Response to 'Desperate Bosnians' article by Maggie O'Kane'Desperate Bosnians risk minefield deaths for US Army rations' is a war report by Irish journalist Maggie O'Kane. It is a forceful and successful attempt to get through to readers by placing them amidst the people in conflict. Vividly describing the everyday life of Bosnians in the midst of conflict, O' Kane achieves a bigger effect on her audience than usual war casualties statistics, which normally cause just a few glances and headshakes. It is a very short story that does not involve many events, yet every word is important and carefully picked. The story revolves around a man called Saudin Guja and a woman he met called Semsa. It takes place in a town called Blaguj, which was cut off by Serbian army from any supplies. O'Kane uses a very interesting technique to tell the story. She starts in the very middle, or rather in the end of the chain of events that took place. ''No one knew the dead woman's name. She lay in the basement corridor of Mostar hospital for a few hours.' , ran the first two sentences. They are very effective, because a dead woman lying on the hospital floor is not an everyday thing. Any person that read that would be lured into the story and would have a need to find out what happened to this woman and how she ended up dead. O'Kane then goes on to give description of the woman and information about her, giving the reader the facts, which he is now longing for ''Her name was Semsa. She was a refugee aged about 45. Saudin Guja met her in the crowd that flooded past his house at dawn to look for the emergency food aid air-dropped on the mountain by the Americans in the night before'. O'Kane now jumps backwards to the start and suddenly switches the main character from the woman to Saudin Guja. Interestingly enough, she doesn't however give any background on Saudin. The title, and the previous sentence of this article cause the reader to think: Why are Bosnians risking their lives for US Army rations. O'Kane is implying the fact that these people, cut off from any civilized life have US Army para-drops as their only supplier, she is showing you how desperate and horrible their life currently is.As the story goes on, the reader finds out that the Americans had dropped their supplies during the night, however Saudin didn't want to go because the minefield where the supplies had been dropped was also very near the Serb front line. This shows how careless the American army was about this situation, to drop food near the enemy, and how much help the Bosnians are in need of.''Blaguj has been cut off for months. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has not visited. Not only they are desperate, they are also abandoned, even the United Nations, an organization that is supposed to help everyone around the world has given up hope. Saudin then decides that he will starve unless he gets some food and decides to set out and get some of the supplies. ''Packages with Juicy Fruit gum and brown plastic sachets of cherry and cocoa powder'' , again O'Kane tries to force the fact on us, how careless and useless the Americans are in this conflict, how is chewing gum going to help starving children! Saudin Guja then met Semsa just outside his front gate and made for the 'minefield ''On the way up, they were passed by to soldiers carrying an old man. His leg had been blown off by a mine in Deiho's field'' O'Kane writes such a horrible detail in such a seemingly casual voice yet again, showing to us what everyday life is for the desperate Bosnians in Blaguj. ''As they reached the field, they saw another explosion in the distance. A mine detonated by someone else scavengig for packages'' Yet again, for them such a normal event, for us , however , such an extraordinary event happening. All the peple kept going, they received shouts warning them about Serbian soldiers being closeby, about mines detonating each step, but noone listened, they were so desperate to get supplies which could save their lives. As Saudin and Semsa gathered more packages, more and more mines blew up around them, but still they kept gathering, so greedy and desperate for food. ''The Chetniks ( Serbian Soldiers ) were laughing at us'' . '' Come on you Muslims. Come on over here and we'll give you some food'. Maggie O'Kane is trying to show us how horrible the Bosnian

lifestyle was, amidst starvation,disease, poverty, they are taunted by the Serbians, insulted, and abused. ''They panicked. Semsa was running about five feet in front of him when she hit the mine. It blew her apart. '' ''Wehn she was dying, she kept repeating: My children, my children''. O'Kane tries to make us feel their pain, understand that there are children in this conflict, young children who will never live a propper life, how desperate Semsa was not just for herself, but for the sake of her childern. ''They burruer her at night in Mostar graveyard, wrapped in a brown wool blanket, in a coffin made from a teak veneer wardrobe'' O'Kane is once again taking us into the horrible surroundings that these people are in , they have no coffins, no funeral resources, they have to use everyday materials and do the best they can. This was a very effective piece of writing, because it brought the reader deep into the conflict, and placed him amongst the people that suffered. It showed the reader how life in Blaguj would be like, and why, the people that have had the bad fortune of being born and raised there, require help from every person in the world, including us. It is most effective however, because it focuses on two characters, rather than the whole picture, it makes you feel and see from the inside, not from above, not from outside.s