SARAJEVO - Everything was a matter of time and place. Would you be there when a sniper took aim on the street while you were fetching water, because the taps were dry and the entire Olympic city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, had to fill bottles and canisters at a few springs or water tanks. And he would shoot.

Everything was a matter of time and place.

Would you be there when a sniper targeted you while you were going to get bread, which could only be bought at a few places because no stores were open. Would you be there when the sniper pulled the trigger while you were collecting wood in a park to heat yourself in a makeshift stove during freezing winters; while children attended makeshift schools in basements; while you walked to university in a false sense of normality at a time when everything was abnormal.

Bullets and grenades were crashing into homes and you never knew if you would wake up alive after going to bed. Many were killed that way, and others called them the lucky ones, because death found them in their sleep.

Everything was a matter of time and place.

Would you be in the crosshairs while going to the theater, a concert, a book promotion or to watch a film at the newly launched Sarajevo Film Festival.

Walking to university under fire

Yes, that is how it was. Fully aware that they were risking their lives, the citizens of Sarajevo, young and old, walked for kilometers through a besieged city between 1992 and 1995, because public transport did not exist, knowing that they could be hit by a bullet or torn apart by a grenade.

And all of that to preserve the spiritual resistance of a city being destroyed, unique for the fact that in the midst of the siege it opened a new theater, the Sarajevo War Theatre (SARTR), on May 17, 1992, the first year of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. SARTR still gathers audiences today, more than three decades later.

For me, it was deeply personal. I was 18 years old, serving on the front line as a soldier of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, defending the city, the country and dignity, taking notes for my first novel among peers without a trace of fear, and afterwards going to the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo, where I would later graduate.

Despite sniper fire and shells from Serbs artillery, tanks and mortars, thousands of students walked to their faculties for lectures and exams, literally thirsty and hungry, in a city without electricity, gas and basic necessities.
Through writing journalistic texts and books, I had the opportunity to meet many foreigners who were always interested in the wartime period.

They would be stunned by the details I remembered, “flowers on the asphalt” imprinted by exploding mortar shells, building façades pitted with shrapnel, windows shattered by blasts and covered with plastic sheets from humanitarian aid.
A scar like a memory that preserves every detail.

I would first tell them that my father was killed in the war, but I would much rather speak about fashion shows I watched at the Kamerni Theatre, once even from the front row, about music that was composed at that time, or about the packed hall of the Bosnian Cultural Center during a wartime screening of Pulp Fiction, where the audience roared with laughter at liters of fake blood, only to later walk home stepping over real blood.

The ‘Watch out, sniper’ sign across Sarajevo / Danilo Krstanović

Watch out, sniper!

On that way home, on every corner, stood a large warning reading “Watch Out, Sniper!.” Barricades or simple blankets were hung across intersections to block the sniper’s view of passing civilians.But Sarajevo is not a small city. It lies in a valley surrounded by hills, from which Serb soldiers had a perfect vantage point overlooking streets, buildings, entrances, everything.

Between the theater and my apartment was the infamous “Sniper Alley”, an exposed strip we called that way because even the fastest sprint did not guarantee survival.

Everything was a matter of time and place. Would you be there when the sniper fired.

I remember occasions when a sniper’s bullet whistled just centimeters past my head.

Panic, fear?

No.

Today, perhaps. Back then, not at all. It became part of everyday life, and a human being adapts, aware that there is no other choice.

There could have been another way, just like there could be today in Gaza. But not in the world we live in, ruled by ruthless leaders without compassion, humanity or justice.

Everything was a matter of time and place.And when you think it cannot get any worse, you find out it absolutely can.

I was already writing for “Oslobođenje”, the oldest daily newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina, founded in 1943 and declared the best newspaper in the world in 1992, when it published the front page headline “Sniper Safari in Sarajevo,” revealing how wealthy foreigners were coming and paying Serb forces to shoot civilians from their positions.

It was April 1995, the final year of the war, ended by the unjust Dayton Peace Agreement whose consequences we still live with, but at least the killing stopped, and hope began, a hope that survives even now.

