by Sheri Fink
The stories defined his enemy. They gave him a reason for hating his former neighbors, friends, and colleagues, and sometimes these past months, particularly when the other side seemed stronger, he did. It took time for the transformation to occur. For a long while he didn’t believe that war would come. But the stories were like recruiters. They turned him into a player.
His šekovići voluntary guard, at first loosely attached to the Yugoslav National Army, was aimed at neutralizing paramilitary formations—basically Muslims arming themselves in preparation for Bosnia’s independence. As the group’s only physician, Boro readied his fellow soldiers for the types of injuries they might suffer in the field and taught them how to treat themselves before help came. The volunteer Serbs set up guard posts on the road between Tuzla and Zvornik, searching car trunks for weapons. Once, they rambled through a village where Muslims were rumored to be organizing weapons, but the men in question slipped into the woods and Boro’s troops could not find them.
The group saw its first real action around 3 one morning in April 1992. Along with forces from other areas in Bosnia and troops from Serbia, the troops took Vlasenica, a Muslim-majority town of about 8,000 inhabitants with a sizable Serb minority. It surprised Boro to meet almost no resistance.
“In the morning, Muslims were called to give up their arms,” Boro later recalled. “People came and brought pistols, rifles, hunting rifles, whatever anybody had. And we stayed there until 11 in the morning…. We went back to the base, and Vlasenica was taken over by [other] units… and the local [Serb] population.”
During the time Boro was there, he said, he did not hear a single gunshot. The same pattern was repeated next in the town of Kamenica. “The assignment was the same: to go into the village and call people to give up their arms. And then the officers [of] the unit usually gave lectures to the people, the inhabitants of the place, how there is no need to be afraid and organize any kind of [resistance]; that basically the cause of coming into this village or city is to prevent anything worse. Then the army would go back, take the arms and go back. And the people who were living there stayed to live there.”
It didn’t remain this way for long. One morning in June, Boro’s sister came to take his wife, Sanja, away to their parents’ cottage in the hills.
“It’s going to be a bad day,” she told her.
Buses arrived near šekovići to remove the 150 or so remaining Muslims. Their belongings were confiscated. The only Muslims allowed to stay were two women married to Serb husbands.
When Boro appeared at the cottage hours later, his sister and wife rushed to him. “What happened?” they asked.
“Nothing,” he answered.
Did he feel bad about it? Boro wasn’t one to talk about his feelings. Long after the events, when pressed, he’d look back and wryly remind the questioner that times when people were asked to leave and left were the best times in the war—then nobody was killed. In other places the “ethnic cleansing” turned far crueler. Boro’s first military action in Vlasenica helped consolidate Serb authority. Soon after, Muslims were removed from their posts in the police and army. Then came the harsh treatment. Muslims were “arrested, beaten and interrogated, and some arbitrarily killed,” according to the report of a U.N. commission of experts investigating violations of humanitarian law. Conditions worsened over the following months, after 80,000 troops from Serbia along with a significant amount of weaponry were transferred to local control. Muslims’ homes were looted and set on fire. “Then, in the beginning of June, the systematic eviction and execution of Muslims began,” the U.N. commission found. Muslims were detained in at least eight camps where beatings, rapes, individual killings, and mass executions occurred. Those considered politically influential were taken to fields and murdered. The commander of one of the camps was later accused of crimes against humanity in the first indictment issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
But by that time, Boro was long gone from Vlasenica. Every once in a while, he heard that one or another of the soldiers he was treating had participated in some atrocities. As a doctor, he felt ethically bound to care for whoever needed him. Still, Boro began to pity the people on the other side of the front line as it became clear how much stronger his side was than theirs. Practically the only wounds he treated at the start of the war were the self-inflicted injuries of inexperienced soldiers, reflecting the imbalance of power. His voluntary guard became an army brigade. For the first several months of war, he worked out of a car in the field, moving along with the mostly offensive actions. He gathered the medicines and materials he needed from the donations that Doctors Without Borders, among other organizations, made to civilian health clinics. For the seriously injured, he had at his disposal several nearby hospitals. Those who needed a higher level of care were flown by helicopter to major hospitals in Belgrade, Serbia.
