WAITING FOR WAR AND PEACE

Banja Luka in the Midst of a Moslem-Croat Offensive

AIM, Beograd, September 24

It has been raining for days in western Bosnia, raining on the long columns of horse - drawn wagons converging towards Banja Luka from the directions of Prijedor, Sanski Most and Mrkonjic Grad, making a wide detour around the town, according to the decision of the authorities, heading north. The rain seeps through the plastic, soaking the sacks filled with flour and the dogs who were not left behind at the moment of flight. It also rains on the flocks of sheep people drove before them, their only wealth. It penetrates through the blankets, soaking the hay spread on the wagon floor. Over 100,000 people are on the move day and night. Columns glide by the demolished skeleton-houses, burned - down, windowless, which at the beginning of the war the same authorities pulled down driving out the Moslems and Croats - so that they would not return. Thus, for example, Kozarci, once a Moslem settlement, can offer hospitality to no one. Just like many houses in Brcko, Modrica or Derventa.

Detached from the column, shrouded in a scarf, an old woman Djuja Drljaca is sitting on the grass by the road leading from Prijedor to Banja Luka. She is wearing a homespun coat and peasant sandals and holds a bag in her lap. She is watching the long column heading in the opposite direction, towards Prijedor. These have lost someone in the first column, she says, and are now going back to look for them. She doesn't know where she is going, it is her fourth day since she run away from the village of Suvaje, near Krupa on the Una river. In those last moments she could hear the screams and see the village burning, she says. "It is all Clinton's fault, my child. He doesn't want to see that the Moslems and Croat hate us", is how she explains the fifth year of the tearing apart of the very heart of Bosnia. But, she has never heard of the notorious camps for Moslems from the beginnings of the war, "Omarska", "Trnopolje" and "Keraterm".

Forty year old Slobodoljub Karanovic is leaning on a team of horses. He is two meters tall, wearing a uniform. His chin is trembling as he is holding back his tears. In despair he takes off his shirt and shows his barely healed wounds. He only wishes to get his aunt Djuja, parents and children safe to Banja Luka, and then he will go back to the front together with his 20 year old son. We shall die for President Karadzic and for our villages, he adds passionately. There is enough hate in his voice to start a new war in a decade or two.

Slobodoljub believes that his sister from Belgrade will come and take the family with her to Belgrade. Distraught as he is he still doesn't know what Branko R. from Belgrade found out at the control point near Klasnica. When he tried to pull out his parents fleeing from Sipovo, as well as the children of his recently killed brother from Banja Luka, the soldiers told him that no one could pass through into Serbia. It is not allowed.

And in Klasnica, thirty-year old Nada Marinkovic, fleeing from Petrovac, her sixth day on the road, points at the endless line of tractors and horse-teams, mostly from Sipovo, Kljuc and Petrovac. "Now, they are sending us to Bosanski Brod, that's what they have decided. We hear that we will get houses without roofs, ruins. Some say that they are sending people back from there also. We are penniless, we have no bread. But, I would not like to go to Serbia. If I have to drown, I would rather it be the Vrbas, than the Drina river", says she bitterly.

In the Banja Luka Pot

The number of refugees and the situation on the roads changes from hour to hour, just like the mood and the situation on the front lines. The local authorities have calculated that there are 127,000 of them. At the end of last week there were 25,000 of them in Prijedor alone, but no one knows whether 10,000 people fleeing from the Croat artillery firing from Bosanski Novi should be added to this figure. There are 10,000 in Derventa, 17,000 in Bosanski Brod, 5,000 in Laktasi, 12,000 in Celinac. In Banja Luka there are only about 20,000 refugees because the authorities, having learned the lesson of Krajina, prevented the more massive inflow of distressed people into the town. There are 13,500 from Mt.Ozren. Over 50,000 of them are children. There are 52 reception centers in 16 communes which should be the destination points of all the columns.

The humanitarian situation is disastrous, food requirements reach as much as 4,000 tons, the local Commission for Refugees has distributed only 100 tons since September 8; the UNHCR donated 500 tons, the International Red Cross 250 tons and the MSF Holand 6 tons of food for children. Currently, at press conferences, Nikola Koljevic is pleading on the international community for construction materials to renovate the houses, so that the people could move in before the winter. Foreign journalists are amazed. Can it be that these authorities are really expecting the world to rebuild what they themselves have destroyed, they wonder.

