Glamoc: The Resolved Returnees and the "Determined Barbara"

AIM Banja Luka, April 30, 2001

While for five whole years all citizens of B&H could count on some of the rights from Annex VII of the Dayton Agreement, until recently the pre-war inhabitants of villages around the Glamoc Valley, where implementators of that same Agreement had built military ranges the "Determined Barbara" and "Pelican" (for the "essential training in the country"), could not hope for anything. Although the Dayton Agreement and the B&H Constitution precisely state that private property of B&H citizens is inviolable, refugees from the Glamoc villages on whose holdings the ranges of SFOR and the Federation Army had been built, were dispossessed of their property three years ago without any prior notification.

The decision was brought by the Government of the B&H Federation and was based on the "general interest" and the Law on Expropriation of the former SFRY, which is incompatible with the valid constitutional frameworks of B&H. On the basis of that decision, legal owners of real estate were deprived of their right of return.

The Glamoc people kept rolling a stone uphill, while those in charge waited for it to roll back: the damaged villagers wrote demands and appeals, swallowed mumbo-jumbo explanations of international organisations and federal institutions just to be recently told that they have every right as all other citizens. Naturally, they will have to wait for their implementation. The first step into the "forbidden zone" was made two months ago when 45 pre-war inhabitants of the village Prijani and of the surrounding villages visited their homes and submitted to the SFOR representatives, who are lords of that part of the Glamoc Valley, the requests for return. According to the refugees, the village was wrapped in warning tapes restricting movement.

However, after the negotiations between the initiators of the return to the "forbidden zone" and SFOR officers from the Canadian battalion, special signs of warning were removed. During the April visit to the plots, only the second group of potential returnees could freely move around the village. Thus, in a three-year war of nerves between SFOR and pre-war owners of expropriated lots, the injured inhabitants could be satisfied for the first time. Nevertheless, when their excursion was over and they submitted their ownership documents and restitution requests to the SFOR auxiliary services, they remembered that officials of Housing Commissions accompanied by armed escorts were waiting for them in front of their current temporary homes with eviction orders.

That force, empowered under the valid property laws, is strong enough to deprive them of other people's homes, in which they mostly reside now, but is weak to resist the law of force, which deprived them both of their property and their basic rights. And while they are waiting to be evicted, the villagers of legally occupied villages can only dream that their devastated houses will one day become fit for life.

Robin Hodges, SFOR colonel, sent a message to the owners of houses in Podgreda, Hasanbegovici, Bajici and Rajicke - villages located along the base border: "Come and we shall be good neighbours." They were told that they could return, while SFOR and UNHCR will try to find donors willing to finance the reconstruction of their houses. However, two years ago owners of cadastral lots in the villages of Mladeskovci and Opacic received the same message, but even today same as Prijani these villages are totally devastated and deserted. It seems that even the proposers do not know when and how the houses will be reconstructed, while owners suspect that the international organisations are only buying time with their promises. They say that they would trust them more if SFOR would admit that the houses had been burned down during manoeuvres of Multi-National Forces in August 1998. The accused forces reply that such claims have always complicated and slowed down the process of return to these parts.

Recently, the current SFOR spokesman for sector "South-West", Chris Hempton stated that Multi-National Forces had nothing to do with the destruction of property in the village of Prijani. "Inhabitants of this village have abandoned their property during the war and are therefore considered displaced persons", Hempton explained his "discovery" and asked the injured owners for patience. In reply to accusations that arsonists did not come from the Croatian side, but from SFOR, Hempton's predecessor Tonny Qinn stated: "This is total nonsense. I claim with full responsibility that the village had not been shelled and that no fire had been opened in the direction of the village".

Only a year before Qinn's reply, the SFOR Chief Command in Sarajevo admitted that five houses had been burned in the maneuvers and as many as 54 in FMOD on that "SFOR's range". The people in the municipality of Glamoc claim that SFOR first admitted being responsible and promised to compensate for the damages, and then revised its decision. The message "we didn't do it on purpose" was soon replaced by another one: "It was not us, there will be no compensation".

Deputy President of the Glamoc municipality, Bozo Jovicic said that a consequence of SFOR's combat fire in August 1998 was a fire which broke out on eight locations and in which 155 buildings were burned down on the stretch from the village of Dubrava to the village of Prijani, including Opacic and Mladeskovci. For two years and a half now the inhabitants of Prijani have been trying to prove that most of the 69 houses at the village were burned down during the mentioned maneuvers. According to the Preparatory Board for Return, the debate on that issue stopped when SFOR high-ranking officers saw at the Ramici base a videotape of the village before the infamous 1998 drill. Nevertheless, there will be nothing of the repair or of the compensation until SFOR expert services "determine who the land owners are". Although the municipal administration people do not see why proof of ownership should be submitted to the Multi-National Forces, because all the land register documentation has been preserved, the owners only want to get things started. No one, even they do not know how much patience will they need waiting for the first results and having to endure a new round of phone talks at cross purposes between the SFOR-FMOD-municipality. For the time being, there are more "pragmatists" among them. Out of the 704 owners of the total number of 7,360 lots expropriated for the construction of the range, 544 have filed compensation applications. However, eighteen owners, who have been indemnified, received compensation only for their agricultural land.

The pace at which the problem is being resolved is best demonstrated by 176 appeals submitted to SFOR and the 12 private legal actions filed against the B&H Federation, addressed to the House of Human Rights. Although they were the ones who brought the decision on land expropriation, from the very beginning officials of the Federation have been shifting the responsibility to others. Interpretations are based on the indirect message that this was all cooked up by the SFOR, while the Federation, as the holder of sovereignty over that territory had been forced to bring such a decision. It disregards the fact that the Army of the Federation "camped" at the "Pelican" range while the drill was on. Despite all this, current FMOD officials, such as Antun Mrkonjic, claim that they have nothing to do with this and that the municipality of Glamoc, which opposed this decision the most, has been is in charge of expropriation.

Irrespective of the fact that at one time the international peacekeepers stated that the construction of the range for the training of the Federation Army cannot be stopped under any circumstances, they now realise that they might have made an "omission". But, as they said in the SFOR's legal service, the land was given to them for their use. A Croatian General, one Bozanic, is to be blamed for their violation of other people's property without any respect for the potential owners. "Brigadier General Bozanic, who is obviously from the Croatian Defence Council, sent to the then IFOR a letter offering it land for its base", revealed lieutenant-colonel Bert Herts not explaining why SFOR had not first checked whether there was any private property in the planned area. When they have finally realised after three years that they are virtually violating their own standards every day, authors and defenders of Annex VII of the Peace Agreement are now sending a message that the return to some parts of the range will be possible. They have hinted that, if need be, they will make space if owners of the lots agree. The cadastral owners of the "forbidden zone" are astonished, because only four months ago they were not allowed even into the graveyard in Prijani.

As it happened, the dead were the first to return. In mid December despite the warnings of SFOR soldiers that they could not guarantee their safety, Slavko Markovic's relatives decided to fulfil his dying wish. The villagers say that the guns cannot be heard so often now. Perhaps that is why some of them have decided to rebuild the destroyed houses in the nearby Brajici. One of the returnees got tiles for his roof.

As for guarantees that he will be able to keep a roof over his head, he can only count on God and, possibly, St.Barbara, the protector of the British artillerists after whom the drill range was named.

Goran Djogic

(AIM)