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PERSPECTIVESThe Janesville Gazette. Sunday, May 12,1996 7 As keletons littercountryside;ethnic hatepersistsAssociated NhMEMICI, Bosnia-Herzego-vina-Tears weB in the eyes of Hasan Hodzic, a63 year-old Muslim, as he clears away the rubble of two houses his family lost in the war.His wife, Bahira, 54, overweight and risking a heart attack, is chopping wood. *; .■'„■#■:They live in a tiny, damp coal shed, surrounded by row after row of gutted homes, their roofs burned away, their windowsblown out. H .-If“We have no other choice,” Hodzic says.Not one of the 400 homes escaped the damage of war in this village 12 miles east of U.S. military headquarters at Tuzla Air Base. There is no water, no electricity, no school, no medical clinic.The Muslim families say the Serbs burned their homes and everything else in Memici, where they once lived together as friends, and indeed sent some of them to concentration camps four years ago.Now the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accord signed last December has realigned Bosnia, returning Memici to Muslim control. American peacekeepers have silenced the guns that claimed an estimated 250,(KM) people dead or missing.Spring and the promise of peace is bringing home some of the war’s wandering, displaced persons for the first time since the war started in April 1992.The grass is green, farmers are plowing and planting their fields, shepherds are gathering their flocks, and children are laughing and playing in the villages again.The mitttaiy mission of separating and disarming the warring sides across Bosnia has been declared a success, but the civilian effort is at least three monthsbehind, say some U.S. officials.There are many obstacles, including a lack of money, millions of deadly mines scattered across the countryside, and fear of returning to former homes now under control of a different ethnic and religious group.Although in some areas the war damage is minimal, in some sections of the country miles of homes lay in ruins, far beyond military objectives. Ghost townsAbound. *Skeletons of the victims of war, with their clothing and their persona) belongings, still litter thecountryside.The spring thaw lays bare what U.N. war crimes investigators believe are mass graves where as many as 7,000 Muslim men fromSrebrenica are believedentombed, victims of an alleged Serb massacre.The Serbs say they only defended themselves.The Dayton peace accord realigned the territories of the three warring factions - the Bosnian Muslims, the orthodox Bosnian Serbs and the Catholic Bosnian Croats.But neither the 18,000 American peacekeepers nor the Dayton peace agreement can bring the Serbs and Muslims together again in the villages as they were before the war.“I do not know how to hate, but I want to live as far away (from the Serbs) as possible, says Mehmed Hodzic, who was wounded in the right leg at the start ofthe war.In the village of Markovici near Memici, two homes owned by Pasa Jahic, 52, were destroyed by the Serbs, who were her neighbors. She says her husband, Juso Jahic, 52, was executed by the Serbs in May 1992.In March, when the town reverted to Muslim authorities under terms of the peace accord, all of the Serbs left, including her next-door neighbors. “I asked myAssociated PressHumic Satin digs in front of his house in the badly damaged village of Stanic Rijeka.neighbors and they replied,‘We’ve been ordered to leave this place,’ ” she says.Twenty-five miles away, in the town of Kravice, a Serb woman,Zora Lozic, says the Muslims shelled her house. Just down the road is a battered school, its yard piled high with debris. Buildings and houses around it have been blasted away.“No one helps us,” she says. “I can’t afford reconstruction.”Instead, she lives in a shack with her two children.Kravice’s community center, including a theater, is a pile of rubble. Next door some Serb men are drinking beer and talking to an American officer, Maj. Daniel Z^jac, of Buffalo, N.Y., operations officer for the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division.The men tell Zajac that 2,300 people lived in Kravice and 152 died in the war. Eighty-six children were orphaned, says Jovan Nikolic, the school principal.“What do you need most?” asks Zqjac.“Building materials, food, clothes. Mostly we need everything,” Nikolic says.“Look at my house,” says Zora Lozic. “We’re not living anjrcnore.”Thousands of Serb, Muslim and Croat peasants are not really living anymore in the beautiful countryside of Bosnia’s towering mountains.Avdo Joldici gets some help from his daughters as he does repair work on his badly damaged house in the village of Memici, 12 miles east of the U.S. military headquarters at Tuzla Air Base.“You can see the damage,” says Pasaga Ahmetovic, the acting community representative in Memici, as he peers through his office window at the ruins.“It is very difficult for people to manage,” he says. “If they find they can repair only one room for the whole family, they’re veryhappy-”Most of the men are unemployed. ‘There’s no money at all,” says the community representative. “The families are waiting for humanitarian assistance for food and for repairing their homes.”During the past four years, the U.S. government has provided $1 billion in humanitarian relief aid in Bosnia. But now it is switching to a recovery effort. The United States Agency for International Development is funneling $550 million into Bosnia this year, some of it through nongovernment humanitarian agencies.The money is for repair of damaged homes, restoration of water and electricity, and to help revivethe economy with loans to small businesses and job programs forthe unemployed.As a sti ter, USAID is granting $25 million to eight nongovernment organizations for limited emergency repairs to 2,500 homes in 50 villages. The Emergency Shelter Repair Program will provide more than 2,000 jobs for Bosnians, including demobilized soldiers, and is scheduled for completion by fallThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is spending between $15 million and $30 million to buy locally producedbuilding materials for villagers to rebuild their homes, while at the same time helping revive a deadeconomy.But Randolph Ryan, a spokesman for the UNHCR, concedes it’s a “drop in the bucket.”A Bosnian government survey in July 1995 estimated that 63 percent of the 1.3 million housing units in the country suffered some damage, and 18 percent were destroyed.The UNHCR estimates there are 1.2 million displaced persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina and an additional 1.4 million people receiving assistance.This is evident in Bratunac, a Serb-held town where men are at work at a huge warehouse handing out sacks of flour marked USA, donated by the Red Cross and the European Community Humanitarian office.Many who come to the warehouse are old, those who cannot fend for themselves. An old man drives off, his horse-drawn cart loaded with flour. An old womanwearing a bandanna pushes awheelbarrow loaded with a sack of flour down the main street.The UNHCR’s Ryan and military officials say efforts by one ethnic group to prevent another from spontaneously returning home could lead to serious incidents, even civilian casualties.NATO forces, including American peacekeepers, have defused several potentially dangerous clashes by buzzing the crowds with helicopters, by roadblocksand by a show of force. Thus this puts the American peacekeepers in a dilemma - restricting a freedom of movement guaranteed by the Dayton peace accord or preventing bloodshed.NATO’s interpretation of the Dayton agreement is that its forces are not obligated to ensurefreedom of movement for civilians but may “observe and prevent interference” with the movement of civilians, reftigees and displaced persons. NATO says the burden of ensuring freedom of movement lies with civilian law enforcement agencies, except within the zones of separation, or demilitarized zones, where NATO continues to provide security.NATO says that armed soldiers are not the right forces to control crowds. Senior U.S. Army officers are known to feel that getting Americans soldiers involved in a civil disturbance is highly dangerous with a potential for casualties.Senior U.S. officers say they are concerned about recent clashes between Serbs and Muslims.“I’m concerned by the lack of commitment on the part of the folks promoting these demonstrations, presumably for political purposes rather than humanitarian,” says Msy. Gen. William L. Nash, commander of U.S. forces.These officers say they are political acts designed to embroil NATO in confrontations and to drag the Americans deeper into Bosnia. NATO has informed the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serbs and the Croats that movements for a political purpose do not constitute a freedom of movement issue for NATO troops and will not be treated as such.Nash said U.S. forces would take “nonlethal” action to insure the safety of all concerned but most importantly the safety of the soldiers. He would not specifywhat this might be, but tear gas and water cannons would be options.Checkpoint Charlie, named after the American armored company stationed there, sits among several small villages, including Memici, separating the Muslims on one side of the road and the Serbs on the other side.“We don’t have to worry about people bringing in weapons much anymore, says one of the peacekeepers, Pvt. Alan Chilcote of Philadelphia, who is only 19. “People are starting to understand that they’ve got to get rid of their weapons, to understand that they can’t have these weapons and peace at the same time.“We re seeing people start to come back and forth across sides, go back to their houses. We help them as much as we can so they can get back on their feet.erican peacekeepers have silenced the guns that claimed an estimated 250,000 people dead or missing.“Occasionally, they come out and ask for a bottle of water and we help them out with that .”But that’s where it ends. U.S. officials say the American forces are sticking to their one-year objective of keeping the peace. They say they are not going to drift into a civilian mission of rebuilding villages and towns and providing them with military police forces, or into pursuing waicriminals.About 1.3 million Bosnian war refugees are living in Europe and other countries. It is estimatedthat nearly 400,000 may returnthis year.Military and civilian authorities overseeing the Dayton agreement, as well as nongovernment agencies providing humanitarian aid, believe the key to real peace is the return home of the displaced and the refugees.The displaced lucky enough to return home now get minimal help, save for some food, plastic sheeting to put a roof over their homes and cover windows, and some wood-burning stoves.Dozens of nations and finance agencies have pledged more than $1.8 billion in aid, but the World Bank and other humanitarian agencies say the reality is that the money is slow in coming in.Even at that, it falls far short of the country’s total rebuilding cost, estimated conservatively at more than $5 billion over four years.The economy was another casualty of the war. According to The World Bank, annual per capita income has dropped to about $500, compared to $1,900 just before the war.Industrial output in 1994 was 5 percent of the prewar output, although there was a slight recovery last year. Coal production fell to 1.5 million tons in 1994, less than 10 percent of the prewar level.Farm production was disrupted by large population movements, destruction of farm equipment and the land mines. The World Bank estimates that Bosnia’s prewar population of 4.4 million has dropped by about 1 million.By 1994, domestic food production had fallen to only 35 percent of the country’s needs, according to The World Bank, and about 90 percent of the population was fUl-ly or partly dependent on humanitarian aid.“Because of the difficulties of distributing food, there are now many pockets of hunger and malnutrition affecting mainly women and children,” says The WorldBank.Further, it reports, about 70 percent of electrical generating capacity has been damaged or is out of operation, and about 1,500 miles of roads and 58 bridges are in urgent need of repair. It is difficult to drive over a roadway in Bosnia that isn’t riddled withgaping potholes, or unpaved in parts.Virtually all parts of the transportation system have been damaged, either directly, by heavy military and humanitarian traffic, or by lack of maintenance for more than three years,” says The World Bank.Craig Mason is Tuzla project manager for World Vision International, the Los Angeles-based humanitarian relief organization that is helping rebuild homes.“Reconstruction is going to be a very long process, but it’s essential we start immediately and do as much as we can for short-term impact, he says.“People are sick of living in collective centers. They want to go back to their homes. I think certainly that will happen, but the danger is that there isn’t anything to support these communities when they go back.#I1**
Newspaper Details
Janesville Gazette
Janesville, Wisconsin, US
Sun, May 12, 1996
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Barry M.
USA 16 Dec 2020
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