All language subtitles for The Death of Yugoslavia - Eyewitness to History The Death of Yugoslavia - Part 2

LOUDSPEAKER: You are now under the
protection of the UN forces.

CLAPPING AND CHEERING

The original series of
Death of Yugoslavia

was finally broadcast in the autumn
of 1995.

The conflict was far from over.

The war between Serbia and Croatia
had reached a stop,

but the war in Bosnia was very much
still going on.

37 were killed.

The ballistics experts confirmed
that the shell came from

Bosnian Serb territory.

It was just what the Americans
were waiting for.

Lo and behold, the Americans
came in, bombed the Serbs

to the conference table.

And the conflict was settled at
a peace conference at Dayton.

This is Paul Mitchell.

And it was just the opportunity
that Paul was waiting for.

Yeah, I'd spent...

..I suppose, the better part of
a year and a half

going into really nasty places.

Erm, not as a war correspondent.

I mean, we certainly didn't ever
film anything going bang,

certainly not on purpose, anyway.

But I think the first time we went
to Sarajevo for a research trip,

we broke every single security rule
that...

Well, actually, at the time,
there were no security rules.

We had no hazard environment
training.

Erm...

No bodyguards. We had nothing.

Fantastically, our co-producer from
Austria had been a paratrooper

in the Austrian Special Forces,
so he really knew what he was doing,

but none of us did, and actually,

the first time we drove
in, we drove in in his soft-bodied

Fiat Panda under sniper fire.

And, erm...

Where the bullets were close enough,
you could actually hear them

going over your head,
which was pretty terrifying.

Fortunately, I didn't know this
at the time.

It was unpleasant.

And you definitely, like it or not,

you develop a sympathy for the
people that you're stuck with.

I mean, it's kind of a hazard of
the business.

If you're in the city that's getting
shot at and shelled

on a regular basis, you're sharing
that with the people you're with.

And no matter how much emotional
distance you want to

put between them,
there is some sort of sympathy.

And I can definitely remember a
moment in the summer of 1995,

when the UN peacekeepers had been
taken hostage in Gorazde,

and there were these awful images
of them handcuffed to poles

and being surrounded by Bosnian Serb
soldiers.

The Canadian, Russian and Czech
military observers detained

at the arms dump attacked earlier
today by Nato bombers were not

the only ones taken hostage by
the Serbs.

At least ten other UN officers,
all of them unarmed,

are being held at gunpoint at other
possible air strike targets.

And, really, the worst thing was
the Srebrenica massacre.

And I definitely remember that
awful, awful photograph

of a woman who hung herself in the
trees, in Tuzla, after escaping.

She was one of the people who
survived the massacre,

but didn't survive the aftermath
herself.

And it really, really hit me hard.

So, when the whole thing finished,
I was...

..happy by the idea that we could
tell the final bit

of the story, cos, you know...

Films sometimes are like books,
you know, you don't finish them,

you deliver them. And this is one
we delivered, but it kind of was

delivered at the wrong moment.

And if you had done it over, you
would have made the boundaries

between them in a different way.

It really was important to tell
the story of the moment

that the Serbs overstepped the mark

and did things that were so horrific
that it shocked

the international community to
rushing to finish the war.

The Serbs laid on coaches
for the civilians -

but when they reached
Muslim territory,

only women and children emerged.

The men of Srebrenica had
disappeared.

There was no refuge.

In this field alone, some 2,000 of
Srebrenica's men are buried.

The peace treaty, the Dayton
Accords - which were signed

at this enormous American Air Force
base in Dayton, Ohio -

were agreed in November,

and then they were signed
in December in Paris.

The BBC said, "Fine, we would like
another programme,

"but it should come as quickly as
possible. On the heels of

"this agreement, people are
interested in Yugoslavia."

"So, I mean, given you took two
years to make the first lot,

"can you do this one a bit quicker,
please?"

So... By a bit quicker, they meant
they meant a LOT quicker.

Yes.

So, you had this great idea to tell
them that on 15 December

in Paris, there would be the actual
signing of the Dayton Agreement,

and all the participants would be
there - the Croats, the Bosnians,

and particularly the Serbs,
as well as the Americans.

And so we'd go to Paris for this
weekend, and do it all.

So, off we went.

Like all great ideas, of course,
it never actually happened that way.

First of all, we got to Paris,
and it snowed,

and then there was a transport
strike, so you couldn't go anywhere

for love or money.

I remember we also were given this
fantastic maroon-coloured...

..Nokia first-generation
mobile phone -

which I'd never seen one before,
which was quite exciting -

and came with one of our
consultants, a very fantastic

Bosnian journalist named
Tihomir Loza.

And Tihomir and I, on the Eurostar
train, opened this thing up

and said, "How do you turn it on,
and what does it do?"

And I think that's as far as we ever
got with it.

We never got it to do anything,

cos none of us knew how to use
a cellphone.

We had got, before we went,

a promise from the key man
in the peace conference,

Richard Holbrooke, who was the sort
of man who could handle Milosevic.

The nice British diplomats -
like Lord Carrington, David Owen -

who had tried before,
had got nowhere.

But Richard Holbrooke was as
tough as Milosevic

and, you know, could stand up to him

and shout what he needed.

My favourite bit in programme six
was when he says to Milosevic,

"OK, I'll talk to the Bosnian Serbs.

"But you have to promise,
no history, no bullshit -

As someone who's had to listen to
a lot of both of that.

When he said it, it worked.

President Milosevic has made
some suggestions,

and we're going to take a quick
break to caucus among ourselves.

The Americans decided to eat
their words.

They would meet the Bosnian Serbs.

So, we said to Milosevic,

"Wait a minute.

"We want to set down some
ground rules.

"Number one, no historical lectures,
no bullshit."

