CNN Mission: Peace

'This is the day we've been waiting for'

Bosnian government declares siege of Sarajevo over

March 1, 1996
Web posted at: 12:20 a.m. EST (0520 GMT)

Authority

ILIJAS, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- Nearly four years of death and devastation ended quietly Thursday as the Bosnian government declared the painful siege of Sarajevo over and took control of the Bosnian Serb-held suburb of Ilijas.

For the first time since the war began in 1992, the government had total control of a road that leads in and out of the city without passing through Serb-controlled territory.

Serbs flee

Bosnian Interior Minister Avdo Hebib drove across a former front line, glanced at his watch, and said: "The siege of Sarajevo is officially over." It was 10:03 a.m. "This is the day we've been waiting for. Thank God it has finally come."

Four years earlier on this day, Bosnian Muslims and Croats had begun voting in a two-day referendum for independence from Yugoslavia, the beginning of a long, bloody conflict. The siege itself began April 6, 1992.

It was a day of celebration and triumph for Bosnian Muslims. But it was nothing short of a tragedy for Bosnian Serbs, who have been fleeing the city in droves in recent weeks, shunning the prospect of change and life under a Muslim-Croat Federation.

Ilijas is the second of five Serb-held districts to be transferred to government authority, and by March 19 -- three months after NATO took over from the United Nations in Bosnia -- Serbs are obliged under the Dayton peace plan to give up all five Sarajevo suburbs that they held during the war.

Power lines

Like in Vogosca, the first Serb-held district to be handed over, signs of the Serbs' bitter flight were evident in Ilijas. A medical clinic, an apartment building and a cluster of stores had been burned down. The doors and windows of many homes had been ripped apart. Wrecked cars had been overturned and robbed of tires. Personal belongings were strewn about in some areas.

Abandoned

Most of Ilijas' Bosnian Serb community had crowded into trucks in the final hours before the changeover, desperate to leave. A few stayed on, unwilling to give up their homes, unwilling to succumb to what they saw as a mistrust created by propaganda.

"They all followed each other into misery," said one Bosnian Serb of his neighbors and friends who left the city. "The Serb Republic can't help everyone ... Both sides' propaganda brought us to this."

By the time the new police force arrived, Ilijas was virtually deserted; a population of some 17,000 people had simply melted away.

So, it was left to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to call for a post-war Bosnia that was built on ethnic tolerance.

But Bosnian peace coordinator Carl Bildt said the Serb flight from areas of the Bosnian capital due to be handed over to Muslim-Croat control was undermining the goal of a multi-ethnic state.

NATO officials have accused Bosnian Serb leaders of manipulating their people into leaving.

The commander of NATO-led peace forces, U.S. Adm. Leighton Smith, told Bosnian TV late Wednesday that both the government and Bosnian Serb leaders failed in their efforts to persuade Serbs to stay.

"I think both of the governments ... could have done considerably more much sooner in trying to allay the fears of the Serb citizens of Sarajevo," he said. "Too little was done too late."

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