On a recent cold morning in the heart of Republika Srpska, beneath a sky scrubbed clean of clouds, all was quiet surrounding the warehouse where one of modern Europe’s darkest horrors unfolded. The only living creature was a medium-sized dog, chained to guard the site.
There is no plaque, no marker, no acknowledgment of any kind of the mass execution of over 1,000 Bosniaks who were killed in a matter of hours on July 14, 1995, their bodies hastily discarded in mass graves. Though their slaughter was part of the internationally recognized Srebrenica genocide, the former farm shed in this Serb-controlled enclave in Bosnia is eerily peaceful today. Its bullet-laden walls have since been covered over with white plaster, and a mesh wire fence stops people from getting too close.
The Balkan war of the 1990s, the worst in Europe since World War II, reached its pinnacle of horror with the Srebrenica genocide, when over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb soldiers throughout that July. Yet despite — or perhaps because of — the scale of the atrocities, Bosnia’s past is increasingly up for debate.
Just a few hundred yards away from the Kravica warehouse, a stark contrast emerges. A newly erected Serbian memorial — shaped like a cross and constructed from marble — commemorates the Serb victims of wars past.
When Srebrenica massacre survivors and activists want to organize remembrance events, they are met with bureaucratic obstacles, police surveillance and, sometimes, outright threats.
Historical revisionism is rife in a region that was remade by the ethnic cleansing that defined the Yugoslav wars, in which Bosniaks, who are mostly Muslim, were targeted by Serbs, who are usually Orthodox Christians. Croats were also among the victims and the perpetrators.
Denialism, once a fringe phenomenon, is now deeply embedded in the political fabric. This has recently extended to the classroom, where, 30 years after the war, students in different parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina are taught different versions or fragments of the truth about the suffering and crimes of the early 1990s.
In 1995, an agreement brokered by the United States known as the Dayton Peace Accords brought an end to open warfare, dividing Bosnia into three: Bosnia-Herzegovina, home mostly to Bosniaks and Croats; Republika Srpska, controlled by Serbs and allied with Russia; and the tiny, internationally supervised district of Brcko. Since then, education has increasingly become a battlefield.
Each of the three entities has its own government, president, parliament and, crucially, its own ministries of education, police and media operations. While there is a state-level government and presidency shared among the three constituent peoples — Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats — much of the day-to-day governance is fragmented, allowing for divergent narratives and policies to take root across ethnic lines.
“In the societal context in which we live today, education should contribute to fostering dialogue, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the situation is quite the opposite,” said Nerma Halilović Kibrić, a professor at the Faculty of Criminal Justice, Criminology and Security Studies at the University of Sarajevo. Kibrić’s research has shown that students at Bosnia’s three largest universities — Sarajevo, Mostar and Banja Luka — have high levels of mistrust between different ethnic groups.
Until 2018, studying the war of the 1990s was effectively banned across Bosnia, including in the capital, Sarajevo, where a siege lasting nearly four years — the longest siege of a capital in modern warfare — starved the city and cut it off from most of the world.
Since this teaching embargo was lifted seven years ago, each of the three ethnic groups has developed its own history curriculum, portraying crimes, victims and perpetrators in different ways.
In the schools of Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska, a new chapter appeared last year in history textbooks for ninth-grade students. In a section entitled “The Civil War in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Creation of Republika Srpska,” the convicted war criminals Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić are presented as key figures in the enclave’s military and political history.
“They are equated with heroes,” said Kristina Pajic, an 18-year-old who first saw the men positively portrayed in her elementary school in Banja Luka.
Karadžić, a former politician now serving a life sentence in a British jail for crimes including genocide, is described as a poet and psychiatrist as well as the leader of the Serbian Democratic Party, playing a crucial role in the founding of Republika Srpska. The chapter says Karadžić was “delivered” to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) but omits to mention that he was convicted. The book shows a large photograph of Karadžić, sporting a bouffant hairstyle, beneath the Serbian army’s coat of arms.
As for Mladić, the former commander of the army of Republika Srpska who came to symbolize the Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing, he is portrayed as a much-needed general who defended the Serbs in Croatia and the key figure in establishing the Serbian entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The book acknowledges his extradition to face trial at the ICTY in The Hague in 2011 but does not mention the charges against him.
Nor is there mention of the genocide in Srebrenica or the suffering of other ethnic groups beyond the Serbian perspective. Instead, there is an artistically rendered scene of the Serbian army’s artillery in use, set against a dramatic fiery sky.
Sitting in central Banja Luka, where the call to prayer can be heard across the winding streets, Jaska, a university student and Pajic’s older brother, described the war as “an absolute taboo. It was mentioned occasionally when someone was interested, but I had to find out most of these things myself.”
