Town by Ordeal

All the way from Klasnice, our bus was jumping on a bumpy road through Zaluzani and suburb of Budzak. Once we arrived in Banja Luka, we were overwhelmed by a strong smell of whey from farmers' houses in the neighborhood. Some 20 elderly refugees from Glamoc and Grahovo were waiting at the bus station to get permission and finally set off for Serbia, especially Vojvodina, where most of them have relatives.The station's buffet has been the shelter to a family of four, who fled Mrkonjic Grad. They are reluctant to talk to reporters, but tell their story to the waitress who appears to be from the same town. The father of the family works in Austria, but came to Mrkonjic to get his wife and two children out of the town. They are now stuck at Klasnice, from where no one was allowed to leave. The waitress, obviously upset by the story, curses the war and those who started it.

"They started this war only to cover for the thieves who looted Yugoslavia," she said. "Then the world interfered only to hide its part of the blame. And now they say the people are to blame, because they voted for them. Yes, we voted, you m... f..., we were not the ones to call the elections."

There is no taxi to find. The road leading to the center of the town is packed with carts and tractors covered with plastic sheets, and horses are grazing in the near-by park. The sound of horse-shoes echoes throughout the town, and prevailing license plates on tractors and cars are those from Jajce, Sipovo, Drvar, Bosanski Petrovac, Mrkonjic Grad... A woman refugee stops for a brief rest outside a kiosk in hotel Bosna, whose window is full of merchandise by Fahrenheit, Paco Raban, Addidas - the meaningless words for the exhausted woman who, with the night slowly setting over the town, dares to ask for the price of a room at the hotel. She almost cries when she hears the answer.

MEZZANINE: Cold air in the hotel is in the mezzanine warmed by the smoke of cigarettes and smell of alcohol and food. It is Sunday evening and the indoor cafe is crowded with people whose voices mixed with popular folk songs. A ranking policeman is laughing loudly while carrying two cases of beer to his room. Muscle-men in uniforms entertain young women with heavy make-up. Their touches are far beyond discreet or friendly, but are not resented by their company. Mini-skirts of such a minimum length have never before been seen in Banja Luka, either on native girls or those who came to the town recently. Officers - some people here call them the members of the war-time presidencies of towns whose inhabitants are now wandering the area in search of shelter - are eating, but can hardly be seen paying for the meals. It is hard to catch the slightest sign of worry on their faces, mostly adorned with thick moustaches. One could even say that they are in a very good mood, like someone who is getting along fine.

Banja Luka has become the scene of a psychological war. NATO planes have destroyed almost all civilian communications facilities and the remaining stronger relays reduced the transmission to avert the bombing. Banja Luka television is broadcasting its program via an alternative link and can not be watched outside the town. To overbridge the information vacuum, the press center of the First Krajina Corps is issuing a special edition of the Krajiski Vojnik paper, which is distributed directly to the fighters on the front. Not one of the Serb radio stations can be heard on BSA positions. Croatian television recently showed the skillfully montaged pictures of Croatian troops capturing Sanski Most. These pictures were broadcast all around the world, but authentic shots which denied the report could not be seen even in what little has left of Bosnian Krajina. Without the telecommunications relay on Mount Majevica, Krajina has had no telephone links with the outside world and most of the foreign news agencies relied on sources in Sarajevo and Zagreb.

Amidst the information isolation, the RS started an information war against itself - permits to cross the Drina are now sought in Belgrade and confirmations are awaited indefinitely. Belgrade itself took part in this information war. TV Belgrade embittered the Krajina Serbs by failing to show a single shot of the bombing of Banja Luka, the fall of Krajina towns, atrocities by Dudakovic's Fifth Corps...

