In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the POP album & POPmart we are featuring yet another POPmart concert:
U2 in Sarajevo: reconciliation for a few hours
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - What politicians and diplomats have failed to do for years, rock music
might well accomplish Tuesday: end the division of Bosnia, at least for a few hours.
Fans from all over the bitterly divided country flocked to Sarajevo to hear the Irish rock band U2 in concert -
the biggest spectacle the city has seen since the 1984 Winter Olympics.
The concert in the Kosevo Olympic stadium - rebuilt last year after suffering heavy damage during the 3-year
war - has, in its own way, accomplished miracles. About 45,000 people were expected to pack the stadium
for Tuesday night’s concert, which fulfills a pledge made by U2’s lead singer Bono when he spent the first
postwar New Year’s Eve with Sarajevans in December 1995, weeks after the war ended.
For the first time since the start of the war in 1992, people more accustomed to seeing each other through the
sights of a rifle were converging on the capital to listen to music together. It was a reminder of prewar
Sarajevo, home to some of old Yugoslavia’s best rock bands.
About 500 fans even came from the Bosnian Serb republic, and trains ran between the north and south of the 
country for the first time since the war-shattered railway network was repaired last year.
In Serb territory, tickets were available through international civilian organizations working to bring peace. In
some places, U2 concert posters were pasted over pictures of Radovan Karadzic, the indicted wartime leader
of the Bosnian Serbs.
Even the NATO-led peace force lent a hand to Tuesday’s concert, helping to check the stadium for bombs.
Concert revenues - $ 18 a ticket on average - were being donated to a hospital reconstruction fund in Sarajevo.
During the war, U2 dedicated a song, “Miss Sarajevo,” to the city’s suffering. On his ZOO TV tour in 1993-94,
Bono established a direct link with Sarajevo - bringing a glimmer of the outside world to a city that endured 3
years of siege, shelling and sniping by the Serbs.
Bosnians never forgot it. “Welcome U2,” the main daily “Oslobodjenje” proclaimed on its front page Tuesday.
“I felt excluded from the world for so long,” said Azra Smailkadic, 18, who arrived Tuesday from Travnik in
central Bosnia dressed in layers of sweaters and jackets. “It’s not only about U2. It’s the feeling of being part of
the world again.”
“The city is full of young people with backpacks,” said her best friend, Amela Leko. “Everybody is here expecting
something nice to happen for a change.”
Although the railway from Sarajevo to the south and to the north was fixed by foreign donors last year, trains
never ran until Tuesday, because Muslim and Croat politicians could not agree who would operate the railway
within the Federation they share.
But U2’s concert made them overcome the dispute for a day. Special trains from Maglaj to the north and Mostar
to the south brought in fans Tuesday and were to take them back Wednesday morning. After that, the trains will
be idle again.
The Muslim member of the Bosnian presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, is expected to be among the many political
notables in the audience.
And at U2’s request, the warm-up act was distinctly Sarajevan - the chorus of the city’s Gazi-Husruf Beg Islamic
high school singing two Islamic spiritual songs, “Ilahije” and “Kaside.”
U2 Sarajevo concert - 2:13:33
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