The first city we will visit is Sarajevo. It is the capital of Bosnia, and is at 18 degrees E, 44 degrees N in your Atlas (p. 99).
The 1984 the Winter Olympics were held here because of the deep gorges and mountainous slopes between 2,500 and 4,000 feet high that were ideal for skiing and the luge. Today these mountains are used for completely different purposes--as strategic outposts. Going up one mountain, a visiting journalist said:
"It was amazing, having spent so much time confined in the saucer of land below, to see the city splayed beneath like a rape victim... from this perspective, it was blindingly clear that the Serbian gunners can see exactly what they are doing." (Christopher Hitchens)
In March 1992 Radovan Karadic* sent Serb forces to erect barricades around Sarajevo. In April they assaulted the city, and the UN opened a peacekeeping operation to protect the airport, as 13 year old Zlata Filipovic* recorded in her diary at the time. By November 1992, 17,000 had died in fighting, and thousands of civilians were evacuated from Sarajevo.
Before the war, the 1991 Census of Bosnia showed a population of 525,980 in Sarajevo (49.3% Muslim, 29.9% Serb, 6.6% Croat, Others 14.2%). As refugees have fled the fighting and ethnic cleansing, these figures have changed. To protect the civilian populations of threatened cities the United Nations established six "safe areas" in May 1993.
The Serbian military headquarters are located at Pale, approximately 15 miles southeast of Sarajevo. The commanding officer is General Ratko Mladic*.