Page 506 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1146 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Kosača), a former communist cultural center, on the square “Rondo” that today is called
the “Square of Great Croats” (Trg velikih Hrvata). The monument was created by the
Croatian sculptor Slavomir Drinković and was unveiled just two days before the city
was united in 2004 by the order of the Office of the High Representative (OHR). The
black marble cube is composed of fourteen pillars, seven on each side, through which
passes a cross. The pillars represent fourteen centuries since Croats migrated to the
Balkans. One side of the monument depicts a “Pietà”, representing a mother’s pain for a
lost son, in this case referencing the fallen defenders. Some Muslims were members of
the HVO during the first phase of the war, but monuments’ religious symbols exclude
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any referece to them. The monument is the site of the commemoration of the events
connected to the HVO. Emily Gunzburger Makaš speaks about the use of architecture
for the construction and reinforcement of national identities in Mostar, a process that can
be applied to all other places in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The fight over urban spaces
in Mostar culminated in January 2013 when a memorial dedicated to the ABiH was
destroyed by a bomb. The lily-shaped memorial was placed in April 2012 (Figure 3)
in front of the new building of the Mostar City Council after a memorial to eight killed
HVO soldiers from Livno, who died in that place in 1993, was erected there, replacing a
cross that stood there before. Both actions were followed by numerous accusations and
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heated debates by the media and political parties. Generally, the issue of memorializa-
tion in Bosnia and Herzegovina is highly politicized and is used by the political elites for
the accusation against the others.
In Sarajevo important places of memory are graveyards for the killed soldiers of the
ABiH. The main memorial site is the “Central memorial for Šehidi and Killed Soldiers
of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Aggression 1992-1995” (Centralno
spomen obilježje za šehide i poginule borce Armije BiH tokom agresije 1992-1995)
situated in the burial site Kovači – “šehidsko mezarje Kovači” (Figure 4), where the
first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović is buried. The word “šehid”
in Arabic means witness and in Islam indicates a person who died defending his faith,
a person who died courageously or innocently. Today the term has wider meaning and
also includes the civilian population. Muslim tombstones “nišani” (tombstones from
the Turkish cultural heritage) for the killed soldiers of ABiH in these burial sites were
standardized in 1996. They have the shape of “stećak”, Bosnian Bogomil medieval
tombstones, on which are added the symbol of lily, the Muslim religious symbol of the
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crescent and the star, and texts from Koran. Bosniak authors argue that the golden lilies
symbolize the historic continuity of today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina with the medieval
Bosnian Kingdom, since they were part of the coat of arms of the medieval house of

14 Emily Gunzburger Makaš, Representing Competing Identities: Bulding and Rebuilding in Postwar Mostar,
Bosnia-Hercegovina, dissertation, Cornell University, 2007, pp. 276-278.
15 Maja Zuvela, Bomb destroys war memorial in divided Bosnian town, Reuters, January 14, 2013, http://www.
reuters.com/article/2013/01/14/us-bosnia-mostar-idUSBRE90D0JR20130114
16 Amra Čusto, Uloga spomenika u Sarajevu u izgradnji kolektivnog sjećanja na period 1941-1945. i 1992-
1995., komperativna analiza, Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2013. pp. 84-96.