Sarajevo Serbs’ Fears Threaten to Unsettle Peace

Milorad Jokic, a well-dressed lawyer from a prominent Sarajevo Serbian family, spoke calmly Saturday of his fears of life under the rule of the Muslim-led Bosnian government. But suddenly, as he described what he expects will be a brutal future of misery and intimidation, the 61-year-old man’s eyes reddened and his face contorted in uncontrollable sobs.

“Where will I go?” he cried, standing in the middle of the Ilidza market. “I have no place to go, but I cannot wait for the Muslims to come. I must leave because of my sons, my family!”

In this and the four other Serb-held suburbs of the battered Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, gunfire has stopped but peace seems distant and reconciliation impossible.

The U.S.-sponsored agreement ending the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina that is scheduled to be signed this week in Paris provides for the unification of Sarajevo by restoring the Serbian suburbs to government control. Sarajevo will become the only place in all of Bosnia where enemies are being asked almost immediately to live together again.

But many Serbs say they will never accept being governed by the Muslim-Croat federation that will control half of Bosnia.

Unless they are granted better guarantees for their safety, the Serbs say, they will abandon their homes in a mass exodus. Some vow to torch their properties as they go--or to stay and fight.

The growing conflict over Sarajevo has emerged as a major threat to the peace process, which is soon to be enforced by 60,000 NATO troops, a third of them Americans. Reflecting its concern, the Clinton administration dispatched chief negotiator Richard Holbrooke to the region over the weekend to extract renewed assurances from Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic that the rights of Serbs will be protected.

But such diplomatic gestures mean little to the Serbian residents, whose fears are being fed by deliberate misstatements from their leaders and discouraging statements from Bosnian government officials.

Izetbegovic said last month that all Serbs are welcome to remain in Sarajevo--except those who took up arms against the Bosnian government. That would exclude virtually all Bosnian Serb men between the ages of 16 and 60, most of whom were drafted or served in the army. Government officials have since sought to soften such comments, but the damage was done.

At the same time, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic have also stirred passions. Karadzic, whose political death was to have been sealed in the peace agreement but who remains in power, warned that the accord converts Sarajevo into “another Beirut” that will “bleed for decades.”

Thousands of Serbs have been turning out for protest rallies in Ilidza, Grbavica and the other Serbian suburbs in recent days to demand changes in the plan negotiated last month in Dayton, Ohio. At one rally, they stomped on an American flag. A referendum in which the Sarajevo Serbs will vote on the peace plan is scheduled for Tuesday, two days before the accord’s signing.

“We could live together before the war, but after four years in which so many children have been killed--our children, their children--now we cannot live together,” a retired textile worker who would give her name only as Rada said as she shopped with her grandson in Ilidza’s market.

Many of the Serbs in the suburban districts said they feel that they won their war on the battleground only to be sold out by their leaders, especially Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, who negotiated in Dayton on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs.

Indeed, Holbrooke and the U.S. negotiators were said to have been stunned that Milosevic conceded so much on Sarajevo, rejecting other plans that would have given it a protectorate status or a setup similar to Washington.

“We defended our homes, we defended our property, we lived through difficult circumstances, but we were successful,” said Jokic, the lawyer. “And now the United States and Milosevic have given us up to the other side.”

During the first days of the war, in the spring of 1992, Serbs seized these suburbs and Muslims fled. Ever since, the Serb-held suburbs effectively cut off the besieged center of Sarajevo from the rest of the world. The Bosnian Serb army used positions in the districts to shell Sarajevo mercilessly and to snipe at civilians, killing or wounding Muslims, Croats and Serbs. Bosnian government soldiers also shelled and sniped the Serbian suburbs, although at a lesser level.

The Serbs say they are afraid that those who suffered the siege of Sarajevo will seek revenge against them. Many say the minimum guarantee that would make them feel safe would be the creation of their own police force.

Serbian leaders put the population of their suburbs at between 120,000 and 150,000. U.N. officials say the total is about half that.

Velibor Veselinovic, the deputy mayor of Ilidza, said the Dayton agreement will cause a mass exodus of the Sarajevo Serbs, who he said constitute the brightest, most skilled and best-educated of the Bosnian Serb people. Dispersing them will be a damaging blow to Bosnian Serb society, he said.

How realistic it is to expect that these Serbs will flee is unknown. They are largely urban and professional, less likely to live in pastures and on roadsides--the fate of many other refugees. Banja Luka, the only other major city in the newly formed Republika Srpska, is already flooded with refugees, and foreign countries are increasingly inhospitable to exiles from the former Yugoslav federation, where the war has displaced nearly 3 million people.

The principal U.N. relief agency is opening offices for the first time in the Serb-held suburbs and is trying to discourage flight.

“The message we’re trying to get across is that they’ll be facing a miserable existence elsewhere,” agency spokesman Kris Janowski said. “There are already too many [refugees] in an area that can’t handle any more.”

But, he added, “I’m not sure they’ll be rational in their decision.”

In Grbavica, the Serbian suburb closest to government-controlled Sarajevo--reached just over the barricaded, barbed-wired Brotherhood and Unity Bridge--blankets that served as sniper screens remained draped over the streets. Apartment high-rises showed the pockmarks of shells and bullets, and the charred skeleton of a university building sat rotting.

At Grbavica’s Snoopy Cafe, young people filled the tables, smoked cigarettes furiously and discussed their bleak futures over beers and Cokes.

“They would put me in prison for at least 10 years because I was a fighter,” said Boris Dzordzovic, a 20-year-old soldier. “I feel helpless. There won’t be a normal life here for 100 years. Maybe older people will stay, but not the young. There is no future here. Just look around. Everything is destroyed.”

Dzordzovic said he plans to join his girlfriend and family in Italy as soon as the peace agreement is signed.

A veteran soldier, who identified himself only as Arba and who said he was one of four Serbian soldiers captured by French U.N. peacekeepers in a firefight during North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes earlier this year, predicted more war when Serbs rise to defend their districts.

“This is Serb land,” Arba said, grenades hanging from his belt and an earring in his left ear. “This land has been drenched in the blood of the best Serb men. We cannot just leave now.”

Neso Ivkovic, 32, a militia lieutenant with thick black-rimmed glasses whose grandfather came from San Francisco, said he is convinced he will be killed if forced to live under the Muslim-led government. Serbs will be harassed and attacked, denied jobs and housing and pressured to leave, he predicted. He said he will move to New York.

“We cannot live together with them--that’s the reality,” Ivkovic said. “It’s like a capital which is divided between blacks and whites. In a way, I’m a racist, I admit it. I say I cannot live with Muslims.”

At Radio Grbavica, where hundreds of people are phoning in to complain about the peace agreement, Zoran Kecman, who runs a publishing company that prints the Serbian version of Sarajevo’s Oslobodjenje newspaper, said he doubts that many Serbs will stay in these suburbs where some have lived all their lives. A few renegade elements of the Bosnian Serb army, however, will take a stand and launch a guerrilla war, he predicted.

“After four years of being under shooting every minute, you are no longer a normal man,” Kecman said. “These fellows without family will stay here and fight. They are few but can cause trouble. Every house here has four or five guns. These people have no idea where to go, and they are desperate.”

Asking the war’s enemies to live together so soon after a war that pitted neighbor against neighbor is an impossible test, said Gordana Vasiljevic, an employee with the Ilidza municipality who fled the government-held town of Tuzla.

“If they divided the rest of Bosnia [in the peace agreement], then why this experiment with Sarajevo?” she said. “After all that has happened, how can anyone trust?”