Muslims Despair Over ‘Liberated’ City : Balkans: Residents of shattered Mostar feel like pawns. Croat victors proclaim new state.

The screech of an incoming mortar sent Habib Buric scurrying from his windowless car to take cover before the shell exploded a few blocks away, sending a shudder through piles of rubble that used to be a quaint and bustling Turkish bazaar.

Before resuming the task of collecting a dead son-in-law’s belongings from the bombed-out ruins of last month’s battle for Mostar, Buric waited out one more round of the whine and crash that have become the rhythm of daily life here.

Since its recapture from Serbian forces three weeks ago, Mostar has been hailed by its new Croatian stewards as a safer and more efficient base for government than the embattled Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.

To the dismay of the republic’s Muslims, the Croatian conquerors have declared their own state within Bosnia-Herzegovina, taking Mostar as its capital.

But with Serbian guerrillas again on the offensive and blindly lobbing shells at Mostar from beyond the next ridge, Muslims such as Buric have begun to despair that their once-tranquil and integrated city can ever be rebuilt.

“I think this will last forever, or until some foreign force intervenes,” the 50-year-old munitions worker said Monday as he waited for another incoming shell.

Mostar, like many of the other economic targets of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s fierce war, has been virtually decimated in the taking.

The former tourist haunt, whose 400-year-old Turkish bridge is one of the most famed sights in the former Yugoslavia, was first conquered in mid-April by Serbian guerrillas and the powerful Yugoslav People’s Army, which deployed its tanks, guns and attack planes to destroy the aluminum and aircraft industries that were the city’s lifeblood.

During the fierce fighting that destroyed or damaged nearly every central apartment house, churning homes and cars into incinerated ruins, three-quarters of Mostar’s 120,000 residents fled.

Croatian fighters took the city back in mid-June, again drawing the heaviest rocket and grenade fire in the warren of shops and cafes along the steep banks of the Neretva River. Even the Turkish Bridge, which has withstood centuries of invasion and onslaught, now bears a huge gash in its marble superstructure.

Between the two devastating conquests, which each side terms a “liberation,” local Croatian political leader Mate Boban declared that he was establishing the new Croatian state of Herzeg-Bosna.

“I believe we have the right to defend ourselves and not die like dogs,” Boban said Monday, complaining that the Sarajevo leadership “cannot function.”

But Boban conceded that Mostar, his chosen capital of the new and unrecognized state, is little better off in its bid to restore any sense of normality. The self-styled president of Herzeg-Bosna continues to fulfill his predominantly military role from the command post of Grude, 25 miles behind the front line that has returned to Mostar.

“We still have a situation where someone can be shot in the street and no one does anything,” Boban said, explaining his absentee supervision.

Boban and others working to defend Mostar contend that their actions are emergency measures made necessary by the war. Since Serbs began rebelling against Bosnia-Herzegovina’s proclaimed independence in March, at least 7,500 have been killed, more than one-third of the republic’s 4.4 million residents have become refugees and two-thirds of Bosnian territory has been seized and declared to be under Serbian rule.

That, in the view of local Croats, has justified radical action.

“This is the first territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina which can be called liberated. The rest is under occupation,” said Tihomir Maric, head of the provisional military governing council. “We were forced to establish some kind of order on this territory.”

Despite Maric’s insistence that a semblance of civilian order has been restored, Mostar exudes an atmosphere of chaos from every shattered corner.

Liska Park, a lovers lane during peace, is now a brown moonscape of 200 fresh graves where shelling victims have been hastily buried by relatives fearful of journeying to exposed cemeteries.

Crowded with tourists in previous summers, Mostar is now a ghost town but for the camouflage-clad soldiers on patrol. Among the few civilians still braving a midday walk despite the shelling and air-raid warnings, most seem mistrustful of the complication Boban has introduced by proclaiming yet another Balkan state.