Graphic ArtThe first casualty of war is truth. Words no longer mean what they used to mean, so that to "cleanse" means to slaughter and a "safe area" is one under siege by a ruthless enemy.
Such was the case for the town of Gorade in eastern Bosnia, where Bosnian Serbs and Muslims had lived peacefully together for decades until the outbreak of war in 1991. The Serbian nationalists murdered men, women and children - those who had been their neighbours and their friends - while the UN delayed and did little, reluctant to compromise its neutrality and unwilling to commit to an intervention. The area around Gorade was officially declared a "safe area" by the UN in May of 1993, without that meaning that anyone in Gorade was safe.
It was in late 1995 - after Nato strikes had forced a Serb ceasefire but before the Dayton Accords put an end to the war - that Joe Sacco first visited Gorade, seeking the testimony of those who had survived the three and a half years of being surrounded by Serb forces. Safe Area Gorade is the product of that visit and those that came after: as with his earlier Palestine, Sacco documents both what he saw with his own eyes and what the inhabitants of the besieged town told him. The result is harrowing, frightening, and intensely powerful. Sacco does not flinch from depicting the process or the effects of war. There are passages that are hard to read, as when Gorade's survivors describe being captured by the Serbs, or escaping from them, or dealing with injuries from shelling. Sacco's stark, detailed black-and-white art reveals all without being prurient or sensationalist: the horror of the situation is allowed to speak for itself.
Even when there were no attacks, Gorade was isolated for months at a time, with no road access out of the town, no electricity save what the resourceful citizens could generate from the currents of the Drina river. There were times when getting food meant a 10km trip on foot through snow-covered mountains, where many died of exposure. Cultural isolation had a deleterious effect as well: no news from outside, no new books, no new music, children kept home from school for lack of teachers or supplies. Sacco's drawings show the effects of this long deprivation: many of his Goradans are hollow-cheeked from starvation and baggy-eyed from fatigue. The scars left behind by the Serb attacks are everywhere in his landscapes: roofless houses, black marks on the roads, piles of rubble.
Sacco begins Safe Area Gorade with an anecdote about a man who claims to know "the real truth" about Gorade: "I never visited that man," he says, "in fact, after that evening, I avoided him completely . . . " There is a warning here against being too certain of one's own perspective. As Christopher Hitchens says in his introduction, " draws himself into his panels as if he wanted us to forgive him a little" - for, after all, this is not his story he is telling: he is trying to convey, as accurately as possible, the recollections of those who were there.
He weaves their stories together with great skill: one long section combines testimony from five different people who lived through the same attack. Another section gives us the answers from numerous people to the crucial question: can you ever live with the Serbs again? (Some are optimistic, remembering how they were friends with Serbs once. Others are wary, burned children fearing the fire.) Yet through all this, Sacco avoids moralising and polemic, even in the face of the most appalling atrocities and the most disgraceful neglect by the international community. Safe Area Gorade is not an argument or a dissertation, and is all the better for it. Joe Sacco may not be convinced that he knows "the real truth" about Gorade, but what truths he could find he has set before us in compelling form.
Katherine Farmar is a freelance writer. Her comics blog, Whereof One Can Speak, is at http://puritybrown.blogspot.com
Safe Area Gorade By Joe Sacco Jonathan Cape, 229pp. £14.99