Twenty (20) kilometers
Bosnia Herzegovina has twenty (20) kilometers of highway. That's all. Twenty (20) kilometers. For a country which has roughly the size of Holland (it is just 10,000 square kilometers bigger), that is not much. However, in 2003 it had one (1) kilometers. And it has been even worse. So there has been some progress over the last few years.
Road constructions are ongoing, always, and there are plans to make a highway through the country, which will lead from the Adriatic Sea to Budapest. Seeing is believing.
The reasons for the limited amount of highway kilometres is two-fold, so I have been told. Reason number one is that the terrain of BiH is not really suitable for highways. The country is very mountainous, which makes it difficult to build the highways. Eevn I, as a layman, can see that. Reason number two is of a completely different nature: apparently, no highways were build in BiH on specific order of Tito- it was a matter of national defense.
Although by many considered a communist (and admitedly, I think he was one), Tito was as distrustful of the Warsaw Pact as he was of NATO. As he result he not only built up the Non-Alligned Movement, he also built up the fourth stongest army in Europe. Not having nuclear weapons though, he needed another advantage over possible invaders from the East or the West. He made an army that was trained in guerrilla warfare, an army that consisted to a large extent of militia's, like the partisan army in the Second World War. A guerrilla army is successful if it can make full advantage of the terrain it operats in. Bosnia, being the rough country that it is, was in his opinion the best place for his guerrilla army to fight invaders (the proof of this pudding was in the eating in the 1990's, but not as Tito intended it). So in times of war, the Yugoslav army was supposed to withdraw to Bosnia, and continue the fight from there. Tito knew that advancing modern armies need good infrastructure in order to be succesful. They needed highways to move on. So not building them in Bosnia, was part of national strategy.
This explanation is given to me by a few people. I can not check it on the internet, but it is an interesting story. Be that as it may, twenty (20) kilometers of highway is still quite a pain. Driving to the coast costs me over 4 hours, and it is not even 200 kilometers. According to the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo the car-accident rate in Bosnia is 10 times higher then in the rest of Europe.
All eccentric explanations aside, that for me is an argument enough to do something about the roadconditions.
Road constructions are ongoing, always, and there are plans to make a highway through the country, which will lead from the Adriatic Sea to Budapest. Seeing is believing.
The reasons for the limited amount of highway kilometres is two-fold, so I have been told. Reason number one is that the terrain of BiH is not really suitable for highways. The country is very mountainous, which makes it difficult to build the highways. Eevn I, as a layman, can see that. Reason number two is of a completely different nature: apparently, no highways were build in BiH on specific order of Tito- it was a matter of national defense.
Although by many considered a communist (and admitedly, I think he was one), Tito was as distrustful of the Warsaw Pact as he was of NATO. As he result he not only built up the Non-Alligned Movement, he also built up the fourth stongest army in Europe. Not having nuclear weapons though, he needed another advantage over possible invaders from the East or the West. He made an army that was trained in guerrilla warfare, an army that consisted to a large extent of militia's, like the partisan army in the Second World War. A guerrilla army is successful if it can make full advantage of the terrain it operats in. Bosnia, being the rough country that it is, was in his opinion the best place for his guerrilla army to fight invaders (the proof of this pudding was in the eating in the 1990's, but not as Tito intended it). So in times of war, the Yugoslav army was supposed to withdraw to Bosnia, and continue the fight from there. Tito knew that advancing modern armies need good infrastructure in order to be succesful. They needed highways to move on. So not building them in Bosnia, was part of national strategy.
This explanation is given to me by a few people. I can not check it on the internet, but it is an interesting story. Be that as it may, twenty (20) kilometers of highway is still quite a pain. Driving to the coast costs me over 4 hours, and it is not even 200 kilometers. According to the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo the car-accident rate in Bosnia is 10 times higher then in the rest of Europe.
All eccentric explanations aside, that for me is an argument enough to do something about the roadconditions.
posted by David Hein at 4:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home