op 18 front pages-converted - The Watson Institute for International ...

Throughout the relief effort, however, food remained the
centerpiece.
But how were such priorities established and revised to
reflect changing needs? Seeking to take the views of host
government authorities into account, U.N. authorities placed
a premium on meeting the basic food needs of civilians. The
U.N. took pride in the “miracle of Sarajevo,” highlighting the
avoidance of starvation in the Bosnian capital since the outbreak
of war in April 1992. Given the obstacles to keeping the
city’s population alive, this was no small accomplishment.
During the first nine months of 1993, a total of 56,707 metric
tons of relief supplies reached the Bosnian capital, about
37,000 by truck and the rest by the airlift.
But there were other views. Some Bosnian authorities
found the U.N.’s emphasis on food, however helpful in the
short-term, riddled with longer term negative consequences.
“I wish the UNHCR had never come here,” commented the
Bosnian Minister for Refugees and Displaced Persons in September
1993. “They’ve done a lot of good, but they’ve made
people passive. People have forgotten how to work.” Others
noted the growing gap between the continuing U.N.’s attention
to food and other needs of the population, whether for
other forms of assistance or for more forceful international
action.
Even individuals who were more appreciative of the food
were still critical of the U.N. relief effort as a whole. “Food and
other relief items are of course a humanitarian need,” Musadik
Borogovac, a Bosnian journalist and former Sarajevo resident
said, “but humanitarianism goes much deeper than just keeping
people alive.” In his view, “the real humanitarian help that
the world could give us would be to lift the multiple blockades
of Sarajevo: the information and communications blockade,
the transport blockade, the parliament blockade.”
The U.N. was seen by some not only as the source of
Sarajevo’s daily bread but also as the enforcer of policies that
worked multiple hardships on its people. Reinstating the
humanity and decency of life in the capital would have required
a more multifaceted array of initiatives than transporting
food and medicine. Nor was the ambivalence only outside
the U.N. “It was very frustrating for me as a member of the
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