.
14:08For me here, there were rappers of these two streets,
14:12which were under a certain angle,
14:14and they were supposed to create a building
14:16with, I don't know, 10,000 square meters,
14:19so that the administration of the bank would have become a financial centre in Herzegovina.
14:27That's it.
14:28Good morning.
14:29I am Dragan Biedic.
14:31I am 49 years old.
14:33So, I am 71 years old.
14:35I am a project of this building in Mostar.
14:37Dragan Biedic's father, Djemal,
14:40fought against the German occupation together with Tito.
14:43After the war, he went into politics and rose to the position of Minister-President.
14:48The Biedic family is Muslim.
14:50His father, Djemal, advocated for the recognition of the Bosnian Muslims
14:54as an official ethnic group in Yugoslavia.
15:04Yugoslavia is made up of six constituent republics.
15:08Bosnian Herzegovina is considered a multi-ethnic community.
15:12The 1971 census broke the population down into 40% Muslim Bosnians,
15:1737% Orthodox Serbs and 22% Catholic Croats.
15:22That made Bosnia a miniature edition of Yugoslavia,
15:25a mix of ethnicities and religions.
15:28A powder keg.
15:29The result of the inter-national wars in Yugoslavia
15:36was quite high.
15:38It is mainly related to Bosnia and Herzegovina,
15:43and especially to the city regions.
15:46There was a base for a inter-national cooperation,
15:51close-up and understanding.
15:54At that time, the population of Mosta is half Bosnian and half Croatian.
15:59The city is a model of peaceful coexistence.
16:03But Yugoslavia faces mounting economic problems,
16:06and that's reflected in the planning for the high-rise bank building.
16:28The bank is supposed to have an imposing ground floor,
16:35with one floor above for technical facilities,
16:37and another six floors on top for offices,
16:40and another six floors on top for offices.
16:40A building with exposed concrete,
16:42Beton-Bru in French,
16:44from which the term brutalism is coined for this style.
16:47And that brutalism in architecture,
16:50which there is still a lot,
16:54is a result of the modernity,
16:57which was characteristic for Yugoslavia
17:01in the 1950s and 1960s.
17:03In the 1950s and 1960s.
17:04In fact, Yugoslavia as a socialist country
17:06the country was expanded with socialism,
17:09with the stalinistic concept of culture
17:12at the beginning of 1950s.
17:14And it started with modern people.
17:17The technology inside the concrete block was modern as well.
17:23In 1991, the cables have been installed,
17:42and the building is finished.
17:52It is Mostar's tallest building.
17:54It offers you an unblocked vista of the inner city
17:57and the surrounding mountains.
17:59It is this 360-degree view
18:02that will turn Dragan's building into a place of terror.
18:05During the civil war,
18:07Croat snipers chose this position
18:09to shoot at Bosnian civilians.
18:12It was a tough question.
18:15I was afraid of everyone.
18:17I was afraid of the people.
18:22I was afraid of them.
18:23I was afraid of them.
18:23I would like that those snipers
18:25were not on this building.
18:26But I was sure there was on another one.
18:28It was not a statement.
18:30But the high building
18:32gave the most power for those people.
18:35Since then, Dragan has been working on a concept
18:39to complete this building.
18:40He has never again designed a building of this scale.
18:49Back to Kupari by the sea.
18:51Here, tourists from the west sun bathed on the beach
18:54alongside soldiers from the people's army.
19:03Luxury vacation, Yugoslavian style.
19:06Today, this holiday resort is in ruins.
19:09Back to Kupari by the eighties.
19:13The old troops hunt on the back of the sea.
19:14The three-point sniper.
19:15the war who had an occupation here.
19:18The latter, the ten-year.
19:20The name of Ivana Kulic.
19:25The first time I was here,
19:27it was 1978.
19:31I had nine years ago.
19:34Ivana Kolic is a competitive swimmer from Dubrovnik near Kupari.
19:38There is no indoor swimming pool in her hometown.
19:41And so, in the winter, she traveled to Kupari for training.
19:48This is all for me very hard to watch.
19:51I was here for the first time since 1987.
19:56I was here on the same base.
20:04Here is a soldier.
20:09He was sitting here.
20:11He was sitting here.
20:12He was a fighter.
20:16We were not able to get to train here.
20:19It was a military.
20:20It was very hard.
20:23There was an anecdote.
20:25When the general would want to buy himself,
20:27if we had training, we would have to go outside.
20:30That day, the training was ready.
20:33Because the general would want to buy himself.
20:37In 1984, the Olympic Winter Games are to be held in Sarajevo.
20:42Yugoslavia wants to present itself as modern and powerful.
20:46Many young athletes are chosen to carry the Olympic torch.
20:49Among them, Ivana Kulic, the swimmer from Dubrovnik.
20:55In Dubrovnik, there were four athletes in the Olympics.
21:01I was among those four athletes the most successful athletes.
21:07So, I wore them since I had only 14,5 years.
21:11What the world was not meant to see,
21:14Yugoslavia was mired in an economic crisis.
21:21When it came time to pay the bills in the 1980s,
21:25and that's what happened,
21:26that was when the decline happened.
21:29So, coincidental with Tito's death,
21:32you had Yugoslavia's debt coming due.
21:43Ivana, 14 years old back then,
21:45can feel how the supply situation is deteriorating.
22:00The government's answer to these shortages?
22:04Slogans.
22:05The Young Pioneer Organization is tasked with educating the country's youth
22:09to become good comrades in the spirit of Tito.
22:13And that meant everybody should feel Yugoslavian,
22:16not as a Croat, a Serb or a Bosnian.
22:21I thought, if you are born, if you live in Croatia,
22:26then you are a Croatian,
22:26then you are a Croatian,
22:27then you are a Croatian.
22:29If you live in Serbia, then you are a Serbian.
22:32So, I didn't think that there could be a small difference,
22:37especially between people who speak the same language.
22:41Ethnic tensions are beginning to mount in the 1980s.
22:45Croatia and Slovenia are the richest constituent republics.
22:48Serbia wields the largest political influence.
22:53And the majority of high officers within the People's Army are Serbian.
23:05The problem was revealed in a moment,
23:09a law about the armed forces,
23:11which predicted that in the highest commanding officers
23:15the result of the general general general
23:21will be proportional to the establishment.
23:26The army ignored this law.
23:29Of the 479 higher army positions,
23:32only 25% are filled with Croats or Bosnians.
23:36With their 75%, Serbs and Montenegrins have control of the army.
23:43The religious fault lines also run parallel to the ethnic ones.
23:47The intersection of those two leads into a catastrophe
23:51that can be felt until today.
23:56In tune in harmony is a simple fact.
24:01We understand the
24:02fact that the united principal people are officials,
24:13Ivana College left Kupari to go to law school.
24:17She only returned after the war.
24:22Today, the former competitive swimmer works as an attorney for labour law in Dubrovnik.
24:38The secret project Jelyava is considered the key to Yugoslavia's border security.
24:44The facility in the mountain of Plejavica is reinforced with concrete to withstand even nuclear attacks.
24:51The MiG fighters stationed here can be made battle-ready within a few minutes.
24:55They are meant to deter any attacks from the east and the west.
25:04However, the facility proves useless against attacks from within during a civil war.
25:26They are the first time I came to the war base in Bihać.
25:41It was the first time I came to the war base in the 8th of 1981.
25:46Unfortunately, nothing is永遠.
25:47The first time I came to the war base in Bihać in the 8th of 1981.
25:55against possible enemy attacks an underground fortress built to safeguard
26:04Yugoslavia's air sovereignty but there are not only fighter planes in Dželjeva
26:10Yugoslavia's aerial reconnaissance is also coordinated from here
26:18This was a photo section that was filmed on the border of the country and inside the country of the
26:30country
26:30of the country of the country. Every change that was interesting from the military or the economic change
26:38was able to read from those films that were high resolutions.
26:47Spying, shooting missiles down and bombing targets, Dželjeva is versatile in strategic military matters
26:53but the airbase has a political purpose too. It is meant to impress.
27:02I think that at that time Yugoslavia has benefited from the fact that it had such an object
27:08where it was definitely without a mistake, not only with Europe but even with Russia
27:15but also with some objects. Now it is now an object that has dominated the land
27:19but it has given the right to the current government of the country to choose something
27:26where it is even more than a place.
27:31Zdenko Jancets works his way up to the top of the airbase leadership.
27:35However, even for deputy commander Zdenko Jancets there is a section in Dželjeva
27:41that he has no access to. The listening post of the intelligence service.
27:45What was planned for spying on foreign countries is now also used to eavesdrop on its own army in the
27:52early 90s.
27:57The Serbian-Montenegrin majority officers are listening in on the minorities.
28:05Here, maybe these connectors are talking more about the reason why it was all served.
28:14It means that there were all the connections and connected.
28:22The problem is that the operation of this space and this object was very discontent.
28:35It was not in its own purpose.
28:40The Serbian-Montenegrin majority of the Serbian-Montenegrin majority of the Serbian-Montenegrin
28:41is situated in the Krajina region.
28:44And thus not only at the border between the constituent republics Croatia and Bosnia
28:48but also in an enclave with the Serbian ethnic majority.
28:52A situation that is fraught with danger.
28:57The Serbs in Krajina are afraid of Croatia seceding from Yugoslavia.
29:02That would make them a minority in a Croatian state.
29:05The Yugoslav People's Army, with its Serbian-Montenegrin majority officers corps,
29:09supports the nationalists in Krajina.
29:12Žedenko Jancet discovers that weapons and ammunition are disappearing from Zeljava
29:18and resurfacing later in the hands of Krajina militias.
29:21When I saw the role of the former Yugoslavia people army
29:28and people, as well as Serbs,
29:33I decided to leave this army.
29:40On June 25, 1991,
29:44the constituent republics of Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence.
29:48For Žedenko Jancet, the time has come to free Zeljava.
29:53With Croatia's independence,
29:54Zeljava suddenly lies in enemy territory
29:57for the Air Force's Serbian-Montenegrin majority.
30:00To prevent the base from falling into enemy hands,
30:04they resort to a drastic step.
30:12The single biggest investment in Yugoslavia's history
30:16now lies shattered and in ruins.
30:37In the end, the MiGs, still deployed here, bombed all the runways.
30:41To this day, you can see the craters from the air.
30:51Žedenko Jancet never returned to Zeljava since then.
30:55Until today.
31:05The civil war also has a dramatic impact in Kupari.
31:09The luxury resort on the Adriatic coast near Dubrovnik
31:13attracts tourists from all over the world.
31:15The special thing is, the facility is under military control.
31:20Here, the crisis that pushes Yugoslavia to the brink of bankruptcy in the 1980s
31:25has gone almost unnoticed for a long time.
31:28An island of precarious serenity,
31:31while elsewhere Yugoslavia's catastrophe is picking up speed.
31:38When I was 10 years old, I had the first time
31:42to meet the beauty of Kupari.
31:45It was a dream for崩壊, a dream for life.
31:51For some of us, it was only a break.
31:54For me, it was my home, my life.
31:58But it was all until the war.
32:02My name is Marko Perkušić.
32:05I was born in 1977-1963 in Kupari.
32:12Marko Perkušić grew up at the military hotel in Kupari.
32:17His grandfather worked in the hotel management.
32:20In Kupari, soldiers from the Yugoslav People's Army
32:23met vacationers from the west.
32:25They're not too shy to mingle.
32:27However, the growing nationalism doesn't stop at young people.
32:35I started with my first mother,
32:39who was a shahonist.
32:42And then they would ask,
32:43why do you wear this mother?
32:45Why do you wear this uniform?
32:48It was something that was provocative,
32:52but it was the beginning.
32:57Marko, 13 years old then,
32:59had no idea about the history of Croatia's coat of arms.
33:03During World War II,
33:05it is also the symbol of Croatian fascists.
33:09There is a danger of the old animosities
33:12between Croats and Serbs flaring up again.
33:14The dominant confidence was that the problems of Yugoslavia
33:20are the wrong ones.
33:22But it was actually a base for the international,
33:29the international battles,
33:30and for the wars in the beginning of 1990.
33:34in the last few years.
33:36May, the 13th, 1990.
33:39The top match in the Yugoslavian soccer league.
33:42Dynamo Zagreb against Red Star Belgrade.
33:45For some of the fans of both sides,
33:47this also means Croats against Serbs.
33:49The game ends in violence.
33:5260 people are injured.
33:53The beginning of the end of Yugoslavia.
33:56The same people,
33:58with whom we were friends,
34:00and did their children,
34:02they started to shoot some knives,
34:06for example.
34:07I asked him,
34:09what would you do?
34:10And he said,
34:12I don't know,
34:12someone will hurt me.
34:14It was an alert for war.
34:17It was an alert for war.
34:19It was an alert for war.
34:19It was an alert for war.
34:19It was an alert for war.
34:23The central government is unwilling to simply accept
34:26Croatia's and Slovenia's declarations of independence.
34:30Serbian politicians and the military
34:32see themselves as the defenders of Yugoslavia's unity
34:35and attack Slovenia and Croatia.
34:38On Croatia's Adriatic coast,
34:41people's army units are marching on Dubrovnik.
34:49Kupari is the first to come under attack.
34:52On January 1st, 1991,
34:57it seems to me that it was 6.20 in the morning.
35:01The first grenade was opened
35:03and it changed the whole life.
35:09And these spaces,
35:11and you as a man.
35:15It seems to me that it changed the whole world.
35:21A war between neighbours and brothers.
35:24Guests flee.
35:26Grenades are fired at hotels.
35:28The Kupari military hotel is fired upon by army units.
35:33Chances are high that some of the attacking soldiers
35:35have spent their vacations here at some time.
35:38The people from Kupari flee into nearby Dubrovnik,
35:41where the war catches up with them.
35:47Without supplies or safe shelter,
35:50they watch their coast vanish into smoke.
36:01Marco spends a year as a refugee in Germany.
36:04After the end of the bloodbath,
36:06he returned to his home.
36:09The hotel facility where he grew up
36:12had been destroyed and ransacked long ago.
36:35In March 1992, the Bosnian population votes on its independence.
36:40Even before the result is known,
36:43the Bosnian government is claiming
36:45that a majority has voted for independence.
36:47Western governments fear the fragmentation of Bosnia
36:50could throw the Republic into a civil war worse than that
36:53which killed thousands in Croatia.
36:56Fears that come true.
37:34The night of the ballot count,
37:37a majority of Bosnians vote in favor of independence.
37:41But the result is deceptive.
37:43What looks like a clear majority favoring secession
37:46spells the end of peaceful coexistence.
37:491.2 million Serbs boycotted the referendum.
37:53This third of the population now wants to unite
37:57with what's left of Yugoslavia.
38:00Mostar takes only little notice of these developments.
38:03The population in the south of Bosnia
38:05is almost exclusively Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats.
38:08in the south of Bosnia,
38:14and the remaining Japanese-based Hmong,
38:18and the Koreans who
38:29Serbian's ruler Slobodan Milosevic is the driving force behind the country's civil war.
38:34The leadership of the Yugoslav army is dominated by Serbs, and they follow the new strongmen.
