Serbia and Croatia are linked for me because both of them were part of Yugoslavia under Tito. It seemed to me as if all of the countries that were included in one country under Tito fared somewhat better under his "benevolent dictatorship" than the countries directly under Stalin. Many locals look fondly on the years under Tito's dictatorship. My memory of Tito differed quite a bit from the information I received while visiting the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
When we visited the town of Vukovar in Croatia we saw first hand the devastation that occurred twenty years ago during a four year war between Serbia and Croatia. It took 200 million dollars to clean up the land mines and some still remain in fields marked as such. Ninety percent of the town was destroyed during the conflict, with many buildings still in need of repair. We looked down into one bombed out building and two cats peered up at us from among the ruins. They seemed to be well fed, perhaps from the mice, or maybe the townspeople helped out. (I noticed in Romania that many people would share food with the roaming dogs. Sometimes a whole neighborhood would adopt a dog as an outside pet.) The war between Serbia and Croatia moved into Bosnia in 1994 and memories surfaced for me about the ethnic cleansing that was second only to the Holocaust in World War11. In 1995 President Clinton forced the Serbs and the Croats to leave Bosnia and make peace.
Peace appears to be on the surface. Reconstruction is going on, malls and supermarkets are replacing the obsolete factories, Mc Donald's has emerged in many cities, and everyone seems to want to move on. On the other hand, what bothered me was that in Vokovar, at least, Serbs and Croats no longer intermarry, the schools remain separate for the two groups, as well as the coffee shops. Healing does take its own time. Hopefully the Serbs, Croats and Muslims, will, in time, achieve that illusive gift of forgiveness.
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