Yet through it all, the people of Sarajevo have somehow held on to a wry sense of humor. These are modern, educated, European people who have been through hell and survived to rise again. They look just like us. They also look just like one another. One of our colleagues, a Muslim, told us that his best friend before the war was a Croat who now asked him not to visit because he could no longer protect him.
Names are a giveaway as they indicate ethnic origin.
Ethnic integration, as it existed before the war, is probably inconceivable within our lifetime. But if we can create conditions leading to peace in the land, albeit partitioned, we will have accomplished a vitally important mission. There is one perverse benefit from the war. The economy is running at somewhere between 10 percent and 25 percent of what it was five years ago. The huge industrial plants, like the massive steel mill in Zenica, are shut down.