Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995

Sacco speaks with Munira, a woman who was sent to a center for pregnant women in Foca during the war. It was the closest facility to Goražde, but she and other women became trapped when Serb forces won the town. Though the Chetniks left them alone at first, they soon began taking women every night, raping them.

Munira hid under the sink every night and gave birth to her daughter at the clinic. When the women were to be exchanged, the Chetniks took one woman and kept her, though she was later exchanged to her family for money. In the final months of 1992, refugees rushed into Goražde, escaping these other towns, pushing the population to 60,000.

Sacco and Serif sit with a man who has videotapes of the horrors that happened in Goražde. They see bombs going off and the victims afterward. There are dead children and others. After an hour and a half, they leave. As Sacco and Serif walk out, the man offers them a price so high for the videos that Serif is horrified and offended.

Sacco sits with Dr. Alija Begovic, the director of Goražde’s hospital, as they watch videotapes of treatment in the hospital. Begovic tells Sacco about some of the patients on the screen and explains how difficult it was to work during the conflict. He believes that his staff performed thousands of operations and treated 10,000 wounds, all with a reduced staff, no supplies, and no running water. The first five months of the conflict were Begovic’s worst, and he quickly had to become a surgeon, amputating his first leg with a kitchen knife. The patient had no anesthetic.

Nurse Sadija Demir came from Višegrad and began working at the hospital immediately. She and others worked constantly, and it was sometimes so busy that it could take days to have a wound treated. Some surgeons braved their way through Serb territory in the fall of 1992 to help, but it is only now, during the ceasefire and with the Blue Road open, that Begovic feels that the hospital is doing better.

Their conversation is interrupted when a messenger comes to tell Sacco to meet Edin at a coffee bar. Before Sacco leaves, Begovic questions how the UN and world did not intervene, claiming neutrality, when such horrors were happening.

At the coffee bar, Sacco meets a man who fought with the Yugoslav People’s Army in 1991 when they fought against Croatia. When his unit began flying a Serbian flag, he, a Muslim, left and came back to Goražde. While other places, like Sarajevo, have their suffering publicized, Goražde remains isolated. The shelling in Goražde was intense: “On one day in July ’92, he said, 2,500 shells landed in an area 600 meters square” (126). Many lost their houses in the bombardments, and many repaired their houses multiple times.

One girl, named Suada, never left her house after finding the bodies of her neighbors in the wreckage after a bombing. When she finally walked out into town to see a friend during a ceasefire, she did not recognize her hometown. She became scared and called to her friend from the street.

A woman named S. tells Sacco that she thinks she can get out of Goražde by telling UN authorities that her mother, whose eye problems are severe, needs to be evacuated and that she must go with her. Her brother was evacuated and is recovering in the UK.

One night at the Piramida, a woman tells Sacco that she needs to get out to get a brain scan. She says that there is something wrong with her brain but that doctors will not recommend her to be evacuated. She says that only those with money can buy their way out. Dr. Alija Begovic disagrees with this, saying that the Serbs dictate how many people can leave and that not enough can be saved. Sacco reflects on how he can come and go without having to pay anyone.

Most journalists arrive in Goražde in the morning with UN convoys. They tour the town, see its most devastated spots, interview people on the streets, and then leave in the afternoon with those same convoys. Some journalists throw candy to capture desperate children scrambling for them. Children ask journalists for candy and cigarettes. Some journalists don’t want to give the kids sweets or at least want to give them to their parents, but Sacco believes that the children can make their own decisions.

When Edin and his family returned to their home, they searched the area for building materials while others found food. That first year back, they had enough food from their garden, apple trees, and cow, but they began to run out of food in winter. In the summer of 1992, the UN tried to send convoys with food into the enclave, but the Serbs turned most of them away. By the end of that year, food became scarce in Goražde. People began trading their goods, like TVs, for flour and other food. For refugees and others who struggled, the only solution was to go to Grebak.

