Bosnian Swap Meet May Be a Peace Model

It was a lesson in free-market economics that might make the most seasoned capitalist proud.

Onetime enemy soldiers Ahmet Colic and Milenko Vukovic sat shoulder to shoulder atop a flatbed truck parked at a muddy roadside market here. Their legs dangled from huge sacks of Canadian sugar stacked four deep and four wide. Colic hadn’t moved a bag all day, and he was getting antsy.

Vukovic, joining his newfound friend for a smoke, suggested upping the price. At least then, he advised, you’ll make more money when you snag a customer.

“I actually may have to lower the price to get someone interested,” Colic told an attentive Vukovic. “If you have goods in your truck too long, sometimes it is better just to get back your investment and forget the profit. It can even happen that you have to sell below cost so you can invest in selling something else.”

With the war over in Bosnia-Herzegovina, thousands of entrepreneurs are being born in the most unlikely places as out-of-work soldiers try their hand at an oft-forgotten byproduct of last year’s Dayton, Ohio, peace accord: In addition to silencing its heavy weaponry, the pact has opened the way for a fledgling capitalist economy in a once-Communist country and given a new voice to gutsy free-marketeers.

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The grass-roots transformation is still modest by any measure, but it is sinking its thirsty roots most everywhere. Rickety curbside kiosks, makeshift frontyard cafes and living-room video shops have sprung up across the map. Boys with spray bottles and squeegees stake out traffic signals, scrubbing motorists’ windows when the light is red and collecting payment when it turns green. Private merchants smile and say “Thank you” and even make special orders, all in the name of good business.

Nowhere is the burst of entrepreneurial spirit more authentic--and the lessons more profound for all of Bosnia--than at a grungy swap meet here in northeast Bosnia, where Croatian, Muslim and Serbian territories converge in a trampled cornfield along Route Arizona, the name the military gave to Bosnian Highway 18-1, the main logistics road to the U.S. air base in Tuzla.

“It is a unique place, because all three factions are coming together in one place,” said Army Capt. Jim Billings, whose unit operates a nearby American checkpoint.

Trznica Arizona, or Arizona Market, is open to anyone willing to sweat a little and hustle a lot, paying no heed to the ethnic distinctions that fueled 43 months of war and still engulf the country’s political landscape. In all but the rare exception, ethnic rivalry is checked at the barbed-wire fence raised by U.S. Army engineers to keep the ever-expanding commerce from spilling onto the congested highway.

“Trade. Trade. Trade,” said Nedzad Dautovic, 25, a Muslim with a thick wad of German marks in his pocket who was loading 110-pound sacks of sugar into the trunk of a Serbian car. “That’s what this is all about. Nothing else will bring us together again.”

Buy a German car, a Yugoslav tractor or a truckload of Macedonian grapes. Hungarian cooking oil comes by the bottle or the case. There are Turkish extension cords, Korean fishing rods and Dutch chewing gum. Soon there will be a strip joint.

It is big news in Bosnia when Serbian, Muslim and Croatian politicians deem anything important enough for them to sit around the same table. Such multiethnic gatherings are daily happenings among the thousands of traders and shoppers who have been coming here in droves since early summer but who first laid claim to the black-market outpost last winter when arriving U.S. troops set up the heavily fortified checkpoint down the road.

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Old neighbors, now living separately because of “ethnic cleansing” on all sides, walk the same garbage-strewn field in search of a bargain or to make a quick sale. A dozen restaurants and food stands, some no more than canvas tarps and empty flour sacks draped over flimsy wooden frames, cater to anyone with a buck. In all, 80 vendors have set up shop permanently, with scores of others coming and going as time and money permit.

Barely a year ago, former soldiers Colic and Vukovic were fighting just beyond a minefield south of the market, in a thick patch of trees that straddled the front line where combat took a heavy toll on both sides. They can point to the spot from their perch on Colic’s truck.

Now Colic, 28, a Muslim, and Vukovic, 36, a Serb, exchange tips on running a new business, and even pitch in to help when one or the other is busy. They don’t pretend to be soul mates, but they eat and drink together--and, for the sake of sustaining their two families, try as much as possible to concentrate on the future, not the past.

“We all have to survive somehow,” said Vukovic, whose black leather jacket is torn at the sleeves. “That means you do what you have to do.”

Vukovic entrusts his inventory of cigarettes to Colic each evening, when the mild-mannered Serb and his wife, who is also his business partner, drive 40 miles on rutted roads to spend the night with their two teenage sons in Serb-held Bijeljina. The routine starts again at 6 a.m. the next day, every day of the week.

