A war reporter I never was or will be; I was a reporter in wartime and hope I’ll never have to be one again. Let me explain why.

The first time I went to Sarajevo during the war, at the end of 1993, was following an invitation of Zdravko Grebo, the founder of Radio Zid. An invitation as original as that I’ve never received again. The reason to accept Grebo’s invitation was the connection we had made during 1993 between the small Dutch public broadcasting organisation IKON and Radio Zid. To support the independent radiostation that refused to accept a separation of former Yugoslavia along etnic and religious lines, at IKON we organized fundraising. During a visit to Prague in October 1993 Grebo received the first tape recorders we had bought. Some time later the UN arranged the transport of the new radio transmitter pole Radio Zid needed.
It took some time before I followed the material support in person through the hole in the wall from Ancona.

Jolanda Keesom (1958), Arnhem, The Netherlands, worked as a radiojournalist and a writing journalist since 1985 and nowadays is publishing on social and (mental) health issues.

For security reasons a trip of an IKON-television crew I planned to join to the Sarajevo Film Festival of 1993 was cancelled. An important complication was that IKON was more or less traumatized by the loss of several journalists in the seventies and eighties during work in Nicaragua. But the Dutch cineast Johan van der Keuken decided to take the risk, joined the Festival with a brand new beamer and made a short documentary on cultural life in Sarajevo. Afterwards he explained that working with local colleagues was the best way to operate under the circumstances. So finally, in December 1993, my colleage Rik Delhaas and I had permission from our bosses to go to Sarajevo. The ironic promise Grebo made that he could not garantee our safety, overruled all argumentation.LOGO- RADIO ZID

Dutch aliens

The first advice Grebo gave us when arriving to Sarajevo was not to wear a bulletproof vest and helmet. ‘You look like an alien and besides it’s difficult to run in it’, he said. He was right, although by then nobody had enough energy to run anymore, except fresh people coming in like us.

A few times during my visits in wartime I was very close to sniper shootings and mortar attacks, but luckily enough I never personally witnessed people being wounded or killed. The first time we interviewed Grebo a mortar granate hit the room next to us in the parliament building. While running through the corridors to find a safer place, my recorder registrated Grebo shouting ‘You’re going to win a Pulitzer Prize for this’. Good joke.

Soon I learned to imitate the behaviour of local people when shooting started: to walk on the shadowy side of the street, to use strategic points to cross open spaces like the riverbanks, to hide behind strong walls in houses and to be happy with foggy and rainy days that meant relative safety. The only problem I took home from that experiences is that I cannot anymore stand the fireworks that are abundantly used in The Netherlands at the end of the year.

Your personal postman

Because of the relation with Radio ZID I’ve been working with young Bosnian colleagues several times in wartime; sometimes to get detailed local background information, sometimes with them as my interpreter to English. Despite the age difference it was always fun to work together and to meet people at Radio Zid or at Obala because they were open minded. But I did not exclusively depend on them. During my five visits to Sarajevo in wartime I also became aquainted with parents and friends of people who fled from Sarajevo and were living in The Netherlands at the time. Somehow rumour spread that I was going through the hole in the wall around Sarajevo and they asked me to be some kind of postman for letters, special food, sigarets, medicine, books and CD’s. Some of these deliveries led me to people working for SAGA, Soros Foundation and La Benevolencija. Others brought me to older people who were living quite isolated because they didn’t belong to the ruling party and were afraid.
I was well aware of the trade character of those relations, but considered it a good alternative for dependency on the ‘fixers’ who were always active near the Holiday Inn Hotel, trying to sell stories to the international media. Instead I visited appartments on the eighth or twelfth floor of high-rise buildings in Novo Sarajevo, facing Snipers Alley. There people were living without elevator or water in one single safe room. They were burning the inlaid floors of the other rooms to cook and heat and were growing vegetables on their extremely dangerous balconies. Many times I was embarassed by the meals they prepared for me, but after a while I realized Bosnian hospitality was strong and I was some kind of poor replacement for their children. For me, like any foreign journalist, it never was a problem to find a comfortable place to sleep and something to eat or drink. There were enough empty houses for rent, the ‘secret’ tunnel under the airport provided restaurants and I had enough German Marks to spend. But it always felt strange to order a meal in a restaurant knowing other people had to eat Icar, the food UN provided and that looked like dog food and seemed to taste like it too.

Sometimes by just being there and talking to people it was rather easy to correct stories that where repeated time after time in the media abroad. That happened for example with the history of the text ‘Welcome to hell’ near the bridge crossing the river Miljacka to Hrasno. People who lived there assured me that text had allready been there before the war. But foreign journalists didn’t hesitate to make up their stories.

