In Balkans, New Political Climate Brings Hope to Displaced Masses

Branislava Brkljac, a Serbian refugee who lives in a former barracks here and earns a bit of money selling clothes at a sidewalk stall, often visits her native Sarajevo to see her brother and check out the home she dreams of getting back.

“I have an apartment, but now there is a Muslim family living in it,” Brkljac, 50, said of her home in the capital of neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. “He was a fighter in their army, so it will be very difficult to get them out.”

Brkljac is one of about 1.7 million people in the nations formed by the breakup of the former Yugoslav federation who are viewed by the United Nations as refugees or displaced persons, driven from their homes by the ethnic wars that tore apart their countries during the 1990s. Like her, most face enormous obstacles to both leading normal lives where they are and to returning home.

But in the jigsaw puzzle that is the Balkans today, recent political developments are providing glimmers of hope. The fall from power last month of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the rise of a moderate democratic government in Croatia and the increasing acceptance of returnees in Bosnia raise opportunities to address long-intractable problems.

Newly elected Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has moved to improve relations with his country’s neighbors, a key condition for easing the plight of refugees.

“Not just us refugees, but all the Serbian people have lived so badly due to Milosevic’s bad politics,” Brkljac said. “Now the borders will open, and we’ll all live much better.”

Yet a decade of horrors has left wounds that cannot be easily healed. Wars and “ethnic cleansing” drove minorities from areas in Croatia and Bosnia dominated by Croats, Serbs or Muslims. Reversing this flight is extraordinarily difficult.

The vast majority of ethnic Albanian refugees who fled Kosovo last year have returned to the province, which is under the control of the United Nations and international peacekeepers but remains a part of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic. However, about 200,000 displaced people from Kosovo, most of them Serbs, remain in other areas of Yugoslavia after fleeing the province in fear of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians after the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army.

“I see no future for us,” said Gordana Zivkovic, a 26-year-old Serbian refugee from Kosovo, as she cooked bean soup for her three small children at a collective living center set up in a former psychiatric clinic here. “We are so far away from our homes.”

An ugly game of musical chairs contributed to the problem, as refugees who fled one area moved into homes vacated by people who themselves had been driven out because of their ethnicity, said Zvonko Tarle, editor in chief of Odgovor, a weekly newspaper here devoted to refugee affairs.

To illustrate his point, Tarle pulled out pen and paper and started drawing circles and lines, showing hypothetically how in order for a Serbian refugee in Yugoslavia to return to Sarajevo, a Muslim occupying his apartment needs to go back to Republika Srpska, the Serbian-controlled sector of Bosnia. But the Muslim’s home is occupied by a Serb from western Bosnia, whose home is occupied by a Serb from Croatia. In the home vacated by the Croatian Serb lives a Croat from Bosnia, and in his house lives someone from Sarajevo.

“So this is a circle that is very, very difficult to untangle,” Tarle said. “This problem has to be solved on the regional level.”

In addition, many refugees want to remain in a place where they are part of the dominant ethnic group, Tarle said. “I think a majority want to stay where they are, but some 40%, we think, want to go back to their old houses,” he explained.

“These people are facing three major problems,” Tarle added. “The first is to have their properties returned to them. The second is to be able to earn a living. The third is to rejoin the social life of the communities they return to.”

In what remains of Yugoslavia--the republics of Serbia and Montenegro--there are about 300,000 refugees from Croatia and 200,000 from Bosnia, according to U.N. statistics. The vast majority are Serbs who typically have been refugees for five to eight years. About 80,000 have acquired Yugoslav citizenship, aid workers say. But the rest live in a kind of legal limbo: They are considered foreigners, and it is difficult for them to find good jobs.

Many hope that under Kostunica’s new government they will be allowed to have dual citizenship, giving them full rights in Yugoslavia and keeping alive the chance they might someday get back property they once owned or rented in their homeland.

“If I were in any other country, I’d have citizenship already,” complained Rada Setkar, 44, a Serbian refugee from Sarajevo who worked in the 1980s as a factory official. She fled her home in 1992 and now sells miniature gas burners at an open-air market.

Setkar receives modest amounts of free flour, cooking oil and sugar as a refugee, earns some money working at the market six days a week and lives with a man who has an apartment.

