Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995

Edin is Sacco’s primary contact in Goražde and acts as a guide and translator for Sacco and other journalists. He splits his time between teaching at the technical school and serving on the front. His schooling has been interrupted by the war: He needs only to defend his dissertation in Sarajevo to complete his degree. Edin is kind and patient and knows everyone in town, granting Sacco easy access to Goražde. He, like many others, struggles to survive.

When Sacco meets him, he wonders why Edin is so comfortable with, and willing to help, the journalists. Sacco realizes that the journalists represent the future and a way to move on: “I suppose we were his guides, too, reintroducing him slowly and sweetly to his old planet, to the world beyond this” (17). Edin wants to move on from the conflict and begin his life again, away from the destruction and death.

After the conflict ends and Edin returns to Sarajevo to finish his degree, Sacco meets him and is surprised when Edin’s desires for the future are not what he expected. He believes that Edin will want to escape Bosnia, at least for a time, but Edin refutes this: “No, he said, that was precisely what he didn’t want to do. He was in his late 20’s and looking back on a hole in his life four years long. This was not time for a break. He wanted to get on with things” (227). Edin wants to finish his degree and begin the life put on hold by the attacks on Goražde. After his service on the front and in the classroom, he can now move on with his own life.

Riki is a friend of Edin whom Sacco comes to know over the course of his time in Goražde. Like Edin, Riki was a student in Sarajevo when fighting broke out, and he made his way back to Goražde. Riki is obsessed with America and often sings English songs. He tells Sacco that he does not belong in Goražde but in the US: “I should have been born in America. My soul is in the West. I want to see all the American cities. New York…Los Angeles” (101). Riki becomes a bright spot in the otherwise dire setting of Goražde, as his singing and smile disrupt the heartbreak and violence around him. He often asks Sacco to help him learn English and spends time on the front during a ceasefire reading an issue of Time about President Clinton’s scandals.

Like Edin, Riki attempts to return to his former life after the conflict ends. Though he flirts with outsiders that come to Goražde, aiming to leave with them, he returns to Sarajevo to complete his studies. Unlike Edin, his journey to graduation is longer, and Sacco rarely sees him: “The university had changed the rules on him. He’d thought he’d need a year to finish his studies, but he’d learned he needed more like two and a half” (227). Riki’s return demonstrates how the conflict disrupted the lives of Bosnians and how recovery is more than just the rebuilding of Goražde. Riki still pursues his degree, but he now must devote more time to his schooling, pushing his education timeline further than he expected.

Dr. Alija Begovic and Nurse Sadija Demir are two figures whom Sacco interviews at the hospital in Goražde. Their accounts appear at many points in Safe Area Goražde, and their inclusion demonstrates how dire the situation in the town was.

Begovic explains to Sacco that the town and its doctors were unprepared for the carnage of the conflict and had to adapt quickly to casualties: “Begovic cut off his first leg with kitchen knives. He could dull the patient’s pain only with a little morphine and brandy” (123). Without the tools and supplies to conduct such surgeries, Begovic and others had to use what was available, reflecting the desperation in Goražde. He also tells Sacco that the doctors of Goražde were not trained for such surgeries and had to learn as they encountered injuries.

Begovic and other healthcare professionals did what they could, often overwhelmed by the injuries that flooded the hospital. Demir explains to Sacco that they also did not have the necessary staff to address everyone’s needs: “We were operating on persons with old wounds, abdominal wounds. Some of them had been wounded 10 days before…there weren’t enough nurses…we didn’t pay attention to what was a working day” (123). Without enough nurses, not all wounds could be addressed when needed, worsening the humanitarian crisis. Begovic and Demir are both eyewitnesses to the impact of the violence of the conflict and highlight the dire situation that Goražde was in under siege.

The Silly Girls are a group of young women that Sacco and Edin often visit. Sacco enjoys their company, and they come to represent the hopes and attitudes of the youth in Goražde. On his first visit, he hears from the girls about their love lives, with one having a boyfriend recovering from an injury in Ireland, while another’s boyfriend is at the front. When one girl, Nudjejma, whose relationship is rocky, becomes overwhelmed by memories of the war, another girl, Kimeta, reads her future and tells Nudjejma that her love life will look up soon. In this moment, this prediction is meant to ease Nudjejma’s worries and is more important than hopes of an end to the conflict.

