Upon leaving Sarajevo with an Edinburgh Direct Aid convoy in 1995, we were forced to spend the night at the base of Mt. Igman in the town of Hrasnica. It had snowed heavily the previous night and the Bosnian army was temporarily limiting access over the only route in and out of Sarajevo.

Despite feeling embarrassed because our aid vehicles were empty, we did manage to strike up friendships with some of the refugees in the nearby collective center. Like most areas within Bosnian government control, Hrasnica housed many refugees from parts of Bosnia "cleansed" by Serb and Croat nationalists. Not that Hrasnica was in any way safe. Although it wasn't controlled by Serb militias, it was still shelled regularly from nearby mountains. In fact it was so severely damaged that it looked like what Hiroshima may have looked like after the bomb. Not at ground zero, but perhaps a few miles away.

Amid the rubble and destruction, people were going about their lives: cooking in empty lots and trading cigarettes and toiletries for scarce money and food.

Most of the refugees here are from eastern Bosnia, the areas closest to Serbia that were the first to be overrun and cleansed during April and May 1992. The Serb nationalists were as successful in cleansing these areas of Muslims as the Nazis were in cleansing eastern Europe of Jews, but the Serbs did it more quickly.

Perhaps the numb expressions on these children's faces can explain what they experienced better than words can. All we know is that they watched as their parents were killed.