Sarajevo Enjoys New Lease of Life
City devastated by Bosnian Serb siege has been transformed, boasting restored Austro-Hungarian buildings and gleaming new office blocks.
Sarajevo Enjoys New Lease of Life
City devastated by Bosnian Serb siege has been transformed, boasting restored Austro-Hungarian buildings and gleaming new office blocks.
It was a hot summer day in June 1992 and I was standing with Sky News reporter Dan Damon, in the small Bascarsija square in Sarajevo’s Old Town, surrounded by green hills dotted with mosques and pretty red-roofed white houses.
Just a few months earlier, war had broken out in Bosnia and Sarajevo was already under siege, exposed every day to shelling and sniper fire from Bosnian Serb positions around the city. The streets were covered with rubble and many lovely old buildings had been hit.
“How long will it take to repair all this damage?” I asked Damon, a veteran war reporter who had seen many wars and destruction far worse than this.
He looked at me intently, as if trying to figure out an answer which would be both realistic and satisfying.
“At least ten years,” he finally said.
My heart sank. I was 26 at the time, and 10 years seemed like eternity.
“No, you must be wrong,” I protested. “I’m sure we can rebuild the city in just a few years. Just wait until the war is finally over - it can’t last for much longer.”
He looked at me with sadness in his eyes, but didn’t say anything.
In my naiveté, I really believed that the war would last only a few months because the West would intervene and stop the killing of innocent people.
Little did I know that the war would last for another three and-a-half years, and that hundreds of thousands of mortar shells would eat away at the face of my beloved city, killing thousands of Sarajevans and wounding many more.
The damage I was looking at in Bascarsija that day was just a small fraction of the devastation Sarajevo would suffer before the war ended. Now I’m glad I didn’t know what was ahead, because I don’t think I would have had the strength to endure it all.
Damon was right – rebuilding a city recovering from war is a painfully long and expensive process. But now, 15 years on, despite all the problems the country is faced with – inefficient government, inter-ethnic distrust and a weak economy – a new, more modern face of Sarajevo is slowly emerging.
The changes are particularly noticeable in the area along the infamous former Sniper Alley in downtown Sarajevo. The street owed its name to the Bosnian Serb sniper nests positioned on the hills above it during the siege, from which cars and passers-by were regularly shot at.
The area around this street, known as Marijin Dvor (Marija’s Castle) was one of the most damaged parts of the city and featured in many television reports made by international journalists during the war.
Footage of wounded civilians hiding behind United Nations vehicles from sniper fire became an image which for years symbolised the helplessness of the city under siege.
The parliament, the most prominent building in Marijin Dvor, and two skyscrapers in its vicinity were very badly burnt at the beginning of the war; the Holiday Inn hotel, in which international journalists stayed during the war - often sleeping in bath tubs for added safety from sniper fire - was heavily damaged, too.
Several beautiful buildings dating from the Austro-Hungarian period, including the national museum, military barracks and a high school building, were seemingly wrecked beyond repair.
But despite all the pessimism of Sarajevans like myself, who by the end of the siege thought that the city was so damaged that it would never rise again, all those buildings have been slowly, carefully rebuilt or restored to their former glory.
The parliament building is now a tall structure made of white stone and blue glass, a smaller version of the UN building in New York. The national museum has a new, sparkling façade. The American embassy, the biggest in the Balkans, has been built just across the street from the museum, replacing the military barracks.
Ultra-modern office buildings and shopping malls have risen literally everywhere, from ashes and rubble which was there at the end of the war.
Of course, for most Sarajevans the pace of all these changes has been intolerably slow. We want to see more improvements and for them to be carried out much faster.
Millions of euros have been invested in the reconstruction of Sarajevo since the end of the war, but even so the scars of conflict are still visible on many buildings throughout the city.
Yet as Damon indicated to me that June afternoon in 1992, just because you want something badly, it doesn’t mean it will happen, at least not as fast as you’d like.
So, patience is the key. And it is wonderful to note that the whole area around the former Sniper Alley, which not so long ago was one of the most devastated and dangerous areas in Sarajevo, is now one of the most beautiful and prestigious.
Merdijana Sadovic is IWPR’s ICTY programme manager.
