There’s the definite feel of a finale about the scene, as if soon the curtain will fall and the audience – us up in the hills – will be able to go home. The war has reached its autumnal stage. It has grown into a tragedy, even though I’ve grown to regard it more and more as a comedy – of errors. The war is flawed, it’s a lost cause, the siege has reached the point of terminal decline. I’m reminded of the final day of a school term, with everyone preparing to leave. The kids’ minds (if kids can be said to possess such a thing) are elsewhere, the work has been pushed to one side.
Today, 29 August, I returned to the Vraca memorial park camp in the evening to be told that thirty-eight people had been killed in Sarajevo’s main marketplace, the Makale. It’s the same marketplace where sixty-nine people were killed in another mortar attack about eighteen months ago. The funny thing is, it’s supposed to be a safe area. So much for the UN.
I gather we’re blaming the enemy – and why not? That’s how it’s done nowadays: you commit an atrocity, then tell the world’s media that the enemy killed themselves for the publicity, to try to win the sympathy vote. I’ve never understood this dodging of responsibility for one’s actions; to me it doesn’t make sense. If you commit an atrocity, why not admit to it? When that Pan Am jet was blown up over Lockerbie, everyone ran around denying they’d done it. But someone must have done it, and been proud to have done it, so what’s the point in remaining silent? If you feel so strongly about a cause that you’re willing to blow up a planeload of people, but refuse, once you have the world’s undivided attention, to admit you did it, why place the bomb in the first place? The IRA always admits to its bombings, and I like that. ‘Yeah, sure enough, pal, it was us that did it. We put that bomb in the pub that killed eight people and maimed fourteen others, and we’re more than happy to admit it.’ That kind of talk makes sense to me.
The rumour is that one of the batteries on the eastern side of the city lobbed the offending mortar into the marketplace. The question, if anyone can be bothered to either ask or answer it, is: were they ordered to fire at the innocent people out shopping, or did some bored artilleryman fire the shell into the marketplace to liven things up? For what it’s worth, I think Mladic gave the order. He may even have fired the gun himself. It’s pure Ratko, exactly the kind of thing he loves doing. Killing people is his forte, and a whole crowd of shoppers in a market would have had special appeal.
Around the campfire they were all talking about the marketplace slaughter. Something different had happened, and the men regarded it as a break from the usual routine. Like me, they were pointing out that Mladic always concentrates his guns on civilian targets. He’s been doing it for the past three years, telling his soldiers to shoot only where there’s flesh. What they do, in fact, is no different to what I and the other snipers do every day. It’s all relative. No one objects if a team of snipers succeeds in killing thirty-eight people in a day, but when a mortar does the same thing, everyone gets upset. Can someone explain the difference to me? Once, when Mladic was visiting camp, I heard him say, ‘It’s the quickest way to get them to surrender. Kill the ordinary people and it’ll cause such an outcry it will make them give up the city. Anyway,’ he added, winking at one of his aides, ‘that’s exactly what they are, ordinary, so what does it matter?’ I don’t understand why everyone feels the need to discuss this Makale thing endlessly. It’s as if they’re determined to justify their actions. I don’t see any need for that. It doesn’t worry me at all if there’s little reason and no excuse for what I’m doing. Why should it? Mallory climbed Everest because it was there. I’m killing the inhabitants of this city for the same reason – because they’re there.
Nikola, as usual, was disagreeing with everyone. ‘Just the day before the Makale bomb, that pig Richard Holbrooke said he’d bomb us to the negotiating table. That’s what he said: ‘I’ll bomb the Serbs to the negotiating table.’ So it’s obvious enough he did this. He wants the world to hate us even more than they do already by making out we bombed those shoppers. One day he says that, and the very next day the market is shelled. And the following day US planes just happen to be ready to bomb us back to the Stone Age – to punish us. That’s the word they used: to punish us. It’s too much of a coincidence.’ The men who were listening to him wavered, like the crowd in Julius Caesar, many of them nodding and muttering that he could be right. The giant, Bukus, who’d wandered over to listen to the discussion, shook his head impatiently and shouted, ‘Fuck the lot of them, that’s what I say. Who’s coming up to the farmhouse?’ And he strode off, obviously having more important things on his mind than politics.
Nikola blames the disaster on international public opinion. He says the UN, the US, the UK and Europe, who have all stood by and done nothing over the past few years, have now said enough’s enough. Those mealy-mouthed spectators are becoming impatient with the Serbs. There’s been too much bloodshed, that’s their opinion. It strikes me as a bit late for the appeasers, the Western powers, to get upset about the amount of blood that’s been spilt. They’ve sat on their hands and been humiliated by Serbia for as long as I can remember, so why show concern now? Maybe they have a limit to the amount of blood they’ll allow to be spilt. Like nine hundred gallons is OK, but one thousand gallons, that’s too much. The bombing of the marketplace was a mistake – if we did it. We pushed them too far. There’s been such an outcry about ‘the barbarians besieging the city’ that the West now feels obliged to take action. They can no longer afford to keep their heads buried in the sand. The British, the Americans and the Europeans are finally realising that you can’t remain uninvolved, can’t negotiate, can’t say, ‘Hey, let’s sit down and chat about this,’ with people like Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic. Those three individuals are up to their elbows in blood and still busy, busy, busy killing their enemies and turning their backs on the peace conference.
That doesn’t mean I’m not upset now that the UN has started to bomb us. Luckily, I’m not in Grbavica. It’s bearing the brunt of the UN bombing runs. I’ve spent much of the day looking across the city as the jets streak overhead, holding my breath until, a few seconds later, there’s an explosion and smoke erupts from within the huddle of buildings. They’re bombing other positions around the city too, but less severely. I hope they don’t hit the big farmhouse.
I wonder what Mladic and Radovan Karadzic will do. To start with, it might be a good idea if they talked together. It’s being said they hate each other now, Mladic calling the President a corrupt war profiteer and refusing to talk to anyone but Milosevic. He’s also promised, without consulting Karadzic, that if the UN bombs our positions around Sarajevo then he’ll bomb London. Great, I think, fantastic! That would be interesting, although I can’t see Milosevic agreeing to such a manoeuvre, even if they’re capable of it. Mind you, if it did happen, I’d immediately write to Bridgette and tell her that the bombing raids had been arranged by me in the hope of wiping her off the face of the map, blowing her and her creative right out of their bed – the ultimate lover’s revenge. She’s so naive she’d probably believe me. And then, of course, there’s also Ms Diane …
One thing for sure is that the beast of war is out there, loose in the land. I can feel it. There’s blackness everywhere, the rumbling of God knows what, like something out of Conrad: anarchy, the breakdown of the rule of law, men roaming the land slaughtering each other amongst smoking ruins. The horror, the horror!
I recall Santo, many months ago, muttering something about how we all believe we’re good until a war starts, but it’s only when it does that we truly find out who we are, only then that we know for certain whether we’re good or bad.
‘There’s a wild beast in all of us, Milan,’ he said, half turning to rest a hand on my shoulder, as if to make sure I didn’t escape the truth he was about to reveal, ‘and most of us are only too happy to let it out if we do not have to answer for its actions.’
When the barriers come down, that’s what he was saying, when the restrictions, rules and laws are removed, when we have no one to answer to but ourselves, that’s the time when we find out the kind of person we are.
Me, I think I’m bad. It’s not necessarily some amazing insight, but I think that’s the kind of person I am – bad. And now’s the time to prove it to myself.