Bosnia has become a synonym, along with Beirut, Somalia, and Rwanda, of murderous conflict and political anarchy. The tragedy of this Balkan nation, a Sarajevo-born journalist explains, cannot be understood apart from the larger story of Yugoslavia's unraveling.
Years before the thousand-day siege began, my Sarajevo neighbors and I played a waiting game with war. It was not going to confound us. We had taken a long, hard look at every possible scenario of Yugoslavia's violent breakup. Our amateur analysis invariably showed that we, the residents of Albanska Street, had nothing to fear. We lived right across from the brand-new Military Hospital. It was an indispensable facility. And we reassured one another that it would provide unconstrained services to all sides. The war, after all, was going to be in the country, not in the city. In Sarajevo, the wounded would be treated and political treaties would be negotiated. And if things went from bad to worse, the women and children could always seek refuge in the nearby Marshal Tito army barracks.
Our hopes died a very sudden death. As it turned out, my neighborhood became one of the most perilous places in the city. The hospital was pounded, the Marshal Tito barracks were devastated, and the street around the corner soon came to be called Sniper Alley. In May 1992, a month after war broke out and the siege of Sarajevo began, a Serb shell struck my apartment building, removing part of the wall and vastly enlarging my bedroom window. Fortunately, I was then living and working in Brussels, where I'd gone the previous September to open a bureau for my newspaper, Oslobodjenje. Around the same time my apartment was hit, I received a telephone call from a Muslim woman-my neighbor, my colleague, and my best friend. Hearing artillery fire in the background, I advised her to leave her apartment. "You're crazy," she exclaimed. "If it's hit I have to be here to put out the fire."