A Life Half Lived

by Andrew MacLeod

  It is a difficult factor within many developing economies, that comparatively rich NGOs and aid agencies pay higher salaries than many of the local governments or organisations. This is sometimes called ‘capacity stealing’ in that many of the best and brightest will take menial jobs in a high-paying international NGO, rather than substantive but low-paying jobs in their own government. As a result, many NGOs inadvertently upset the economies in which they operate and can actually do more harm than good by taking from a local economy its best intellectual capacity.

  The very strong ‘Swiss-centric’ way of thinking permeated everything and I had to keep that factor in the back of my mind. In a report on the context of Yugoslav operations in December 1996 I wrote:

  “Plans for an ICRC/Yugoslav Red Cross schools program, primarily aimed at recruiting youth into the YRC and secondarily aimed at encouraging values of tolerance, have been delayed due to problems of access to the Albanian population of Kosovo.”

  It is possible for a whole program to be delayed because access to one part of the population was blocked. Equally and undoubtedly the Kosovo issue was part of the problem. The ICRC attempted to bring a program into schools to disseminate humanitarian principles to youth, and to help heal the psychological effects of the war – admirable stuff. A nationwide campaign would naturally need the permission of the Education Ministry, which was originally given, but later withdrawn when the ICRC insisted that the program could not operate in Kosovo because of the perceived lack of neutrality. On the surface, given the political environment, the ICRC’s belief on why the program failed seems sound.

  But, when one looks closer, the first stages of any effective planning process include: gathering information, identifying a potential need, ascertaining if the need is being met, and if not, formulating an aim for a program to meet the need (then go on to plan the program). In my opinion, this is where the school program really failed. I visited a number of local YRC branches and found that they already had localised school programs. No national permission is needed for these as each is local to its own community. If we assumed there was a need for a school program, why didn’t we know or think that the need was being partly met by the Yugoslav Red Cross?

  When asked why the ICRC didn’t just improve the local programs rather than invent new ones, the Head of Delegation, François Bellon said “you don’t understand. You are new. You are not Swiss and will take some time to understand”. The truth is, the Delegation was completely unaware of what the Yugoslav Red Cross was already doing and that it was one of the most admired Red Cross organisations for its capacity and ability around schoolbased programs.

  The ICRC was not blocked because of ‘Kosovo’, but because of institutional arrogance and the lack of an ability to accept that a local program, run by a Red Cross for many years, could be better than the program envisaged by the ICRC which, up until that point, had very little experience in running school-based children’s programs. An outsider would think it surprising that the two branches of the Red Cross cannot co-operate. Early in 1997 I learned one of my tough lessons about the ‘co-operation’ side of my mandate. François Bellon, my Head of Delegation at the ICRC had said to me, “You may co-operate with anyone except the IFRC.”

  The ICRC must be neutral and be seen to be neutral. It is also better funded than the IFRC. The IFRC works very closely with national Red Cross societies, which are often bound up with national politics. The Australian ambassador Christopher Lamb (who has remained a friend) hosted a drinks party at the Australian Embassy, and it was here that I met the head of the IFRC Delegation, Hannes Hauksson. He was also trying to strengthen the Yugoslav Red Cross children-in-school programs but had no funding to do so. Ambassador Lamb organised for Hannes and me to meet in secret in order for us to coordinate our programs without François knowing.

  We were able to gain funding from the ICRC for the IFRC and Yugoslav Red Cross together with the ICRC to run combined youth and children’s programs in Sutomore that year. Sutomore is a town on the Montenegrin coast that the Yugoslav Red Cross used for youth summer camps. It was also the place where we decided to run a beach rescue program. One of my mandates was to run programs that would encourage ‘humanitarian values’ in youth. On arrival in Belgrade, I found and joined the Partisan Swimming Club, which had within it many of Yugoslav’s national swimming team. At one of our training sessions the coach mentioned that he would like to set up a beach rescue program because nearly 800 people a year drowned in Yugoslavia I told him of the Australian surf lifesaving movement and my time at my home swimming club in Point Lonsdale. He asked if we could set up something similar in Yugoslavia. We managed to get some equipment from Australia, some trainers from Italy, and had the Yugoslav Red Cross recognised by the World Lifesaving Federation as a training organisation sponsored by McDonald’s, the hamburger chain, which was just setting up for the first time in Belgrade, post sanctions.

  The captain of the Partisan swimming team, Vladislav Chale, selected a number of his colleagues to become the first volunteer lifeguards in Yugoslavia. Over the summer of 1997 we trained this first group and I’m proud to say that our program runs today, still saving many lives each year. All of this had to be done in secret because the Head of Delegation would not have approved, even though I could think of no better humanitarian value than to volunteer your time to save the lives of others.

  In May 1997 the Head of Delegation left. Thomas Merkelbach, as new Head of Delegation, proved to be a breath of fresh air that was desperately needed. Thomas is a tall and wiry Swiss-German who has, he says in his self-deprecating way, a habit of making things worse – a reference to the fact that every time he has started a mission the political situation in that region has deteriorated.

  When he arrived, Thomas looked and listened and in his words, “very quickly realised something was wrong”. He had to undertake a radical shift in the position of the ICRC delegation. Thomas was also open to the idea that the Yugoslav Red Cross did have a capacity in dissemination and youth programs – even considering its problems in Kosovo. The ICRC school program was canned, and replaced with support for those already existing within the Yugoslav Red Cross. Thomas also loved the idea of the beach rescue program, so finally we could now continue publicly. Hannes and Thomas became firm friends. Another good side of Thomas is his treatment of local staff, welcoming and encouraging a sense of true equality with national staff. The relations with the Federation improved radically, and I really enjoyed working with Thomas, but my time in Belgrade was coming to an end.

  Understanding Deep-seated Hatred My assistant was Jelica, a Serb, who spent most of the war in Belgrade, watching Serbian TV, and whose understanding of the political situation was shaped by the Serbian TV that she watched. I wanted Jelica to see what the Serbs did. If she saw what the Croats did she would just have another reason to hate them – she knew what they did was wrong, but to encounter what your own people did is confronting. The Serbian Serbs destroyed Vukovar and the Bosnian Serbs bombarded Sarajevo. A rehabilitation of the Serbian population needed to begin with recognition of their own errors. Jelica hadn’t been to Sarajevo since the Winter Olympics. On this visit she saw that the apartment block in which she had stayed for that visit had been destroyed. Instead of flowers and life, Sarajevo had rusted barbed wire, bullet holes and death. Jelica cried as we drove by the buildings.

  We attended a Bosnian field officers’ meeting, which allowed Jelica to meet Muslim, Croat and Serb people whom she had spoken to on the telephone during the war. Although all these people work for the Red Cross it was the first time many of them had met. At this time, things were still extremely tense between the ethnic groups. Even though our national staff all worked for the same humanitarian organisation and they knew that they could not blame each other for all the wrongs, the Serb contingent stayed overnight in the Serbian capital of Bosnia, and the Muslims in Sarajevo.

  In Sarajevo, once she had established they were still alive, Jelica was able t
o meet some of her pre-war friends. She came back with stories of how much heat can be gained from a burning shoe when there is no wood, and how her friends had boiled shoes to eat during the siege because there was no food. Jelica had arrived in Sarajevo and gained an understanding of the Serbs’ role in the city’s destruction and left with stories of how much pain nationalism had caused to her friends.

  During this time I continued to enjoy work with the summer camps and the Red Cross Youth. It became clear to me that 14–18-year-olds were well worth spending time with. They were old enough to understand what was happening in their country, but too young to realise that politics would demand that they lie about it.

