Moving the Living and the Dead

Petra and Zoran Mihajlovic decided to move out of Ilijas.

Ilijas is an industrial suburb of Sarajevo which was under Serb control. Under the latest Dayton agreement Ilijas will belong to the Moslem-Croat Federation and that is why the Mihajlovics and their ten year old twins decided to move out.

They packed all their belongings into a truck, climbed aboard and left. Zoran huddled next to the driver on a bag of clothing to make room for a VREME reporter on the two hour drive. On the right side of the driver Petra hugged one of their two sons and fought back tears. They will return once more and they left two camp beds behind, a boiler in the bathroom and some food just in case a political event makes them change their minds. For now, they have heard nothing that could guarantee their safety under Croat and Moslem rule.

The truck from Vogosca bounced along the muddy road around the north east side of Sarajevo. Blankets, drawers, doors, a washing machine and other things that fell out of fully loaded trucks and cars are strewn along the road testifying that others have gone this way before. Undoubtedly, this is a road of no return. This was the main road between Pale and the Sarajevo suburbs held by the Serbs. It was used to bring out the wounded under heavy sniper fire to the hospitals in Pale and Sokolac. Petra says many of the wounded died along it.

The city of Sarajevo is visible from several points along the road, mysteriously attracting everyone in the truck. Petra watched the blackened maternity hospital on Kosevo hill where she worked up to 1992 until the road between Ilijas and the city center was cut off. Later, when she took that road, often on foot, snipers fired at her from the roof of the hospital. Then Serb gunners responded, firing at the snipers. The maternity hospital stands black and useless. Useless and not interesting like Betanija, a height where both Serbs and Moslems died during this war. In the general grayness, the Bare cemetery seems frighteningly white with its new markers, having grown to five times the size it was before the war.

On the final height before the village of Hresa the Bosnian Serbs police erected a checkpoint. The policeman looked at the drivers documents, asked "are you moving out" and let the truck through with no further comment. It isn't far from there to the village of Sumbolovac where Zoran, Petra and the twins were headed. Sumbolovac is the last village before Sarajevo on Romanija mountain.

They arrived to a cottage that belongs to a man named Sima. He moved into from Ilijas when the war broke out. To the Mihajlovic family this is just a stopover. They plan to go on (as close to the Drina as possible) and nourish secret hopes of returning to Ilijas one day.

To the Serbs in Ilidza, Grbavica, Ilijas the biggest problem is moving their dead. Exhumations are done at night, in secret. The resettling of the remains of Sarajevo Serbs costs 800 DEM plus fuel. The price includes a metal and a wooden casket "of average quality". "People exhume their loved ones singly, although several coffins could be transported at once," the pragmatist in the owner of the funeral service from Loznica said. He soldered the metal coffin shut, put someone's mother in law in the car and said he'd be back. "This is the fifth exhumation," Father Cvijan said, nervously dragging on a cigarette. "The Church has nothing to do with this." Father Cvijan lost a son in this war and asked the Dabro-Bosnia Metropolitan for advice, whether to exhume him or not. "If you do, everyone will follow suit," the Metropolitan allegedly answered. Cvijan followed the advice but he still doesn't know what he'll do. He's afraid he won't be able to stand it. The removal of the remains is the biggest nightmare for the people in Serb Sarajevo.

Some 700 soldiers and 300 civilians were killed in Ilijas; funerals are expensive and the people have little money. The authorities have promised to remove the remains of all the victims of the war to a single cemetery, but they have promised a lot of things before. They promised united Serbdom, a Serb sea line, borders on the Neretva river, they promised a Serb Sarajevo.

Used and abandoned, former special forces soldier Z.Z. showed the surgical stitches on his arms and leg, two useless fingers on his right hand. "Where'll I go now? I proved myself in this war, but no one is interested any more. In 1993, I went to Novi Sad on leave, made the musicians in a bar line up to buy me a drink. Who'll buy me a drink now? To survive, you have to prove yourself again, and you can only do that if you work and I'm 60% an invalid."

He and his young wife have to move. The authorities in Sarajevo have included him on a list of alleged war criminals. People in Croat controlled Kiseljak, which had good ties with Serbs during the war, confirmed that he is on the list. Now Z.Z. is thinking about changing his name. "I'm afraid, I don't know what of. If Sloba (Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic) promised 2,000 people for the Hague, he'll round them up. Just as he rounded up the men who fled Bosnia into Serbia. And they were brought here in shorts and slippers. Just like he caught the man who listed Ilijas as his home and he got killed on the first day here."

His wife, who seems like a woman who can stand the burden of her husband's disillusionment, said they went to see a house near Bijeljina. "When I left, I imagined the worst possible image. When I arrived it was even worse. My husband said: "That's what we spent four years at war for"."

The special forces soldier, the urban young man who spent four years living between heaven and earth, hid his medals. "Dangerous thing. Who knows what they'll bring."

There are no statistics on the number of people who moved out. In Ilijas, the estimates are that the figure does not exceed 20%. When they leave they take everything from their homes, including electricity plugs. They take down the doors and windows and leave them waiting like the people who hope to stay. Everyone carefully follows the news, fairly good news on Serb radio, but no one hears anything good. They want to stay but can't imagine living under Moslem rule. "If the Croats took over we might stay, but under the Moslems - No," a woman in mourning clothes said categorically. The aversion towards the Moslems stems from the fact that the Serbs and Croats didn't fight on the Sarajevo front. The woman trembles. She says she's trembling from bitterness. All the mothers of dead soldiers decided to move their children together, and then the mother who started the idea moved her son's remains alone, in secret. No one, not even the woman in black, will say their name. She's convinced the "people in Sarajevo" take names published in the media and draw up lists to take revenge. The Sarajevo Serbs say the list of war criminals was drawn up from commendations read on radio and they all agree that there are some 20,000 names on the list. Why the list is big, no one can explain.

