ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010059
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
SOURCE: AIDA CERKEZ ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEFORE THE WAR, Sarajevo was known mainly for the 1984 Winter Olympics and the assassination that sparked World War I. Now, the city will be remembered for a four-year siege, officially ended Thursday, notable for its brutality, its futility, and the world's agonizing slowness to end it.
After driving a cross a former front line, until recently guarded by Serb guns and armor, Bosnian Interior Minister Avdo Hebib glanced at his watch. It was 10:03 a.m.
``The siege of Sarajevo is now officially over,'' he declared.
Nearly four years of death and privation in the Bosnian capital ended quietly Thursday as the Serb-held suburb of Ilijas was transferred to government control.
For the first time since the war began in 1992, the government had total control of a road into and out of Sarajevo.
In spring 1992, Serb guns sprouted from the hills around Sarajevo. But until the first shots were fired, few residents of the Bosnian capital believed their former neighbors would become their killers.
Four years later, Sarajevans call themselves survivors of hell. They have been shot at, shelled, starved and, most of all, surrounded. When the siege formally came to an end Thursday, many residents barely noticed.
``It is one of the most important days in the history of this country, and yet we are too tired to even celebrate,'' said Nedim Londrc, a 28-year-old writer sitting at a cafe.
The siege ended four years to the day after Muslims and Croats voted in a referendum to declare Bosnia independent from Serb-led Yugoslavia. Serbs in Sarajevo, furious at the prospect of Muslim-Croat rule, boycotted the vote.
Hours after the results were announced - late March 1 - Serbs threw up the first barricades in Sarajevo. Someone scrawled on the main post office: ``This is Serbia.'' A quick wit scrawled in reply: ``No, you fool, this is the post office.''
Armed Serbs in black ski masks peeked out from behind the barricades, from behind the buses that blocked a main bridge spanning the city's Miljacka River.
Radio warned people to stay indoors. But by March 3, Sarajevo's people rebelled at being pinned down by Serb militants. They broke through the barricades on the main street.
To their shock, troops inside Yugoslav army barracks opened fire on the crowds, wounding several people.
For the first time, many Sarajevans realized that the Serb-dominated army - touted for 50 years as an evenhanded force for all Yugoslavia's peoples - had turned against them.
The Bosnian Serbs acquired most of the Yugoslav Army's weaponry when the army pulled back from the conflict. They used the guns to cement the siege of Sarajevo.
The first fatality came April 5. Suada Dilberovic, a 24-year-old student, was killed by a Serb sniper during a peace rally.At this point, people could still get in and out of Sarajevo. Residents jammed the airport, trying to flee. Buses and cars streamed out of the city.
Many who left then - and during the siege's rare lulls - were middle-class professionals. Most are still refugees abroad. They were replaced largely by people fleeing rural areas, giving the cosmopolitan city an entirely different feel.
At first, Serb snipers fired from city rooftops. Then they moved to the surrounding suburbs and hills.
Residents lived much of the first two years in basements, hoping to avoid the thousands of shells raining down on their city.
In early May 1992, telephone links went dead. The Serbs burned the main post office.
But the electricity was still working May 27, when the first massacre occurred. Horrified residents watched the images on television of the bodies of 17 people being pulled from the street where they had been waiting in line for bread. A shell killed them and injured dozens more. The Bosnian government was sure it was a Serb shell; the Serbs denied it.
Soon, the other utilities were cut as well.
Other massacres followed - the worst on Feb. 5, 1994, when 68 people were killed in the shelling of the main marketplace. This prompted the first serious threat of NATO airstrikes against Serbs. It took another marketplace massacre, on Aug. 28, 1995, which killed 35 people, to trigger widespread airstrikes on Serb positions.
For most of the siege, Sarajevans believed they had been abandoned by the outside world, despite an international airlift of food and supplies that sustained some 300,000 of them.
Dozens of cease-fires and peace plans failed, while more than 10,000 Sarajevo residents died, including more than 1,500 children.
Sarajevo, home to Bosnia's Muslim-led government, turned inward and gave birth to its own heroes. Criminals and police officers alike grew into commanders of their own forces to defend the city.
Sarajevans hardened. Death was no longer the tragedy it had been. Black humor was a weapon against hunger, and burning books, furniture and most of the city's trees helped stave off the cold.
Living on canned humanitarian aid, Sarajevans joked that their bodies would stay intact for decades after their deaths because they had consumed so many preservatives. They learned exactly how much of a car's tire you needed to burn to cook soup. Street names changed to ``Sniper Alley'' or ``Road of Death.''
Periodically, life would ease. In spring 1994, after the first marketplace massacre, the siege loosened somewhat. For the first time in two years, bananas and meat went on sale.
But with wavering international will, the peace soon frayed, and the terror returned.
Until only a few months ago, the city was at the Serbs' mercy. They switched electricity, gas and water on and off, blocked supply routes and periodically closed the airport, halting the airlift of aid.
Relief came only with the peace agreement forged in Dayton, Ohio, and signed Dec. 14 in Paris.
The U.S.-brokered Dayton agreement divided the country between the Serbs and a Muslim-Croat federation, but unified divided Sarajevo under the Muslim-led government's control.
The five suburbs that the Serbs held throughout the war, and from which they fired at the city, go back to the government.
The handover has triggered one of the final exoduses of the war. Serbs fearful of living under enemy rule fled Sarajevo, often destroying what they could not take with them.
The gradual freedom of movement regained since December has come so incrementally, and Sarajevans are so weary, that most barely noticed the siege was really over.
``It will take some time to realize that getting to Zenica [in central Bosnia] doesn't take eight hours anymore, but just one,'' said Londrc, the writer. ``The mentality of the closed city remains.''
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Map by AP.by CNB