It would be wrong to think that only these people from the column are displaced persons. To that number we should add another 60,000 who remained in this area when fleeing from the Knin Krajina in August, and the countless ones who on several occasions during the war fled from one town to another, depending on the advancing of the different armies. Practically, of the 500 thousand people astir in this region, no one any longer lives where he used to live before the war. Now it is possible to go only 40 kms to the south, to Mrkonjic Grad, and 60 kms to the west and Sanski Most as the revengeful Moslem-Croat units are there so that the civilians who did not even live in these areas have to suffer the consequences of Karadzic's army destroying everything not Serbian in its path at the beginning of the war. In the north there is the Sava river and heavy Croatian artillery, while in the east is the lifeline - the corridor which is only 3.5 kms wide at Orasje, for instance.

The Krajina people are now also the prisoners of their own city authorities, and only refugees can leave under harsh controls. Since the beginning of the offensive the regular Bosnian army, aided by long-range Croatian artillery, won 4,500 sq.km. of territory. A military expert says that part of the territory was given up by agreement. And a part abandoned - on account of the Krajina syndrome. It is believed that the Drvar and Petrovac, and even Mrkonjic Grad inhabitants started fleeing in panic, convinced that their cities were a part of the agreement too. And when there are no people, the towns are lost. One can never be a good soldier if he has to worry about a child left behind. He fights until he gets his family out, and then follows it.

The "fixing" of the politically agreed percentages on the maps in the name of peace - that is how two soldiers carrying rifles on their shoulders explain the situation on the road leading to Prijedor. Their unit disintegrated near Kljuc, they have been walking for days, heading for the reception centre on Manjaca, and afterwards to the now probably narrowed-down front at Mrkonjic Grad, Sanski Most or Bosanski Novi. They still do not know that such thinking could easily cost them their heads. Namely, radio broadcast the call of the local authorities to the inhabitants to tell on their neighbours. On those who "spread defeatism", and who do not exclusively blame the NATO pact, Moslems and Croats for everything.

And in Banja Luka...

The thirst for information and gloomy uncertainty have enveloped the city. Only satellite TV programmes and Croatian News can be watched, phone lines are broken, as a consequence of the NATO bombarding. It is hard to distinguish, in this propaganda war, the things that different armies would like to happen, from the things that actually happen. People listen with disbelief to the Bosnian Government inviting Banja Luka, the center of what they felt to be the powerful Republic of Srpska, to surrender. And to Holbrooke trying to convince Tudjman to suspend the offensive. A question lingers in the air - where has all that military power gone? And although the fall of the city seems impossible to the majority, they still listen to echoes of the fighting in Sanski Most. If that city were lost, the road to Prijedor would be open, and then...

The First Krajina Corps Command claimed late last week that both Sanski Most and Mrkonjic Grad were holding up, that the Knezevo front had calmed down, that Gradiska was also calm, but that heavy fighting was taking place on the line from Krupa to Bosanski Novi.

In Banja Luka's Main Street, small shops which once belonged to Moslem goldsmiths now display shoes for DM 200 and Levis jeans. In the evening, in the Bosna Hotel, their new owners, calling themselves "businessmen", order whiskey and cappuccino and play tennis next to the freshly dug graves at the Banja Luka cemetery. They come from the ranks of former storehouse attendants, policemen and bad students. They were the loudest champions of Serbian patriotism at the beginning of the war, when Banja Luka had less than 50% Serbs, 35% Moslems and 17% Croats. Out of 45,000 Moslems, only 6,000 are left, while Croats number 2,000 at most.

The "new class" is also awaiting in panic for what is brewing. Still, it leisurely orders drinks for beautiful girls, always numerous in Banja Luka, or for crew-cut soldiers in black uniforms - the "Panthers" from Bijeljina, known for their cruelty. In the same hotel are also Nikola Koljevic and his guards, commanders of units which broke up during the Moslem-Croat offensive, as well as foreign journalists whom Sonja Karadzic kept for days on Pale, and whom the Banja Luka authorities now take by buses on strictly controlled photo-safaris.

Casablanca, some would call it. No, rather Saigon, ten days before the fall, others would say. Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan walked one night into the smoke - filled restaurant reverberating with patriotic marches and the rock music of the Zagreb E.T. band ("It's Only Twelve O'Clock). Smiles broke out on some faces, a woman brought her child to send his greeting to the "Tigers" and to touch his "hero". And someone from the corner muttered: "That is how a war criminal becomes a national hero".

His arrival confirmed the deep schism between the army and the police, the followers of Mladic and Karadzic, the former partisans and the contemporary Chetniks.