  There was one other depressing note that came from the camps. At the youth camp hosted by the Novi Sad Red Cross (from Vojvodina, Serbia) I was able to meet many teenagers with ‘good Red Cross spirit’. They were at the camp to learn skills to take back to their communities. Jelena was an 18-year-old from Banja Luka, a Serb town in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian Serbs often attended Serbian Red Cross camps in Serbia. After the camp she came to Belgrade and we met one afternoon for a walk and a chat. At one point, as we overlooked the Sava and Danube rivers from the Kalamegdan Fortress, we began to talk of politics, refugees and Bosnia.

  Jelena began speaking about a former Muslim neighbour in Banja Luka. The Muslims were cleansed from Banja Luka fairly early on in the conflict, but the neighbour now wished to return home. Jelena told me that a Serb refugee was now living in the house of the Muslim, so it would not be possible for the Muslim to return. The Serb, she said, should not have to move.

  “But,” I replied, “the Muslim is currently a refugee and he wants to return to his house. Why can’t he return home?” Her answer was simple. “Because he is Muslim – don’t you understand? The Serb should stay.”

  “But they were your friends before the war?”

  “Oh yes, good friends.”

  “Would you be friends now?”

  “Well, no, I can’t. After all, they are Muslims.”

  I was dumbfounded.

  I looked out over Zemun, once a small town just outside of Belgrade and

  now more or less a suburb of that city.

  “What do you think about Seselj?” I asked.

  Seselj is the Mayor of Zemun and also the leader of one of the more

  ruthless state-sanctioned paramilitary organisations. His criminals were responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Bosnia. Now, as Mayor of Zemun he was forcing any ethnic Croat that stayed during the war to leave

  – a Croat who had got on so well in the town that they stayed for the entire war was only now being ‘cleansed’. Additionally, Seselj was head of the Serbian Radical Party and running for Serbian President in the up-coming elections.

  “What do you think of Seselj?” was Jelena’s reply.

  “I think he is a criminal,” was my simple answer.

  Jelena then stunned me by saying that she would vote for him. I asked

  her why and what she thought of the cleansing of the Croats. “We are doing them a favour,” she said. Now I was lost. How could forcing someone out of their home be a favour?

  “Well,” she said, “at least we are not killing them. In Zagreb they killed the Serbs. Here we will let them live, so we are doing them a favour.”

  I really was surprised. She used unconfirmed stories of atrocities committed by the ‘other side’ (many of which were true, however) to justify atrocities of their own. The logic was not that two wrongs make a right, but that one wrong justified that another could be committed. Perverse, barbaric and backward in my view, but here they are still proud of it. Jelena is not typical either. She has a humanitarian heart, otherwise she would not be spending her time taking care of the elderly and doing the other good work that the Red Cross Youth in Banja Luka do. A product of the ‘hate’ years, Jelena is now a member of the ‘hate generation’. She is an excellent example of what is meant when people say, ‘Bosnia used to be multi-ethnic. They used to live together. Now they can’t. The hate is too great.’

  I had a similar discussion with one of her Red Cross youth colleagues, this time a teenage boy.

  “What nationality are you?” He asked me.

  “I am Australian”, I said.

  “No, you misunderstood my question. What nationality are you?”

  “No, you misunderstood my answer. I am Australian.”

  “But you can’t be,” he said, “Australia is not old enough to be a nation.”

  “Does your nation have to be older than 200 years?”

  “200 years is not enough” he said.

  “500 years?” I asked.

  “No” he said.

  “Thousand years?”

  “Still not enough”, he said.

  “Well the Serbs have only been here 800 years,” I said.

  He had no answer to this. These discussions reinforced my view that ‘you cannot win an emotional argument with logic or logical argument with emotion’. Jelena’s view and that of her colleague were based on emotional logic and no amount of rational logic would change their minds.

  Under Tito, Yugoslavia was in the process of creating a ‘Yugoslavian’ identity, that over time could have supplanted individual ethnic origins. The war destroyed any hope of a unified self-image.

