By Lisa Rico
"One woman can't change anything, many women can change everything." The woman from the small village of Vares in the war-torn country of Bosnia-Herzegovina responded emotionally when asked about Women for Women International, an out-reach organization whose mission is to support countless women survivors of war around the world.
She is both, a lone woman still trying to cope - to survive - 10 years after a devastating ethnic war in the old Yugoslavia, where so many women were left without husbands, children or homes. And she is one of thousands of women calling upon inner strengths to regain confidence, independence and self-worth. After all these years, they turn to Women for Women International (W4W) to keep hope alive. Some learn trades, some market traditional crafts, some set out to become entrepreneurs.
The woman from Vares does it with a cow. Thanks to a W4W loan, she is able to support her family by selling milk and cheese. Her small triumph in a country I had hardly noticed on a map was one of many that recently set me on an emotional roller coaster.
The ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Serbian nationalists from 1992 to 1995 under the direction of Slobodan Milosevic resulted in the rape and murder of thousands of non-Serbs in the region. More than 16 rape and concentration camps were organized by the Serbian military. The war left more than 200,000 dead and another 200,000 severely injured, and millions more were deported or forced to flee their homes.
A few years ago, I heard a story about W4W on CNN. The story focused on how people, like myself could actually help. They explained that people interested could sponsor a woman survivor of war from one of the nine countries they work in; Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Irag, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda and most recently, Sudan. As a sponsor, they would match me with a "sister". We would trade letters; I would offer her encouragement and emotional support. With my donation of less than $30 a month, she would receive training and skills necessary for her to eventually support herself and her family. The story on CNN was soon followed by a story on Oprah.
I became a sponsor. My first sister was from Bosnia. Her name is Zahide.
The more I learned about W4W, the more involved I became. I was soon talking with staff in Washington D.C. about ideas and other ways I could help. I was hooked.
So when the invitation to travel to Bosnia and Herzegovina with the founder and CEO, Zainab Salbi and her husband, co-founder, Amjad Atallah arrived, I jumped at the opportunity. I was one of 11 traveling with Zainab and Amjad. Coming from points east and west, the group rendezvoused in Sarajevo, and the journey of a lifetime began.
Anisa Suceska was the first Bosnian woman I met. I liked her immediately. With short blond hair, long turquoise beads bobbing around her neck and totally cool sunglasses, she invoked a style and pizzazz I had not expected to find in Bosnia. Lucky for me, she also spoke excellent English. At the young age of 27, she is wise beyond her years. Anisa, the same age as my daughter, is an artist who studied in Italy. Her father is involved in aviation. We had many shared interests. But with her light-hearted spirit and a youthful twinkle in her eyes, I assumed, and hoped, she must have escaped the atrocities of war. As the journey progressed in the coming days, I would discover how wrong my assumption was.
After the war and studies in Italy, Anisa worked with various humanitarian organizations including the Organization for Security in Europe (OSCE) and an arm of the UN, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). After which, she went to Iran as an international consultant for Afghan and Iraqi elections. The latter resulted in her picture and a death threat appearing on the front page of an Iraqi newspaper - leave the country or else, sort of thing. But that didn't scare her off. She completed her project and returned to her home country of Bosnia-Herzegovina where she began her work with W4W. Currently, Anisa is the program manager in Bosnia - Herzegovina and is responsible for, among other things, the human rights education, economic empowerment and income generating activities for over 4000 women each year. They're lucky to have her. Needless to say, she impressed me.
Almost thirteen when the war began, Anisa and her family, like many others, were forced to vacate their building when snipers began firing on it. We were viewing photos from the war at a local gallery when Anisa casually pointed to a building in one of the photographs that was surrounded by bombed and blazing buildings and said, "This was where my family lived; me, my mother, father and young sister, who was 4. We had to leave because snipers were here (as she pointed to the roof of an adjacent building) and were shooting into our building. We went to stay with my grandmother were it was more safe."
She took me to that "safer" part of town. While all the buildings are still standing, all have the scars of war riddled across them. She explained that during the war it was too dangerous for kids to go to regular schools because those buildings were being bombed. Small schools were set up here and there in the basements of buildings or abandoned stores. "My school was over there in that building" as she pointed across a wide commercial street in the old section of Sarajevo. "The street seemed much wider during the war," she said. They would have to run as fast as they could to cross it, to avoid being hit by bombs. "What about your friends, did you lose any during the war?" I asked. A simple but direct answer is all I received: "Of course."
