Publication: THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS PubDate: 7/2/2000 Head: BITTER HOMECOMING Ethnic strife lingers as refugees return

to postwar Bosnia Byline: Ed Timms Credit: Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News Section: NEWS Edition: THIRD Page Number: 1A Word Count: 1618 Dateline: SRPSKA VARAS, Bosnia SRPSKA VARAS, Bosnia - Its not much, but Emina Bejnanovic calls it home. All thats left of her house is a foundation and rubble. Serb soldiers torched it eight years ago. That was about a week after soldiers came and led away three of her sons. She never saw them again. The 57-year-old woman recently returned to Srpska Varas, a small community in eastern Bosnia, with about two dozen other Muslims who were displaced by Bosnias bitter civil war. They want to rebuild their homes and their lives. But first, Serbs who also were forced to flee their prewar homes will have to leave. Srpska Varas defines the progress that has been made in resettlement - critical to the worlds hopes for a multiethnic Bosnia - and some of the obstacles. Returnees from both sides of the ethnic divide often face considerable resistance. U.N. officials have raised concerns about acts of violence directed against returning families. One Bosnian Muslim, for example, recently was wounded when a hand grenade was lobbed through the window of his home in the northern Bosnian town of Prnjavor. Bosnian Serbs complain that when they try to return to their prewar homes, now in mostly Muslim neighborhoods, they are harassed or turned away. Much of the political landscape in Bosnia is still defined by ethnicity, and some politicians - Croat, Muslim and Serb - see resettlement as a threat to their political base. But Bosnians are returning to their prewar homes in unprecedented numbers, in part because of a multinational military force that has

provided a level of security and stability. About 700 Texas National Guard members with the 49th Armored Lone Star Division are part of a multinational force that operates in eastern and northeastern Bosnia. It is potentially one of Bosnias most contentious areas, as the international community struggles to realize the goals of the 1995 Dayton peace accord. Brig. Gen. Michael H. Taylor, deputy commander of the 49th, acknowledges that progress in Bosnia is often incremental. He likens it to watching paint dry. The biggest indicator of success ... is people who want to return to their prewar homes, said Gen. Taylor, a hospital administrator from Lufkin in civilian life. Robert L. Barry, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europes Bosnia Mission, recently testified in Washington that in the first quarter of this year, about 12,000 Bosnians returned to their prewar homes in communities dominated by another nationality. This was, he said, four times the number who returned during the same period last year. In all, more than 800,000 Bosnians have not returned to their homes within Bosnia, a nation of 4.5 million. At least 300,000 refugees still live in other countries. An estimated 200,000-250,000 died during the war. Reshaped demographic Ethnic cleansing reshaped the demographics of Bosnian communities. Srpska Varas population was once roughly 80 percent Muslim and 20 percent Serb. Until earlier this month, when a handful of Muslims returned to reclaim their property, virtually all of its residents were Serb refugees who had fled other parts of Bosnia. It is on the outskirts of Zvornik, once a mostly Muslim city whose skyline was dominated by a large mosque. The mosque is gone. It was razed by Serbs who wanted to obliterate the most visible symbol of a Muslim Zvornik. The current population is Serb. The Muslims in Srpska Varas are crowded into one house, in barracks-like living quarters, as they rebuild their own homes or wait for Serb families to leave. All these Serbs didnt live here before the war. Theyre all

