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  • From Karabakh To Bosnia: Mothers United In Grief Over Loss Of Childr

    FROM KARABAKH TO BOSNIA: MOTHERS UNITED IN GRIEF OVER LOSS OF CHILDREN IN WARS AND CONFLICTS

    http://www.armenianow.com/society/features/44938/armenia_azerbaijan_bosnia_herzegovina_sarajevo_war
    FEATURES | 02.04.13 | 15:01

    Photo: Gohar Abrahamyan/ArmeniaNow.com

    By Gohar Abrahamyan
    >From Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

    Editor's Note: The Caucasus and the Balkans may be separated by more
    than a thousand miles and may be having different views of modern-day
    world affairs, but there is still one thing in common between the
    two mountainous regions that makes them strive to know each other.

    The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern communist bloc in
    general triggered conflicts and wars in areas where problems between
    different ethnic groups remained for decades. The Armenian-Azerbaijan
    war over Karabakh as well as the Bosnian war between Serbs and
    Croats in the multiethnic area began and ended almost simultaneously,
    claiming tens of thousands of lives - both soldiers and civilians.

    Almost two decades after the end of the war in Karabakh, a trip has
    been organized for a group of women from Armenia and Azerbaijan to
    Bosnia & Herzegovina to share their grief with local woman who had
    lost their loved ones in the bloody conflict.

    ArmeniaNow correspondent Gohar Abrahamyan has been in Sarajevo during
    the past week to attend the events organized as part of the visit. She
    singles out one particular trip to a monument to children killed
    during the Balkan war that was erected in the Bosnian capital. It
    was organized for Armenian and Azeri participants as part of a joint
    project by the Center of Humanitarian Studies in Azerbaijan and the
    Civil Society Institute in Armenia.

    A glass monument located in the heart of the capital of Bosnia and
    Herzegovina, Sarajevo, has for several years been a place where
    representatives of different social and religious groups of the
    country's population have been gathering.

    This small state with a population of some 3.8 million that was part
    of the former Yugoslavia and had its current borders shaped at the
    cost of tens of thousands of lives, has not yet fully overcome the
    heavy legacy of the 1992-1995 war.

    Traces of bullets are still seen on buildings almost everywhere in
    this Balkan country recovering from a major ethnic conflict. While
    modern tall buildings are being erected alongside shabby houses in
    Sarajevo and while the city's business center with its posh hotels,
    beautiful shops and restaurants is as busy as anywhere in major
    European cities, there are still people who bear noticeable sorrow
    as they struggle yet with the loss of their families and loved ones
    in the war. Many of them say they are still waiting for justice to
    be administered on war criminals.

    Zlatka Inanovic, a 47-year-old resident of Sarajevo, has lived with
    this expectation for 20 years now.

    She tells of how her five-year-old son and mother-in-law were killed
    before her very eyes after someone threw a hand-grenade into their
    house in 1993.

    The woman still keeps an album with her little son's photographs, and
    her two daughters born after the war continue to keep memory of him,
    bringing fresh flowers to the monument to killed children situated
    not far from their house.

    The glass monument built in one of the central parks of Sarajevo
    in 2009 commemorates more than 1,600 children who were killed or
    are presumed dead during the years of the conflict. It has become
    a sight for many mothers who lost their children in the war to come
    and commemorate them.

    All around the monument are footprints of brothers and sisters of the
    killed children, and not far from it are seven pillars, on which the
    names of 540 are engraved.

    These columns make a subtle sound of clanking when rotated. Creators
    of the monument say they had designed it so that people could associate
    this sound with children's souls.

    Last weekend a group of women from Armenia whose children were killed
    by Azeri snipers or saboteurs after 2000 also came to see the monument
    in Sarajevo. Along with them were also a group of Azeri women whose
    husbands and relatives were killed in the Karabakh war in the early
    1990s.

    Aghavni Ghukasyan, 56, says she lost her 20-year-old son Narek
    Margaryan, a conscript in the army, in 2010, as an Azeri sniper hit
    him near the frontline. She says that nothing could ease her pain
    of losing a son, but seeing other mothers who suffered the same fate
    she understood that she wasn't all alone.

    "I would like to be in your land, to see the beauty of it, its numerous
    monuments, but I'm sorry that I have come here to share your pain,"
    said Ghukasyan addressing Bosnian women at an event. "No mother in
    the world wants a war, all mothers want their children to be raised
    in peaceful conditions, but, unfortunately, our children did not have
    such an opportunity. We need to do one thing now - to oppose wars."

    Azerbaijani journalist Piruza Sadulaeva, who also lost family members
    during the war, stressed her belief that all women have the same
    feelings when it comes to war, as they all love their children the
    same way. It is mostly men who die during wars and conflicts, but
    women bear most of the suffering, she argued.

    "I don't know who invented the first weapon, but I know that its very
    first bullet must have hit a mother's heart," said the Azeri woman.

    Like her counterparts in Armenia and Azerbaijan, Bosnian Inanovic,
    too, hopes that the war will not resume in her country and that other
    women will not have go through the same horrors as she. The woman,
    who says she has many friends among both Serbs and Croats, doubts
    she will ever be able to forget what happened to her, but she says
    perhaps she will be able to forgive.

    "I hope that this conflict will never happen again, and other people
    will not have to live through this pain, but I want to see the one
    who killed my child, look into the eyes of this criminal and see his
    child," Inanovic said.

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