In the former Yugoslavia, Zenica was known for two things: its prison and its steel mill. The former housed some of the worst criminals in the former Yugoslavia; one famous song describes how much the protagonist hates this town, where he has been jailed. ‘No one has ever escaped from it,’ one person boasted. The latter generated a large amount of pollution, smelled unpleasant, and employed hundreds of people from the town. Before the war, roughly equal numbers of Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived in Zenica. During the war, the Bosnian army had troops there, and the town was not attacked or subjected to the same ethnic cleansing attempts that plagued many other towns because ‘they knew the army was here.’
‘After the war,’ he said, ‘the first crime was privatization.’ During the process of privatizing the nationalized companies that largely constituted the Yugoslav economy, most buyers were either political cronies of company management or the management itself – but of course, to achieve a management position for such a company, individuals had to be well-connected in the Party. If the buyers did not fall into one of those categories, odds were good that they were international businessmen. This was how Zenica’s steel mill was bought by an English businessman of Indian descent, who owns a number of similar enterprises throughout the world. There was corruption: those local people who had the funds to buy the companies were the same people who had been in charge during their nationalization. Production from Zenica’s steel mill was slashed, and workers laid off. There were few alternate employment options for them.
The evening after I arrived, I sat on a ledge outside of my apartment and wrote in my journal as the call to prayer sounded from the white minarets that dot the valley.
‘After the war,’ he said, ‘the first crime was privatization.’ During the process of privatizing the nationalized companies that largely constituted the Yugoslav economy, most buyers were either political cronies of company management or the management itself – but of course, to achieve a management position for such a company, individuals had to be well-connected in the Party. If the buyers did not fall into one of those categories, odds were good that they were international businessmen. This was how Zenica’s steel mill was bought by an English businessman of Indian descent, who owns a number of similar enterprises throughout the world. There was corruption: those local people who had the funds to buy the companies were the same people who had been in charge during their nationalization. Production from Zenica’s steel mill was slashed, and workers laid off. There were few alternate employment options for them.
The evening after I arrived, I sat on a ledge outside of my apartment and wrote in my journal as the call to prayer sounded from the white minarets that dot the valley.
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