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TechnoratiSpectres of Sarajevo
News of the arrest conjures memories of those dreadful days of death. Next, for Mladic
Every year since the war ended in Bosnia in 1995, I have tried to return to Sarajevo, a city in which I passed some of the saddest years of my life. I was there during the war, in those days of no water or electricity. I was there the night Slobodan Milosevic was carted off in his slippers from Belgrade to The Hague. I drove all night down to Sarajevo just to be with my wartime friends. I arrived at dawn, thinking people would be dancing in the streets. Instead there was a sombre air. I met one of my closest friends, a former sniper, and he shrugged: "What's done is done. Is Slobo in jail going to bring back my father? My best friend? My grandmother?"
All of them were killed in the war. As proof, we went for a walk through Lion's cemetery, once a football pitch and now littered with graves. The dead hang around Sarajevo: it is a haunted place. Most of the headstones were marked with dates in the 70s and 80s. I stopped to visit some women I knew, a group whose sons and husbands had been among the 7,500 who died in Srebrenica in July 1995. They weren't celebrating either, they were crying. "There will be no justice until they catch Karadzic and Mladic," they said, referring to the chief architects of the war - Radovan Karadzic, the bad poet, psychiatrist, football fan and nationalist leader who gave the orders to shell Sarajevo to the verge of madness; and General Ratko Mladic, the "Butcher of Bosnia" (still at large), his henchman, who carried out his orders with methodical, chilling skill.
It took more than a decade to find Karadzic. More than a decade of rumours that he was disguised as a woman, living in the remote mountains of Montenegro. Or that he was still in Pale, where his creepy daughter Sonya ran a radio station and once chased me off her property with dogs. But in fact Karadzic was usually hidden by Serb nationalists who refused to give up their forgotten hero. And now, 13 years after the tragedy of Srebrenica, 16 years after the siege of Sarajevo began, and almost on the exact day that British troops were deployed to Sarajevo, he is found.
So what now? In the aftermath of any war or genocide, healing and reconciliation are ultimate aspirations. But in a country where neighbour turned on neighbour, where rape became an instrument of war, where Pale - Karadzic's tinpot headquarters in his self-proclaimed country, the Republika Srpksa - became the centre of evil, it is hard to imagine that healing happening at any time over the next few generations.
Yes, Karadzic behind bars is a triumph of sorts. It's true I had tears seeing the celebrations in Sarajevo. But I still think that none of this would have happened if we had managed to corner this despot early in 1992, when the war would have been easy to contain - and had David Owen not cynically said: "Don't dream dreams that the west is going to come in and save you." Lord Owen was right. We left the Bosnians to rot.
Hatred lingers. I still get letters from teenagers who grew up without their fathers, mothers, sisters, cousins, brothers - among the 250,000 killed in a senseless war. Ethnic hatred is what fuelled Balkan wars in the past and, sadly, I am sure it will in the future. But for now, the world needs to focus on Mladic. He and Karadzic acted as tweedledum and tweedledee, and one cannot sit in jail while the other is free, wandering around Belgrade restaurants. It's true Serbia wants to join the EU, and it's also true that it finally wants to give in and help us. So go and get him, boys.
As I raise a glass to celebrate Karadzic's capture, I will make a toast, ziveli, Bosnian for "to life", and I will remember those thousands upon thousands of people in the Lion's cemetery whose lives were far, far too short.
Janine di Giovanni is the author of Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
18 Comments so far
Show Alland by the way, regarding the earlier comment referring to croatians in dubrovnik: anyone who was in dubrovnik, croatia, during their seige, understands what it means to be under seige, and what it means to stand up to seige while receiving horrible attack, and what it means to find some sort of harmony and afterlife in the aftermath of a seige to move forward with life TODAY.
AD & safiyyah, your pro-serb hate rhetoric is in bad taste, as this butcher is arrested. what happened in sarajevo, and what happened in the countryside, throughout all three ethnic zones was a horror that reflects badly on all who participated in cycles of killing and revenge, in what were, as locals and those involved are aware, the MOST HORRIBLE possible atraocities of revenge and hate.
alaskamaid is unaware and wrong, but toad_goddess_qld is aware and right. yes, even in yugoslavia, where ethnic groups lived in relative harmony, there were cultural cycles of revenge among the 3 groups, and even between families within ethnic groups. no one questions whether peeps in BiH are tough and vengeful. the war already answered that question. and no bosniak denies the heroism of the NATO forces, americans, who finally, wayyy too late, did rescue them in sarajevo.
