THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SARAJEVO
THE WINNING OF FREEDOM
Eagleton's cabinet for the reconstruction of Sarajevo's infrastructure needs to ensure US $532 million for its work. Today, they lack as much as US $456.5 million. But, the salary of each of the 19 planned town planners is envisaged at the fantastic monthly amount of about DM 20,000! The only question is will their work correspond to their astronomic salary, i.e. will the town planners earn that salary to the last cent?
AIM, July 12, 1994
It will be easier to perceive the actual dimensions of the destruction of Sarajevo now when the action to save it is being prepared than it was when hundreds of inhabitants daily lost their lives in it. When emotions were suppressed a bit, facts emerged. Indisputable, cruel, harsh. Their implications range from political over ethnographic to material ones. And, as is usually the case, the material ones seem easiest to surmount although the demands are enormous because the proportions of material destruction are also such. Eagleton's cabinet asseses that US $ 532 million must be secured to renew the infrastructure of the city. The magnitude of this figure is attested to by the fact that the Vienna and New York meetings on Sarajevo pledged US $ 75.8 million, from donors who had committed themselves so far. According to this statistic, another US $ 456.5 million is lacking!
But, the cabinet of William Eagleton claims that they are not discouraged. "The reconstruction will evolve gradually, and the money raised so far, along with some other commitments, will be sufficient to prepare Sarajevo for the winter", says Eagleton. There is room for optimism when we know that some of the most interested donors will give their contributions subsequently, once they examine their interests in more detail and decide on the manner of contributing. They are primarily Islamic countries, Canada, Germany... Participation in the reconstruction of Sarajevo and Bosnia is not disputable for them, but they have still not defined the form of that participation. This actually leads to the essence of the problem when the material factor of reconstruction is in question.
Since predominantly private capital is concerned and it should promote private interests in Sarajevo, the most optimum form of investing it is being sought, so that both the donors and the city reap maximum benefit from it. That is why many are looking into the terms and conditions, inquiring about specific projects which could tomorrow bring a profit to the investors. It is no secret that a veritable small "war" is being waged in Sarajevo around interest spheres. Numerous foreign diplomats, representatives of humanitarian organizations, UNPROFOR and God knows who else, are barely trying to hide their "real" role.
Many of them have been directly entrusted by major world corporations to ensure their interests in Sarajevo. The Sarajevo weekly "Bosna" recently tried to find out what kind of interests are in question and found that, according to the cost estimate made by Eagleton's cabinet, the 19 town planners who should work in Sarajevo for a period of three months should get salaries in the amount of US $ 522 thousand. In simple terms this means that one planner would have a monthly salary of 12,000 dollars, or expressed in the locally popular "national" currency, about 20,000 German marks!
"The Bosna" prints this as a sensation, although it could be viewed from other end too. For someone the result of whose work should be the happiness and comfort of the inhabitants of the capital over a long-term period, such a salary need not be too high. The more important question is, who those planners will be and will the results of their work be commensurate to such a high compensation. Knowing the nature of Western capital, it is to be expected that they will earn their salary to the very last cent. That is what is believed here, but the wish for the greatest possible participation of domestic interests, whether experts, labour or entire domestic enterprises are in question, is only natural and the battle for those positions is one of the cruical battles of Sarajevo.
Officals promise that that will be so. A minister in the B&H Government, Hasan Muratovic, chief of the Sarajevo delegation at the New York negotiations says: "A Directorate for the Reconstruction and Development of the city has been established, headed by an eminent economist, the Director of the "Hidrogradnja", Mehmet Drino, and expert teams for cooperation with Eagleton's office will be set up." Mehmet Drino underlines: "Reconstruction projects will call for great efforts on the part of all the citizens of Sarajevo, of experts..." Thus, the fight to include domestic interests is on, but sight must not be lost of the fact that many domestic experts have left the country and that enterprises have been decimated by the war. Finally, foreign experts will attempt to link projects to foreign firms because the contractors will be selected at bidding procedures and works will not simply be left to domestic firms. Because of all this, it is expected that many donor countries will not bring "live" money here, but rather materials, experts, projects...But, one does not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Maybe a more important question than this, at least for the denizens of Sarajevo, is when the specific works will start? The middle of the summer in war-time Sarajevo is the eleventh hour for sounding the alarm because winter will soon come. There are many promises, but not a square meter of glass, for instance, has yet entered the city. Although living conditions in the city are much better than in the past two years, many things are still measured by the spoon and patience is wearing thin. Impatience, on the other hand, is the greatest enemy of planning.
