Day 8 - Thursday 04 April 2019 Sarajevo

After a leisurely breakfast and dropping off some laundry at hotel reception I wandered down to the tour office to join my Times of Misfortune tour.  This tour was primarily about the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 until 1995.  Domir was our tour guide and he had been a police officer during the siege.  Domir is a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and although it was obvious where his sympathies lay he presented a balanced view of the conflict.

The circumstances surrounding the siege are difficult to explain in a few words and don't think that I have a complete grasp anyway.  The whole thing came about as a result of the collapse of Yugoslavia and the component countries trying to go their own way.  This resulted in a resurrection of the ethnic tensions that the old Yugoslavia kept a bit of a lid on.  These ethnic tensions resulted in a number of atrocities committed by all sides in the name of ethnic cleansing.

Anyway to cut a long story short this ethnic cleansing ended up with the Serbians (orthodox) laying siege to Bosnian Sarajevo (primarily Muslim).  Did I mention that there is a religious element to all this as well.  Sarajevo sits in a river valley and is surrounded by high ground pretty much all around.  The Serbians held the high ground and located their artillery, mortars and snipers on this high ground.

View of the city

The siege lasted for 1,425 days and 11,541 people were killed.  The city was under constant artillery and mortar attack, some of it random some of it aimed.  About 250,000to 300,000 people lived in the city during the siege and the only source of supply was through the airport that was controlled by the UN.  The UN and the airport could only provide a minimal amount of humanitarian goods to the city, around 200 grams per person per day. During the siege there was no electricity or running water, water was supplied from the brewery which had access to water from some deep wells.  I have attached a photo of a signboard showing a map of the siege and providing some details.

Remember this was all happening in a European city in the late 20th century!

Many of the buildings in the city still carry the scars of this fighting.  Some spots are marked where mortar shells fell, particularly in one of the markets where 10s of people were killed by a random attack.

Typical building in central Sarajevo

Same building showing shrapnel damage from the siege

One of the sites we visited on the tour was the tunnel under the airport.  One of the only gaps in the Serbian siege lines was at the airport, but this was controlled by the UN.  The Bosnians came up with the idea of digging a tunnel under the airport runway, so over a period of 4 months they dug a 800 metre tunnel under the runway.  This tunnel is a metre wide and 1.6 metres high.  We walked through a 25 metre section of it, I only banged my head about 5 times.  Impossible to imagine people making numerous trips through this tunnel carrying heavy loads.  As time went by they ran a small pipe to pump some diesel through for the hospital generators and a cable for some electricity and even some primitive rails so they could move some supplies on makeshift hand carts.

Some detail of the siege

The tunnel

The siege ended with the Bill Clinton brokered Dayton agreement, our guide was grateful that this agreement stopped the siege and the fighting however he was critical of the terms of the agreement that has made Bosnia difficult to govern and for the economy to develop.  This is something that I will need to investigate further at some time.

Fun Facts:  The Sarajevoeans are very very proud that they hosted the the 1984 winter olympics and see this as almost a counterpoint to the barbarity of the siege.

Step Count: 7,347

Observations:  Corruption is rife and is holding back economic development, international businesses are loath to invest until the corruption and nepotism is brought under control.  Our guide told us that as he had been a police officer during the war he was offered a job with the post office (which would have been a very good job here), however there was one catch, it was going to cost him E10,000 up front, he declined and borrowed some money to buy a van for tours etc.