  Reflections on My Time in the Former Yugoslavia

  In my last letter home from Yugoslavia I wrote the following about the people: I dislike the way the people blame everyone else for their problems. It wasn’t, they tell you, the people of former Yugoslavia that started the war

  – it was the EU, the US, NATO, UNPROFOR, Germany – for all they care it could be grandma blogs and her pet dog ‘Spot’ – but it was not them. They didn’t mean to pull the triggers, they didn’t mean to stand by and watch the slaughter – it was all someone else’s fault. This is why they will do it all again.

  And what of their future? The country is crumbling. Political assassinations have commenced. In the election campaign for the Montenegrin President both candidates accused each other of criminality, smuggling and profiteering. As a result, I get the feeling that people are beginning to lose confidence in the fabric of society.

  I am often asked if I will return to Yugoslavia. If I think of the nature or the friends I have made, the genuinely good people I have met, then I might be tempted. But then I think of the people as a whole. The ‘nation’ they are so proud of. The history they are so proud of. The denial they are so good at. Then I think ‘no I won’t come back’…and I can hear some of the Serbs say, “Good riddance you Ustaše bastard – it was all your fault anyway.’

  Yugoslavia is a beautiful country. It is a shame it has been ruined by its people. I have never felt so much bitterness about a place I enjoyed living in. The temptation to stand on a street corner and yell, “Can’t you see,? don’t you know what has happened? It was your fault,” is just too strong.

  Given that my letter was written only a year before the full invasion by Serbia of Kosovo, it seems prophetic. I just hope that the people of the Balkans have learned now, yet somehow I doubt it.

  The Yugoslav Red Cross threw a going-away party for me. A huge variety of people turned up, including Red Cross youth, the Partisan Swimming Club, people from ICRC and IFRC, which showed that you can get all parts of the Red Cross Movement in the same room. General Churchin also turned up, and being respectful of the Red Cross, he came in civilian rather than military uniform. Churchin presented me with a formal gift from the Yugoslav Army. It was an old artillery shell polished and mounted with an emblem of the Yugoslavs on the casing. He also presented me with a small cap badge from Yugoslav Special Forces. It was a badge that he had worn. In military circles it is the small gifts like that which mean the most. They provide subtle messages of friendship, and complicated circumstances.

  The shell casing provided an amusing anecdote. On shipping my personal effects back to London I asked an old Irish friend if he would clear m
y goods through customs.

  “Is there anything in the baggage I need to know about?” he asked me. “No,” I said. “Oh, wait a minute, there is a shell casing from the Yugoslav Army.”

  “Andrew,” he said to me in his very heavy Irish brogue, “I am from Ireland, I cannot very well turn up to customs at Heathrow airport saying I am here to collect that wee shell from the Yugoslav Army!”

   3.

  Rwanda: Aid and Genocide

  If fireworks reminded you of death, would you still watch them? I don’t like fireworks. The sharp cracks of the shells and the loud booms of the larger pyrotechnics take me back to a steamy equatorial night when thousands of men in gumboots and green fatigues marched across an international border. Many would be dead by morning. With the sounds of AK-47 rifles cracking like small fireworks and artillery whistling overhead, on the night of August 2, 1998, Rwandan armed forces invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo, kicking off what became known as ‘Africa’s First World War’. The war that began that night was to last a decade; it involved at least eight countries and killed approximately eight million people throughout the central African region – almost as much as the entire population of Rwanda. On that one night in the remote central African town of Gisenyi, I witnessed an invasion and dread filled my soul.

  I had been given four weeks’ notice of that night’s invasion, and the story of how this came to be is a story of trust; one that offered one of the largest moral dilemmas a person could ever face. Do you prepare for an inevitable conflict, or do you try and stop it?

  In early 1998, following the conclusion of my mission in the former Yugoslavia, I was deployed to Africa to be the Communications Coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross Delegation in Rwanda. Four years after the 1994 genocide the repercussions of the aftermath still reverberated. I was overseeing military-based International Humanitarian Law and also overseeing all external communications. I had a detailed briefing from several people in Geneva, but it was Yves Daccord, then Head of the Dissemination Division of the ICRC who gave me the simplest instruction: “Whatever else you do, you must re-establish contact and trust with General Paul Kagame.”