Jan Piekło, Landscape After War (III) - Sarajevo.

The first thing that can be seen from an airplane coming in to land at the Sarajevo airport is the way that the houses have been scattered among the green hills like little Lego blocks scattered by a child. The houses get bigger: by the time the Croatian ATR lowers its landing gear, I can recognize those houses -- dead, burned-out ruins with the windowpanes gone, with scars left by mortars -- the districts of Ilidza and Dobrinja, for which the Serbs and Bosnians fought fiercely. Vegetation is growing over the damage. SFOR (Stabilization Force) personnel carriers and heavily-armed French soldiers guard the airport. Civilian planes have been landing here for only three months.

A Ring for a Soldier

Hope has returned to Sarajevo. Exhausted by the siege and wary of the numerous mediation efforts undertaken by the West, the inhabitants are not exactly brimming with optimism. Yet life has plainly triumphed over destruction. The red trams are running again, as before the war. Taxis are again available at the airport -- their clients are mostly members of various missions, courageous businessmen and people visiting relatives. The drivers glance in the mirrors to check their fares' reactions as they point out the shell-pocked Oslobodjenia building, the rebuilt Holiday Inn and the still-closed station with its sidings full of wrecked railroad cars. The Bosnian police have replaced their fatigues with black uniforms modeled on those of American police.

Old Zastavas and Yugos, white UN and OSCE jeeps, SFOR personnel carriers and city buses bearing the yellow stars of the European Union -- donated as part of the reconstruction program -- roll along the streets. Men are at work in the Bascarsija district in the heart of the old town, covering the damaged copula of the mosque on Saraci Street with copper sheeting. Outside, women pray. They bow so far forward that for a moment only their bare heels can be seen. A patrol of Dutch soldiers with dangerous looking weapons slung over their shoulders stop to watch. They observe the prayers through a screen. Not far away, the frame of a massive crane sticks up like a powerful symbol from behind a burned-out library that is being rebuilt.

The many shops are open. The window displays, so recently empty, are filling up again. A black female American soldier with intricately braided plaits negotiates the price of a ring. Old men sit on the benches in front of the shop drinking coffee with a fragrance that delicately tickles the nostrils. The gilded marble facade of a branch of a Turkish bank stands near the new Air Bosnia office. Malaysian soldiers who look like teenage boys play with children and take each other's photographs with Bosnian girls. Someone is fishing from the stone wall beside the Miljacka river. A cobbler mends shoes behind a sheet of glass. Preparations are underway in the Sarajevo museum for the first post-war exhibition.

What is regarded in the West as lunchtime approaches. Fahrudin Sehic, the owner of the Una Restaurant on Prota Batkovic Street waits in front of his door for clients. The best ones are officers, soldiers and employees of various missions, and they cross his palm with Deutsche Marks, universally regarded as legal tender in Sarajevo. He treats them almost like family -- after all, they are his living -- and perspires as he goes around filling their crystal glasses with wine.

In accordance with the strictures of the Koran, no alcohol is served in the cheap bar nearby, which is crowded with voluble natives. A group of strictly-veiled Muslim girls hurries along the street. I pass a Norwegian unit and groups of Turks, Americans and French soldiers from the SFOR. They stroll leisurely; cameras dangle around their suntanned necks. In their free time, they act like tourists in search of something exotic. If it were not for the weapons they ostentatiously bear, the marks left on the sidewalk by mortar shells and the pocked walls of the houses, one might think that some sort of festival of international fraternization were underway.

Now, Things Are More Difficult

One does not speak out loud about hope in Sarajevo. The wounds are too fresh, there are too many problems still to solve, too many new problems have come up. The city has changed: the majority of the Serbs and Croatians have moved out and been replaced by Muslim refugees from the towns and villages occupied by the Serbs. Embittered by their experiences, the new arrivals burn for revenge against their tormenters. Radical local politicians, of whom there is no shortage, eagerly woo their support. With the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, various Muslim influences can be seen. Sarajevo is losing its old multicultural face. The things that made this place special were the first casualties of war.

The Sarajevans who survived the siege are as open and hospitable as ever, but reserved. When talk turns to peace prospects, they fall silent and stare into the distance. What they lived through has made it hard for them to believe in a lasting peace or the sense of changes. They no longer believe politicians or the media they control, which have been unable to meet the challenges of reality. They prefer actions to words. For instance, Boro Kontic, a journalist and director of the Soros Foundation media program in Bosnia, shows guests around his training center unsmilingly and without a hint of pride. Kontic, a Montenegran, knows the names of Kapuscinski and Michnik and speaks nostalgically about the level of prewar Yugoslavian journalism.