A daily sprint across open, exposed ground / Danilo Krstanović


Sniper tourists

Back then, honestly, it made no difference to me who was shooting, whether it was a chauvinist who hated Muslims and everyone who remained in the city, or a morbid foreigner fulfilling a sick fantasy.

Perhaps for that reason, one stops thinking about it, until everything resurfaced three years ago during the AJB DOC film festival of Al Jazeera Balkans, where I worked before it was recently shut down, when the documentary “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanič was screened. He had researched this topic for years, and that is when things began to unravel.

Everything is a matter of time and place.

Today it is the same place but a different time, and journalists once again play the most honorable role, just like during the war, when they uncovered and reported on concentration camps, massacres and total barbarism. Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni filed a criminal complaint in a Milan court after years of research on war tourists who allegedly came on organized trips to shoot at civilians in Sarajevo, children, women, elderly people. 

The whole world has now published a story more than 30 years old, in which no one was ever arrested or held accountable. Following his complaint, prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis opened an official investigation at the Milan court, giving hope to those whose loved ones were killed by snipers that some form of justice might finally see the light of day. Reportedly, specific names have been discovered but are still kept confidential due to the investigation.

Last night, I spoke over the phone with Šefko Hodžić, a veteran journalist of “Oslobođenje”, who documented the existence of sniper tourists in his personal wartime diary and later in a book. He said to me that it proves how low humanity can fall.

A morbid price list

Let us imagine it. You come from democratic Europe, in this case from Italy, though other nationalities are mentioned, and even US Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has demanded an investigation in America, all so you can shoot at people like big game animals from a safe distance, purely for sick amusement.

It was a hunt. For human beings.

Such an operation required wide coordination. Allegedly, flights departed from Trieste to Belgrade, and then helicopters or cars transported them to the front lines around Sarajevo. Of course, authorities in Serbia and in the Bosnian entity Republika Srpska deny it, but nobody trusts them anyway, as they glorify convicted war criminals such as wartime president Radovan Karadžić and commander Ratko Mladić, sentenced in The Hague for genocide in Srebrenica and other grave crimes.

Thus, no one here expects moral catharsis even if the Italian case results in convictions. But perhaps somewhere in the world, people will finally grasp the horror of such evil and prevent similar crimes in the future.

I happen to know Edin Subašić, a former wartime intelligence officer of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the first to receive information about the sniper tourists, from a captured Serbian volunteer soldier back in 1993. That soldier had spoken a few days earlier with Italian war tourists who came to shoot at the city.

It was shocking, but the true shock came later. Subašić learned that there was a morbid price list, allegedly involving hundreds of thousands of German marks paid to Serbian fighters to shoot at Sarajevans, with the highest price offered for killing a child. Though he has kept details confidential for investigative reasons, he told me one new piece.

It is very likely that sniper tourists also shot civilians in Podrinje, eastern Bosnia near the Serbian border, as doctors removed hunting ammunition for big game from the bodies of wounded civilians, and video evidence exists, which may lead to a new documentary film.

Everything was a matter of time and place.

During the siege, 1,601 children were killed in Sarajevo, many by snipers. Snipers and shelling claimed a total of 11,541 civilian lives. The siege lasted 1,425 days, the longest in modern history, and 50,000 tons of artillery were fired from Serb-held positions, averaging 329 shells per day.

Take care

Memory has meaning only if it makes us better human beings. With that hope, I wrote my wartime novel “Take Care”, my debut book, and the title was the way Sarajevans greeted each other during the siege. It is a story about young people who left university lecture halls to defend their city, regardless of nationality, a story of friendship until death, of love under the constant smell of gunpowder, based on truth.

There are no sniper tourists in the novel. Why? The answer is simple. Even though I was once in the sniper’s crosshairs, I am ashamed of such evil. As I told you, I prefer to speak about theater, film, books, concerts… The End

(Edin Krehić is an award-winning writer and journalist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has published five novels, writes film scripts, and has reported from numerous countries over the past 30 years. He lives in Sarajevo.)