Remembering glory, horror in Sarajevo
The ghosts of the Bosnian civil war haunt this mountain capital. Cemeteries dot the hillsides. Bulletand shrapnel-pocked apartment blocks still crowd the narrow valleys.
The siege of Sarajevo was longer than the Nazis’ infamous siege of Sevastopol during the Second World War. Sarajevo was cut off from the rest of the world for 1,425 days between 1992 and 1996. The war is so deeply woven into the fabric of the city that it still infects almost everything, including memories of the 1984 Winter Olympics which Sarajevan Croats, Serbs and Muslims hosted so confidently and so ably before neighbours turned on each other.
I was one of the few foreign eyewitnesses to Sarajevo’s moment of glory as an Olympic city and then in those tragic years when it was being blown apart.
Back in 1984, many Sarajevans had grimly warned me that all bets were off after Marshal Josip Tito, the Yugoslav strongman, had died four years earlier. Their reasoning was simple. There were so many scores to settle between Bosnian Muslims, Orthodox Serbians and Roman Catholic Croatians and no leader was strong enough to hold these ancient hatreds in check.
These prophecies came to pass in the spring of 1992.
One of the best views of the Zetra Olympic hockey rink and the rusting cauldron that once held the Olympic flame is from a huge cemetery for victims of the Bosnia War that was built right next door on what had been a soccer pitch. The arena was the first Olympic site in Sarajevo to be turned into a smouldering hulk. That happened during the first weeks of the war. Smashed by sustained Serbian artillery fire, the rink caught fire, burning for days.
After the smoke cleared, the arena’s basement, which was still intact, became a makeshift morgue. Lumber was extremely scarce, so the rink’s wooden seats, which had been salvaged, were hammered together to make coffins. Snipers had made it so dangerous to move anywhere in the divided city that one of the few safe places to bury the dead was a few metres away.
The arena was rebuilt in 1999 with most of the funds for this coming f rom the International Olympic Committee. However, the Olympic ski jump centre — 45 minutes away by road at Igman — still bears scars from gun and shell fire and has not been used for years. Tall grass now grows where tens of thousands of spectators stood and cheered the dominant Finnish and East German jumpers. The area has been converted into a soccer field of sorts with pickup games being played by men whose dreams of Olympic glory ended many years ago.
I am told that the Olympic ski jumping medal podium, which was used during the war for executions, still exists. But during a quick tour I could not find it.
My roommate in the media village during the Sarajevo Olympics was Michael Farber, who was then a columnist with The Montreal Gazette and now works for TSN. I remember how charmed we both were with how the Yugoslavs had delivered such a friendly spectacle in a cosy village setting.
Miralem Muhic, who was a young fireman assigned to protect the Olympic Village, recalled that “we were so proud at having organized the best Winter Olympics until that time.” Even the gods seemed to be on Sarajevo’s side, he said, blanketing the city and surrounding mountains with the first big snowfall of the year on the eve of the opening ceremony.
But then the civil war came and “destroyed everything that was important to the city (including) every place connected to the Olympic Games,” Muhic said.
I had first been to Sarajevo with my brother Luke for the pre-Olympic alpine events in 1983. We were stunned by the grace and beauty of the minarets, mosques and churches in the Old Town where restaurants served staggering helpings of grilled veal and
After the smoke cleared, the arena’s basement, which was still intact, became a makeshift morgue.
lamb.
The Old Town was magnificently restored after the war and is a major tourist draw. But other places such as Bjelasnica, where I spent a lot of the 1984 Games watching the men’s alpine races, have not fared as well. The mountain was a strategic prize because it looked down on the only route which Bosnian Muslims could use to resupply besieged Sarajevo. So, in 1993, Bosnian Serb forces seized the summit. However, they were soon forced to retreat by the UN, which threatened to authorize airstrikes. French peacekeepers moved in and the area was declared a Demilitarized Zone.
Two years later the Serbs launched another offensive, forcing the French off the top of the mountain. The UN allowed western warplanes to attack Serb positions this time, which quickly led to talks that ended the siege of Sarajevo.
Visiting Bjelasnica this week was a melancholy experience. Although the ski lifts still work and a lot of money has been spent trying to restore the mountain resort to its Olympic lustre, the place where the world experienced so much joy and pleasure 30 years ago, like most of Sarajevo’s other Olympic venues, has become a forlorn relic with no clear economic future.