SOCIETY-BOSNIA: An Experiment with Ethnic Uncleansing

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BRCKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jul 1 2003 (IPS) - Arriving in this town by bus is quite an experience for someone who has not been here for many years.

The old clock tower at the railway station still stands. Only, it has no hands, and the walls around it are scarred with marks of artillery fire. Houses around have no windows or roofs; trees and grass grow out of them.

"Downtown, the buildings are not so bad," says Mila Stajic (28), a Serb economist from the town. "The town is getting its old face back, and life is better here in the district than in any other part of Bosnia."

Like many others, Mila calls her hometown simply "the district", or even "the experiment within the experiment."

The larger experiment is post-war Bosnia, a federal state made out of the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation. The experiment within that is the district of Brcko.

If the attempt to reverse ethnic cleansing can work here, it might just work elsewhere.

The Dayton Accords that ended the 1992-95 wars in Bosnia had such experiments built into them. The wars left 200,000 dead on all sides. They led also to the uprooting of two million of the 4.2 million population of pre-war Bosnia.

The Accords called for re-establishment of a multi-ethnic society and for the return of refugees to their pre-war homes.

In much of Bosnia that possibility is still distant. But Brcko has been picked to prove that it can still be possible.

"We had to start from the beginning here," says Ismet Dedejic, head of the economic department of the local government. "But now conditions here are better than anywhere else in Bosnia."

Average salaries are two to three times higher than elsewhere in Bosnia. Money that the international community has been pumping into Brcko for years now pays local policemen 600 dollars monthly; doctors get 1,200 dollars and judges about 1,700 dollars.

The reason for these high salaries by Bosnian standards is simple. Administrators believe that this will help provide quality services and impartiality in a town trying to recover from the catastrophic effects of a divisive war..

Pre-war Brcko had a population of 88,000, with Muslims of Slav origin making 44 percent, Croats 25 percent and Serbs 21 percent. The rest were people of mixed origin.

After the Bosnian Serb army ethnically cleansed Brcko of Muslims and Croats, Serbs who had been forced to flee from other parts of Bosnia came to settle in Brcko. Many now have to leave the houses they moved into because the old Croat and Muslim house owners are returning.

"Brcko has the highest refugee return rate in Bosnia," says mayor Sinisa Kisic. "But still, more than 10,000 people are waiting to come back."

Given the new political correctness, neither the mayor nor any other official comments on the ethnicity of those returning. But those returning are clearly Muslims.

The returning Muslims will have a lot of rebuilding to do. In the three years of war, the Bosnian Serb army blew up all the mosques in town.

But the refugees will return to an administration under which that rebuilding will be possible. The district has a multi-ethnic administration representing Serbs, Muslims and Croats. It has also its own multi-ethnic judiciary, police and education system. The local radio station has staff that carefully represents all three peoples.

Everything is under the strict control of the international supervisor Henry Lee Clarke. He has responsibility for making the Dayton Accords work in Brcko.

And slowly, they are working. "Things are getting better," says Mustafa Karanovic, a Muslim carpenter. "I am back in my house, but I don’t know if I can get any work."

The level of industrial activity in Brcko and its port on the Sava river is only 5 percent of the pre-war level.

That might be a good thing, Mila says. "Maybe it will help new generations start all over again, and not dig into a past that could only bring new conflicts."