Bosnians Await Reunions That May Not Come

At a seaside catch basin for the victims of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the women of Sarajevo share all that they have left: meager charity rations, relief that their children are safe, hopes of seeing their husbands again and a sad conviction that the world is unmoved by their misery.

Three months into a Serbian campaign aimed at an “ethnic cleansing” of their integrated republic, Muslim and Croatian families must choose between continuing to fight a losing battle or fleeing their Bosnian homeland if they want to survive.

Many families, like that of Mahira Sukurovic, have separated to split the difference. Men stay behind to defend all they have lived for. Women and children spirit themselves to safety and wait for reunions that may never come.

“My sons cry for their father at night, and I don’t know what to tell them,” said Sukurovic, a 31-year-old Muslim recently arrived after a daring escape. “I can’t tell them that he is alive and protecting us because I don’t know. Our neighborhood has been under constant attack, and there is no way to know what has happened.”

Sukurovic fled with Dino, 5, and Nedim, 6, through enemy-held mountains in the middle of the night. Both terrified children had been admonished that a single sound could get them all killed.

The children had begged to escape the explosions and hunger after a month of riding out the city’s siege in their cellar. Now they cry to go back to a suburban home that Sukurovic is no longer sure still stands.

Along with 300 other recent arrivals to the incongruously idyllic surroundings of a tourist campground on the Adriatic, the Sukurovices languish through an endless vigil of waiting for word from home.

Nearly 6,000 people have died in Bosnia since Serbian guerrillas, opposed to independence, began pounding Muslim and Croatian communities with rockets and mortars in early April. Most of the dead were civilians, nearly all of them Muslim.

Now that the attackers have captured most of the rural territory they want, the guns supplied by the Yugoslav federal army have been trained on thoroughly integrated and indivisible Sarajevo.

Western governments have shown little inclination to involve their military forces in the ferocious battle, despite the fighting’s exposure of colossal cracks in the “new world order.” Instead, international mediators have chosen to rely on diplomatic measures that have so far proved ineffective in forcing an end to the lopsided war.

But time is running out for Sarajevo, where at least half of the original 600,000 residents are refusing to flee. Those left to defend their homes and the dying ideal of ethnic tolerance have been surrounded by Serbian gunmen and are being starved to death.

“America should help us. A big power like that could stop the fighting if its leaders wanted to,” said Arzija Bratic, the long gray roots of her red-tinted hair testifying to two months of roaming and hardship. “Sometimes we fear the West is waiting for us to be killed.”

Many refugees here point to the U.S.-led Desert Storm operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation as an example of international solidarity to set the world right. They cling--some say naively--to the belief that foreign powers will soon awaken to their plight.

Others express disappointment and anger, accusing Western countries of silently condoning the rebel Serbs’ declared aim of “ethnic cleansing.”

“The democratic leaders of the world have committed a crime by allowing this to happen to Bosnia,” said Alija Cengic, a college sociology professor from the city of Foca, which has been razed by Serbs. “I think they know what is going on. People here feel hopeless because the world is doing nothing to stop this murder.”

Avdia Zolj, who came to the Stobrec refugee camp from Sarajevo in a secret convoy to fetch food and organize resistance, said of the fighting: “It’s nothing other than genocide. There should be military intervention. Otherwise the war will last until there is total destruction of the Muslim nation.”

Unwilling to concede the Bosnian capital or muster foreign help in its defense, Sarajevo’s protectors are looking to the teeming refugee camps for vital reinforcements. Muslim and Croatian men driven out in the war’s early phases are being collected from their places of refuge and grouped into fighting units to defend Sarajevo.

“We have the will to fight for Bosnia, but we don’t have enough weapons,” said Enis Cavrak, 27, a factory worker from Foca. “Some of us are volunteering to defend the capital, even though we don’t live there. If Sarajevo falls, all of Bosnia’s Muslims will be doomed.”

Zolj and a dozen others from Sarajevo have shuttled between the front and the camps in Croatia, carrying wounded fighters out and ferrying in food, recruits and ammunition.

“We cannot make much of a difference, because the other side prepared for war but we didn’t. No one ever imagined the conflict would go so far,” said restaurateur Fadila Zorlak, warning that without foreign backing the Sarajevo resistance is likely to fail.

Croatia’s nationalist regime is blamed by foreign mediators for taunting Serbs and the Yugoslav federal army into battle, a degree of complicity that dampened Western enthusiasm to move in and defend Croatian communities attacked by Serbs last year. But few, if any, of the European Community and U.N. diplomats trying to broker peace in Bosnia have found any grounds for the punishing bombardment of Sarajevo. Its defenders--among them many Serbs--cower in cellars without food, water, electricity or much hope.

None of the men from Sarajevo who visited Stobrec to gather supplies put any faith in Serbian promises to let U.N. forces reopen Sarajevo’s airport to humanitarian aid. “These are just attempts to stall and starve more of us,” said Zolj, a lawyer with the Sarajevo city government.

While the refugees focus on foreign governments’ failure to spare them from attack, those expected to foot the bill for food and shelter of the displaced Bosnians have other complaints about the Western world’s behavior.

Almost all of the refugees from a year’s fighting in Croatia and Bosnia--some estimates suggest there are nearly 2 million--are bottled up in former Yugoslav republics because tight immigration laws prevent them from seeking refuge in the West. Along the splendid Dalmatian coast, home to at least 200,000 refugees, hotels, sports halls and campgrounds are overflowing with women and children.

With the prospect of escalating conflict driving millions more to flee the embattled Balkans, countries bordering on what was Yugoslavia have convened a standing conference to handle the crisis. The clear message sent by Austria, Italy and the rest of Western Europe is that help will be forthcoming, but only if the homeless stay where they are.

That has upset Croatian, Slovenian and Serbian authorities, whose humanitarian relief agencies are already overwhelmed.

“Italy has proclaimed a state of emergency because of its 2,000 Bosnian refugees, yet everyone expects Croatia to accommodate and care for 271,000 more,” Prime Minister Franjo Greguric complained during an early June session of the refugee conference in Zagreb.

Lena Elek, who oversees refugee affairs for the region around Split, where 60,000 are sheltered, estimates the cost of caring for the refugees in Croatia to be about $55 million per month.

In neighboring Slovenia, another former Yugoslav republic, officials contend they have reached the limit of their ability to provide for the 60,000 Bosnian homeless in their care. They have appealed for greater international assistance to cover the $15 million a month they must spend just to feed the displaced.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, based in Geneva, has also warned that its resources are exhausted by the Yugoslav conflict and that the international community must take stronger measures to end the fighting or face the migration’s mounting costs and social disruptions.

Despairing of their indefinite sentence to life on the dole, some of the refugees in Slovenia and Croatia are braving a return to their besieged homes.

“We’re going back tonight because our place is free,” Mukelefa Bikic, 67, said as she scrambled to gather her adult children and their few belongings to head home by bus to Modrica, in Bosnia’s north.

Her school-age grandchildren were left behind at the refugee camp in Ljubljana, to be sent for if the adults decide it is safe.

“The enemy is still all around, but we believe America will help us,” the woman declared with confidence. “We are the victims of this war. Everyone must realize that.”