One
More Mile:
A Dialogue on Nation-Building
(80
minutes, digital Betacam, 2002)
By
Elizabeth Coffman and Ted Hardin
description | reviews
| screenings | history
| interview transcripts | bios
| contact info
History
The recent wars in the Balkans have forced many scholars to ask themselves
about the cyclical nature of history, about the roots and interconnectedness
of nationalism and genocide. How could such a tragedy occur in Europe
again in this century? As one of our interview subjects, Bosnian writer
Aleksander Hemon, suggests, "Europe is the perfect place" for
such a moment to repeat itself, because Europe is the "cradle of
nation-states." Now that the war in Bosnia has been over for more
than eight years, the time has come to evaluate the rebuilding process
and to ask the questions of 'How can we prevent such a war from happening
again?' And specifically we ask, 'What is the international community
doing to Bosnia's political, economic, and social scenes to insure their
stability?'
Billions of international aid dollars have poured into Bosnia, following
the overwhelming destruction and genocide that occurred throughout the
first half of the 1990s. Along with those dollars came a small army of
well-paid international workers who are responsible for rebuilding homes,
returning refugees, democratizing the media, overseeing elections, rewriting
the code of law, improving gender relations, and privatizing the economy.
In Sarajevo alone international workers account for 10% of the population
of the city and over 40% of the current economic activity. In short, internationals
working through various agencies are involved in a massive and somewhat
utopian project to rebuild a country, using the economic and political
philosophies of the democratic and capitalistic West. These decisions
are made sometimes with, but often without the cooperation of local Bosnians,
and the isolation of the international community at times suggests just
another form of colonialism.