You describe David Owen as a soft
British Foreign Minister,

and I don't think anybody in his
entire life

has called David Owen soft.

He was tough, but he had a
government that absolutely...

Well, it wasn't his government.

It was the Tory government,
actually, of John Major.

But they absolutely were not going
to let any kind of

serious intervention happen.

Every time it came close to
happening, they stuck...

they did something to stop it.

I mean, he said it all at the start
of programme five.

"Don't deceive yourself that the
West is going to come in

"and settle your problems for you."

Don't, don't, don't live under this
dream that the West is going to

come in and sort this problem out.

Don't dream dreams.

Well, in the end, the West did come
in and settled the problems -

but it took two years more.

I mean, you knew that people weren't
taking it seriously.

You had Lord Carrington, who'd
stopped being Foreign Minister

in 1982.

You had David Owen, who'd stopped
being Foreign Minister in 1979.

And you had... But he was the
Europeans' representative.

He wasn't the Americans'
representative.

And that makes a big difference.
Yeah.

And you had Cyrus Vance, who'd been
American Secretary of State

for Jimmy Carter. They were retired
people, basically.

You know, if you're taking it
seriously, you have somebody

who's actually serving in
a government.

And the people there weren't stupid,
they knew that it wasn't going to...

That is to say, it was clear
that American firepower

was behind what they were doing.

So, in the end, the Americans
came in and bombed the Serbs

into submission,
and that's what settled it.

And I mean, that's one place where,
when you think of Ukraine today,

the same thing is true.

The Europeans' initiative
isn't going to work

without the Americans behind it. No.

I mean, the other thing that was
extraordinary on the ground,

I remember, you know, definitely one
of my trips in the making

was there had been all these
British UN soldiers

with their blue hats.

You know, they were kind of designed
to be nonthreatening, essentially.

And once the bombing started, and
they became the implementation force

and no longer the peacekeeping
force, and they traded their

blue helmets for their green khaki
military combat uniforms,

you suddenly thought, actually,
they're quite scary.

And they swap like that.
It was an amazing sight.

The troops on the ground marked
the change

in a different way, as soldiers do.

At the base, in Bugojno, of the
Royal Regiment of Fusiliers,

the blue flag of the United Nations
was lowered, and the blue beret

was replaced by the traditional
red hackle of the Fusiliers.

And even that gave way to combat
helmets this morning,

as they and their armoured vehicles
lined up at Mrkonjic Grad -

a Nato, not a UN force -
to head for the front line.

So, what changed the situation,
I guess, the Srebrenica massacre

just was one too many atrocities,
I guess you can call it,

for the international public opinion
to bear.

I think some of it was also to do
with pure American politics as well.

This was about the time that
Bill Clinton had a few

really bad losses domestically,

and it didn't hurt to have a big
victory that he was right behind,

and that was part of it.

Good evening. After nearly
four years of war,

the leaders of the factions that
have torn Bosnia apart

have finally agreed to
a peace settlement.

It was initialled tonight after
three weeks of negotiations

at an Air Force base in Dayton,
Ohio.

The presidents of Bosnia,
Croatia and Serbia have made

a historic and heroic choice.

They have heeded the will of
their people.

Whatever their ethnic group,
the overwhelming majority

of Bosnia's citizens,
and the citizens of Croatia

and Serbia want the same thing.

They want to stop the slaughter.

They want to put an end to
the violence and war.

They want to give their children
and their grandchildren

the chance to lead a normal life.

Today, thank God, the voices of
those people have been heard.

It was all very quick.

And I just remember thinking,
you know, so many people died

and there was so much suffering,

and, really, it took almost
no time at all.

Two weeks at Dayton. Yeah.

Well, two weeks at Dayton and, what,
maybe two weeks of...

..two weeks of cruise missiles,
and that was about it. Yeah.

The kind of blood and soil
nationalism that was burnt into

the rhetoric that went on before
the shooting started in Bosnia,

and in Croatia, and that carried on
right through the war,

was unbelievably ugly and scary.

And there was sort of an
inevitability to the escalation.

You know, that Milosevic jumped onto
that nationalist bandwagon,

and it was really, really hard
for him to get off it,

and it just escalated and escalated
and escalated.

The other thing that, really,
I was remembering was,

you know, if you talk about
the diplomacy,

the danger of falling into cliches.

I can remember, there was some
American journalist or historian

wrote a book that was really
influential at the time,

where they talked about the ancient
ethnic hatreds of the people

in Yugoslavia, and everybody latched
on to it because...

It became a very convenient thing to
say, "We shouldn't get involved

"because, you know, those people
are like that."

And, you know, it's that kind of
othering,

you know, giving them labels.

You know, they were Muslims,
or they were Serbs,

and they were just, you know,
they hate each other,

and they've always hated each other,

and they always slaughtered
each other.

Rubbish.
Why would we get involved?

And you look where it led.

I think that's one thing the
programmes prove.

Our personal story, when we got our
first interview in Belgrade

with one of Milosevic's generals,
General Panic,

and we had two fixers - one was
a Serb and one was, well, a Muslim,

although she lived in Belgrade.

And we had to go with the Serb
to meet the Serb general,

but, in fact, she was ill that day.

So, we just told Panic that the one
we took with us,

we gave the name of the Serb's,
because the only way he could tell

the difference between them was
the name.

So, when we gave her the Serb name,

he was perfectly happy to deal
with her.

And it made me see just how little
difference there were between

these two people who were fighting.

It just was historical accident.

They were the same thing.
Yeah.

But as a television producer,

I'd say that a lesson I hope people
take away from it is,

this was a complicated conflict,

and if you give producers enough
time and enough resources,

you really can unravel it
and make it into something clear

that teaches people something,
and that tells a very good story.