A Fortunate Life (62 page)
Authors: Paddy Ashdown
11 Aug 2002
Paddy is well, in fact he surprises me as to how well he is, when you
take how hard he works, the stress he is under, the pressure of the job,
etc. He still loves the job, & the ordinary people seem to really appreci
ate him, too (though I don’t think you could include the politicians in
that!). I really am very proud of what he has done here. It’s as if his
whole life has been an apprenticeship for this job. On Friday P and I
went to Srebrenica. I can’t describe it on ‘paper’, the story tells its own
tale, but we went to all the sites, the football field where 1,500 men &
boys were murdered, then to visit people who had returned, all women of
course, except one village where we spent the night, where they are clear
ing the rubble of their destroyed homes. The women had lost husbands,
sons, grandsons. It was extremely moving, and very humbling
XXXX
Jane
8 October 2002
Last week took us to some lovely, &
not
so lovely, places.
Tuesday started gloomy, with low cloud and rain – so no helicopter,
which meant an early start driving to Vitez, which used to be a thriving
steel town. The only thing the war seems to have done to its (Vitez’)
advantage is that the air is now fresh, & there are fish in clean rivers,
but no jobs & no thriving town any more.
Then to Tuzla, where we stayed in a hotel which was so cold I had to
put on P’s socks. We visited a newly built centre where they try to help
traumatised women. Several Srebrenica women there. P is arranging
that there will be a grave for each Srebrenica victim, even if no remains
have been found, so that everyone has somewhere to mourn. To the ceme
tery next day to see the war memorial for all who died between 92 &
96. Over 2,000 names on a Vietnam-style marble memorial. Then a
beautiful drive over the hills to Bijeljina, the trees are turning, and the
countryside is spectacular. In Bijeljina we visited the hospital. I went to
see the children’s ‘ward’, which was worse than some condemned build
ings in the UK. The staff were wonderful, though – but only one bath
(no shower) between all patients, parents & staff.
23 Oct 2003
The countryside looks superb. The trees are the most wonderful colours,
seeming to turn from the tips first. We went off to Goražvde to make
šlivović
on Sunday. They (Muslims all) had this great machine, belch
ing out steam & ‘slivo’ one end, being fed by water, wood & fermented
plums at the other! Of course it was an excuse for a party. All the
friends of this couple seem to bring round their fermented glop of plums,
sit about, drink & eat, whilst this machine turns it into firewater.
16 March 2004
Must off. Have 10 women from an organization called ‘Women
Victims of War’ for whom I am doing lunch at our house tomorrow,
which I am dreading. All rape victims, some of even worse atrocities. I
don’t know what I can do for them. I am told that it’s best just to lis
ten. Seems good advice to me, but if I had those awful experiences, to go
to lunch with this old granny in her posh house would only make me
more angry. But I am told they want to come … so a quiche-making
session ahead.
21 March 2004
My meeting with the Women Victims of War went much better than I
could have wished. I was extremely nervous. There were 12 of them –
2 in their 20s, so they must have been in their teens when all this
dreadfulness happened. One woman was raped 130 times, & another
had 7 family members killed in front of her. How one can go on after
that, I just don’t know. However, 1 of the young ones, in bright shocking
pink, smiling throughout (well nearly), who gave me hope for them. She
had a job in a plant nursery & therefore can see a future.
There are 1 or 2 things we can do immediately, like register their
vehicle. It will cost 400 KM, but too much for them to find all at once.
Also they have 7 women who are protected witnesses, but live in a flat
without a telephone, which we can sort out for them.
21 July 2005
Just got back from Žepa. Another so called ‘safe haven’ which wasn’t. It is the most beautiful place, snug in a mountain valley, surrounded by mixed woodland. The weather was wonderful, but the life there isn’t. We stayed with some elderly refugees. The village has no employment, no school, no medical facilities, no senior school for the kids. The road in is so rough, no one wants to invest. All very sad in a place of such beauty.
I had many partners, national and international, without whose help I would have achieved nothing in Bosnia. But two require special mention. The first was the Bosniak Muslim state Prime Minister, Adnan Terzić. He is less devious than perhaps it is necessary to be in politics, especially in the Balkans, but he is a genuinely good man and a brave one. He was also one of the very few Bosnian politicians I knew who was motivated not by nationalism but by what was best for his country as a whole. The second was the President of the Serb-dominated Bosnian entity the Republika Srpska, Dragan Čavić, whose public acknowledgement of Serb involvement and shame in Srebrenica, involved an act of political courage of the same order as Willy Brandt’s statement of atonement at Auschwitz. To my deep regret and pain, both of these men, who were my partners and friends, and who took many personal risks to put their country on the road to a stable peace and the EU, paid with their political careers at the elections after I left. I hope it will not be too long before Bosnia will again recognise that what it needs is more such leaders, not fewer.
