New goal posts for Kevljani.

Once the festival was over, the locals took advantage of the cleared land to resurrect their old football pitch. They hadn’t had a pitch since before the war. The relatively new colours of the boy’s team are yellow and blue and so are the new goal posts. This is fair enough but colours can be complex with their own political associations and related history. In this case yellow and blue also happen to be the colours of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Muslim or Bosniak village of Kevljani is in BiH but also falls within the Serbian autonomous region, or as its commonly known; Republika Srpska, that covers 49% of the country. The political elite of this entity generally consider themselves to be Serb, continue to follow a nationalist agenda and have their associated colours of red, white and blue. They have ambitions to ultimately break from the yellow and blue of Bosnia and Herzegovina and join with Serbia proper, working towards forming what is termed a Greater Serbia – a land that contains all Serbs (it was such sentiments that fueled much of Serb aggression during the last conflict). Unfortunately these populations are scattered and mixed, I don’t know what the local Serb village’s thoughts are, but it was clear by cementing yellow and blue into the ground what political allegiances where being projected through this young boy’s football team.

Maybe a little bit confusing and I didn’t want to go on and on with explanations, but please feel free to correct me if there is the need.