Politics and Demography

Stup - A Croat Municipality?

AIM Sarajevo, 20 May, 1999

In the suburban district of Stup in Ilidza municipality of Sarajevo Canton, there were about five and a half thousand inhabitants before the war - 70 per cent of them were Croats, 20 per cent were Serbs and 10 per cent of them were Bosniacs. Nowadays, there are 2,200 inhabitants living here, and according to official data, ethnic composition in percentages has remained the same, while the demographic picture has significantly changed. Among other, more than one hundred families from Srebrenica have made their new homes here.

As Stup was close to the first line of combat, 650 buildings have been ruined in it to the level between 40 and 100 per cent, and about 120 were completely destroyed. "Stup is open to anybody who wishes to return. However, there is the problem of sold houses, of course. At the moment, most of those who have sold their houses are of Serb ethnic origin. The domicile population, about 10 per cent of them, have emigrated to the third countries, half of them to Croatia. More than 400 housing buildings have either been reconstructed or are still in reconstruction since reintegration to this day. Apart from Italian Intersos, a contribution to reconstruction of this district was given by CRS, Umkor, Caritas, Help, Cap Anamur, and the elementary school for 300 pupils was reconstructed with the help of the Austrian government", says Tomislav Baric, secretary of Stup local community who also notes that 80 per cent of the electricity mains has been repaired, while the telephone and sewage networks have been completed. The water supply has been reconstructed back in 1996 already, and the gasline just partly... Although the process of return is in progress, citizens of Stup are not satisfied. According to Baric's opinion, the return is held back by slow reconstruction of houses.

This postwar statistics is just one side of the story, the other side is political. Ever since reintegration of Ilidza in 1996, the idea about establishment of the Croat municipality of Stup has been more or less present. The reason for this is that the Croats are threatened in this region and there is a need for an ethnic municipality which would ensure the right - they do not shrink from saying - of the Croats to survive. After Usore, this would be the second municipality established on ethnic grounds in the Federation. There have been many discussions, meetings, sessions of the municipal and district committees of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) about the possibility of establishment of Stup municipality. The talk about it was intensified especially after certain incidents, murders and crimes on the territory of Ilidza, the municipality which recently resembled the wild west. In the middle of the day because of unsettled accounts among local power wielders (Bosniacs) a murder was committed. Beside his brand new Mercedez car worth about 200 thousand marks, parked in front of his luxurious pizza parlour, a 28-year old was riddled with shots from an automatic rifle.

Representatives of the Croat people in the Sarajevo Canton Assembly, and even the deputy governor, Mladen Bevanda himself, share the opinion that such a municipality is necessary on the territory of the Canton. On the other hand, leaders of the Canton, neither the former nor the current, have never accepted the idea and they have never discussed it either in the Assembly or in the government. Pursuant the European Convention on local self-administration, establishment of a municipality is possible if there are four thousand inhabitants in a region, and not on ethnic grounds. Therefore, at best, Stup could become the tenth municipality of the Sarajevo Canton, but by no means with the prefix - Croat. In the meantime, the problem of illegal construction of individual housing units on the territory of this Sarajevo district could be put in the context of "Stup - Croat municipality", which was put on the agenda of a recent regular session of the HDZ municipal committee of Ilidza. As stressed at the time, illegal construction of homes on the territory of the parts of Stup called Azici, Doglodi and Otes has acquired enormous proportions and it has completely got out of hand. There are about a hundred such cases, but the fact that especially causes concern is that new illegally built buildings are springing up almost every day. That is the reason why officials of this party warned that "a change of the demographic composition threatens Stup, because the future tenants are solely Bosniacs - of Muslim ethnic origin". According to their opinion, this is a "premeditated way to contribute to killing the wish to achieve our goal - constitution of the Croat municipality of Stup".

Sefkija Duranovc, head of the town planning section of Ilidza municipality, claims that as concerning illegal construction, Stup was the least affected by this phenomenon. He says that neither he nor any of the employees of the section he is at the head of know anything about illegal buildings and protests coming from HDZ. (For example, for a long time they claimed that they did not know that a whole new settlement of 48 houses existed in their settlement Sokolovici.) They only know that the Croats and the Serbs are selling at high prices their land to people from Sandzak who are building new homes on it, with required documentation.

Officials of HDZ have a prepared answer to this question, too. It is true that selling of high-quality Stup land is "fashionable" because it is the only source of money for its owners, but the new buildings are nevertheless illegally constructed because it is impossible to obtain the necessary documentation for construction overnight. According to the words of Stefko Bilic, secretary of Stup II local community, since 1996 there have been attempts to warn the relevant authorities in Ilidza municipality against illegal construction of 50 houses "which are so obvious that they can easily be spotted even while landing or taking off in a plane" and against construction of the road in Kasindolska street. Letters were sent to Husein Mahmutovic, head of Ilidza municipality, Sefkija Duranovic, ministry of transportation and communications, and Cantonal ministry of town planning. There has been no answer. Bilic's sttement was confirmed by the Cantonal construction inspectorate which has been informed about the "Kasindol case" and a team of inspectors has already been sent to the site. They have not received, they say, the report from HDZ, and they therefrom are not informed about illegal construction of houses in Azici, Ores and Doglodi. "Oil on the fire" was added by the development plan of Stup which includes construction of new housing units which HDZ vigorously rejects. As they say, if not larger, certainly the same number of housing units can be provided by construction of buildings on other more attractive locations such as Poljine, Bare, Betanija (districts in other municipalities of Sarajevo) or by reconstruction of the destroyed housing. By construction on other locations, they say, the high-quality land in Stup would be "protected", and this is the only thing that people in Stup have left if they wish to survive (and remain here). In other words, arrival of new inhabitants to Stup would endanger the existing Croat population.

It seems that inhabitants of Stup are suffering the most damage because they are faced with a lack of money for repair of their houses and unemployment - there are very few who work. On the other hand, there are political problems. Returnees fear that it will be impossible for them to live in their former homes and that is why they sell their destroyed houses: they mostly entrusted their relatives or friends to sell their housing units and land. Others condition their return with the return of their neighbours and staying of those who have already returned. However, data stated in the beginning of this text do not coincide with the data obtained in HDZ. They claim there that before the war the ratio of the Croats and the Serbs was 60 to 40, and that the number of inhabitants of Bosniac ethnic origin was insignificant. Nowadays, they say, the number of the Serbs is negligible, and the ratio of the Croats and Bosniacs is 60 to 40 per cent, "fearing that it will change in favour of the Bosniacs if illegal construction is not interrupted". Finally, HDZ claims that establishment of Stup municipality would not lay the stress on Croat, but that the main reason for establishment of the municipality is the general opinion that Ilidza municipality is too big and that establishment of the new one in Stup would greatly relieve the burden. As things are now, citizens of Stup cannot practice their rights not only as Croats, but neither as inhabitants of Stup.

Until the possible establishment of a new municipality or some other solution in the "game of politics and demography", what once was a wealthy suburb of the city of Sarajevo with a promising future, three and a half years after the war still resembles a ghost town, impressively testifying about war suffering, but also of political manipulations.

Zeljka GUTALJ

(AIM Sarajevo)