Guido Braslavsky
06/29/2021 2:48 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 06/29/2021 4:10 PM
That was the good life.
Every evening at the end of the tasks at the Sarajevo headquarters, the United Nations general staff officers
retired to rest at the very nice hotel in Stojevac
, about 15 kilometers from the city center.
In that accommodation at the foot of the
emblematic Mount Igman
,
dinners
were given
by candlelight,
stimulating conversations between officers of twenty nationalities,
evenings enlivened with violins and orchestra,
very typical of the cultural tradition of the communist country,
Yugoslavia, which was in full dismemberment.
But in just 15 days everything changed.
The war in all its harshness began for
Jorge Mario Reta
, at that time a major in the Argentine Air Force, now a retired brigadier, when that same hotel was
in the middle of the firing line of the Bosnian Serb advance
.
Circumstances would lead him in the next few months to be
the only Argentine to have
“the sad privilege”
of dealing personally with
General Ratko Mladic, the “Bosnian butcher”,
commander of Bosnian Serb troops and chief executive officer along with
Radovan Karadzic
- the president of the self-proclaimed
Republika Srpska
- of the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of Muslim Bosnians in Srebrenica,
the largest genocide since World War II
.
"We talked about Ratko Mladic being brutal, but we did not imagine what happened next,"
recalls Reta, who in the second half of 1992 sat many times at the negotiating table with Mladic and Karadzic, together with French general Phillipe Morillón-his direct chief-commander of the UN in Bosnia.
Last June 8, an international court
confirmed the life sentence for Mladic, 78
,
issued in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), for the Srebrenica massacre and the Sarajevo siege, among other war crimes and crimes against humanity .
An image from September 18, 1996. Dozens of Srebrenica victims buried in mass graves near the town of Pilica, about 55 km from Tuzla, Boisnia-Herzegovina.
Photo: AP / Staton R. Winter
Argentines to the Balkans
In Argentina
Carlos Menem
ruled
and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - the year he became president - he carried out a policy of seamless alignment with the United States,
"carnal relations"
as Foreign Minister
Guido Di Tella called them
, a concept attributed to his advisor
Carlos Escudé
, a specialist in international relations who died earlier this year at the age of 72, due to Covid-19.
With the
implosion
of the Soviet Union and the
collapse of the communist bloc, there
was talk of the emergence of the planetary "only superpower", the United States, and of a "unipolar" world. Menem first ordered the dispatch of two Navy ships to the First Gulf War (1991). Although "the end of history" was proclaimed, far from ceasing, conflicts intensified in the world with ethnic and religious components - as happened in the former Yugoslavia - and the United Nations
increased its international missions of "peace", or rather , of interposition.
The government would make the contribution to
the UN peacekeepers
one of the pillars of its foreign policy, and at the domestic level a policy towards the Armed Forces:
a destination, a mission, an opening to the world
that it would leave behind, incidentally. , the stage of the fracture with civil society and democracy, the violations of human rights and their sequel to trials already annulled by the first forgiveness laws, and the pardons of the Menemist Peronism to the commanders of the dictatorship.
“In February 1992 the UN asked for international collaboration to create a force in the former Yugoslavia.
Argentina answers in ten days,
and 1000 Army troops would leave. It was the first time in history that Argentine troops landed on the old continent ”,
Brigadier Reta highlights what was the Argentine Army Battalion (BEA) based in Eastern Slavonia, whose first chief was
Colonel Luis Hilario Lagos.
The mission was called
UNPROFOR
(United Nations Protection Force),
but there was still no conflict in Bosnia ...
Although the bulk was the Army, 4 officers from the Navy and another 4 from the Air Force -Reta among them- were assigned
to the state UNPROFOR's largest in Sarajevo, the Bosnian city in the Dinaric Alps.
Independence and war
“We arrived on March 22 as advanced and we inaugurated the mission there, from 21 countries. An emblematic building had been rented, the PTT of telecommunications, it was the state company, as Entel says here before the privatizations, it had about 15 floors. The UNPROFOR staff was there because the
United Nations was looking for a neutral country, since the war was between Croatia where the 1000 Argentine soldiers go,
and Serbia, with fierce fighting in the second half of 1991 until the ceasefire in December.
Sarajevo, September 1992. The PTT building, United Nations headquarters.
It was the place of work and accommodation for 300 officers, NCOs and soldiers from 21 countries that made up the UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) mission.
Photo courtesy of Brigadier (R) Jorge Reta
Sunday April
saw a crowd with Yugoslavian pass flags
and struck us that
he had cut the red star in
the middle.
Shortly after, Parliament declared the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH). The country was divided into thirds (of nationalities) and the Bosnian Serbs do not participate, they withdraw,
independence is approved by Muslim Bosnians and Croatian Bosnians.
It was an international shock because another conflict was coming.
Sarajevo is in a valley, surrounded by mountains, they told us that there were already Serbian tanks around.
The people in the city had exploded with joy for the independence but immediately the snipers began to kill civilians
. Germany immediately recognizes BH. Then the European Community does the same (the EU as such is born later), and the United States. The Serbs who were on the heights begin the siege of Sarajevo. You have to imagine, as if it were a line on General Paz Avenue, from there the attacks and
a city four years without electricity, without water, telephone, communications.
We were not there for Bosnia,
but for the war in Croatia
after it declared its independence in 1991. The attacks grab us at our hotel, from which we could not leave. One afternoon we all got together in the lobby, and the concierge opened a door behind which there were
88 steps down: it was an anti-atomic bunker built by Tito
in the middle of the Cold War
[Josip Broz Tito was the Yugoslav communist leader who held the country together with an iron fist since the Second War]
, because there was one of his rest villas. The UN called for a ceasefire to get us out of there.
Ilidza, about 12 km from Sarajevo.
April 12, 1992, the UN troops staying at the Stojevac Hotel, must take refuge from the Bosnian Serb attack in an underground bomb shelter that had been built for Marshal Tito in the Cold War.
On the left, the then major Jorge Reta.
Photo courtesy of Brigadier (R) Jorge Reta
On the third day they took us out in trucks to Sarajevo: it was my first contact with the war,
seeing the corpses on the side of the road
.
The next day the order came to evacuate the mission, a normal two-hour journey took us eleven hours to Belgrade
because the Bosnian Serbs who controlled the territory were changing our routes. "
A week later, a mortar shell
landed on a bakery in Sarajevo, killing 16 civilians.
UN decided to
establish a defense force in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital that appeared abandoned to their fate and where only 20 French troops had been guarding the PTT building.
Reta volunteered in Belgrade to return to Sarajevo,
in the mission commanded by Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie.
“The UN armed a force of
Canadians, Egyptians and Ukrainians,
of 3,000 men, but they did not arrive immediately.
We went with MacKenzie and 14 officers,
and we could see that in just 15 days they had destroyed half the city. "
Mitterrand in Sarajevo
On June 28,
Francois Mitterrand,
the French socialist president, bravely decided to travel to Sarajevo despite the risk involved.
It was a surprise visit with a
huge international impact to the besieged city.
The airport was already
a Bosnian Serb tank base
.
They said Mitterrand could go to the PTT building and stay there.
Reta remembers that they looked for a "precarious" emergency bed for him, they painted an H in the parking lot, so that the helicopter could lower.
The Mitterrand was high politics: June 28 was the
anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Francisco Fernando in Sarajevo
, a fact that triggered the start of the
First World War.
"Mitterrand wanted to be on that emblematic day because it had its own dispute with the British.
It paid tribute in the streets of Sarajevo to the 14 dead. It was two or three very difficult days for the security we were looking to provide."
"François Mitterrand's visit to Sarajevo - wrote the Spanish newspaper
El País
the next day - was a balm for the inhabitants of the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
subjected for three months to an" unbearable ordeal ", in the words of the president French.
During the six hours spent in the city Mitterrand, Serb gunners and snipers silenced their guns ... 'we had to break the circle of iron, blood and fire smothering 350,000 people at the gates of the European Community (CE); you had to show the world that, if you want it, it can be done ', said Roland Dumas, French Foreign Minister ".
A helicopter belonging to the French delegation was shot and
Miterrand had to wear a bulletproof vest
at that time.
But in addition to the symbolic, the French president achieved a key concession.
"
Before leaving, Mitterrand met with Karadzic
and managed to hand over to UN city airport ,
"
Reta said.
"We have nothing to occupy it with!" ─
I told General MacKenzie.
He answered me, and it was a lesson for life.
─Opportunities must be seized, and it is now.
So let's raise the UN flag at the airport, and keep our fingers crossed!
Sarajevo, Bosnia, August 1992. Argentine Air Force Major Jorge Mario Reta observes the damage caused by a Bosnian Serb bombing to the PTT building, United Nations headquarters (UNPROFOR).
“Two days later the first Hercules arrived with supplies, and twenty planes a day came to land when conditions allowed,
mostly carrying food.
It was the largest humanitarian airlift in history.
"The black market was tremendous. A Bosnian salary was 20 marks; an egg was worth 15 marks, and 30 marks a kilo of meat. The Bosnian Serbs were not going to back down: they wanted us to feed the Muslim Bosnians while they
already controlled 70 percent of the territory was advancing at the military level.
The UN says, no more, we must make a peace plan. "
Facing the genocidal
“I was appointed, and it was a fortuitous event, to represent this mission in Sarajevo. I was coordinating the meetings between
Cyrus Vance
-the former US Secretary of State, sent by the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali-;
Lord David Owen
(the European negotiator) and
the President of Bosnia. "
MacKenzie had departed and his place as commander of UNPROFOR was already occupied by the French general Philippe Morillón, of whom Reta was his chief of staff.
“With Morillon we were going to see the President of Bosnia, and outside the city to Karadjic. We
faxed information
to Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, who came whenever they could, every fortnight in the same Hercules who brought food.
The workbench was Vance, Owen and Morillon. "
At 10 miles, an hour and a half drive, they saw Karadjic, the
"President of the Republika Srpska",
in the city of
Pale
, the "capital."
The appointments Reta recalls having attended at least fifteen times
were invariably at the Hotel Panorama
de Pale,
a room with a coffee table
where Morillon and Reta sat, and opposite Karadjic and Ratko Mladic.
General Ratko Mladic and Bosnian Serb leader, psychiatrist Radovan Karadzic.
Both sentenced to life imprisonment for the genocide of Muslim Bosnians in Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In September 1992,
a British Army medical inspector arrived in Sarajevo to assess the situation of the UN troops
.
He concluded that the
humanitarian situation
was so dramatic
that the troops should not spend more than a month,
due to the psychological damage.
He spoke with Reta, who dealt frequently with both demons, asked him to secretly write down gestures of both, their times, their way of responding, to capture certain emotions.
The doctor later told him that, although it was risky to make a diagnosis in this way,
for him Karadjic had a high degree of schizophrenia, and Mladic of paranoia.
An "explosive" combination.
"Look into Mladic's eyes!"
And yes, they are blue!
Reta replied somewhat surprised.
The British doctor then observed him:
─Mladic has the look of the lion. It is a lifeless look.
“The officers that I knew -
recalls Reta -
were mediocre downwards.
But Mladic was an exception: he
knew about world history, about literature, about painting.
He spoke of history with absolute solvency.
But in fact he had the
sparks of hatred and death
in his eyes
. "
In that room at the Panorama Hotel,
the reception was very cold.
A handshake and that's it
.
General Morillon - he would be a MEP years later - was very clear about the treatment he should give to his interlocutors.
─Here we have the agenda to discuss,
doctor
─
he marked Karadjic,
who was a psychiatrist.
─Remember, general, that I am the
President
of Bosnia.
─
Doctor
─
Morillón insisted remember that the legal government of Bosnia is the one that has a recognized seat in the
United Nations General Assembly.
