Reporting the Siege of Sarajevo

Kenneth Morrison, Paul Lowe

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350202849
• eBook ISBN: 9781350081796
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The Siege of Sarajevo remains the longest siege in modern European history, lasting three times longer than the Battle of Stalingrad and over a year longer than the Siege of Leningrad. Reporting the Siege of Sarajevo provides the first detailed account of the reporting of this siege and the role that journalists played in highlighting both military and non-military aspects of it. The book draws on detailed primary and secondary material in English and Bosnian, as well as extensive interviews with international correspondents who covered events in Sarajevo from within siege lines. It also includes hitherto unpublished images taken by the co-author and award-winning photojournalist, Paul Lowe. Together Morrison and Lowe document a relatively short but crucial period in both the history of Bosnia & Herzegovina, the city of Sarajevo and the profession of journalism. The book provides crucial observations and insights into an under-researched aspect of a critical period in Europe's recent history.

1

The political context of the siege

The foreign correspondents who had covered the wars in Slovenia and Croatia arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina gradually, after the suspension of hostilities in Croatia in January 1992 following the ‘Sarajevo Agreement’, which allowed for the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to administer the implementation of a ceasefire. Based primarily in Belgrade and Zagreb, they tended to come to Sarajevo for relatively short periods, though numbers increased significantly during the independence referendum of 29 February and 1 March 1992 – the so-called ‘referendum weekend’ – which ended with the subsequent ‘war of the barricades’. Almost no foreign correspondents were based in Sarajevo at this time, though many who were there to cover the referendum would return to make the city a more permanent base after armed conflict broke out in April 1992. Thereafter, the encirclement and subsequent siege of Sarajevo by the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija – JNA) and, after May 1992, by the Army of the Serb Republic (Vojska Republike Srpske – VRS) became a major international news story.

The path to Yugoslav disintegration

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the result of deteriorating relations between three nationalist parties that formed a governing coalition following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first multi-party elections in November 1990. Indeed, this coalition of uncomfortable bedfellows held very different views vis-à-vis the future status of Bosnia and Herzegovina and of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Socijalistička Federativna Republika Jugoslavija – SFRJ). The latter was in the midst of a painful process that would culminate in its violent disintegration – one that was gradual, complex and multidimensional. There is no single causal factor – and thus insufficient scope to address, in detail, the myriad factors that led to the SFRJ’s disintegration in this book.¹ The death of Josip Broz Tito on 4 May 1980 was, however, a pivotal event. The Yugoslav system that Tito – the partisan hero of the Second World War, the ‘man who challenged Stalin’ and the figurehead of the SFRJ on the international stage – had played such an important role in creating was, by the time of his death, becoming increasingly fragile. Constitutional changes, including the wide-ranging, decentralizing reforms of the ‘1974 Constitution’, that had vested more power in the SFRJ’s republics – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina – and two autonomous provinces – Kosovo and Vojvodina – had ensured stability throughout Tito’s twilight years. However, in the years following his death, the Yugoslav League of Communists (Savez komunista Jugoslavije – SKJ) would endeavour to maintain the status quo – the slogan, I poslije Tita, Tito! (And After Tito, Tito!), underpinning their strategy of continuity.

Even before Tito’s death, however, the SFRJ had begun sliding into an acute economic crisis that would, in turn, generate a crisis of legitimacy for the SKJ. In the immediate years after Tito’s death, however, it was the economy that presented the greatest challenge. Loans were called in, as investors became nervous about the SFRJ’s ability to pay its debts. The economy laboured under a growing trade deficit, a significant balance of payments deficit, and a burgeoning foreign debt. By 1983, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that the Yugoslav government initiate ‘shock therapy’ and endeavour to restructure the economy in an attempt to contain the worsening crisis. Such conditions were reluctantly accepted by a government only too aware of the potential social and political consequences that could result from further austerity in a context of pre-existing declines in living standards.² Nevertheless, in an attempt to rescue the economy, the government took drastic measures, closing down unviable enterprises while reducing manpower costs in others. Redundancies, growing unemployment and rising inflation dictated that ordinary Yugoslavs, after long periods of economic stability, began to feel the economic privations that had hitherto been unfamiliar to them, while the Yugoslav League of Communists (Savez komunista Jugoslavije – SKJ) seemed unable to effectively tackle the economic crisis.

