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What happened in sarajevo?


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, lasting from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996.

Sarajevo was heavily damaged during those four years. The manuscript collection of the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, one of the richest collections of Oriental manuscripts in the world, was deliberately destroyed by Serb nationalist forces. The siege of Sarajevo was undoubtedly the worst and most catastrophic period in the city's history since the World War I. Prior to the siege, the city was experiencing tremendous growth and development. The 1984 Winter Olympics had brought back some of the glory Sarajevo hadn't seen since the late 17th century. The warfare put a stop to all of this, taking the city back to a desolated state of destruction.

The city used to be a model for inter-ethnic relations, but the siege of Sarajevo inspired dramatic population shifts. Aside from the thousands of refugees who left the city, an immense number of Sarajevo Serbs left for the Republika Srpska as well. The percentage of Serbs in Sarajevo decreased from more than 30% in 1991 to slightly over 10% in 2002. Regions of Novo Sarajevo that are now part of the Republika Srpska have formed East Sarajevo (Serbian Sarajevo), where a good deal of the pre-war Serbian population lives today. Some Serbs that remained in Sarajevo were treated harshly by refugees returning to their homes, significantly so in Ilid??.

Since the gloomy desolate years of the early 1990s, Sarajevo has made tremendous progress, and is well on its way to recovery as a modern European capital. By 2004 most of the damage done to buildings during the siege was fixed. New construction projects have made Sarajevo perhaps the fastest growing city in the former Yugoslavia. Sarajevo's metro-area population in 2002 was around 401,000, which was 20,000 less than the population of the city itself in 1991. With its current growth and reconstruction, Sarajevo may one day in the not so distant future return to its late 1980s form and is clearly on the fast track to recovery, but the scars of the siege of Sarajevo on its history may never fully disappear.