The officials of the army, composed as it is of underpaid and exhausted villagers and refugees, deny that Arkan's units are part of it. It is vulnerable because the whereabouts of general Mladic are not known - whether he is in hospital, or has been removed. The well-paid policemen of Karadzic, a special caste in the city, only grinned. And the guesswork began. Some thought that he had been well paid to come and show that Serbia was not so far away. Others believe that he is always where the money is... Banja Luka will fall and he will plunder what is still worth taking. Not everyone is glad to see him here. Last time he was here many owners of expensive cars were left without them, and it cost them DM 500 to get them back.

• I am here because I do not trust this communist army - Arkan tried to explain in a short conversation. -They do not know how to wage war, they see everything red. It was easy before when the other side was weak. Now the time has come to fight, and they only sleep, fool around and drink here.

We ask him whether his coming has anything to do with the official Serbia, which he negates. He says that he has come on the invitation of the police, and that he has excellent relations with Karadzic. However, one of the members of his guard adds that Colonel Filip, of the special units of Serbia, known from the hostage rescue operation, is also in the region of Banja Luka - leaving it up to us to draw the conclusions.

How shall we know that things have changed on the front, we ask finally, and a man in Arkan's escort adds in a hollow voice. "You will hear cries for help".

When Capillaries Burst

180 people sought aid in the hospital in Prijedor, during only one day, September 18. From Bosanski Novi, which was for two days under continuous artillery fire from Croatia, 44 civilians and 15 soldiers were brought. A wounded woman lying in the emergency ward is staring at the ceiling. A shell fell on the column of refugees and blew her ten-year old girl to pieces.

Horses tied in front of the hotel in Prijedor. Refugees from Bosanski Novi arrive all the time. Thirty-year-old Stana Licina looking at her two sons, happy that she and her husband were composed enough to take advantage of a five-minute break in the shelling and flee. Exile is their destiny. First they fled Zagreb at the beginning of the war. Stana does not know where to go now. Serbia is far away and she has only distant relatives there. And the husband has to go back to the front. And stares fixedly in front of him, into thin air.

If the war in Bosnia so far meant the organic disintegration of kinship and neighbourly relations, what is now happening is the bursting of capillaries. In the morgue in Dubica there are eight massacred bodies, mainly old people. Two half-burned corpses. Gouged out eyes, crushed in skulls, cut off heads. The work of the special group called the "Black Mamba" from Croatia, which infiltrated itself across the Sava river, hid in the houses near the very bank on the outskirts and silenced the inhabitants in a mean and revengeful way. The group was caught, killed and buried. Two members escaped, the military command claims. Later on we learned that they were actually captured and were undergoing interrogation.

The houses where the crimes were committed can be reached only by crawling on one's knees, heart throbbing in one's throat. Snipers stalking from the other side of the river. In an empty yard, we find a pool of blood behind the house, near the wood pile. In the neighbouring house, 80-year-old Desa Pralica just crosses herself and wails: "Death has walked over me, my children". She shows how the group barged into the houses, strangled the shopkeeper Djoka Zavisic with a wire, and killed a neighbour in front of his children and wife. She spent the whole day and night lying on the floor waiting to die. She cannot explain why they did not kill her too, she says. She stares at the floor. Later on we find out that her daughter is married to a Croat, is living in Germany now, while two of the terrorists from the "Mamba" group once lived in this town.

Only up to a few years ago, all three nations lived here peacefully, went to the same schools, the same restaurants. Now there are only Serbs here, while the few remaining Moslems are on forced labour, clearing the ruins. Their lives are not worth much at the moment.

The Serbs from Dubica are reluctant to say where their neighbours disappeared. They will describe the Second World War and the sufferings of the Serbs in the camp of Jasenovac, 50 years ago, vividly and in great detail. But it seems that they have pushed the events of three years ago to the back of their minds.

Stana Nikoletic, a pediatrician, bows her head, swallows her tears, trying to explain the causes and consequences of the fear and hatred in this area. She says: "I shall never understand how this could have happened. But, they started first and we had to drive them away".

The Director of the Prijedor Hospital, Dr. Milan Kovacevic, explains laconically that there were Moslems in Prijedor once, but that they left voluntarily at the beginning of the war.

Hints that such "volunteers" and revenge-seekers could return to Banja Luka and Prijedor prevents any serious consideration of the proposals on peaceful negotiations coming from Sarajevo. The loan has been taken at the beginning of the war. Now it has to be repaid. That is hardly imaginable without blood. Naturally, of the innocents.

Gordana Igric