The clearly weird Martin Bell has wheeled hiself out again for a "special" in the Telegraph. Many will remember this BBC reporter who wore a white suit, got shot in Sarajevo and then was allowed to return to pursue a natural vengeance against those he thought had done it. Later he launched a crusade for what he called "the journalism of attachment" a poor attempt to justify why a reporter should be allowed to take sidea rather than just report from both sides - something very few did in BiH.
As he says below: "The Serbs suffered as well. They, too, were sniped at and targeted and killed, mostly out of range of the cameras. " Yes, Martin those cameras were SO difficult to move in those far-off days! Anyway in amongst the tripe their are some interesting things: he gives a precise death toll of 97,000 (an old trick is not to give round figures to give an air of precision). Also he thinks the ICTY is flawed though he doesn't explain. Most peculiarly is the following: <excerpt start> A story went the rounds of a newspaper reporter who wished to write a profile of a sniper. Both sides had them, fearing the enemy's as much as they valued their own. He fixed it up with the man's commander and went to visit the front line. "What do you see?" he asked the sniper. "I see two civilians walking in the street," said the sniper. "Which of them do you want me to shoot?" At that point the journalist realised his mistake, pleaded with the sniper to shoot neither of them and turned to leave. <excerpt end> Well, I'm pretty sure that he used to tell the same story with himself as the journalist and he used to add "It doesn't matter whether it was Serb or Muslim sniper". Of course it does! The coverage had been such that no-one even realised there were Muslim snipers let alone ones indulging in this sort of sadistic callousness! If anyone has that story in their archives I'd be grateful... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2008/07/24/ftbosnia124.xml Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian conflict:'We could have ended it sooner' Last Updated: 12:02am BST 24/07/2008 Fifteen years ago, a cataclysm unfolded on our doorstep. Now, after the capture of Bosnian Serb warlord Radovan Karadzic, Martin Bell, one of the reporters closest to the conflict - and who was wounded while covering it - remembers a war that shamed the West. It began, for most of us, in the ugliest hotel in the Balkans - Sarajevo's Holiday Inn, built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, apparently out of yellow Lego. It was there that Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, urged a boycott of the referendum on Bosnian independence in March 1992: Muslims and Croats voted for it, the Serbs all stayed away. The faces of conflict: Muslim women weep after fleeing Srebrenica in July 1995, following the killing of up to 8,000 locals by the forces of Radovan Karadzic Faces of conflict: Muslim women weep after fleeing Srebrenica in 1995, following the killing of up to 8,000 locals by Karadzic's forces It was there shortly afterwards, in one of the conference rooms, that he declared the secession of the Serbs from the rest of Bosnia. And it was there that he and his bodyguards fled for their lives after a peace demonstration was attacked by gunfire in April 1992. The shots were thought to have come from the Serbs' own office. The hotel was partly wrecked. And so began the most destructive war in Europe since 1945. It was a war that would cost 97,000 lives; drive more than two million people from their homes; and bring shame on the United Nations and the Western democracies. I was there at the beginning. I was there at the end. I was there for much of the time in between (with a brief intermission when my Army-taught fieldcraft failed me under mortar fire). It may seem like history now. It didn't then. It seemed like hell on earth. I remember in the early days cowering under tank-fire in a side alley near the Presidency. My first thought was: what a bloody stupid way to earn a living. My second thought was: so much for the brotherhood and unity of Tito's Yugoslavia. My third thought was: this is bad, and it is bound to get worse - a modern European city under siege by weapons mainly of First World War vintage, hundreds of thousands of people at risk and the world outside hardly cares. We should have needed no history lessons concerning the repercussions of a first shot fired in anger in Sarajevo. Something else I found, as the front lines were established over that summer, was that a war like this could be a thing of spectacular beauty. It kept all hours. The Jewish cemetery, between Muslim and Serb-held parts of the city, was fought over day and night. Parachute flares illuminated the ruins and added allure to devastation. Tracer fire rose and fell in a perfect parabola like a rain of molten hyphens. We caught it all on camera, and still no one cared. Civilians, it seemed to me, were not just caught in the crossfire but were being deliberately targeted. There was a shortage of bread, so the snipers targeted the bread queues. There was a shortage of water, so they targeted the standpipes. For most of the harsh winter of 1992 to 1993, Sarajevo was a city under fire, without the most basic necessities of life. There was a shortage of fuel, so people burned their furniture to keep warm. The survivors responded with defiance and black humour. "What's the difference between Auschwitz and Sarajevo?" asked one. "Auschwitz had showers… and gas." With the possible exception of Rwanda, it was the UN's darkest hour in modern times. Its troops escorted relief convoys, when the Serbs allowed it, which was like passing food through the window while a murderer stood at the door. The organisation's spokesman assured us that it wasn't a siege - it was merely a "tactical encirclement". The UN forces saved lives and risked their own lives to do so. The British and French lost about 70 men each. The soldiers were brave and resourceful. But they were let down by the politicians. The mandate was unworkable. The supposedly "safe areas" were killing fields. The double-talk drove us crazy. The Serbs suffered as well. They, too, were sniped at and targeted and killed, mostly out of range of the cameras. Their front line ran down to the river near the centre of the city, where it included Sarajevo University's Department of Philosophy. There, if you were as foolish and lucky as I was, you could peer through the breezeblocks and take an instant course in survival studies. The Serbs' heroes' cemetery in Sokolac bears monumental witness today to the