38:41Now the Serbian leadership wants to conquer Bosnia and cleanse it ethnically.
38:46And so, the first act of the Bosnian drama begins, the attack on Mostar.
39:01The fight for Mostar lasts for two months.
39:05In June of 1992, Croatian units forced the Serbian troops to retreat.
39:10Many buildings are heavily damaged, among them the high-rise bank building no one ever moved into.
39:21The Croats from Bosnia were in many ways seen as the most nationalist, the most extreme,
39:26and they often saw their capital as Zagreb and not Sarajevo.
39:32So what they wanted to do, ultimately, was to join with Croatia and have a Croatian state.
39:39Snipers became instruments of terror in the Yugoslav war.
39:43Anyone could be a target. Women, children, the elderly.
39:53Their goal was to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies.
40:04There was a line here, you had to run the street, you had to run the street here.
40:09There was a lot of them left here, you had to run the street.
40:11But the sniper who looked at the children, the elderly, and the women,
40:16he was drinking, drinking and drinking.
40:24The Croatian army attacked Mostar from the west.
40:28The large part of the Bosnian population flees into the eastern part of Mostar, across the Nivedva river.
40:35Residents with Croatian roots take flight into the opposite direction.
40:39The ruined bank building is the tallest one in Mostar, on the Croatian side.
40:44It is from there that snipers put the Bosnian eastern part of Mostar into their crosshairs.
40:55Only one kilometer away, as the crow flies, a residential neighborhood on a hill.
41:00In the fall of 1993, Sturjan is walking uphill on a small road, and is hit in the leg by
41:07a sniper's bullet.
41:36Sturjan is walking through a mental injury.
41:52The bullet went clean through.
41:55A big scar reminds Stojan of the civil war every day.
41:59Estimates say more than 2,000 people were killed by sniper fire in the Bosnian war.
42:19After the civil war, many looked back at life in former Yugoslavia like it was some kind of a lost,
42:26idyllic world.
42:27Above all, of course, those who had benefited from the system, politicians and officers.
42:35But many ordinary citizens also looked back at Yugoslavia with nostalgia,
42:40where life may not have been prosperous, but peaceful at least.
42:48It was the most normal thing I lived at that time.
42:51There was no tension when it was the so-called brotherhood and unity.
42:56In fact, somebody said something a few months ago,
43:00that it would be normal.
43:04Nobody expected that this situation would be possible.
43:09I am Daniel Borovic, a MiG-21 pilot who served on the aerodrome from 1982 to 1992.
43:19What may well be the most unusual legacy of Yugoslavia lies deep inside a mountain,
43:26the military airfield Zelyeva.
43:43Three MiG-21 squadrons are stationed in Zelyeva.
43:48Two for airfights and one for reconnaissance, with high-resolution cameras.
43:57The war was announced that the aircraft had to be filled inside the area.
44:01The soldiers were devastated by the king.
44:05They were forced to be devastated by the king.
44:07They were devastated by the king.
44:09They were devastated by the king.
44:17They had their own place.
44:19It was a little bit of a cold.
44:21With the breakup of Yugoslavia, the army also begins to fall apart.
44:26Serbs and Montenegrins become allies against Croats and Bosnians.
44:31Most heavy weaponry remains in Serbian hands.
44:35Croatia tries to secure a MiG fighter jet and gets in touch with Croatian officers.
45:00Many Croats desert the army and defect to recently founded Croatia.
45:07Daniel stays behind.
45:09He is surprised by the soldiers.
45:10He is supposed to wait for an opportunity to bag a MiG-21.
45:15So I lived with my family for months in this pressing,
45:20with a huge psychological pressure.
45:22We had to believe that everything is the best possible to get to the job.
45:26And waiting for something to happen,
45:28and I revolted everything that happens.
45:32His superiors don't trust Daniel Borovic
45:34and put him on sick leave due to some alleged neurotic behaviour.