Grebak was a Bosnian outpost west of Goražde that distributed food and weapons. To reach it, the people of Goražde hiked through Serb territory. Desperate, Edin and his family trekked to Grebak many times, taking turns. The trip was dangerous, especially during the winter, when many froze or were ambushed and died, earning the journey the name of the “White Death.”

Edin tells Sacco about one journey during the winter. He paid two kilograms of flour for a ride to Zorovici, where he departed with about 200 people. It was so dark that everyone had to stay close together or risk being lost. They crossed streams, many falling in, and passed a group returning from Grebak. Edin reached the outpost a little after four o’clock in the morning. At Grebak, a black market, funded by the nearby town of Trnovo, blossomed. Edin believed that it was best to get tobacco in addition to food, as they could trade it back in Goražde.

Edin took 28 kilograms of food and waited for night for the return journey. This trip was more difficult, and the group separated. Edin followed a neighbor who knew the journey well, and they passed many people who could not continue. He made it back home. With strict rationing, the food lasted almost a month.

In March of 1993, the food situation in Goražde worsened, and the Bosnian government refused any more UN aid to Sarajevo unless aid was provided to the enclaves. US President Bill Clinton ordered airdrops of food, the first of which arrived on March 9. At first, the army tried to control access to the aid drops, but people overwhelmed them. Edin explained that he and others would wait outside and have to rush across town when pallets landed. People fought over the food, and Edin did not always return with some.

In the spring of 1993, peace talks were stalling, and the Serbs were preparing to overrun another enclave, Srebrenica. In response, the UN declared Srebrenica and other enclaves, like Goražde, designated safe areas. This acknowledged Serb gains of territory, and the Serbs soon attacked anything not in the safe areas, leading to more refugees flooding into Goražde. The Serbs continued to bomb Goražde, and though the UN committed to protecting these safe areas, they sent few soldiers to the town. During this time, Trnovo and Grebak fell, cutting Goražde off from the rest of Bosnia.

Sacco joins Edin and Riki at Kimeta and Sabina’s home once again. As they party and Riki sings, Sacco takes Sabina aside to interview her. She remembers times when she narrowly missed being hit by shrapnel crashing through their window and when cannon fire nearly hit her while she hung the wash. Sacco asks what the worst moment of the war was for Sabina, and she tells him about her best friend getting killed by a sniper two months prior. She also mentions her brother-in-law, who escorted her sister to Sweden before returning to Goražde and died while fighting in 1993.

Sacco asks if Sabina had any Serb friends, and she tells him that she did, like everyone else. When her friend Mila’s sister-in-law was captured during an offensive, she told Sabina that Mila was in Cajnice, living a normal life. Sabina holds no ill will against her friends, but another girl, Dalila, tells Sacco that she had no Serb friends: “How could they have been your friends if then they tried to kill you?” (154).

Sacco meets with one of the few Serbs who remained in Goražde, Veljko. He saw himself as a Yugoslavian and did not accept the rise of Serbian nationalism, straining his relationship with many people. He believed that the Chetniks caused all the problems in the conflict.

Serbs knew that he stayed and often fired at his house and yelled at him from across the Drina. He tells Sacco that the police and his neighbors treat him well but that refugees, resentful of Serb attacks against them, hold grudges. They kicked out all his Serb neighbors who also stayed. Much of their resentment against Serbs manifested in property damage, and many former homes of Serbs were burned down.

Most of Goražde’s Serbs were moved to buildings near the police station for their own safety, though there was occasional violence against them, especially when Serbian forces attacked. When the UN began medical evacuations, many Serbs crossed the border, though Veljko says that it was mostly to reunite with their families or because their homes were destroyed.

Sacco asks many people the question of whether they can live alongside Serbs again, and the answers vary. Many reflect on the sense of betrayal from people they grew up with turning on them and killing indiscriminately. Some believe that their Serb friends always hated them. Many resent how their lives are irrevocably changed, though some do not see all Serbs in this light and believe that it is better to look to the future rather than the crimes of the past.