Under the Guns

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Vedad Hamzic had a fever and it wouldn't go away. The 10 — month — old infant could not be helped at home in the devastated outlying Sarajevo suburb of Sokolovic Kolonija. So his father, Zijo, a policeman, begged the local authorities to lodge a desperate plea with the United Nations protection force (UNPROFOR): Could the soldiers take the baby through the Serb noose around Sarajevo to Kosevo Hospital in the city itself? They could not. The city's besiegers insist that any Muslim evacuee be matched by a Serb also in need of help; UNPROFOR acquiesced. For five days, while Vedad's condition worsened, Zijo, 25, and his wife Zlatka, 24, waited in vain for a matching tragedy on the other side.

Finally they decided they would have to risk their own lives to save the baby. On three consecutive nights they huddled with Vedad in a trench alongside Runway 12 of Sarajevo's bullet — raked airport, waiting unsuccessfully for a moment to run the gauntlet of Serb snipers and get into the city. Each night they were spotted by U.N. troops and turned back. One soldier rejected the parents' pleas for mercy with the judgment that Vedad wasn't sick, just sleeping. On the fourth night they made the dash, but it was too late. Vedad died the next day in the intensive care unit of Kosevo Hospital, a victim of encephalitis, which responds well to timely treatment. "All guilt is on UNPROFOR for the death of this child," was the harsh but not entirely unfair verdict of Dr. Bisera Vranic, who treated Vedad. Melca Kadic, 28, the baby's aunt, was just as angry. "It would be better if UNPROFOR just left. The little food aid we get doesn't enter the balance. They can't protect even little children."

Bosnians are facing the cold awareness that outsiders can't or won't help. After more than 15 months of war, it seems impossible that the tragedy of this land could deepen, that the most blighted battlefield of the new world order could descend into a blacker darkness. But the Balkans have an apparently limitless capacity for dark deeds. Even as the Serbs were tightening their grip on Sarajevo last week, Serb President Slobodan Milosevic was crushing his parliamentary rivals in Belgrade and consolidating his grip on what is left of Yugoslavia. Not only did his goons beat and detain Vuk Draskovic and other members of the opposition Serbian Renewal Party, but his stooges in the Yugoslav parliament also succeeded in ousting President Dobrica Cosic, a coup that paves the way for a Milosevic dictatorship.

Depressing as that news was, it was undoubtedly lost on the citizens of Sarajevo, who were getting a foretaste of the West's shamefaced solution to the Bosnian problem: the notion of safe havens concocted in Washington and endorsed last month by the U.N. in Security Council Resolution 824. Last week the city was pummeled by the worst shelling in more than two months. As residents watched a soccer game in the government — controlled suburb of Dobrinja, two Serb mortar shells landed among them. Fifteen died and 123 were wounded, the city's worst toll from a single incident since the notorious shelling of a bread line a year ago. Says Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic: "This plan doesn't provide six safe enclaves, just six morsels for the Serbs to eat." Another supposedly safe area is Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, where at least 20,000 refugees live in subhuman conditions that are scarcely safe. Knifings are common as desperate people fight for scant food supplies. The Serbs steadfastly refuse to allow aid convoys to bring in tents. The water supply is sparse and so contaminated that epidemics are virtually inevitable, but the besieging forces have not allowed U.N. engineers to change the filters at the nearby purification plant at Zeleni Jadar. Conditions are so bad that some of those trapped in Srebrenica last week opted to risk escape through Serb lines. The Bosnian government claims dozens were captured, and are being held by Serb troops in Zvornik, 25 km away.

Gorazde, the largest Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia, was also nominated for "safe area" status. Sarajevo radio and Bosnian army sources claim that Serb forces have launched a major offensive on the city, showering it with shells last week, killing many and sending thousands fleeing into the mountains. Though NATO planes have spotted raging fires in the enclave, the U.N. has been unable to confirm any of the havoc. Under the Security Council resolution, U.N. military observers should have "unimpeded access to all safe areas," but they have been refused entry by Serb commanders.

