MOSTAR SUNSET BOULEVARD

AIM Split, January 8, 1996

Towards the end of last year, quite symbolically, the swollen Neretva river carried away three pedestrian bridges constructed between two banks in Mostar by the European Union and UNPROFOR. Not long after that, shots fired from both banks deepened the Mostar gap. Tightened cords in this city increasingly remind of the period of two years ago when the Croat-Muslim war was cooking in the Bosnian- Herzegovinian pot.

European optimists envisaged and verified by relevant documents that from January 20 this year free movement will be possible for everybody in Mostar. Instead, at the beginning of this year, people unwillingly even step out in the streets. More sensible pessimists warned that freedom of movement should wait for some time, because the wounds of war have not healed yet, and people known who committed many murders.

Last year ended with lofty expectations - Mostar airport Ortijes was open. The first post-Dayton year of hope in Mostar, however, began with a murder of a young man early in the morning in front of hotel "Ero" on the eastern, Muslim bank of the river. This lighted the fuse. Then Croat policemen were shot at at the western bank, civilian cars with licence plates of Herzeg Bosnia were stoned, and then two Boshniak policemen from the eastern bank were wounded on the Boulevard. On Saturday, January 6, also on the Boulevard, nowadays perhaps the ugliest European street which devastated and eerily empty divides Mostar, a Croat policeman was killed on duty. Then the European administrator of Mostar called IFOR to keep peace with its armoured vehicles at the demarcation line between federal partners, and Mostar acquired the atmosphere which corresponds to its dreadful war scenery all over again, and the fact that, due to the presence of IFOR, the decision on demilitarization of Mostar was violated - proved to be good. Things have seriously reached the extreme point of peace and the initial point of war. IFOR vehicles are between them. For how long?

"IFOR cannot do everything in this country, it is necessary for the people of this country to accept responsibility for the situation in it" - American admiral Leighton Smith said after his visit to Mostar in the beginning of the year.

In Mostar, policemen are shot at. In cities with a single police force this is usually done by criminals, but in cities with more than one police force, this is done either by criminals or by the other police force. The outcome, result or purpose are the same - to show both oneself and the others that the Croats and the Muslims cannot live together. In this blood-stained process, the wheel of war profiteering will continue to turn, which would disappear should peace be established. Mr Koschnik has determined a long time ago that the criminals on the two banks of the Neretva cooperate better and more frequently than the police forces. The results are becoming more obvious.

Mayor of western Mostar, Mijo Brajkovic, warns that there are extremists on both sides whose interest is the war. Koschnik appeals to him and his colleague on the eastern side, Safet Orucevic, to suppress passions. Only two days before this appeal, Koschnik said that the matter of shooting at policemen was not a matter for the politicians but for the courts. Perhaps he realized that in Mostar everything was a political issue when on Friday, a day before policeman Ljubic was murdered, representatives of the police force from the eastern side failed to appear at a fixed meeting in hotel "Ero" with the policemen from the western bank and the European policemen, where safety measures were planned to be discussed. They had more important things to do, spokesman of Western European police, Howard Fox reported as their excuse. Before that, Herzeg-Bosnian policemen had refused to patrol with them because of attacks against them.

"Nothing can surprise me in Mostar", Martin Garod, a member of Koschik's European team is in the habit of saying, but he is still shocked with the behavior of leaders of the two banks in Mostar. He warns the citizens of Mostar to pray to God that it does not rain heavily, because they would be threatened by Neretva river due to the unreconstructed dam of the "Mostar" Hydro-Electric Power Plant. This is not the matter of a technical problem, there is also enough of European money for its reconstruction, but the Croats and the Boshniaks cannot reach an agreement who should do it, and they cannot do it together. If the people cannot cross over the Neretva river, then the Neretva river will flow over them - abundant Mostar rains suggest such a conclusion.

