Serb Refugees Fear for Future as Croatia Takes Back Territory

Tears welled in the pale eyes of Danica Trbojevic. The Croatian owner of the house that Trbojevic, 65, has occupied for the last six years is threatening to throw her out. She and her neighbors, all Serbian refugees, are being badgered by Croats eager to come home once this last piece of Serb-held Croatia returns to Croatian rule today.

“The owner warned us that no one can protect us day and night,” Trbojevic said Wednesday as she added firewood to a stove that heated the small kitchen. “After tomorrow they can do whatever they want to us.”

Today marks the formal reintegration to Croatia of the Eastern Slavonia region, a once-fertile basin hugging the Danube that was seized by Serbian rebels backed by the Yugoslav army in a vicious 1991 war.

It will be a day of celebration for Croatian authorities seeing their country once again whole and for tens of thousands of Croats bombarded and driven into exile. But it is also a time of trepidation for Serbian refugees, many forced from their own homes elsewhere in Croatia by the same bloody conflict.

An expensive, 2-year-old U.S.-led United Nations mission ends with today’s elaborate hand-over ceremony. The last of what was once a 5,000-member U.N. military operation will withdraw and Croatian flags, signs, license plates and currency will reign throughout the land.

In contrast to other parts of the Balkans, however, international officials in Eastern Slavonia have taken numerous steps to prevent a mass exodus by Serbs. Whether they were successful depends on whether Croatian officials will live up to agreements to retain Serbs on the police force, in the judiciary and in public administration. It depends, diplomats say, on the skill and goodwill of a Croatian government that, despite a poor human rights record, aspires to win the West’s favor, full membership in Europe--and economic aid.

“The longer-term success of this is yet to be determined,” the American diplomat who headed the U.N. mission, William Walker, said in an interview. “It won’t be determined for a long time, and it will be determined by the Croatian government. . . . Everything that can be done by outsiders has been done.”

At U.S. urging, the Croatian government of nationalist President Franjo Tudjman agreed to allow a 180-member U.N. police monitoring team to remain in Eastern Slavonia for another nine months, along with about 80 human rights monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A Croatian police force, roughly half of whom are Serbs, is in place, and thousands of Serbs have been issued Croatian passports.

In local elections in April, Serbs voting for the first time since the war won the majority on city councils in 11 of 29 municipalities throughout Eastern Slavonia.

But the most complex and least fulfilled agreement involves “two-way returns.” Croats may return to their homes but cannot evict a Serb to do so, unless the Serb is allowed to return to his home or given suitable alternative housing.

U.N. officials say the Croatian government has done very little to make it possible for Serbs to return to their homes elsewhere in Croatia, many of which have been used by officials to house Bosnian Croat refugees.

Yet pressure is building. International envoys are worried that Croats will try to return to Eastern Slavonia with force and en masse.

Although senior government officials pledge cooperation, local leaders often inflame tensions. Even Wednesday, Croat-controlled Radio Osijek played nationalist songs to whip up sentiment. Numerous incidents of harassment, threatening phone calls and a couple of grenade tosses have been reported, especially targeting Serbian refugees, but violence has thus far been kept to a minimum.

The feelings of insecurity are great, however. Here in Grabovac, a four-street village that fell to the Serbs in November 1991, about 140 Serbian families anticipating today’s hand-over have quietly left Croatia in recent months, residents said. Trbojevic and her elderly husband, Vladimir, said they would love to return to the home that the war made them flee in the central Croatian village of Kovacica. But the structure is occupied by refugees.

Marijan Kozulic, who like the Trbojevics is squatting in a Croat-owned home in Grabovac, was stunned to find the owner dumping lumber in the front yard last weekend. The owner gave Kozulic until Feb. 1 to leave and demanded he pay him rent. “When are you Chetniks [Serbian nationalists] going to leave?” he yelled at Kozulic’s 77-year-old mother, Kozulic recalled.

“I just cried,” said the mother, Magda, as she stirred a pot of rabbit on her stove.

The 1991 Serbian takeover of these villages in Croatia’s easternmost region--especially the horrific three-month siege of the baroque city of Vukovar--is often considered the point of no return in a war that would eventually engulf much of the former Yugoslav federation.

Vukovar was reduced to rubble by heavy artillery and aerial bombing from the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army. Not a single building appears untouched. Residents such as Ivan Frank hid for three months in their basements until the city fell on Nov. 18, 1991.

Frank, who was held for weeks in a prison camp and beaten by his Serbian captors, is one of the first Croats to return to Vukovar. His apartment reconstructed by European Union money, the 75-year-old retired shoe factory worker lives alone amid bare-bones furniture and tries not to think about his fear.

“It was a big risk to come back among those who were against us,” the gentle, white-haired man said. “I have deep scars on my soul . . . but most [Serbs] are also fed up with war.”

Frank’s wife, a Serb, was evacuated to Australia while he was still being held by the Serbs, and they have not seen each other since. She remains too traumatized to return to Croatia, he said. “If it were not for this war, we would be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary.”