THE TENT PEOPLE OF BOSNIA

TWO TOWNS, DIVIDED

GORAZDE

KOPACI

THE ADVOCACY CORNER

– The Regional Committee for Refugees of Southeast Bosnia

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From the Editorial Desk:

For tens of thousands of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), southeast Bosnia is the heart of darkness. Here, in 1992, Muslims were rounded up, beaten, separated from their families, imprisoned, and expelled. For the last eight years, towns like Foca and Visegrad have provided a haven for indicted war criminals and embittered Serb refugees.

Returns to this area have been almost completely stalled. While several thousand Muslims returned to the northeastern RS last year, only 41 returned home to the entire region around Gorazde. Three of the 22 obstructionist local officials who were removed from office in November last year — they included one Muslim– were from the region. One was even head of the local Serb municipal office for refugees.

How can the logjam be broken? In this issue, PETER LIPPMAN explains the regional context. At the center is the town of Gorazde, which was the only Muslim-controlled municipality that did not fall to the Serbs in the war. Thousands of Muslim refugees sought shelter in Gorazde during the siege. Today, they are waiting to go home to towns and villages throughout southeast Bosnia: Visegrad, Rudo, Cajnice, Rogatica, Sokolac, Foca, Pale and Kopaci.

On the other side, in the Serb Republic, are Serbs waiting to return to their homes in what is now the Federation — towns like Sarajevo, Jajce, Bosansko Grahovo — and of course Gorazde.

Out of this Chinese puzzle, Peter has chosen two towns — Gorazde and Kopaci. Before the war, Kopaci was a suburb of Gorazde. Now it lies in a different entity, separated by the Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) that was created at Dayton. The IEBL represents a formidable physical and psychological barrier for refugees on both sides. Until it is breached, there will be no return home.

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GORAZDE

‘Do you see that house in the field over there? That’s my house. It’s right on the inter-entity borderline. If I were allowed to re-enter my house, I’d be cooking dinner in the Republika Srpska and sleeping in the Federation.’

This comment, by a former inhabitant of Kopaci, illustrated the maddening challenge that faces many displaced Bosnians.

Kopaci is a former suburb of Gorazde, the large town that straddles the river Drina in eastern Bosnia. During the war, Gorazde was one of several ‘safe havens’ (along with Srebrenica and Zepa) that the U.N. Protective Forces (UNPROFOR) were assigned to protect. Zepa and Srebrenica, notorious for the massacre of over 8,000 people, fell in the summer of 1995. Gorazde was the only ‘safe haven’ in eastern Bosnia that was not ultimately taken over by Serb forces.

As other towns and villages in the region were overrun, refugees fled to Gorazde. Villages around Gorazde that fell to the Serbs, like Kopaci, were incorporated into a new municipality in the Republika Srpska, termed ‘Srpsko Gorazde.’

At the height of the war 65,000 people were packed into Gorazde. Today that population has shrunk by a third. At the same time, approximately 70,000 displaced Bosnians are waiting to return to the surrounding municipalities.

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Vahid Kanlic and Ahmo Zivojevic are both activists for return who now live in Gorazde. The two men described to me their wartime experience.

Mr. Kanlic told me, ‘I was a social worker before the war. I owned a house in Kopaci, and 15 hectares of land. There were approximately 2,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in Kopaci before the war, and only two Serb families. One of the Serb families stayed until Kopaci fell to the Serbs, and we protected them. Kopaci was not separated from Gorazde until April of 1994, when there was a heavy offensive with 40,000 Serb, Montenegrin, and JNA (Yugoslav National Army) soldiers attacking. All males over 15 years of age were on the front line.’

‘When Kopaci and the rest of the outskirts of Gorazde fell, my family and I fled to Gorazde. At that time I became responsible for ‘civilian matters’ in Gorazde, for the rest of the war. There was chaos in Gorazde then. There were dead and bleeding people and animals in the streets, their blood running together. It can’t be described. People were killed by bombs and snipers.’ (He pointed through a window in his office at two houses on a nearby hill formerly occupied by snipers.) ‘

‘There were around 65,000 people in Gorazde then,’ he continued. ‘What happened in Srebrenica did not happen here, because of our resistance. We protected Gorazde ourselves. There were only four UNPROFOR personnel, and they stayed in the basements.’

‘It was very difficult to do social work here during the war. The old center for social work was bombed, and it burned down. All the documentation was gone. I had to start from scratch.’

Ahmo Zivojevic continued, ‘A tank destroyed my house in Kopaci, while my whole family was in it. My children and I were safe in the basement, but my wife was upstairs. She did not survive.

‘Before the war, I was a shoemaker and I had two shops in Kopaci. One was destroyed, and the other is now a bakery. I don’t know what happened to my equipment; it is gone. I have gone to visit the bakery a few times, without any problem. I want to fix my house — I am waiting for permission from the government of the Republika Srpska to do that.’

‘During the war, I was displaced to Gorazde. During that time, salt cost 100 DM ($60) a liter, flour 25 DM, and cooking oil 50 DM. A box — not a carton — of cigarettes was 120 DM, or you could trade an ox. People smoked leaves, whatever we could burn. Later some people managed to plant tobacco, toward the end of the war. Then they could sell a kilo of it for 1,000 DM.’

‘Later food was parachuted in, but randomly, so some people would have it, and others none. Eventually a sharing system was set up. We used rice for everything: soup, bread, flour, and pita bread. No one eats rice now, if they can help it.’

‘There was no electricity during the war, so we would find a little used motor oil, and burn it with a rag for a wick. There was also no running water, but there were springs. People would wait at the springs for four or five hours for water. But the Serbs knew where the springs were and would bomb them. A lot of people died that way.’

‘There were no surgeons in Gorazde for the first year of the war, although a couple came in May 1993. The siege around the town then became complete, and so the doctors stayed with us until the end of the war. Those doctors did for this town what even God didn’t do.’

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‘Gorazde is a dead end,’ Mr. Kanlic told me. ‘There is hardly any work. People are leaving here, and they never return.’

The level of industrial production in Gorazde before the war was higher than the rest of Bosnia. Today, industrial activity is almost nonexistent. The city is surrounded by the Republika Srpska. It is connected to the rest of the Federation by an access road, as stipulated by the Dayton agreement. But most traffic to Gorazde from the Federation passes through the Republika Srpska because the road is so poor.’

Gorazde has been called the ‘city of heroes’ for its steadfastness during the war, yet it has all but vanished from the public eye. Hidden away to the east and surrounded by the Serb entity, it seems all but forgotten by the Bosnian government in Sarajevo. The city is pleasantly located on the river and under better circumstances it could attract tourists. But the atmosphere is one of depression. Young people loiter on the streets, thinking about how to leave.’

This is happening throughout Bosnia. Many of those young people are displaced. If they were able to return to their pre-war homes they would find it easier to find a job, and the depression would lift. But local administrators oppose them, and the international community has not pushed hard enough. So the economy continues to stagnate while fertile fields outside of the town lie fallow, and displaced people struggle for food. Poverty and displacement go hand in hand.’

KOPACI

Many of the skilled and talented people who now live in Gorazde are former residents of Kopaci, only a few kilometers from the center of town. Kopaci was important to Gorazde before the war, as it was the location of four factories. Kopaci’s residents, overwhelmingly Muslim, were well educated and prosperous. Now, Kopaci has been made the seat of the new municipality of Srpsko (Serb) Gorazde, and it is filled with displaced Serbs from many other parts of Bosnia. Former Kopaci residents who have tried to reclaim their homes in the postwar period have met with violence.

Himzo Bajramovic, president of the Association for Return to Srpsko Gorazde, described the situation to me: ‘Kopaci is four kilometers from here — we can see our houses, but we can’t return. There were 3,668 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) living in that part of the municipality in 1991, and 674 Serbs. Ninety percent of those Bosniaks are now in Gorazde. We can’t return to our houses because the Serb government won’t allow us to.’

‘Most of the government institutions — the post office, the Red Cross — are in private houses, because that’s almost all that there is. The government settled displaced Serbs in Kopaci, but they are residing in private property, which should be untouchable. They say that their people do not have places to go. There are now 300 houses in Kopaci — around 1,200 were destroyed. The Mayor of Serb Gorazde says that the population of displaced Serbs there is 7,000. But we have counted the number of houses and families in Kopaci, and there isn’t room for that many people.’

In March 1999, together with a Sarajevo journalist, I made an unscheduled visit to the mayor of Srpsko Gorazde, Slanko Topalovic, at his office in Kopaci. The mayor was visibly uncomfortable at seeing us in his office. (Vahid Kanlic later told me that we would never have been able to arrange such a meeting in advance.)

Topalovic’s small office was decorated with a picture of St. George and the Dragon, a framed kokarda (Serbian nationalist symbol), and a portrait of Nikola Poplasen, president of the Republika Srpska (removed from office the day after my visit).

Topalovic told me that he felt sorry for all the citizens of Gorazde. Dayton should be observed, he said, but in Kopaci there were 350 families of displaced Serbs living in Muslims’ houses on the right bank of the Drina alone. Where could they go?

Mayor Topalovic was one of the three local officials later removed by the OHR for obstruction.

It is not hard to understand why the activists decided to make Kopaci the focal point for their strategy to return last year. As Lisa D’Onofrio of the UNHCR’s Gorazde office explained to me, ‘Kopaci is the key to the region, because there can be a high degree of return in both directions on this axis.’ Kopaci would be relatively easy to sustain, as people who return there could support themselves by working in nearby Gorazde and in the factories in Kopaci itself.

The return activists of Gorazde believe that once Kopaci is resettled, it can serve as a logistical point of departure and support for return to Visegrad, Rogatica, Rudo, and other locations further afield in southeast Bosnia.

All this makes Kopaci much more important to activists, for the time being, than other neighboring towns. One refugee from Cajnice told me, ‘There are officials in the Serb-controlled part of this region who want to cooperate, but they lack resources. For example, the Cajnice mayor is a good person and he is supporting everything that we are trying to do. The town of Rudo is more difficult. The mayor there is an educated young man, born in Rudo. He has invited people to return. But Rudo is at the end of the road, near the corner of land where Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro all meet. Also, the Army of the Republika Srpska has a base there, so people are afraid to return. People fear to return to all the areas of southeast Bosnia that are controlled by the RS. This is why Kopaci is the key to return to all of the towns around the region.’

Himzo Bajramovic, another refugee, noted that Kopaci has clinics and an industrial center. ‘When people know that we have returned to Kopaci, they will be encouraged to go to their homes farther away.’

This helps to explain why the Regional Committee for Refugees of Southeast Bosnia views Kopaci as the ‘key to southeast Bosnia.’ In mid-1999 the organization began to call upon international officials to facilitate return to the town. At the same time, displaced residents of Kopaci started planning spontaneous returns. Some families began tilling their old fields. During the summer, return activists made arrangements with several international relief organizations to start rebuilding 70 damaged houses in Kopaci.

THE ADVOCACY CORNER

– The Regional Committee for Refugees of Southeast Bosnia

The Regional Committee for Refugees of Southeast Bosnia, formed in January 1999, acts as an umbrella organization for local associations of displaced persons from Foca, Visegrad, Rudo, Rogatica, Cajnice, Pale, Sokolac, and Srpsko Gorazde.

Based in Gorazde, the organization works for the return of Muslims who were displaced from the surrounding towns. It also advocates for the return of displaced Serbs to Gorazde. Vahid Kanlic, the president of the organization, estimates that it speaks for around 100,000 people.
In early March 1999, the Committee held a regional conference in Gorazde, attended by several hundred displaced persons and return activists. It is significant that participants in this conference included displaced Serbs living in Visegrad and several other municipalities — people who were for the first time starting to organize themselves and press for their right to return to Gorazde.

At the conference, activist Mirhunisa Komarica called for the return of displaced persons in all directions. She pointed out that there had been many meetings, but that none had led to return. The international community’s plan for 1999 was to return 120,000 people to their homes. Ms. Komarica mentioned that there are that many refugees in the United States alone.

Fadil Banjanovic, a charismatic return activist from Tuzla, said, ‘We are in a deep sleep. It is time to wake up. It is we who will make return happen, not the international community. We are all for return, but for three years, nothing has happened. Something is wrong, either with the international community or with us, or both.’

I spoke with Mujo Pestek, President of the Gorazde Municipal Council, who told me, ‘The politicians keep things the way they are. Also, some displaced persons are holding things back, people who came out ahead in the war. We need freedom of movement. The best thing would be if the international community would set up municipal information centers and guarantee security for returnees, and then take care of the local authorities who are obstructing return.’

Vahid Kanlic explained his organization’s work to me: ‘We have clear plans based on two-way return. The prerequisites are the establishment of multi-ethnic police forces and local governments, and an increased SFOR (NATO’s stabilization force in Bosnia) for presence to provide security. Before the creation of this committee, there were no contacts between Serbs and Bosniaks. But now we have established communication with people in Visegrad, Rudo, Rogatica, and several other places. We have a mutual language of displacement; we think the same way.’

‘Our organization helps people fill out property claim forms so that they can return. Many people have filled out these forms, some as many as five times. We work with the UNHCR, the IPTF (U.N. police), and we put pressure on the Republika Srpska and the international community. Hundreds of families have submitted applications to return. Now, we have to do this all over because of new property laws in the RS. We are focusing on Kopaci because it is closer to here, easier to sustain, and some of the people who would move back there work here in Gorazde.’

‘Thirty Serb families have returned to Gorazde in the last year. Before the war, the total population of Gorazde was 37,000, with around 30 percent (11,000) of that being Serb. Now there are applications from over 1,000 more Serb families to return.’

Mr. Kanlic complained bitterly to me about the fact that the international community, and especially the Office of the High Representative (OHR), seemed to be ignoring eastern Bosnia. ‘It is the black hole of return, the nest of war criminals. In other parts of the Republika Srpska, things are moving. What is the OHR doing about this situation? If this were Stolac, Drvar, and so on, there would have been big changes by now. Who has been fired?’ Later in the year, it would seem that the international community had heard his plea.