SARAJEVOPosted by Goat FootThere are beasts too ferocious to be tamed. The same is sometimes true of nations, and the Balkans is one such place. Geopolitically speaking, the Balkan peninsula has been unstable for centuries. A crossroad of cultures, the territory bottles the tensions between diff erent groups, rooted in ethnicity, language, faith, and land, and shakes them together into a potent, often bloody brew.
The Second Ottoman Jihad (aka the EuroWars) somehow found a way to make strife in the region even worse. Thousands of Alliance for Allah jihadists were trapped in the Balkans after Euroforces liberated Greece and broke the AfA’s lines in the North. European leaders were unwilling to fund a long-term and difficult campaign to pacify the region. Instead, they choose to arm and equip the locals and let them do the dirty work—unleashing the Beast. Th irsty for vengeance and fueled by the Balkans penchant for savagery, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Romanians, and Slovenes as well as the gypsy clans of the Roma repaid the jihadists in kind for their “pacification” campaigns.
- Quote :
- We’re not savages. We’re a proud people who do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. That’s something NEEC intellectuals, who just want to cannibalize our homeland and turn us into straightlaced Europeans, will never understand.
> Clockwork
- Quote :
- Grain of salt and all that. Particularly coming from a foul-tempered goblin who doesn’t shy from wetwork or selling out one of our own.
> Aufheben
- Quote :
- Bite me.
> Clockwork
The remaining Islamist troops fell apart in the face of the pan-Slavic storm, fragmenting into smaller units that withdrew to former Muslim strongholds in Albania, Bosnia, and Kosovo to carve out new power bases. Some set themselves up as local warlords, others became nomadic marauders— so called uskoci (land pirates)—wandering the Dinaric and Balkan Mountains. The three decades of continuous campaigns and battles that followed in the tracks of the EuroWars have turned the Balkans into a ravaged war zone of squabbling micronations. With two generations now born to a legacy of war, ethnic hatred, and religious cleansing, the whole region is still reaping whirlwinds sown over thirty years ago.
LIFE ON THE HELLMOUTHWithin this hurricane, the Sarajevo Enclave—which
includes the former capital and neighboring cities of Ilidža (including Mt. Igman) and Vogošća—can be considered a stable constant and the closest the area has to a safe haven. While Bosnia-Herzegovina fragmented into a mosaic of contested autonomous enclaves like the Dinaric Collective (an enclave of Croatian-backed paramilitaries in the Dinaric Mountains), the Republika SRPSKA (or Sebrencian Serb Republic, which borders Montenegro and is run by Serbian warlord Goran Jakšić) or the Allied Islamic Territories (formed when the Muslim Bosnian Republic fell apart following the Serbian campaigns of the mid-50s), Sarajevo survived due to its strategic and symbolic importance as a socio-political and cultural hub.
- Quote :
- It’s insanely hard to be up-to-date on the numerous Balkan microstates, their leaders, and allegiances. The constant border, religious, or ethnic strife means these self-proclaimed nations change every other month. Bosnia, in particular, is under constant tension. Regular Croat and Serb incursions into Muslim-held territories are answered with lightning raids, missile barrages, and suicide bombings without either side making significant gains.
> Black Mamba
- Quote :
- Shortly before Crash 2.0, peace talks for the de-balkanization of the region and the re-formation of a Bosnian and a Herzegovinian state with Sarajevo as a shared capital were thwarted by suicide bombers of the NIJ that killed most of the delegates in Sarajevo City Hall. Reducing the number of the few that actually wanted to talk set the peace process back a decade.
> Picador
A significant portion of the ethnically diverse population is made up of the thousands of refugees that escaped to Sarajevo from rural areas in fear of persecution, rape, or murder by partisans and militias, the majority being Eastern Orthodox Serbs, Roman Catholic Croats, and Bosnian Muslims. Violent flare-ups between members of these major faiths and Slavic neo-pagans have become commonplace.
- Quote :
- Numerous locals have converted back to the Old Ways of Slavic paganism. Though a minority compared to the major religions, their numbers continue to grow. There’s even a small community in Sarajevo that trades with the centaur herds on the slopes on Mt. Igman. Nobody knows what these centaurs are really up to (or if they are even sapient), but despite all the fl are-ups nobody has ever dared challenge their territory.
> Winterhawk
Though Serbo-Croatian is the official language of the sprawl, most people speak their native Balkan dialect or the Balkan pidgin spoken in Sarajevo that owes much to both Slavic and Arabic. Islamic influence extends to more than just language, though. As befits the seat of the Reis ul-ulema (chief ulema) of Bosnian Muslims, many aspects of life in Sarajevo are touched by Islam, and the city boasts several Muslim schools and more than a hundred mosques.
Dzevad Vukotić, the current ulema—considered as one of the most liberal Grand Muft is in the world—has guided the city for more than fifteen years. While he’s always managed to walk a tightrope between moderates and the combined Balkan and second-generation Jihadist hardliners without favoring either faction, the recent influx of former New Islamic Jihad extremists into the Balkans and Sarajevo has destabilized the situation.
