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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 November 1999 Issue No. 455 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 November 1999 Issue No. 455
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Books Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Time to heal
By Zeina KhodrEdds is eleven years old. He comes from Srebernica. Now, he spends most of his day in the old city of Sarajevo. Like so many Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), he was forced to flee when the Bosnian Serbs besieged his home city in July 1995 and allegedly executed thousands of Muslim inhabitants. Today, Edds is a refugee in his own country. The Serb authorities will not allow the Muslims who survived to return -- in clear breach of the 1995 American-brokered Dayton peace accords.
Aliana is also from Srebrenica. She lives with her husband and her two-year-old daughter in a Sarajevo apartment which they moved into during the war. Now the original owners -- Serbs -- want to return.
"I do not know what to do," Aliana said. "We were told by the government that we must leave. We have nowhere to go. The Serb authorities are not allowing us to go back to Srebernica."
Srebrenica is still in ruins. Homes have not been rebuilt, and employment opportunities are virtually non-existent. The international community is unwilling to put money into the town until the authorities there start to allow some of the Muslims to return.
Republic Srpska represents the 51 per cent of Bosnian territory that is controlled by the Serbs. Dayton kept Bosnia-Hercegovina united, but did so only by creating two separate entities, the other being the Muslim-Croat Federation. In the Republic, minorities of any kind are not welcome.
"We still have 800,000 displaced persons in Bosnia and we are still looking for solutions," said UNHCR Chief of Mission in Bosnia, Werner Blatter. "The easiest kind of return is what we call majority returns -- people who go back to areas where they are the ethnic majority. But minority returns are difficult because of resistance from local authorities and there is no enforceable mechanism. This particularly happens in regions like the Croat area of Mostar and the Republika Srpska."
So far, there have been 500,000 majority returns. Meanwhile, some 100,000 people have returned to areas where they are a minority. Out of those 100,000, some two-thirds returned to areas in the Muslim-Croat Federation and only one-third to Republika Srpska.
Mirko Shagul, editor in chief of Oslobodenje newspaper, stressed the importance of the repatriation of refugees. "That is the only way to make sure Bosnia remains united. It is happening slowly and the Serbs are hampering the returns."
According to Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, head of the NATO-led stabilisation force SFOR, 80,000 people have been able to return to their prewar houses in the Muslim-Croat half of Bosnia this year -- twice as many as last year. But returns by Muslims, Serbs or Croats to areas controlled by other ethnic groups are often risky. Returns to neighbourhoods that refugees had been driven from remained rare, Meigs said, because other people now occupy their houses.
Security is also a major issue. Most individuals are still fearful of living in areas administered by a different ethnic group. "Harassment of minorities still occur in some areas," said UN spokesman Douglas Coffman, adding: "One of our missions is to reform the police force so minorities will feel secure."
Dayton called for the creation of a multi-ethnic police force. Now, the United Nations International Police Task Force (UNIPTF) is trying to do just that. "During the war, the forces were basically armed militiamen," Coffman explained. "They restricted freedom of movement. The forces were mono-ethnic. Thus for example, in a Serb area, the force would be made up entirely of Serbs." UNIPTF has made some progress. It has taken away the militias' heavy weapons, and eliminated checkpoints. Now citizens are free to travel all over the country. Agreements have also been made with the authorities in both the Federation and the Republic to try to make their security forces reflect the demographic ethnic balance before the war. But the work is not easy, as Coffman is the first to admit: "We are making progress, but it is slow."
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan admitted as much himself in a recent report. "Local leaders still lack the will to improve the functioning of the police force and the judiciary," Annan wrote. "There are still difficulties in recruiting minority police officers. Gross political interference is evident in the failure of the police and judicial officers to discharge duties impartially in ethnically related criminal or judicial cases.
"There is also another obstacle to minority returns -- the educational system, which, since the constitution defines the republic as the national state of the Bosnian Serbs, in which Muslims are constitutionally a minority."
While Dayton may have managed to keep the guns silent, many have criticised the accords. "It lacks an implementation mechanism," Lyon explained. "SFOR managed to maintain peace, but it can only enforce compliance when it comes to military matters, not the civilian aspects of the agreement. The OHR can only request local authorities to comply. There is no way of enforcing the accords."
Filipovic believes this was done on purpose. "I think Dayton was designed to allow the international community, NATO and the US, to enter Bosnia and stay here."
And indeed that is what has happened. Dayton has provided the basis for a continuing international presence in Bosnia. Many western analysts, however, consider such international support essential if violence is not to erupt once more. "Bosnia today is divided into three mono-ethnic entities. If the international community pulls out, there will be war in two years," Lyon said.
The local authorities, meanwhile, are blocking any substantive reconciliation between the communities. The serene atmosphere that prevails on the ground is, in fact, misleading. It may be four years since the war ended, but the fighting is still not over in the minds and hearts of the people.
In the words of SFOR spokesman, Major Jacques Poitras: "The scars are still there. The hatred is still there. But it will require time to heal."
