Muslims Returning to Serb-Held Town in Bosnia

BRCKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Four months ago, this disputed flash point--which had been seized by Serbs and rid of its Muslims--was taken over by an American administrator. U.S. troops now patrol the edges of this strategic town. An unusually large contingent of U.S.-led United Nations police officers keeps watch.

And now, under American supervision, a rare return of Muslim refugees to Serb-held territory, in Brcko’s suburbs, is beginning.

“The Americans are the sheriffs here,” said a none-too-pleased Mladen Bosic, local head of the ruling Serbian Democratic Party, the powerful hard-line nationalist organization that takes its orders from indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.

The Brcko experiment, and its test for American peacemaking, can happen here, and possibly nowhere else in Bosnia-Herzegovina, because of a unique set of circumstances.

Most important, Brcko is in northeastern Bosnia, the sector that is the base for the majority of an estimated 8,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Bosnia as part of the December 1995 peace accords that ended this country’s brutal 3 1/2-year war.

In recent weeks, U.S. troops have expanded their duties to include what one officer likened to community policing--actually patrolling the streets regularly where Muslims are rebuilding their destroyed homes in the Bosnian Serb half of the country.

“We walk around, talk to people, tell them what’s going on,” said Maj. Ronald Raygoza, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and Reserve Army civil affairs officer who was dispatched to Bosnia several weeks ago. “We give them a sense of security.”

Last fall, when Muslims dared venture into these same ruined suburbs south of Brcko to begin repairs, their homes were summarily blown up overnight by well-organized Serbs. U.S. patrols at the time were only occasional.

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But now, in a departure from the hands-off policy, U.S. commanders have decided to provide security for refugee returns amid Washington’s overall toughened approach aimed at trying to make the foundering peace accords work.

Soldiers like Raygoza visit with the locals and may drop in for coffee. About 600 families are returning to Brcko’s suburbs; in Stari Rasadnik, the village most solidly in Bosnian Serb territory, 15 families have begun repairing their homes and will move in within the next couple of weeks.

In these villages near the dividing line between Serbian and Muslim-Croat territory, Bosnian Serb authorities placed Serbs into Muslim homes to form what U.S. officials call “biological blockers.”

To avoid confrontation and ease resettlement, the Serbs living in Muslim homes will not be evicted, for now. Instead, Muslims may move only into abandoned or unoccupied homes--meaning, usually, the most damaged--and only after proving ownership and obtaining approval from an internationally supervised housing commission.

Mevlida Ferizagic is one of the Muslim pioneers. She and her husband are pulling rubble from the home they fled in 1992, filling in holes left in the walls by heavy artillery and shaping a new roof.

“I’ve seen a couple of Serbs,” Ferizagic said. “They come and tell us hello, we say hello. . . . I’d like to move in tomorrow, but it depends on the conditions.”

The Muslims credit the U.S. military presence with making their return possible.

“I have a platoon [in the area] every minute of every day--24 hours,” said Lt. Col. Jim Greer, who commands the U.S. Army’s nearby McGovern Base. “This is a groundbreaking type of thing.”

Successful returns here are all the more remarkable because of the sensitivity of the area. Brcko, sitting on the Sava River on Bosnia’s border with Croatia, is critical to the Serbs because it straddles the narrowest portion of the so-called Posavina Corridor that links the eastern and western halves of the Bosnian Serbs’ Republika Srpska.

For the Muslims and Croats who once formed 70% of the city’s population--about 60,000 people, before they were expelled or killed by Bosnian Serb militias--Brcko is Bosnia’s rail and road link to Europe.

The dispute over Brcko is so explosive that it was the single territorial issue unresolved by the peace accords. Brcko was submitted to international arbitration. But the arbitrator, American lawyer Roberts Owen, could not reach a decision by the deadline last February.

Instead, Brcko was placed under special international administration, with U.S. diplomat Robert W. Farrand named supervisor.

Farrand, in an interview, said mistakes made elsewhere in Bosnia--”lessons learned”--are guiding his hand as he tries to solve Brcko’s problems. The refugee returns, for one, are being conducted quietly and with deliberate slowness. He acknowledged that the returns will become only more complicated; at some point, displaced Serbs will either have to move or returns will have to stop.

In fact, the Serbs, while they have not yet protested openly against the returns, view the trend with alarm. Gradually, they see the Muslims they once eradicated being infiltrated into their land.

Political leaders in Brcko come from the ranks of Bosnian Serb hard-line nationalists, diplomats say. Ditto for the local police. Senior Bosnian Serb leaders have repeatedly refused to submit the Brcko police to vetting and training required by the peace accords.

“All the makings are there for serious resistance,” said an international official. “The returns are happening in the narrowest part of the corridor. It is very worrying for the Serbs. The area is seen as a potential jumping-off place if hostilities were to resume. Resettlement essentially moves the [border on Bosnian Serb territory] farther north. . . . There has to be a reaction. The question is when.”

For now, diplomats and international officials say, the Serbs, Muslims and Croats who are vying for Brcko are being kept on their best behavior by the fact that Owen, the arbitrator, will rule in March on who will control the city. The Bosnians have been told that the use of violence to block refugee returns or, in the case of the Muslims and Croats, to force returns, will be held against the offending parties when the arbitration judgment is made.

“The arbitration is like a Damocles sword hanging over them,” said a Western official with long experience in Bosnia. “The Serbs know they have to cooperate at some level with the [Muslims] and Croats. This wouldn’t work anywhere else in the country. . . . [The] U.S. presence makes a big difference.”