45:38But the army was suffering from a shortage of fighter pilots.
45:42So, in February 1992, he is allowed to fly again.
45:46He is tasked with training a new pilot for air-to-air combat.
45:51Borovic sees an opportunity.
45:53I felt traumatic.
45:58Because that day was a bad time.
46:01So, with the number of 2, we were flying together.
46:04I was working together with that one.
46:07following a new train.
46:12I was working together.
46:13I think, the other way,
46:13that I was not in the aircraft.
46:13After flying, I found him and went to the new aircraft.
46:17And then finally I was flying together.
46:18So I was flying together.
46:18Daniel can get away and land his plane in his new home.
46:22It is the first fighter plane of the newly established Croatian army.
46:27To this day, Borovic is celebrated as a hero in Croatia and is seen as a traitor in Serbia.
46:40The most famous bridge in Yugoslavia has spanned the Nevetva River since 1566.
46:46The name of this landmark, Stari Most, becomes the name of the city, Mostar.
46:52But the bridge divers are no less famous.
46:54From a height of 25 meters they dive into water that runs only several meters deep.
47:03But the Bosnian city of Mostar has been under siege since June of 1993.
47:09The bridge divers are now soldiers.
47:11A young man's family sends him to safety in Germany.
47:15He returns on his own accord.
47:17I was born because I thought that this is the end.
47:24Now we will continue to live and live.
47:27I did not know what to do.
47:30I am Eldin Palata and I have 46 years old.
47:34I was a member of the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina army.
47:37And I took the destruction of the old Mostar.
47:40Mostar becomes a symbol for the horrors of the Yugoslavian wars.
47:43The city is put under siege twice.
47:47And twice becomes the victim of so-called ethnic clansings.
47:51In 1991 the first Serbian fighters attacked the city.
47:55Then, half a year later, Croatian militia begin their fight against Bosnian forces.
48:00And once again, the death toll is high among the civilian population.
48:10Eldin, a Muslim Bosnian, promises himself to never want revenge.
48:15In spite of everything that has happened.
48:20To put all the Horvats in the grave and say,
48:23Did they do the crime against Mostar?
48:25No.
48:26Not all the Horvats did the crime against Bosnian forces.
48:40It's difficult.
48:41And he has only one cassette tape.
48:42Which he reuses over and over again.
48:46On November 9th, 1993, the Croatian army starts shelling the old bridge.
48:51In retaliation, the Croats targeted the Mostar bridge.
48:55The bridge is the city's landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site,
48:59with no military significance whatsoever.
49:22Eldin Palata films the incomprehensible.
49:27The 400-year-old bridge collapses.
49:44Dinah
49:56In 2004, a new bridge is opened.
49:59This new Starry Most has been designed using historical building plans to stay as true as possible to the original.
50:07The war in Bosnia ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995.
50:13However, the years of death and terror are not so easy to forget.
50:18Even the International Criminal Court in The Hague, established to prosecute war crimes in Yugoslavia, can only help so much.
50:2924 years after the destruction of their city, it becomes obvious. There won't be any justice for their suffering.
50:37To this day, Mostar in the whole of Bosnia have found little peace. The wounds of war just run too
50:43deep.
50:48No one will, but simply that the politicians will make every situation to make an excess to say
50:58You can see that they can't live with them now. And to be able to get all of them for
51:05their own.
51:06Muslims have to do their own. Hrvats have to do their own. What are we going to do with the
51:12citizens?
51:14The old Yugoslavia was drowned in a bath. Nationalytics brought death and misery to thousands and thousands.
51:23Ancient animosities boiled over yet again. But slowly peace returned.
51:28And the peoples of the West Balkan were eventually able to become neighbours again.
51:33What remains are the traces of a lost world. The scars of a civil war. And the memory of 150
51:42,000 dead.
51:45The End
51:45The End
51:54The End
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