Nine Images Of Zvornik

1. On the Karakaj bridge on the Serbian side, a heavy machine gun stares dumbly at Zvornik across sandbags. "Is that a water cannon to put out fires," a passerby asks a policeman and points at the anti-aircraft gun under a cover which also points at Zvornik. "It is for fires," the policeman says, "only this one doesn't put out fires it starts them."

2. The Legenda cafe in Zvornik is full of young people: young men with modern haircuts in camouflage uniforms and girls in tights. The music they listen to are groups that were popular in the former Yugoslavia. "Are there any Moslems in Zvornik," a man from Belgrade asked feigning ignorance. "Nope," one of the hosts said. "Zvornik is the ethnically purest town in the world."

3. Crowds at the market: chewing gum by the kilo, gasoline by the liter, oranges and bananas by the piece. Kids play football on a big lawn where the mosque once stood. In the middle of the lawn, a tree that was planted last year has dried up.

4. All the men are in uniform: Radovan decrees a general mobilization every week. On their sleeves insignia: Drina Wolves, Panthers, Military Police, Border Police. Above the city in the hills huge letters still spell out TITO. "We wanted to get rid of them, sent explosives experts up there but it's no use, the letters are of armored concrete, eight meters high," one man said and cursed. Behind the hills towards Tuzla, howitzers thunder.

5. Over the river in Mali Zvornik stands a mosque. "In '92 we sent commandos across five times to remodel it but no go," our host said, "Sloba's police guard it 24 hours a day."

6. On the terrace of the Vidikovac hotel, the place where the late Risto Djogo "jumped" to his death last year, a prominent local businessman (three shops in downtown Belgrade) is buying lunch for a group of local politicians (SDS officials, parliament members). He explains the foundations of political economy: "I'm tired of the people who say they're honest because they have nothing. Whoever failed to earn something in these times is no good to himself, let alone others. What kind of a man is it who can't even buy a car - actually, I don't have one I drive a company car - but I'm telling you..."

7. One of the people who saw divers pull Djogo out of the lake said the divers pulled two more bodies and a 100 kilo catfish out of the lake before they found Djogo. "There's more fish than ever before," he said. A waitress came up and recommended the trout. We all exchanged glances. "Is it from the lake," we asked. She assured us it was not. We all ordered beef.

8. Zvornik hospital is full of wounded. Vinko Pandurovic, commander of the Zvornik corps is also wounded: he got shrapnel in his thigh but they patched him up. "We don't operate on civilians any longer unless they're urgent cases," the chief surgeon said. "We do everything but heads" He has 10 operations a day, he hasn't been home in three days. They lack a wide range of antibiotics and other medical material. "The dressings on war wounds have to be changed twice a day but we get dressing from humanitarian aid in small luxury packages," he said. Earlier they got aid from Serbia at no cost, now they pay for everything. He complains about the Serbian police which recently turned an ambulance back because the wounded man inside (who was going to Belgrade for an operation) did not have any ID.

9. On the way out of Zvornik, towards Bijeljina, three soldiers have been trying to hitch a ride for hours; no one stopped. "They don't want us to get their seats dirty," one of them said bitterly. He patted his Kalashnikov: "I should stop them with this." They were on short leave and are going back to the front. "It's bad," one of them said. "120 of us were either killed or wounded in just two days." "On Majevica," we asked. "Nope, here in the hills, 20 kilometers from here." "Nothing was reported," I said. "How can they report it when we're attacking," he said. Luxury cars with Cyrillic registration from Zvornik, Bijeljina and Sarajevo, many of them empty, pass by. Finally a military bus, full of dark faces stops and gives them a lift.