On 6 April 1992, as part of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, Serbian forces attacked the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, setting off a three-year war marked by ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Bosnian War – which killed 100,000 civilians and soliders, displaced more than two million people, and saw tens of thousands of women raped – was long regarded, until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
NATO airstrikes at the end of August 1995 – after the Srebrenica genocide and prompted by the shelling of the Sarajevo marketplace that month – forced Republika Srpska forces to retreat and led to negotiations that produced the Dayton Peace Agreement in December 1995. Based on ethnic divisions and secured by the international community, the Dayton agreement has resulted in a three-decades-long fragile peace.
In this event, VII photographers who covered the Bosnian War review how they reported the conflict – with an emphasis on the civilian experience – and reflect on both what was and was not photographed, as well as the impact their images had (or did not have). The discussion focuses on what lessons can be learned from the Bosnian experience for visual journalists working in conflict zones today.
Featuring The Estate of Alexandra Boulat, Ziyah Gafic, Ron Haviv, and Paul Lowe.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:40
David Campbell: So the fifth of April is the fifth and the sixth of April is the 30th anniversary of the start of the conflict in Sarajevo and in Bosnia itself. Of course, that was part of the larger conflict surrounding the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. But on the 30th anniversary, you know, we mark the fact that that set off a three-year war that included ethnic cleansing and genocide. It ended up killing 100,000 civilians and soldiers, displaced more than 2 million people, saw tens of 1000s of women raped. And all this 30 years ago. Ron and Paul, of course, covered the conflict itself. Zia grew up in Sarajevo during the siege and will bring a perspective from Bosnia itself to the discussion. But we wanted to begin with a presentation of some work from the late, Alexandra Boulud and Zia edited a selection. Ron, would could you introduce Alex and her work and when and how she covered Bosnia?
00:01:52
Ron Haviv: Yeah, it’d be a pleasure. Hello, everybody. Alexandra was very, very dedicated to the story of Yugoslavia. And I first met Alex, in Croatia, at a hotel in Vukovar, a town which later became famous for being under siege for three months. And Alex, then, when speaking to her, you can see her passion and her desire to be able to go beyond the obvious go beyond the guy with the gun, and really kind of bring home to Europe who she can already realize, having there already been a conflict in Slovenia, and the war in Croatia starting, where Europe was not really paying attention properly to what was happening in their backyard. And like many people feared for the worst that this was going to continue, which it did into Bosnia and Kosovo, as well.
00:02:51
And Alex in Bosnia did some tremendously important work. I think that she was incredibly dedicated to the story. She went to most are by horseback at a time when it was incredibly difficult to get in, almost no journalists were able to get in and she felt it incredibly important to see what was happening there. And her time that she spent, was a tribute to her belief in the impact of war on civilian life and how important it is for people to realize it. But also, I think, to some degree, her hope, is to shame people into reacting. And I think that while her work in Bosnia, which we’ll see now, was very important. Alex’s work in the following conflict in Kosovo was single-handedly, I think, one of the strongest pieces of work to come out. And she can, along with a small group of journalists take credit for the intervention by the world much faster than they did in Bosnia. And primarily, I think, because the journalist did shame people into reacting in Kosovo, which they didn’t do in Bosnia.
00:04:11
And so all of us that covered this conflict, try to have tried to make an impact and hope that lessons would be learned. And of course, now as I sit here, in Ukraine, it’s pretty obvious that the world is not really learned the lessons we thought they would. They’ll turn it over to you, Ziyah.
00:04:31
Ziyah Gafic: Well, I think we can all agree that we, as a human, mankind are not really capable from learning from our mistakes. That’s why you are in Ukraine. Anyway, I would just like to say a few more words from the perspective of Sarajevo. For those who don’t know, April is really the cruelest month for Sarajevo. And as you pointed out, the early days of April, which, in ’92, were marked by peaceful demonstrations, quickly turn into the siege, which sort of started between the fifth and the sixth of April. And we are currently commemorating that day. And also, for those who don’t know, the 1900s during the Second World War, Sarajevo was liberated, also on the April of sixth. So a lot of things happen around this place in April. I would like just to show a few pictures from Alex. This selection pretty much covers most of the country in that period of ’90 to ’95, and actually ’96, as well. So what we’re seeing here is some of her pictures from central Bosnia. So I’ll just go quickly through it.
00:05:48
What strikes me I have to say, a lot from Alex’s work is that even in the 90s, a lot of photographers were still shooting black and white. Black and white was still sort of a standard when it comes to documentary. But photographers like Alex and like Ron, and many others as well, were sort of focusing on color. And I find that quite striking, even to this day, I think here, we’re still in central Bosnia. This is the aftermath of one of the worst massacres in central Bosnia, in a place called Ahmi?i. And this is the aftermath of it, I think, exhumation of the mass graves from it. And then obviously, the venerable bridge of Mostar probably looking at the state of it, it was probably taken a month before it was destroyed by the shelling from the Croatian Military Council. That’s the official title of the Croat military element in Bosnia in the 90s. And here it’s still here we’re in Mostar. And then here sad war in Bosnia was as many other wars was infamous for indiscriminate use of snipers against, unfortunately, civilians. So this is one of the sniper’s positions.
00:07:27
And then finally, we are in Sarajevo here. So you can see the makeshift barricades to protect the civilian population from the snipers. And then the scene that we all got, fortunately, used to which is basically cooking. Because a lot of buildings didn’t have well, most of the buildings didn’t have stoves obviously. So people would cook wherever they could, on these makeshift stoves. Here we are still in Sarajevo and probably one of the most depressing images in my mind is these sandwiches seen from the marketplace, so this was the selection the choice that you could see in the marketplace in Sarajevo. And just for those who don’t know if you look at this on the left side of the picture, there’s this metal sort of like a ring well that’s at some point that gas was distributed through the city but not properly so to speak. So people would make these makeshift burners so this basically would be plugged in the gas pipe pipeline there’s there is a series of small holes on this ring and this will this is used to cook as a burner.
00:08:53
And this here we are in ’96, so the war officially ended and this was the moment when the occupied parts of Sarajevo were as we like to say re-integrated so in a desperate attempt of sort of scorched earth tactics, a big chunk of it was burned and it’s destroyed before the Serb the military left the occupied parts of the city. So these are the scenes from that. And then and I think this to end on a lighter note, so to speak. This is basically former neighborhoods who, sorry, former neighbors who fought on opposite sides getting together for a coffee and a drink and telling the wars stories so I think this is one of the most poignant images for me in for me in this set. That would be it.
