Ozren's Lifeline

Only the Bosna river separates Serb and Moslem lines on the Ozren front at the village of Sevarlija near Doboj. The distance between them is 300-400 meters, a challenge to a good shot but just a routine job for snipers. On the other Ozren front lines, the warring nations are even closer to each other and they shout across the lines sometimes. On Orthodox Easter day, Bosnia-Herzegovina army troops were mainly quiet on Ozren. "They know its a holiday and they're probably using the opportunity to get a few things done," a Serb soldier said.

The Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) brigade commander is known for effective defence; they say he hasn't lost a single trench in this war. He is tall and sturdy, around 30, with a pistol at his hip. He picked tulips in front of a destroyed house and gave them to a woman reporter from Radio Doboj.

His men don't seem like ruthless soldiers: in "former lives" which they have already forgotten they were economists, merchants, workers, guest workers in Slovenia.

It's hard to find a soldier with a cap and in full uniform at the front line; the state is poor, the money from the Vogosca Golfs and Mostar aluminum is long gone and elegance is reserved only for models in Pale or the rear. None of the new fangled creatures are at the front. "All the guys that play at being Chetniks are here, but in the rear. If the Moslems breach the front, God forbid, they'll be the first to run," a soldier from Vozuca explained.

The soldiers on Ozren include women. Rada is a widow, she's 27 years old and has a daughter of six. She used to work in Maglaj and she's been a radio operator for two years. She never dreamed she'd be doing this but she doesn't complain. She thinks all the best about the men around her as does her friend and colleague Slavica who has been a soldier since the first day of the war in Bosnia. Her house is on the front and she doesn't think about a different life.

The sudden temperature rise drew out many poisonous mountain snakes. "Every day there's a snake in the trench," a reserve officer complains (there are virtually no professionals on the front). "We're scared of them, by the time you find some serum you're dead."

The mood and way of life in Doboj makes it a miniature Sarajevo. It's a smaller town, there is less intense bombing but everything else is the same. Traffic is fairly lively in its main St. Sava road on weekdays. None of the shop windows are intact and bombing scars are visible everywhere, but they go on living, working and trading. Windows are sealed with plastic UNHCR sheeting instead of glass. Some people walk their pets in the park. Then a bomb falls, people hide and 15 minutes later kids come out to play again.

"The first shell is the worst and people most often get killed by it," Doboj Mayor Drago Ljubicic told VREME. "Later people get off the streets and the following shells don't do too much damage. It's hard to assess the material damage. No one really thinks about the exceptionally low living standards here. The only measure is staying alive."

This town of 30,000 (the entire community is twice that size) looks like a branch on front line maps with Ozren and Vozuca hanging off it. Doboj is the narrow stretch; Serb positions are packed into a couple of kilometers between the Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) army 2d and 3d corps which shell the town from the northeast (Gracanica) and southwest (Tesanj).

If Doboj falls, Mt Ozren, which stretches almost 250 kilometers to the southeast and cuts the only road between Zenica and Tuzla would be surrounded and the Posavina corridor, the Krajina and other fronts would be endangered.

The daily fighting around the town is not surprising, nor the BSA heavy concentration.

The curfew was lifted long ago but cafes are only open till 9:00 p.m.; the civilian authorities say they don't want to irritate soldiers coming home from the front lines in the town's suburbs.

Along with shells, the safety of the population is most endangered by the Vietnam syndrome: alcohol, lack of food, frustration and weapons make a horrifying combination. "We fight and die, and the people down there won't even let us have fun when we go into town," front line soldiers said.

So, the rising tension between the BSA and Bosnian Serb politicians is present here. The army is grumbling that they don't want a parliament in war, that it should be abolished and martial law imposed to deal with smugglers and profiteers whose numbers have grown to huge proportions. On the other hand, the politicians are strengthening the police and accusing the army of preparing a coup and selling arms to the other side. Ratko Mladic's speech at the closed session of the Bosnian Serb parliament in Sanski Most confirmed rumors that something is going on but a compromise seems to have taken place.

Apart from everything else, Doboj residents are under pressure because of uncertainty over the political fate of their area. Under the Vance-Owen plan, Ozren and Doboj were supposed to be handed over to the Moslems. The fierce reaction among the local population and ensuing media campaign forced out official promises that the plan would not be accepted. But, the fact that no one is repairing the semi-destroyed roads on Ozren, increasingly bad supplies for the army and the state's lack of funding for the region are sometimes interpreted as proof that the Vance-Owen maps are coming in through the back door.

The ethnic map of Doboj has changed completely over the past three years. Half the population (Moslems and Croats) were expelled immediately but the big mosque in the center of town was not destroyed. The mosque was never completed and is missing a minaret. "It's built out of good material and would take a lot of explosives to destroy but the houses are too close, half the block would go up with it," a local man explained.

Mayor Ljubicic said Merhamet and Caritas are working normally but it's clear that Moslems and Croats are very few in the town.

Many Serbs have also left Doboj. One girl said there were more of them in Australia than here. The town is full of refugees from Maglaj, Zavidovici, Gracanica, Zenica and especially from surrounding villages.

Nothing is as it was, not even the cafes: one is named Shrapnel.

It's impossible to get used to daily shelling even after three years and the black humor just serves as a defence mechanism. An unusual phenomenon should be viewed in that light: they say the local library has never had so many members.