Hopes of a new dawn after 10 years in hell

By Julius Strauss

6 October 2000

IT is nearly a decade since I first came to the Balkans, mesmerised and disgusted by the way Yugoslavia, a state respected in both the West and the East, could bloodily turn on itself.

In Croatia, I saw shells fall on the beautiful and ancient streets of Dubrovnik. In Bosnia, I watched neighbour fight neighbour as children, women and old men died in their tens of thousands, the victims of shellfire, sniper bullets and mines.

Behind the apparent chaos, one man was invariably pulling invisible strings, stoking long-forgotten hatreds and egging on the killers. Others too were at fault. The Croats, Bosnian Muslims and the Albanians all had among their number those who fell under the nationalist spell.

But it was Slobodan Milosevic who operated the levers of the bloody wars. Manipulating gullible idealists, he used first rabid nationalism, then cynical concessions and, finally, an appeal to the Serbs' renowned stubbornness to keep himself in power.

It is eight long years since I drove alone into the besieged city of Sarajevo, crashing through a Serb checkpoint in my haste. That day, it was early in June, 1992, it was warm. My sunroof was open and the Sex Pistols were blaring out their rebellious lyrics on the cassette player. I was younger and a lot rasher.

But the one overriding question that tormented me was how one man could create such a portrait of hell. A modern and cosmopolitan city shelled and shot to pieces by deranged men with anti-aircraft guns, tanks and with sniper rifles perched on the scenic hills that surround it.

As I crossed the Serbian border on a deserted night train earlier this week, my feelings were remarkably similar. The images of butchered children in Kosovo, women in Bosnia with legs missing and the drying blood on the stone floor of a smart Croatian hotel after a mortar attack all came back.

How could this one man achieve so much evil? Yesterday's unfolding drama brought Yugoslavia full circle. What had begun in Belgrade was destined to end in Belgrade.

Royalists, Chetnik nationalists, trendy students abreast with the latest in fashion all came together. Miners and workers ingrained with the grime of a decade of poverty united behind them.

The solidarity the Serbs had so often sought had finally come. There seems to be no turning back now. Last night, the state was in tatters. Serbs just hoped that, when the sun rose over Belgrade today, it would bring a fresh new dawn.