Ilidza still has some charm left. Most of the Serbs who fled central Sarajevo live here. Sellers at the market include students and tastefully made up women. "I'll earn some more money and leave," a student said at the market. Most often interviews end with: Don't, not me, please. What is there to say, misery, that's all.

And it's clear why people don't hear the news they listen to carefully. They're waiting for Serbian President Milosevic to speak, everyone else doesn't matter. But, Milosevic is keeping quiet. Biljana Antic jumps over her packed up belongings. Her husband Mirko was killed in the war leaving her with sons Srdjan (11) and Vladimir (13), his mother, both her parents and Mirko's remains. "No one from the authorities or his command came to see how we are and where we'll go. The pension has been more regular lately but no one has come to talk to us. I sometimes say that my husband's death is alright if he died for the Bosnian Serbs Republic. But I'm afraid, he died for the republic and now my children have to lie and say their father was killed in car accident. We watch the TV news from Serbia and I'm afraid how people in Belgrade will react when my sons say their father died for the Bosnian Serb Republic. Will people despise them?"

Biljana is also waiting for a final outcome, perhaps a new development. She wonders, if everyone will be able to go to where they belong, how her father can return to Visoko where he spent 23 months in jail known for its evil.

Time is passing, the Serb and Moslem armies have been separated between Ilijas and Visoko for a month with IFOR troops clearing minefields between the lines. Those are the explosions news agencies report in northern Serb suburbs. There were reports that Serbs are burning their homes but in six days we only saw that once. What is being burned every day is garbage which accumulates next to containers. Kids start fires with detonators.

In the empty rooms of his apartment in Ilijas, the quiet and conscientious Zoka speaks about how it started, how he feared the extremists, how he meekly accepted the rifle they issued him although he wasn't a Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) supporter, how a machine gun was pointed out of the windows of a Moslem apartment. He speaks about how everyone feared extremists and how only the extremists came out of this alive. "We were pawns." the Ilijas worker says. He went to the front every day because it was his duty. "It's easier for me because I didn't see that I killed anyone, otherwise I wouldn't be able to sand it."

Kiseljak

Sale on Kobiljaca

Illogical roads (you always seem to be going in circles) take you from Ilijas, via Ilidza to Kiseljak, the Sarajevo suburb under Croat control.

The Kobiljaca height, on Serb territory, is indescribably crowded. The jam includes cars with Travnik, Mostar, Kiseljak, Split, Visoko plates, trucks with cattle, IFOR heavy vehicles.

"No pictures," a Kiseljak taxi driver shouted. "No tapes," another said as he grabbed the recorder.

Why?

"If I told someone in Zagreb that the Serbs are OK people, they'd crucify me."

On Kobiljaca there is a market of used goods. TV sets cost from 200 to 500 DEM, freezers 100-200, power drills 100 and there are switches, light bulbs, door frames. The cattle in the trucks goes on to Kiseljak. A cow with calf costs 800 DEM, a sow 400.

This is a Serb sale and the buyers are Croats who will later sell the goods to Moslems who move into the Serb suburbs.

There is more trade in Kiseljak, a place Serb cars can enter without fear. There things are bought and re-sold.

From Kiseljak you can phone friends in Visoko. "The Moslems are fundamentalists but Moslem friends are still friends."

Our guide Slavisa Mitric drags a man out of the noise of the Peace cafe (which locals call War) from a table below the portrait of Chetnik leader Vojvoda Djujic. "Everyone's been turning this man's tape recorder off. You're a Croat, tell me, how do you feel about us leaving." "I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart."

"What about the picture of the Chetnik Vojvoda?" "So what, every nation has its markings."

They cooperated all through the war and were allies against the Moslems on that part of the front. Both say Kiseljak can thank the Serbs for the fact that the Moslems "didn't raze us to the ground". Slavisa points out Boza who married into Kiseljak, lived there in Serb uniform and regularly came to his post on the front line. Boza is moving to Austria.

Paper and Practice

"What's Prstojevic say, will we stay," our Ilidza hosts asked impatiently.

Their curiosity confirmed that the man has a reputation among Sarajevo Serbs and his meetings with Bildt and Clinton confirm that his political rating is growing.

Nedjeljko Prstojevic, Mayor of Ilidza had no Christmas message for his people this year. "I couldn't put anything together. I didn't know what to tell them."

According to figures he showed, there are 124,000 Serbs living in the parts of Sarajevo under Serb control. Under the Dayton agreement the suburbs of Vojkovic, Kasindol, part of Dobrinja, Kotarac and most of New Sarajevo will remain in the Bosnian Serb Republic. About 100,000 Serbs will be left on territory that goes to the Federation, primarily in industrial zones where most factory workers lived.

During the war Ilidza's population of 25,000 was pumped up to 38,000 by a flood of refugees, Prstojevic said.

He added that the key issue is whether the Dayton agreement will be implemented loosely or exactly as it was worded. He said the people expect an extension of the handover deadline but he's been discouraged by the firm respect for all deadlines. "At the moment the Serb people are primarily looking for guarantees of their personal safety and property. The number of Serbs who stay in the Moslem-Croat Federation will depend on those issues. If the transfer of authority is completed by March 21, a large number of people will move and only the few who have nowhere else to go will stay at great risk."