Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and religious discrimination.

In Safe Area Goražde, Sacco explores how the rise of ethno-nationalism in the former Yugoslavia not only led to war and ethnic cleansing but also undermined the fabric of communities. Throughout the work, the people whom Sacco interviews tell him about how their communities fundamentally changed in the lead-up to the conflict and how violent persecution based on ethnic identities fractured the once-peaceful town they had lived in.

Edin explains that as anti-Islam and anti-Bosnian rhetoric grew louder, Goražde became a different town. People began only associating with others they identified with, both in their personal and public lives: “In some coffee bars, all the people were Muslim, and 15 meters away another coffee bar was full of Serbs…I didn’t feel comfortable going alone into a Serb coffee bar” (40). Edin, a man with many Serbian friends, suddenly found that these friends did not want to associate with him. He felt unwelcome in Serb spaces that he had recently been welcomed in. As Edin reflects, “The last days before the war you didn’t hear, ‘Hello, how are you, neighbor?’” (40).