Muslim victims of Bosnia's
civil war
are laid to rest in their hometown
By Jon R. Anderson, Bosnia bureau
Ivana Avramovic / Stars and Stripes
Bosnian Muslims pray before the burial of 78 bodies exhumed from mass graves around
Vlasenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. |
VLASENICA,
Bosnia and Herzegovina — The Muslim dead are coming home to Vlasenica before the
living.
Ferida
Hadzic, clutching her teen-age daughter’s arm, cries as the dirt is shoveled onto her
husband’s thin pine casket, a green burial shroud draped over his remains.
Hadzic’s
husband is one of 78 Muslims who were buried in their hometown Saturday, 10 years after
they disappeared at the beginning of Bosnia’s bloody civil war.
All of them
were last seen alive in a Serbian concentration camp, shortly after being run out of their
homes in 1992. Traveling in eight buses and 100 cars, about 500 Muslims finally returned
Saturday, gathering for prayers on a grassy hillside under a warm spring sky before
picking up shovels to bury their dead.
For the 24
victims whom officials could not identify, a big orange earthmover helped settle the
graves.
Hadzic’s
house is just across the street from the cemetery. This is only the second time she’s
seen it since the war.
"I’m
afraid to come back here," she says. "All I have now is my daughter."
At least
her husband is home now, she says. But she wonders how long it will take before the Muslim
community that once thrived will be able to return for good.
In the
distance, the bells of a Serbian Orthodox church ring out, echoing against the green
hills, celebrating a new marriage. Before the war, this was a city of 30,000 almost evenly
split between Serbs and Muslims.
Ivana Avramovic / Stars and Stripes
Bosnian Muslims pray by some of the 78 graves before the burial ceremony Saturday in
Vlasenica. |
Now, the
town mosque is a pile of rubble and 20,000 people live here — all of them Serbs.
The current
residents seem unconcerned about the burials. No angry protests, no ethnic taunts.
About 100
police, mostly Serbs, made themselves seen, especially around the cemetery. Outside of
town, about 100 U.S. peacekeepers took up position along the main roads, sitting inside 20
machine-gun mounted Humvees. Two OH-58 Kiowa helicopters circled overhead.
"We’re
just here hoping for another boring day in Bosnia," said Maj. Tom Carden, executive
officer for 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, which patrols this part of Bosnia.
The troops
are here in case trouble breaks out, but are keeping their distance intentionally.
"Sometimes
we can be a lightning rod," he says. "We don’t want people to overreact or
throw a sucker punch, just to try and get us involved in something we don’t need to
be involved in."
Success has
been slow coming in this region where ethnic tensions still remain high. While 10 Muslims
were integrated into the local police force a month ago, one was welcomed with two
grenades tossed into his house.
The good
news, however, is that refugees have begun returning.
Ivana Avramovic / Stars and
Stripes
Bosnian Muslim men build burial mounds
for family members who were killed sometime after being taken into Susica concentration
camp. |
While none
have actually returned to Vlasenica, about 50 families have started rebuilding their homes
in the outlying villages, says Capt. Reed Berry, whose company of infantrymen is
responsible for daily peacekeeping patrols in the area.
A Serb
family now lives in the Hadzic house. Jadranka Mijatovic stands on the porch while her
three daughters play quietly in the yard. She and her husband were driven from their home
in Sarajevo in 1993 and have lived here ever since.
She’s
glad the Muslims can come to bury their dead, but like many here, who are refugees in
their own country, she is frustrated by the multitude of problems that have made finding a
real peace in Bosnia difficult.
The
situation is like a giant, jumbled ethnic Rubik’s Cube: returning people to their
homes has been a slow, seemingly impossible process.
"It’s
an ugly situation," says Mijatovic, shaking her head.
In fact, at
this point, she and her husband don’t think they’ll ever go home.
"There
is no work for my husband in Sarajevo," she says. Working at a furniture store in
Vlasenica, he is earning about $100 a month, enough to support the family.
Under rules
established by the international community, since January, the Mijatovics have been paying
about $75 a month to Hadzic for rent.
Hadzic, in
turn, uses that money to pay rent for her apartment in Tuzla.
Walking up
the road to the cemetery memorial service where his brother is being buried not far from
Hadzic’s husband, Dzemal Cehajic says he doesn’t have a home to come back to.
"I
would love to return tomorrow, but there is nothing to return to," he says.
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