scale of their losses. One of the war's worst massacres, at Ahmici in April 1993, was committed not by Serbs but by Croats. There was no monopoly on evil in this war, and no monopoly on suffering. There was, however, a preponderance. Slowly, the world woke up to what was happening. So did some of the journalists. A story went the rounds of a newspaper reporter who wished to write a profile of a sniper. Both sides had them, fearing the enemy's as much as they valued their own. He fixed it up with the man's commander and went to visit the front line. "What do you see?" he asked the sniper. "I see two civilians walking in the street," said the sniper. "Which of them do you want me to shoot?" At that point the journalist realised his mistake, pleaded with the sniper to shoot neither of them and turned to leave. Radovan Karadzic Radovan Karadzic: 'I knew Karadzic quite well. He was affable, but impossible to deal with' As he did so, he heard two shots from the position just behind him. "That was a pity," said the sniper. "You could have saved one of their lives." The front lines hardly moved for the first three years. And as they solidified, so did the resistance to any sort of negotiated settlement. The Serbs not only believed in the legend of their own invincibility but persuaded others to believe it, including governments - such as our own - who should have known better. In the bitter January of 1993, I met Colonel Jovo Bartula, whose guns were on high ground east of Sarajevo, pouring fire on to the government positions opposite. He pointed to the snow-covered hills around. "All this is Serbian territory," he said. He also warned against outside intervention: "I wonder what the Americans would say when they started receiving a convoy of coffins. Let them play their war games somewhere in Somalia, or Iran, or Iraq, or Kuwait, but surely not here." What, then, of Karadzic, the titular head of the Bosnian Serbs' mini-state? The shock-haired psychiatrist, poet and "President" of it all was not out there on his own. He had the likes of Bartula to support him, as well as paramilitaries such as the "Tigers" of the warlord known as Arkan, and - most importantly - his regular forces under their commander, Ratko Mladic, who is still on the run. Only towards the end did the two men fall out, when the Serb positions began to crumble under heavy attack from the Croats. They had no reserves, and no second line of defence to fall back to. Karadzic then styled himself Commander-in-Chief, putting on combat fatigues and touring the front. "Maybe we went a bit too far with General Mladic," he mused. "We made a legend out of him." I knew Karadzic quite well. He was usually affable, but impossible to deal with. He seldom appeared before midday, but would talk all night over a bottle of Ballantine's whisky about the sufferings of the Serbs since 1389. He referred to the Muslims as Turks. He described Sarajevo's magnificent library, which his forces destroyed, as a storehouse of fundamentalist literature. He was also obsessed with maps: he seldom travelled without them, and felt that they held the key to his people's future. He constantly complained that under the various proposed divisions of Bosnia, the Serbs would be left only with the rocks and the rattlesnakes. The theory was that wherever Serbs had lived or died would be forever theirs. His daughter, Sonja, ran the Foreign Press Centre, but was not an attractive person in any sense. Hence the story of the golden fish: one day, it ran, Dr Karadzic was so frustrated by the map the negotiators were trying to impose that he went fishing. On the river bank, his luck turned and he caught a magical golden fish. "If you throw me back into the river," it said, "I can grant whatever you wish." "In that case," said Dr Karadzic, "I wish you to take this map and make it acceptable to my people." "I'm sorry," said the fish, rubbing its fins in embarrassment, "but I don't do maps. Is there anything else I can do for you?" "Actually, there is," he said. "You could turn my daughter Sonja into the most beautiful woman in Bosnia." The fish responded: "I think I'll take another look at that map." Not all Serbs rallied to Karadzic. Some of the soldiers were openly critical. One of them, whose nom de guerre was Major Mauser, was responsible for the strategic reserve in the northern corridor. He believed in a negotiated peace, telling me it would be a useful exercise for the soldiers and politicians to change places for a couple of weeks. He was later killed, like other outspoken commanders, in mysterious circumstances. So the grinding, attritional war dragged on until the summer of 1995. Then, in July, the deadlock broke in the most appalling way. The Serbs overran the Muslim enclave and supposed "UN Safe Area" of Srebrenica. The Dutch UN force of 300 men capitulated. Up to 8,000 Muslim men were murdered in cold blood. It was the greatest war crime in Europe since 1945, and an episode of great shame for the UN. Finally, the world woke up. When the next atrocity occurred - an attack on the marketplace in Sarajevo on August 31 - the UN's British commander, General Rupert Smith, authorised the use of Nato airpower on a decisive scale. The Bosnian Serbs' command centres, communications and ammunition depots came under massive bombardment. So, for psychological reasons, did a military facility near General Mladic's home village. Within weeks, the war was over. The Dayton agreement, three months later, turned a ceasefire into a peace - or an appearance of peace. However, it left all sorts of problems unresolved: it rewarded the Serbs with a sort of mini-state, and the unfinished business included the disappearance of the two men most sought-after by the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, Karadzic and Mladic. The capture earlier this week of Karadzic, improbably disguised as a doctor of alternative medicine, is one of those moments when news becomes living history. We in the Western democracies should look back at those terrible years of the war and blame not only the parties to it - Croatia and Serbia included - but also ourselves. We could have ended it much earlier, but chose not to. Looking forward, we must hope that the capture of Mladic will follow; that both men will receive as fair a trial as possible, despite what I believe are the tribunal's procedural flaws; and that all Bosnians will benefit. This is more than a settling of old scores. Bosnia without its Serbs would not be Bosnia. This is a chance for them, a proud and ancient people, to leave behind them the darkness of the past.