Over the year of war, the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina gained strength, and its forces, particularly those from Srebrenica, conducted some punishing actions, including a blitz offensive in fall 1992 against a strategic village, Podravanje, from which Serbs fired tank cannons and mortars into Srebrenica. After Srebrenica forces retreated, Boro saw the bodies of ten men who appeared to have been burned and driven over by tanks the Srebrenicans captured. The sight gave him “the creeps.” Many Serbs were killed in the same village during World War II. Now it had again been completely plundered—from its livestock to the windows and roof tiles on its homes—and its haystacks burned by the civilian hapsi who rushed in with the estimated 2,000 to 2,500 Srebrenica troops who took part. Boro and everyone else on the Serb side heard terrible rumors of what happened to Serbs living in Muslim-controlled areas, and he worried about the welfare of his parents in Tuzla.
Boro tired of the grueling front-line work. Never partial to a life of all labor and no play, one day he asked his commander, Pandurević, if he could spend more time doing regular hospital work. The commander agreed. Boro took a job at a nearby hospital in the wealthy bauxitemining town of Milići, learning surgery on the job with its strong-headed neurosurgeon director. When it became clear that the director would not grant Boro and his family an apartment in town, Boro left, making an enemy of the director, and hustled his way into his current job in Zvornik.
These days hospital work is nearly as grueling as field work. This week the Srebrenica forces managed to do some damage when counterattacking with all the usable weapons they had left, a ZIS cannon and small arms. While a ceasefire for Srebrenica was being hammered out on the tarmac of Sarajevo airport last night, Zvornik Hospital received about twenty wounded Serbs. Their injuries were what kept Boro busy all night. He is tired of the constant work here. Going to Srebrenica sounds like a good chance to break up his routine.
* * *
BORO AND A SERB MEDICAL COLLEAGUE ARRIVE at the Zvornik soccer field, where helicopters await them. The two Muslim doctors picked up in Tuzla look frightened to be here in Serb territory. One of them was threatened with jail if he refused to come. Soon, the tables will turn and the Serb doctors will be among enemies. Boro’s colleague asks a French U.N. officer whether his and Boro’s safety will be guaranteed in Srebrenica. The officer points out that dozens of U.N. Protection Force soldiers are now stationed there.
“I can’t guarantee their safety, let alone yours,” he says.
Boro tries not to dwell on his fear. On the helicopter journey, he schemes up a way to avoid being identified as a Serb by those waiting on the ground. Nobody would expect a Serb to be the first to walk, with confidence, off the helicopter into his enemy’s territory, so this is exactly what he decides to do.
As the helicopter descends, Boro peeks out the window and sees a crowd of thousands of people gathered around a soccer field. This is terrible. All those people probably think I’m the enemy. But now there’s no way back. He disembarks first, as planned. Then it hits him. He has stepped through the looking glass. It is an unforgettable moment
. His hopes and wishes have come true. He has crossed the border line. He is on the other side.
* * *
AT FIRST, never mind the fact the U.N. soldiers can’t “guarantee” him anything, Boro sticks close to them on the soccer field. He gets to work with the other doctors checking the wounded, who are being ferried to the field.
After about half an hour, a jeep pulls up. It astonishes Boro to see Dr. Nedret Mujkanović get out. They recognize one another immediately even though three or four years have passed since the two tall, attractive men shared the black market for imported clothing at Tuzla medical school. In addition to living in the same Tuzla apartment block, Nedret was Boro’s pathology teaching assistant, and Nedret’s younger brother was one of Boro’s close friends.
They greet one another with a Balkan-style hug and kiss on both cheeks.
“How is it in Tuzla?” Nedret asks.
“I didn’t come from Tuzla…” Boro begins to explain.
“Ah, you’re the Chetnik coming from Zvornik!” Nedret backs away from him in mock horror. “Fuck! My people will kill me!” He says it with a smile, and then invites Boro for a tour of the hospital.