Days went by and our friendship grew. I eventually asked her the question I had been wondering since the first day. "Anisa, during the war, were you or any of your family injured?"
This is my recollection of her story:
"One day, I was with two friends. I was only 15. We were waiting in line for bread and a grenade went off", as she motioned to an area about 18 inches away and slightly behind her. " I was lucky," she said, "because when grenades explode they go up first, then out. My friends were not so lucky. They were standing a little further away. One lost his leg, the other an arm, but we all survived. I didn't think I was hurt, I didn't feel any pain. I started screaming, trying to get help for my friend because I knew that more grenades would follow. A taxi pulled up. My friend with the arm injury and I got the other one into the taxi. The taxi took us to the hospital. It was packed with people. I tried to get someone's attention, afraid that my friend with the leg injury would bleed to death. A doctor there recognized me because he was a friend of my father's. But when I tried to get him to help my friend he started telling me to lie down on the gurney. I was so frustrated because I didn't think he understood that it was my friend who was hurt. Eventually, he slapped me across the face to get me to calm down. It must have worked because the next thing I remember was waking up, strapped to a bed. My parents where in the room. I must have been in shock. I didn't feel any pain at the time, but the grenade had gotten my back. I was bleeding really badly and they were worried about infection, and my heart. They removed all but three pieces of shrapnel that were small and too close to my heart." Then with a laugh and a shrug she said, "But it's no problem now, except when I go to airports I set off the metal detectors."
This was the type of resolve and spirit I witnessed all over the country. Even in the small village of Srebrenica where the largest single massacre since World War II happened. On July 11, 1995, approximately 10,000 men and boys were murdered. The village was devastated. It still is. Very few men survived. While there, I was told a story about a young girl who was playing alone after the war. A journalist who was there doing a story asked the little girl where her mom and dad were. She replied, "I don't have a dad." The journalist expressed sympathy and said, "That must make you very sad". The little girl shrugged her shoulders and said, "It's okay, no one here has dads."
Srebrenica is the location of the newest women's center to be opened by W4W. The opening ceremony was held while I was there. The women who attended are struggling to hold on to hope for a better future. One woman, Kada, said "I'm ready to die, I have nothing; I lost everything - why do I want to go on?" That didn't stop her from enrolling in the program and attending the ceremony - somewhere inside her a flicker of hope lives on. The new W4W center will help keep that alive.
In yet another village, we attended a graduation ceremony where more than 60 women were completing the W4W program, excited about their futures. During the ceremony, witnessed by the mayor and other leaders, the young daughter of one woman asked to read a letter she had written after attending a meeting with her mother. She wrote, " I listened to my mother talking with excitement about letters from sponsor sisters, and I admired these wonderful women who learned about my town recently and who support emotionally and materially women they have never seen. Who knows, maybe one day God will give them the opportunity to meet and build an invisible bridge from the USA, a bridge made of life and friendship. Thanks to these women . . . women in my town started to wake up."
I also woke up on this journey. Woke up to the realities of the world around us and the atrocities so many have experienced, and still are today. Of course, I knew war existed before. But everything is different now. This war now has a face. It was about real people, not numbers, groups and leaders. I've seen the effects of it first hand. I touched it, and have been touched by the survivors. Everything in my future will be filtered through the experiences I encountered in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I hope to help build awareness for W4W, and hopefully contribute to its funding by curating a benefit global art exhibit. Using photos of women survivors of war from not just Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also from all the regions supported by W4W, I plan to get accomplished artists from around the world to render these women in various media. The exhibit will travel, pieces will sell, and the word will spread. And along the way, hopefully more people will wake up.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the six republics of the former Yugoslavia. Under the leadership of Marshal Tito, it was an intermixed multiethnic society with little social division. The three dominant communities were the Muslims, Catholic Croats, and the Orthodox Serbs. After Tito's death in 1980, they slid into economic and political decline.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was ravaged by war from 1992 to 1995. Over 200,000 were killed, and another 200,000 severely injured. Millions were deported or forced to flee their homes. It's estimated that Serb soldiers raped 50,000 Muslim women during the war. Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic led the brutal campaign to ethnically cleanse the country. The war ended in 1995 after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords. Since that time, the country has been struggling to rebuild.