The economic crisis did not cause the Yugoslav crisis, but it created the social, economic and political conditions whereby nationalism, long taboo, could be resurrected. The SKJ, already toiling with economic problems would, equally, prove impotent when faced with a rising tide of nationalism, which re-emerged as the dominant political ideology, first in Serbia and, as a consequence, throughout the SFRJ. The first politician to understand and exploit the opportunities presented by the shifting political currents, while simultaneously undermining the SKJ’s mantra of Bratstvo i jedinstvo (Brotherhood and Unity), was Slobodan Milošević. A seemingly unremarkable party apparatchik, he had risen through the ranks of the League of Communists of Serbia (Savez komunista Srbije – SKS) through the mid-1980s, largely as a result of his close relationship with Ivan Stambolić, his friend and political mentor. Milošević’s visit to Kosovo in April 1987, whereupon he told Serbs that they ‘would not be beaten again’ was a pivotal moment. Following the Eighth Session of the Central Committee of the SKS in 1987, Milošević used the issue of Serb rights in Kosovo to politically assassinate Stambolić; thereafter, Milošević quickly became the undisputed leader of the SKS and, increasingly, cast as the ‘saviour of the Serbs’. Promising to revise the ‘anti-Serb’ 1974 constitution and stem the ‘counter-revolution’ in Kosovo, Milošević wrested control of four of the eight Yugoslav federal presidency votes – and rendered it dysfunctional – by sending the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija – JNA) into Kosovo and revoking Kosovo’s autonomous status, as well as undermining – and eventually displacing – the existing local communist leaderships in Vojvodina which, like Kosovo enjoyed autonomy, and Montenegro, which was one of the six Yugoslav federal republics.

The instrument used to achieve this objective became known as the ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’. Ostensibly demonstrations about the status of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, the real aim was to discredit, undermine and eventually force out, the tottering communist leaderships there – to be replaced, of course, by Milošević loyalists. The ‘politics of the streets’, were used with some efficacy in Vojvodina, where a series of well-organized rallies in Novi Sad, dubbed ‘The Yoghurt Revolution’, brought the province’s leadership to its knees. In Montenegro, ‘Meetings of Truth’ – ostensibly focused on the issue of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo – took place across the republic.³ Seeking to capitalize on the popular discontent fuelled by Montenegro’s grim economic situation, they took their demonstrations to Titograd – now Podgorica, the republic’s capital. A series of rallies outside the parliament building placed increasing pressure on Montenegro’s ageing communist authorities. By January 1989, this ‘old guard’ within the League of Communists of Montenegro (Savez komunista Crne Gore – SKCG) had resigned and were quickly replaced by the mladi, lijepi i pametni (young, handsome and intelligent) troika of Momir Bulatović, Milo Djukanović and Svetozar Marović, all – at that point, at least – loyal to Milošević.⁴

These developments were observed with growing anxiety in Slovenia and Croatia, and in January 1990, amidst increasing tension between the Yugoslav republics, Slovenian delegates – whose proposals for reform had been dismissed – left the ‘Fourteenth Special Congress’ of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije – SKJ), held in the Sava Centre in Belgrade. They were followed thereafter by the Croatian delegation. In the spring of 1990 multi-party elections were held in both Slovenia and Croatia. In the former, Milan Kučan, the former leader of the Slovenian League of Communists (Zveza komunistov Slovenije –ZKS), became president, while in the latter, Franjo Tuđman of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Community (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica – HDZ) triumphed over Ivica Račan’s Social Democratic Party of Croatia (Socijaldemokratska partija Hrvatske – SDP) in the Croatian presidential elections. Slovenia held an independence referendum on 23 December 1990, resulting in an overwhelming majority in favour of leaving the SFRJ.

Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991, resulting in a short conflict between the Slovenian Territorial Defence (Teritorijalna obramba Republike Slovenije – TORS) and the JNA, before the latter departed Slovenian territory. Croatia seceding from the SFRJ was, however, a more complicated matter. Croatia’s Serb community, particularly those inhabiting the Krajina region, watched these developments with growing alarm, with Milošević’s government in Serbia only too happy to stoke their fears. History weighed heavily on the Serb population there. The experience of the area’s Serbs between 1941 and 1945 when the Krajina was part of the Ustaša-led Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna država Hrvatska – NDH), during which they were subject to mass persecution, murder and expulsion, resonated strongly with them. In response to the Croatian government’s apparent moves towards independence following the victory of Franjo Tuđman’s HDZ, Croatia’s Serbs – the vast majority of which were located in the Krajina – embarked upon a rebellion following the announcement of a new constitution—which relegated Serbs to the status of a ‘constituent people’. In December 1990, the Krajina Serbs established the Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina (Srpska autonomna oblast Krajina – SAO Krajina), set up roadblocks – the so-called ‘Revolution of the Logs’ – and three months later declared the region’s separation from Croatia.⁵ An organized rebellion by the Krajina Serbs soon turned into a full-scale war, and conflict intensified in both Krajina and Eastern Slavonia during the spring and summer of 1991. It would culminate in a full-scale war pitting hastily organized Croatian government forces and paramilitaries against Serb rebels, Serb paramilitaries and the JNA, during which the town of Vukovar was destroyed with heavy weapons and the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik was pounded with heavy artillery.

The 1990 multi-party elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina was not, of course, immune from the events taking place in Slovenia and neighbouring Croatia. Indeed, it was in an unenviable situation as the SFRJ disintegrated. The most multi-ethnic of the SFRJ’s republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina comprised a mixed population of Muslims, Serbs and Croats; thus, the disintegration of the SFRJ would have significant consequences for the republic. According to the 1991 Yugoslav census, 44 per cent were Muslims – a majority, though a relative majority only – 31 per cent were Serbs and 17 per cent Croats; the city of Sarajevo mirrored this ethnic mix to some extent, its population being 49 per cent Muslim, 30 per cent Serb and 7 per cent Croat.⁶ Sarajevo developed significantly after the Second World War, with industrial development driving an increase in the population of the city and its physical expansion westward towards Ilidža. As a consequence, Sarajevo became an attractive place to settle for different ethnic groups from across Bosnia and Herzegovina and from other parts of the SFRJ.⁷ Mixed marriages were common in the cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in places such as Sarajevo and Mostar, though far less common in rural areas. Sarajevo, in particular, was multi-ethnic, multi-religious and a place with an urban mindset, where one’s ethnic or religious identity was relatively of little importance.

The challenge that Bosnia and Herzegovina faced as the SFRJ began to disintegrate began, however, to challenge the assumptions of many Sarajlije (Sarajevans) that their city was somehow immune from the rising tide of nationalism that had emerged in other Yugoslav republics. In any event, as multi-party elections were scheduled in every republic of the SFRJ, new political parties would emerge to challenge the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Savez komunista Bosne i Hercegovine – SK-BiH), then led by Nijaz Duraković – who would, in 1992, form the Social Democratic Party (Socijaldemokratska partija – SDP). Political parties were first registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 1990, the first being minor ones emerging in Mostar, none of which were of any real significance.⁸ In Sarajevo, however, parties that would become powerful, even destructive, forces in Bosnian politics would soon emerge. Problematically, they were of a predominantly, though not exclusively, mono-ethnic character and organized along ethnic lines.

The first of the significant parties to form was the – predominantly Muslim – Party of Democratic Action (Stranka demokratske akcije – SDA), who held their first meeting in the Holiday Inn hotel.⁹ One of the most iconic buildings in Sarajevo, the Holiday Inn hotel, with its somewhat unusual exterior of yellow, ochre and brown, was designed by the Bosnian architect Ivan Štraus and built in advance of the 1984 Winter Olympics. It was not only a distinctive building from an aesthetic perspective but, given its large atrium and numerous dining rooms, conference halls and location directly across from the Bosnian parliament, a place where the republic’s political elite would regularly gather.¹⁰ The SDA was, according to Izetbegović, ‘a political union of Yugoslav citizens belonging to the Muslim cultural and historical traditions, as well as other citizens of the country’, but Izetbegović had a history, and the SDA never transcended beyond a predominantly Muslim party. The SDA was ostensibly led by its then de facto leader, Alija Izetbegović, a Muslim lawyer and scholar who had, as a member of Mladi Muslimani (Young ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Maps
• Chronology of the siege of Sarajevo, 1992–96
• Introduction
• 1 The political context of the siege
• 2 The early months of the siege
• 3 The emergence of a reporting infrastructure
• 4 Operating in a city under siege
• 5 Reporting daily life
• 6 The troubles we’ve seen
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint