Bosnian War: An 800 meter long tunnel saved Sarajevo

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Wading through ankle-deep water in a tunnel, constantly bent over, a power cable to the left of you, and an often leaky diesel line to the right - it's not just exhausting, it's life-threatening.

Especially when the walls and ceiling are constantly being hit by grenades.

Anyone walking through such a tunnel must have good reasons.

The Sarajevo tunnel is one of the most important structures in recent war history.

It is only thanks to this almost 800 meter long corridor stiffened with wood and metal that the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina survived the almost four-year siege by Bosnian Serbs.

Since the beginning of April 1992, the well-armed rioters under General Ratko Mladic had occupied the slopes around the city.

On February 29, 1996, the siege finally ended.

There was only one point where there was still contact with the south-western area, which was still held by Bosnian troops: where the regional airport had been expanded to modern international standards for the 1984 Winter Olympics.

From June 1992 this airport formed a UN protection zone, over which more than 160,000 tons of supplies and medical equipment were flown into the besieged city in 13,000 flights.

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The Serbian irregulars only respected the protection zone because neither military supplies nor healthy refugees were flown out.

People who wanted to flee from Sarajevo via the fenced off and of course closed area of ​​the runway were caught under fire by snipers.

The tunnel entrance in the south of Sarajevo is now a tourist destination

Source: AFP / Getty Images

When it became clear at the turn of 1992/93 that the siege would continue for a long time, the command of the Bosnian 1st Army took up a suggestion by the engineer Nedzad Brankovic to build a tunnel that would pass under the runway.

Suitable locations were quickly found on both sides of the UN protection zone: the Dobrinja district of Sarajevo on the north and the suburb of Butmir on the south.

Accordingly, the project was given the code name "Object BD".

Work began in the spring of 1993 - on both sides at the same time.

First, a 180 meter long covered and camouflaged trench had to be built on the "B" side, which reached to the edge of the restricted area around the airport.

A similar construction also led to the airport site on the "D" side, about 315 meters long.

In between, the actual 340 meter long tunnel was dug under the runway and taxiway.

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A total of 1200 cubic meters of earth was moved, 170 cubic meters of wooden planks and 50 tons of metal were installed as supports in the tunnel and the adjacent covered trenches.

But because the groundwater in Sarajevo was high, the tunnel was often damp.

View into a section of the Sarajevo tunnel that has been renovated for tourists.

Between 1993 and 1996 it was almost never so clean and dry

Source: Getty Images / Moment Open

At the end of June 1993 the troops digging from both sides were supposed to meet between the runway and taxiway.

During the last few days of work, the non-smoker Brankovic became a chain smoker.

Later he remembered: “You wait for the last few meters, you can hear the others dig - but they don't break through.” But then it turned out that the survey was accurate enough, you hadn't dug significantly past each other.

The tunnel was put into operation just one day later.

A telephone line connected the two entrances, and in addition, pioneers of the Bosnian army laid a power cable, a diesel pipeline and tracks for hand-operated lorries.

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First a few dozen soldiers came from besieged Sarajevo to defend the southern tunnel entrance at all costs.

Then people followed - always one-way, always in groups, sometimes up to 4,000 per night.

The almost 800 meter long path through the maximum one meter wide and between 1.60 and 1.80 meter high tunnel usually took a good 30 minutes - but sometimes up to two hours at high tide.

The southern exit of the Sarajevo tunnel was in this house in Butmir

Source: Getty Images / Lonely Planet Images

The tunnel was only used at night.

The Serbian irregulars were not allowed to shoot, at least not with heavy weapons, at the airport site - instead they set fire to the alleged tunnel entrances.

Dozens of civilians and soldiers died from shrapnel, some of which flew into the covered trenches and some hit the house above the southern tunnel entrance.

Nevertheless, the tunnel became Sarajevo's lifeline.

In theory, it might have been possible to evacuate the city with the more than 300,000 trapped Bosnians - but that is exactly what the Bosnian army command did not want.

Weapons and other military equipment were brought through the tunnel into the besieged city, exhausted people were brought out and then brought back in again after their recovery.

After massive international pressure on the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, the siege of Sarajevo ended after 973 days;

It was the longest blockade of a city in the 20th century, not even the inclusion of Leningrad by the Wehrmacht in World War II had lasted that long.

Sarajevo had at least 11,000 victims and another 56,000 injured.

That there weren't much more is mainly thanks to the tunnel.

This article was first published in 2016.