displaced persons from Sarajevo or some other area in Bosnia, said Army Capt. Jed Welder, 31, a troop commander with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. So theyve got to have some place to go. Since 1992, Capt. Welder said, Srpska Varas is the closest that any Muslim has come to returning to Zvorniks city center. That resettlement of Srpska Varas has not been seamless. Last week, Serb residents and the returning Muslims exchanged insults. A Serb Orthodox cross atop a nearby hill was defaced, although there is some question whether its the work of returning Muslims or Serbs who want to see Muslims blamed. The Muslims came back to this area on the fifth of June. Since that time, theres been verbal harassment back and forth, minor provocations. Capt. Welder said. Theres been no violence, but theres tension. Local police from the Zvornik opstina, an area roughly equivalent to a county, maintain a 24-hour presence, and U.S. military patrols are almost always in the vicinity. Since January, about 5,000 refugees have either returned permanently to the opstina or have begun rebuilding their homes in order to return. Before this year, only a few refugees had returned to the westernmost portion of the opstina, near Camp Dobol, a U.S. military installation. The increased number, Capt. Welder said, is a potential flash point as returning refugees displace others. Ramo Ahmetovic stands with other Muslim refugees outside their foothold in Srpska Varas, a war-scarred cinderblock-and-brick structure. He points to another house, perhaps 50 yards away, that is occupied by a Serb family. Its the house he fled in 1992 to save his family. He doesnt wish the Serb family any harm. He just wants to go home after living hand-to-mouth as a refugee for eight years. His family, now living in the northeastern Bosnian city of Tuzla, will move in as soon as theres even one room available. Mr. Ahmetovic said he hasnt talked to the Serb family since returning. Although people were milling outside the house earlier, no one came to the door when an interpreter for U.S. forces

knocked. Another Serb family sat on the second-story stairwell of another house nearby. The patriarch - a gaunt, elderly man with a shock of white hair - glowered down. He was angry that the Serb Orthodox cross had been defaced. And he had some prime suspects in mind. The Muslims, he said, know what they have done. The virtue of patience Similar friction has occurred in other areas where refugees have resettled. In time, Capt. Welder said, the tensions ease. New neighbors work things out. Local police and military units can back off and move to a new resettlement area. Give them time - Strpljenje, Capt. Welder said. Strpljenje means patience in Serbo-Croatian. Its one of the first words that you learn. Mrs. Bejnanovic, whose husband died before the fighting, hopes to return to Srpska Varas with a surviving son, his wife, and two grandchildren. She believes that the soldiers and the police have made it safe. And she added, I dont have another place to live. Kula Grad, farther up the road, also was a Muslim community. A castle, purportedly built by the Ottoman Turks hundreds of years ago, sits atop a hill above the village. Bosnian Muslims on that hilltop held out against Serb forces for a month before being overwhelmed in 1992, after Bosnia declared its independence from the former Yugoslavia. Kula Grad was then sacked. Up until January this place was a ghost town. Nobody lived here. Every house was destroyed, Capt. Welder said. There wasnt a single roof in the village. In January, Muslims returned. Now, with the help of international aid, about two dozen houses have roofs again. Building supplies were stacked by the foundation and collapsed minaret of the villages mosque. Rows of flowers have been planted around a communal well. Residents get by with no electricity and no running water. Those

whose homes are still too badly damaged live communally in a battered building that was once Kula Grads school. We have to live together The village is deep in the republic of Srpska, the Serb portion of Bosnia. Mehmed Poulakic, 48, worries about the education Muslim children will receive in a Serb-dominated society. Parents, he said, must work to pass on their culture and history. He believes that a multiethnic Bosnia can work. We are the people who have to forgive, he said. We cannot forget. But we have to live together. Ljubomir Petric lives with his wife and three children in Srebinica, an eastern Bosnian city, once mostly Muslim, that is now populated almost entirely by Serbs. Most of the Srebinica Serbs were displaced by the civil war. Mr. Petric has no desire to live with Muslims in a multiethnic state. He suggests that the civil war demonstrated that Muslims and Serbs cannot live with each other and "we shouldnt be forced." And hes contemptuous of resettlement efforts. You tell me how I can go back to my very own house, said Mr. Petric as he sat on a bench in the center of Srebenica, flexing a rusted handsaw with one hand. Because there is a Muslim in there. Several other men sitting with him nodded or grunted their support. His wife recently tried to get local authorities to help them reclaim their home in Donji Vakuf, but Mr. Petric said she was turned away. A former factory supervisor, hes tried to provide for his family by taking on any job he can find. Its not enough. Very soon, he warned, hell be forced to steal. Mr. Petric lives in a house that belongs to a Muslim family. He worries that when authorities begin pushing to resettle more Muslims in Srebenica later this summer, he wont have a roof over his head. If somebody throws me out, or if one of my kids gets killed, Im ready to kill, Mr. Petric said. You have to understand, someone else lives in my house and I cannot go back, because it is not safe

for me.