Mercy Corps Meeting – Tuzla, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Part of my trip and indeed my motivations for setting up the Silk Road Society was to visit and try and help raise funds for various charities that worked in the areas along my route. These charities help not only in the restoration of the Silk Road’s physical heritage, but also in the social and economic development of the people that line the route. One of the charities whose work appealed to me was that of the Scottish charity Mercy Corps. They have projects worldwide, but I found there were exceptional projects in many of the countries that I intend to visit. The headquarters in Edinburgh put me in contact with the country directors in order to set up meetings.

My first appointment was in Tuzla, Bosnia, with the country director, Marko Nisandzic. Tuzla is a rather unknown, industrial town in the north east of Bosnia just within the borders of the Bosnian Federation in the Croat and Muslim controlled part of Bosnia. The name derived from Turkish influence and means “salt city” on account of the numerous salt mines that once developed around the city. The mining of salt, by water extraction, has caused large amounts of subsidence and the town has recently moved into the chemical industry. But, as my driver warned me on the way to the Mercy Corps Headquarters, the factories are only working at a fraction of their capacity and the town is in desperate need of modernisation and renovation.

I am ushered into the Mercy Corps HQ, now housed in a building belonging to the town’s orthodox church next door. Marko introduces himself and one of the long serving project managers, Alenca Savic. They are both from Tuzla, having worked as civil engineers for a construction company before joining Mercy Corps in 1994. While there was no actual fighting in Tuzla itself it was a town under siege for the best part of 4 years. Alenca gives me an insight into the Bosnian mind. She explains how people from the traditionally peaceful town heard about the fighting in Slovenia and Croatia, but took to thinking that this was just something happening to other people. Even as the fighting closed in on Tuzla to just 20km away, from which the shells could be clearly heard, the people of Tuzla stayed, believing it would not (and could not) affect them. Marko gives me some statistics from the war that shock me deeply. Of 4 million Bosnians living in Bosnia before the war, some 2 million had been displaced – both in and around Bosnia, Europe and as far afield as the US and Australia. Since the war ended only 1 million people had returned to their pre-war homes and Mercy Corps believes that at least another 180,000 people still want to return. Alenca points out what are all too obvious reasons for why people do not, or rather cannot, return at present. Many simply do not have the finances to reconstruct their damaged homes – a fact that I have seen first hand on the bus to Tuzla. The villages I passed had many houses half reconstructed to the point that only the ground floor was lived in, the rest left as skeletal ruins with the outer walls still bearing the scars of war and displaying a honeycomb of bullet holes. Furthermore, these villages have little infrastructure remaining and the prospect of families leaving their settlements (and new lives elsewhere) to return to an uncertain future back home is daunting. There are no schools, no jobs and few services. For others the trauma and political repression they suffered in their home villages is too much to return to.

But Mercy Corps has provided help and hope in the region to some 27,000 people. Funded by a plethora of donors both organisational and private, they have made an impressive start. Marko explains one particular project in a village near Srebrenica on the Serbian front line. Here they used to have 500 homes for the 500 families living there. The war claimed the lives of 300 of its men and displaced the families. Yet despite this the villagers were resolute to return and pick up the pieces. Mercy Corps was keen to help and sent a delegation to conduct a feasibility study. What they saw horrified them and worried them as to whether the villagers would be able to return: Trucks had simply taken the bodies of those killed and dumped them in a mass grave by the hillside. Clothing and human remains were strewn everywhere and the damage was almost total. The photos Marko showed me were sickening and left me immensely saddened. The atmosphere was very tense as they recalled these horrors – interrupted only by the occasional nervous laugh to try and break it, but clearly there wasn’t much to laugh about.

For Mercy Corps it was a difficult decision to make as to whether the project was viable, but they persisted and the project was a success. The example only re-enforced the mountain that Bosnia has to climb in the aftermath of the war. Alenca interjected saying that “sometimes you think it is such a big problem that you wonder if it is possible to succeed”. Despite this you could see that her and Marko and indeed Mercy Corps were determined to do their best. But their next story about the landmine situation only served to make the mountain bigger. The cost of clearing the heavy density of landmines is 5-10KM (3-5 euros) per square metre. In a country of 51,000 square km, the task is far from easy nor cheap.

We discuss how they see the future of Bosnia and they both answer “Europe”. Everywhere I am greeted by signs with the European flag and slogans saying “constructed to EU standards”. This is the big hope. In Sarajevo, where I write this, I notice that there is even a tram printed in yellow advertising the 2005 UK presidency of the EU – a strange show of how desperately Bosnia supports its entry into the EU. But even this political and economic aim is far from actually happening – the country is run by three presidents (one for each ethnicity: Muslim, Croat and Serb); it is split in two by the 1995 Dayton Agreement. Bosnia is not really a country, more of a buffering state in the Balakans with deep divisions. Coupled with what Alenca sees as people’s “irrationalism” to jump on board with historical beliefs and feelings, the country’s division and separate agendas, may prove to be its downfall. The mountain to climb looms ever larger. But nevertheless in a country where only 8% of the land is below 150m, mountains are something that Bosnia’s inhabitants are used to climbing with overwhelming resilience. It is charities such as Mercy Corps that are helping to provide a bigger springboard through its local actions for success in this task.

Mercy Corps in Tuzla is locally staffed and run. They work independently from the government. The full-time staff of 32 is a fraction of the 100 who worked previously and they are in desperate need of funds to help achieve their aims and bring Bosnia back together. The country director Marko Nisandzic can be contacted by e-mail at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it . Please do not hesitate to contact Nick Rowan at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it if you have any further questions. If you would like to make a donation to Mercy Corps, please do so via the Mercy Corps website at www.mercycorps.org.uk and mention the Silk Road Society.

For more information on the work that Mercy Corps undertakes in Bosnia and some stories clieck here.