"A man with no arm came into my shop, the blood gushing from his stump. Then he ran away. I saw the torso of a woman. She was still moving, but her legs were gone. The other day I saw something similar in a film. A beast cut a young man in two, torso and legs. One was a movie, the other is our reality here in Bosnia. We are like a flock of little chickens squeezed into this cage of a town, chirping for help."
Those were the reflections of Ferid Durakovic the day after a Serb mortar shell landed near his food store in Sarajevo last week, killing 43 people and wounding more than 80. Others recalled hands and feet tossed among odd bits of clothing, torsos strewn amid fresh vegetables, wet scraps of flesh clinging to the stone walls of nearby buildings. It was another savage attack on a city that has seen too many, and everyone in Sarajevo knew it would go unavenged, like all the rest.
"After I pickle [fire] the bomb off, I don't have to worry about watching the flir [forward-looking infrared sys tem ] because I can watch for triple-A [anti-aircraft artillery] and other things as my whizzo [weapons system officer] holds the laser on the target all the way in." U.S. Marine Captain Erik Swenson, speaking here, is the pilot of an F/A-18 Hornet (call sign: "Lumpy"), and he could hardly be more different from a Sarajevo shopkeeper. But he and Ferid Durakovic are intimately linked. Starting last Wednesday morning, Captain Swenson-in his first taste of combat-and dozens of other nato pilots began bombing the Serbs in retaliation for the massacre Durakovic had witnessed. "I saw explosions 30 or 40 miles away," said Swenson. "They seemed to be everywhere, like popcorn going off." What no one thought would ever happen finally had.
Last week was one of the most remarkable in the 41-month-old Bosnian struggle. On Monday the Serbs committed their atrocity. Then from Wednesday through Fri day, NATO conducted the largest combat operation in its history, finally pounding the Serbs after endless bluffing. By Friday, a diplomatic breakthrough had occurred, with all parties agreeing to meet in Geneva this week for preliminary peace talks. After years of war and "ethnic cleansing," the brutal dialectic of aggression, retaliation and reconciliation seemed to have been telescoped into a matter of days. There is still a long way to go, and all hope could yet be dashed-on Saturday the Bosnian Serbs' continued recalcitrance triggered a new nato ultimatum: lift the siege of Sarajevo, or be subjected to yet another round of air strikes. But all of a sudden the chances for a settlement in Bosnia seem better than they have been since the wars there began.
Earlier in the summer the Western allies had warned unequivocally that a Serb attack like the one last Monday would provoke a massive response. But previous NATO bluster had led Serbs and Muslims alike to conclude that the alliance was all bark and no bite. Even after the shell had hit Sarajevo, vacillation appeared to be the likely outcome as the U.N. insisted on sifting the evidence to make sure the Bosnian Serbs were indeed the culprits. Then bad weather and a protective shift of British peacekeepers further delayed the nato attacks. As the hours ticked away, it seemed as if the West had once again issued an empty ultimatum.