DRVAR ON THE DAY OF ITS "LIBERATION"

CITY OF UNHAPPY PEOPLE

AIM DRVAR, September 20, 1999

Once again Drvar came in the center of media attention when Wolfgang Petritsch, High Representative for B&H, and Robert Barry, Chief of the OSCE Mission, announced on September 16 their decision on removing Mile Marceta from office of the President of the Commune, and Borivoj Malbasic from office of the Chairman of the Municipal Council.

On September 14, only two days earlier, Drvar celebrated the fourth anniversary of its "liberation". That day is celebrated as the Communal Day. Organisers of this celebration were the HDZ Municipal Board and the Municipal Council which has only one councillor from HDZ ranks, while all other fourteen members are members of the Serbian nation. Croatian representatives of the commune, headed by Ilija Sljivic, Vice-President of the Commune, laid the wreath and lit candles under the Memorial Cross in City Park in memory of the killed HVO fighters.

On behalf of the Federal Defence Ministry General Zeljko Siljeg and Brigadier Zrinko Tokic, commander of the First HVO Guard Brigade "Ante Bruno Busic" and General Drazen Milic, as well as representatives of the Herzeg-Bosnia District with Ivan Ivic, the Prefect, attended the three-day celebration marking the "liberation" of Drvar.

Apathy, sadness and general impoverishment of Croats who had been "humanely resettled" from 47 communes all over Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbian returnees who used to make as much as 97 percent of this commune's pre-war population did not fit into this festive atmosphere which was "seasoned" with one-national iconography organized according to the HDZ choreography. There was no trace of the symbols of the B&H Federation and the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not even on the uniforms of the members of the First Guard Brigade "Ante Bruno Busic" which is a HVO part in the Federation's Army.

The arbitration decision of Wolfgang Petritsch, High Representative for B&H, and Robert Barry, Chief of the OSCE Mission, on the removal of Mile Marceta from the office of President of the Commune and Borivoj Malbasic from the office of Chairman of the Municipal Council did not come as a surprise nor disrupted the chronic lethargy and monotony surrounding this town which has been living on "blind track" for years.

Actually, what is bothering both the Croatian exiles and Serbian returnees, whose numbers are almost equal, is the total obstruction and non-functioning of communal executive authorities which has for a result hard life, poverty and lack of any prospects for both nations.

We met Mirko Bosnic, Coalition delegate for Drvar in the village of Podovi, surrounded by trees at the foot of Mt.Klekovaca, halfway from Drvar and mountain pass Ostrelj. He told us that until now over 5,000 Drvar denizens have returned to the area of the Drvar Commune and added with much satisfaction that there was no village or settlement in this commune without at least several returnees. They have returned in greatest numbers to Sipovljani, Mokronoge, Vidovo Selo, Ljeskovica, Prekaje, Zutic, Crni Vrh, i.e. to the area surrounding the Drvar - Glamoc road, between Mts. Sator and Lunjevaca.

Bosnic told us that what made him especially happy was the return of young couples with children. Most of them came to the village of Zaseok, above Drvar, some hundred meters from the main road Drvar - Bosanski Petrovac.

The most important thing was that people were coming back and stayed and had the activities of the international community aimed at the establishment of joint police forces and securing favourable credits for a sustainable return intensified there would be even more of them, said Bosnic adding that youth, work and electricity were three corner stones for a sustainable return to the Drvar commune.

Bosniacs from Kljuc were working on the house of the returnee Jovan Zivkovic. His neighbours, also returnees jokingly said: "The Croats have torn it down, the Bosniacs are rebuilding it and the Serbs will move in".

Zivkovic told us that this year the returnees were given 300 cows, some have purchased sheep, goats, chicken and thus started breeding livestock anew because it had been destroyed. Once Drvar was famous and proud of its livestock. Villagers we have visited in the nearby settlements, because there are no Serbian returnees in the town despite 1,200 submitted request for the restitution of flats, want electricity more than anything else in order to "lighten-up" their murky lives.

In the entire Canton 10, the greatest number of requests for the restitution of property was submitted here but, as they claim, there is no one in the Commune to handle these requests because ever since its founding in 1997 the executive authorities never started working because of the constant obstructions by the HDZ. It is fact that there are currently over fifty renovated and vacant houses and flats in Bugojno and Kakanj, but the exiled Croats are not too willing to return there because of the HDZ policy which prevents them from doing that.

Croats displaced from central Bosnia, who have come to the "promised town" and moved into the Serbian houses and flats, accuse the Croatian authorities for cheating and turning them into the "guardians of the Serbian property" which, sooner or later, they will have to abandon under the pressure of the international community. For the time being they refuse to leave other people's houses and flats, in which they enjoy the full support of the representatives of the Croatian people in the communal authorities and the HDZ.

On our return from Drvar we stopped in the village Sipovljani some ten kilometres from Drvar, to which the greatest number of Serbian returnees, as much as 2,000, have come back. Lately, this village is in the focus of media attention because the HVO has started the construction of military barracks for members of the First Guard Brigade "Ante Bruno Busic" who are presently stationed in the building of the National Liberation Struggle Museum.

All returnees were against this construction because the barracks were being built on their private grounds, and according to Nevenka Miletic, Chairman of the Association of the Drvar Returnees and a returnee herself "there was never any army in Drvar, and we don't need any today, especially having in mind the fact that there are both federal and SFOR army troops in the nearby Glamoc".

Representatives of the international community are also against the construction of the barracks. That is why a month ago the OHR had put a stop to the construction which the Croatian side, and even the highest representatives of the Croatian people in the Federation's and B&H authorities, including the FB&H Defence Minister Miroslav Prce, are persistently pushing.

We returned from Drvar, in which hopelessness and poverty are almost tangible, by a road on which, according to stories of elderly Drvar denizens, the film "This People Will Live" was made some fifty years ago. Now, homeland for one and a "promised town" for others Drvar has turned into a place of misery and desperation. Some optimism was instilled by the arbitration decision and commitment of the international community to finally give Drvar its government which would be a multi-ethnic one and work to the benefit of all its citizens.

Reason for optimism also gives the announced visit of the representatives of federal authorities to Drvar with a view to agreeing specific forms of assistance for this doomed commune. Everybody hopes for the best after the adoption of arbitration decision. A major step has already been made in that direction: first eight policemen of Serbian nationality - returnees from Banjaluka and Prnjavor, who worked as members of the police forces of Drvar before the war, few days ago started working in the Drvar Police Department.

Nedzad VREBAC

(AIM Sarajevo)