It’s a relief to find a friendly face in a potentially hostile environment, but Boro’s been warned by the French U.N. officer not to set foot outside of the U.N.-protected soccer pitch. He glances at the U.N. soldiers, loading patients onto helicopters as if they were pieces of wood. His mind performs a quick calculation. One, he’s known Nedret a long time, which means Nedret probably won’t do anything to harm him. Two, Nedret probably has a lot more stature in town than these insensitive U.N. soldiers do. Boro accepts the offer and informs the U.N. officer that he’s going with Nedret to the hospital. The soldier looks surprised.
“Is anyone forcing you to go there?” he asks.
“No, he’s my friend,” Boro explains. “I went to school with him in Tuzla, and I feel safer with him than with you.”
As they get ready to go, Boro sees yet another familiar face. Sadik Ahmetović was a student nurse in a hospital where Boro worked before the war.
“No one will harm you here,” Sadik says. Still, Boro can’t wait to disappear into the relative safety of the hospital. They travel there in the jeep and arrive at a crowd scene, hundreds of people drawn to the hospital by the prospect of evacuation.
“Here’s my buddy,” Nedret announces to some colleagues outside the hospital, “Boro.” Boro is a Serb name. Everyone within earshot turns to stare. Boro feels even more nervous and uncomfortable, but Nedret just keeps standing there chatting. Then a woman shrieks with delight.
“What’s up, Boro? Oh, Boro, it’s you!” People in the crowd turn their heads as Fatima approaches, smiling deliriously. Boro recognizes her from medical school, a kind and studious girl who used to lend him notes when he skipped class.
“What’s up, Fata?”
From Fatima’s perspective, sweet, funny, carefree Boro is about the only Serb in the world she’d still be happy to see land in Srebrenica. He reminds her of their youth in the days when nobody knew or cared who came from what ethnic group. She peppers him with so many questions and with such loud enthusiasm that Boro must accept that his cover is blown. By now, everyone around him knows he’s a Serb.
For the next couple of hours, Nedret hosts Boro at the hospital, introducing him to staff members and showing him patients. Boro couldn’t have imagined conditions this poor. It shocks him to see how much harder the doctors here have to work compared with those on his side. When he sits down for coffee in Nedret’s office, Boro brims with questions. How do you perform surgery without electricity, with no x-rays, with no anesthesiologist? It occurs to him that he might help.
“What do you need?” he asks Nedret.
“I need everything.”
They catch up, discovering that their early days of war were spent as combat doctors on opposite sides of an active front line near Tuzla. Nedret describes his overland journey to Srebrenica. Boro tells of his field actions and, comparing stories, the two realize that Boro was probably with a patrol of soldiers that Nedret and his fellow travelers had slipped past. They’d narrowly avoided detection and with it the possibility of a deadly firefight between old friends.
The two have nearly forgotten about the evacuation, which is proceeding without their assistance. They return to the soccer field hours later to find throngs of Nedret’s former patients awaiting examination and certification to be loaded, about twenty apiece, onto helicopters. Dozens of amputees have led a procession through town on their homemade crutches, demanding to be evacuated too. An International Committee of the Red Cross physician, Louisa Chan-Boegli, and the U.N. refugee worker Larry Hollingworth lock horns over procedures. Louisa wants to give each patient a thorough check and gather the required one signature each from Srebrenican, Serb, and international doctors to avoid violating promises given to the Serbs. Larry, still convinced that Srebrenica will fall, wants to shove as many Muslim men as possible onto the helicopters while there’s a chance to get them the hell out.
* * *
OVER THE AFTERNOON, French Puma and British Royal Navy Sea King transport helicopters shuttle 133 men out of Srebrenica before the operation draws to a close for the day. Boro declines Nedret’s offer to stay the night and returns to Zvornik. His fellow Serbs look at him as if he’s a ghost, as if they expected the Srebrenica Muslims to kill him. In the evening, he crosses Zvornik Bridge from Serb-held Bosnia to Serbia and buys loads of fresh fruits and vegetables, coffee, chocolate, cigarettes, beer, and a liter of cognac for Nedret. Back at Zvornik Hospital, he swipes some special suture meant for the delicate work of sewing friable, damaged liver. He obtains permission to bring goods back with him to Srebrenica, slyly avoiding mention of how much and what he has.