00:09:56
David Campbell: Yeah, thanks for that, that edit. So yeah, how old were you during the siege? Do you have memories of the war?
00:10:04
Ziyah Gafic: So I was 12 when it started, and then my family in all their wisdom, decided to leave the city. So we actually left with the last civilian flight, because who wanted to know what’s going to happen could anticipate what’s going to happen. So my father and my mother actually resigned from their posts, they basically left their jobs. And the idea was to go to New Zealand, however, for my dad lasted only two days, when we landed in Macedonia on this last civilian flight, he came back and stayed there throughout the war. And we came back about 18 months later, once the tunnel under the airport was dug that was the only for us Bosnias that was the only access to the city, so then we came back and stayed here till the end. And so when it ended, I was 16. Yeah.
00:11:01
David Campbell: Yeah, I mean, it is remarkably eerie. Looking at that edit of pictures now thinking about Ukraine, and extraordinary similarities between some of the scenes there and some of the scenes that we’re witnessing now. We’re going to go in and explore that issue a little bit more and discussion later. So thanks, Zia. Paul.
00:11:34
Paul Lowe: Thanks David, did you get the link okay?
00:11:36
David Campbell: I did. And while I cue that up, why don’t you explain how you came to cover the war in Bosnia? And a little bit about your approach in covering the war?
00:11:50
Paul Lowe: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, Ron and I both covered the conflict in Slovenia, and then Croatia. In fact, we were both together, it was the early days of the conflict. Drove together up to the front lines in Slovenia, and that’s sort of what ended up being a kind of almost a phony war, the Six-Day War, and then follow that with going into Croatia, Ron spend even more time than I did there as the with the CG Vukovar, but you’re both in some of these initial border battles on the Croatian-Serbian border. So, you know, on those travels, lots of people say, “Oh, Bosnia, there won’t be a war in Bosnia. There can’t be a war in Bosnia, because it’s so intermixed. It’s so there’s so many mixed marriages, it’s so multi-ethnic, it’s multi-confessional, it’s multi-everything,” but in the end, unfortunately, became I suppose multifunctional.
00:12:34
And so, you know, for us, I think at the beginning, it was the next domino in that in that chain of, in many ways leading on from the whole kind of breakup of the former Soviet Union, I think we’d covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the main revolution. The Baltic states as they were liberating themselves from Soviet control, I was in Moscow. So there seems to be very much part of a chain of events that was ongoing, which was kind of in some ways the disproving you know, Francis Fukuyama’s famous, “The End of History,” the kind of victory of liberal democracies. And it was a kind of time when we thought things were going to get better, but in fact, you know, sadly, that decade of the sort the 90s turned out to be the opposite.
00:13:13
So initially, I think like lots of journalists, we were drawn to Bosnia because it was just the next stage and we covered these other wars that were leading up to it. But I think a lot of us, once we got there, the story shifted quite significantly, in terms of the scale of it, and especially in terms of the scale of the atrocities and the war crimes that have been carried out all over the country. But they were extremely hard to report on. Ron did some sterling work at the beginning but very quickly became very hard to operate on the Serbian side. And thereby that point, also, they encircled and besieged Sarajevo. And so Sarajevo definitely became this focal point for a lot of reporters like ourselves, and it kind of captured our hearts to be perfectly frank, you know. I think it’s a modern European city, that we could all very easily almost imagine, you know, I come from Liverpool, in England, which is a very similar-sized city has a similar sense of humor. And the idea that you know, it could be besieged by people across the whirl, which is just across the water, you know, neighbor on neighbor was, was really quite striking.
00:14:16
So I think a lot of us went there initially as a story, and then for a lot of us, it became much more than that we were really kind of caught up in it emotionally, professionally, psychologically. And also in terms of, you know, what we were seeing as journalists collectively, I think, was a very clear act of aggression by one party, very well armed, very well organized with overwhelming firepower against a relatively defenseless enemy or defenseless city. And so it became a sort of symbolic battle of civilization I really think for a lot of us and we saw it as an attack on in some sense, civilized values, you know, what it means to be a democratic, multi-ethnic community, which Sarajevo was a very emblematic symbol of. And I think that in a way it became an incredibly human story as well, because literally every street corner, every apartment, the hospital, everywhere you went, there were these incredible stories of human resilience, resistance, creativity, humor, and also obviously terrible, terrible, terrible suffering at the same time. So it became this really deep and profound story, I think, for many of us, and also one that challenged the sort of basic tenets supposedly, of international journalism that you, you cover a story, honestly, and truthfully, and you get that story out, that means the community will respond and, and take some kind of action to prevent the suffering. And sadly, as we know, that absolutely didn’t happen until a very late stage which we could perhaps discuss some of the reasons for that later.
00:15:48
But anyway, so what really drew me to the story, was this idea of a modern city taken back kind of almost the Middle Ages, and how do ordinary people respond to that? How do they try to survive? So my kind of overarching theme which developed, obviously, over the years because, you know, was sort of Sarajevo survivor’s guide. What was daily life like under siege? How do people respond? So although I did some work on the frontlines, I wasn’t particularly interested because there are frontlines or the soldiers fighting in trenches in lots of other conflicts. What seems to be really unique about Sarajevo was it was, as I said, it was a capital city. And I was fascinated and really engaged with the way that the individual citizens and the way the organizations and groups citizens there, found all these different ways to resist, to engage with what was happening around them, you know, making art and making culture, putting on theater productions, obviously, you know, the most prominent which was Susan Sontag’s “Waiting for Godot,” but also, you know, creating artwork, sculptures, films, paintings, you know, music concerts and nightclubs. You know, it was an incredible testament.
00:17:01
And then also on top of that, you know, these incredibly creative ways that people found to get water to get food. You know, if your water has been cut off from your house or your apartment, you have to go to a standpipe in the street, it’s maybe a kilometer away. There are about 15 or 20 standpipes around the city. You’ve got to carry that water home. How do you do that? You know, a liter of water is a kilo. So if you’ve got 50 litres of water, that’s 15 kilos, and if you’re pretty, pretty hungry, because there’s no food that’s a huge physical effort. So people made all these incredible contraptions you know, with little taking shopping carts and prams and sledges, and all sorts of different things to make little vehicles they could tow around to carry things. One guy even made a hydroelectric power station on the river and had to get it from all bits of radiators and car parts and so on so he could power a battery to read his newspaper at night, and so on. So these stories of incredible almost sort of Heath Robinson, but still really incredible creativity in the face of this incredible aggression was really inspiring and really extraordinary. And to me, seems to be something really unique. And also, because the siege went on for so long, the strategies had to develop and you know, people turned their, you know, the fields, the playgrounds into gardens, and also very suddenly playgrounds into cemeteries.
00:18:18
So I would go, I mean, I think like a lot of us, we would go initially, I went for about two or three weeks in the summer of 1992. After that, I then started going back, you know, fairly regularly for a couple of weeks at a time, sometimes a month, sometimes two months. In and out, I kind of lost track really the number of times I went in and out, but like a lot of journalists, a lot of the staff reporters for the major agencies were rotated in and out on a kind of monthly basis. But freelancers like myself and Ron and others would go in for as long as we felt we could go in really and come out again. Sometimes on assignment very often not, very often looking for smaller guarantees. But I think a lot of us became very committed to the story and wanted to see it through and kind of keep on going back to sort of follow it really. And of course, we then go off, we’d leave and we go off somewhere else. We go to Chechnya, or we go to Sudan or Somalia. And we could perhaps touch on some of the lessons from Chechnya as well, later on. But it just kept drawing us back in again. And so it became more than just a story. I think it became, you know, I guess an obsession in some ways, but also a kind of very intimate and personal experience as well.
00:19:22
And so that’s really what I tried to document and I think, looking back now, you know, I’ve just opened an exhibition, here inside Vije?nica, which was the City Hall, which was burned down during the siege and destroyed has now been beautifully restored. And we’re now in the middle, as you alluded to, in the middle of a week of events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the siege, which, you know, it seems incredible that it’s 30 years ago, it’s hard to believe that it’s not long ago. And Bosnia in some ways, it’s still very much trapped in its past. It’s still frozen by the Dayton agreement. But you know, on the other hand, there’s still there is a lot of creativity in the city, a lot of there is hope. There is obviously a lot of great young people here who are trying to create a better future.
00:20:05
And so it’s a very poignant week of events and made even more, obviously, even more, poignant because of what’s obviously happening in Ukraine because the playbook as it were the pattern of events that happened in Yugoslavia and Bosnia, which were quite similar to the events that we saw in Chechnya and obviously now that we also saw in Syria and Aleppo. And now we’re seeing in Ukraine with hopefully a different outcome final outcome will obviously the casualties there are pretty horrendous. It’s extraordinary that the international community you know, this, it really makes that claim of never again, sound extremely hollow because we’ve heard it so often. And I think the lesson you know, the international lesson in a way is that standing up to these aggressive acts extremely strongly and extremely vocally in advance of them happening rather than waiting until it’s basically too late to intervene is sadly not a lesson to particularly being learned in the capitals.
00:21:03
Anyway, perhaps show the short film. There’s a four-minute film I’m going to show which is just a kind of compilation of photographs from the siege it was produced for me by a fantastic gallery called 11/7/95, which is the anniversary of the Srebrenica gallery run by Tarik Samira, for an exhibition I did a few years ago but it just gives you a flavor of the work that I did during the siege. So hopefully that’s going to run without too many problems, David, thank you.
00:21:36
David Campbell: Can you hear that okay?
00:21:37
Paul Lowe: Yeah that’s much better. That’s perfect.
00:25:41
David Campbell: Wow, that’s an incredible production, putting all those images together. So that is part of an exhibition this week?
00:25:48
Paul Lowe: Actually, no, that’s one we made a few years ago. But the exhibition this week is 30 images from that. And we’ve printed them up really large on mesh. But I’ll try and upload, I might try and upload a picture before we finish here. But they’re, the pitches are sort of two meters, two meters across by one-half high. So they look pretty extraordinary. They’re almost life-size, and by bigger than life-size, some of them and we’ve installed it inside Vije?nica. So I’ll see actually if I can upload a picture into my computer, so just show people towards the end. Approximately how it looks. But yeah.
00:26:18
David Campbell: Well, thanks for that. Let’s Ron, let’s go to you.
00:26:29
Ron Haviv: Okay. Well, as Paul mentioned, I started documenting the conflict in the first war in Slovenia. And I recall, as I made my way to Slovenia, by train from Zagreb, which is the capital of Croatia, I met a young girl on the train. And she was really very upset. And she said, “This is the end of Yugoslavia was first Slovenia, then Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo.” She like, said it all like step by step she knew exactly what was going to happen. I said, “Come on, please don’t Don’t be ridiculous. This is the 1990s. We’re in Europe, there’s not going to be a war this is this will be over soon, and everything will be fine.” And that’s how I entered documenting this conflict with this sort of complete naive understanding of what was about to occur. And what several months into the Croatian war became obvious to me, at least as all the weaponry was being moved to Bosnia, that Bosnia was going to start at some point unless they could figure out some sort of political solution, which nobody gave much hope for.
00:27:49
So this idea, “Welcome to Sarajevo,” which I think became representative not only of the city of Sarajevo of work you just saw from Paul but of just of the entire war in Bosnia, but also sometimes a war Bosnia is also often assumed by people to be all of the wars combined. And in some ways, it is because the same characteristics, the same brutality, the same reasoning existed throughout all the different conflicts that kind of moved from place to place in the former Yugoslavia. And as we moved to the kind of the next image, and kind of for myself. I had been there on April sixth, which was the day where Bosnians had declared that they were going to have a peace march in Sarajevo, to show the world that they still believed in this idea of Yugoslavia, which was the idea of the Yugoslav not the Bosnian, not the Croatian, not the Serb, but the Yugoslav, which is not relevant of what the different ethnicities were and they could all get along, as they had been under the semi-benevolent dictatorship of, of Tito. And when Tito died, things started to kind of break apart.
00:29:13
And so here you see Bosnians in Sarajevo, taking cover as a Serbian government opens fire on the crowd from the roof of the Holiday Inn, which later became famous for being the home of the journalists. And then the next photograph, and this kind of backtracks a little bit towards the war in Croatia. This is a man here. You see, his name is Archon. He was a very famous paramilitary leader. His unit was called if you can’t guess by the photograph was called, “The Tigers.” And this is a photograph that I taken along with Alexandra when we met our Archon in the Croatian war, and we had gone there or to see if we could document what his men were doing. And he said, “No, there’s nothing we can do together right now.” But Archon spoke many languages, including French and English, and consider himself, a bit of a ladies’ man immediately became smitten with Alexandra and asked her, “Well, what would you like me to do?” And she said, “Oh, I’d love to do a portrait.” And he said, “Okay, no problem.” And then without any more input from Alex or I, he went out into the courtyard of his headquarters in a town called Grudes, and got all his men to get up on this tank with their balaclavas and Serbian flag and so on and sit in front, right before Alex and I were about to photograph this somebody handed him this baby tiger, which he had said had been quote, unquote, “Liberated from a zoo in Croatia.” And so my relationship with Archon began here. He liked my version of the photograph, and made it into a poster and so on. Copyright didn’t seem to be much of an issue with him.