Still, money is specific, tangible and judging by all things there will be plenty of that. Material reconstruction will inevitably start, but a number of other important issues remain open. One of them is the ethnographic one. The war has considerably changed the ethnographic picture of the city. (Not the ethical one, although there were and will be many changes in that area too.) Of the six hundred thousand inhabitants of Sarajevo before the war, the number fell to about 250 thousand during the war, and the number of those moving in has intensified of late. An exchange of the population has been made. Many left the city temporarily or for ever, for fear of the war or under its pressure.
They include a large number of highly educated experts and people who have been living in Sarajevo for several generations. Many refugees of rural social origin have moved into the city driven by the winds of war. There were migrations in the very urban core itself. Many citizens have fled from Grbavica, Ilidza, Vogosca and suburban areas, from the areas of contact with the Serbian attackers, towards the center of the city. The town is under a general pressure of temporariness and instability. Most of the inhabitants are not sure whether their present places of residence are permanent or temporary. Will they return whenceforth the war ousted them?
Returning calls for changing circumstances and remaining for changing habits. The tectonic upheaval caused by the war has left almost no one stable. And under such circumstances it is impossible to plan, while every reconstruction and building, on the other hand, must start with planning. These dilemmas and quandaries finally lead to the most important question: for how many citizens will Sarajevo be built? For 600 thousand, like before the war, 250 thousand, the current number, or for an entire million or two, how much it could perhaps number after the war, given the confined living space, especially for the Moslems and the wish of many to return to Bosnia, but only to Sarajevo. Hardly anyone now knows the answer to this question and without it it is hard to plan, let alone start building.
Finally comes the crown question concerning the final political epilogue. Is Sarajevo a single or divided city? Two years of the administration of William Eagleton, the infrastructure coordinator appointed by the United Nations, are believed to be a transitional period until the final solution. Although under resolution 900 of the Security Council Sarajevo is considered a single and indivisible city, is is not clear what that means in practice. Deputies to the Municipal Assembly have raised a number of crucial issues on that subject.
Husein Kamber, President of the Communal Assembly of Centar asks: "Whose is Sarajevo? Whose are Vogosca, Ilijas, parts of New Sarajevo and Novi Grad? Will we build an integral Sarajevo under one control?" Investments into Ilijas, Lukavica, according to Kamber's words, mean helping the enemy. But, the definition of an integral Sarajevo is practically incompatible with the idea on a 2:1 division of interests. The representatives of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian authorities claim that that is not a division of the city, but the other, Serbian side, has already launched a test balloon in the form of the request of Dragan Kalinic, Minister of Health in Karadzic's "state", who demands the division of the Kosevo Clinical Center in the same proportion. Similar requests for the University, Television, economic facilities and organizations have not yet been made publicly, but it is logical to expect them.
Replies to such and similar questions are, for the time being, more diplomatic than specific. Minister Hasan Muratovic says: "UN Resolution 900 on the restoration of life to the city is not a republican or municipal project. A global project is in question. Its aim is to restore life to the city, to initiate a new economy." From this diplomatic answer and a number of other facts we can intimate one thing: there is no final political solution for Sarajevo yet. It will be freed slowly and gradually, step by step, through a combination of the most diversified means, expect force.
The reconstruction and development of Sarajevo should mean the winning of freedom for Sarajevo. What would in normal political circumstances be an aim, will be applied to Sarajevo both as a means and an aim at the same time. Sarajevo will continue to defend itself by life, although even today five months after it stopped being a war zone, thanks to the NATO ultimatum, an occasional Sarajevan still gives his life in that defence. And that is the price that will be included in the total when finally a recapitulation is made of the suffering of this city.
Strajo Krsmanovic Zijada Krvavac