There will be thousands of people in Sarajevo today who will be reflecting on the impact that Radovan Karadzic made on their lives during the dark days of the siege of that city, when 12,000 people were killed and more than 50,000 wounded.

Visiting Sarajevo in those days it was hard to comprehend that a modern metropolis so close to the centres of political power in Europe - just a few hours flying time from Paris and London - could have been allowed to fall into the grip of what seemed an unending nightmare, masterminded by Karadzic and his cohorts.

Sarajevo and its people were trapped by the city's topography, as the Serbian forces on the hills which surrounded it took up positions from where they could shoot at will their former neighbours, laid out on the streets below them. Food shortages, water shortages and power shortages turned life into a grim struggle for survival and every time Sarajevans stepped out onto the pavement they were in danger of being maimed or killed by either shellfire or the deadly rounds of the snipers.

Those sharpshooters, heroes of the Serbs, had in some cases trained as Olympic marksmen, a cruel irony in a city which, for many, was known previously for its staging of the Winter Olympic Games. Now they were winning medals for shooting unarmed civilians venturing out to fill up bottles of water at standpipes, or to shop for what food was available at the market.

In Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles there was unrestrained hatred between warring Catholic and Protestant neighbours, but it was nothing to compare with Bosnia, where a vicious civil war tore the fabric of society apart. In Sarajevo the Serbs were trying to strangle the city into submission and the massacres came in the form of shell impacts, the worst of which, on the marketplace on February 5 1994, killed 68 people and wounded 200. In the meantime Sarajevo crumbled, with almost every building showing signs of the fighting and 35,000 of them destroyed between April 1992 and September 1993.

The people of Sarajevo showed immense courage and fortitude in those days, when Karadzic would have had them wiped off the map. Safe routes were opened up across the centre of the city with piles of containers erected to protect people at the most vulnerable crossing points. A cafe society of sorts continued even in the darkest days, and at night there were rock concerts staged in blacked-out buildings in the city centre. In quieter moments people would venture out of their basements and boarded up homes to meet neighbours and talk and walk their dogs.

When relief of sorts came in the form of the ceasefire, which brought a halt to the worst shelling from February 1994, Sarajevans emerged into the daylight in a state of collective shock after nearly two years of war. As The Times reported on March 22 of that year: "People who have lived in fear of sudden death or maiming every time they ventured out to get water and food have become traumatised after 22 months of war. Now peace confronts them with new realities. They can walk the streets, as they are doing in their thousands in the spring sunshine, and some have been to a famous football match (a UN team against FC Sarajevo), but the city remains under blockade and the Serb snipers are still at work, more casually than ever, but still to deadly effect."

On that day the marketplace massacre, an event which finally goaded the West into threatening the Serbs, was still just under a month old. "The holes where that shell landed are now filled with dust and cigarette ends," The Times reported. "On the stalls nearby, wreaths and paper flowers are held down in the wind by stones. A card with one reads: 'My friend Ifet, who will always remain in my memories and in my heart. From his colleague, Lube.'"

Edward Gorman is now Formula One correspondent for The Times and Times Online

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