Rebuilding Is Bosnia’s New Battle

A torn poster of pop singer Michael Jackson is all that remains of the little bedroom. What was once the outside wall is now a gaping hole made by a Serbian shell that ripped through the house and gutted the interior.

Downstairs, three generations of Fahrudin Lipovac’s family live in the one room they have repaired. They bathe in a tub in the middle of the floor. Each day, when Lipovac, 49, comes home from his army post, he and his neighbors work together on their ruined houses, fixing the buildings of Gradacac bit by bit.

“Every day there are more people coming back,” said the weary Muslim soldier and carpenter. “First we repair one room, then another. It doesn’t matter how big your house is--for everyone, home is the best place in the world.”

All over Bosnia, as peace takes hold, the enormous task of rebuilding this devastated country has begun. Bosnians like Lipovac, using donated materials and their own labor, have started repairing damage estimated by the World Bank at tens of billions of dollars.

With an international force--including 20,000 U.S. troops--coming to help keep the peace forged in Dayton, Ohio, and Western nations proposing to give more than $5 billion in aid in the next three to four years, some Bosnians have high hopes for the rapid rebuilding of their country. But the problem of relocating about 2 million refugees, combined with the sudden influx of foreign money, makes many wonder just what kind of country Bosnia will become.

The Western powers will have little interest in rebuilding the Soviet-style economy that was collapsing even before the war. If the economy is to be revived, aid officials say, it must be converted into a free-enterprise system.

And aid workers fear that many Bosnians who abandoned their homes to flee ethnic violence are unlikely to go back. But building housing for refugees in their adopted communities would cement the transformation of Bosnia-Herzegovina from a unified, multiethnic country into a segregated society.

“If it were you, would you move back next to your neighbor who burned your house and is watching your TV?” asked Kevin Mannion, a British aid official who has worked in Bosnia for three years. “And if we build the housing where the refugees are, does that mean that we’re building two new countries?”

From one end of Bosnia to the other, the destruction caused by “ethnic cleansing,” shelling, bombing, burning and looting is staggering. Because much of the savage, 3 1/2-year war was aimed at driving civilians from their ancestral homes, the devastation of towns and villages is especially great.

Gutted two-story stone houses litter the countryside. Ancient monuments are in ruins. Factories are wrecked. Mosques and churches are demolished. Almost two-thirds of Bosnia’s housing has been damaged or destroyed, and well over half of the schools are no longer usable, the World Bank reports. Water, power, health care, communications, transportation and waste disposal systems are in shambles.

“You have to understand that the enemy during the war destroyed everything he could,” said Hazim Novalic, secretary of the mostly Muslim municipality of Gradacac, which suffered heavy losses in fighting with rebel Serbs. “The enemy attacked hospitals and public buildings like schools. Now our kids go to school in garages.”

Devastated Economy

The economy of Bosnia is also in ruins. Industrial production is just 5% of what it was before the war. Few people have steady incomes, and obtaining credit is virtually unheard-of. Nine out of 10 Bosnians rely at least in part on humanitarian aid from abroad, according to the World Bank.

“The needs are enormous, but also the capacity of the people is enormous,” said Rory O’Sullivan, who arrived last week in the capital, Sarajevo, to take up his post as the World Bank’s resident director in Bosnia. “The economy is on its knees.”

Bosnia’s needs are especially great considering its size. Its total land mass--including rebel Serb-held territory--is smaller than San Bernardino County. And its current population of about 3.4 million--not counting 1 million refugees abroad--is smaller than that of the city of Los Angeles.

No one has yet been able to tally the damage or come up with comprehensive cost estimates for reconstructing Bosnia. The Serb Republic has not allowed World Bank assessment teams to inspect damage in the 49% of Bosnia it controls.

But the town of Gradacac in the northeast illustrates on a small scale the extent of the destruction and the difficulties of rebuilding.

An important trading center even in Roman times, Gradacac was one of the few towns that was rapidly converting to a free-market economy with the breakup of the former Yugoslav federation, town officials said.

With a prewar population of 56,000, Gradacac boasted scores of profitable small and medium-sized factories that provided jobs for more than 8,000 people; many of the factory workers used their earnings to set up small businesses that employed 3,000 others, officials said.

For the rebel Serbs, the wealthy town was a prize worth taking. They laid siege to Gradacac--bombarding it with artillery, bombing it from the air, firing at it from tanks. Gradacac officials said sometimes as many as 7,000 shells landed in a single day.

Back to Roman Times

A special target was Gradacac’s hilltop fortress, which dates back to the Romans and has long symbolized the town’s independent spirit, officials said. The shelling severely damaged the historic structure, and some Serbian bombs--designed to pierce through roofs and explode indoors--destroyed many of the fortress’ furnishings and artworks.

The Serbs eventually seized 45% of greater Gradacac, killing an estimated 1,000 people and wounding 1,500. But the Serbs were never able to take the town itself. When the war stopped, the Serbian front line was less than a mile from the town hall.

The repeated assaults damaged or destroyed all of Gradacac’s factories, 84% of its housing, all of its schools, most of its utilities, its sports arena and its noted health spa, which once attracted ailing patrons from all over the former Yugoslav federation, officials said.

“We all worked hard for what we had, and in a moment it was destroyed,” said Mehmedalija Zrnic, 69, as he rested from repairing his two-story stone house with a large front room that serves as a cafe. “It took me 50 years to build. It took two hours to destroy. We have no resources now. I am old. We need other countries to help because we can’t do it on our own.”

Indeed, some Bosnians suggest that the United States has an obligation to provide financial assistance because the U.S.-backed arms embargo handicapped the Muslim-led government in fighting off the Serbs, thus prolonging the war and increasing the devastation.

“People were not able to defend themselves, and maybe that is partly the fault of the international community for not understanding that this was part of [the Serbs’] plan for a Greater Serbia,” Novalic, the municipal secretary, said as he looked out his office window at the ruined fortress. “And so, in that sense, people feel it is the duty of the international community to provide aid.”

The Clinton administration is proposing to give $600 million in aid to Bosnia. Although that is the maximum Congress is likely to approve, nearly all of it could be soaked up just paying for the basic restoration of Gradacac.

Millions for Repairs

Town officials estimate it would cost $320 million to rebuild factories and restore the once-flourishing farming sector, which specialized in plums, pears, apples and tobacco. It would cost at least $160 million to pay for materials to fix or put up all the houses needed here. And restoring essential services would take at least $100 million.

Gradacac’s prewar water supply, for example, is in territory seized by rebel Serbs. Some townsfolk have drilled wells, but others must travel a mile or more to fill jugs with water and haul them home. It would cost at least $8 million to meet the community’s minimum water needs, town officials said.

The phone system’s central switching equipment was so badly damaged that only 72 calls can go through at one time. Immediate repairs would cost $500,000, with millions more needed to restore the system.

It would take at least $28 million to rebuild schools; $21 million to repair roads; $17 million to restore other utilities; $11 million to rebuild health care facilities; and more than $9 million to repair the fortress and other civic buildings, not counting the cost of restoring damaged artworks.

“What we need is credit so we can rebuild our houses,” said the carpenter Lipovac, unshaven and with large bags under his eyes, as he worked in his small wood shop fixing a neighbor’s shattered door. “It is very hard here because there are no jobs and we can’t work for our money. These houses won’t stand for long. Each winter destroys them more.”

But Gradacac, with its successful business sector before the war, will be easy to rebuild compared with the task of replacing the outmoded, centralized economy that dominated most of prewar Bosnia.

Under Yugoslavia’s Communist system, most of the country’s heavy industries operated without regard to making a profit. To maintain full employment, many people were given jobs whether or not there was work for them to do. And state-subsidized factories set production goals without the limits of market forces--such as the cost of materials or demand for the products they made.

Echoes of Old Days

Today, many of Bosnia’s companies continue to be government-run--often by the same people who controlled them while Bosnia was part of Yugoslavia. Some company managers are reluctant to change, and hope for the reconstruction of Bosnia’s old centralized economy.

The World Bank and Western nations, however, plan to make aid dependent on the privatization of government-controlled industries, the creation of a viable banking system and changes in Bosnian law to encourage foreign investment.

“They are not just going to pour money into the state-run companies,” said Mannion, the British aid official. “The whole social infrastructure, as well as the technical, has to be reshaped. Now they [Bosnian industries] will have to pay real prices [for materials], and they will have to sell at real prices on the other end.”

During half a century of Yugoslavian communism, the rival republics were tied together through common power generation, water systems and industrial production--in part to make the breakup of the country more difficult. Now it will be hard to rebuild Bosnia without cooperation among all the rival factions.

“Our efforts must be directed toward all the country and all of its people,” Carl Bildt, the senior civilian in charge of implementing the peace accord, recently told donor nations. “Our efforts should also put a premium on cooperation and integration between the [Muslim-Croat] federation and the Serb Republic.”

Initially, the World Bank and the European Commission propose spending $5.1 billion over three to four years on such programs as schools, health clinics, agriculture, manufacturing, essential services and mine clearing. But officials say that this is just the beginning.

“There is a limit to what you can do in three to four years,” said O’Sullivan, the World Bank head in Bosnia. “Obviously you couldn’t spend $20 billion in that time.”

Raising the amount of money that the World Bank and the European Commission propose spending also will not be an easy task. So far, 50 nations and 27 private organizations have committed about $500 million--or only about 10% of the target. The United States’ pledge to donate $600 million--subject to congressional approval--has been criticized by some European nations as too little.

Some aid officials expect that national self-interest will govern many of the donations. Much of the help is expected to come in the form of in-kind contributions from countries seeking to assist their own industries, they say.

A country with a large railway industry, for example, might purchase trains at home and send them to Bosnia--boosting domestic business and ensuring continuing ties with Bosnia when the trains need maintenance or spare parts.

Where to Build Anew?

Bosnia’s housing damage is pegged by the World Bank at $6 billion, but the biggest problem will be deciding where to build dwellings.

The aid program plans to focus on the voluntary return of displaced persons. But many refugees fear they will again be victimized if they go back to communities they were forced to leave. It is not helping matters that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peacekeeping force insists that it is not its job to ensure that civilians can travel freely around the country.

“The displacement of the population in federation territories raises complicated ownership issues, and a resolution cannot be expected in the near future,” the World Bank concluded in a recent report on the reconstruction effort.

The promise of aid to all parties could give peacekeeping forces leverage to make sure the formerly warring factions abide by the Dayton accord--including allowing refugees to return home.

But some Bosnians question whether the Serbs--who started the war and now control nearly half the country--should get international help to rebuild towns they destroyed and captured, driving out Muslims and Croats.

“If they [Western nations] help the aggressor, it will mean they still do not understand who was the victim,” said Nihad Okanovic, a Gradacac official and a Muslim. “If they give money to the other side, that will be a boost to the aggressor to do the same thing again.”