Tuzla & the Northeast

The north-east has been settled since the Neolithic, and the salt springs of Tuzla gave the town its medieval name, Soli, and its Turkish one, from tuz, salt. In the Middle Ages the lands of Soli and Usora on the northern edge of the Bosnian kingdom were fought over with Hungary, while the silver mines of Srebrenica, from srebro, silver, drew Ragusan merchants and Saxon miners. The Ottomans took the area between the 1460s and the 1530s and ruled much of it from Zvornik. In 1831 Husein-kapetan Gradaščević of Gradačac led a Bosnian revolt against Ottoman reforms.

Austria-Hungary developed salt works and coal mines around Tuzla from 1878, making it an industrial town with a strong workers' movement. Under Tito, Tuzla became a centre of mining, power generation and chemicals.

The 1992–95 war struck here early and hard. Serb paramilitaries seized Bijeljina and Zvornik in the spring of 1992 and expelled or killed their Bosniak populations; the Posavina corridor around Brčko, the narrow link between the two halves of Serb-held territory, was fought over for three years. Tuzla stayed under a multi-ethnic civilian government, but a shell killed 71 people at the Kapija square on 25 May 1995. In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN safe area of Srebrenica and killed around 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, a crime international courts have ruled genocide. Dayton left Brčko unresolved; arbitration made it a separate district shared by both entities in 2000.

The region is a patchwork. Tuzla Canton is largely Bosniak, Posavina Canton Croat and Catholic, and Bijeljina, Doboj, Zvornik and the Drina towns Serb and Orthodox; Brčko has all three. Tuzla prides itself on having held together during the war, and on a secular, working-class, left-leaning streak that led it to start the nationwide protests of February 2014. The novelist Meša Selimović was born in the city.

Religious and national calendars run side by side: Bajram in Bosniak areas, Orthodox Christmas on 7 January and the family slava saint's day in Serb households, and parish festivals among the Posavina Croats. Srebrenica shapes the year for Bosniaks everywhere: each 11 July newly identified victims are buried at Potočari, and thousands walk the Marš mira, a three-day march along the route of the men who tried to escape in 1995. How the war is remembered differs sharply on each side of the entity line, and it is a subject best left for locals to raise.

Folk culture is closer to the Pannonian plain than to the mountains: kolo circle dances, tamburica string bands and sevdalinka songs in Tuzla's cafés.

Tuzla, with around 110,000 people, is the region's main city and the third largest in the country, with a university, a busy pedestrian old town and suburbs spreading down the Jala valley. Bijeljina, the centre of the fertile Semberija plain, has about 100,000 in its municipality; Brčko District around 80,000; Doboj about 70,000. Zvornik, Gradačac, Gračanica, Srebrenik, Lukavac and Orašje are smaller market and industrial towns.

The economy rests on coal from the mines around the city, the Tuzla power station, chemicals at Lukavac, salt, and farming: wheat, maize, fruit and vegetables on the plains. Brčko's port on the Sava and its postwar Arizona market made it a trading town. Salt extraction, particularly in the 20th century, has caused sections of central Tuzla to sink.

Emigration to Germany, Austria and Slovenia is the defining issue, and remittances support many families. Tuzla's air pollution from coal is a constant complaint, and Srebrenica, with only a fraction of its prewar population, remains quiet and poor.

The north-east eats like the Pannonian plain as well as like Bosnia. Grills turn out ćevapi and pljeskavica, bakeries sell burek and its cousins sirnica with cheese and zeljanica with spinach, and restaurants serve sogan-dolma, onions stuffed with minced meat and rice. Semberija is farming country, and spit-roasted pork and lamb, pečenje, is the centrepiece of weddings, slava feasts and roadside restaurants around Bijeljina.

Along the Sava and in Posavina the rivers supply carp, catfish and pike, cooked in paprika-rich fish stews in the style of neighbouring Slavonia. Kajmak, the rich clotted dairy cream, and young white cheese come from the hill farms, and summer brings plums, raspberries and peppers roasted for ajvar.

Plum rakija, šljivovica, is distilled in almost every village. Salt, long drawn from the city's brine, is a small point of pride in Tuzla, and coffee is taken Bosnian-style everywhere.

Tuzla is the obvious base. Its Pannonian Lakes, salt-water lakes created in the city centre between 2003 and 2012, are the region's summer attraction, with the Salt Square, the restored Ottoman-era old town, and the Kapija memorial a short walk away. Nearby are Lake Modrac near Lukavac, the clifftop fortress of Srebrenik, the Gradačac castle and watchtower of Husein-kapetan Gradaščević, and the forests at Kladanj below Mount Konjuh.

North of Tuzla, Doboj's medieval fortress looks over the Bosna, with the Ozren hills and their Orthodox monastery to the east and the spa of Vrućica at Teslić to the west. Brčko, on the Sava, has an Austro-Hungarian centre and a river crossing to Croatia; downstream, the flat, fertile Posavina plain around Orašje and Odžak is farmland and orchards. Bijeljina has its Semberija ethno-village at Stanišići and the Tavna monastery in the Majevica foothills.

In the south-east, the Drina valley runs from Zvornik, under the ruined Kula Grad fortress, to Bratunac. Srebrenica lies in a narrow valley beyond, once known for its Guber mineral springs. At Potočari, the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery holds more than 6,000 graves, and the former UN base across the road houses an exhibition on the genocide of July 1995.