The collapse of U.N. and American resolve to stop Serbian aggression is plunging the inhabitants of Sarajevo deeper into despair, according to the president of the besieged city’s Jewish community.
“It’s desperate. The Serbs continue to shell and to sniper,” said Ivan Ceresnjec, president of Sarajevo’s 600-member Jewish community.
The Clinton administration this week dropped its call to use air strikes and other forms of military intervention to pressure the Serbs to stop their attacks. Now, echoing their European allies, the United States is saying that the road to peace must be paved by further concessions by the Bosnians.
Many American Jewish groups, comparing the situation in the former Yugoslavia with the Holocaust, had urged the government to take more forceful action.
After the administration made clear it was backing away from that position, Jewish groups expressed their disappointment.
“We are witnessing the ultimate tragedy in the horrible conflict in Bosnia, and that is the failure of the international community to mobilize an effective response that would bring an end to the war,” said Lynn Lyss, chair of the National Jewish Community Relations Council.
“There is enormous frustration in the Jewish community about what is transpiring in Bosnia and the gross lack of international will to act,” she said.
One small piece of good news for Sarajevo was expected this week, however, as an aid convoy of food, medical supplies and clothing organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee made its way to the city.
It was the first such convoy in four months.
In recent weeks, as Bosnian Muslim forces began what proved to be an unsuccessful offensive, rumors circulated that the Serbians “would take revenge on Sarajevo (Bosnia’s capital) because they have Sarajevo in the palm of their hand,” Ceresnjec said.
The failure of the offensive, and the apparent Western acquiescence to the Serbian counteroffensive, have only further lowered morale.
As of midweek, the Serbs were closing in on the town of Bihac, which had been considered a “safe zone.” They had stationed a surface-to-air missile system within range of the Sarajevo airport, 140 miles to the southeast, and threatened any flights attempting to arrive or depart from there.
“The airport is still closed,” said Ceresnjec. “People feel abandoned from the rest of the world. Every time it’s worse because people are losing their strength.
“It’s 32 months of siege, and generally nothing has changed. You still have 300,000 people stuck in what looks like the biggest concentration camp in history,” he said.
Ceresnjec spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by telephone from Berlin, where he is opening a photographic exhibition of the Sarajevo Jewish community.
The exhibit is part of a fund-raising effort to support the community’s soup kitchen, which serves both Jews and non-Jews “in a totally non-sectarian way,” he said.
This week, the first convoy of aid to the community since August departed from the JDC warehouses in Split, on the Adriatic coast.
The five trucks, containing 100 tons of food, medicine and winter clothing were scheduled to arrive in Sarajevo on Wednesday.
“The contents of the trucks have come from Christian, Muslim and Jewish organizations around the world, mostly from Europe,” said Yechiel Bar-Chaim, the JDC’s country director for the former Yugoslavia.
At the moment there are no more evacuations planned for the Jews of Sarajevo.
“The people who have stayed after 30 months of war are people who want to stay. Whether the latest turn of events will change the situation, we don’t know. Certainly, if there are people who want to come out, we will bring them out,” said Bar-Chaim.
The JDC’s last evacuation was in February.
Another, non-JDC evacuation effort led in July to the arrest and interrogation of the Sarajevo Jewish community’s vice president, Danilo Nikolic, as well as other Jewish figures.
All those arrested were eventually released, and their passports and other confiscated documents were returned by September.
The community was concerned about the arrests, but is hopeful they are a thing of the past.
“That’s just history. We hope it will not be repeated,” said Ceresnjec.
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