by Alex Lochrie
Daylight hours on the whole were safe enough, but as soon as darkness fell both sides behaved like animals. Once we had dealt with the snipers around the airport, the main danger was sniping and shelling within the city itself. When a bullet or shell misses its target it can travel a long way before it hits something, and that could be you or the building you were in. It might not be deliberate, but that makes no difference when it hits you and a careless moment could cost you your life. Whenever we left a building, even within the compound, we put on our flak jacket and helmet. Even crossing the 25 yards from the office block to the canteen was dangerous. No one loitered outside, not even for a quick fag. Not many legionnaires smoke but those who did had a great incentive to give it up. It gives a whole new meaning to the expression ‘I’m dying for a fag’.
A CHANGE OF TACTICS
At the beginning of March we knew that there had been a change in the Serbian strategy when the outfield of the airport started to get a pounding from artillery and mortar fire during daylight hours. The intensity and range increased every day until the shells were landing just outside the earth banks which protected the buildings. The danger was that it was inevitable that stray rounds would start to fall inside our compound and onto the terminal buildings. It became so intense that all normal activities came to a halt and because of the danger to aircraft landing or being offloaded, the airlift was suspended. Even the Russians stopped flying. At the worst of this period over 2,000 rounds fell within the airport perimeter every day. Miraculously not one legionnaire was injured as a result of the shelling, but everyone’s nerves were jangling. I now know what it must have been like for the soldiers in the trenches during the First World War, and we were in relative safety. The constant noise and shaking of the earth was what got to you. It just didn’t let up, day or night.
External movements had to be kept to a minimum, but our duties had to be performed as usual. We did notice that if we drove towards an area that was being shelled, it came to a halt and would resume once we had passed. Once we realized this we were able to make our way to and from different parts of the airport as we wished, but the situation could not be allowed to continue.
Again our Colonel showed what he was made of and gave the order for our heavy 120mm mortars to be brought over from Calvi. On their arrival they were set up and aimed at the Serbian base at Lukavika. He let it be known that if one more Serbian round fell within the confines of the airport, the Serbian HQ would be reduced to rubble. We were on very good terms with the US Air Force based at Ancona and they agreed to make some dummy attacks on the Serbian barracks using F16 fighters. Because of our reputation, our threat was taken seriously and the shelling stopped well before the deadline. Over 50,000 rounds had fallen in close proximity to our positions in just under three weeks. The silence that followed was almost as nerve-racking as the bombardment. There was still the nightly shelling of the city, but its intensity was nothing compared to what we had just been through. All the same, every time a shell exploded, even in the distance, we jumped.
Sarajevo’s power station and fresh water supplies had been destroyed by the Serbs at the very beginning of the siege. The nearest working power station was 50 miles away in a Bosnian-controlled area but the power cables had been brought down where they crossed areas held by the Serbs. We managed to get an agreement to let us run a temporary landline into the city which could carry enough power for the hospital and essential services during daylight hours. The Serbs were able to cut it off as darkness fell but would suddenly restore the power in the middle of the night. Anyone who had left a light switch on could then find themselves an illuminated target in the middle of the blacked-out city. It was just another part of the game that was being played out with the innocent lives of the civilians trapped inside the city.
At its narrowest, the city is only 5 miles across, and at its widest 10. It was a miracle that anyone survived. If the Serbs had really wanted to raze the city to the ground, they could have, but I don’t think that they wanted to occupy a ruin at the end of the conflict. They also wanted to gain the support of the outside world and could not understand why the West was not being more supportive in what they saw as the front line against the domination of Islam. What they did not understand was that it was the way they were going about it that was their downfall. Ethnic cleansing would never be an acceptable solution to the problem. Negotiations between the two sides continued to take place in our compound on a weekly basis, which in itself was a big step in the right direction. A really positive move was getting them to agree to hold pro-rata simultaneous prisoner exchanges which took place at the airport.
I had to photograph these exchanges from a hidden vantage point as neither side wanted the world to see what was going on, or how they had treated their prisoners. These exchanges were all about timing. On a prescribed day, at a given hour, the two convoys of prisoners would be escorted into the airport at exactly the same moment. The Serbs brought their prisoners in covered lorries and the Bosnian prisoners came in buses. Each convoy held exactly one hundred prisoners whose identities had to be checked by both sides before the exchange could be made. The prisoners would line up facing each other across our compound and only once both sides were satisfied could the exchange begin. You could see the anguish on the faces of the prisoners as they waited for the exchange to take place. Many had been in captivity since the very beginning of the siege and had obviously been mistreated. Some of the poor souls were in a bad way both physically and mentally, so weak that they could not walk the last few yards to freedom unassisted. Many looked bewildered, some were crying, the occasion too much for them to take in. When they had boarded the transport, I am sure that many of them thought that they were being taken away to be executed. Most just looked at the ground, incapable of looking into the eyes of those they passed as the exchange was finally made. It took a couple of hours to verify every identity before the convoys were eventually ready to leave. I have never experienced anything quite like it.
