Waiting in Sarajevo

I’m sitting in the Sarajevo bus station though it’s a train to Zagreb I’m catching in three hours time. It’s warmer here and you can sit down without having to buy something, unlike the train station which has plenty of cafes but nothing approximating a waiting room.

I don’t expect much sleep with a rattling night ahead. The train has got to be better than a bus though there’ll be a border crossing into Croatia around 3am to contend with, a process I'm becoming intimately familiar with. I’ve already had three goes with the Croatian authorities today. My bus left Dubrovnik early and we passed the string of islands that fill our ride up the coast before we hit the strange Neum corridor which is about 15km of Bosnian coastline and the country’s only access to the Adriatic.

The corridor was defaulted in 1699 by the Republic of Dubrovnik to the Ottomans in the Treaty of Karlowitz. The wealthy merchants of Dubrovnik were worried by the approach of the Venetians and were happy to have an Ottoman buffer between them. The corridor was inherited by Yugoslavia, and now the sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia places a passport check going in and out of the corridor but there is no Bosnian presence on either side. Nor it seemed were there any connecting roads with Sarajevo in the corridor. In the town of Neum itself where we stopped for coffee, the restaurant owner showed his colours with a Croatian scarf placed prominently on the bar and he accepted only Croatian money or euros.

I passed through Croatian borders a third time further north along the coastal plain where the Sarajevo road splits from the Split road. This time the Bosnians were on display complete with their national insignia. It was not far to the city of Mostar, though the winding road meant it took another hour. The journey was sensational through deep ravines alongside the rushing Neretva River surrounded by scrubby mountains on both sides. I was trigger happy with the camera for most of the way.

A funny thing happened in Mostar. I was hoping for a photo of the famous ‘stari most’ (old bridge), the symbol of the city which was destroyed by the Croatians in the 1993 war and subsequently meticulously rebuilt. There was no view of the bridge on the bus journey itself but I saw a sign pointing to it as we headed towards the bus station. When we got to the station, the bus driver turned off the engine and said words to the effect of ‘dieci minuti’ roughly translated that we had ten minutes here before we pulled out. I calculated it might be possible to run back to the river and catch a quick photo of the bridge. But as I started running from the station I began to think this was madness, it might be at least five minutes there and then I needed to get back again too.

I gave myself four minutes to get there. It took me almost exactly four minutes of full pelt run to get to the river. I eagerly peered over the bridge but there was no sign of the famous ‘stari most’ in either direction. I took photos anyway and realised I’d better rush back to the bus. Only on the way back did it occur to me that I might have been on the bridge itself, though from knowing its distinctive shape, I doubt it. It turned out the bridge was around a bend, and not visible from where I stood. But with the time ticking, I rushed back to the bus, puffing madly. To add insult to the injury of not finding the bridge, the bus driver waited the best part of 20 minutes anyway. As we pulled out, it was obvious there was another bridge the other side of the station that was even closer, no more than one minute walk away. Oh well, there’s a reason to return to Mostar some day.

(pic: The bridge I did not see in Mostar).

I made up for the disappointment with fabulous scenery shots elsewhere as the views got even better between Mostar and Sarajevo. Coming in to the capital, the views turned grim. The grey and closing weather didn’t help but any of the high Stalinist-looking flats could easily have hosted sniper alley. Thankfully the inner town was much nicer. I dropped my bags at the train station and walked along the river to the centre. It is a beautiful and ornate old town, very stately and grand. Most of the buildings have been rebuilt after the war.

I can see why Archduke Franz Ferdinand might have liked it here until he made it to the bridge where Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot him in 1914, which knocked down several royal houses of cards and led to the death of millions in World War I. Oddly enough Sarajevo itself escaped any further damage in that war. However I can also see the result of the gunfire of more recent bouts of Serb nationalism. I pass several pock-marked and bullet-ridden buildings. The siege of Sarajevo lasted four years from 1992-1996 with Serb forces high on the hills taking pot shots at anything that moved below. I’m wondering whereabouts in the city is their entity, the mysterious Republika Srpska?

