The Battle of the Drina

Available for over a year

The largely unknown story of the siege of Goražde, the only Muslim enclave and UN ‘Safe Area’ in eastern Bosnia to survive the Bosnian war, after the breakup of Yugoslavia. The story of Goražde and how it survived nearly four years of brutal siege is a remarkable tale of individual resilience and courage. But it’s also a story about lack of international will and a near final betrayal that almost wiped out its existence. The failure of the United Nations to act, leading to the genocide in the neighbouring UN Safe Area of Srebrenica, irrevocably damaged the institution. Goražde became the ‘red line that could not be crossed,’ testing the resolve of the international community and almost breaking the NATO alliance. Presented by journalist and filmmaker Fiona Lloyd-Davies, this episode of Archive on 4 takes the listener into the heart of the story, through eye-witness accounts from people who were in Goražde throughout the siege, and those who made the decisions that decided its fate. The voices from Goražde include a PhD engineering student who became a defender and is now the Prime Minister of the canton, a restaurateur who became a commander known as the black pirate and teenagers who dodged snipers and risked freezing to death to find food. Woven into the story are the voices involved in making the decisions that would decide the fate of the town, from diplomats such as Lord Hannay, British Ambassador to the United Nations; David Scheffer who attended cabinet meetings in the Clinton administration’s War Room and British UN peacekeepers who risked their lives to prevent Goražde from falling to the Serbs. It also has a deeply personal angle for Fiona as her sister Vanessa, a doctor in the British Army and seconded to the UN in June 1992, was on the first attempted convoy bringing much needed food and medicines to the besieged town. But the armoured personnel carrier Vanessa was in went over a mine and the convoy found itself in the middle of a firefight. They never reached Goražde. Fiona went to interview Vanessa in Sarajevo a few days after the failed convoy, and heard about it first-hand. It was the first of many assignments in Bosnia, where Fiona worked throughout the war. Yet neither Vanessa or Fiona ever reached Goražde during the war, and Vanessa tragically took her own life some years later. To look for answers and finish her sister's journey, Fiona went to Goražde and uncovered the extraordinary and untold story of the Battle of the Drina. Written and presented by Fiona Lloyd-Davies Produced by Imogen Serwotka A Studio 9 Films production for BBC Radio 4 Image credit: Fiona Lloyd-Davies