Mark Boyd, an 18-year- old Protestant youth, is knocked down by a hit-and- run driver on ‘the Shankill’, the notorious stretch of road running through West Belfast's Loyalist heartland. Laying in agony with a broken leg, two men approach him to offer assistance. But before doing so, they summon him to sing the Sash, the sectarian song popular among Northern Ireland's Protestant population. Unfortunately, Mark does not know its words. In spite of all his assertions that he is Protestant and not Catholic, he is set upon by the would-be good Samaritans, only escaping a potentially worse fate at their hands by fleeing to a nearby take-away store. (Summarised from McAleese 2007)

On the outskirts of Skopje, Macedonia, five men on a fishing trip are shot dead in cold blood. As people are arrested, interethnic tensions simmer. Rumours have spread that the suspects are ethnic Albanian and that the murder of their victims, all ethnic Macedonian, was politically motivated. It is not long before tensions erupt. Ten thousand frenzied Albanians gather in front of Skopje's Jaja-Pasha mosque after mid-day prayer. Their indignation has been roused by activists using social media to spread accusations that the police framed the suspects and that the government is vilifying Albanians as terrorists. The crowd marches towards the government building, hurling stones at police and burning dumpsters. They chant ‘Allah is great!’ and ‘Gruevski [the Prime Minister] is a terrorist!’ (Summarised from Marusic 2012)

The enchanting Bosnian town of Mostar has a public water company run by two directors. One is a Croat who has an office in the western Croat side of the town, and manages the Croat staff and water supply there. Another is a Bosniak, who has an office on the eastern Bosniak side, and supervises the predominantly Bosniak staff and customers there. ‘Only the water itself is common’, says one of the directors, everything else is separate. The comment is an ironic reference to the duplication and division running through his company. But it is also an allegory of Mostar more generally. The town languishes at the hands of a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy, parodied by international observers for having ‘at least two of everything’: one administrative structure for Croats and another for Bosniaks. (Summarised from ICG 2009: 11–12)