One of the policies I instituted when I arrived was to open all positions in the OHR, which had up to then been dominated by internationals, to Bosnians. They proved to be just as able, and in many cases more so, than the internationals who had been sent to Bosnia to do jobs that they could easily have done – with the added and priceless advantage that they knew the country and its customs and traditions. They were a wonderful team to work with, and I was very sorry indeed to have to part from them when my mandate was over.
Nevertheless (and despite their help), I made many mistakes too, of course. I probably devoted so much time to trying to persuade the Serbs that they could not be a state within a state that I may have overlooked the importance of the Croats. I cannot pretend, either, that every decision I made about the use of my powers to make things happen faster was wise, for some were not. Towards the end I probably got a little too impatient to get things done quickly. Indeed I did not realise just how frustrated and impatient I got in the last days of my mandate as I pushed forward the final reforms, especially to Bosnia’s fractured and politically dominated police forces. But Jane did. Here is her description of this time, in an email to a friend:
8 June 2005
Why is it that one goes through periods of one’s life when everything
seems to turn to shit? We are passing through one of these periods.
The Republika Srpska government have now turned down police
reform, therefore shutting off the Bosnians’ path to Europe. The P. M.
(Muslim) has just sacked the Foreign Minister (Serb), & Mostar
have problems with this year’s budget [sic]. I have a husband in the
deepest despair. Just to add to the sweetness & light, it has been rain
ing since Sunday, with no sign of a let-up in the forecast until next
Thursday!! Snow has been reported somewhere in Bosnia (can’t
remember where, & I doubt I could spell it if I could!) Flaming June
eh! And we have our first 2005 guests arriving this eve! Watch this
space. Lots of love from us both,
Jane XXXXXXXXX
With hindsight, I think I should not have left Bosnia until this last great reform – the reform of Bosnia’s police force – was properly secured. To my regret, much of this has been allowed to unravel by the international community (and especially the EU). For this, I fear, Bosnia will pay heavily in the future.
And there were failures, too. The biggest was that Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić remained at large when I left – despite a determined attempt to capture them that was conducted with my partners, the US Generals commanding the NATO force in Bosnia and the British General leading the European Union force (EUFOR) that took over in 2005. One look at Karadžić, when he was eventually captured, with that long beard and unkempt hair, confirmed to me what I suspected at the time, that he was almost certainly protected during many of his years as a fugitive, not by his ‘cover’ as a ‘doctor of alternative medicine’, but by being disguised as a monk in the Serbian Orthodox Church. I am delighted that he is now, at last, in The Hague – where, I am told, I may have to return for the fourth time, to give evidence at his trial.
But General Mladić, who is accused of having the blood of Srebrenica more directly on his hands, remains at liberty, protected in his case, I am sure, by renegade elements of the Serbian state security structures. There cannot be a stable peace in the western Balkans without justice in Bosnia, and justice will remain incomplete until
these two primary architects of the Bosnian horrors both end up in The Hague where they belong.
Some things with which I was engaged in Bosnia were not strictly speaking part of my job, but being involved in them gave me a great sense of privilege, nevertheless. Perhaps none more so than leading the international fund-raising effort to establish the memorial graveyard with room for eight thousand Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, opened by President Clinton on 20 September 2003. This beautiful and moving site with its thousands of simple white headstones,
*
built on the very spot where the Serbs gathered their victims before they were taken away to be murdered, will in time, I hope, become one of the world’s iconic symbols of remembrance and a testimony to what happens when the international community remains silent in the presence of great evil.
It was my involvement in this project that brought me into contact with a little group of Bosniak Muslims who lived at a place called Sutjeska, in the mountains immediately above Srebrenica. When the Serbs stormed through in 1995 they all fled. But in 2002, on my first visit to the town, I heard that some had moved back and, with Jane, drove through the forest and along the vertiginous mountain tracks to find them. What we discovered when we got to Sutjeska was a small community of women led by one of the very few men to have escaped the massacre, called Hasib Huseinović. He had been the first to return, with his wife Fatima and his daughter Fadila. Jane and I were very moved by the courage of these women who had moved back into the area where they had lost husbands, sons, fathers and grandfathers and settled down to rebuild their burnt houses, clear their land and live amongst their Serb neighbours again. We both felt humbled by the fact that, faced with the same experiences, we would never have had the courage to do what they did. During our visit we discovered that they had some goats, but desperately needed a cow, for milk and cheese and for calves with which they could start a new herd. So we bought one and arranged for it to be sent to them. When we visited them a last time before leaving Bosnia, and Hasib ‘spun a lamb’
†
in our honour, we were delighted to find that our cow had had produced two daughters, and the little community was thriving. Jane’s email home tells it all:
1 April 2004
We had a great trip to Srebrenica. We went to the village we first vis
ited when we first got here. They now have another 15 odd houses
rebuilt, with animals, ducks, chickens, dogs, & of course, the cow we
gave them last time is pregnant again, they also have another calf too.
