Sarajevo's War Damage Totaled $18.5 Billion: Study
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Courtesy Of: Reuters News
By Daria Sito-Sucic
Tue Dec 12, 2006
Tue Dec 12, 2006
10:56am ET
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - The 1992-95 siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo by Serb forces caused 14 billion euros ($18.5 billion) of damage, the author of a study said on Tuesday.
Since 1996, a multi-disciplinary team of Bosnian experts has been collecting data from companies, institutions and individuals for the first comprehensive survey of the destruction in Sarajevo during its 1,417 days of isolation.
"The focus of the study was visible wartime damage, what had been destroyed or taken away, and we have got a figure of 14 billion euros in direct war damages in Sarajevo in the period of 1992-95," Duljko Hasic told Reuters in an interview.
During the siege, Sarajevo and its 340,000 citizens were hit constantly by artillery, mortar and heavy machinegun fire that destroyed apartment houses, hotels, factories, office blocks, waterworks, communications and utilities in general.
Nearly 19,000 people died, 10 percent of them children.
Hasic said the main goal of the study was to establish the facts but also to form a basis for possible reparations.
He cautioned this was an incomplete account of the total losses, since the study did not include indirect wartime damage, for example the loss of foreign markets, business contracts and breaks in production by Sarajevo-based firms.
The loss of rich and rare books in the National Library and the Institute for Oriental Studies, both burned down, is also not included in the survey, he said.
That kind of damage is unlikely to be properly evaluated but the consequences for the economy will be felt over the next 30 to 50 years," said Hasic, who works as an economic expert in Bosnia's Foreign Trade Chamber.
WAR REPARATIONS
Ten years after the war ended, Bosnia has achieved only 80 percent of its 1990 Gross Domestic Product of $10.6 billion, the year in which it exported more than a half of its production to the West, Hasic said.
The worst-hit sectors during the war were industries, banks and other financial institutions that were either destroyed or robbed, accounting for 12 billion euros damage.
The damage in housing amounted to 1 billion euros while public infrastructure, schools and universities, cultural and sports institutions and hospitals accounted for the remaining 1 billion euro, according to the study.
Hasic, a Bosnian Muslim, said the Sarajevo study served as a model for a new survey estimating the total wartime damage in Bosnia, estimated roughly at 200 billion euros.
It has been included as evidence in Bosnia's genocide lawsuit against the former union of Serbia and Montenegro at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which is expected to rule on the case in February 2007, he said.
"The key issue is not war reparations by Serbia and Montenegro but the fact that this country was destroyed and that must never happen again," he said.
Hasic said the war bill should also be studied by the international community too for its failure to intervene.
"They had an important role because they allowed all this to happen. They cannot wash their hands of it now."
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
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