Aid Memoir. Larry Hollingworth

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СКАЧАТЬ Gorazde

      Returning from the airport to my desk in the PTT, I found the card of M. Bernard Kouchner, the French Minister and founder of MSF. It was he who had accompanied President Mitterand when Sarajevo airport was first opened. He had been brought to my office by Mr. Leon Davico, whom I knew from his UNHCR days when he was head of public information. We had last met in Addis Ababa. The card contained greetings from M. Kouchner and the telephone number of Leon, who was staying at the Holiday Inn. I immediately rang him. Leon is a man of many contacts around the world. He was born in Belgrade where I was certain he would know everyone who was anyone. I explained to him that I wanted to get to Gorazde and asked for his help.

      – No problem—said Leon. I know Mrs. Plavsic very well. This was excellent news for me. She was a Professor of Biology at the University of Sarajevo. She had a flat in Sarajevo, but now as Vice President of the so called Srpska Republika, she lived in Pale and in Belgrade and was responsible for Humanitarian Affairs. Leon arranged for us to meet her, and I drove us both to the Serb army headquarters barracks at Lukavica on the outskirts of Sarajevo. When we arrived, it was obvious we were expected. We were taken upstairs to the main conference room at the end of the corridor. We were offered coffee, and then Mrs. Plavsic arrived. She is a tall, well-built woman with a very strong Slav face. She has a fine head of mouse brown hair. Her English is slow and hesitant but fluent. She was charming. She and Leon greeted each other in their native Serbo Croat. I was introduced, and English became the language of the discussion. Leon had a few messages from Bernard Kouchner.

      Whilst we were talking, shelling began. Mrs. Plavsic said that whenever the Muslims saw that Lukavica had a visitor, they shelled. For sure, these were incoming rounds and they were not very far away. Leon introduced my background to Mrs. Plavsic. He told her that we had first met in Addis Ababa, and he outlined my current task—to provide aid to all sides.

      His words were interrupted by an enormous bang. A shell had landed very close. We had heard the whistle, heard the thud, felt the windows rattle and the pressure change. A soldier who was outside the door entered the room and told us to get away from the windows. Mrs. Plavsic, I noted, was unflustered. She picked up her notes and her coffee and moved towards the door. There was another great bang, but this was an outgoing reply to the Muslim intrusion.

      The soldier suggested that we find a less exposed room, one with less glass. We moved down the stairs to a tiny room with only a one pane window. It was also at the side of the building.

      Mrs. Plavsic took all this in her stolid stride. We resumed our talk. I took the lead and explained that there was tremendous pressure on us to get aid through to Gorazde—UNHCR, led by Fabrizio Hochschild, whom I know you know well, has tried one attempt, but the convoy lost an APC and a truck in mine explosions. Mrs. Plavsic confirmed that she knew Fabrizio well. I had supported the convoy attempt and was sad at its outcome. I have no objection to you trying a convoy, but before you attempt Gorazde, I would like you to try to relieve two other Muslim villages which are cut off and desperate.

      This answer was not what I expected. Her magnanimity took me by surprise. She went on to say that—there are Serb majority villages, isolated and starving which I should also like you to attempt to reach. This was good news for me, as I knew that all take and no give would not work in this environment. I showed great enthusiasm to learn the location of all these villages.

      She was well prepared for my visit. She called in an army officer and arranged a further meeting for us with some military officers to pinpoint these other locations. She implied that a successful attempt on the easier targets would earn full support for an attempt on Gorazde. At no time did she say—No—to an attempt on Gorazde.

      I returned to Sarajevo, very grateful to Leon for his introduction and kind words.

      I went to see Eric de Stabenrath, the Lieutenant Colonel Operations Officer of the French battalion at the airport. His battalion had rescued the last attempt at Gorazde. Eric and I were determined that we were going to relieve the siege of Gorazde together. Eric’s background intrigued me. The name de Stabenrath is obviously not French. An ancestor of his had been secretary to one of the Louis’ who had ruled France. But Eric’s father had commanded the French Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu. The parallels between the French position in besieged, surrounded Sarajevo and in Dien Bien Phu were uncanny. Eric’s father had died in the closing hours of the battle.

      In an unguarded moment, the reserved aristocrat, told me of the time, as a tiny child, when he had told his nanny that he no longer had a father. Long before the news was known, long before it could have travelled, he “knew.”

      I had another “experience” with Eric. One day we went together to the “Airport Settlement.” This was a Serb enclave next to the airport adjoining Muslim majority Dobrinje. The Serb Liaison Officer Major Misha Indic told me that civilians lived there and requested food for them. The Bosnian government told me that only Serb soldiers were there. They demanded that I did not deliver any humanitarian aid there, as it would go only to Serb “fighters.”

      I asked Eric to investigate. He confirmed that he had been there, with his incredibly brave translator, and visited the settlement and found families. There were women, children, grandmas and grandads living in houses bombed, almost, to dereliction. They needed food.

      We decided to take it. A small convoy was organised. Major Indic was our guide. We took in a minimum of food. It was a wild day, lots of shooting and a lot of shelling. In the middle of it all, Indic, who has an impish, nay devilish, sense of humour, took us to a house for coffee. We sat on the floor in the courtyard, the tiny, damaged, house was surrounded by the walls of others. The lady of the house prepared us coffee. In the group was a grandma. Indic knew that she had a reputation for “reading” the coffee cups. As an Englishman, I knew all about “reading” tea leaves. It had never occurred to me that coffee grounds have the same effect.

      The old gran offered to read for us. Eric finished his drink first. She told him to swish the dregs around and then hand the cup to her. This he did. The old dear, dressed in black, short of many a tooth, held the tiny cup in her small, surprisingly soft hand. Her daughters were crowded around her, attempting to peek. She called them to order and proceeded, with many twists of the cup, to read… first, Eric’s past…

      Past and future, his and mine, she told with conviction and passion. I can reveal that she told Eric that there had been two male influences in his life. One strong, but for a short time, the other strong and long. Eric was amazed. Following the death at Dien Bien Phu of his father, his mother had married again; Eric loved, admired, and respected his stepfather.

      One other little incident stands out in my mind. During the reading, there was a sudden and accurate outburst of sniper fire from the Muslim side. The bullets bounced off walls close by, the young children who were playing around us during the “reading” quietly moved to the walls of the buildings and stood silently against them during the bursts of fire. A new instinct for children older than their years.

      Back to the aftermath of my visit to Mrs. Plavsic. Eric took me in to see his senior, Colonel Patric Sartre. In effect, Eric is the second in command of the Marines, both he and Sartre are small and tough. Interestingly, they both have strawberry birthmarks on their faces; they tell me that it is not a compulsory feature for promotion. We discussed the “Plavsic” proposal. Colonel Sartre requested that he attend my meeting with the military when I would learn about the Serb and Muslim villages.

      I returned to the PTT building to see the liaison officers—the government ones to tell them about the progress towards a Gorazde convoy and the Serb ones to arrange a meeting with the military. The following day, Indic gave me the details; Mrs. Plavsic did not hang about!

      The meeting was to be at Pale, the capital of the so-called СКАЧАТЬ