Beware of evil from someone you have done good to.

This sentence is inscribed in the gate of one of the many small cemeteries in the countryside around Sanski Most, the small town in northwestern BiH where I will be spending the next month. Like all places in BiH, Sanski Most has many faces. Surrounded by rolling green foothills dotted with mosques and wildflowers, the town and nearby villages seem to be, for lack of a better comparison, a Bosnian Hobbiton straight out of Tolkein. Pedaling along the banks of the idyllic Sanica River, it is easy to forget that just over a decade ago these hills were the heavily mined front line.

Riding through the villages you begin to see signs. All of the buildings (including the mosque) are brand new, many still awaiting the final layer of plaster. At first this does not seem to be very significant. After all, the fact that so many are building new houses should be a sign of wealth and progress, no? Vahidin, the director of the Center for Peacebuilding and my host in Sanski Most tells a different story. Almost all of the villages in the region were completely destroyed in the war. In his village alone 200 residents, mostly Bosniaks, were “ethnically cleansed” by Bosnian Serb forces. They are rebuilding because there was nothing left when those who were lucky enough to escape returned.

Nowadays the ethnic cleansing committed by Bosnian Serb forces has been reversed, and Sanski Most and its surrounding villages are populated by an overwhelming Bosniak majority. Mosques by far outnumber churches, and hajab and call to prayer are simply part of everyday life. But as I have learned in my first week here, the wounds of the war are still very visible. Vahidin is still afraid to travel in the Republika Srpska, where he is called names and often threatened by the Bosnian Serbs who were once his neighbors.

I spent my first afternoon in Sanski Most having coffee (which translates to a whole morning/afternoon affair followed by lunch in BiH) with Vahidin and one of his friends from imam school who is now studying robotics in Germany (an imam doing computer science…go figure). When Vahidin’s friend went to light his cigarette I noticed that his hand was twisted and scared. I simply assumed that this was a birth defect. As Vahidin described to me later however, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. His friend had been imprisoned in a concentration camp during the war, and after his camp was liberated he joined the BiH Armija, the armed forces of the predominantly Bosniak government that opposed the Bosnian Serbs in their attempts at ethnic cleansing. His injured hand was the result of a battlefield injury. Here I was in sunny, seemingly peaceful Sanski Most being treated to coffee by a concentration camp and army survivor.

Just before we left the cafe, a group of soldiers walked by. “Chilean,” Vahidin said. “Part of the EU protection force in Bosnia. I didn’t think Chile was in the EU.” Sanski Most. Green hills. Shining minarets. Still occupied by foreign troops. Still recovering from the evil of those it once did good to.