World Financial Support to Help Bosnia Cope With the Ravages of War Fades

In an unheated room with broken windows, Saima Habibovic haltingly admits to 25 women that she can’t cope with refugee life in Sarajevo because she is illiterate and terrified of cars.

Bibija Kustura describes how she smokes heavily and gets depressed when her children go to school because she has too much time to think about her missing husband and former home.

Elvira Lagumdelic acknowledges craving revenge against Bosnian Serbs for killing her father-in-law, and says she would burn down the Serb house she now lives in if she were forced onto the street again.

Every week, these Muslim women come together to share the traumas of their shattered lives. Elsewhere in Sarajevo, there are group counseling sessions for demobilized soldiers, young people, women who are widowed or single parents, and most recently children returning from abroad.

The guns fell silent in Bosnia more than a year ago, but psychiatrists and psychologists say many people are just now seeking help for their psychic scars. However, support from public officials and the international community is diminishing as Bosnia recedes from the world spotlight.

The priorities for rebuilding Bosnia are wrong, says Zina Rasavac, program coordinator for Corridor, Bosnia’s first nongovernmental organization dealing with mental health.

“People need reconstruction in their heads first,” she says. “After that, it’s easier to have reconstruction in the country.”

While fear of bombs and snipers has receded, traumas stemming from the loss of homes, jobs and loved ones remain. “But unfortunately, there is a reduction in money to help people with psycho-social problems,” Rasavac says.

Some Bosnians, including those in a position to make policy, regard counseling as a crutch.

“I believe there are too many counseling centers and too many people run to them, thinking they’re psychologically jeopardized,” says Sead Avdic, deputy mayor of Tuzla, a city in the part of Bosnia controlled by a Muslim-Croat federation. “It’s not necessary. We are strong people.”

Nejira Nalic, director of the Bosnian Committee for Help in Tuzla, says that view is consistent with Islamic teachings about the need to endure, even if it is painful or difficult.

The pain in Bosnia is obvious.

Dr. Habiba Hasanagic, a psychiatrist who works at a government clinic in Sarajevo and supervises counselors at Corridor, says many people are suffering from mental illness or depression. There also has been an increase in suicide, alcoholism and drug use, mainly marijuana.

Despite exhortations to get on with their lives, many people are seeking help.

Hasanagic says women preoccupied with keeping their families alive during the fighting “come to us and say: ‘Doctor, now I’m burned out. I’m sick.’ ”

Demobilized soldiers “don’t see a future,” she adds. “They don’t know how to feed their families, how to live in peacetime. They say, ‘I feel empty, useless.’ ”

The government agencies that assisted people with emotional problems before the war were mostly destroyed, and now international donors have cut back on aid funds, Hasanagic says.

“It’s not sexy anymore,” says Jasmina Husanovic, project coordinator for the Bosnian Committee, which had to close 13 of its 24 community and counseling centers in Tuzla after the European Union and the United Nations decreased financing.

“In America, they are still treating Vietnam War veterans, let alone World War II veterans,” she says. “I don’t know what will happen with displaced women who were raped, whose husbands were killed or are missing.”

The 25 refugee women who meet weekly in Sarajevo are lucky. Their counselors have been working for free since a grant from the New York-based International Refugee Committee ran out.

At a counseling session, social worker Salih Rasavac encourages Habibovic to talk about fleeing rural Cajnici in eastern Bosnia.

“I was raised in an uneducated family,” the 45-year-old peasant says. “I was raised to keep my feelings inside me. I talked only with my family. . . . But I have to admit I can’t walk through the city streets and lights. I’m afraid of cars.”

Rasavac suggests she and other illiterate peasant women attend literacy classes.

When Lagumdelic, 21, speaks of revenge, Rasavac urges all the women to examine “the heaven and hell in themselves” and tells them to “use your energy for the future.”

Kustura, 40, is from Visegrad, which was among the first cities the Serbs drove out Muslims with arson and gunfire in 1992. She says her depression disappears when she is with the group, but adds that she feels forgotten.

“Nobody pays attention to us anymore--we have to take care of our own lives,” she says.

For Sevda Palo, who was wounded in the war, the session is too much. “I can’t stand these stories,” she says. “I don’t like to talk. I now have a headache.”

Rasavac says if she suffers alone, she will think she suffered most.

“But when we talk about it together, maybe she will realize others suffered more,” he says.