Sarajevo still out in the cold

By Pete Sweeney in Sarajevo

Date: 09/12/04

DESPITE the lifting of the siege of Sarajevo in 1996, the capital of Bosnia Herzegovina remains one of the most isolated cities in Europe.

The airport is served by few airlines and flights are frequently cancelled thanks to inclement weather. Train and bus connections remain patchy and slow. The parliament building is still a burnt-out hulk scarred by artillery and sniper shells. Many public parks also serve as cemeteries.

The international aid community has sought to address this isolation through economic and infrastructure development.

Despite some harsh criticism of international aid programmes for failing to support development from within by encouraging viable local entrepreneurs, and for maintaining a culture of dependency, some programmes are notable successes.

The International Rescue Committee restored Sarajevo's electrical power.

Amy Antoniades, grant administrator for the International Women's Club in Sarajevo, which provides numerous grants to Bosnian-based charities, points out a less publicized success.

"There's a shortage of milk in the former Yugoslavia," she says.

"Bosnia has cows, so there's a lot of cow-smuggling across the Croatian border." In response, charities have created programmes helping Bosnian farmers export milk to the neighbouring states through a cooperative system, allowing them to keep the cows and produce sustained income. "This is the only way some of these communities are making any money," says Antoniades.

But, as economic conditions have stabilized in Bosnia, international aid is shrinking.

"Funds are drying up for everyone," says Antoniades. In this context, the challenge is to support the programmes that foster self-sufficiency and cut back those that foster dependence on a charitable organization.

In the well-intended rush to provide income to Bosnians, some programmes have fostered economic activity that produces a supply of goods for which there is little or no demand.

One aid worker points to a programme which subsidizes Bosnian women who knit doilies for sale. "They sell them at NGO fairs, so they get some sympathy sales, not much more," says the aid worker.

"Unfortunately, there's a built-in incentive for them to stay non-profit. Once doily sales exceed a certain level, the subsidy will be withdrawn. If they become profitable they lose their subsidy.

"It's basically just giving these people something to do."

But international aid is far from the exclusive source of economic development. Bosnia is redeveloping its hydro-power and mining industries using foreign investment.

Also, a few Bosnians have developed a tourist industry that strikes some as macabre.

While the National Museum in Sarajevo recently closed due to lack of funding, the Tunnel Museum, which preserves a portion of the tunnel that the Bosnian military built beneath the airport to break the siege, remains open and profitable.

The most ubiquitous and yet gruesome knick-knacks in Sarajevo markets are expended rifle shells converted into pens and objets d'art. One Bosnian shopkeeper expresses his disgust at this trade. "I don't sell bullets," he says.

Article reports on the isolation and desolate economic situation of the Bosnian capital.