By Amina Zornic and Vesna Besic
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Images of suffering and tragedy in Syria today are very similar to events in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the nineties, according to many Syrians residing in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Innocent children, blood in the streets, destroyed houses, schools and hospitals are a daily reality for the Syrian people whose lives have been dramatically changed since March 15, 2011.
It all started in the city of Daraa exactly four years ago, with mass protests by students who wrote on the wall of one of their local schools: "The people demand the downfall of the regime." The regime has not gone and has countered by all available military means, killing and massacring its own people.
The uprising against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad has turned into a bloodbath which has claimed more than 200,000 lives, including 3,500 children. Millions of people have fled Syria.
Those who came to Bosnia to study in the 1980s and 1990s talked to The Anadolu Agency, comparing the destinies of the two countries.
- Similarity of Homs and Srebrenica
Sherif Hakimi, from the Syrian city of Homs, came to Bosnia in 1985 to study medicine. He married a woman from Srebrenica and now has three children. He arrived in Bosnia when he was 18-years-old and has never went back to his home country. As a citizen of one of the most affected cities in the Syrian civil war, and the husband of a woman whose town experienced a brutal genocide in the 1990s, Hakimi draws parallels between the two regions.
"The tragedy is similar in every war. Just as in Bosnia, it is mostly innocent people who were killed," Hakimi told the AA.
"Homs was attacked first. I have always been describing Homs and Srebrenica as similar places because of the suffering of innocent civilians," he said, blaming the international community for the war in his country.
"People do not realize what is going on. Politically, they do not know what is happening. They are not involved in politics. The situation is complicated because a couple of world players are in the game now," he said, adding that his people are the victims of global politics.
Many of Hakimi's cousins were killed or have fled the country.
He has four sisters who were in Syria when the war began. Two of them remain there "for the country," Hakimi said. One of his other sisters fled to Germany and the other to Saudi Arabia.
Hakimi said that among all the countries to which Syrians fled to, Turkey has offered them the warmest welcome.
"I was there (in Turkey) and I have seen how it is. That is the country which accepted Syrian refugees in the best manner," he said.
- Regime torture started years before war
Besim Sheha left his family in Syria and came to Bosnia in 1998 because of the torture being conducted in Syria in the 1990s, he said.
"Put simply, we did not have any rights in our country. Only regime supporters had rights," Sheha said.
Due to the civil war, some of his family fled to Turkey and Egypt, but most of them remained in Syria. His mother is among those who stayed.
"She is sick and without any treatment. They have water and power outages for up to 12 days at a time. I will not speak of the violence because you in Bosnia have experienced it," Sheha told the AA.
He also thinks that innocent civilians are the ones mostly affected by the conflict in Syria, as it was in the case of Bosnia, and that the suffering will stop when the "great powers" decide to do so.
"The war in Syria will end when the 'great powers' agree to do so. Then we will compare it with Bosnia, when the 'great powers' agreed the war stopped here," he said.
- Aleppo population 'halved'
Nidal Balach, from Aleppo, came to Bosnia in 2001 to study law and has not travelled back to his country.
"My mother is Bosnian and my father is Syrian. We lived there and I decided to study here. It was hard to leave the country, it is not easy to take the decision of leaving," he said.
When he did so, he could not foresee the war that threatens his country. He said today his heart is breaking to see the beautiful country completely destroyed by war.
"It is the country that one cannot describe, where we all had everything in life. My city, Aleppo, is the most populated in Syria with 7 million citizens. It is known for its spices and industry," he said.
The number of its citizen has now "halved," according to Balach.
"Those who were not killed have gone as far as possible from the war-torn country," said Balach, adding that he has no more friends there.
"I do not have anyone over there. I do not even have friends there anymore; they have all left the country. If the war would stop now and if I were to go back, I would not have anyone there," he said.
He said that it is not easy to see news of the country being destroyed every day, especially centuries-old mosques and street bazaars in the old part of Aleppo.
"I do not know figures, but everything is destroyed there. In the old part of the city, my Aleppo, everything is destroyed now. All buildings of historical value are demolished. Aleppo was a rich city, half of the place has a rich history," he said.
"Tears come to my eyes when I see that," he said, in the belief that even when the war ends -- it will take years before normal life starts again.
