A SENSE OF PROPORTION
John Simpson argues with an historian of the Holocaust about appeasement in Bosnia Sarajevo WE USED to identify the name of Saraje- vo with the spark that caused an unparal- leled conflagration. From now on it is likely to be emblematic of the outside world's refusal to intervene to stop the wrong thing happening. Every act of aggression or presumption by the tin-pot emulators of Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic will be traced back to Sarajevo. And, as always with these grand analogies, it will be as inaccurate as it is right. The international community has indeed been weak in Sarajevo, but not necessarily in the way that is usually assumed.
In the back of our new Land-Rover, a sleek, white gadgety affair with ceramic armour instead of the old heavy metal, an argument was going on as we drove through the streets of the devastated city. 'It's Munich all over again,' said the harsh, combative voice with its interwoven accents of Germany, France and the Unit- ed States; 'and you pretend you can't see it.' Bullshit,' I answered, lurching against the armour-plating as we took the turn into Sniper's Alley too fast. I had been expounding the view that a sensible gov- ernment does not involve itself in an open- ended war with no clear way out, unless its own security is directly threatened. 'Your trouble,' I continued, 'is that you think everything is a re-run of Munich. You only ever make films about the Holocaust,' I added nastily.
He sat and thought about that for a moment: a bulky man in his mid-60s, bald- ing and bespectacled. Marcel Ophuls, the director of The Sorrow and the Pity (about collaboration in France) and Hotel Termi- nus (about Klaus Barbie) and several other of the best documentaries of the 1970s and 80s, was now making a film about Saraje- vo. I had first met him in January, when he was sitting huddled against the cold in the near darkness of the Sarajevo television station, leaning against the wall on which someone had written, 'Is that a torch in your pocket or are you just glad to be in Sarajevo?' As a student of the films of the 1940s, he had enjoyed that. He asked if he and his cameraman could have a lift with us, and I was so delighted to meet him that
I offered him all the help at my disposal. Now he was on his fourth visit to Sarajevo in the seven months since our meeting, and I had come to love him greatly.
'So what if I do only make films about the Holocaust? — not that I accept I do, of course. I'm a Jew. To me it's the most important thing that's happened. And, yes, I think it has lessons now.' The Land- Rover rumbled on; my colleagues had long since ceased listening to our argu- ment. I pointed out the dangers of chil- iasm: if you are always seeing Armageddon and the imminent arrival of the Emperor of the Last Days everywhere, you are likely to end up like Eden over Suez or Johnson over Vietnam: you get in over your head. A sense of proportion, even in a vicious three-way civil war like this, is essential. 'I see no need for a sense of proportion where evil is concerned,' said Marcel Ophuls.
It was a powerful line, but it didn't help in deciding what should or shouldn't be done. The European Community, the United States, the United Nations, have all come out of the Sarajevo affair badly, and the Bosnian Serbs, who have behaved with greater wickedness than their two enemies in the war, have been rewarded for their wrong-doing. The message of the past 16 months in Bosnia is plain: if you are determined enough, no one will stop you. 'Their name will stink in the nostrils of decent people for generations,' another friend of mine said recently; yet how many decent people remember the Turkish mas- 'I think I've had enough — I've just seen a 5-foot high mouse walk by.' sacre of Armenians, or the Italian bombing of Abyssinia, or the crime of Lieutenant Calley?
The Land-Rover came to a halt. We had reached the Serbian checkpoint on the road to the airport. The door at the back opened and a man pulled our gear about and examined it. This time, because we were going to the Bosnian Serb headquar- ters at Pale to see their leader, Radovan Karadzic, the Serbs did not steal anything valuable from us, or even stop us long. Maybe, too, they remembered what had happened the previous week, before Mar- cel Ophuls arrived. When we stopped at the checkpoint the Serbs found a big wad of money on me, and tried to take it. The senior officer, his pitted, primitive face glowering, accused me of planning to buy weapons for the Muslims with it. 'You have my word that it is only for my own use,' I said. 'To me you are nothing,' he answered, hefting the money appreciatively in one hand. The gang of soldiers he commanded looked on wolfishly, anticipating their share of the loot. Then our translator revealed that we were on our way to inter- view Karadzic. 'Tell him,' I asked her, 'that I will give Dr Karadzic a careful description of the way we have been treated here.' It worked, of course; with people like this it always does. The wad was handed back, apologies were made, the pitted, primitive face split into an ingratiating smile. A dirty hand was raised to cap-level in an approxi- mation of a salute, and we were waved on our way.
This particular checkpoint, on the road between the airport and the city, has been allowed by the UN to play an important part in the siege of Sarajevo. Its very exis- tence is an indictment of the feebleness of the UN in dealing with the Bosnian Serbs. When it was established earlier this year, in clear contravention of a formal agreement between the Serbs and the UN, it soon began to interfere in the passage of UNHCR convoys into Sarajevo, and the UN forces allowed them meekly to be checked by the Serbs at inordinate length. Last month the city almost ran out of clean drinking-water because this checkpoint, on orders from above, refused to allow a con- signment of UN oil through to the pump- ing-stations and elsewhere. The ill- disciplined, sometimes drunken soldiers who man it frequently steal things from the vehicles which, unprotected by the UN, have to pass through. My colleagues and I regularly lost small things like packets of batteries, and once we were lucky to save our helmets and flak-jackets from them. The UN command in Sarajevo accepts the existence of this post on the grounds that the Bosnian Serb leadership must not be antagonised, otherwise the supply of food and medicines will be made even harder. This, indeed, is weakness, and the Bosnian Serbs have recognised it as such.
The UN polices the siege for the Serbs in other ways: stopping people from leaving Sarajevo, forcibly turning back those they catch trying to escape from the city across the airport, blocking private individuals from bringing food into the city. 'But this is collaboration of the kind I dealt with in The Sorrow and the Pity,' said Marcel Ophuls when I told him this. He recalled all those busy, conscientious Vichy police- men rounding up Jews and resisters. If the UN's anxiety about the likely reaction of the Bosnian Serb leadership seems now to have been excessive. General Mladic with- drew from his mountain-tops overlooking Sarajevo when he thought the Nato powers might be preparing to bomb him. A friend of mine who was leading a UNHCR con- voy was held up for hours until two French jets flew low overhead by complete chance. The Serbs immediately waved the convoy on, with apologies.
When my colleagues and I, accompanied by Marcel Ophuls, left Sarajevo, we decid- ed to take the risk of going through the Serbian checkpoint alone, rather than trav- el with the unreliable and often unhelpful UN troops. We were all nervous as we headed down the desolate, much attacked road to the airport, past the wrecked tank and the shot-up, abandoned containers. If the Serbs chose to search us, we could lose some of our gear, and Marcel might lose his films. We approached the bend in the road, where the Serbs had protected their illegal post with a big bank of earth.
If only, I thought, the UN had fired a couple of tank rounds in here on the day the Serbs had set this place up, how much better things would have been for the peo- ple of Sarajevo. We drove through the chi- cane where the post was. It was empty. The soldiers who manned it hadn't even both- ered to turn up yet, though it was 8.30 in the morning. We clapped and shouted in our relief as we drove through at speed. 'No one tests these things,' Marcel Ophuls said to me. 'Everyone accepts the front these bastards put up.' He snorted. 'And you say it isn't like Munich.' We picked up speed along the empty airport road.
John Simpson is foreign affairs editor of the BBC.
'His heart just stopped throbbing.'
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