On 11 July the Serbs (maybe I should be writing ‘we’?) captured the UN-declared safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa. In camp, everyone had a good laugh. We jeered at the United Nations, and declared that these towns were now really safe, now that we were in charge. The celebrations went on long into the night, but left me strangely uninvolved. I don’t give a damn who ends up in charge of this country – although I’d never tell my father that. He wouldn’t see my point of view. Who wins and who loses, who cares? The country isn’t worth conquering now. Whoever takes over will always be looking behind them, wondering if they’re safe, because none of the factions will ever get complete control. They’ll only be able to rule, retain their grip on power, by suppression. In ten or twenty years time there’ll be another war, to right some of the wrongs of the past, to even things out again.
I think I hate them all. If I had my way I’d put the lot of them up against a wall and shoot them. That’s what they deserve. The Christians and the Muslims, the Social Democrats, the Communists and the Liberals, the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Hungarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Albanians and Slovenes, they’re all as bad as each other. Maybe I don’t give a fuck who I shoot now, friend or foe, it’s all the same to me. They’ll just be another notch on my rifle butt, another 500 Deutsche Marks in the bank.
After the battle of Srebrenica, it seems there was a massacre – of Muslims. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what people are saying. What I do know is that the Serbs marched into the city as victors, whereas here we just sit in the hills and shoot into empty streets. It’s not a battle, it’s a siege, and I’m beginning to wonder if I should move elsewhere, to where there’s proper fighting. But then I ask myself if I want to die for some cause I don’t believe in. If I’m simply searching for a story, then it’s probably better that I stay put. No idea on earth is worth dying for, surely? Is it?