Ethnic Discord : Children of Balkan Conflict Draw Harsh Lessons From War : They can’t paint over their sorrow. So UNICEF helps them confront their pain through art.

In horrifying nightmares, Antonija Pavicic, 4, relives the spring day when, she says, Serbian soldiers slit her father’s throat as she and her mother looked on, helpless. Most nights, she wakes, screaming at the vision of his headless ghost, her body drenched in sweat, heart pounding.

It happened a little over a year ago in a small Croatian village, she says. Her family had just climbed out of their cellar to surrender--Antonija, her mother, father, grandfather and sister, now 3. But when they went outside, soldiers killed her father and grandfather on the spot.

Antonija is one of countless children trapped in the blood bath in what once was part of Yugoslavia. Children on all sides of the fighting have witnessed such unfathomable atrocities that experts say many may never recover from the emotional scars. They have seen family members butchered, playmates’ limbs blown off, their mothers raped.

“People seem to think that because this is Europe, all the children were put safely to the side while the war went on,” said Edith Simmons, a U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokeswoman in Zagreb. “But you’re talking about thousands of children who have seen people slaughtered. We don’t know what kind of psychological effects this will have on them in the future.”

Last October, to reach out to traumatized children, UNICEF launched a psychological counseling program in cooperation with the Croatian government. The program now includes 50 schools in Croatia. The main goal is to treat children who suffer from war-related stress in hopes of helping them to one day lead functional lives.

But results of a recent UNICEF survey of 5,000 children in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, do not bode well: 51% said they had witnessed a killing--19% of these had seen more than one person die at a time; 39% reported losing one or more family members; 72% had seen their homes bombed; 81% feared that at some point during the war, they would be killed. (There are about 70,000 children living in Sarajevo and surrounding towns, according to UNICEF estimates.)

The magnitude of the problem is so overwhelming that many psychologists are at the breaking point. They feel burned out and helpless in the face of so many needy children.

“When I hear some of these stories, it’s all I can do not to cry in front of the child,” said Antonija Urli, a psychologist at Children’s Hospital in Zagreb who counseled young Antonija. “Everyone is exhausted, working overtime, and still it is not enough.”

According to Croatian government figures, there are about 160,000 school-age refugee children in the country, out of a total of 500,000 refugees who fled Serb-held areas in Bosnia and Croatia. So far, about 6,000 children have been tested to determine whether they suffer from emotional dysfunction due to the war.

Dozens of teachers, social workers and school counselors have undergone special training to help them identify children who exhibit symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Workshops have been conducted for parents to alert them to signs of abnormal childhood behavior.

Psychologists say some of the common symptoms of high stress in children include nightmares, anxiety, depression, loss of concentration, heart palpitations, headaches and stomachaches. Many children also suffer from guilt feelings because they survived while their acquaintances and loved ones perished. In severe cases, children have become withdrawn and even violent.

One of the main components of the UNICEF program is an art therapy course designed to help children confront war experiences and put them in perspective. Children are assigned themes like “memories” or “peace” and asked to draw what those concepts mean to them. A sampling of these drawings was on exhibit at the U.N. General Assembly Public Library in New York last month. The exhibition, “No War Anymore,” included 190 photographs of children’s drawings from around the world.

“The purpose of the drawings is for the child to be able to express difficult experiences without having to communicate verbally,” said Rune Stuvland, a Norwegian psychologist working with children in Bosnia and Croatia. “Putting the event on paper is also a way of working through it and putting some distance between the past and present.”

During a visit to a hospital in the Bosnian town of Tuzla earlier this month, Stuvland handed out paper and crayons to the young patients there. Some were survivors of the April 12 bombing of a school soccer field in the town of Srebrenica. There, witnesses later said, 36 people were killed; there were reports of decapitations.

Children describing the scene drew a garish collection of bloody body parts, flaming houses and tanks shooting fire. “The children remember the most shocking part of the event. For instance, the arm being blown off,” Stuvland said. “What we are trying to do is to take these children back to these horrible experiences in a very safe environment where they can come to terms with them.”

But Stuvland and other psychologists acknowledge that there is no definitive medical research to prove that these methods work with children who have experienced such severe trauma. Much depends on the individual child and the family support he or she receives.

One child may suffer extreme emotional problems just from having been forced to live in a shelter, experts say, while another who saw murders may not.

“If you look at children during World War II, some of the ones who lived in concentration camps had normal lives when they grew up and others didn’t,” Stuvland said. “But the logical thing seems to me that the sooner you provide help, the sooner you can cure the problems.”

UNICEF officials are considering a counseling program in Bosnia similar to the one in Croatia. But efforts in Bosnia have been hampered by constant shelling and disruptions of basic services. Many schools have been destroyed; those that remain often double as refugee housing.

The need for services for children is enormous--far greater than the limited resources available. In Bosnia and Croatia combined, more than 3 million people, many of them children, have been forced to flee their homes. The more fortunate found shelter with relatives. But most of the poor wound up in refugee camps. Many children were uprooted and now live with distant relatives or strangers.

“A lot of these kids now feel like their lives are meaningless,” said Urli. “They have simply given up all hope for the future.”

In many cases, the war has led to the complete breakdown of the family structure. Often, children get little emotional support from parents--many of whom are overwhelmed themselves. The adults worry about missing spouses, finding work and other concerns more immediate than their children’s mental state.

School officials say the lack of parental support makes it difficult for many refugee children to adjust to their new environment.

“A lot of parents have a very fatalistic attitude, and they don’t show any interest in how their kids are doing,” said Natasa Lalic, a counselor at an elementary school in Zagreb where 11% of the 1,020 children are Bosnian or Croatian refugees. “They’re so depressed, they just kind of let things go and leave the school to take care of their children.”

Even for children who appear to be faring well, painful memories can be triggered easily. For Petar Jokic, 7, who lives with his family in the Spansko refugee camp on the outskirts of Zagreb, the trigger was the pungent smell of vinegar that filled the room on a recent evening when his mother was tossing a salad. It took him back to the time over a year ago in his village near Vukovar when he, his mother, father, grandmother and 6-year-old twin siblings sought refuge from bombing raids in their cellar. For three months, he said, he slept on a sack of potatoes.

Back then, his parents added vinegar to the water to freshen it; smelling that odor transported him back to the smell of gun powder and the deafening shelling that would rock the house.

Psychologists say that children like Petar will probably always guard memories of the horror they have survived. But, perhaps, treatment will give the children some hope. “We’re just trying to help them overcome it,” Simmons said. “We know they will never forget.”

Untitled Poem

Edima Suleymanovich, age 12

In my dreams I go among the ruins

of the old part of town

looking for a bit of stale bread.

My mother and I inhale the fumes of gunpowder

and I imagine it to be the smell of pies, cake and kebab.

Then a shot rings out from a hill nearby.

We hurry, although it is nine o’clock

and e might be hurrying to “our” grenade.

Then an explosion rings out in the street of dignity

many people are wounded

sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers.

I reach out and touch a trembling, injured hand.

I touch death.

Terrified, I realize this is not a dream

It is just another day in Sarajevo.