BRKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina — In greener times, the fertile plains west of the Sava River near Brcko sprouted wheat, corn and sunflowers.
Except for the steady hum of a few farm tractors and the buzz of crickets, little broke the silence in a region of Yugoslavia called Posavina.
But all that changed with the war.
"Nobody will be able to go for a walk for 60 years," said Rusmir, a Bosnian army soldier who would not give his family name. That's because the quiet Posavina countryside is now sown with thousands of land mines, hidden demons that may haunt this swath of farmland for decades.
Into this quagmire will march U.S. forces, who will spend 1996 — and possibly beyond —patrolling an area that includes what has come to be known as the Posavina corridor.
Control over the corridor and the town of Brcko is so vital that the issue couldn't be resolved at peace talks held at WrightPatterson AFB, Ohio. That task is now in the hands of a panel of international arbitrators.
"We have always been for open roads, and one of the conditions for peace to succeed is open roads," said Began Causevic, the Bosnian army battalion commander for Brka village, the closest Bosnian settlement to Brcko.
"We don't understand corridors," Causevic said, speaking through an interpreter. "Why corridors when this is one state? We don't understand that somebody in one country has to control one road, and somebody else has to control the other road."
The Bosnian Serbs occupy Brcko. And they want to maintain control of it and a north-south road that links the two halves of their Bosnian domain.
For the Bosnian government, Brcko serves as a bridge to. Croatia, its partner in the newly formed federation. Besides its strategic value, the town is vital to commerce because it is along the Sava, the former Yugoslavia's longest river.
The future for "Brcko is uncertain for us and for them," Causevic said.
Conventional wisdom holds that Brcko likely could be designated as a "free city," meaning that both sides will have access to it. Under the peace agreement, both sides are to pull back from their current front line positions and eventually return to their respective barracks.
The closest barracks this side of Brcko is commanded by Causevic, a bespectacled, clean-shaven man with black hair and a bushy mustache peppered with gray.
"If I were not in the position that I am," he said, "I would be able to say a lot more."
Causevic did say the Bosnian Serbs in this region should be satisfied with the pact. He and his men maintain they would eventually have taken Brcko, describing the men on the other side as weary and old.
The width of the circuitous Posavina corridor ranges from about two miles to five miles. The length is roughly nine miles.
In a 4-foot-deep trench along one segment, Bosnian soldiers seemed relaxed, smoking cigarettes and taking the cold, sloppy conditions in stride. Beyond them is a no man's land — a brown and white landscape that hasn't seen a farmer's plow in more than three growing seasons.
A squad of Bosnian Serbian soldiers is no more than 200 yards away from this most forward post. A blue, white and red Serbian flag flutters overhead.
It's a one-hour walk from Bosnian front line positions to the center of Brcko.
The link that Bosnian government forces have to battalion headquarters and Causevic is but a series of multicolored communication lines running along the top of the trench wall. The wires are elevated in places by wishbone-shaped twigs.
"I have absolute trust in American soldiers," Causevic said. "They will surely finish their job. American soldiers will not teach us things we already know ... but they will show us war techniques we don't use."
Like his men and the Serbs across the line from them, Causevic is tired of war. But, "there will not be peace if each man doesn't return to his home," he said, referring to the country's thousands of refugees.
And pastoral Posavina won't experience lasting peace — a peace that will bring life to fields long dormant — unless questions over its boundaries are resolved.