We had to escort the convoys back to their own lines to prevent either side from opening up on the other before reaching safety. It was ridiculous, but again it was all part of the game. The exchanges were repeated several times during our stay – we even managed to get some of the opposing negotiators to shake hands and even get on first-name terms. Although the press had got wind that the exchanges were taking place, we had no choice but to refuse them entry to the base. They were allowed in when the weekly negotiations were held but unless they were told that there would be someone important taking part, they wouldn’t turn up.
Just before one such meeting a very strange incident took place in front of the world’s press. As normal, our compound was the venue for the meeting and on this occasion every TV and news crew had been told that there would be some high-ranking officials at this particular meeting. Nothing happens by chance in this world. The arrival of General Philippe Morillon of France and General Ratco Mladic of Serbia at the entrance to the conference building was timed to perfection. Every camera was pointed at the pair and the flashlights were working overtime. This was one of those photo opportunities not to be missed and the photographs would appear on the front of every national newspaper in the world within hours. As the TV cameras rolled and the journalists shouted out to catch the attention of the pair, General Mladic turned to face the cameras and held his hand out to General Morillon. Morillon made a grand overt gesture of refusal and stormed into the building. Within hours the images would be beamed up to satellite links and be on every evening news bulletin.
Once both parties were inside the building and well out of sight of the press, they got down to a friendly game of table tennis as if they were old palls. With the meeting over, they again left at the same time. The TV cameras rolled and still cameras clicked hoping for more of the same, but this time they did not look at the press or each other before getting into their respective vehicles. It was all for the cameras. The pair of them would not have been out of plac
e in Hollywood. Another example of how the public are manipulated for whatever reason.
As the winter weather worsened it became clear to us that large parts of the population were suffering more than others from a shortage of food and warm clothing. When the aid convoys arrived in the city they were taken to warehouses run by the different communities, depending on the source of the aid. If it came from a Christian charity, then it went to a warehouse run by the Christian community. The problem was that 70 per cent of all aid coming in was from Christian charities. The small percentage of aid coming in by air was given out to everyone regardless of which community they were from. I was shocked to find aid which had originated from Scottish Christian Aid charities was piled high in a warehouse. From the paperwork we could see that it had arrived months before and was not being distributed to non-Christian communities.
We visited a Roman Catholic church hall which was stacked to the roof with aid parcels. If you weren’t a Catholic, you did not get one. It was that simple. We visited every Christian denomination in the city and found the same thing. It was so bad that our Colonel decided to initiate our own distribution system. We bullied, coerced or simply confiscated supplies from the mountains of aid lying in the warehouses. The problem had arisen because the Christian population was of Serbian nationality and hated the rest of the population, despite being shelled by their own people. You had a siege within a siege. But this was humanitarian aid sent to the people of Sarajevo, regardless of the background of the donors. The aid had not been sent with a proviso attached dictating who would receive it. The people at home who had given so generously would have been horrified if they had known the truth.
Our efforts had only a limited effect on the larger problem of feeding the population. We supervised and protected the distribution operations in the worst-affected areas. For several months we more or less commandeered the aid convoys as they came into the city. They had to pass by the airport anyway before they could enter the city, and despite their protests we forced them to distribute the aid direct to the areas where there was the most suffering. In some instances this was the first aid to reach them since the start of the siege.
I am afraid the truth is that only a small percentage, about 20 per cent, of all items handed in to charity shops, or collected by well-meaning organizations, ever finds its way to the people needing it most. Most of it ends up on the black market or pays for the administration costs of the so-called charities. I have watched as parents cut grass to make soup, such was their desperation. Every spare bit of ground in Sarajevo was planted with vegetables and potatoes. It was difficult to prevent our efforts to ensure that aid was distributed being exploited for political gain, or from being used against us in an attempt to destroy our neutrality.
One such incident in particular sticks in my mind and is worth commenting on. We received an invitation to attend a ‘cultural event’ in the Bosnian district of Dobrinja. Our Colonel and senior officers were asked to attend the event in the ‘Community Centre’ which had been a hall constructed for the 1984 Winter Olympics. The invitation was accepted on condition that we could search the venue and that it would be secured by our own men – there was an obvious security risk with so many senior personnel in the same place at the same time. We also let them know every Bosnian mortar battery would be put under observation to prevent a repeat of the ‘market’ incident. You can just see the headlines: ‘Serbs bomb UN delegation on peacekeeping mission.’
