G-Prep Grad Reaches Shell-Struck Sarajevo Relief Worker Arrives As Office Staff Listens To Radio For Names Of Marketplace Dead

A Spokane man arrived at his new office in Sarajevo Tuesday, hours after 37 people were killed when the marketplace down the street was shelled.

It was a bitter welcome for Tom Perko, 36, a Gonzaga Prep graduate who will manage the Catholic Relief Services office in Sarajevo for the next year.

“I thought back to my home in Spokane and tried to imagine what it would be like to have the city surrounded by a hostile force and to have them lobbing shells into NorthTown,” Perko said in a letter faxed Tuesday.

His office staff, all Sarajevo residents, politely greeted their new boss, then immediately ran back to listen to a radio announcer read the bombing victims’ names. Remarkably, no one at the office lost a relative or close friend in the bombing. A driver knew one of the injured but was not close.

Perko’s staff had awaited his arrival for more than a month. He flew into Croatia last week. In an armored car, he drove over the Igman Pass Road on Tuesday to get to Sarajevo.

Perko likened the trip to driving up Mount Spokane Road, only there’s no pavement. In many places, the road abuts sheer cliffs with no trees to stop a vehicle’s fall should the driver veer off the path.

Descending the mountain into Sarajevo, the lack of trees provides a perfect line of fire for snipers.

“This was the section of the road where flak jackets, helmets and Catholic Relief Services’ armored Land Cruiser came in handy,” Perko said.

No one fired at their car as they descended the pass, he said.

Arriving during the aftermath of the shelling - just 150 yards from the Catholic Relief Services office - was a jolt, Perko said. In an earlier interview, he pointed out that his office would be in a safe part of the city and said he would rarely go into areas under attack.

While Perko has done relief work in Central America, Africa and Russia for almost a dozen years, this is his first assignment in a war zone.

“It was strange and difficult,” he said of his first day. “I really am living in a war zone. And although it was a decision I freely made, the people of Sarajevo have no such choice.”

The market usually is safe, because it has no military significance. In targeting the area, Serbs were aiming deliberately at civilians, “for the sole purpose of causing terror,” Perko said.

Western powers on Tuesday approved military action against Bosnian Serb targets in retaliation for the shelling.

War planes, presumably from NATO, roared over the darkened skies of Sarajevo early today and apparently bombed Serbian-held areas to the east and south of the city, Reuters reported.

For three years Orthodox Serbs, backed by Serbia, have rebelled against Bosnia’s Muslim government. They want to retake land they were run off of hundreds of years ago.

At the end of his first day, Perko and his staff were shuttled home in one of two armored cars owned by the relief service. “We need another,” he said.

Although cumbersome, the shuttles are necessary to protect relief workers from snipers during morning and evening commutes, he said.

Perko was impressed with his apartment, which includes a gas stove, refrigerator, stereo, TV and a “nice bathroom.”

“However, there is no electricity, no running water and no gas,” he said. Those commodities are controlled by the Serb rebels besieging the city.

One of Perko’s drivers made a point to fill several 10-gallon jugs with clean water and stocked the apartment with candles and a flashlight, in preparation for the boss’s arrival.

“I went to sleep to the wartime lullaby of sporadic gunfire,” he said.

With money from the United States, Catholic Relief Services provides a local bakery with yeast, flour and salt. The bread goes to the most needy in both Bosnian and Serbian held portions of Sarajevo. Perko’s staff supervises the distribution.

Catholic Relief Services manages a trauma counseling center, where it trains health and social workers to help refugees and residents.

Perko’s supervisors are considering opening another office in Kiseljac, 50 miles outside of Sarajevo, a territory controlled by Bosnian Croats. That way Perko could manage projects to help refugees in those areas.

In closing, Perko discussed the irreparable ethnic divisions the war has caused. He asked a Croation staff member why he no longer had Serb friends.

“It didn’t make any sense that Serbs who had not participated in the war were no longer his friends,” Perko said. “All he could say was that too much had happened.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo