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SARAJEVO-The narrow tunnel that ran beneath Sarajevo airport was people's only escape route during the longest siege in modern history, a symbol of a brutal war that split families and pitted neighbors against each other.After marking the 15th anniversary of the now largely destroyed tunnel's opening, some in the capital of Bosnia hope to reconstruct the passage which meant escape or at least brief relief from desperate times. Yet the sensitive project lacks funds and they say it may be an opportunity for foreign investors."It should be reconstructed to remember those times and show Bosnians and the world how we lived, how we survived," said Ismet Hadzic, a general during the war who ran one half of the tunnel. "If the city rebuilds it, it would become the premier tourist destination in the city."Like Vietnam's Cu Chi tunnels or the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, the tunnel that helped ordinary people survive in Sarajevo through more than 1,000 days under siege embodies the local spirit of resistance.But even as Bosnia slowly recovers from the 1992-95 war, its government is still divided by ethnic and religious tensions. For some, memories of Sarajevo's bloody past are still too raw and its economy too battered to contemplate such a venture.During the war, Bosnian Serb forces surrounded Sarajevo, a city that once boasted of tolerance between Muslims, Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Jews.About 14,000 people were killed during the siege, according to Norwegian government-backed research by the Sarajevo-based Investigation-Documentation Centre.Sarajevo's population of about 350,000, of which about 90 percent are now secular Muslims but still includes Serbs and Croats, has made significant progress in rebuilding since then. Yet nearly 40 percent of Bosnians are still officially unemployed.As in the days of Noah....
