Out of the Trenches and Out of Work in Bosnia

For 3 1/2 years, as he manned a mortar position near the front line, Eldar Mujezinovic was obsessed with one thing--survival.

But now, as his confidence grows in the prospects for peace in the former Yugoslav federation, Mujezinovic is plagued by a new worry.

“During all that time, I had only one thought on my mind: How do I keep myself--and my son--alive?” Mujezinovic, 28, said, gesturing toward his 3-year-old son, who was born underground during the height of the shelling in Tuzla. “Now I’m in the baby-sitting business. And my biggest worry is how to get a job and support my family.

“I risked my life for years for this country, and now I have nothing,” Mujezinovic added bitterly.

As the soldiers who fought for years in the war here begin to grapple with the possibility of peace, they are immediately frustrated by the formidable task of finding work and building futures in a country where many of the factories and workplaces have been destroyed.

Mujezinovic is a Bosnian Muslim, but similar anxieties face Bosnian Serb and Croat soldiers as well.

Soldiers and former soldiers who have grown accustomed to combat now spend their time hanging around at home taking care of children while their wives work, trying to scare up odd jobs in town markets or listlessly drinking Turkish coffee or beer in smoke-filled cafes.

Leaders of each of the factions are struggling to address the looming crisis of unemployment, which some foreign observers and Bosnian officials say is bigger than any other problem facing the war-ravaged nation.

Currently, joblessness is rife in both sections of Bosnia-Herzegovina delineated in a peace accord hammered out in Dayton, Ohio, last fall: In the Muslim-Croat federation, only about 20% of the prewar industry is working; in the Serbs’ Republika Srpska, perhaps as little as 10% is.

Complicating the crisis, the former Yugoslav federation was only in the early stages of shedding its Communist system when war broke out. So the postwar reconstruction effort must uproot the vestiges of the command economy as well as repair damage caused by the war.

Although Bosnian Muslim, Croat and Serb leaders say they want market-based economies, practical changes come slowly.

For instance, Mujezinovic wants to get out of the army and start a fast-food shop in a house owned by his family. But under the rules of demobilization, he can be dismissed from the army only if his prewar workplace, the depot and maintenance center for the city’s buses, vouches for him and he agrees to return there.

The salary at the Tuzla depot is so low that Mujezinovic is unwilling to return. But that’s not the only obstacle standing in the way of his dream. Bureaucratic red tape has prevented him from getting a permit for his business, so a once-willing investor has pulled back.

While most people here are eager to embrace the free-market system, some are concerned about the potential consequences. Under the command economy, most prices were low and salaries high because of government subsidies. Now salaries at state-owned businesses are dismally low and prices are steep, even by American standards.

“I think it will be very difficult to employ all of us because everything will be in private hands and the owners will employ as few of us as possible,” said Goran Narancic, 30, who was allowed to leave the Bosnian army two months ago to continue his education. His preference would be to get a job, but because going to school is the surest way out of the army, he signed up for classes.

Older soldiers seemed concerned about their career prospects in a post-Communist, postwar society.

“We won’t all be able to get jobs when we switch to the market system,” said Cvetin Sikimic, 46, a Bosnian Serb soldier who was a mason before the war. “It’s harder for older people like me because we don’t have the strength to work like younger people. I’m worried about my family, especially because we ran out of all our reserves during the war.”

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The only soldiers who seemed confident about their ability to rejoin civilian life were those who were well-educated and had good jobs in the small private sector before the war.

“I’m not worried about getting a good job,” said Enes Hukic, 30, who worked as a manager for a private trade firm before the war and is now serving in the Muslim-led Bosnian military in an administrative, noncombat position far from the front lines. “Our country has a shortage of people with a high level of education.”

The exodus of skilled workers and intellectuals is one of the biggest obstacles to rebuilding the economy. Another is that the estimated 2 million refugees who have remained in Bosnia have been dislocated from their jobs.

Many of the city dwellers who were forced to move to rural areas during the war have no clue about farming or animal husbandry. Meanwhile, many refugees who fled to cities from rural areas have no skills except farming.

Hamdija Mujanovic, a refugee from Serb-controlled Zvornik, a city once populated mostly by Bosnian Muslims like himself, worries that he will be on the bottom of the lists for jobs in Tuzla, where he now lives with his family.

“Life was super before the war,” said Mujanovic, a former painter who is still a soldier. “I’m concerned about what will happen if I demobilize. We won’t have a chance to be employed because residents of Tuzla will have preference over refugees. When I listen to the television or radio news, everybody says people will return to their old working places. My working place is not here. It’s in Zvornik, but I can’t go back there.”

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Government officials, economists and the soldiers themselves say that without significant foreign assistance, the Bosnian economy will not be able to recover.

“Then we will have great social problems--lots of poor people, a low standard of living and a high crime rate. With those conditions, it would be very easy to have a new war,” said Sefik Mulabegovic, a Bosnian Muslim who is a professor of economics and the vice president of Tuzla University.

If they become disillusioned with economic reforms, the people of Bosnia might vote to bring Communists back to power.

“As an economist, I am very scared of this problem,” Mulabegovic said. “It’s not without reason that Communists won the elections in Eastern Europe and Russia.”