Unembedded

Illusions about my journalistic independance and objectivity I very quickly lost. During the spring of 1994 I visited Mostar, Zenica and Tuzla and saw how information was completely manipulated by the ruling parties. How could a foreigner find the truth when opposite stories were told about the same war events? ‘The first casuality in war is the truth’ is an old wisdom. In wartime it’s nearly impossible to check your sources, definitely when you don’t speak the language and definitely in a country with a different media history than the one you know. The main goal of my work in Bosnia became to find stories about important aspects of the war that didn’t get attention in Dutch media. Sometimes by just being there and talking to people it was rather easy to correct stories that where repeated time after time in the media abroad. That happened for example with the history of the text ‘Welcome to hell’ near the bridge crossing the river Miljacka to Hrasno. People who lived there assured me that text had allready been there before the war. But foreign journalists didn’t hesitate to make up their stories.

Selfcensorship was never necessary because I was not ‘embedded’ in the armed forces, as seems to be normal in wars nowadays. So I felt strong objections to the obligation to accept the company of a Bosnian soldier while working in Hrasno in the spring of 1995. The City of Amsterdam wanted photographer Katrien Mulder and me to make a portrait of the people living in that area because Amsterdam was dedicated to help reconstructing the buildings as soon as possible after the war.

Since the Hrasno area on two sides was situated at the frontline, we had to have permission from the Bosnian army. Doing interviews in the company of a soldier was against all my principles and irritated me because he interfered in the conversations. But soon enough we found a way to talk with people without being intimidated by his presence.

Sarajevo Syndrome

Good memories I have of the moments when we succeeded to realize more or less impossible plans with Radio ZID, like making and distributing a CD from the lifeconcert Rock under the Siege that was held in January 1995. Through smart logistic solutions the original recordings arrived in Amsterdam where The Dutch Pop Music Foundation (Stichting Popmuziek Nederland) had the CD’s made. Zdravko Grebo and Armin Jamakosmanovic came to Amsterdam and took as many copies as possible through the secret tunnel under the airport, risking Grebo to hurt his back again. The remaining amount was collected from my house by some tough British humanitarian aid workers.

The strangest job I’ve ever had was to buy and deliver a generator to Radio Zid with the help of the Dutch army. After months of waiting, in the autumn of 1994 when Sarajevo was completely isolated, I received a triumphant message from the Dutch troops that my ‘package’ was delivered. The heavy thing was brought through the lines with a cooked-up story and arrived at Radio ZID as a big surprise.

Of course my efforts in these actions were nothing compaired to the amazing survival strategy of the people in the circle around Radio ZID, with their humour and irony. They also had the medicine against the stress that was rising among foreigners when UN-flights were cancelled. In the beginning of 1995 I myself was diagnosed with ‘Sarajevo syndrome’ when I couldn’t leave Sarajevo by Maybe Airlines and showed symptoms of panic. I was deeply ashamed when I realised others didn’t have a chance to leave at all. Finaly, we were brought by car to Split by a Dutch engineer who was repairing the water supply in Bosnia. He safely delivered us with our material, packages and letters at the Croatian coast. At home it took some time before I was cured from Sarajevo syndrome.

Understanding war

After the Dayton agreement I visited Sarajevo two more times to report about the reconstruction of Hrasno. What stroke me then was the existence of an enormous industry of humanitarian aid, with a lot of expensive expats and some opportunities and a lot of crumbs for the local population to rebuild ther lives with. Dependency on international aid seemed to become a new Sarajevo syndrome, but this time local people suffered from it.

After the Dayton agreement, I visited Sarajevo two more times to report about the reconstruction of Hrasno. What stroke me then was the existence of an enormous industry of humanitarian aid, with a lot of expensive expats and some opportunities and a lot of crumbs for the local population to rebuild ther lives with. Dependency on international aid seemed to become a new Sarajevo syndrome, but this time local people suffered from it.

Looking back I’m not convinced that international media played an important role in ending the war in Bosnia. After the massacre in Srebrenica it took months before any action was taken by the international community, despite all publicity. Maybe the growing emphasis in international media - following international politics - on the etnic and religious character of the war even delayed international action. Time will tell, they say, and I hope Bosnian journalists will find and tell the truth.

During the last year I’ve been writing about the way we in The Netherlands are commemorating the occupation during the Second World War and celebrating the liberation by the Allied Forces in 1945. Because they were too painful before, after 67 years the stories about the war still keep emerging and feeding a more complex and accurate analysis of what happened. I can imagine that actual and future generations of Bosnian journalists still have a lot of important work to do concerning the last war in Bosnia. To succeed they will need the courage and the means to work according to international professional standards. But in the end you do not have to be a war correspondent to understand the war.