Reporter recounts horrors of Bosnian war

As former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic prepares to stand trial in The Hague on charges of genocide, Roger Cohen describes his experiences covering the war in Bosnia in a New York Times op-ed Thursday.

“You talked of your ‘love’ for Sarajevo, the ethnically mixed city your boozy forces kept shelling,” Cohen says of Karadzic. “You told me, 32 months into the fighting that you were ready ‘to declare a state of war.’

Cohen also writes of those he met during the war and the tragedy they endured, remembering the words of a wounded Sarajevo resident: “If I remain a paraplegic, I will be better, anyhow, than the Serb who shot me. I will be clean in my mind, clean with respect to others, and clean with respect to this dirty world.”

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