MOSTAR, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The Mostar Gymnasium, a bustling high school of 650 students, lies at the crossroads of Bosnia’s divides. Located on a boulevard that once served as a front line between Croats and Muslims during the country’s brutal 1990s war, the brightly colored, recently renovated building stands out among its neighbors, most of which are still in ruins.
But it’s not the discordant splash of peach amid the rubble that makes the school conspicuous here — it’s that inside, Croatian and Muslim students attend school together.
Fourteen years after the Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war, Bosnia’s children are growing up more isolated from other ethnic groups than even their parents did. The war largely succeeded in separating the country’s three main people, Serbs, Croats and Muslims, known as Bosniaks. But the peace cemented those divisions into law.
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