The Washington Post
December 30, 1992
SARAJEVO – Every night, hundreds of exhausted men, women and children try to flee this besieged, freezing city on a dangerous escape route that crosses the airport tarmac. Most are stopped by well-armed troops who force them back to the ruins of Sarajevo, for here the keepers of the siege are U.N. soldiers.
“It breaks our hearts,” said a French soldier who has turned back old women and mothers with babies. “They cry, they plead with us for help to cross. They even offer money. But we’re under orders to stop them.”
The airport forms a crucial part of a tight siege line thrown around Sarajevo by Serb nationalist forces who have been bombarding the city for months. Under heavy international pressure, the Serbs agreed to allow U.N. control of the airport so that relief flights for Sarajevo’s trapped civilians could land. But, apparently in exchange, U.N. commanders have adopted a policy of stopping any residents of the largely Slavic Muslim city from crossing the tarmac to escape the siege.
U.N. officials here have never hidden the fact that they turn back people at the airport. But until icy winter temperatures took hold here in the last week, the numbers were small. Now the number of intercepted civilians is soaring — there were more than 500 Monday night — and U.N. officials here acknowledge that the no-passage policy represents a troubling moral trade-off. “It’s a tremendous compromise,” said one.
When the civilians are stopped, the U.N. troops search them for weapons; everyone is frisked, including children. They are then taken in U.N. patrol vehicles to the starting point of their sprint to freedom.
Scenes of wrenching pathos take place every night, according to four French soldiers who spoke on condition that they be identified only by their first names. They expressed misgivings about the no-passage policy but said they were soldiers and that means following orders. “We are not here to think,” said Paul. “We are here to follow orders. There are others, higher up, who do the thinking.”
Women drop to their knees begging to cross the tarmac, the soldiers said. Men who are caught heading into the city with sacks of potatoes or dried meat take family pictures from their wallets and plead that they are carrying food to their trapped wives and children.
Some wounded people who try to hobble across the tarmac say they are trying to get medical attention on the other side. Mothers carry newborn babies wrapped in blankets; old people move as quickly as they can, which is rarely quick enough.
All are turned back.
The U.N. policy is also burdened by the fact that troops here, on at least one occasion, have stood by without taking any action as fleeing civilians came under Serb machinegun fire on the exposed tarmac. U.N. troops at the airport are allowed to fire their weapons only in self-defense, which precludes intervention to save people who are being shot down before their eyes.
These contradictions crystallized for a French soldier named Francis as he patrolled the airport Saturday night in a U.N. armored personnel carrier (APC). Three middle-aged women were intercepted as they tried to make the 700-yard scramble across the tarmac to Butmir, a Muslim-held village outside siege line. They were searched, then tucked into the APC with the sacks of soiled clothes they were carrying.
The women were sobbing, Francis recalled, and they kept repeating one word, over and over again — Butmir, Butmir. For them, Butmir equalled freedom.
The APC took them back to edge of Dobrinja, a Sarajevo suburb within the siege line. At the drop-off point, Francis could see several dozen other civilians getting ready to dash across the tarmac, but because they had not yet violated the perimeter, the APC started backing away.
Then, suddenly, a Serb T-55 tank opened fire on the civilians with its 50-caliber machine gun. The APC was hit by some of the bullets, but rather than fire back at the tank to protect the panicked civilians, the APC retreated, out of the line of fire.
Francis was sealed inside the APC, but witnessed the mad human scramble outside on the vehicle’s periscope. From a distance of about 100 yards, he saw tracer bullets zipping toward the civilians. He saw them drop their suitcases and run for their lives. He does not know how many people might have been killed or wounded.
“We were obliged to retreat,” he said. “It was sad, but there was nothing we could do. We’re powerless to intervene.”
According to U.N. spokesman Mik Magnusson, if civilians fleeing Sarajevo were allowed to cross the tarmac, the besieging Serbs would attack the airport, shutting it down. The choice, he indicated, is to help enforce the Serb siege or give up any hope of continuing humanitarian aid flights that are keeping thousands of people alive.
The airport dilemma demonstrates the cloudy moral ground that the U.N. Protection Force sometimes occupies in Bosnia. Its compromises with the Bosnian Serbs — who have been condemned the world over for waging aggressive war in Bosnia — have infuriated the Slavic Muslim-led Bosnian government, which has charged that the United Nations is knuckling under to international pariahs and war criminals.
U.N. officials say they must consider the situation pragmatically. At a recent news conference, the top U.N. generals in Bosnia were asked if they minded dealing with alleged war criminals — which the United States has branded a number of top Serb leaders — and they responded by saying they have no choice.
“The international community is dealing with them,” said Indian Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar, commander of U.N. forces in the Balkans. “They are leaders of one of the parties of the conflict, like it or not.”
Photo: Mikhail Evstafiev, Wikimedia Commons