- Quote :
- There are fears that New Islamic Jihad’s big gun, Sayid Mutjaba Musawa, Ibn Eisa’s former second-in-command, has taken permanent residence with his special friends someplace in the Balkans. Could be him instigating extremists on to the next bloody escalation.
> Elijah
- Quote :
- God I hope not. It’s good for biz but I’ve yet to meet a merc who will take Balkan contracts without fl inching at the thought of another tour in this hellhole. Big outfits like MET2000 and 10,000 Daggers have seen so much conflict, they now offer automatic hazard pay for the duration of a Balkan’s tour—too many green never get to collect.
> Picador
Aside from the power held by the ulema and his Bosnian Muslim supporters, who are the major faction in Sarajevo’s domestic policy, city government is in the hands of a parliamentary committee that consists of the remnants of the former government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ever since the local police forces and military disbanded decades ago (the endless stretch of grave markers leading to Mt. Igman tell that story), criminal investigations and peacekeeping tasks are performed jointly by Blue Helmets from the Balkan UN Protection Force (a peacekeeping mission started in the early 1990s) and a European Crisis Group (Eroforce/MET2000 troops supported and re-commissioned by the NEEC).
The Peacekeeping taskforces are stationed in Butmir, where they assist in protecting Sarajevo Airport, maintained by Saeder-Krupp and serving as one of the few remaining aerial gateways in the Balkans.
The presence of these high-tech military forces has held neighboring predators at bay in the recent years and has kept the committee independent of corporate influence—even though occasional concessions are given to local powerhouses like Ukraine Bioenergetica (through Energopetrol), Bosnalijek (Zeta-ImpChem), Ares Arms, Krupp Manufacturing, Ruhrmetall (Balkan railways and mil-tech manufacturing), Aztechnology (tobacco and alcohol industry), and Esprit Industries that control what remains of the enclave’s long-suff ering economy.
- Quote :
- You fail to see the bigger picture. The Corporate Court has bankrolled peace in Sarajevo over the last decade. Blue Helmets cost money don’t you know? Without the funding, the city and the remnants of the Bosnian government would have long sunk into oblivion. The situation has given the Triple-As leverage over the Bosnian Muslims, maybe enough to prod them and the recalcitrant governments of Serbia and Croatia to the table for some long-term peace negotiations.
> Cosmo
- Quote :
- And yet Saeder-Krupp, Z-IC, Ares, and Ruhrmetall all rake it in supplying arms and munitions of all sorts to the factions in Sarajevo itself and bordering nations—where the money comes from is anyone’s guess.
> Am-mut
SARAJEVO ROSESPeace is hard won in the city. Nationalist factions, militias, partisans, hired mercenaries, and cutthroats are always causing trouble havoc, with collateral damage being more rule than exception. Cheap or used armored vests are a common fashion accessory among Sarajevo’s natives. Th ose who can aff ord additional protection hire bodyguards (often outsiders to avoid conflicts of interest) or travel in armored vehicles. Although public transportation systems like the spinal tram network around the central district and busses that shuttle to the suburbs survived, they have been a target of attacks and hostage-takings in the past.
- Quote :
- Since every asshole has a firearm, you’re always at risk of getting shot at simply because some bigoted prick doesn’t like the color of your skin or metatype. So watch your back.
> Black Mamba
Landmarks and building facades are derelict, scarred from the years of siege and bombardments. Mortars, missile strikes, and gunfi ghts that have taken their toll; the streets are pockmarked with “Sarajevo Roses” (so named after the unique crater patterns left by exploding mortar shells on concrete). Though public funds are channeled into reconstruction and maintenance, most inhabited buildings—those that don’t belong to a corporation or have a (religious) benefactor—are war-marked, battered, filled with debris, or on the brink of collapse. Power losses and water and food shortages, especially in refugee and non-Muslim quarters, are frequent. Death tolls in winter skyrocket due to diseases and lack of fuel.
The crumbling infrastructure extends to the Matrix. Sarajevo’s laughable excuse for a grid navigated the Crash 2.0 and its aftermath with nary a glitch, and to this day it still doesn’t possess a public wireless network (with no plans on the horizon either), though smaller corporate and private networks do exist. Free access to today’s infosociety is still well out of the reach of the Balkan people—a pity, since education and cultural exchange might be exactly what the doctor ordered to break the cycle of violence.
- Quote :
- Just as the corps want it. Today’s hell-holes are the corp-zones of tomorrow.
> Aufheben
CONCRETE OPPORTUNITIESSo why come to this hotbed of trouble anyhow? Like other regions in the grip of squabbling interests and factions, Sarajevo’s underworld is full of opportunities for the bold or the foolhardy. Due to ethnic ties, most regional syndicates like the Albanian Fares, the Turkish Grey Wolves, the Balkan Vory, Kalderash, or Roma mobs have local outfits who stick tight to their flock. It therefore requires a certain breed of runner—possessing just the right amount of callousness, risk propensity and business acumen—to navigate the complexities of this nightmare patchwork of factions and their oft en-incomprehensible motives. Since neutrality isn’t an option in a city governed by ethnic feuds and antagonistic religions, choosing the right temporary allegiance and knowing when to change will decide whether you succeed or end up face down on the streets.