the real question is when peeps, BOSNIAKS, CROATS AND SERBS ALIKE, are willing to move back into harmony and give up traditions of revenge for growth and healing. anyone who hangs onto hate, anyone, when all are in so desperate need of unity and healing, is wrong. by the way, that doesnt mean im against seperating the area into 3 autonomous regions. im simply saying that EITHER WAY: peeps need to move on to health, not revenge based hate.
this business of singling out leaders and demonizing them for the bloody murder that is the byprodcut of the systems they serve or oppose really has to stop, and soon...if this guy is some form of demon, then every president of the usa during my lifetime - and i mean every one! - should also be treated as an international monster...wake up, and grow up, folks...this crap about biblical vengeance and people cursing an individual for the social atrocities we all play at least a small role in creating, belongs in the friggin bible...evolution, anyone?
fs
Odd thing is that Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic did the SAME shit that the US is doing now in Iraq... that the US has done in the past in Central America... etc.
Reconciliation in Bosnia is slow coming for many reasons. One evident here as well is that the list of bastards i.e. Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic, Arkan does not include Oric, Gotovina, Tudjman, Izabegovic.
As pointed out by some it is not only Bosnjaks that suffered or Croats but all three sides. There was not only Srebrenica but also Oluja (operation Storm in Krajina) and places like Majdanski Dzep.
History, language, and cultures have been politicized in the Balkans and differences highlighted. If you have read Mamdani's book When Victims become Killers you will understand the Balkans. This cycle of violence constantly repeated not simply by twists and turns of history but by the lack of reconciliation and clear understanding of history.
Nationality is a construct yet academics writing on Bosnia still themselves do not understand that.
Being labeled a Bosnian Serb for me has taught me many things about the world. I was a young child in Bosnia and will never understand why it all had to happen. Yet when people hear my nationality they either draw back or express their prejudices. But now every refugee or victim of war I meet in Canada understands me and I them. And people from Bosnia regardless of nationality meet in a little café in a Canadian town and talk about the stupidity of what happened. Such is life.
Ziveli my friends.
Do not judge people by their presidents or leaders. Judge them by their character.
The tangled ethnic history of that region goes back many centuries, and a comments forum is no place to try to straighten it out . . . we definitely did hear only one side of the most recent chapter of the story (naturally)
Siouxrose is absolutely right, "we know little about this thing called death. . . "
I learned that after doing CPR on my father-in-law, who then 'died';
but in reality his presence was/is even stronger than when in his failing body
unfortunately, he was/is not a very nice man and that presence affects our lives in many ways
The whole concept of 'war' is based on the idea of 'winning' by getting the 'enemy' into a state of 'death';
this is a VERY flawed concept in the first place, but so fundamental to our worldview that it is NEVER questioned . . .
sorry, "peaceful"...
As a child growing up in Hungary (Hungarian father, Polish mother, both different religions) we used to holiday in Yugoslavia (from mid 50s to early 70s). We've been pretty much everywhere, but mainly in today's Croatia. We had good friends in Dubrovnik and Riyeka - both uni lecturers.
Somehow in middle Europe we are/were familiar with our history and at some point we had awful wars with our neighbors: mostly the neighboring country, but it might have been the neighboring village or just the neighbor. Deep down we kept/keep hating our neighbors and plot revenge. The hate does spill out from time to time and we have a go at each other. The smallest reason can set it off. We have our stoushes, maybe a couple of massacres thrown in and then it's over. Then there is a lull and after a while it all starts again. There will be a Milosevic, Karadzic, Arkan and the likes. Bastards all you say. I say, just products of history and its twists and turns.
Now I live in a very peaceful part of the world: have retired to the tropical parts of Australia. When I try to tell the above to my Aussie friends, they just don't get it. No historical precedents here, no understanding of this mentality. I guess it is the same in the US or Canada.
Well, the best is really to stay out of the Europeans' business. The US flew over, bombed the life out of a country and now they are judging them. Something is very wrong here...
Whooosh!
I agree with you AD. The US 'humanitarian intervention' carried out by the Democrats and Republicans and initiated by the Clinton Administration against Yugoslavia is what paved the road to real American genocide in Iraq. The Clinton goons began the economic war that started out the killings in Iraq,too, and set it all up for the Bush Klan to go in and later occupy the country.