“In order not to pay rent, I suffered all sorts of things,” Setkar said. “He’s younger than me. He’s an alcoholic, and he’s so disgusting. But I don’t want to pay rent, so I have to put up with him.”

Bosnia and Croatia, along with Slovenia and Macedonia, were part of Yugoslavia before breaking away during the 1990s, triggering a series of wars fed by ethnic hatred.

The U.N. lists 800,000 people in Bosnia, many of them Muslims, as “internally displaced,” meaning they are refugees within their own country. There are another 65,000 refugees in Bosnia from neighboring countries, most of them Serbs who fled Croatia. About 64,000 people in Croatia are listed by the U.N. as refugees or internally displaced.

Refugees and displaced persons who left areas of Bosnia that are still dominated by their own ethnic group have largely returned home, but “the return of ethnic minorities to their prewar residences is taking longer than initially hoped,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, said in a recent report.

More than 10,000 refugees returned to Croatia and Bosnia in the first six months of this year. But even at that rate it will take many years to solve the problem, U.N. officials say.

“It’s been five years since the war [in Bosnia] was over,” said Maki Shinohara, a UNHCR spokesperson here, “and I think people have started to think about the future, to overcome emotions and start to think, ‘We have to build a society for our children.’ ”

Current living conditions and prospects for returning home are especially poor for displaced persons from Kosovo, primarily Serbs but also Roma, or Gypsies.

Slavi Cvetkovic, a 30-year-old Serbian refugee from the Kosovo village of Musutiste, has a full-time job as a Belgrade firefighter, earning about $40 a month. But that isn’t enough to get his family out of a squalid collective residence set up in a sports center. He, his wife and two small daughters camp out in a large hall, living in a 10-foot by 15-foot space divided from their neighbors only by blankets and sheets of plastic hung from ropes.

“Many things bother me,” said his 33-year-old wife, Zagorka. “My kids are little, and there’s constant clamor here. The big doors [to the hall] open and close all the time. We have just one water tap and one toilet for 16 families--45 people.”

Most Serbs who fled Kosovo say they can go home only when Serbian soldiers and police return to Kosovo to protect them.

But the prospects of that happening are dim. The U.N. administration running Kosovo since last year is pledged to institute autonomous and democratic self-government while keeping the province part of Serbia. More than 90% of Kosovo’s current population of about 1.6 million is ethnic Albanian, and virtually all of them favor independence and bitterly oppose any Serbian police or troop presence.

The international peacekeeping force known as KFOR has had great difficulty trying to protect the estimated 75,000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo. The international community shows no enthusiasm for mass repatriations to the province any time soon.

Eric Morris, UNHCR special envoy for Yugoslavia, said here last week that Kostunica is pressing for a U.N.-supported return next spring of thousands of Serbian refugees to now largely deserted areas of western Kosovo that they once dominated. Morris did not rule out the possibility but indicated strong doubt over whether conditions would allow it.

Whether such a large-scale repatriation is safe “will have to be KFOR’s call” and will require “an understanding with the [ethnic Albanian] leaders in Kosovo of the right of return,” Morris said.

Slavi Cvetkovic, the Belgrade firefighter, said he hopes to return with his family to his old village and farm in Kosovo. But he has heard that their home was destroyed and fears for their safety.

“Where we used to live there were 200 Serbian houses and 1,000 Albanian houses,” he said. “If we go back now, there will be lots of revenge. Their houses were burned down and our houses were burned down. Without strong authority, we will not be able to live together. They have their blood revenge. Nothing can be done without [Serbian] military and police because otherwise there’s nobody to protect you there.”

He added that he has no idea how he can ever go home.

“I don’t know how it could happen,” he said. “We are lost and confused here. Look how bad it is. I almost cannot think. I cannot sleep. I cannot have a bath. There are other people who should think about it. They should at least give us someplace to live, for the sake of the children.”

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Balkan Refugee Crisis

The United Nations estimates that about 1.7 million people are refugees or internally displaced within the five nations that arose out of the breakup of the Yugoslav federation.

BOSNIA

Refugees: 65,000

Internally displaced people: 800,000

CROATIA

Refugees: 24,000

Displaced: 40,000

MACEDONIA

Refugees 20,000 Displaced: 0

SLOVENIA

Refugees 4,000 Displaced: 0

YUGOSLAVIA (Serbia, Montenegro)

Refugees: 500,000

Displaced: 200,000 Source: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees