In Belgrade you never know what’s going to happen next. One moment they’ll fight to the last man in the war over Kosovo; the next they’ll sign Kosovo away. One moment you’re quietly having dinner on a riverboat; the next you’re on your way to Novi Beograd police station under arrest.
Surprise is a product of ignorance. And although as a journalist I shouldn’t admit to this, a lot of the time I don’t know what’s going on around here. I didn’t know that the stretch of river bank west of the Barracuda restaurant is a closed military area. You might have expected a gate and a large sign indicating that this is not a place suitable for children, tourists or journalists. Ambling along, we were endeavouring to find our way back to the Hyatt hotel. A low gate across the road was clearly meant to stop vehicles going any further, but the pedestrian walkway curved neatly round to the right and we obediently followed it. The floating structure down on the river was definitely a lido.
Just as the peace agreement crept up on us, so did a large man in jeans and an open-necked shirt. He loomed out of the darkness and gripped my companion firmly by the upper arm.
His lack of English and the paucity of our Serbian meant that we couldn’t explain our foolish error. Two soldiers came out to peer at us through the gloom. After 20 minutes of mutual incomprehension, the local cops screeched up in the Belgrade equivalent of a panda car. We were soon in the back of the car, heading for the police station. When we arrived, a dozen policemen were lounging on metal chairs behind wooden tables. As in a cheap thriller, naked light bulbs swung from single cords dangling from yellowed ceilings, to which clouds of Balkan tobacco smoke rose.
Our passports were demanded. We proceeded to the standard international sniggering ice-breaker topic – Bill and Monica – then cantered through “Why is Nato bombing us?”, and I began to feel that our incarceration on suspicion of spying might be shorter than that of two unfortunate Australian aid workers, who were sentenced to four and 12 years last week after being found on the Croatian border.
After an hour a burly officer who seemed to be the boss accompanied us to the Hyatt. As we walked in through the imposing marble reception area, he did a double take, as if it were inconceivable that a place of such luxury still existed in Belgrade. The hotel’s manager apologised on behalf of the Serb people for the inconvenience caused, and it was finally agreed that we did not need to report to the station for further grilling in the morning.
After the relief, the self-recrimination. Why did we not realise that the lido was a jetty for military patrol boats? We had, after all, seen such a vessel near there earlier. How stupid to try and walk back to the hotel after supper. Don’t you know there’s a war on? So it is with trying to understand most of what goes on here. After Slobodan Milosevic signed the accord, it seemed obvious that he had had little choice, but just a few days earlier my colleagues and I were intoning, “a diplomatic solution seems as far off as ever”. Journalists never say, “I am confused”, preferring to blame objective reality: “The situation is confused.” Information flow here is like a sealed radiator system – it goes round within the pipes but only leaks out if something has gone wrong.
State television is an interesting indicator. The day the G7 countries and Russia agreed the text of the UN Security Council resolution that would bring the war to an end, the early evening broadcast led with Milosevic’s congratulations to the navy on the occasion of Navy Day. At the time, Nato was across the table from Yugoslav representatives at the talks on the Macedonia border but this was adeptly fudged – the British general in charge of the Nato force about to occupy Kosovo is called “the UN commander”, and the delegation presenting the alliance’s document for signature is called “the United Nations team of experts”. It is Milosevic’s way of trying to convince his people that he has scored a victory by beating off Nato and getting the UN to intervene instead. To some extent, this works. Our translator can’t believe that Nato troops are going to be deployed in part of Kosovo. To him it’s inconceivable and, anyway, state TV hasn’t mentioned it.
Our access is similarly limited, although we do speak to opposition supporters and others who may reveal the occasional titbit. Otherwise our lives revolve around the Army Press Centre. Every morning we visit it, while the soldiers and their acolytes plot in secret what they will tell us today. Their currency is government press conferences and organised trips to the site of the latest bombing or to Kosovo.
The standard question to colleagues is: are you on the list? The list comprises the favoured few who will go on the next trip. Occasionally we hear of dirty dealing by those who will do almost anything to get on the list.
Journalists are prone to the paranoid notion that everyone else knows what is going on and they have missed it, but the Serbs are more philosophical. Serb acquaintances laughed at my indignation that there were no signs to indicate the restricted area by the river. As news of the peace deal spread, I feverishly made phone calls trying to get the inside track on what was going on. Our translator watched with amusement. “Probably only three people in the country know what is happening,” he said. “And they’re not going to tell you.”
Lindsey Hilsum is diplomatic correspondent for “Channel 4 News”
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