Controversial maps, which were meanwhile faxed to several addresses in Belgrade, were allegedly sent from a fax machine without a number. One map shows the Serb territory stretching from the upper flow of the Sana river to Kljuc and Mrkonjic Grad, and further to the narrow hinterland of Doboj, trough the strip north of Tuzla, and then through Vlasenica and outside Sarajevo further to the south towards the Neretva river and the sea, where it ends somewhere south of Dubrovnik. On the other map, the Serb land follows the valley of Vrbas, cuts across the bridges in Banja Luka, includes Tuzla and then ends on the Adriatic coast as the previous one.

Apart from the names of towns, there are no names in the Banja Luka story. People are reluctant to tell their names - some are terrified, others have lost their sense of identity. People here can no longer tell between true and false information, and misinformation is punishable.

"The citizens are instructed to immediately report every case of spreading misinformation and untruth about the situation in this area to the nearest police station, to the military police, the war-time presidency, civil defense activists or local commands of the Republika Srpska army. Persons involved in such activities will be arrested and detained before handed over to the competent bodies," says a statement released from the military prosecutor's office in Banja Luka.

"Various missionaries, disguised as army and police members, have lately appeared in many parts of the Republika Srpska," the local paper Glas Srpski quotes Banja Luka's military prosecutor, Mayor Srboljub Jovicic, as saying. "They are spreading panic among the people, telling them that the army has betrayed them and that they must flee the allegedly sold territory. We have toured the entire territory held by the First and Second Krajina Corps, and everywhere people are mentioning the same names of what they call the traitors."

"The names of traitors" is a phrase that refers to the military or civilian leadership, depending on the case. The army says its troops began to retreat after seeing the civilians leaving their homes, which it argues was ordered by local war-time bodies, appointed by the administration in Pale.

In the climate of general suspicion and conflicting interests, several police formations are present and active in Krajina: the civilian police, state security, military police, special police, Martic's police (Martic is in Banja Luka), police of retreating forces and police from Serbia. A few people may know what Serbian police do here, but according to reliable reports, one of their jobs is to turn back refugees at a police checkpoint near Modrica. The latest news is that Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, is on his way to this front, together with his "Tigers."

The fact that Serbia is not trying to conceal its presence in this area supports one of the many hypotheses circulating in Krajina: the regime in Serbia intends to turn every defeat blamed on Radovan Karadzic into a victory of his rival in Belgrade. Karadzic's rating in Krajina has these days fallen to its lowest level ever. Strong political support, which he has won during his conflict with Milosevic and Belgrade's blockade on the Drina, vanished in the past several days. Besides, the Bosnian Serb leader does not seem to feel very secure at home either, as a dozen bodyguards accompany him whenever he goes out, mostly to attend the war-time presidency sessions.

Slobodan Ecimovic, RS assistant commissioner for refugees, estimates that over 100,000 refugees have been accommodated in 46 camps in the area between Sanski Most and Banja Luka. "They need everything: canned food, blankets, mattresses, hygienic supplies... everything is needed urgently," said Ecimovic.

In order to reduce the influx of people to Banja Luka itself, Karadzic has instructed that refugees from Sipovo and Jajce be sent to Brod, people from Petrovac will be accommodated in Derventa, those from Srbobran (Donji Vakuf) in Laktasi and Gradiska, those from Kupres in Ivanjska and Simici. People from Drvar are being sent to Prnjavor, Modrica and Samac, those from Mrkonjic Grad to Banja Luka, Celinac, Kotor Varos and Srbac, and those from Kljuc are directed to Prijedor and Kozarska Dubica. The president's order has left Serbs from Kljuc and Mrkonjic close to their homes, but moved those from the southern-most towns to areas in the far north.

To the letter of this order and with the constant sound of horse-shoes, the chaos at a crossroad between Klasnice and Banja Luka subdued on Sunday evening (September 17). People under the plastic sheets say they have left fortune behind. It may sound exaggerated, seen by the eyes of mostly poor people, but the truth is that, apart from what they took with them, nothing really belongs to them in the places they are heading. The only thing these people have are their native places. They are poor and, now they know, very naive. Until two months ago, they were saying that no one can drive them out of their Drvar, Srbobran, Petrovac... Now they say: "If we were only given five more days to move out, to get away."