Journalist of CNN Nic Robertson yesterday reported for this American television network from Munich where world powers reached an agreement on cessation of conflicts in Syria and the delivery of humanitarian aid to tortured and decimated population.
This reminded Robertson on the war in B&H which this journalist saw from the firsthand. In a lengthy reportage on CNN he, by comparing these two bloody war, questioned the moral compass of the modern world, first of all the great powers that have been watching on both of these conflict for years as it is something that is not their problem.
“I could recite the names of scores of obscure villages, knew which was Croat, Serb or Bosnian, where the front lines were and how to navigate the seething deadly patchwork of a country so broken it seemed the conflict would never end,” said Robertson.
“I dreamed of the day the barricades would be gone, of how glorious it would be to walk Sarajevo’s shattered streets from end to end without risk of a sniper’s bullet. When that day came, and it did, I felt empty. Not emotionally, but physically, a yawning stomach kind of feeling. There was nothing magical about the freedom to roam when so many lives had been lost for simply straying within sight of a sniper’s rifle the other side of the divide,” remembered the journalist.
“Today I look at Syria and wonder when the madness and killing will end there,” said Robertson adding that war there last for 5 years.
Robertson believes that the war in Bosnia ended after the world powers, after years of observation, began to feel collective guilt.
The war in the former Yugoslavia, recognized journalist, was something completely incomprehensible for Europeans.
“Once a favored holiday destination, no European who enjoyed the Yugoslav sun could understand how their table waiter had turned on the tennis coach and chambermaid,” explained Robertson.
“So when I look at Syria today and see neighbor pitted against neighbor I am reminded of Bosnia, of barricades, snipers, front lines and wasted lives,” he wrote.
“I don’t know Syria like I knew Bosnia; the government has denied me a visa for over three years. Sure I study the maps, but the visceral connection isn’t there, my life doesn’t depend on making the right turn. It doesn’t mean I don’t bleed inside for those hundreds of thousands who have already perished. Perhaps my skin is thinner now and I do all the more easily. But I know I feel emptier for understanding, and wonder when the world’s compass will point it home again,” concluded Robertson his story.
(Source: avaz.ba)