As best they can, the mostly Muslim forces of the Bosnian government have tried to break the Serb strangleholds, often at fearsome cost. Two weeks ago, the 1st Mountain Brigade of the 1st Sarajevo Corps succeeded in cutting a crucial Serb supply road at three points. In response, beginning at 4:30 one morning, the brigade was hammered by Serb guns positioned on the hillsides across the valley that holds the city. "I watched our people get torn apart," says Cuza, 42, a former Sarajevo bus driver, who was stationed far above the city on hotly contested Mount Trebevic. The brigade of 700 suffered 29 dead and 60 wounded. In the process Sarajevo also took a pounding. U.N. observers counted at least 1,130 rounds fired from Serb positions, many of which fell on the city.

At the moment, argues Ejup Ganic, the U.S. — U.N. safe — area strategy favors the aggressors. The Bosnian government and its army above all want the international arms embargo to be lifted. "If we got arms, we'd establish equilibrium on the battlefield within a month," says Ganic. "That would create a realistic atmosphere for negotiations." Ganic maintains that Serb forces were withdrawn from around the now substantially demilitarized safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa and redeployed to the assault on Gorazde. When that enclave too is surrendered to U.N. protectors, Ganic predicts, 30,000 or 40,000 Serb troops will be freed for action against Sarajevo. UNPROFOR spokesman Barry Frewer does not disagree. "There is nothing in the safe — area agreement that says the Serbs will freeze their troops and not deploy them elsewhere," he concedes.

Some of those under siege believe a new flow of arms would not help much in deflecting such force. "Lifting the embargo would only mean more suffering," says Nada Slavnic, 66, a retired Serb biologist, as she measures out U.N. — donated flour to the Croat and Muslim co — residents of her old — town apartment building. "We're surrounded here, and the minute the aggressors know the embargo is lifted, they'd need only a night to destroy the city while we're still waiting for arms."

The bankruptcy of Western policy after more than a year of public handwringing comes across as cruelty to the residents of Sarajevo. They feel as if they alone — against the pressure not only of Serb aggression but also of Croat ethnic cleansing and growing Muslim radicalism — have maintained a tenuous hold on the multiculturalism that has characterized Bosnia for centuries. "I was a rich man in Sarajevo because I had friends who were Croats, Serbs and Jews," says Edin Numankadic, an artist and a Muslim. "I have to believe that will come back. I know the people of Sarajevo still have a reflex for justice and for tolerance." He is baffled that Europe and America, which claim to uphold those same values, have left Sarajevo to fend for itself.

Resentment is also directed at the international forces on the ground in Bosnia, numbering about 7,500, but they are not to blame for the fiasco in which they are enmeshed. UNPROFOR is woefully understaffed even for its original mandate of protecting humanitarian — aid deliveries, and it is now being asked to do even more without the power to engage the belligerents. Under mounting pressure, the U.N. Security Council last week authorized NATO to launch military air strikes against Serb artillery around the besieged enclaves, and gave the Secretary — General permission to send in up to 10,000 more troops. But whether any action will follow is uncertain at best.

Meanwhile, just four days after three Italian aid workers were killed by mines in Gornji Vakuf, west of Sarajevo, two Danish aid truck drivers and a Bosnian colleague died Tuesday when their convoy was shelled near Maglaj, 80 km north of the capital. Sighs Anthony Land, special liaison to Bosnia for the — U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees: "It was another day of mindless violence and military terrorism."

The prospect of endless others — along with the realization that there is to be no help — is leading to an eerie fatalism. Nadija Odovic lost her Serb husband last November when he was killed "fighting for Bosnia and Herzegovina" in the 1st Sarajevo Corps. The six months since have not eased her bitterness or despair. "The longer we waited for the Americans to help us, the more our souls died," says Odovic, 40. "Now that we've stopped waiting, at least we'll die with dignity."

Last Tuesday, the day of the Dobrinja soccer — game shelling and Vedad Hamzic's stark burial, was the Muslim holiday of kurban bayram, which commemorates God's willingness to allow Abraham to substitute a lamb for his son Isaac as a sacrifice. At dawn men filtered in to the Gazi Husref Bey mosque in Sarajevo's old town to hear the mosque's imam, Izmet Spahic, lament the sacrifices demanded by a brutal war. In happier times the faithful moved on from the mosque to family feasts where lambs were slaughtered. This year there were no lambs for the ritual. But the sacrifice of human beings to the gods of war continues unchecked.