Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Siege pins Americans far from home Date: Sun, 22 Nov 92 17:26:45 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD Siege pins Americans far from home \BY Joel Brand \CR SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Safeta Basic and her American-born daughter, Aida, have been waiting five months for the call that never came: word that U.S. authorities have arrived to evacuate American citizens from this besieged capital. American Air National Guard and Air Force cargo planes arriving on relief flights to Sarajevo several times a day have been authorized to evacuate the Basics and 27 other American citizens on a list provided by the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Croatia. But no one in authority told that to the Basics or 14 others on the list who, since applying to be evacuated in June, remain cut off in a city where telephones rarely work and street travel is conducted under threat of sniper and artillery fire. Any attempt to flee overland from the city of 400,000 has been extremely hazardous, leading past numerous sniper points and into territory held by ill-disciplined Serbian militias. The first organized land evacuation was attempted last Sunday, when the Red Cross, taking advantage of a precarious cease-fire, managed to bus some 1,500 residents out of the city to nearby Serbian-held suburbs. But many families were split up in the evacuation and hundreds of others were left behind. Mrs. Basic and 14-year-old Aida learned they were eligible for the airlift - unlike almost everyone else in this city - only when tracked down at their house in Sarajevo's northern hills by an American reporter last week. "How come I didn't know about it?" Mrs. Basic, 36, asked suspiciously. Her tall, brown-haired daughter, who was born in St. Louis, said she wanted to leave as soon as she could. "I just want to leave the war, beyond that I don't know," she said in her living room. Mrs. Basic, who returned to Sarajevo from St. Louis after her marriage to an American broke up, said that in June she placed her and Aida's names on a list at the Bosnian Foreign Ministry of foreign nationals who wanted to be evacuated. "I kept calling [the Bosnian presidency] every day because my daughter, she kept asking me, 'When are we going to go?' I never thought we'd really go. If it really happens, I'm going to die [of happiness]," said Mrs. Basic, who works at a hospital as an anesthesiologist. "If something happened to her and I could have gotten her out sooner, I couldn't live with myself," said Mrs. Basic, who wants to take her daughter back to St. Louis. Bosnian authorities said they passed the list of foreign nationals along to the United Nations but are unsure what happened to the list after that. However, on Sept. 25, the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia, provided a list of 28 Americans to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Sarajevo and asked the United Nations to arrange their evacuation. As of last week, UNHCR - which is understaffed and hard-pressed to carry out its primary mission of providing for up to 1.8 million people this winter - managed to contact only 13 of those on the list. Telephones are frequently out of order and most phone numbers changed after the main exchange was hit by artillery in May. The only way to reach the others is to track them down by going to their last known address - something UNHCR has not had the resources to do. There are no working long-distance lines from Sarajevo, making it impossible for the stranded Americans to contact the embassy in Zagreb. [In Washington, a State Department official said the United States aired television and radio advertisements in Sarajevo, advising U.S. citizens to contact UNHCR. ["We've been doing what we can to get through to people," said the official, who acknowledged that television in Sarajevo may not be working. ["We're incredibly limited in what we can do for people inside a war zone," said the official, who said the nearest embassies are in Zagreb and Belgrade, the Serbian capital.] A spokeswoman at the Zagreb embassy, which was upgraded from a consulate after Croatia was recognized as an independent country in April, pointed out that Americans were advised to leave Bosnia-Herzegovina before the war started there and that some heeded the advice. But many stayed behind, almost all of whom had ethnic or family ties in the country. Some said they could not have anticipated what happened since Bosnian Serbs laid siege to Sarajevo. U.N. officials said that eight of the 13 Americans reached by UNHCR were evacuated so far, seven of them in the past week. Of the remaining 15 Americans, the Basics and another American - the 18-year-old U.S.-born son of a college professor - learned they were eligible to be removed only through inquiries for this article. One other American citizen gave up on waiting for an airlift and undertook a hazardous overland escape from the city through the Serbian-controlled countryside, according to his neighbors. His fate could not be determined. The whereabouts of another dozen U.S. citizens who were trapped in Sarajevo remains unknown. Even among those who were contacted by UNHCR, there are some who feel trapped and abandoned by the U.S. government. One of these is a contractor from Seattle who lived in the United States for 20 years but returned with his wife for a visit to Sarajevo just before the war started. He asked that their names not be used. The contractor, who recalls watching on television as U.S. troops rescued endangered Americans from Grenada in October 1983, is angry at being left on his own to make the dangerous trip through the city to the U.N. headquarters for evacuation. "I don't know what the life of an American is worth to the American government," he said. * Staff writer Warren Strobel contributed to this report in Washington. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM