Balkans: After War, An Empty Peace

This land, once described as "the model of multi-ethnic mixture" of Bosniak Muslims, Serbs and Croats in former Yugoslavia paid for the war with more than 200,000 lives. Most of those killed were Bosniak Muslims.

The post-conflict recovery and nation building since 1995 when the wars ended was supported by more than five billion dollars in international aid for reconstruction, but this healed wounds only superficially.

"There's peace and security, but there's no chance that our lives will ever look the same as in pre-war times," Abid Dudic (51) told IPS.

He returned to his pre-war home in Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia from Germany only two years ago. He fled with his family in 1992 when the conflict broke out.

The family returned to find that Dudic's father Huso and his wife Fahreta's three brothers Resad, Sefik and Redzep went missing in July 1995 after the Bosnian Serb Army overran the United Nations protected area of Srebrenica.

More than 20,000 Bosniak Muslims had been crammed into that small town since 1992. When it fell to Serbs in 1995, at least 8,000 Muslim boys and men were executed. Relatives of the Dudics were among them.

"If it was not for pictures, I would not know that my brothers existed," Fahreta told IPS. "The pain, the emptiness will always remain in my heart."

Fahreta and Abid share the destiny of hundreds of thousands who still feel the trauma of war in Bosnia, regardless of ethnicity.

A recent post-war study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bosnia confirmed that "the legacy of a painful past still remains."

"The first and fundamental conclusion is that an extremely deep sense of grievance remains," said the study, published under the title 'Justice and Truth in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Public Perceptions'.

Half of all the interviewees said that what happened in 1992-95 affects their everyday life today. That was true for almost 60 percent of Muslims, 46 percent of Croats and 39 percent of the Serbs surveyed.

The war had threatened the lives of almost 70 percent of Muslims surveyed, as well as 54 percent of Croats and 45 percent of Serbs. A total of 54 percent from all three ethnicities said they would never forget it.

Another study showed that thousands suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The study, published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested that many survivors are plagued by a "a fear of loss of control over life", even though the guns and tanks went silent ten years ago.

"These findings may have important implications for reconciliation efforts in post-war countries and effective interventions for traumatised war survivors," said the authors, seven psychologists and psychiatrists from former Yugoslavia.

Based on interviews with 1,358 survivors conducted between March 2000 and July 2002, the experts examined factors contributing to chronic depression among those who lost loved ones and homes or were otherwise traumatised.

On average, victims suffered 12.6 "war-related events" such as combat and torture, living as refugees, witnessing the death or rape of loved ones, being exposed to mass graves or enduring sniper fire, siege or aerial bombardment.

Some 79 percent of war survivors in Bosnia said they believed justice has not been done. This has embittered them and complicated their chances of recovery.

The UNDP study warned that "more than 25 percent of those surveyed believe that there could be another conflict should the international troops withdraw." Peace in Bosnia is guarded by thousands of European troops, with the help of locally established forces.

But the locals are divided along the lines the Dayton Peace Accords provisioned for: people in Bosnia-Herzegovina live in two separate entities whose names clearly define the ethnic division. One is the Muslim-Croat Federation, the other is Republic of Srpska, populated by Serbs.

The division came as the result of war, as groups moved to areas where their ethnicity prevailed during the conflict. The same happened when refugees, victims of ethnic cleansing on all three sides, started to return.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says that of the two million people who left the country or were displaced within its borders during the war, only 800,000 have returned. The rest remain in third countries.

The pre-war population of 4.2 million has shrunk to about two million. The multi-ethnic composition of cities like Banjaluka, Sarajevo, Tuzla or Mostar remains only a pre-war memory.

"This is an empty country," Senad Malkoc (55), a Sarajevo teacher told IPS. "In some areas you can drive for hours without seeing any lights at places you knew were large villages before the war." (END/IPS/EU/IP/HD/VZ/SS/05)

Source: IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency

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