The textbook, authored by Dragiša Vasić, a professor of history at the University of Banja Luka, was published seven years ago but was included in the mandatory curriculum in September 2024. The history book from before 2018 contained no chapters on the war of the 1990s. Vasić did not respond to a request for comment from New Lines.
Around 80 miles to the southeast, a high school history teacher in Busovaca in central Bosnia-Herzegovina alternates between different textbooks, depending on which ethnicity her class belongs to that day. “The school operates as two separate legal entities. Each shift observes its own national and religious holidays,” said Emina Musić, adding that she works for “two schools under one roof,” an increasingly common practice.
Her 240 students are physically segregated. When teaching Bosniaks, Musić uses a supplement to the textbook glorifying their fellow compatriots and their army. For her class of Croat students, she uses a different textbook, approved by Croatia’s Ministry of Education, which hails the end of the war as a victory for the Croatian army that led to the independent state of Croatia. The students must also study the Croatian language as a mandatory subject, even though they are in Bosnia. The linguistic requirement is largely symbolic: Before the wars began in 1991, the official language of the former Yugoslavia was Serbo-Croatian. When the federation broke up, the language splintered as well, each republic having its own — Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and others — even though, in practice, they are all essentially the same.
Even in Srebrenica, where children as young as 6 study mere yards away from the massacre site, they are taught the official narrative of the Republika Srpska. The end of the war is presented primarily through the lens of the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa to Serbian forces and the expulsion of 250,000 Serbs from Croatia. Once they reach fifth grade, the school’s 200 students will be segregated by ethnic background and follow the separate national curricula.
Hamza Barac, who was born in Sarajevo after the war and went through elementary school without learning about it, said that many of his contemporaries view the past unfavorably: “Their focus is not on the positive aspects. Instead, it’s on the negative ones, often based on subjective historical interpretations, which frequently lead to divisions.”
“In high school, we briefly covered contemporary history and recent events, but the approach was one-sided and left no room for discussion,” said Barac, who is now a student at the Faculty of Criminal Justice, Criminology and Security Studies at the University of Sarajevo.
“We were only taught about the successes or defeats of the Bosnian army. I don’t recall the history books mentioning any victims other than the Bosnian people,” he said, adding that he turned to non-Bosniak friends and colleagues to try to piece together a bigger picture of what took place.
His 22-year-old fellow student Nia Abadžić said that she barely learned anything in school about the war. “My parents, who are Bosnian Muslims, taught my sisters and me to be open to any discussion because we cannot have a well-rounded opinion on something if we don’t hear different perspectives,” she said.
With the demise of communism over 35 years ago, the former Yugoslavia fractured, and war erupted as resurgent nationalism took hold. The conflict was at its deadliest point between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where more than 100,000 people were killed, most of them Bosniak civilians. Half of Bosnia’s population was also displaced.
The war involved fighting between all major ethnic groups, with Serb forces from Serbia also participating. The West intervened militarily, mostly with United Nations peacekeepers, to help Bosnia’s Muslim population.
In the years following the Srebrenica massacre, carried out by Republika Srpska soldiers, the event was recognized as genocide by the U.S., U.N., European Union and numerous other international bodies, becoming the first of its kind in Europe since the end of World War II.
Yet despite such widespread recognition, Republika Srpska’s leadership is increasingly trying to minimize or deny the Srebrenica genocide. In recent years, President Milorad Dodik has honored Russia’s former ambassador to the U.N., the late Vitaly Churkin, who vetoed a 2015 resolution on recognizing the genocide, with posthumous military medals and wreaths on his memorial.
This contest over memory is emerging at a time when relations between Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina are at their lowest point since the end of the war in 1995. Dodik, who is currently the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has repeatedly threatened secession, openly challenging the unity of Bosnia-Herzegovina. His administration has pushed for increased autonomy, rejected the authority of the central government in Sarajevo and aligned itself with Russia, exacerbating political tensions. The fragile postwar balance established by the Dayton Accords now seems more precarious than ever. The battle for memory is intricately tied to this broader political crisis, whereby historical truth is not merely a matter of record but a tool in a larger struggle for power and national identity.
The current wave of historical revisionism in Republika Srpska also reflects a wider global trend of political polarization. In May, Dodik traveled to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin — his eighth visit since the start of the latter’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — underscoring Republika Srpska’s close ties to the Kremlin. In Sarajevo, this relationship has translated into support for secessionist rhetoric and a persistent challenge to state-level institutions. A recent failed attempt by state police to arrest Dodik on charges of undermining the constitutional order illustrated the depth of institutional fragmentation. His subsequent remarks suggesting that Bosniaks should “return to the faith of their ancestors” were widely condemned and are now under legal scrutiny by the state prosecutor’s office for inciting ethnic and religious hatred.
