‘What Else Are We to Do?’ : As Their Homeland Is Destroyed, Bosnian Muslims in U.S. Send Guns to Their Countrymen

It’s a long way from the Bronx to Bosnia. But for Mike Radoncic and many of his friends, the war that has destroyed their European homeland with a savagery not seen since World War II is just a gunshot away.

On a quiet Saturday afternoon, men are gathering as usual around small tables at the Two-Star Cafe and Social Club north of Manhattan. Normally, they talk about their children, their jobs and upcoming soccer games organized by the city’s South Slavic community. Yet today, the talk is of war and guns.

“We need money to buy weapons,” says Radoncic. “We will fight to the last drop of blood and protect our people, even if the world does nothing.”

Like others in the darkened cafe, the trim, intense speaker is a Muslim who emigrated to the United States from Sarajevo. He talks grimly of carnage in the capital city, which was once a peaceful home to his people as well as Croats and Serbs. Today, it is engulfed in war and dying a slow death--surrounded by Serbian troops who say they fear the creation of a Muslim-dominated state.

So far, an estimated 8,000 people have died, and some observers say the true number may be 50,000. The conflict has decimated thousands of Bosnian towns and created more than 2.5 million refugees. This week there have been reports of death camps, rape and torture that recall Nazi extermination tactics.

As Western nations deplore the growing violence--but do little to stop it--Muslim Slavs in the United States are taking matters into their own hands.

“We’re raising thousands of dollars to get weapons into our homeland,” says Radoncic, a 38-year-old building superintendent in Manhattan. “We’re outgunned, and we have to do whatever we can to help.”

It’s tricky work. Radoncic and his colleagues have collected about $100,000 so far and sent it to a bank account in Germany. There, the cash is used to buy weapons, and couriers smuggle them in as best they can. Because Sarajevo is currently surrounded by Serbian troops, the pipeline has slowed to a trickle.

Similar efforts are under way in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Toronto, according to Muhamed Sacribey, Bosnia’s ambassador to the United Nations. So far, the effort is uncoordinated and sponsors are simply doing the best they can in each city. Still, several million dollars have been raised nationwide, including donations for humanitarian aid.

In Southern California, for example, nearly $2 million in food, clothing and medical supplies will be sent to Bosnia through a Croatian church organization, according to Nihad (Eric) Dzinovic, an Orange County jeweler.

“We think the U. S. government should help us with weapons,” says Dzinovic, who organized the drive. “Last week, I spoke with my 90-year-old mother, who was in Sarajevo, and she said, ‘Tell the world we don’t need sandwiches. We need guns to defend ourselves. We need help from everyone.’ ”

It doesn’t take much to gather funds, Sacribey notes, because many Muslim Slavs in the United States have friends and relatives in Bosnia who have been killed or wounded in the fighting. The contributions run especially high in places like New York, where the emigre community is fairly new and people have strong, recent ties to their former homeland.

“I know that $100,000 is not a great deal of money, but our position is, ‘Better something than nothing,’ ” says Radoncic. “We believe one gun is one gun--and that means one Serb less.”

The world has been roused by the spectacle of Bosnian forces fighting better-armed Serbian troops, and Radoncic’s colleagues are aware of the importance of public opinion. They portray themselves as patriots acting purely in self-defense and carefully monitor news coverage. But Serbian officials in Belgrade and at the United Nations tell a vastly different story.

Indeed, they deny that their nation has anything to do with the violence in Bosnia, suggesting that the conflict is a civil war. Decrying negative publicity, they insist that the world knows only half the story and that Muslims and Croats are carrying out equally vicious reprisals against Serbs.

“The press coverage has been very one-sided and biased,” says Milos Strugar, a counselor with Serbia’s permanent mission to the United Nations. “When you hear of these atrocities, you only hear from Muslim and Croat victims. I’m not saying that either side is innocent, but all sides are to be blamed equally. And you don’t get that picture in America and Europe.”

One reason may be that Serbia’s claims of non-involvement have become increasingly hard to believe, according to numerous international observers. The United States and several European countries have condemned reports of Serbian atrocities, and they also suggest that the sophisticated weaponry used by Serbian partisans in Bosnia--including jet fighters--makes it highly unlikely that the Belgrade government’s large army has stayed out of the war.

In May, the United Nations imposed tough sanctions on Serbia and called for a security zone around the Sarajevo airport so food could be flown in. The fighting continues, however, and one cease-fire after another has collapsed. This week the United Nations suspended its mercy flights into Sarajevo, citing the danger of random sniper fire and mortar attacks on its peacekeeping forces.

As international censure of the Serbs grows, private U. S. efforts to aid Bosnia are gathering momentum. In a campaign reminiscent of Irish Republican Army fund-raising drives, the New York Muslim community has held collection meetings in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, and a fourth drive is set next week at the Two-Star Cafe. Volunteers believe they are working against the clock, with the death toll mounting each week and Serbian forces growing stronger.

“What else are we to do?” asks Ismet Sujak, who runs a grocery down the street from the cafe. He says his mother’s uncle was killed May 27 in one of the war’s most publicized atrocities. The man was standing in a Sarajevo bread line, during a cease-fire, when Serbian rockets rained down, killing him and 15 others. Sujak clenches his fist at the memory.

Across the table, Muhammed and Muharem Brucaj, two brothers, tell of friends in Sarajevo who were killed defending the besieged city. Some died in mortar attacks, while others were slaughtered in hand-to-hand fighting.