These young women continue on with their lives despite the conflict. Even when they remember moments in the conflict when Sacco interviews them, they do so without being overwhelmed by sadness, retaining a youthful sense of wonder: “[S]he grinned about the time the cannon fired at her while she hung the wash…and giggled about how bad posture saved her and Kimeta from shrapnel” (151). When Sacco interviews Sabina, she recalls these moments with a smile, remembering the absurdity of facing danger while doing laundry or being lucky that she slouched. The Silly Girls do not let the conflict destroy them or take their joy and youth.

Josip Broz, more commonly known as “Tito,” was the leader of the Partisans, a communist resistance group that defeated the Chetniks in World War II. After the war ended, Tito and the Partisans assumed control of the newly formed modern Yugoslavia. Tito united the six republics under the notion that they were all Yugoslavian.

After Tito’s death in 1980, Yugoslavia began to fracture because, Sacco writes, “[i]f Tito managed to create something of a Yugoslav identity, he did so without defusing or allowing for an airing of the nationalities’ grievances. Those grievances would be exploited by politicians jockeying for power once President-for-life Tito was gone” (20). In the wake of his death, a power vacuum opened that allowed for many factions to rise up and manipulate people with ethno-nationalist rhetoric. With Tito’s death, the notion of “brotherhood and unity” ended.

Slobodan Milošević came to power in the wake of Tito’s death, advocating for the creation of a larger Serbia. He became Serbia’s president and used his platform to stoke fear in Serbs across Yugoslavia against their Muslim neighbors, framing the creation of a united Serbia only for Serbians as a battle against other ethnic groups. The tensions that he stoked led to conflict with Slovenia and war with Croatia before both republics achieved independence, and they resulted in the attacks on Bosnian Muslims, leading to the war that surrounded Goražde.

Alija Izetbegović was the leader of the Muslim party in Bosnia and the man named to Bosnia’s rotating presidency at the time of the outbreak of war. He staunchly opposed the rise in Serbian ethno-nationalism, as well as the sentiments that Bosnia should be a part of a greater Serbia: “I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace I would not sacrifice sovereignty” (38).

In the aftermath of the war, Izetbegović played an important role in the resolution and peace agreement. Though enclaves like Goražde and others once presented potential concessions for peace, the acts of the Serbian forces in the final months of the conflict gave Izetbegović leverage: “[A]fter the Srebrenica massacre and the fall of Zepa, the Bosnian government opposed an American proposal to trade Gorazde away” (212). Izetbegović demanded that Goražde remain a part of sovereign Bosnia, not caving to pressure to trade it for an easier path to peace. His efforts succeeded.

General Ratko Mladić was the commander of the Bosnian Serb military. He was responsible for straining the UN and international support for the Bosnian Muslims as much as possible. He directed his forces to retake weaponry surrendered to the UN and then used it to increase the bombing of Sarajevo. When NATO retaliated, he took UN workers hostage. Mladić facilitated a meeting with Janvier and seemingly convinced the UN and NATO to back off. His manipulation of these international organizations opened up opportunities for continued attacks on the enclaves.

US President Bill Clinton is the most influential foreign figure included in Safe Area Goražde. Like the UN, Clinton’s focus was not primarily on the safety and support of the enclave. He advocated for peace but refused to truly commit to efforts to guarantee it, and he even saw the conflict as a distraction from other US interests. Clinton’s focus was on foreign relations with Russia, who supported the Serbs, and he therefore refrained from becoming too involved.

Only as the crisis worsened did Clinton and the US reassess their stance, leading Clinton to advocate for airstrikes against the Serbian forces. While the UN saw involvement as a violation of their neutral status, Clinton and the US came to see a lack of involvement as a failure and stain on their reputation. The ensuing threat of NATO bombardment finally brought the Serbs to the peace talks.