Bosnian Capital Reunited After 4 Years of War

Embattled and fractured for four years, this capital that came to symbolize the horrors of Bosnia’s ethnic war was reunited Tuesday following the return to government control of its last and most agonized Serb-held district.

Under terms of the U.S.-brokered Dayton, Ohio, peace agreement, 52 police from the Muslim-led government drove into the ruins of Grbavica at sunrise and raised the white and blue flag of Bosnia-Herzegovina. After them, thousands of men, women and children arrived, walking across the Brotherhood and Unity Bridge that separated Grbavica from the rest of Sarajevo like a Balkan Berlin Wall. Many came to visit homes, friends and family not seen since the war started in 1992.

On the Grbavica side, many of the remaining 1,500 residents who had braved days and nights of terror, arson, murder and rape peered from their windows and ventured into the rubble-covered streets. Some had been holed up in their homes and flats for weeks to escape the thuggery that accompanied the flight of thousands of Serbs.

“It is a rebirth!” cried Abdullah Alajbegovic, 57 and Muslim, as he stood at the Grbavica end of the bridge to greet his liberators. “For four years it was like being in a prison.”

Fatima Cutna, 67, emerged from her apartment for the first time in days and stood wide-eyed as she watched the entourage of police, NATO troops and journalists moving through Grbavica. Dressed in a long wool coat and tennis shoes, she began to sob.

“Thank you! Thank you!” she said again and again. A white-haired neighbor passed, embraced her and exclaimed: “You are free! You waited for your freedom. Now don’t be afraid.”

The peace plan that has now been in force for 90 days switched five Serb-held suburbs and districts to Muslim-Croat control, reunifying the capital but giving rise to an exodus of an estimated 50,000 Serbs inspired by fear of retaliation and the propaganda of their hard-line Bosnian Serb leaders. Only about 11,000 Serbs remain in the suburbs, U.N. officials said.

The result is a city no longer under siege and finally in control of its outlying utilities, access roads and neighborhoods. But it is also a city dominated by Muslims and bereft of its past tradition of ethnic and religious diversity.

“Sarajevo became one city again today,” said Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. relief agency that worked to protect Grbavica’s residents.

But, he added, “It is quite sad and deplorable that one of the first consequences of Dayton was the displacement of people at a time when our job was to return people to their homes.”

Grbavica was a front-line neighborhood just across the Miljacka River from central Sarajevo. It has been devastated by fighting and the arson and mayhem wreaked by departing Serbs. Much of the neighborhood is mined.

It was from Grbavica that the Serbs had their best positions for shelling Sarajevo. And Grbavica too was routinely shelled and sniped at by Muslim-Croat forces.

The elation for Sarajevans of the stitching-together of their capital soon gave way to hard realities.

Bosnian Serbs fleeing Grbavica left a parting gift for Hanifa Mesic, a 62-year-old widow. They booby-trapped the pantry door of her apartment, and its explosion sent police bomb inspectors diving for cover. North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.N. police officials cautioned that Grbavica remains extremely dangerous.

And despite Sarajevo Police Chief Enes Bezdrob’s warning that people entering the area would have to prove they had either property or family in Grbavica, by the afternoon young men who clearly were unfamiliar with the town were gathering.

The complexity of returning the displaced to their homes--a principal component of the Dayton accord--was also on view.

Jelica Laca, a 61-year-old Bosnian Croat who fled Grbavica following a sniper attack on her son, returned Tuesday to the apartment she had not seen in 39 months. To her surprise, she discovered Danica Micic, a tiny 66-year-old Serbian woman who had moved in a couple of years ago after fleeing her Sarajevo home.

“Out of here!” Laca screamed at Micic. “You have stolen everything! I never want to see you near my door!”

Micic responded that Bosnian Serb authorities told her she could have the apartment. “I have papers,” she begged.

Laca would have none of it and gave Micic a few minutes to gather her paltry belongings. Dejected and wailing, Micic took a couple of snapshots down from the wall and placed them in a bag in the hallway, along with a bag of potatoes, some empty jars and a plastic bowl.

“I’m a sick woman. I have nowhere to go! I lost everything,” she cried, her head wrapped tightly in a scarf and an amputated right hand covered with a glove.

“I too lost everything!” Laca cried back. “You shot my son! You are beasts!”

“You should thank me! I preserved this place for you!” Micic countered.

As their voices and emotions rose, the two women began shoving each other. Laca spied an electrical heater that Micic was taking with her.

“You can’t have that,” Laca told Micic. She grabbed it, threw it on the floor and stomped it to pieces.

Micic screamed her reply: “I should have burned your place!”