The US media wants us all to think of the US War Against Yugoslavia as the good war, but it was most definitely not. From this supposed good war, came the rhetoric of further 'humanitarian interventions' that have led to very real US atrocities against the peoples of Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Somalia. We need to try both Bush and Clinton in the 'international court'. Oh wait, we cannot! These courts are made in Kangaroo Land, are they not? Just like those at Guantanamo.
'This story sucks fascist rat do do. I stand with the people of a once democratic state of Yugoslavia against all fascist damn bastards. The bad guys have won temporarily. But what goes around comes around people say in the US black community. The US war on democracy must be defeated, and Moscow might just help as they did in the Second World War. That first strike policy on nuclear weapons is beginning to sound like music to my ears. That just might concentrate the minds of the fascists.
i lived in bosnia in a serb neighborhood, supported by bosnian muslims entirely, an american throughout. "So what now?" i asked my freiend, in the aftermath of a war of genocide, are healing and reconciliation, ultimate aspirations, possible?" my friend, a bosnian muslim with love for america said to me, "10 years after the war, we will all forgive the cycle of hate. but it will take 10 years." "why/" i asked. he said, "in this country people of 3 different ethic heritages lived in harmony for many years, but there was so much hate and destruction during the war, it will take 10 years, one generation, before the tradition of REVENGE can dissipate and we can live together in harmony once again." i believed him. we all celebrate the capture of a fossil, a relic, a dinosaur.
Hard as it is, there is always the choice of vengeance or forgiveness. The South African Councils on Truth and Reconciliation began the process of healing old karma. The Course in Miracles refers to it as "the atonement/at-onement" when any two who nursed grievances choose to put those aside and come to mutual peace and elected respect for one another.
Gordon Michael Scallion who authored the book, "Notes from the Cosmos" and has a good record predicting weather events/disasters spoke about going to Gettysburg. As an astute clairvoyant he could see and feel the soldiers STILL on that battle field. We know little about this thing called death. It's true for all intensive purposes the body dies, but that which represents the SELF (whether termed soul or spirit or etheric, etc) continues to exist. When persons die very suddenly and do not hold a belief system with respect to the afterlife (short of the nice little bi-polar fiction about a place discernable as heaven, or conversely as hell) they do not always realize they are "dead." The consciousness remains where it is. Gordon Michael Scallion spoke of trying to speak to these trapped souls in order to liberate them, to help them to understand they had already crossed over.
The passage of time, that difference of 100 plus years is NOTHING on other planes of existence that do not rely upon the physical laws of earth and how it's timed to the clockworks of our solar system.
I bring this up because the atmosphere Ms. Giovanni related is quite true. She IS walking among the dead, among spirits that have likely not found peace... more than she realized. (This also explains "haunted houses.")
Many of the deaths attributed to the Christian Bosnian Serbs were in fact committed by Islamic Extremists (Al Qaeda) with weapons from Iran that the US greenlighted (went though Croatia to Sarejevo and Izetbegovics Muslim government). When asked about it Madeline Albright did not deny it, except to say "It is very hard to believe a country would do that to it's own people". After 9/11, we know it is not so hard. The purpose of course was to facilitate conditions for NATO intervention and the Balkanization of the region.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
Not saying Karadzic is innocent, just that there was more to what went down there than the black and white painting we see. History of course gets written by the victors. The losers get labelled as war criminals.
Karadzic was turned over for one reason, and one reason only: the Serbs want in to EU and sold him. The fact that they "hid him in plain sight" for 15 years proves that they knew all along where he could be found. The cynicism continues.
In spite of that, I will raise my glass too; not because of the "capture," -- simply in memory of the 250,000 dead and those who have survived, knowing full well that the U.S. was up to our arses in the cynicsm and remains so around the globe.
I hope that the universal raising of glasses shows, at least, that we are able to retain some small bit of our humanity in this sea of cynicism and sewage.
Thanks, especially, to Janine di Giovanni who has the courage to look at all of this in the face and still raise a glass.
My friends who lost sons, brothers and fathers at Srbenica are going through pain, again.
This time they feel it may be closure, whatever else happens.
"It tells you how academics see things to their benefit no matter what the reality is."
Brother you've got that right. In spades.
In my Master's program we had to read an article on Dubrovnik. The author gushed on how the different ehnicities lived together in peace. It was within months of the start of the Yugoslav horror stories starting. It tells you how academics see things to their benefit no matter what the reality is.
In a restaurant in Santa Fe, I asked a father of a Croat family what he thought about Mladic still not being found. He declared that it was no longer an issue, and nobody cared.
Maybe he said that because he was in the States.