Cvetkovic power play in Karadzic arrest

Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic has called on the remaining Balkan war crimes fugitives to surrender voluntarily after Tuesday’s arrest of Radovan Karadzic. He hailed Karadzic’s arrest as a major step for Serbia and urged others to voluntarily surrender. Cvetkovic claimed the arrest would open the way for reconciliation throughout the region, allow for better life in Serbia and the more efficient defence of its territorial integrity. Cvetkovic will be hoping for a major rapprochement with the EU as a reward for Karadzic’s high profile arrest.

And there is no doubting this is a major PR coup for the new PM installed in June this year. Radovan Karadzic declared himself president of the Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb republic) when Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded from Yugoslavia in 1992. On 11 July 1995, the UN and NATO allowed Bosnian Serb forces to seize Srebrenica, despite it having been declared a United Nations “safe area.” Serb forces killed between 7,000 and 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in the week after the fall of the town. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ruled the crimes in Srebrenica to be genocide and Karadzic was removed from power by the Dayton Accords which ended the conflict later that year.

Now, reconciliation is starting to happen in Srebrenica. In 2003 a memorial service was held where security was provided in part by Bosnian Serb police while the Bosnian Serb Prime Minister spoke of “respect for the dead” and called for reconciliation. That same year the Bosnian Serb government admitted on local television station in the capital, Banja Luka for the first time its culpability for the slaughter at Srebrenica. The report revealed that the code name for the Srebrenica operation was "Krivaja 95" named for a small town in central Bosnia. The report named five detention centres where men were held and said a large number of Bosnian Muslims were executed nearby.

But while the leadership makes noises towards normalisation, the war leaders continue to resist arrest. With Karadzic nailed, the focus turns to Ratko Mladic who is also wanted for his role in Srebrenica. Mladic lived in the Serb capital Belgrade, under the protection of former president Slobodan Milosevic until he (Milosevic) was arrested in 2001. By 2004 Mladic was believed to be living under the protection Bosnian Serb military forces but hasn’t been heard of since.

In 2005, Human Rights Watch (HRW) complained that NATO did not do enough to capture Karadzic and Mladic. HRW’s European director Holly Cartner said NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia made only three confirmed attempts to arrest Radovan Karadzic in ten years despite numerous sightings of him. “You can count on one hand the number of times NATO has made real attempts to arrest Karadzic and Mladic,” she said. “Karadzic’s continuing freedom a decade after Srebrenica is a profound moral failure for NATO and the international community,

Much of that “moral failure” has now been rectified. After spending years with impugnity in the extraordinary guise of a new age medical preacher, Karadzic was arrested two days ago in Belgrade. According to the BBC, he was finally uncovered by an unnamed foreign intelligence service and was kept under surveillance by local security forces for a couple of weeks before being arrest. A statement from Cvetkovic’s office said “Karadzic was located and arrested tonight [and] was brought to the investigative judge of the War Crimes Court in Belgrade, in accordance with the law on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.” While it may take years for Karadzic to have his day in court, Bosnian Muslims could be forgiven for celebrating in Sarajevo. Cvetkovic may also be celebrating a major bargaining tool in the upcoming battles with Brussels.

Scorpions jailed for Srebrenica crimes

Serbia's war crimes court has sentenced four men to twenty years prison for their part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. The four former members of Serbia's paramilitary "Scorpions" force were found guilty after video footage showed they killed at least six people during the massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys.

The former commander of the Scorpions unit, Slobodan Medic, and his chief accomplice, Branislav Medic, were each given 20 years in jail. The only defendant to have confessed to the crime, Pera Petrasevic, was given 13 years. A fourth defendant was given five years while a fifth was acquitted. Presiding judge Gordana Petrovic said “Slobodan Medic ordered the three defendants and two others to execute the prisoners, take them away from the site and make it seem as if they had been killed in conflict.” The video that implicated the men showed them taunting Bosnian youths about their virginity before shooting them in the back as they lay in a ditch. Relatives of the victims expressed disappointment that none had received the 40 year maximum sentences.