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On busy nights--Trznica Arizona never closes--Colic hawks the cigarettes to his after-dark sugar customers, never asking his friend for a commission when he strikes the jackpot and unloads a carton or two.

“In April, I turned in my weapon,” said Vukovic, a locksmith who took up the cigarette trade three months ago because the lumber shop where he worked is now in Muslim territory. “Before that, we used to shoot at each other.”

Not because we wanted to, Colic noted apologetically.

“I wasn’t aiming at you. I wasn’t aiming at anyone in particular,” said the sandy-haired Muslim trader, who sleeps, eats and works on his flatbed truck.

Meals are cooked with butane gas and a pint-sized frying pan; the toilet is wherever he ventures in the overgrown patch of weeds marked “Mines.” Trips home to his wife and two young children in nearby Gradacac are rare--just enough time for a good meal, a warm bed and a chance to empty his wallet.

“It wasn’t personal,” Colic added of the shooting. “No one ever asked me if I wanted to do it.”

Vukovic nodded knowingly. Still, he confessed with a pained and distant gaze, it has not been easy working with Muslims. He makes the two-hour daily commute to and from Bijeljina because his family lost their home just down the highway. He wouldn’t be sitting on sugar sacks with Colic, he said frankly, if there had been other choices.

Trznica Arizona was a remarkable place even before it had an American name. During the war, it was a perilous but thriving center for black-market trade between separatist Serbs and Bosnian Croats, who would smuggle goods past Serbian blockades to besieged Muslims in outlying towns and villages.

More than a few wartime profiteers were killed trying to make a deal when they tripped mines or took a bullet in the back; others were arrested by military police for trading with the enemy.

Once the war ended and the NATO-led peace implementation force, or IFOR, laid claim to Highway 18-1, the dangers of doing business dropped considerably, but so did the demand for smuggled goods. Soon the American checkpoint became a haven for Muslims, Croats and Serbs divided by the so-called inter-entity boundary lines established by the Dayton agreement.

“It was a perfect spot--not deep in anyone’s territory,” said Mijo Geljic, 38, a former Croatian smuggler who now works at the market for the local municipality. “If there was trouble, you could be back home in seconds.”

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But there was no trouble. Serbs, Croats and Muslims met peacefully under the watchful eyes of American soldiers, exchanging news of friends and loved ones and often sharing a tailgate meal. Some brought household items to trade or sell. Soon a trailer serving coffee parked among the pack. Another followed.

On weekends when the weather was good, the crunch of vehicles was so severe that North Atlantic Treaty Organization patrols were unable to squeeze past without pulling in their side mirrors. When one Sunday last spring two U.S. commanders, traveling in opposite directions, were brought to a standstill by the activity, the market was destined for another make-over.

“We had two options,” said Lt. Col. Todd Semonite, commander of the 23rd Engineer Battalion and one of those stuck that Sunday. “The easy one was to make them go away. IFOR has to have the ability to move down that road. . . . But because it had already become such a meeting place, and there seemed to be a lot of cooperation, the other choice was to help expand the area off the road.”

So beginning in June, Army engineers did what they do best: Rearrange the earth. After the area had been combed for mines, bulldozers leveled the cornfield, laid dirt roads, dug trenches and created a master plan for an 18-acre trading post. Local Bosnian Croat authorities, who have jurisdiction over the area, bought several truckloads of gravel, which the U.S. engineers also spread.

At IFOR’s recommendation, last month the U.S. Agency for International Development set aside $39,000 to help local authorities add toilets, running water, electricity and drainage. Work began last week.

“This is an exciting thing that is happening because it developed spontaneously, promotes re-integration and helps revive the economies of both [the Serbian and Muslim-Croat] entities,” said Craig Buck, director of the U.S. agency in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

But progress has also brought tension. A law passed last month by the local municipality sets fees for vendors. And it now costs 10 German marks daily, or about $6.50, to park a big rig in the market. Flea market stands go for half that amount.

Andrija Cancarevic, the market’s Croatian manager, said the fees are necessary to pay for maintenance, including a cleaning crew to keep up with worsening sanitation problems. The American money is helping, but it is not enough, he said.

Many vendors said the charges are too high, and they have simply refused to pay until they see real improvements. Since most of the sellers are Serbian and Muslim, Cancarevic has been reluctant to send Croatian police after them for fear of upsetting the delicate ethnic harmony. IFOR has agreed to patrol the market for weapons and explosives but has refused to be drawn into the collections business.

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A Western aid official said the Americans would intervene only if Croatian authorities used the U.S.-funded improvements as an excuse to “shake down” vendors, but there have been no complaints.

Short of that, the official said, the market needs to be left alone to work out its own problems, perhaps serving as yet another example for the rest of the country.