So slowly, slowly and step by painful step. Best of all was the young
girl who had lost all her brothers & Father, and then her Mother died
of a broken heart. She now has a new house, was working out in the
fields, & ran towards us, grinning from ear to ear. They have a huge
green house, & electricity at last. There were tears, of course, but of joy
this time.
The story is not all happiness, however. In 2005 the remains of Hasib’s son were identified by the International Commission for Missing Persons, using DNA identification techniques, as one of those killed in the Srebrenica massacre. I attended the Srebrenica memorial service on 11 July that year when Hasib’s son was buried. Here is my diary entry for that day:
Before the ceremony I bumped into Hasib in the huge crowd. He told me
that his son was amongst those to be buried today. He was trying to be
stoic, as a man should, but his big round eyes filled with tears that
wouldn’t keep back. And Fatima and Fadila, who were with him, were
weeping uncontrollably
After the ceremony, I asked Darko [my interpreter] if he would go and ask
Hasib and Fatima if they would mind if I came down and helped him fill in
their son’s grave.
*
He came back and said that I would be very welcome. So,
as the VIPs dispersed around us, we broke off and made our way across the
mud, pressing through the vast crowds of mourners. Everywhere there were
small groups standing by open graves waiting for the coffins to arrive. People
were amazingly kind, stretching out and shaking my hand, asking for my
photograph, and saying how much they wanted me to stay. One woman said
that I was their Tito; please would I not go? Although another, a lawyer
from Travnik, gruffly told me I should be doing more to catch war criminals.
We made our way down through the mud and the crowds to the end of the
graveyard where Hasib’s son was to be buried. By now the coffins, each cov
ered in green cloth [the Muslim colour of mourning], were arriving, passed
from hand to hand in a long column over the crowd’s heads to the terrible
shrieking and wailing of the women. When I came up to grave number 83,
there was Hasib standing erect, his arms around Fatima, and Fadila, who
were pressed against him as tight as wrecks cast up on a rock. As the coffins
came, dancing on outstretched hands towards the little tableau, like frail
green barques tossed on a sea of grief, I watched Hasib, his big brown face
now broken with sorrow and streaming with tears, craning his neck for the
first sight of coffin number 83, which would bear the remains of his beloved
son to him at last. I thought of what he had told me the first time we had
met; he had parted from his son there, at the corner of that field, Hasib had
said, pointing. He had told the boy that he would go through the woods. His
son had replied that he would take his chances with his friends and flee along
the roads. They had then shaken hands, wished each other good luck and
parted. Hasib had watched the boy until a bend in the track hid him from
view and had replayed this last image in his mind a thousand times since.
He had only come back to Sutjeska because he knew that, one day his son
would walk over the hill and join him again in the place where they had
parted. And now, instead of scanning the horizon for his son coming over the
hill, he was searching for coffin number 83, which would bring him the last
few shards of bone that were the only remains of his beloved boy.
As coffin 83 was born up to him, Hasib leapt into the grave, in
Muslim fashion, to prepare the bed on which the coffin would lie and,
with infinite gentleness, guided it as it was slowly lowered in. I moved
towards the mound of earth to help the friends fill the grave, only to find
Fadila already there, spade in hand. I gently took the spade from her
(women aren’t supposed to do this), and started digging furiously to hide
my tears. In due course someone came and took the spade from me so that
they could take their turn at filling in the grave. I pressed past the mourn
ers to put my arm around Hasib and mumble something unintelligible
about there being no words to express my sorrow, and Jane’s too. He
mumbled some reply between bitter tears.
As I looked back there was Fadila on top of the mound again. I was
afraid she was going to throw herself into the grave, so I moved back towards
her and, as I approached, she threw herself at me, crushing herself in my
arms, and weeping uncontrollably as great waves of sorrow mixed with
anger wracked her body. So, I confess, did I. I just cannot imagine what it
must be like to have to bury your own kith and kin in such circumstances.