Srebrenica is Europe’s largest mass murder since World War II. In 2004 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judicially recognised the massacre as genocide. Judge Theodor Meron, President of ICTY made a speech later that year at Potocari Memorial Cemetery where many of the victims were buried. In the speech Meron stated it plainly “Bosnian Serb Army harboured genocidal intent against the Bosnian Muslim people who sought safety in the enclave of Srebrenica, and that these officials acted upon that intent to carry out a deliberate and massive massacre of the Muslims in Srebrenica”

While Judge Meron called the massacre genocide, others have labelled it “gendercide”. Gendercide is gender-selective mass killing. Other examples include the 1988 Montreal massacre where 14 women students at the École Polytechnique were systematically killed by a lone gunman screaming "I hate feminists." In Srebenica, while the international community and UN peacekeepers did nothing; Serb forces separated civilian men from women and killed the menfolk in their thousands.

The conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina began in 1992 and featured large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocidal atrocities from the outset. In April 1992 Serbian forces tortured and killed 350 Bosnian men in a gymnasium in the village of Bratunac near Srebrenica. But they were not able to take Srebrenica itself. The city was defended by Naser Oric, a Rambo-like figure whose troops (and associated squads of civilian torbari, or "bag people") inflicted a number of smaller atrocities on Serb villages around the Srebrenica pocket. Oric’s forces managed to establish an enclave around the town, but the Serbs gradually tightened the noose.

General Ratko Mladić led the Serbian army during the war. Mladić made it plain that he held a special grudge against the men of Srebrenica. He allowed women and children to be evacuated from the town before shutting off the refugee flow. Desperately, the UN Security Council declared Srebenica a “safe area” but only had 500 Dutch peacekeepers in the town to back up the declaration. Finally in July 1995, Mladić’s army entered the UN safe area. They got little resistance from the disarmed defenders and the UN.

Thousands of Srebrenica men fled the town seeking protection within the UN compound at Potočari. Serbian soldiers surrounded them and began setting houses and haystacks on fire. As the day progressed, Serb forces gathered the refugees and began systematically murdering the men. French policeman Jean-Rene Ruez told The Hague tribunal in 1996 what evidence he collected from witnesses. Serb forces killed and tortured refugees at will while Streets were littered with corpses, he said. Rivers were red with blood and many people committed suicide to avoid having their noses, lips and ears chopped off. At least 8,000 died and 25,000 were forcibly repatriated.

General Mladić remains at large with an outstanding international arrest warrant against him. While many claim he is being protected by the Serbian army, Belgrade newspaper Vecernje Novosti said he was just one step ahead of his pursuers in a "feverish manhunt" by police. In May 2006 the EU broke off membership talks with Serbia and Montenegro over Belgrade's failure to deliver Mladić to the war crimes tribunal.

Situated in the far east of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Srebrenica was founded as a mining town. The name means “silver mine” in Serbian but nowadays only salt is mined here. Srebenica is now part of an entity known as the Republika Srpska. The Republika is not a true republic but rather a Serb-governed enclave of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The boundary line between it and the Muslim controlled rest of the country runs along the military front lines as they existed at the end of the war.

But now the Muslim community now want to change the boundary. Last week Srebrenica’s municipal assembly adopted a resolution demanding partition from the Republic of Srpska. Serb members left the session ahead of the vote in protest saying the assembly had no mandate to violate the Constitutional order of the Republic of Srpska and breach the Dayton Agreement. But Rizo Tabaković from the Party of the Democratic Action that sponsored the resolution, said that "the partition request was a logical move in light of the ICJ judgment, while mirroring Srebrenica's current status."

While politicians still argue about the boundary, others mourn the massacre. Some are sufferers of the syndrome known as "Survivors' Guilt" which was first identified after the Holocaust. Emir Suljagic was a Bosniak teenager when the war began. He was a translator for the UN in Srebenica when captured by General Mladić’s men. Mladić took Suljagic's ID card during questioning. Suljagic had the courage to ask for his ID back; Mladic agreed and his life was saved. While he survived, others were not so lucky. Nura Alispahic saw her 16-year-old son being killed in the court video. "Whatever the ruling, my child is not here," she said "These people will leave jail one day, but my child will never come out of the ground."