─You know, General, that we control 70 percent of the country's territory.
The first meetings, recalls Brigadier Reta, were
related to the exchange of prisoners and the dead
.
The other big issue was the restoration of water, electricity and communications service to Sarajevo, in whose winter temperatures of 20 degrees below zero are normal.
Between August and December, Reta was with Morillon many times in Pale with the Karadzic-Mladic duo.
"The pressure from the Bosnian Serbs was very great and they were supplied by the Serbs, by President
(Slobodan) Milosevic."
─Did they ever notice that you were Argentine?
“Mladic
, he thought I was Egyptian.
Perhaps because there was an Egyptian contingent among the United Nations forces.
On one occasion I clarified to him that I was Argentine.
"Argentina!
Maradona!"
, Mladic reacted.
.
It is a common account of Argentine soldiers who were in the Balkans - thousands passed in the 90s -
how the invocation of the name Maradona was a safe-conduct
that opened difficult paths on many occasions.
Bellies against a table
Reta remembers Vance and Owen as two
huge diplomats
.
That Vance was playing the good guy, and the Brit was playing the bad guy to the Serbs.
At a meeting around December, no longer in Pale but in a Bosnian Serb-controlled tank base 10 kilometers from Sarajevo (they had taken over much of the structure of the Yugoslav People's Army from the Tito era),
Vance pressed, always with the objective of achieving control of 51% of the territory for BH, and the end of the war.
Karadjic surprised then:
─We are ready to rethink the borders.
There was a shocking silence.
Vance asked Reta to get a map of Yugoslavia, which was quite a difficult task.
Reta was able to find one in a corridor of the regiment, pinned to a billboard.
Reta remembers that there were 12 to 15 people in the meeting, that Vance and Owen supported their bellies on the table to get a good look at the map,
and Karadzic and Mladic were on the other side with the same attention, and tension.
They passed a marker on the map,
"and if a town was left on one side or the other it could mean its annihilation."
On the way, always by armored car, to the airport, where Reta accompanied them after the meeting, Vance and Owen
"were exulting."
Very optimistic
.
But
Karadzic and Mladic were buying time
: the Bosnian Serb "parliament" in Pale would "reject" the proposal a few weeks later.
Argentina vs Bosnia in 2014
For many Argentines today, perhaps the youngest, Bosnia and Herzegovina refers to the unknown country with whose soccer team
Argentina faced in the debut of the 2014 World Cup by group F, with a 2-1 victory and with a goal from Lionel Messi.
In the 1990s, the Sarajevo disaster, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, were daily news in the world press and dozens of journalists and war correspondents were on the scene. Here the war in the Balkans would have a separate domestic chapter with the
illegal smuggling of weapons to Croatia
(an embargo prohibited it), a case discovered by a historic investigation by
Clarín
journalist
Daniel Santoro,
which would lead Carlos Menem to jail in 2001 for five months and a cause that the Argentine Justice never concluded and Menem dragged for 23 years until his death.
Sarajevo, July 1992. In the PTT, Major Jorge Reta in the daily press conference that he gave at 9 am.
United Nations.
More than 100 international journalists attended.
Photo: courtesy of Brigadier Jorge Reta
Reta dealt with
Christiane Amampour,
who from CNN denounced that Bosnians "were dying of hunger";
with
Martin Bell
of the BBC, among many other figures from the world press.
With that experience in tow, an open mind and a high appreciation of the role of the press in these conflicts, upon his return to Argentina,
Jorge Reta would be chief of communication and press for the Air Force and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for ten years,
doing efforts to train a generation of young aeronautical officers in breaking down barriers and engaging openly with the media.
In his last stage as a brigadier, Reta was Secretary General of the Air Force.
Armored Clash
But in Sarajevo, the 40-year-old officer still has a few weeks left, and a dramatic end to his mission.
At the Sarajevo hospital, the United Nations
had donated a generator to the nursery so that babies would not reach the world in rooms with freezing temperatures.
But in the middle of the war the generator had been referred to trauma, where the wounded were treated.
