Eastern Sarajevo

East Sarajevo (Istočno Sarajevo in Serbo-Croat, Cyrillic: Источно Сарајево; English: East Sarajevo) is a city in the Republika Srpska, in Bosnia and Herzegovina that holds the constitutional capital of the Republika Srpska. It was established from the territory of pre-war Sarajevo that remained in Bosnian Serb power after the Bosnian War and is therefore located adjacent to current Sarajevo.

Geography

The territory of Eastern Sarajevo includes, on the one hand, that of some neighborhoods of the pre-war districts of New Sarajevo and Stari Grad of the city of Sarajevo, which were assigned to the territory of the Republika Srpska after the Dayton Agreements (and which, separated from the original pre-war municipalities, became the new municipalities of New Eastern Sarajevo and Stari Grad Oriental), and on the other, the of 4 Bosnian Serb municipalities in the eastern and southern metropolitan area of the Bosnian capital located around the Miljacka River valley (Tarnovo, Sokolac, Ilidza Oriental and Pale), making Eastern Sarajevo one of the largest cities in the Balkans.

History

With the start of hostilities of the Bosnian civil war in 1992, the Republika Srpska declared Sarajevo as its capital, hoping that eventually the entire city or at least a substantial part would remain in its possession. territory and, in fact, during the war, efforts were made to provide joint administration to all sectors of the city under Bosnian Serb control (which during the war reached 30% of the pre-war Sarajevite territory) among which were the Grbavica district, part of Stari Grad and New Sarajevo, as well as almost the entire northern, southern and eastern metropolitan area of the Bosnian capital).

At the end of the war, the rectification of borders established by the Dayton Agreements meant that the Republika Srpska had to cede the Grabavica neighborhood, part of New Sarajevo and all of the towns in the area to the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. northern and western metropolitan Sarajevo and part of those in the south, so that only a small part of the pre-war city of Sarajevo (only some peripheral neighborhoods of the districts of Stari Grad and New Sarajevo that barely accounted for 10% of the urban center of pre-war Sarajevo) remained in the territory of the Republika Srpska. In this way, the aspiration for Sarajevo to be the capital of the Republika Srpska was unviable, so it was decided to create a new entity with the administrative category of city that would group together those neighborhoods of Stari Grad and New Sarajevo, but given its small extension even grouped together, it was also decided to annex to the new entity 4 more municipalities that housed the bordering Bosnian Serb towns in the east and south of the Sarajevo metropolitan area (among them the city of Pale, capital of the Republika Srpska during the war). The meeting of all these nuclei formed Eastern Sarajevo, which therefore began to serve as the constitutional capital of the Bosnian Serb entity.

However, the lack of infrastructure and urban continuity of the population centers integrated into Eastern Sarajevo, and the fact of being a "city" created for administrative purposes artificially have determined a lack of political decision when materializing and establishing the capital of the Republika Srpska in it; which has meant that with the exception of the University of Eastern Sarajevo (one of the two public universities of the Republika Srpska) the vast majority of the main political and administrative institutions, particularly the Bosnian Serb government and parliament, have their headquarters in the city. of Banja Luka, a city that has de facto functioned since the end of the war as the capital of the Republika Srpska.

Name

At the time of its administrative creation Eastern Sarajevo was initially designated as Srpsko Sarajevo (Српско Сарајево, Serbian Sarajevo), but the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina decreed that This name was illegal and forced it to be replaced by another, for which the current alternative of Eastern Sarajevo (Istočno Sarajevo) was chosen.

Municipalities

The city of Eastern Sarajevo is made up of 6 "municipalities":

• New East Sarajevo (whose main district is Lukavica)
• Stari Grad Oriental
• Ilidža Oriental (whose main district is Kasindo)
• Pale
• Sokolac
• Tarnovo

Sports

The local football club, FK Slavija Istočno Sarajevo, plays in the Bosnia-Herzegovina Premijer Liga.