00:31:04
As we moved to the next images. It enabled me to get access with Archon when I came upon him again, a few months later, in a town called Bijeljina, which was just on the Bosnian, Serbian border. And this was a few days before the official beginning of the war, which many people consider the day of the Peace March, the beginning. This is about five days before. And Archon arrived to help the Serbian population who were fighting already against the Muslim population in this town, that kind of basically split along ethnic lines. And after three or four days of fighting, Archon arrived. And I went up to him and reminded him that I had taken this photograph with him. And he said, “Okay, fine, go off with this group of guys who are going to go clean the town of quote, unquote, “Muslim fundamentalist,” which I never actually want to have seen. And they went into the center of town. They stopped at a mosque. And in the mosque, they found this man Haroush Zubiri, who actually was working in Bosnia, but actually, it was a Macedonian, Albanian Muslim, working in a pizza place to raise money for himself and his young wife who just married. And Haroush route was taken out of the mosque. And you see on the right side of the frame, the Serbian paramilitaries holding several pistols, which she said was found in the mosque, and that were Haroush’s, which he denied. And this is why Haroush being from Kosovo, is for them the ultimate symbol of Serbian nationalism. He was obviously against them. And they were going and they arrested him, they took him off, took him away.
00:32:58
And the next photograph you’ll see here is a combination of the violence that took place across the street from the mosque, where we see the Parajeti that the husband and wife Abdullah and Hajmeta Parajeti lying on the ground next to Tifa Shabanavich. And they are, had just been shot by the Tigers. And just as we were leaving, Sujan Goolevich, who is the Tiger you see with a cigarette in one hand, and sunglasses on his head, kind of walked up to them and kind of decided to make this gesture towards them. And I had photographed the people by themselves, and I had photographed the soldiers by themselves, but I had not gotten a photograph of the two together. And I was kind of in my memory, I thought of this had been like a very wide street, but actually, having gone back a number of times, it’s a very narrow street. And I kind of stood in the middle of the street, and I just wanted a frame of the soldiers walking by when Sujan oblige me with this photograph. And this picture was then along with the photograph of Haroush and other things that happened that day were published in Time and Stern and other magazines. Later that week, kind of really, before the war had really kicked off.
00:34:34
And I have thought that these photographs would be kind of photographic evidence, kind of the tipping point, given the amount of activity of talking heads of diplomacy and journalists, pundits, everybody’s saying the West needs to intervene immediately in this conflict, to stop it from starting. I thought here was the evidence of unarmed middle age Muslim civilians being killed, executed by well-armed Serbian paramilitaries. What more would you need as a warning sign? And the photographs are, of course, ignored at that time by the international community. And because of this being there, what I really thought was the beginning of that conflict, I thought it necessary to really see to see it through. Also having been in Slovenia, and Croatia, I thought this was in some ways, both individual stories of each conflict, but also kind of the continuous dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
00:35:35
So as I spend more time, you would come across different scenes. This is towards the end of the war. This is a soldier Sinad Madonnavich, who was fighting with the fifth corps in Bosnia as they were retaking much of the land that they have lost during the previous three years of conflict. And so each man was basically fighting to take back his village. And here you see Sinad standing in front of his house, where he said 69 of his relatives had been killed and buried in the yard. And just as we were leaving, I was with several other photographers who just collapsed against a tree in grief.
00:36:25
In 1992, I was working on the Serbian side, and I’m actually realizing that I was on a list to be arrested and possibly killed. But I thought it was important to document everything that was going on. And one of the things of course, was when Ed Vulliamy and Ike and crew as well as Roy Guttman discovered the evidence that there were prison camps that existed. And it was incredibly important to obviously document what was going on.
00:36:55
And with an actual invitation from the Bosnian Serbs, I went to Tripoli in this picture from Manja?a to document what was happening. And you see here in this photograph, and I think in the next one, kind of the reality of what was going on. Their condition, according to the Serbs was due to tuberculosis, not to what they were saying, which was no food, torture, executions, and so on. And what was interesting was that these photographs along obviously, the story of the concentration of not the concentration, of the camps themselves, became very big news. But they weren’t these were not camps of the Nazis, or weren’t ovens and so on. It was incredibly brutal, and people were being killed. But once a world was sort of assumed that they weren’t as bad as people imagined, they allow the services just kind of closed down some camps and then open up new camps elsewhere.
00:37:55
And the story of the camps kind of disappeared until later, when eventually everything kind of came back with the International Criminal Tribunal. And photographs, including mine, were used as evidence to indict and convict people for war crimes.
00:38:19
Here is also kind of the attempt that we all have is always to try to show all the different sides and here’s a prisoner release. It’s a Serbian prisoner being released and reunited with his family. But as Paul said, very early on, it became very difficult unless you were Serb, Russian or some Slavic nation very difficult to work on the Serbian side. And they did themselves a great injustice because we were very, we were unable to really see what the Serbian civilian population was suffering during the conflict. Well, I don’t think that there was an imbalance between the two different sides. It certainly would have been much more helpful if people understood that all sides were suffering.
00:39:06
This is a photograph of Mostar. Within the bigger war, there was a smaller war between the Muslims and the Croats, which with the epicenter in Mostar, which completely showed how everything was completely falling apart and everybody was fighting against each other. And in 1995 a town, which had been promised to be protected by the United Nations, one of several, a town called Srebrenica fell to. Let’s go back, David. Fell to Serbian forces, and it said that more than 8000 men and boys were executed by Serb forces while many of the women and children were bused to Bosnian lines and eventually put into you know, nations count.
00:40:02
And this woman lost her son and is completely outraged at the lack of inaction by the United Nations. And I met her a few years ago again. When at The Hague, Rocco Malachi who was the Serbian general, and Bosnian-Serbian General, who was in charge of the operation was convicted of crimes for Srebrenica and did exactly the same thing upon hearing the conviction. So it’s kind of interesting, it’s an interesting photograph that you can see in the book called “Imagine: Reflections on Peace” that we did on post-war society. Next.
00:40:51
Here’s is similar to the photograph you saw from Alex, she and I were working together in the neighborhood of Grbavica where Serbs were trying to force all Serbs to leave that they shouldn’t live under a multi-ethnic ruling in Sarajevo. But it was quite, quite sad. Next.
00:41:14
And the Serbs were so adamant about not living under Bosnian rule, that before they left, they went to the cemetery and took, dug up their ancestors, put them in the back of their station wagons and pickup trucks and tractors, and drove them out of Sarajevo, which I thought was, I’m not actually really understanding how to comprehend what they were doing. They were so adamant, not, there’ll be no way to ever live with Bosnian Muslims or Croats again.
00:41:50
This, the arrival of American forces coming in to enforce the Dayton Peace Agreement.
00:42:02
And then this last photograph, I think, actually, even though the photograph of a photograph is probably the most true photograph about not only this conflict in Bosnia, all the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, the conflict going on right now between Russia and Ukraine, in that it is a photograph of a Bosnian family. It’s the Falco family. They all survived the conflict. They were living in a suburb of Sarajevo called Alija. And they fled. They fled, and a Serbian family or Serbians moved into their home. When Dayton called for the reunification of Sarajevo, the Serbs left their home, but took everything out of the house, including the electricity, and the copper piping, there was nothing left. The only thing left on the floor was his family photograph. And you can see with probably a razor blade and a drill bit, they erased their identity. And that’s basically what most conflicts are about. It’s about the other, being afraid of the other, wanting to make sure that the other doesn’t exist, the other can come and kill your family. And people will do anything, if they believe that is what’s true to protect what they have, including erasing anybody. Thank you.
00:43:30
David Campbell: Thanks, Ron. I mean, you’re speaking to us from Kyiv. What’s it like having put this edit together of Bosnia 30 years ago, while in Kyiv what parallels do you draw? What similarities do you see? Or what differences do you see?
00:43:49
Ron Haviv: Well, I think probably the first let’s start of the first difference, slash similarity, which is the Bosnians were not given any hope to win the war. They were expected to lose the war quite quickly. There was an arms embargo. Nobody wanted to help them. But the world felt for the world population and suddenly supported them the underdogs trying to fight the good fight. Here in Ukraine, nobody gave the Ukrainians more than a few weeks to hold out against the Russians. The differences? Of course, there was no arms embargo. And the popularity as great as it was with Bosnia is probably I think, there’s never been as high for any kind of conflict in our lifetime, given the bigger conflicts were more divisive. This is quite incredible what’s going on here with world support, which is waning because people are getting tired of it but it’s pretty, it is pretty fantastic. So the spirit of the Ukrainians mimics the spirit of the Bosnians- to keep fighting. That they know they’re fighting for their home. They know they’re fighting for what they believe is the right thing. And that I think is huge and very hard to fight against.
00:45:06
At the same time, as we see now, as the Russians are pulling out, especially out of areas around Kyiv, where I spent the last few days, once again, taking literally the same photographs of executed civilians. People with their hands tied behind their back, people hardly buried in the mass grave, because it’s too dangerous during the conflict to give them a proper burial. The just kind of shock of the world again, 30 years later, “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe this happening in Europe.” Right? So during Bosnia, “I can’t believe there’s another war happening in the 20th century.” Now, it’s like, “I can’t believe there’s another war happening in Europe in the 21st century.” It’s a bit of a, you know, it’s a bit disappointing. And so when we look at what eventually happened with Bosnia with Srebrenica, where the world was eventually shamed into acting in a way that would be a deterrent to the Serbian forces. The war ended, along with, you know, supporting the Bosnians with weapons as they were able to start fighting for themselves.
00:46:14
I think here, even though there is huge support, both with the economic sanctions and military support, I agree with President Zelensky of Ukraine, that it’s not enough. And then I think as soon as, if they do the world community does balance out like they did in Bosnia, with planes with more tanks with more artillery. Then the war will end because there’ll be other detente or the Russians will realize they can afford to lose more men.
00:46:50
David Campbell: Paul, can I bring you back in to ask about the question of impact and images. I mean, Ron was when showing his photos was talking about the disappointment in particular at how those photographs with Arkan troops around Belina didn’t get through to international consciousness at that point, and then even the camp photos. You know, they created quite a media spectacle at the time, but they didn’t prompt intervention and so on. I mean, how do you think about the question of impact and what the photos might be able to do, or I mean, is it asking too much for photos?
00:47:27
Paul Lowe: Yeah, well, the French philosopher Giorgio, had a great quote by saying that, “We ask too much, and too little of photographs.” You know, to expect photographs alone to elicit change in any kind of substantial way is too much. But equally, we shouldn’t sort of, you know, divest them totally of their power, because they are very intensely concentrated symbols of whatever it is you’re trying to get across. And I think it’s very important that we do bear witness to these events. And I think, hopefully, my work and absolutely Ron’s work is a testament to that, because it’s been used in ICTY tribunals. It’s been used in history books. It’s been used in all sorts of other contexts after the event. And in a sense, the sort of counterfactual you have to imagine the world without photographs. And what kind of evidence would we then have, of these things happening?
00:48:16
I think what’s very interesting in Ukraine is the cycle of evidence gathering, to sort of creating a case for potential prosecution has been massively accelerated. And I think there are some really interesting ways and really intriguing ways at the moment in which journalism, human rights activists, discourse and legal apparatus are beginning to become much more symbiotic. So you know, the New York Times is exposed today of the Russian claims that the bodies in Bucha, were staged, and so on by, you know, forensically looking at satellite images from the weeks before, in the days before and comparing them geolocating and geotagging to actual bodies, where you can see a satellite image of a body taken, you know, three or four days ago, and the actual body lying in the street today. So I think it’s a very interesting kind of space in which the visual realm and its potential power has been kind of accelerated by that.
00:49:08
But equally at the moment, we’re also seeing, obviously, people questioning the power, questioning the veracity of photographs. But I think we’re in an interesting point where things like you know, we’ve something we’ve been working on with the VII Foundation is this Adobe’s new, you know, image tracking verification processes, to make images in a sense, more believable, more truthful, to invest in with them with an extra level of veracity. I think if you combine that with an author, like, let’s say, you know, Ron, who has such a long track record of producing, authentic, honest, truthful work, and has proven time and time again, that’s what he does. And we can talk about all sorts of other journalists who are doing exactly the same thing in Ukraine. I think we can build a space in which journalism and the visual realm is worthwhile, is important and can play a significantly important role.
00:50:02
I think, to be honest, I think, obviously, Ukraine as a, there’s all sorts of issues around why Ukraine has captured the public’s attention and when other similar or perhaps not, you know, other situations in other parts of the world have not in terms of the refugee crisis. And, and obviously, you know, what we’re seeing now in terms of executions is probably going even beyond that. But I think that undoubtedly, you know, photographs have played a big, big part in mobilizing opinion.
00:50:30
And I think it’s also very interesting, the way that you know, things like Instagram and Twitter have become now the spaces in which those images are circulated. I mean, one of the very interesting debates on Twitter over this last week or so has been between Ukrainians, journalists, human rights activists, historians, and philosophers about whether we should be circulating these images of bodies. And if so, whether we should be pixelating them or not. And it’s a really interesting discussion, and all sorts of sides have come up, on one hand, saying, “No, we shouldn’t, because it’s disrespectful to the victims.” Another Ukrainian voice saying, “No, we have to see this evidence, we have to see how brutal this is because if you don’t see the sheer brutality of it then, you know, you won’t take action.” And I think what’s interesting about Twitter particularly, is it has become a space where these debates and discussions are being played out kind of in real-time. Because I think people will post things on Twitter that are more graphic, even if they do have what, you know, content warnings, and so on, then you potentially see in mainstream media. So I think it’s a really interesting set of debates. The Ukraine crisis is really obviously, thrown into the foreground.
00:51:39
But I think all of that essentially supports the idea that yes, it is absolutely important that photographic evidence that is believable, trustworthy, and authenticated, however, that process is done, whether it’s through a technological process, or whether through authenticating the source is still a very, very powerful weapon or very powerful tool in the world. And I think, in a sense, you know, photographers exist to make photographs and show them to people and then people that have to decide what to do with them. And I think that’s the issue really is, yes, we can find ways in which we might get our work out to audiences more rapidly, more effectively, more systematically. But at the end of the day, we as individual photographers, or even collections of photographers, and media outlets, we can’t force people to take action. There has to be other mechanisms. But I think we do form a very important part in that chain of producing the evidence upon which other people can then act. And I think the classic line is still very true. You know, once it’s been seen, you can’t pretend that you haven’t seen it. You can’t claim that it doesn’t, it’s not there.
00:52:44
David Campbell: You can, of course. I’ll bring in an audience question because of course, the claim now is not whether you’ve seen it or not seen it, but it’s the immediate response of an authority to say it’s fake.
00:52:58
Paul Lowe: Yes. Well, that’s where I think that’s where this whole issue of verification comes in.
00:52:44
David Campbell: Yeah exactly. So Ron a question from Tequila Minsky in the audience, “Today’s users of mass executions in a suburb Bucha and so on. Have you seen the evidence? Russian Ambassador denies all this, and investigators inverted commas I suppose to authenticate these executions. Talk us through what evidence you’ve seen. And then kind of also build on Paul’s point about what you think the role of the photograph here is in terms of evidence?”
00:53:32
Ron Haviv: Sure. Well, yes, I mean, I just returned from Bucha an hour ago, and continuing to find, they’re continuing to find bodies and people with their hands tied and no apparent reason why walked into down into a basement cellar, and then a man’s been shot. For what apparent reason? Absolutely no idea, but he’s down in his basement. Found a group of buddies yesterday, with their hands tied behind their back, shot at close range. People shot in the head, a family that’s been burned. It’s going to be I think, without question, they’re already saying it’s going to be very difficult to figure out a lot of what happened, given quite often there’s nobody else on the street when these things happen or piecing it together. But I think that without question, it certainly looks like I mean, I’m not a judge. And I’m not a forensic expert, but I’m certainly on the way to looking like these are these are war crimes.
00:54:34
And I think that it’s important for us photographers, and journalists to be documenting this. I think that especially this is so overwhelming, it’s in so many places. That in the end, I think that our photography and video will be used to help pinpoint and help the authorities. I was traveling with the intelligence investigator today from Ukraine as well as the prosecutor for the area and he was saying, they were both saying to myself and Heidi Levine from the Washington Post about how important it was that we were there that, “They need, they need us. They need the journalism and the visual documentation on several levels.” One, just to help them find out physically where things are. And also, to make sure the world understands what’s happening, or at least has an understanding.
00:55:30
And this is where obviously, the question about impact comes in. And what does this mean? And is it just for today’s Instagram feed, tomorrow’s newspaper and so on? And while yes, it is without question, I do think there’s value in that there is and will be photographs from here that are going to live beyond all of it. And just use my own work as an example. So going back to the photograph from Bosnia, of the Serbian paramilitary with the victims. I’m currently working on a documentary with Lauren Walsh, where we’re basically doing a biography of this photo. And actually, the name of the documentary is called “Biography with Photo.” And we’re looking at what happened when the photograph was born in 1992, and what has happened over the last 30 years, and that photograph has taken a life completely independent of mine, having an impact in a variety of different ways. When the international tribunal for the Hague was opened, a prosecutor, in his opening speech said that the photograph was one of the inspirations for the creation of the tribunal. It then went on, the photograph then went on to help indict and convict people of war crimes as late as about six months ago in one of the last trials.
00:56:49
Photography has been often turned in or this photograph, but much of photography that lives on and on becomes part of different aspects of life. So it’s been turned into art, been turned into comic strips, been used in education. It’s been made into installations at the Venice Biennial, also all sorts of different interpretations that photography does have the opportunity to continue to have an impact on people’s lives. And so in the biography, in the documentary when we speak to people, “Do you remember this photograph on it when you first saw it?” “Yes. And then it made me do X, Y, and Z.” This is the power of photography. It’s not with every photograph. But there are photographs that have this ability to alter things. And I think that is a testament to what certainly the people on this panel are doing.
00:57:44
David Campbell: Yeah. And also, as you pointed out, it’s not something that you had control over or planned that you said that photograph took on a life of its own. And in that sense, so out of all the images you’re taking today, you don’t know which one is going to be important in five years, 10 years, 20 years, or whatever out of Ukraine, which I think is testament to the fact you have to take as many as possible now to see what.
00:58:13
Ron Haviv: It’s important to document whatever we’re seeing without question. Yeah, absolutely.
00:58:17
David Campbell: Yeah. So there’s kind of a, take everything, there might be a wide for social media, a narrow edit for mainstream media and then it will appear in different channels, and you don’t know what the resonance or the effect is going to be on that. I think that’s kind of a significant thing. Ziyah, if you’re there, I wonder if I can bring you in for a question? And also, just to say to people in the audience, you got a few minutes to drop questions into the q&a box. I mean, we’re talking about the impact of these photos. But now on the 30th anniversary in Sarajevo, they’re being used in moments of historical memory commemoration and so on. It’s impossible to say what everyone in Sarajevo thinks about this or what everyone in Bosnia thinks about this, but from your perspective, how do you think these photographs are viewed now? What function are they playing now 30 years on?
00:59:10
Ziyah Gafic: Oh, that’s I don’t think we have enough time for that. But I think what’s, I would like to sort of continuing on the fact that photography that Ron mentioned that photography in his case, in this case, the one from Vietnam, but I think that goes for photography, in general, can take a life on its own. I think what that also means is that the context in which the images are seen is different, right? So here we are 30 years later, and the context is entirely different. The images are seen in different environments, and when I say environment and context, yes, I mean, they are seen in galleries or city halls and so on and so forth. But they also seen in politically and culturally different contexts that this place is different, totally different than it was 30 years ago. And that’s, we have to, unfortunately, we have to factor in the daily politics. So whatever’s happening today, here in Sarajevo, with all due respect, is also happening in the current political climate. And each and every part or party or political entity in this country will pick and choose, right? What suits their, you know, agenda. We are in an election year of come October, right.
01:00:35
And I think there’s a grave danger in that and none of us have, we can’t do anything about it, because all we can do is project these images in the air, so to speak, or in the gallery. And then they’re out of our hands, right? What they are going to spark is beyond us. And in this country very often, and if we go now, like this moment, or tomorrow, if we go into the, you know, the comments sections in the in the local media, you will see more hate speech than two days ago. Right? That’s a fact, and that happens every time. There is an exhibition film, whatever about the past comes into it, you know, ends up in the mainstream media online, largely. And then you see these common sections exploding with, you know, whatever, nationalism, hate speech, and so on and so forth.
01:01:30
So what I’m trying to say it’s, I’m not really it’s more of a question is like, how do we, it’s a wrong choice. It’s a poor choice of words, but how do we control this narrative? Or like, how do, can we exercise any level of control of our images, and what effect our images will have? I don’t know if that makes sense. Right? And it’s a slippery slope. And you know, on one end, here we are, that’s what we do we document what’s in front of us, then those pictures have their, you know, life on their own. And then fast forward 30 years ago, you see this, you know, there’s parking, you know, not healthy debate, unfortunately, at least not in this country. Very rarely, anything of a substance would spark a healthy debate for that matter, just to move even step forward. You know, some of these photographs have been used in court cases, right. So here, the assumption was, okay, we’re going to establish an international tribunal, we’re going to sentence the bad guys. And then the peace and reconciliation will stem from it. Right. That was sort of the logic behind it. And actually, the opposite thing happened. I think now we can say, totally opposite thing happened. And we can have evidence for it. So each time a Serb war criminal would be sentenced two other sides will cheer and celebrate. And I mean, literally cheer and celebrate, while the other two will grieve, even though we’re talking about some 70-year-old dudes who most of the population never ever met. The same goes for the Croats and Bosniaks. So, you know, instead of, you know, true reconciliation stemming from justice, we’re actually having an opposite effect. So I don’t know if that makes if that’s an answer to your question.
01:03:18
David Campbell: Well, it means it’s very complex. But the important point is that they’re being received in different circumstances. And then they’re becoming tools in that circumstance for different sorts of things.
01:03:29
Ziyah Gafic: And we have so little control over it, if any, as it alters.
1:03:34
David Campbell: Yeah. I get this question to Paul from Una, “How did you, when you were photographing in Sarajevo in the siege? How did you photograph people and keep their dignity and not hurt their feelings? Because in some of the photos, people were dying in critical situations?”
1:04:01
Paul Lowe: Yeah, I think it’s very difficult. I’m just actually showing a couple of those pictures appropriate for that now, so can see these on the screen?
1:04:08
David Campbell: Yes.
1:04:10
Paul Lowe: So I mean, you know, it’s a very difficult situation. But I think most of the time, you know, there’s, there’s a sort of unspoken often this is done, not even verbally, it’s done so with body language that your presence has been accepted, you’ve been allowed into that space. So for example, you know, photographing in the morgue or photographing the funeral or photographing somebody being operated on, you know, to save their life? Yes, it’s very difficult, you can’t say to somebody is it okay if I take your picture, but on the other hand, you can through your body language, through the way you move, through glances, through exchanging, you know, expressions with somebody, there is a sense I think in which your presence is accepted. But clearly, there are boundaries that you can’t overstep boundaries that you shouldn’t cross. And I think you have to be very sensitive to that. You have to be very aware that your presence, you are there, you know, your presence is causing a ripple if not a disturbance in the space that you’re in. But you’ve got to be very careful about how you manage that space.
1:05:07
Now, sometimes, you know, clearly working in operating theatre, you’ve got the permission of the doctors, as long as you kind of don’t interfere with what they’re doing, and they’re happy. There were times when we were told, “No, you can’t come in.” And obviously, as the war progressed, that became more common in all sorts of situations. Because at the beginning, I think, as we believed naively, the Bosnians also believed that if the story was told, if access is given that, you know, action will be taken, and when that didn’t happen, people began to question what was the point of us being there and why we should be there. But I think it’s a very, you know, it’s an important thing to think about as a journalist, the kind of ethics as it were, of your, your presence and how you’re moving through a situation. But most of the time you are accepted, you know, and you’re not there, sort of bullying people or kind of forcing people to be photographed, you’re trying your best to be discreet, to be respectful, ethical, if you like.
1:06:01
And I just wanted to quickly show some of these images from the installation, we just hung in the Vije?nica, and hopefully, you can see the scale of that podium as a sort of human size. And so you can see. And it was quite a powerful experience to put this particular picture that’s in the center there, which was taken more or less from exactly where this camera position is 29 years ago in the ruins of the same building, and reposition it pretty much exactly where it was taken. And so you know, I think what to go back to your point earlier on as well, David about edits, it’s not just I think edits, in terms of how you might. It’s the historical edit as well, and going through my work now and looking back at it, images that didn’t seem very interesting or very important, at the time of editing them for news, or even for a kind of documentary purpose, now suddenly have a very strong historical feeling. They have a kind of anthropological, ethnographic almost. So you know, the way that people created gardens out of their balconies behind the concrete barriers and so on. There’s a whole sort of another register if you like, and those images and I think in many ways, you’re not aware of that at all. At the time, it’s very much for later. And that’s certainly something that I’ve discovered going through my archive is that many photographs that I never even marked up on the contact sheet at the time are now ones that are very much a part of the story today. So I think the archive of your work definitely changes over time and takes on different meanings, and different resonances as it goes forward.