“This killing, much of it is done for fun, because the Serbs have no conscience at all,” charges Sujak. The grocer has written three times to President Bush, asking him to aid Bosnia.

“Bush cannot ignore us much longer,” he adds, pointing to a framed letter from the President, hanging on the cafe wall. In his letter, Bush voices concern with the Bosnian situation but makes no commitment to provide U. S. military assistance. Meanwhile, says Sujak, “Our country is a graveyard.”

In recent weeks, New York Muslims have explored a variety of ways to send weapons to the front, as well as massive humanitarian aid. But there are doubts about how much of the emergency shipments actually get through.

“You can never be sure,” says Sacribey. “A lot of these supplies are still sitting in Zagreb (the capital city of neighboring Croatia), and it’s almost impossible now to smuggle things into Sarajevo. So it’s a problem.”

Sacribey adds that his government is bound by a U. N. arms embargo and has nothing to do with the private shipments of arms. Yet he and others are lobbying to lift the embargo, saying Bosnia has a right to self-defense.

“If other nations are not going to intervene militarily, that’s their decision,” he says. “But we ask for the right to fight back. We are outgunned and outnumbered. Why doesn’t the West understand this?”

A key reason is the history of the Bosnian war, which is complicated even by Balkan standards. Few Americans understand the region and have difficulty sorting out the feuding parties.

Although the Balkans have been wracked with ethnic feuds for centuries, the country once known as Yugoslavia was able to put a lid on the problem as long as Marshall Tito’s Communist regime held power. When Tito died 12 years ago, the southeast European country began to unravel politically and economically.

In the new Yugoslavian alignment, Serbs controlled their own region and allied themselves with Montenegro to form a state. They had hoped to extend their influence by maintaining a confederation of the other territories that formerly made up the fractious country. But the Slovenes and Croats declared independence, and Bosnia-Herzegovina did the same earlier this year.

Unlike the other newly independent states, however, Bosnia was not controlled by one ethnic group. Before the war began, its population was 44% Muslim, 31% Serb and 17% Croatian. After breaking away from Yugoslavia, citizens voted to recognize the rights of all three groups. But that drew fire from some Serbs in Bosnia as well as the Serbian-run government in Belgrade.

Soon, Serbian officials began talking about a “greater Serbia” that would reach beyond its borders. Others talked of the need for “ethnic cleansing,” a brutal campaign to rid Bosnian cities of Muslims or Croats altogether.

“It’s a barbaric principle, one that seems incongruous to many of us in the West,” says Tom Szayna, a Rand Corp. analyst in Santa Monica who specializes in Eastern Europe. “But the Serbs and others have been programmed for centuries to think of themselves fundamentally as members of an ethnic group.

“If you define nationalism in that strict, orthodox sense, the corollary is that the state should strive to be ethnically pure. Now, there’s no such thing as ethnic purity, but if you want an impossible task, try to tell a Serb it doesn’t matter that a region is full of Serbs, Muslims and Croats.”

Back in the Bronx, there is angry talk about Serbian aggression. But there is also a bitter recollection of happier times, when Bosnians felt they could get along. Sujak says he has many Serbian friends and suggests that these relationships are cooling as the war continues. Radoncic notes that he has gone to a Serbian auto mechanic for years, but wouldn’t call him now.

The strongest fallout may be on children. Radoncic has two sons, Isak, 12, and Irfan, 9, who grew up thinking different groups could coexist. For example, Radoncic’s brother, Sefke, who is still trapped in Sarajevo, initially took refuge from the siege in the cellar of a Serbian friend. As he and others constantly point out, many Serbs who do not endorse aggression are currently fighting to preserve Bosnian independence, at great personal risk.

But now, with the war in its sixth month, Radoncic’s boys talk about Serbian atrocities . . . or at least the stories they’ve heard from adults.

“I’ve heard the Serbs take pregnant women, cut out babies and put in dead cats,” says Isak, drinking a soda in the small cafe. “They do bad things.”

“All this makes me guilty, because I’m in America and the fight is over there,” adds Irfan. “I wish I could buy a gun and use it.” Then he reconsiders: “Actually, I’d give it to an adult. He’d be a better shot.”

Later in the day, Radoncic shows a visitor the radio studio he has set up in his apartment. He hosts a weekly show for the South Slavic community, reporting on war news and fund-raising efforts. He has also helped distribute a videotape that contrasts a once-peaceful Bosnia with its bloody present.

Crouching by his television set, Radoncic translates the tape, originally narrated in Serbo-Croatian. It tells the story of Mostar, an idyllic little town with medieval bridges, churches and Muslim mosques.

The camera pans across beautiful scenery, then dissolves into the chaos of 1992: A man with his face shot away is crumpled on a floor. Children with arms and legs blown off cry in a nursery. Fresh graves fill a quiet city park. A Croatian narrator speaks with passion, saying there is no longer any humanity in his town. Then he ducks low to avoid a burst of automatic gunfire.

“I don’t talk just as a Muslim, or as a Bosnian,” says Radoncic as the video ends. “I hope I am talking as a human being. This terrible fighting is killing innocent people, and the world cannot pretend it no longer knows.”

In the next week, he predicts, more money for guns will be raised and sent to the front. But a peaceful solution has to be found, before it’s too late.

“I remember my father telling me long ago about Hitler, how the world watched and did nothing,” Radoncic says. “Haven’t we learned anything?”