The recent arrest of Ratko Mladic, the Serbian military commander indicted for war crimes committed in the early 1990s, brought back memories of my visit to Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
It was back in 1999, already several years after Gen. Mladic had been formally implicated in horrendous massacres. Yet, it taught me something about the horrors of war and ethnic cleansing: their traces linger, like a stench, for years after. What Gen. Mladic had commanded and executed was still traceable in the landscape. What I saw of Bosnian social life suggested a society that was an amputee.
I was in Sarajevo as a representative of the Council of Europe. The multi-ethnic state already had a constitutional arrangement determined by the Dayton Agreement, which had helped restore peace in the region. The political structure consisted of a rotating Presidency between the three ethnic groups: Serbs, Bosnians and Croats, with a Council of Ministers headed by two co-chairmen.
It says something about the horrors through which this region of the former Yugoslavia had passed that such a description of its political structure, boring and yawn inducing, should be counted as a triumph. Being “interesting” was something Bosnians had had enough of for the time being.
Let us remember it was the Balkan wars of the 1990s that made the term “ethnic cleansing” current. It took considerable violence and brutalisation to make it seem like a logical solution to many people. Bosnia had been an example of multi-ethnic, multicultural living. It took the likes of Gen. Mladic to turn it into a bloodbath, where former neighbours took up arms against each other.
The consequences were still evident from high up in the sky when I flew into Sarajevo that June day, almost exactly a dozen years ago. The countryside was hilly and with small hamlets. I could distinguish houses that had been burned and made roofless. Uncultivated fields without any animals indicated a powerful sense of loss and isolation. The airport of Sarajevo was war-scarred.
It was not all like that, of course. As I was driven from the airport, through the outskirts of Sarajevo, I expected to see more damage than I did. I could distinguish signs of reconstruction. It seemed that individual countries – Turkey, Austria – were responsible for the reconstruction of particular zones. Once we crossed the former front line, however, the destruction was evident. We went straight to the Parliament building, which consisted of two high-risers. One was gutted, the other was semi-usable and was being gradually restored. About one-third was functional.
After our meetings, we were given some free time to view the devastation at first hand. People were still living in bombed-out buildings without any form of services. Terrible sights. In time we were taken to our hotel, the Holiday Inn. Only the name had survived. A larger crater dominated one side. A generator lit up the interior but no water came out of the taps in my room.
Fortunately, not everything was doom and gloom. We walked downtown and everything seemed normal. Open-air cafés, restaurants, shops. Churches and mosques mingled side by side and we were shown where Pope John Paul II visited.
We were driven to the Bosnian Islamic part of the city. The narrow streets with their small gold shops, mosques and cobblestone streets did not seem to be war-ravaged. After the terrible sights earlier, the lunch hosted at a restaurant serving traditional food – soup with meat, cheese pie with cream, stuffed vegetables and a very sweet dessert – was a welcome reminder of a different history that had preceded the war.
The prospects were still bleak at that time. Only one or two politicians, according to my instant impressions, seemed really up to their job. However, could one blame them? They were brave men trying to build a normal state out of one that had been through hell.
And hell still threatened to break through. The displaced persons had no immediate hope of return. We were told that, although the situation in Sarajevo was tense, outside it was worse.
The sense of fatalism was so strong. I arrived on an ominous date.
We were told that June 28 was an ominous date because many events, including the assassination of Archduke Leopold (which had sparked off World War I), happened on this day.
These memories help me see what the arrest of Gen. Mladic means. It is more than the arrest of an undoubted war criminal. More than justice for his victims. It is a sign of a country beginning to achieve closure on a recent trauma.
Perhaps, this month, the arrival of another June 28 will not be viewed with so much trepidation.
Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.