BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA: Sarajevo, A Winter Hell – Even Without The Guns

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joel Brand

SARAJEVO, Dec 15 1994 (IPS) - On most days Izet Kurtovic can be found shivering with cold and fear on the frontline that weaves between the high-rise apartment buildings around the besieged Bosnia- Hercegovina capital of Sarajevo.

But when he can, he climbs a steep road into the barren hills beyond his home, clutching a small axe and an empty flour sack, to scour the frosty mud-covered knolls for firewood.

Since the war began three years ago he and his wife have learnt how to use a wood stove to cook the family’s meagre meals and stave off the bitter cold that made Sarajevo perfect for the 1984 winter Olympics and makes it a frigid purgatory now.

These days though, the only wood left is the shell-battered small stand of trees on a ridge in no-man’s-land, a mile or so off. “That’s all that is left and that’s the frontline,” the former typesetter for Sarajevo’s main daily paper said, shaking his head. “You’d have to be mad (to go there).”

A third winter of fighting between the Muslims, Serbs and Croats has descended on former Yugoslavia. And with each one that arrives, less is left inside the narrow lines drawn by the besieging Serb rebel troops surrounding the capital. Foreign currency savings, trees and simple hope have all long since been exhausted.

In February, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) ultimatum to the Serb attackers eased life in the city but revealed a bitter truth — Sarajevo’s mainly Muslim population see that even without the rain of Serb shells, life here will continue to be difficult if not unbearable.

Indeed, the ultimatum of last February that temporarily made the Serbs take a step backward, seems so long ago. Nowadays, NATO is drawing up plans on how to safely coordinate the withdrawal of United Nations peacekeeping troops whose lives are increasingly threatened in the bitter territorial battle.

At the same time, snipers continue to shut down Sarajevo’s tram service, leaving residents to trudge through the winter rains and snows past the same gunmen. Food prices have fallen but are still high, most people spent what money they had in the first two years of the war.

Gas supplies for heating and cooking fluctuate at the whim of the surrounding Serbs, likewise water and electricity.