I was a 19-year-old living in Banja Luka, the second-largest city in Bosnia, when Yugoslavia began falling apart. What I remember most is the shock and speed with which my normal life and those of my friends abruptly ended.
At the time, I wasn’t following politics or watching the news much, so I had no idea what was to come – a full-blown war and genocide of the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim people), led by Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serbian general and convicted war criminal, who died this week in a prison in The Hague.
