On the recordJanuary 25, 1994
during the just completed winter session break, I made my third trip to the former Yugoslavia, this time visiting the war-ravaged city under siege, Mostar, located in southern Bosnia about 50 miles from the Croatian border. Each time I go there I come away thinking that things can get no worse. But they can and they have. Senseless killing and inhumane acts are the order of the day. The weekend report from Sarajevo in the Washington Post detailing the senseless mortaring, killing, and maiming of little kids out for a sleigh ride isn't, unfortunately, a low point in this end-of-the-century holocaust, it's business as usual. Mostar was little different. Divided by the Neretva River, east Mostar is home mostly to Bosnian Moslems while Bosnian Croatians hold the western half of the city. Serb gunners inhabit the hills and ridges to the east where artillery and mortars rain down on the city. East and West Mostar trade artillery, cannon, and sniper fire. As a result, the city resembles a bombed-out town from a World War II movie. The buildings remaining standing are largely shells and the people have moved underground, living in unheated, unlighted, and certainly unventilated cellars, seeking whatever safety from the shelling they can. There are mostly women, children, and the elderly there. Younger men are in the army there and elsewhere. Fighting. Conditions are awful. Just awful. Only untreated riverwater to drink and that has to be gotten under cover of darkness.