Paperwork - elaboration of the Statute of the city and its administrative division - was interrupted by shots fired at Mostar sunset Boulevard, a few days after the time limit for its adoption, pursuant the Dayton Agreement, had expired. The key question in Mostar - does planning of six city municipalities, three with Croat and three with Boshniak majority population, means that Mostar will be united or divided might become redundant. The Bosnian question reaches back to the beginning, here in the middle of Herzegovina, with the reply which can easily be assumed: if the city and the citizens will not be united, the Boulevard will become a border as massive as the Berlin wall. At the same time, while in Sarajevo, the "summit" conference between Tidjman and Izetbegovic was an attempt to reinforce Federation B&H, down in Mostar the "bottom" was opening. Neither of the two parties is completely sincere. Both leaderships have, of course, led their parties into this bloody war with each other, and it is difficult to expect that they can lead the way to a joint peace. At the last session of the Constitutional Assembly of the Federation and the Assembly of B&H, Irfan Ajanovic and Ivo Lozancic sat down on the same bench. The recently released former chairman of the assembly of SFRY accuses the current President of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) of B&H that he had handed him over to the army of Bosnian Serbs in 1993, and that he had then spent more than 900 days in prison there and lost his health under torture. What will their peace be like?

Apart from the danger felt in Mostar air, just like in 1993, another analogy is possible - at the time, the possibility of a NATO intervention was also felt in the "air', which never occurred among other due to opening of a new Croat-Muslim front which created complete chaos in Bosnia & Herzegovina and caused confusion in the world public. It was impossible to tell who were the "bad" and who the "good guys" any more. Nowadays, the NATO is here, peace is in sight, and another Muslim-Croat "play-off" for a definite division of B&H into three seems to be beginning.

"If Mostar is not going to be a united city, there will be no Federation", Hans Koschnik is resolute. This city is the key to Croat-Boshniak relations. The split of the war alliance between the Croats and the Boshniaks in 1993 conceived in Central Bosnia was sealed up in Mostar. By initiatives in it, the war between the Croats and the Muslims was restrained.

On the other hand, Mijo Brajkovic says that Mostar cannot be observed separately from the rest of the Federation. And in the rest of the Federation the situation is wretched - despite agreements and declarations, the Croats are not returning to Bugojno and Vares, nor the Muslims to Capljina and Stolac. While waiting to see where the first step forward will be made - in Mostar or the rest of the Federation - two steps back are being taken, it seems.

Incidents are registered not in Mostar alone: last month at a control point of the Croat Defence Council near Zepca, five men were killed - for ones they were Jihad warriors, and for the others, foreign citizens members of the Army of B&H. In the same region, on Christmas morning, two members of the Croat Defence Council in civilian clothes were killed, which the Croat party considered to be an act of vengeance for the previous incident.

The Croats in Herzeg-Bosnia also consider instigation of court proceedings in the Hague against Kordic, Blaskic and others as an act of vengeance by the Muslim party, as well as charges brought up in Bosnian courts against tens of Bosnian Croats for the roles they played in the Croat-Muslim war. Liberation of Ivica Rajic by the Mostar court is acquiring the same reflection on the other side, because he was tried for murder of five soldiers of the Croat Defence Council, but who was also charged by the Hague court for massacre of Muslim population in Ahmici.

The Bosnia-Herzegovinian federation established in Washington, two years ago meant an exit out of a deadend street of the Bosnian war where everybody was at war with everybody else. Nowadays when that war abated somewhat due to internal exhaustion, and somewhat due to external resoluteness, the Croats and the Boshniaks are at a loss: they will either show to themselves and to the others that they can live together, or they will show those who have started the war that they were right by reassuring everybody that they cannot live together.

Croat deputies in the Constitutional Assembly of the Federation and the Assembly of Bosnia & Herzegovina are already demanding guarantees from Sarajevo administration for their safe arrival and return from the Bosnian capital. This has started to resemble the situation from the beginning of the war when the Croat officials left Sarajevo. Some things resemble spring 1993. History is obviously more easily repeated when the protagonists are - the same.

GORAN VEZIC