In the well-equipped modern studio in a room at the center, BBC journalists teach young Bosnians how to edit texts and make radio and television programs. A young Serb from Mostar gets up from behind his computer and says in fluent English, "This is a beautiful city... or rather, was." Then he tells about the story he is working on: an American SFOR soldier happened to be photographed in Pale as he kissed the flag of the Serbian Republic in Pale, and the picture was printed in Oslobodjenia.

More than 60 people have graduated from the BBC journalism course, and all have found jobs in the local media. Kontic regards this as normal. Another journalist, Durska Jurisic, recently returned from a course in the United States. During the war, she read the news on Bosnian television; she is frustrated and full of emotions that only now make her spew out words like a machine gun. "During the war, we journalists were in constant danger. The western concept of objective reporting became a silly joke in such conditions. How could I interview Karadzic? I would have been killed. Everybody knew my face," she says. "I would like to do that interview now, but it's still impossible. If I went there now, I would not blame someone who lost their family in the war for wanting to hit me.

"Things were simpler then," Duska goes on. "Journalism was easier. Now it's more difficult. There's a shortage of professionalism, equipment and money. The system of educating journalists must change. Politicians cannot be allowed to use the media for their own purposes."

The Bosnian authorities have just confiscated an issue of the satirical bi-weekly Polityka for a caricature of the symbolic transformation of President Ali Izetbegovic into Marshal Josip Broz-Tito. Boro Kontic is preparing a protest together with Mehmed Halilovic, editor-in-chief of the daily Oslobodjenia and chairman of the Independent Association of Journalists of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina.

"There are no free media in Bosnia," says Mark Balsiger, the young Swiss director of the Free Election Radio Network (FERN) created by the OSCE with financial support from the Swiss government. "Journalists cannot get out of the habit of commenting."

Radio FERN was set up for the parliamentary elections and is still on the air. The electoral cycle has not finished; local government elections, postponed for various reasons, are scheduled for September 13 and 14. FERN transmits music and news 24 hours a day. The station is located in the basement of the OSCE mission headquarters on Ban Obal Kunin Street in Sarajevo; since there is no communication between the Serbian and Muslim parts of Bosnia, tapes with correspondents' reports are brought by car from Pale to Sarajevo. Swiss diplomats regard it as easier to talk to the Serbs in Banya Luka and Pale than to the Croatians in Hercegovina. I hear similar views from the ethnically-mixed staff of Slobodna Bosnia magazine, which has correspondents all over Bosnia. FERN journalist Borka Rudic says that people have had trouble getting used to the station. "It was a shock. They suddenly started getting full information from all over Bosnia. Now they listen." Balsiger believes in the sense of his work, which is intended to restore something that was destroyed: social communication throughout the country.

The Only Place on Earth

After everything that has happened in recent years, it is hard to live in Sarajevo without growing frustrated. Father Mato Zovkic, a Croatian Catholic who is a close associate of Vinko Cardinal Pulic, feels that the city he once loved has ceased to exist. He fears that Islam will take the place of communism. "Now, going to mosque is the key to a career," he says.

-Of John Paul II's visit to Sarajevo, he says bitterly, "Why were the Croatians who came out to greet the Pope accused of playing up nationalistic elements? What was wrong with their manifesting their roots with Croatian flags?" Father Zovkic offers a harsh assessment of the independent Bosnian media: "They operate in a very narrow field and only criticize, rather than proposing anything constructive or any solutions... They do not help to create hope." He believes that the first step should be the elimination from the media of such offensive characterizations as "Chetnik," "Ushtashe," "fundamentalist." However, he does not intend to leave Sarajevo.

"My place is here," he concludes. It sounds like a profession of faith. The fog lifts from the hills and the sun shines in Sarajevo. The white towers of the minarets shine against the background of the green hills. In the cafe on the square near the Orthodox church, the bust of the great Yugoslavian writer and Nobel-prize winner Ivo Andric has been replaced on the obelisk bearing his name by a loudspeaker from which rock music blares. People turn their faces to the sun, drink coffee, and remain mistrustful, wandering if perhaps the calm has not lasted too long. They need hope like a plant needs water; they have gone through hell and only hope can restore their world. The international community should support that hope in every possible way.

back