VOLUME 3 • NUMBER 140 • 2005 After The War Was Over DP/24134•2005 DP/22922•2005 DP/23794•2005 SERBIA: Sarajevo woman and a new life in Belgrade. SERBIA: Croatian family applies for Serbian citizenship. BOSNIA: A family of Kosovo refugees in Bosnia. DP/21160•2005 BOSNIA: An ethnic Croat risked staying in Republika Srpska during the war. Balkan BOSNIA: Widows Images of the Srebrenica massacre still wait- BOSNIA: An ethnic Serb farmer ing to go home. went back to the Sarajevo region. DP/21656•2005 2005 DP/22484•2005 THE COMPLICATED MOSAIC OF BOSNIA: A Muslim family returned home to DP/22689•2005 a Serb-dominated region BOSNIA: Croat returnees to the Mostar after the war. DP/21074•2005 DP/20851•2005 CROATIA: Croatian family who fled Serb militias in 1991 now back home. DP/20998•2005 CROATIA: An ethnic Serb returnee still waiting to reclaim her occupied home. BOSNIA: Croatian refugee continues to live and work in another refugee’s property. DP/21296•2005 CROATIA: An ethnic Croat family from Bosnia resettled in Croatia. DP/20991•2005 POSTWAR LIFE BOSNIA: An ethnic Serb family living in a Muslim-dominated DP/22784•2005 region of Bosnia. region in the Bosniak-Croat Federation. DP/22392•2005 Mostar’s restored bridge. DP/23184•2005 The ‘miracle’ of Dayton 4 REFUGEES –10 yearsyears laterlater “THE BRIDGE, IN ALL ITS BEAUTY AND GRACE, WAS BUILT TO OUTLIVE US. IT WAS AN ATTEMPT TO GRASP ETERNITY” PHOTOGRAPHS BY VINCENT WINTER REFUGEES 5 The ‘miracle’ of Dayton–10 years later The war years: A temporary footbridge replaces Mostar’s historical bridge. BY R AY W ILKINSON ings to further his war aims against neighboring Bosni- an Muslims. Bosnians held uleiman the Magnificent commis- The ancient stones crashed into snow swollen tor- prisoners of war by sioned the 16th century masterpiece to rents below and Croatian journalist Slavenka Draku- ethnic Serb forces. reflect the caliph’s own omnipotence. lic, who had also penned the earlier lines about the The mortar used to lace the dazzling Mostar bridge, lamented: “Why do we feel more pain Seeking safety stone pieces together high over the River looking at the image of the destroyed from Serb snipers in a muddy trench Neretva reputedly was mixed from the bridge than the image of massacred and behind U.N. finest egg whites and horse hair and in people? We expect people to die. The armored personnel the intervening centuries scholars, global travelers and destruction of a monument to civi- carriers. Sclergy revered the bridge not only for its physical beau- lization is something else. The bridge ty but also as a symbol of religious and cultural toler- transcended our individual destiny.” ance, a structure which outlasted Ottoman and Austri- As much as any other single event an empires, royalist Yugoslavs and 20th century in an unfolding tragedy which would communist cadres. last for nearly four years, the Mostar On a bitterly chill day in November 1993, Croatian bridge and its wanton destruction General Slobodan Prljak saw the bridge at Mostar, deep became another type of symbol—this in the heart of the newly declared independent country time not of tolerance, but of the intol- of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not as one of the world’s erance and depravity into which the cultural jewels but as an impediment to one of the 20th Balkan region of Europe was mired at century’s latest and most insidious developments—the the start of the 1990s. ‘ethnic cleansing’—the separation or murder of ‘inferi- or’ local peoples. A KEY PLAYER “It’s just an old bridge,” the Christian general said It had all seemed so different casually as he ordered his artillerymen to destroy the during the previous four decades. graceful arch and 11 other surrounding historical build- After Josip Broz Tito and his commu- 6 REFUGEES ©B. GYSEMBERGH/CS/BIH•1992 AP/H. DELIC/DP/BIH•1996 As much as any other single event, the wanton destruction of the bridge at Mostar became a symbol of the intolerance and depravity into which the Balkan region was mired. nist partisans seized power in conflict between Croats, Serbs and Muslims erupted /CS/BIH•1996 Yugoslavia in the waning days of World across that country, too. War II, he welded it into a politically sig- In the ensuing fighting and localized wars-within- nificant state which successfully strad- wars between 1992 and 1995, several hundred thousand dled the world’s major power blocs— persons were killed. Serb forces committed the worst UNHCR/A. HOLLMANN communist, socialist, capitalist and single atrocity in Europe since the end of the Second third-world. World War when they massacred nearly 8,000 Muslim But when Tito died in 1980, ethnic, men and boys around an obscure town called Srebreni- political, economic and religious tensions resurfaced ca. Concentration camps were established. Half of and the façade of Yugoslav unity fell apart. After a Bosnia’s entire population—men, women, children, the decade of increasing regional tensions, Slovenia and old and the disabled—were ripped from their homes. Croatia declared independence from the Serb-domi- nated central authorities in Belgrade in 1991. War engulfed parts of Croatia. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its own independence in 1992 and interethnic HUNGARY Ljubjana SLOVENIA Zagreb VOJWODINA ROMANIA CROATIA Novi Sad Banja Luka Tuzla BOSNIA Belgrade AND HERZEGOVINA Srebrenica Knin SERBIA Sarajevo Kraljevo Mostar Adriatic Sea Mitrovica MONTENEGRO Pristina Dubrovnik Podgorica KOSOVO ITALY Skopje /CS/BIH•1995 ALBANIA FYR OF The Balkans MACEDONIA GREECE UNHCR/C. GALBE REFUGEES 7 The ‘miracle’ of Dayton–10 years later DP/21829•2005 Digging new graves for recently identified victims ‘Ethnic cleansing’ became part of the international the Dayton Peace Accords on November 21, 1995, at a of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. vocabulary. The bulk of Bosnia’s factories, bridges, U.S. Air Force base called Wright-Patterson in Ohio. roads, schools, homes and water and electricity supplies The guns fell silent. Bosnia was split into two almost were destroyed as were entire towns and villages in equal parts, the so-called Republika Srpska, spiritual Croatia. home to ethnic Serbs, and a Bosniak-Croat Federation. unhcr became the lead humanitarian organization Under the terms of Annex 7 of the Dayton Accords (see in the Balkans and began the most wide-ranging and story page 14), unhcr again became the lead humani- complex operation in its history, spearheading a pro- tarian agency—this time repatriating the war’s civilian gram to care for 3.5 million civilians. Central to that victims from stinking collective centers across the operation was what became the longest-running air region, from abandoned homes and bomb-damaged bridge in history, a 3 1/2-year, almost daily shuttle of car- buildings where they had squatted after the original go planes which helped feed the Bosnian capital of owners had also fled; from as far away as refugee centers Sarajevo. and private homes in Europe and North America— Only a few years before, in 1984, this same city had bringing them back to a shattered landscape sown with been the proud host to the world at the Winter Olympic mines, with almost no physical infrastructure, few jobs Games, but now it had been reduced to a hapless collec- and simmering ethnic hatreds. tion of traumatized civilians cowering in their dark- On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Dayton ened homes, targets in a virtual ‘turkey shoot’ by Serb agreement in November, the bridge at Mostar today gunners perched high in the surrounding hills. again provides a dramatic backdrop against which to After an increasing American and nato interven- highlight developments in the last decade—an easy ref- tion, the Bosnian phase of the Balkan nightmare splut- erence point to measure the progress or lack of it—in tered to a halt in the most unlikely of venues when the trying to patch together again Europe’s battered south- major protagonists agreed to what became known as east corner. UNHCR again became the lead humanitarian agency— back to a shattered landscape sown 8 REFUGEES A brief history of the BALKANS 1878 they overrun the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica December 11, 1999 The Congress of Berlin redraws the map of the and massacre nearly 8,000 men and boys. Political change begins to sweep the Balkans. Balkans and despite ignoring the wishes of local The catastrophe hastens the intervention of Croatian strongman Franjo Tudjman dies and a populations creates three new countries, U.S. and NATO forces. democratic system is established. In October Serbia, Montenegro and Romania. the following year, Slobodan Milosevic August 12, 1995 concedes defeat in presidential elections in June 28, 1914 As the tide of war turns decisively against Serb Belgrade and on June 28,2001, is handed over to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro- forces, Croatia launches Operation Storm the International Tribunal in The Hague to Hungarian throne, is assassinated by a Serb to retake Serb-held territory. Some 250,000 face war crimes. gunman during a visit to the Bosnian capital of ethnic Serbs flee Croatia during the war. Sarajevo, precipitating World War I and the February 2001 subsequent collapse of the Austrian and November 21, 1995 Conflict breaks out in the former Yugoslav Ottoman empires. Yugoslavia, the ‘Kingdom of The Dayton Peace Accords end hostilities in Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and more Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ is created from Bosnia and Herzegovina. NATO-led than 150,000 people flee, principally to the debris in 1918. implementation forces deploy and UNHCR is neighboring Kosovo. In August, the country’s designated as the lead humanitarian agency two opposing sides sign a peace agreement and October 24, 1944 to oversee the repatriation, feeding and civilians begin to return to the country.