The Bosnian government favored recovering its soldiers to continue facing the siege.
“The newborns were very underweight, due to the lack of food. We got them the generator because before they only had one heater.
All the hospital rooms were bombed, the hospitalized people were in the corridors where there was even a layer of ice on the floors.
That was the situation ”.
Del edificio de la ONU se salía obligadamente con casco, chaleco antibalas, y en blindados. Como tantas otras veces, Reta se subió a un blindado de 5 toneladas que conducía un soldado irlandés de la Legión Extranjera.
Tomó a toda velocidad por la tristemente célebre “avenida de los francotiradores” para evitar ser blanco fácil de los serbios que mataban diariamente desde las alturas.
Decenas de personas siguen por pantalla gigante el juicio contra el ex líder militar de los serbios de Bosnia Ratko Mladic ante el Tribunal Penal Internacional de la ex Yugoslavia (TPIY) en La Haya (Holanda). Foto EFE.
A velocidad máxima, el vehículo chocó con un blindado ucraniano “amigo” de 15 toneladas. El impacto fue brutal. Era el 7 de enero de 1993. Malherido, con una pierna gravemente comprometida y dolorosamente extraído desde adentro del blindado, Reta fue operado de urgencia en el subsuelo del PTT, donde los franceses habían montado un quirófano y sala de terapia intensiva.
Al día siguiente lo evacuaron a Zagreb, donde estaba el hospital de campaña de los Estados Unidos, y dos meses después a París, para nuevas y sucesivas intervenciones quirúrgicas.
“Más de 10 mil personas murieron en los 10 meses que estuve allí. Entre 3 mil y 5 mil impactos recibía la ciudad todas las noches. No contra blancos militares: como si aquí tiraran contra Almagro, Caballito...".
Jorge Mario Reta ya se había despedido, en camilla, de Sarajevo. No volvería.
El asedio contra la ciudad de 500 mil habitantes duraría 43 meses.
En julio de 1995, los serbobosnios llevaron adelante la masacre de Srebrenica contra los bosnios musulmanes.
Tras dominar el enclave, separaron a más de 8 mil varones, hombres y adolescentes, y los ejecutaron. Arrojaron sus cuerpos a fosas comunes. Violaron sistemáticamente a mujeres y niñas. Todo parte de un plan de limpieza étnica, en las propias narices de la Europa culta y civilizada, y ante la pasividad del contingente militar holandés.
La cosa terminó cuando la OTAN -Estados Unidos- inició bombardeos contra posiciones de los serbobosnios. En Pale, Tuzla y en Gorazde, con cazabombarderos despegados de la base italiana de Aviano, y desde el portaaviones Theodore Roosevelt. El presidente Bill Clinton apurado por sus tiempos electorales para la reelección forzó con el poder militar norteamericano los Acuerdos de Dayton de 1995, que impuso la división territorial y terminó con la guerra de Bosnia.
El ex general serbobosnio Ratko Mladic, el "carmicero de Bosnia", condenado en primera instancia a cadena perpetua por el genocidio de Srebrenica y otros crímenes de guerra. Foto EFE.
Debieron pasar tres largos años. El escritor español Juan Goytisolo que viajó a la capital Bosnia por entonces junto a Susan Sontag, escribiría en el acápite de su novela de 1995El sitio de los sitios: “A los habitantes de Sarajevo que, pillados en el cepo, luchan contra la cobardía e indiferencia del mundo”.
Hace unos años cuando Mladic y Karadzik fueron apresados y juzgados por crímenes de guerra y crímenes de lesa humanidad, Jorge Mario Reta se contactó con la Haya para ofrecer su testimonio en contra de ambos.
Le hicieron saber que las declaraciones y testimonios de los generales Morillon y MacKenzie, y la inmensa cantidad de denuncias de bosnios y familiares de desaparecidos y asesinados, que excedían todo lo imaginable, eran suficientes.
Mirá también
La brutal historia de Ratko Mladic, el “carnicero de Bosnia” que desencadenó un infierno sobre la tierra