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Karadzic's insane asylum By Itai Engel Tags: Radovan Karadzic, UN, Israel  In the end we each had our pictures taken next to the car that, for a month, had sheltered us from Karadzic's bullets and murderers, and with which we smuggled out and saved civilians from his ethnic cleansing. That car had more luck than brains, certainly more luck than fuel, and somehow it always succeeded in rescuing us at the last moment, against all odds and all laws of mechanics, to the point where we thought that God Himself was watching over us from the skies above Bosnia. One morning when we went out to the parking lot, we saw that a shell had exploded a meter from the car and scorched it completely. Apparently, despite our feelings to the contrary, there really was no God in Sarajevo. God wasn't in Bosnia at all in 1992. He was replaced by someone who played God: a Serbian psychiatrist named Radovan Karadzic. We were three journalists - an Italian, a Dutchman and I. We hitched a ride with a UN plane that was bringing medicine and food to the besieged city of Sarajevo. It unloaded us and the provisions and rushed to take off again. Even the UN armored vehicle that took us and the boxes to the city disappeared seconds after we arrived at its outskirts. We were now on our own. Advertisement Nobody came to take the provisions and we had nobody to ask, so we entered the quietest neighborhood in the world to look around. And then it began. One, two, three, four, five shells landed alongside us. Stones, iron bars and a huge cloud of sand flew around us; I went into shock. I fell to the ground, my hands trembling, and cowered. That was the first time I had arrived in a battle zone with the goal of doing journalistic work. Within seconds I understood that that apparently exceeded my abilities. I'm out of here. I'm going back home. As painful as it was to admit it, I was incapable of doing the work. The problem was that there was no way out. To go back was more dangerous than entering this city under bombardment. So I stayed. As a young, frightened 23-year-old in Bosnia, I understood within a week how quickly one can adjust and function in an insane situation, how quickly one can change. With tons of adrenaline and innumerable threats engulfing you, you wouldn't believe what you are capable of doing. An experienced psychiatrist who specialized in dealing with states of chaos, Radovan Karadzic succeeded in 1992 in transforming a normal, balanced and emotionally strong population into one that was panic-stricken and neurotic to the point of being dysfunctional. His idea, as the president of Bosnia's Serbs, was to drive the millions of Muslims in the republic totally crazy, so that not a single one of them, even if he survived somehow, would want to go on living. Several hundred years ago, the Muslims in Bosnia were Serbs, like Karadzic's forefathers. When the Ottoman Empire took over the region, the conquerors suggested that if the conquered converted to Islam they would be entitled to better conditions. There were Serbs who preferred to fight to the death rather than accept the humiliating proposal. But there were many, Serbs and Croats, who were tired of the never-ending wars in the Balkans and the ongoing oppression, and decided to convert. They were never religious fanatics. They looked and dressed like Serbs and Croats. Islam remained for them a general definition, not something that separated them from others, certainly not in more recent times, when the entire region was called Yugoslavia and the Marxist leader Josip Bruz Tito didn't even want to hear about religion and religious differences. But the memory persisted: the memory of those Serbs who struggled for their land, their identity and their heritage down to the last drop of blood, in the face of a resounding defeat by the Turks in Kosovo in 1389, and who with their own eyes saw how their Serbian brothers simply surrendered, gave up their identity and converted to Islam. Memory was the only thing over which Tito and his regime had no control, and in the memory of the Serbs, the converts were considered traitors of the worst kind. "Turks," they were dubbed scornfully. Experimental lab I had entered the experimental laboratory of the psychiatrist Karadzic along with my two journalist colleagues. Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, is a charming city. It is surrounded by mountains and hills that overlook it from almost every direction. Nice in peacetime, but a death trap in wartime. Karadzic's Serbian snipers entrenched themselves in the mountains and hills. The city itself was populated mainly by Muslims; nearly all the streets were exposed to the snipers' guns. Therefore, movement within the city mostly took the form of short, crazed sprints from the wall of one building to the wall of another. I remember my first time. I was standing behind the wall of a house, glancing in the direction of another one. The wall was in effect the only thing that blocked the sniper's view of me or anyone else. About 50 meters separated me from the next building, 50 meters in which I would be exposed to the lunatics on the hills. The psychiatrist's lunatics. I saw how my Dutch colleague, Kees Van Der Laan, took a few deep breaths, shot out as though from the mouth of a cannon, and ran for his life. While he was running, for no more than 10 seconds, we heard what from then on became the soundtrack of Sarajevo: "tsss-psss" - the whistling of bullets fired from the hills at the streets. He was successful. I took the same deep breaths. I thought that if by chance the sniper had seen him running, maybe he would think that there would be another person coming, too. So I waited for a minute. And another. Kees waved to me and shouted something I didn't understand. I thought he was warning me not to run. Apparently it was convenient for me to think so. So I waited another minute. After that I understood that he was actually getting annoyed that I didn't move. I