SOCIETY-BOSNIA: Much Too Late for a Homecoming

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia, Jun 27 2003 (IPS) - Every morning, Brane Jankovic and his wife Zora go out to look after the flowers in their swapped home, and then to the garden at the back to pick tomatoes, cucumbers and baby potatoes for their day’s meal.

Every morning, Brane Jankovic and his wife Zora go out to look after the flowers in their swapped home, and then to the garden at the back to pick tomatoes, cucumbers and baby potatoes for their day’s meal.

"It’s just like back home," says Brane, a Serb. But not quite. "My home is more than 200 kilometres to the south, and I have been there only once in the past ten years."

Brane’s home was in Konjic. He swapped his house in Konjic with a Croat from Banja Luka. "At least my wife and I have a decent place to live in now," he says.

That means Brane is now in an overwhelmingly Serb Banja Luka, and the Croat in a mostly Croat Konjic.

It was not meant to be so when the Dayton accords promoted by the U.S. in 1995 finally brought peace to war-torn Bosnia. The uprooted, it was hoped, would go back home and not into clusters of their own ethnicity.

Brane and the Croat share the destiny of almost two million people uprooted in the 1992-95 war. Before that the 4.3 million people of Bosnia-Herzegovina lived next to one another. You could not tell who they were except from the name. Everyone spoke the same language, and with the same accent.

Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from former Yugoslavia in 1992. Ethnic Serbs resisted the move to independence. The war that followed changed it all.

Bosnian Serbs were pushed by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia to carve out a new republic in Bosnia, and ‘ethnically cleanse’ non-Serbs from areas they saw as their own.

Croats and Muslims in turn forced out Serbs living in areas where they were in a majority. They fought one another too, as ethnic Croats fought to unite a part of Bosnia with neighbouring Croatia.

The war left 200,000 dead on all sides.

The new Bosnia-Herzegovina comprises the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Muslim Croat Federation, but has also a joint presidency and government. But that has not brought people together.

The war changed Banja Luka, as it changed Bosnia itself. Pre-war Banja Luka had a population of 195,000, 55 percent of them Serbs, 15 percent Croats and 15 percent Muslims. The rest were called ‘Yugoslavs’, which had come to mean people from mixed marriages.

Pre-war Konjic had a population of 43,636, of which 54.5 percent was Muslim, 26 percent Croat and 15 percent Serb.

Today Banja Luka has grown into a city of 300,000. That makes it home to thousands of Serbs who migrated to the town from Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia- Herzegovina, and other parts of the country where they were not welcome.

What is now the Bosnian Serb Republic should have seen the return of at least 800,000 people of all three ethnic groups to their original homes. But only 233,480 returned, and among them only 120,000 were non-Serbs. Most non- Serbs who left have chosen to stay away.

In other areas 695,000 of the original residents returned when the number should have been well over a million. They came back from other countries, or other parts of Bosina they had fled to when the war began.

"It’s good to talk of tolerance and reconciliation, but too much blood was spilled, too much ethnic hatred remains," says 25-year-old student Dejan Jovic who is engaged in several projects for the return of refugees. "You hardly hear of reconciliation. Most people think the three groups should remain separate."

A recent survey among Bosnian Croats showed that 80 percent want to stay with their ethnic own, Croatian analyst Drago Pilsel told IPS. "People have swapped property, found new jobs, sent children to new schools, grown new roots," he says.

Real estate agencies that specialise in property swaps are flourishing in Banja Luka. Some provide services on the Internet. Scores of deals have been made through these agencies.

"It’s hard to think about coming back," says Croat Damir Radic (29). He was born in Banja Luka but has been living in Canada since 1992. He returned to his home town last week for the visit of the Pope. "This is not the place I left, and this is not the country I would like to live in," he says.

Those who return, come to a country with 40 percent unemployment, where 60 percent of the young dream of leaving.