One of the most striking things about walking around Mostar is the way restored buildings stand immediately beside roofless shells, bullet marked walls and properties which appear to have been abandoned halfway through their destruction. I initially wondered why so much had been left, but it became apparent that an enormous amount has already been rebuilt. Much of that work has focused on the Old Bridge and historic centre, while many of the remaining ruins are concentrated in areas which suffered the worst fighting.
Mostar was damaged during two distinct phases of the Bosnian War. In 1992, the city was attacked by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Bosnian Serb forces, with extensive shelling damaging homes, public buildings, industries and infrastructure. Bosnian Croat and Bosniak forces initially fought together against that attack, but their alliance collapsed the following year. During 1993 and early 1994, the Croatian Defence Council and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina fought one another, dividing Mostar between a predominantly Croat west and a besieged Bosniak east. Buildings around the Bulevar stood directly on the front line, while artillery, fire and close range fighting caused further devastation across the city.
The scale of destruction meant that everything could not be repaired at once. Across Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than a third of the prewar housing stock was partly or completely destroyed and over half the population had been displaced. The urgent priorities after the conflict were restoring water, electricity, roads, hospitals, schools and habitable homes. International funding also supported culturally important projects such as the reconstruction of Stari Most and the historic area around it. Those investments were enormously valuable, but inevitably left less prominent apartment blocks, offices, factories and commercial buildings waiting much longer.
Ownership has provided another obstacle, and I had seen similar evidence of these problems among the ruined buildings of Belgrade. Some private properties had owners who were killed or displaced, while others belonged to people now living abroad. Still other sites accumulated competing claims, unresolved inheritance questions or numerous co-owners who all needed to agree on what should happen. Bosnia created a substantial property restitution process after the war, but returning legal ownership did not necessarily provide people with the money required to rebuild. A ruined property with six owners, three legal disputes and no commercially viable use is not an especially tempting proposition for an investor.
Mostar’s political structure has made progress slower as well. Post-war government was divided between different administrative levels and political interests, while parallel Croat and Bosniak institutions remained influential. Disagreement over electoral rules meant that Mostar held no local elections between 2008 and 2020, leaving the city without a normally renewed council for twelve years. This was, to put it mildly, rather sub-optimal for making complicated decisions about reconstruction. Buildings along the former front line are particularly sensitive because they occupy both valuable land and contested historical space.
There is also the less dramatic problem that many of these structures are extremely expensive to save. A building which has lost its roof, windows, services and internal walls may require complete structural reinforcement before restoration can even begin, particularly when a tree is growing through the middle of it. Demolition can also be costly, particularly in a busy city centre, and the cleared site still needs an economically realistic new use to make redevelopment financially viable. It’s hard to see what can realistically be done about properties such as this without entirely demolishing them and perhaps using some of the stone in the reconstruction, but then it might just be easier to build something new elsewhere.
The future is therefore likely to involve a mixture of restoration, redevelopment, demolition and deliberate preservation. Mostar has already demonstrated through the Old Bridge, historic centre and numerous individual buildings that major reconstruction is possible when ownership, funding and political agreement come together. Some ruins may eventually become hotels, offices, housing or cultural spaces, while others could be retained as properly interpreted memorials rather than unofficial urban exploration sites. The difficult question is how much physical evidence of the war should remain. Repairing everything risks making the destruction invisible, but leaving dangerous shells throughout a living city is not a sustainable form of remembrance.
This reminded me of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, whose ruins were deliberately retained as a war memorial for decades before reconstruction began after German reunification. Cities can apparently become accustomed to living around their damaged buildings, until a later generation decides that their meaning or future should change.
On a more positive note, I found this piece of installation art inside one of the ruined buildings. It was encouraging to see an abandoned space being used creatively, even if the building itself remained some distance from troubling a conventional estate agent. We also saw several buildings which were finally being reconstructed during our meanderings, so the situation is gradually improving.