think I've never in my life been as scared as I was then, next to that wall. Every evening, the citizens of Sarajevo would estimate how many of their neighbors had been mowed down that day by sniper fire and were still lying in the streets. A man who was sprinting hysterically would suddenly change direction and then crumple onto the ground. If someone else was running a few meters away, he would only glance at him out of the corner of his eye and run even faster. People learned that if they stopped to pick up the person who was shot, it would only make it easier for them to be hit, too. Occasionally, under the aegis of UN mediation, after the sun had set over Sarajevo, the Serbs would allow people half an hour to collect the bodies, with a promise not to shoot. There were also many times in that war when a sniper broke the promise. Among the dead were also a very large number of journalists: Twenty-one were killed during three months of fighting. So I ran. And I made it. I was thrilled to tears when I reached the ugly, sooty wall of that house. Alongside it, in addition to my Dutch colleague, stood another four residents of Sarajevo, including one woman with a bucket and a man of about 60. None of them took deep breaths. None looked insanely frightened or had a smile fraught with adrenaline because he had executed a good sprint. With a perfectly normal expression they quickly glanced beyond the wall and dashed to the next house. And then to the next. That was how they were fated to live, if they survived, from 1992 to 1995. They ran to fill a bucket with water, or to bring wood for heating their homes during the snowy Sarajevo winters. In the houses there was, of course, no electricity, gas or telephone service. The windows were usually shattered from a direct hit or the shock wave of exploding shells. There was not a house in Sarajevo that did not come under fire from the psychiatrist's crazies during those four years. After two days of running in Sarajevo we too assumed a normal, even apathetic expression during the sprints. Only if there was a sudden "psss," which was really close, shaking the ground a millimeter from our shoe, would that panicky expression from the first time come back fleetingly. Sarajevo, a city of 300,000 at the beginning of the war, ended up with 30,000 residents. Not all were killed by sniper fire. Many fled, just the way Karadzic wanted them to. Anyone who stayed became totally neurotic. Also just as Karadzic wanted. And Sarajevo was not Radovan Karadzic's worst experiment in Bosnia. The most practical manifestation of his professional expertise in states of chaos was ethnic cleansing. Most nerve-racking were the trips outside Sarajevo, when we had to travel in areas exposed to the sniper's guns. After buying fuel on the black market and starting the car, we entered the infamous "Snipers' Alley," the boulevard that led outside the city. At the beginning, there were still houses on both sides. For the walls of those houses to protect us effectively, we had to drive very close to them, to the point where we were driving half on the road and half on the sidewalk. Occasionally we would scrape up against another car that was traveling opposite us, in the same manner. In Sarajevo nobody stopped to take down details after an accident. On the highway, the interpreter Bruno taught us how to drive. To hit the gas with all your strength, even if it meant doing 140 kph on an urban road, and every 20 to 30 seconds to brake forcefully. Then to hit the gas again. The idea was that we would never maintain a regular speed for too long, so that the sniper on the hill would not be able to keep track of the vehicle with his weapon and hit us. Another holocaust We drove to Omarska. Omarska was the main reason why people here in Israel began to take a serious interest in the war in Bosnia. Omarska was a prison camp where Muslims were held. The first pictures taken there showed walking skeletons staring blankly through the barbed wire; then the world began for the first time to speak in terms of genocide and holocaust. It's painful to recall, but the spontaneous reaction in Israel was not sorrow and identification, but one of anger. How could anyone compare anything to the Holocaust of the Jewish people? Without getting into terms and definitions, in Bosnia there was systematic genocide. They called it ethnic cleansing. The idea, as explained to me with cold logic by Serbian citizens whom I met later in the war, is nevertheless somehow connected to us. "We don't want to be stuck the way you're stuck, in Israel," they said. "You occupied territories and got stuck forever with an occupied population inside those territories. For decades you have been dealing, and will deal, with terror that originates on their side and, in addition, with international complaints about violating human rights." In order not to get "stuck," the Serbs carried out ethnic cleansing. Every area that was occupied was entirely cleansed of its Muslim residents. There were two ways of doing this. The first was to load the residents onto trucks and, in a mass transfer, to drive them several hundred kilometers away, and fence them in an abandoned and isolated area. The second way was related to Karadzic's sick worldview: neither transfer nor expulsion, but immediate extermination of everybody. And thus it happened that in a city called Srebrenica, all 8,000 Muslim residents were massacred within a 24-hour period. In one of the horrible pictures that came out of there shortly after the ethnic cleansing, Radovan Karadzic is seen embracing and kissing his chief of staff, Ratko Mladic; next to them, Serbian soldiers and militiamen are raising glasses of slivovitz. A fate similar to that of Srebrenica befell Gorazde, Zepa and innumerable other Muslim villages in Bosnia. But Karadzic's declared ambition to totally terrorize the country's Muslims led to a situation where even massacre was not just an act of killing for its own sake. When the Serbian militiamen entered a Muslim