GORAZDE - AT THE END OF BOSNIA

Prisoners of Freedom

AIM Gorazde, May 30, 1996

Gorazde is a town at the far east of the Federation B&H, which was literally allocated the destiny of a blind gut by the Dayton map designers. Precisely two hundred days after Dayton, it is a town which neither the state nor its remaining 40 odd thousand inhabitants know what to do with. All journalists, without exceptions, who have visited Gorazde wrote reports about "the town which is dying", but Alija Izetbegovic, President of the Presidency of B&H is the only one with a different opinion?! During his recent, first visit

• inspired perhaps by luxuriant vegetation of weeds, onion and lettuce - publicly said that Gorazde was not a dying town. "On the contrary, it is a town in which life is flourishing", said Izetbegovic and - nothing happened to him. In fact, how do the surviving citizens of Gorazde live?

Nowadays, Gorazde is a free, but in fact an imprisoned town. Literally imprisoned by its freedom! It is possible to reach it through the corridor, by a mountain road in construction which is used by noone but IFOR armoured vehicles and Alija Izetbegovic with his suite in modern field vehicles. In fact, another road is also operational, the main road via the mountain of Romanija, but it passes with all its length through the territory of the Serb entity. Three times a week, escorted by heavy transporters and armed to the teeth soldiers of IFOR, a convoy of thirty vehicles at the most sets out to Gorazde from Sarajevo and returns the same day. Mujo Pestek, a disabled veteran, one of the heroes of defence of Gorazde, tells us:

"According to the criteria of the Geneva Convention, we in Gorazde were war prisoners for four years. But, we have defended and liberated our town, and Gorazde has given the largest number of victims in reference to the number of inhabitants for its freedom. And just look how the state is paying us back! It is possible to reach Gorazde only by the road which runs across the Serb-held territory, the convoy is regularly shot at, and God forbid, but if some fool would happen to shoot a mortar at a bus full of people somewhere up on Romanija or in the canyon of Praca! Almost seven months have passed since Dayton, and they have hardly started working on the road in the corridor down which our future road of salvation runs. If they cared one little bit for Gorazde, the state would have by now engaged all available construction machinery. If it had no machinery, the state should have called for tenders abroad by now, since the USA, the NATO, IFOR or God knows who, signed in Dayton that they would guarantee provision of resources for it", claims Pestek.

While citizens of Gorazde are awaiting their road to salvation with diminishing optimism, visitors who happen to come to the town encounter shocking sights. The whole town is in fact an apparition of war destruction. There is not a single house which was spared! But, every house, even if only three of its mutilated walls have remained, is inhabited - by natives and banished persons from surrounding places occupied by the Serbs. From the ruins around people have gathered the little remaining construction material, filled in the missing walls, covered them with nylon and they live there with their families.

Several thousand people in Gorazde wait for each convoy arriving from Sarajevo: a painful sight of a crowd of old men, women and children poorly dressed, and men of age in army uniforms. "They have nothing else to wear", explains Sejo Kuljuh, a leading expert for metallurgy, but nowadays in charge of social affairs in the garrison. He also told us the following:

"A few days ago, an old woman whose two sons had been killed defending Gorazde entered my office. She is now living with her daughter, a young girl, the only child she has left. She told me: 'Sejo, I'm sorry, but my daughter and I have no underwear left. Please, help her at least, she is a young girl, it is a great shame!' I could not help her. I could not even send her to Hilmo Popovic to the distribution centre, because I know that there is no underwear there either. If I had had at least five marks in my pocket, I would have given her. But, I did not have them..."

There is no electric power in Gorazde, telephones are out of order, there is no drinking water. As concerning electricity, only one motor generator operates, but that is sufficient only for the hospital and a few state offices. But, down by the river Drina there are hundreds of miniature hydro- electric power plants: each one of them generates power sufficient for a light bulb or two and a television set in a household or a few cafes which are still open. There will be no drinking water until autumn, and no telephone lines for who knows how long. It is surprising that the state did not spend a little money to buy at least a hundred mobile telephones for Gorazde, and at least slightly alleviate the total blockade the town is in.

The blockade is hardest on the children. Many youngsters, although at school age by now, have never scene a picture on TV screens, and ordinary sweets are luxury for them. It is quite a customary sight to see IFOR soldiers throwing sweets to children in the street from their transporters, and then the youngsters bitterly fighting for them. Grown-ups protest because of such humiliation, but in vain. Sometimes tragedies occur: recently Portuegese soldiers threw several sweets on the street from a transporter and children jumped to get them. Another transporter came and ran them over: one child died and another will be an invalid for life! While crossing the bridge over the Drina we saw an IFOR soldier throwing two sweets to a boy. The sweets fell into the river, the transporter went away and the boy remained crying.

Children in Gorazde are dying of the most commonplace diseases, since the last pediatrician left town three months ago, and a few days ago, the last surgeon also left.

At the same time thousands of healthy men capable to work, idly wander around the town or sit in half demolished houses doing nothing. A dangerous syndrome, custom to do nothing and vegetate on humanitarian aid has seized men, which is terrible for this town which was wealthy and bustling with activity before the war. Nowadays, however, not a single enterprise works. The ones in Gorazde were destroyed by war devastations, and two most profitable local factories - the ones in near-by Kopaca - were given to the Serbs by Dayton accords. Therefore, now the Serbs have factories, but have no workers and experts, and the Bosniacs in Gorazde have experts and workers (some of whom are Serbs and Croats), but have no factories.

Some people tend to believe that this is the "connective tissue", the Dayton "bait" for reintegration of Bosnia, but there is little use of it. Because, the Serbs and the Bosniacs who used to be neighbourly not such a long time ago, are at daggers drawn now and uncapable of making the decisive first step towards inevitable reconciliation and shift towards issues wiser than hatred. The politicians are firmly dug in their trenches of national interests, so there is no use of them either. It was expected that the Serb Civic Council of Mirko Pejanovic would do something in this sense, but it all got stuck because of stubborn inflexibility of the regime in Pale and its unpreparedness for any kind of dialogue, but also due to Pejanovic's close relations with Alija Izetbegovic.

In the meantime, thousands of generally most competent citizens of Gorazde have left this town, seeking in Sarajevo and elsewhere around the world better conditions for living. The official B&H politics persistently refuses to accept this fact, claiming quite the opposite. But, there is only one truth: life is quickly flowing out of Gorazde. Because, who can live in a town which is at a distance of hundred and more kiilomnetres from Sarajevo - the nearest Bosnian territory (according to Dayton accords)!

Citizens of Gorazde are leaving - in IFOR's convoys. While thirty vehicles at the most can come from Sarajevo to Gorazde in a single convoy, the number of people and vehicles which are leaving Gorazde towards Sarajevo has in no way been limited. Is this a mere coincidence? Is it an administrative mistake of IFOR's? Or an agreed policy of the international community and the B&H state? Or a little bit of everything?

Whatever the case may be, people from Gorazde are fed up of bargaining which is at their expense. That is why they are leaving.

DRAGAN STANOJLOVIC