The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

The key question however is: who wanted the war and who was forced
into it? The Yugoslav people believed until the end that there would be
no war – and that if there were, then only where both sides wanted it.
Everyone ignored Kosovo and the Albanians. In the case of Slovenia,
everyone was horrified. In the case of Croatia, everyone thought it must
have something to do with the Ustaša. When the shooting started in
Bosnia, people thought it only involved the people in the burning
neighbouring village. Only when their own village burned did they realize
that the armed paramilitary units and the army were waging war against
the civilian population. When people were rounded up, they thought
they themselves were blameless, and would soon be let free. When
they were taken to the camps, tortured and killed by the thousands, they
couldn’t think anymore. The people in Sarajevo thought they were part
of the civilized world, having hosted the Olympic Games in 1988 with
great success, and that they were actually a good example of Christians
and Muslims living together. They lost their faith in humanity and their
hope when they were besieged, shelled and shot at from the surround -
ing mountains for over three years. The snipers got DM 100 for each
person shot, for each dead child, for each dead woman, for each dead
man, regardless of nationality. The free world could be reached only
through a narrow tunnel which was dug under the airfield. Anyone trying
to escape from the city was shot by the UNO soldiers, who proclaimed
their neutrality. In the other cities too, the non-Serbian population was
to be bled to death and driven out by starvation. In 1993, when more
than fifty-one thousand people were driven together in Srebrenica by
the “ethnic cleansing” of eastern Bosnia, the French General Philippe
Morillon promised desperate women preventing him from leaving town
that the UN would defend Srebrenica from further attacks as a protected
zone. Two years later, after they had been left to endure starvation and
constant shelling, UN soldiers stood idly by as the worst massacre in
Europe since the Second World War was carried out.
Shortly thereafter, Serbian officers left the Croatian Krajina, the “border
area”, with their families and their property. Two weeks later, some two
hundred thousand Serbs fled before Operation Storm. For the USA, it
was important after the massacre in Srebrenica in July 1995 to end the
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