Story No. Destroyed bridge between East and West Mostar. Instead, it remains divided between Muslims on one side and Croats on the other. With the EU administrator for Mostar set to announce a new date for the Mostar elections later this week, APTV travelled to the bitterly divided town where Muslims and Croats are living together under an uneasy peace agreement.
The division of Mostar is no where summed up as neatly - or symbolically - as the fate its oldest bridge. Its destruction severed the last link between East and West Mostar, leaving them as two separate cities - one for Croats, one for Muslims. Even now, despite the Muslim-Croat Federation, the city remains divided in life - and in death.
Its overcrowded graveyards are testimony to the toll the month war between its Croat and Muslim inhabitants took on its youth. Before the war we built a cemetery that would be for all religions.
We divided it between Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox. The cemetery is now on the East side. Now, because of the war, our cemeteries are full so we are using all of the cemetery we built before the war. Earlier this year, the first attempts were made to knit the city back together with the opening of the first permanent link between the two sides. But the reintegration has not gone as smoothly as the EU administrators of this divided city had hoped.
Taxi drivers in this city never cross the divide. We meet in the middle and swap passengers. The buses that should ferry passengers from one side to the other stand empty. In the last five hours I've only had two passengers - this is the bus service which connects both sides of the town.