Historically, during the Yugoslav era, Bosniaks were classified simply as “Muslims,” but the term now reflects a distinct ethnic identity shaped by centuries of Ottoman influence.
Other disputes over identity and memory are also playing out. In Mostar, controversy surrounds the construction of the Croatian National Theatre — backed by the Croatian government — while projects linked to the Muslim community, such as the Mevlana Center, face legal and administrative obstacles. Civil society groups argue this imbalance reflects broader patterns of exclusion and contested cultural dominance. Across Bosnia, the politics of memory remain central to postwar divisions, shaping not only how the past is remembered but who holds power in the present.
In early January 2025, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina annulled part of the Serb-dominated enclave’s school curriculum — specifically, the ninth-grade module “Republika Srpska and the Homeland Defense War” — following an appeal by 13 members of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly. The lawmakers ruled that the section also contravened the country’s educational standards legislation and requested a constitutional review, arguing that it glorified convicted war criminals, including Karadžić and Mladić.
While it was also deemed illegal to teach ninth-grade history using this part of the textbook, “there are no signs that the Constitutional Court’s decision will be implemented,” said Džana Brkanić, deputy editor-in-chief of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, adding that the textbook is still in use.
“On the other hand, the textbooks used in Federation [of Bosnia and Herzegovina] schools are also full of inaccuracies and biased narratives,” Brkanić added.
In the Tuzla canton, one of 10 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a ninth-grade textbook authored by the history professors Almir Bećirović and Nazim Ibrahimović dedicates 64 pages to the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s, but does not delve into the suffering of non-Bosniak ethnic groups.
According to Melisa Forić-Plasto, a history professor at the University of Sarajevo, much of the content focuses on military operations and the successes of the Bosnian army. “War crimes committed by its members are not mentioned, nor [is] the existence of detention camps run by its military,” she said .
Following extensive analysis of history textbooks, BIRN — a network of nongovernmental organizations promoting freedom of speech and human rights — created a database of legally established facts between April 2021 and March 2023. Using this material, Forić-Plasto adapted the content for use in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s formal education system.
The database is divided into 10 regions and is based on all rulings from the ICTY, from which facts were extracted and adapted for educational purposes. Multimedia materials containing testimonies from war survivors without graphic violence were also included.
Two years ago, BIRN offered this material to education ministries in each of Bosnia’s cantons and to Republika Srpska’s Ministry of Education. Only the Sarajevo and Tuzla cantons signed up to integrate the database into their teaching of history. Soon afterward, BIRN’s journalists were invited to the two cantons to give history lessons to students. BIRN says it never received a reply from the Serb enclave.
For the first time in its history, in March, the Srebrenica Memorial Center had to shut its doors due to heightened security concerns. Dedicated to preserving the memory of the 1995 genocide, the site in the nearby town of Potocari contains a large stone wall with the names of those killed and tall, white gravestones. As new victims are identified through DNA testing, new burials periodically take place.
The center’s 10-day closure was an alarming signal of just how fragile Bosnia’s political and social fabric remains, nearly 30 years after the atrocities. The center’s director, Emir Suljagić, wrote on X that he took the action to prevent the children and grandchildren of both survivors and those who perished from “being harmed by someone inspired by the state’s retreat in the face of the rebels.”
After consulting with high-level security institutions, including the U.N., the center has since resumed operations with a reinforced police presence, though group visits are still suspended.
While access to one place of remembrance is temporarily lost, another kind of space comes alive in Srebrenica’s after-school hours, when Serb and Bosniak children rehearse in harmony. In a town where students learn conflicting versions of history by day, they sing together by night, sharing “sevdalinka” folk ballads and verses of longing, loss and love that belong to no single ethnicity.
“Listen to me, I am thirsty for love, because only one song is meant for us,” sing students from elementary to high school at the House of Good Tones, an NGO that aims to bring people together through the arts.
Borrowing the words of the renowned Bosnian singer Amira Medunjanin’s “Pjevat Cemo Sta Nam Srce Zna” (“We Will Sing What Our Hearts Know”), they belt out, “I come from a place where songs have human faces, and I’m a little afraid that, without love for them, winter will freeze the song of the neighbor.”
Inside this three-story white building in central Srebrenica, music is a language of reconciliation. “When we started, we didn’t have a plan or much funding. We just wanted to create a space where young people could feel safe,” said the artistic director Ismar Porić. “We didn’t expect it to last more than a few months. It’s been 14 years.”
“The past here has too many versions,” Porić said. “Some kids learn about genocide from schoolbooks, others from TV, others from silence at home. Our job is to help them find their own voice.”
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