* * *
THE SIGHT OF THE HUNDREDS OF INJURED MEN gathered on the soccer pitch has renewed Boro’s awareness of the tragedy the war has brought on all of Bosnia’s people. For three days he travels to Srebrenica and works with Muslim colleagues. On the last day of the evacuation, unbeknownst to the internationals, he and the local doctors conspire to billet a few special cases onto the helicopters. The non-injured people they want to evacuate have compelling reasons to leave the town, but can’t travel by overland convoy either because they are men or because they have links to the military. Nedret secures evacuation spots for the ailing father of deceased Dr. Nijaz Džanić and for the widow and children of the war hero Akif Ustić. Ilijaz and Fatima help some others. Even Boro signs a doctored medical certificate when beseeched by a former school friend. The Serbs and Muslims find they have much more of a connection to each other than to the internationals. The way some of the U.N. soldiers act makes Boro think they care much more about themselves than the people they’ve come to help. When an UNPROFOR soldier twists his ankle and a swarm of internationals descend on him, Boro and the other Bosnian doctors chuckle amongst themselves.
“He has to go to Paris, emergency case,” they laugh.
* * *
NEDRET WANTS MORE THAN ANYTHING TO LEAVE Srebrenica on one of the helicopters. He pleads with the Red Cross physician, Louisa, to grant him a space, but she asks him who will do surgery if he goes. The Bosnian surgeon from Tuzla who was drafted and sent, under threat of prison, to help oversee the evacuation doesn’t have permission from the Serbs to remain here and won’t take the risk of defying them. And Eric Dachy hasn’t yet secured agreement from Serb authorities for MSF doctors to return.
In fact, Nedret’s departure is long overdue. The commander of the Bosnian Army Second Corps in Tuzla ordered him to withdraw last month, mainly because Nedret’s wife was making repeated, dramatic appearances at army headquarters begging officers for his return. The officers at the corps considered her to be on the brink of a psychological breakdown. At the time, Nedret announced that he was refusing to leave until a replacement arrived. Now, with a realistic and relatively safe way out of Srebrenica dangling before him, he is more than ready to
grab it.
The Red Cross doctor, seeing that Nedret is too exhausted and demotivated to work anyway, takes pity on him and grants him permission to travel. Boro and the other Serb doctor have no objections. Now only one obstacle remains—Srebrenica’s local warlords. Some of them argue that Nedret, who traveled to the field with the soldiers, watching their actions and participating in their military meetings, just plain knows too much. Nedret’s powerful allies insist he is trustworthy. After some remonstration over whether he might squeak about the crime, black marketeering, and other indelicacies he has witnessed over the past eight months, the Srebrenica authorities decide to let him go.
Nedret gathers his belongings, takes off his military uniform, and dresses up to leave in fancy clothes given to him in Srebrenica by friends and patients. He arranges a farewell meeting with his longhaired best friend, Commander Hakija Meholjić, king of the Hotel Fresh Air, whose beard now reaches to his stomach. Nedret shows up on the terrace of the hotel at the agreed-upon time, but Hakija isn’t there. Nedret waits a while, staring at the back of a short-haired man until the man turns around and Nedret sees, from the missing tooth and the characteristic smile, that it is Hakija himself, Hakija who had long ago said to him, “Doctor, when I feel the war is going to end I’ll cut my hair and shave my beard.”
The men embrace. Hakija hands him 100 Deutschemarks.
“Go to the Hotel Tuzla,” he says. “Order two dinners and two beers. Sit alone. One dinner and beer are for me, and one dinner and beer are for you. Then raise your glass.”
The two men cry as they say farewell. Nedret promises that he will return. He goes to the hospital one last time and makes the same promise to his colleagues.