Over the past week I have been reading a book I found in the library called
Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. Written by the journalist Peter Maass, it is a memoir of his experiences in Bosnia during the first year or so of its devastating civil war (which are placed in context by references to history as well as events in the years following his departure). As one may expect, most of his anecdotes, whether personal or secondhand, are depressing in the least and disturbing at the most. There is much cause for dismay - neighbors driven to turn against each other through fear and political manipulation, rampant rape and murder of civilians, and egregiously false justifications for the bloodshed that were put forth principally by the Serbian leadership.
While the whole list causes me to cringe, the last element is particularly galling. Maass keeps pointing out how the repetition of lies was enough to convince the rest of the world to sit on its hands and excuse its passivity with the declaration, "It's the Balkans. They're all just crazy." Few believed Milosevic and Karadzic when they claimed that the Bosniaks wanted to establish an Islamic republic that would force all women to wear burkhas, commit genocide against Serbs (an ironic charge!), destroy churches and crush Orthodox Christianity. Maass provides ample testimony of just the opposite: the Bosnian Muslims were perhaps the most secular Muslims on the planet. They drank ample liquor and ate pork. They rarely attended mosque. And perhaps as many as a quarter of all marriages in Bosnia were mixed. Maass remembered watching such films as
The Blues Brothers and
Blazing Saddles on government television in Sarajevo. He wryly remarks, "If the Bosnian government was, as its enemy shouted, trying to establish an Islamic republic, it was moving very slowly in the audiovisual department." On the other hand, Serb paramilitaries destroyed ancient mosques and pretended they never existed and forced Muslims to deed over property while claiming they moved voluntarily. Yet the lies were repeated just enough to convince the rest of the world that it couldn't sift through the evidence and determine who shared the greatest blame.
The U.N. was a key force for blundering, incompetent neutrality. Over time, however, its policies wore down the commanders that it dispatched to Sarajevo. For the first one, as I see it, the break came when circumstances forced something of an "incarnational ministry." Philippe Morillon, the charming French general who was first called upon to carry out the U.N.'s distantly-planned policies, lived quite opulently in Sarajevo in a residence known as the Delegate's Club. He would sit to eat in a dining room decorated with a Persian rug, graced with a mahogany table, and detailed with linen napkins and crystal wine glasses. "Outside, Sarajevo was dying," Maass reminds us.
The first crack in Morillon's armor of neutrality came after Serb soldiers assassinated the Bosnian deputy prime minister while he was sitting inside a United Nations vehicle. Somehow the colonel in charge of the convoy to and from the airport thought it was okay to open the door to the personnel carrier to let the paranoid Serbs see the U.N. wasn't transporting mujahadeen. Morillon was shaken as journalists probed his failure to keep alive a man under his protection.
Two months later, the eastern enclave of Srebenica was on the verge of falling to Serb forces. Morillon put together a convoy of personnel carriers and flatbed trucks of food and medicine and took to the road. When he reached the front lines, the Serbs accused him of delivering weapons to soldiers. Morillon had to surrender his cargo and he arrived in the besieged city with only a small detachment of U.N. soldiers.
"Srebenica was one of the most desperate places on earth," Maass writes. Thousands lived outdoors because many buildings had been shelled to rubble and the rest were jam-packed. The residents fought each other desperately for parachuted food and then over the parachutes because they could be turned into blankets and clothes. But when Morillon arrived, the Serbs stopped shelling the city. 75,000 Bosnians knew Morillon was their only hope of escaping death, so they blocked his vehicles and refused to let him leave.
But after two days, Morillon himself wanted to stay. He went to the balcony of the local post office and addressed a gathered crowd. "I have now decided to stay in order to clam your anguish and try to save you," he announced. "I am here, and here I stay." The U.N. flag was raised over the post office. Maass writes, "If the Serbs wanted to conquer Srebenica, they would be forced to do it over his dead body."
Morillon became a news sensation instantly. The Serbs backed off, allowing some food and medicine in and refugees out. Eventually they agreed to the deployment of U.N. troops in Srebenica and the regular delivery of aid. But soon the Serbs started shelling the city once again. Two years later, they captured the supposed U.N. safe haven and executed over 8,000 men. As for Morillon, he was dismissed from his post shortly after defending Srebenica. He had bucked U.N. policy, and the United Nations "had no need for heroes in Bosnia."
The general after Morillon, Francis Briquemont, resigned after six months. He had come to love Sarajevo and its people and could not hold steady while enforcing U.N. policy.
Policy is usually decided by armchair intellectuals at a safe distance from the sights, sounds, and smells of war. Ministry is improvised contextually and practiced face-to-face and eye-to-eye. Living in community with people in their joys and their pains turns one from a paternalistic humanitarian to a servant of the servants of God. Morillon's experience, while not identical with Christian commitments, offers a stunning reminder that we cannot offer the transformative grace of God if we are not ourselves transformed by intimate encounter. The gospel is discovered and embraced not among mahogany tables and crystal but cracked asphalt and dirt mixed with blood. God lead us to be converted!
Labels: Discipleship
