Men of War (2010)
Men of War (2010)

Summary/Abstract: THE SIEGE of Sarajevo was the longest in modern European memory. For one thousand days, beginning on April 5, 1992, Yugoslav-backed Serbian separatists surrounded the young capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina and shelled and shot its residents. Confronting a determined armed resistance and a stoic population, the besieging force never attempted to take the city, and after the Dayton Agreement ended the war in 1995, the siege was lifted on February 29, 1996. Sarajevo didn’t fall as other Muslim enclaves did, such as Srebenica, Gorazde, and Zepa, but thousands were killed and tens of thousands were driven from their homes, most never to return. Fifteen years later, Bosnia-Herzegovina has recovered unevenly from the war. The international tribunal prosecuting criminals for the war in Yugoslavia is three times as old as the conflict itself, with arrest warrants still outstanding. The Serbs who attempted to ethnically cleanse the famously cosmopolitan Sarajevo—Orthodox and Catholic bishoprics are seated a bridge away from synagogues in a city of a hundred mosques—achieved the virtual opposite: they cleansed themselves from the city. Today it is almost entirely Muslim. But the population never recovered; Sarajevo is estimated to be three-quarters the size it was in 1991.

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