The ‘cultural event’ turned out to be an art exhibition and concert given by the city’s leading artists and musicians. The artwork and photography depicted the suffering of the city during the siege and was of the highest standard. This was followed by a two-hour concert by what was billed as the ‘Bosnian National Orchestra’.
As we were shown to our seats at the front of the hall we could see that the members of the audience were all dressed as if they were at the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London. The ladies were wearing evening dresses and the men were in dinner suits. We of course were dressed in full combat gear, carrying assault rifles. When we got to our seats the curtains suddenly opened to reveal the orchestra, and ... a Bosnian TV film crew. It was evident that they intended to broadcast the event. Here was a sophisticated audience of cultured people in the presence of armed UN soldiers – a bit like Hitler in full uniform at the opera. The impression they would try to give was that we were obviously working with the Serbs to keep them imprisoned within their own city. The concert, like the art exhibition, was excellent but our Colonel was one step ahead of the game. The CRAP were waiting as the film crew left the building by the back door, and the film was confiscated.
Manipulation is a new factor which must always be taken into account by peacekeeping forces in today’s conflicts. Not only does it endanger the neutrality of the UN, but can put the lives of the peacekeepers at risk. The presence of ‘on the spot’ news crews complicates the work of the peacekeeping forces. It also requires the deployment of valuable personnel to protect them when they could be better deployed doing something else.
Whether the news crews agree or not, their safety is our responsibility and that is something that we take very seriously. It also affects your operational thinking when there is a camera filming your every move. There are times when a film crew will try and stage manage an incident just to get some footage to sell. Most of the film crews in war zones are freelance and sell their footage to the highest bidder. The reporter, or rather correspondent, then does a piece to camera in the safety of a hotel room and the editors back home put the two films together, even though the correspondent was nowhere near the incident in question.
It is amazing how the presence of a news team can turn an aggressor into a victim before your very eyes. As if by magic, injured babies and children appear out of the blue, complete with wailing mothers, even when there was no one about before the arrival of the camera crew. Suddenly a minor incident draws an angry crowd, forcing you to use force to protect the film crew, who in turn make it seem as if it was you who was the aggressor. You can be sure that by the time the edited footage gets onto your TV screen during the evening news, it will bear no resemblance to the actual incident.
I have witnessed TV crews paying children to throw stones at soldiers and tanks, knowing full well that they will eventually get a reaction from the soldiers. The resulting footage will only show the aggressive soldiers, not what caused them to react like that. If a child dies or is seriously injured, so much the better, it sells well to the networks.
Another incident highlighted the dangers we faced from this kind of manipulation. This time it happened at the Serbian checkpoint in Ilidza. A UN convoy which had driven up from the Adriatic pulled into the checkpoint. Normally the checks on UN vehicles were restricted to documentation and control of the vehicle contents. On this occasion the convoy was made up of five 20-ton flatbed trucks and their military escort. The lorries had platforms that tipped and rolled the loaded containers onto the ground while still loaded.
The Serbian controller insisted that the container on the second lorry be rolled off onto the ground to reveal the lorry chassis. This was something that had never been done before and why had they picked on this lorry? While the containers were being offloaded, several TV film crews suddenly appeared to record the proceedings. This they claimed was to show how honest and efficient the Serbian authorities were and that they had nothing to hide. The officer in charge of escorting the convoy had no objections and the container was quickly removed. While the flatbed of the lorry was still raised, the controller walked straight up to the chassis and – surprise, surprise – pulled out a metal ammunition case from within the framework. He shouted to the film crew and quickly pointed out several other similar cases hidden inside the chassis - ten cases in total on each side, filled with AK47 rifle ammunition. In front of the cameras, accusations were made that the UN were smuggling munitions into the city in contravention of everything and anything you could think of
. A Serbian dignitary appeared within minutes and proceeded to read out a long speech which must have taken hours to write. The whole episode was a set-up with the cooperation of the world press, who didn’t care if it was a set-up as long as it was a good story.
The strange thing was that they didn’t examine any of the other lorries. Humanitarian aid ground to a halt for several days until it was pointed out that the lorry in question had been hired from a Serbian contractor two days before the convoy had set off from the coast. The vehicle had been sprayed white before delivery and some of the ammunition boxes had traces of white paint on them from the spray job, proving that they had been in place before the UN accepted the lorry from the contractor. I don’t know why, but the press didn’t get round to publishing that piece of information.
The saddest part was that no senior UN person stepped forward to defend the convoy personnel who had been removed from operational duties. They were reinstated later but without any public apology. It didn’t matter to the hierarchy if some minions fell by the wayside - they would get a peerage or whatever honours their countries handed out when it was all over.