01:07:31
David Campbell: Yeah, crucial point. Ron, a question to you from Olivia in the audience about the relationship between the work you do and the fact that everyone has a smartphone and can take photos and post on social media. “What role can a photojournalist play in today’s world where everyone can take snapshots and easily share them on social media?”
01:07:52
Ron Haviv: Well, I think, our role is not just a photographer, but a journalist as well. That’s not something that’s easily replaced by somebody with a smartphone. So you’re supposed to be working, as an author. You’re supposed to be working with a set of ethics. You’re supposed to be working with an understanding of what you’re trying to say. And hopefully, although there are obviously many, many amazing amateur photographers, and so on, but you as a professional are supposed to be consistent with a higher quality of your interpretation of the world through your visual, aesthetic. So all those things combined, are what should make your work stand above.
01:08:36
It’s great that so many people are interested in photography, and are taking photographs, and we see things that we never would have seen before. But for people that are doing things consistently, and people that are able to show the world the way that they’re thinking about something in a smart manner, often hopefully in a manner that hasn’t been done before. Then your work in your life as a professional photographer will be fine.
01:09:01
Paul Lowe: So David, just on that point, I think photojournalists tell stories, and very rarely do you see that in social media. And that’s the point that we research, we have a perspective, we interrogate, we analyze, we understand, and we make extended bodies of work. And that’s not something that you typically see from citizen journalists, for example. And also very importantly, we are then embedded in system dissemination. So we have agencies, we have networks that can actually circulate as images. And again, most of the time, that doesn’t happen beyond the kind of initial flurry of social media usage. They’re not then archived and captioned and keyworded and made accessible and searchable later on.
01:09:41
David Campbell: Yeah, I think I would also add that sometimes those things are not in direct social media and citizen production is not in direct competition as it were with professional production because of the sort of material that has been produced by participants who are shooting video on the streets during battles and etc is being collated and aggregated and then becomes actually supporting evidence for some of the other things as well. So you see that when Bellingcat puts things together, or the New York Times visual investigations, people put things together, they verify that video, but then they’re using that that firsthand video, but it is the professional images that will then stand out as kind of the sort of historical memory of that, I think.
01:10:23
Two kind of geopolitical and strategic questions to end with. So one for Ziyah, Ted is asking about the impact of the invasion of Ukraine on regional politics in and around Bosnia. “Is it emboldening Serbia? I mean, because on the one hand, we’re looking at Bosnia 30 years on, there has been, we shouldn’t downplay some of the successes, in the sense that the Dayton Peace Agreement is incredibly flawed. The freezing of the conflict has many problems. But there has been a fragile peace for 25 years, and so on, and there’s not been an outbreak of conflict. Are we going to see that change? Are we at risk of new conflicts in the Balkan region?”
01:11:16
Ziyah Gafic: Well, I mean, I suppose if I knew that answer would be playing lotto and lottery but anyway, I don’t think so. And it’s, here’s my reason, I think, to start a war, one side has to believe or to have a belief that it’s overwhelmingly stronger than the other side. I think that’s like one of the main elements to start a fight with anyone. Right. And that was the case in the 90s. That’s the case, obviously, in Ukraine, because when you look at it, it seems obvious that Russia is so much stronger, and it is, and so on, and so forth. Well, anyway, today in Bosnia that’s not the case. Today in Bosnia and including local, you know, our neighbors, Serbia, on the east, the ratio between power is totally different. We don’t have a strong Yugoslav army that we had, which was, you know, for better or worse, was one of the strongest militaries in this part of the world, in these parts of the world, we don’t have that. We have just a bunch of small countries, right? Each four to seven million. So even number-wise, we are kind of roughly there. And if you want to look into numbers of how many people you need to invade another country, we are nowhere, none of these countries is nowhere near the bottom line is the distribution of weapons, legal or illegal is very much in balance.
01:12:45
So I think that’s what keeping, that is exactly what’s keeping this area in check, so to speak. And I don’t think the peace was ever fragile. I don’t think so. You know, NATO is built-in our Constitution. NATO doesn’t need our permission or to be invited to act, should they, you know, if they ever decide to, and for that matter, they did, you know, there’s a small influx of military here, you know, they don’t have to ask any anyone. So I don’t think it was ever a fragile peace. But then again, that’s what as we heard from Paul and Ron, that’s what we all believed in 92 so right? But no I don’t think Serbia in this case feels empowered. Contrary, I think it feels threatened. Right. That’s my take.
01:13:35
David Campbell: So Ron, final question. Another geopolitical strategic one from Glenn. In the discussion on Bosnia, he heard both you and Paul say that one of the mistakes was that the West should have used their military muscle to stop genocide earlier, rather than waiting over three years. But today, with the adversary being a conventional nuclear-armed Russia, do you think it’s time we, the West, challenge Russia with the full capability of NATO to force Russia out of Ukraine and accept the possibility of a wider war?
01:14:07
Ron Haviv: Well, I think for me, I think earlier, my real statement was that they should have allowed the Bosnians to have the weapons and fight for themselves. And when they didn’t, that’s why I wound up where NATO had to intervene. I think that here, I think, you know, letting the Ukrainians purchase their weapons and be able to be supplied to be able to fight a fair fight as close as possible is fair. Do I think that we should engage to the point of nuclear? Obviously, no, but I suppose that is risk. We’re always taking. The question of course is, and I think that, or the statement is that Ukraine is fighting for Ukraine’s survival, but I think they’re also fighting for the sort of New World Order and the way the world is going to work. So it’s a double their fighting on two sides or two levels, and I do think that had the Russians had been able to quickly take this. I do believe there’s probably some merit in thinking that Moldova, I don’t know if about the Baltics, but certainly, some other places would be at risk. And of course, what would that mean for China and Taiwan? It’s a tough question. Well, I think it’s certainly not something that can be easily answered in one sentence. But, you know, we are in another kind of historical moment where the world is gonna go one way or the other.
01:15:38
David Campbell: Yeah. Well, we are over our time, so that brings us to the end. I’m sorry, we don’t have time for more questions. Thank you very much to Ziyah, Paul, and Ron, for participating today. I think this is very important to mark the 30 years of the war in Bosnia and to reflect on what’s happening now. Lots of unanswered questions, we will come back to some of them in future events. Ron, stay safe in Kyiv, and Ziyah and Paul, thank you for joining both of you from Sarajevo.
01:16:11
Paul Lowe: Thank you very much. And yeah, absolutely. Ron, take care. Thank you very much, David. Thanks. And thanks to the audience. Thank you very much.
01:16:19
David Campbell: Bye.
01:16:21
Paul Lowe: Bye.
