Can This Girl Save Sarajevo?

It may take a little girl to bring the world to its senses.

Sarajevo resident Irma Hadzimuratovic knew absolutely nothing of European geopolitics, alleged ancient ethnic hatreds or Belgradian grand designs when recently a Serbian mortar shell exploded not far enough from where she was. How could she know of these things? She is only 5.

Shark-like shrapnel fragments knifed into her body. In the heat of the Serb mortar and sniper assault on the city’s civilian--repeat civilian, not military--population, heroic doctors at the Sarajevo hospital, to which she was rushed, did all they could. Hardened though they were by the many months of carnage, they could not help but break up over the sight of this innocent child dying in front of their very eyes. For without sophisticated medical equipment, not to mention basics like electricity and clean water, there was not much they could do in the face of her extreme injuries. Only an airlift to a country with modern medical facilities could possibly save her.

But why should anyone care that much? After all, this was just one girl--and the world is filled with so many horror stories of starvation, pestilence and civil war. Yet . . . there was something in the sight of that twisted, shrapnel-filled little body that tugged at the conscience--as if not to care about this one 5-year-old was not to care about anything or anyone.

British Prime Minister John Major, whose government in the past has taken a very dim view of further U.S. or NATO military intervention over Sarajevo, swung into action and organized an emergency flight to London, where Irma was, at this writing, holding out at very long odds.

That was a majestic gesture by Major, who after that, along with Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, additionally ordered the evacuation of 41 wounded children from Sarajevo, where more than a thousand children have already been sent to an early grave by bombardment and cruelly accurate sniper fire.

If Irma does recover, though, her mother won’t be there to smile at her. She died in the shelling. But maybe if the world can be brought to its senses and this obscene war can be wound down, Irma’s birthplace, Sarajevo, might be allowed to remain among the living. That’s another life worth saving.