Ron Haviv--With Slovenia now independent the movement turned to Croatia and Bosnia. Croatians valiantly struggled to set up local defense forces against the Yugoslav Army. Units were formed and camouflage camping uniforms were bought at local stores. I worked with defense forces made up of local villagers.

In the beginning it was a hunting rifle against machine guns and tanks. Serious warfare ensued. Planes began to attack small villages, and tanks lay siege to towns for months. The practice of ethnic cleansing was started.

In the beginning it was difficult to convince editors in New York that the war was serious. I thought Americans should be interested in the conflict. Serb/Yugoslavia was a cancer in the heart of Europe. I would work for several weeks, take a break, and then return again.

As the war progressed and spread into Bosnia, the level of violence increased. The stakes became higher for those involved. The world community half heartedly put its reputation on the line. It did more damage than good. It became difficult to justify my role as a journalist. I had photographed the first ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian war. Innocent civilians executed by well-armed paramilitary forces. The pictures were published and there was no reaction from the politicians. I know that photographs cannot change the world by themselves. But I felt that the world community had truly failed. The war progressed from barber against butcher to commando unit against innocent civilian and finally evolved into tank against tank. In the first six months over 30 journalists were killed. We went from being welcome to being targets. As the time passed defenses became stronger. For some it was barricades against sniper fire. For others, the defenses were of the mind. In Serb/Yugoslavia ways of war there are many ways to defeat your enemies. The simplest is to kill them. When this is too difficult, one option is to destroy what they have. Turn their homes, schools, places of worship and art into rubble. To cause so much destruction that people will lose their will to survive. After a while these feelings turned optimistically to expectation, leading to hope, which we all need to go on. Each death led to another. Once someone's father was killed, it needed to be avenged by the son or the brother or the friend...

The world could not, and did not, make up its mind until it was too late. A country had exploded from the inside. People watched and watched, waiting for a conclusion that was self-drawn and acceptable. When the world finally reacted, the results seemed almost comic. Troops, in some examples, were sent not to stop the fighting, but to give food to those under siege--an admirable intent; yet all they had consequently rendered was an act similar to that of fattening the cows for slaughter.