house, several would grab the man inside, and one after the other, before his horrified eyes, they would rape his wife. After the rape, the woman would see her husband being decapitated. The Muslim women who were raped were held by the Serbs in a prison camp for several months, after which they could no longer undergo an abortion if impregnated. To these thousands of villagers, who had led a conservative Balkan lifestyle, the fetus they carried was the seed of Satan. There were women who, right after birth, abandoned the baby and fled. Some killed the newborn with their own hands, and some, despite the horror and disgust, decided to raise the baby. But then, when they returned to their village after captivity, they discovered that the residents, sometimes even their own families, were unwilling to take them back with the satanic Serbian baby in their arms. As in Sarajevo, so it was in all of Bosnia: The Muslims lived in panic, in a crazy world, slowly but surely losing their sanity. Just as psychiatrist Radovan Karadzic had planned. Firsthand horror We didn't get to Omarska. On the way, in one place we passed through, we experienced firsthand the horror of ethnic cleansing. It was a small Muslim village south of the town of Zenica. After a few hours of conversation, photos and interviews with men, women and children there, we noticed, along with them, a frightened person running in our direction down the hill. He arrived breathing heavily, barely getting out a few sentences, but what he said was enough to cause everyone to scream and run. Our interpreter explained that the man had come from the village beyond the hill, five kilometers away, and that a few minutes earlier the Serbian militias had entered and ordered all the civilians to gather in the square. He had been working in a nearby forest and when he saw this, he fled. The villagers we were with, who for months had heard stories about massacres, rape and common graves, had no illusions about their fate. They all rushed home, came out with a bag or small suitcase, and ran for their lives. In a minute we were in the car - another journalist, the interpreter and I. Just as we were starting to drive, a resident ran over and asked to go with us. Only then did we actually understand what was happening. This was not a village where every family had a car; there were only a few with vehicles like tractors or plows. We pushed our equipment aside and let the guy in. We started driving. Beyond that same hill, where the neighboring village was located, smoke was already rising. Everyone started panicking. One tractor with 10 villagers hanging on it somehow got onto the dirt road leading out of town. A woman with a baby ran in front of us and banged on our bumper. We tried to make more room in our little car for her, tossing out a bag and crowding against one another so that the driver-interpreter could see barely anything. After five meters someone else stopped us. We told him to hang onto the door and tried to help him, but it didn't work. He fell. We put him into the trunk. All around there was crying and hysteria. A psychiatrist's masterpiece. We started driving again. The woman with the baby signaled us to turn onto a path that was supposed to take us in a safer direction. And then he arrived - a young man, running alongside the window. We stopped. He looked inside, looked at the trunk and understood that there was no way he could get in. With all the chaos he stood quietly for several seconds; we were quiet, too. And then he nodded in mute acceptance and even managed to raise his hand to wave good-bye. Then he turned around, probably to look for another way to escape, but I could no longer see him because I was crushed against the window and couldn't move my head. I only remember his eyes. I have never felt so helpless. I have no idea what happened to him. Two days later we were told that 20 of the village's residents had been murdered. After the war, for years, we tried with several journalist colleagues, to get to Radovan Karadzic's hiding place. We also tried to convince people whom we knew were close to him to let us interview him. Our friends were mainly Serbs who abhorred him and the horrible stain he had left on their people. Once they reported to us that he was hiding in a monastery in Montenegro; a year later we received a tip that he was in a Greek Orthodox monastery in Greece. But we never succeeded in getting close. Nor did anyone else. Together with Slobodan Milosevic and dozens of Serbian, Croatian and Muslim murderers, he was described as a war criminal. The No. 1 wanted man. I met the No. 2 wanted man, Arkan (Zeljko Raznatovic) - the leader of the Tiger militia, which was responsible for a long series of massacres and ethnic cleansing later - in 1999, at the height of the war in Kosovo. In an interview, Arkan naturally denied that he had ever killed innocent civilians and presented himself as a Serbian patriot. Months after that interview he was murdered. A few months later Milosevic, the Serbian president during the war, was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. He died in prison in 2006. Radovan Karadzic and his chief of staff, Ratko Mladic, were the last important figures who managed to remain in hiding. When I visited Kosovo, and the more chauvinistic neighborhoods in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, I saw pins, posters and shirts adorned with the image of the esteemed Serbian patriot Karadzic. There were always people who were ready to guard him and his hiding place. People who considered him a saint. Finally, now, this sick psychiatrist will get the treatment he deserves. Itai Engel covered the beginning of the war in Bosnia during two months in 1992. He returned to Serbia in 1995, and again in 1999, when the war in Kosovo began. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Calling it quits Beleaguered prime minister announces he will not run in Kadima party primaries. 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