A passport for national unity

Lithuania-Bosnia Herzegovina football match was ongoing in Kaunas. The 23rd minute marked Yugoslavia’s history, notably in football terms: attacker Vedad Ibiševiæ, born 1984, in Stuttgart’s team, scores a goal after receiving the ball by Edin Džeko, star of Manchester City, perhaps the most representative player of the team, and one of the few players born and raised in Sarajevo. It was a perfect assist, and that goal is a victory and a qualification. It’s Bosnia Herzegovina’s gateway to the World Cup in Brazil. Since October 15 the Balkan country with less than 3 million inhabitants stars in the Olympus of international football. Sarajevo, the capital devastated by a siege that lasted 4 years, is now a tinder box that explodes with joy. A recomposed mosaic? The hotbed is not made of fallen bombs but of the smoke-bombs thrown by enthusiastic supporters in the streets, the shots that are heard are not the hand-grenades launched from Mount Igman by snipers that besieged the city. They are firecrackers, exploded to celebrate the football victory. Sport thus triumphs in those places where Dayton peace agreements fail to bear fruits, and where Herzegovina’s population, divided by international authorities into two ethically cleansed realities, probably everyone rejoiced with equal passion. It is the football story of young champions, symbols of the deliverance of an entire generation and an entire people, also in social terms. A national team thus represents a small multiethnic mosaic such as Bosnia was before the war, when it was torn to pieces by ethnic and religious hatred. Certainly, the victorious run of the yellow-and-blue Balkan team – Bosnia Herzegovina qualified as first in round G – is also the result of the good relations within the team led by coach Safet Sušiæ, ex – player of Yugoslavia national team, thriving in the memories of his supporters as the “Brazil of Europe”, with players from the three ‘constitutive peoples’, namely: Serbian Bosnians, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croatian Bosnians. It’s the generation of youths with dual citizenship, those who did not experience the war directly, the offspring of the Diaspora in which they grew up, also in football terms, far from the Balkans. Luxembourg, Switzerland and Northern Europe, are among the areas that hosted them over 20 years ago. “Football gipsies” found hospitality also in the Italian teams: Lulic and Pjanic, just to mention a few, on the opposite sides of the Tiber, the former from Mostar, the latter from Tuzla. With them is also 31year-old Zvjezdan Misimoviæ, born in Germany of Serbian-Bosnian parents, with a long presence in various teams of the Bundesliga.Voices from the diaspora. “The bearing of world football qualification – Fatima Neimarlija, responsible for the Bosnia-Herzegovina community in Rome, told SIR – extends beyond sport. It’s a multiethnic, multi-religious, young national team. They are youths who have been living abroad for many years, who feel bound to their Country and to that society”. The news was bearer of joy to the Bosnians of the diaspora in the world. “Indeed – underlined Neimarlija – most of the players were raised abroad.  The facts that the football players have decided to wear the Bosnian habit is a thus a sign of union and reconciliation. It is a positive aspect of these young players, who live afar from their Countries of origin and nonetheless have decided to express their affection and closeness to their peers in Bosnia Herzegovina”. “The sportive outcome should be an example also in other sectors of society. It boosts the unity of the Country”, is the wish of monsignor Ivo Tomasevic, general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia Herzegovina, that sees in the sport achievement an example to be “exported” to other areas of civil life. “I hope that gradually we may be able to build true unity not only in the field of sports but also in the social and political realms. Sport has taught us that today the union of different countries of Bosnia Herzegovina is possible”. Over the past days was concluded the first population census in the post-war era (the last was conducted in 1991). “We hope – said Fatima Neimarlija – that everyone has participated. In order to progress together with the large European family which Bosnia Herzegovina is a member of, we must know how many we are”.