Bosnia qualified for its first World Cup in its fifth attempt as an independent nation with a 1-0 victory over Lithuania on Tuesday, CNNSI reported. Forward Vedad Ibišević scored the winning goal in the 68th minute, in a game played in Kaunas Lithuania.
The Bosnian national team finished the UEFA Group G play with a 9-1-1 record, qualifying for the World Cup over Greece, who still may advance in next month's European playoffs.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was forged as a single country in 1992, but a bloody war against the Serbians and Croatians lasted for years in the 1990s.
"I congratulate these guys for their great work in the last four years, and it would have been real injustice if we had failed to win the group and qualify for the World Cup," Bosnian coach Safet Susic told FACE television.
Bosnia joins Spain, England and Russia as the early advancers to the 2014 World Cup to be held in Rio De Janiero, Brazil next summer.
CNN's Christiane Amanpour, who spent considerable time in Bosnia as a war correspondent expressed her thoughts on her CNN blog, reflecting on the significance and the win and her memories of the war.
"I remember Bosnia, especially Sarajevo during the war - people loved soccer. Whenever there was a lull in the shelling or the sniping, they would play," Amanpour wrote on her blog.
"But over the course of nearly four years of war, some of the city's soccer fields became graveyards, and I stood there as formal cemeteries overflowed with the war dead. Stadiums were shelled and it was all but impossible even to leave for formal matches abroad...
"So as Bosnia and Herzegovina qualifies for the first time for the World Cup, there's certainly a bittersweet feeling to it, it brings a huge smile to my face because it's wonderful to see Bosnia, to see the city of Sarajevo erupt in such well-deserved celebration. This will unite people," wrote Amanpour.
In July, Bosnian émigrés living in New York marked an 18-year anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, a harrowing episode in the Balkan War, in which at least 8.372 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically killed in three days by Serb forces.
Amanpour, along with reporters, including Roy Gutman, Chuck Sudetic, John Burns, Kurt Schork and David Rohde all had warned and admonished international leaders for their inaction in the Balkan War.
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