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In Bosnia, Skepticism Over Fair Elections
‘I can't vote in Tuzla because I am from Bijeljina.
"How can we have elections in the present situation?" asked Mirsad, an elderly refugee from Serb-held Bijeljina. "If they (Serbs) don't allow me to return to my home, how am I supposed to vote?"
"It's all really a very bad joke," he said from his park bench in Tuzla where he and two other friends, also expelled from Serb held Bijeljina, pass the days. Fearing retribution if they ever did manage to return to their home town, the three would only give their first names and refused photographs, a common practice among Bosnia's refugees.
The vast majority feels that elections now could turn out to be the worst way of going about trying to "establish a just and lasting peace." Every refugee Team Berserkistan spoke with agreed. "If we can't go back to our homes, what is rightfully ours, which we have built with our own hands, I will pray every day for the war to start again," Mirsad intoned from his bench.
"I can't vote in Tuzla because I am from Bijeljina, and even if I could go back the only choice I have to vote for is the seven bastards that did this to me in the first place. There is no way to have elections for me."
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Mirsad's friend, Meho, chimed in. "With all these people still all over this place what do they think they can do," he said. "They don't tell us how this is going to work or anything. It's impossible now. But we will go home someday, no matter what. And if it has to be with the war again, then so be it."
The men nodded gravely at this. Many others hold the same view -- allow the people to return and live in peace, or face a newly equipped, trained and motivated Bosnian Army. "What these foreigners with their plans do, I do not care. Sooner or later I will go home, in war or peace, but I will go home," the third old man stated flatly, breaking his personal silence. He would not even go so far to give his first name, so deep is his distrust and his fear.
"The only thing these elections are going to accomplish at this time is to seal into power the very people responsible for this mess in the first place," he added. "It's really beyond me what they're thinking."
"They seem to have the attitude that any elections are better than none at all. One of their monitors working on this project even told me, "It's far from a perfect situation but we're going ahead anyway. We've held elections in worse places, under worse circumstances." I thought to myself, how are you going to work out who votes where."
"I mean, are refugees from Srebrenica going to vote in Tuzla? Are refugees from Serb Sarajevo going to vote in Zvornik? Their whole attitude struck me as "let's just get on with it, let's get it over." I'm really afraid that they're going to just pass a ruling that people are going to vote in whatever district they have happened to land in. It's really starting to look like that."
There were two faces on them, that of indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic and notorious paramilitary leader Zeljko "Arkan" Raznjatovic, resplendent in a braided Montenegrin jacket and clutching a .357 Magnum revolver in his waist belt. Both have been implicated in the violent removal of non-Serb ethnic groups from their territory.
Across the lines on the other side of "Bosnia", a mere sixty kilometers, Team Berserkistan encountered a group of young Serbian men just East of the Zone of Separation near Kalesija. They were equally committed to their ideology. We spoke to them in their outpost café, next door to the 1/4 Cavalry's OP "Alcatraz". After inviting us in for drinks, they openly told us that they were there to prevent Muslims, or "Turks," as they referred to them, from crossing into their territory by whatever means necessary.
"We don't allow them to cross," the young leader of the band stated, declining to reveal his name and standing next to an Arkan poster. "We can never live with Turks again. We have our place and they have theirs. If they come down here we 'send' them back. We have many Serbs here from Sarajevo, so you see the situation." He then stroked the Arkan poster, saying "This is our man."
When asked about the possibility of leaving for Serbia proper, "Fuck Milosovic and Serbia," they said. "If we wanted to go to Serbia we have to pay three thousand DMs or they will send us to Kosovo. Fuck everywhere, this is our Republik, and we're not leaving. No, we will fight and we will die here, that is all for us."
Three days after this discussion, this same band of young men attacked and beat a fifty-year-old man and his mother directly in front of the US operations post. Lt. Brian Dudley of A Troop, 1/4 Cav. personally intervened to prevent a tragedy while local Serbian police stood by.
A confidential IFOR source also reported the similar beatings happening to Serbs coming across from the Russian sector, north of Tuzla. Less dramatic, but freedom of movement violations just the same. "What the whole thing boils down to is the voting demographic." The source said, "If people return to certain areas it will effect the vote, and that's bad for those who stand to lose power. We're seeing it everywhere."
"I really think that's the only way we're going to get a handle on the people here who are causing the problems. Mind you they're on every side. You see what's happening here, you see what's happening in Sarajevo, and you see what's happening in Mostar. Until the people who are profiting from this turn of events are removed and locked away for a few years, nothing's going to change."
"I talked to some Swedish IFOR troops the other day. They have been here under the UN and were expecting things to improve under the Americans concerning this kind of intimidation. They're worried that they are being 'UNPROFORd.' They say that the Americans are too afraid of taking casualties to stand up to these people and enforce the provisions of this plan and they are backing down more and more. I agree. These people will keep on pushing and the Americans will keep backing down and we'll be right back where we were a year ago. If that happens, all this will have been a colossal waste of time." |
When you talk to the average Bosnian on the street, it becomes quickly apparent that few if any place real faith in the upcoming OSCE-sponsored elections.
"No one gives us any information on elections. We don't know anything about how this is going to work. They need to make something clean first in this country before, then we can think about elections,"
Berserkistan, June 8 · Izetbegovic: Poor Elections will Partition Bosnia
Berserkistan, June 8 · Sacirbey: U.S. Applying Undue Pressure On Bosnia Over Elections
Berserkistan, June 8 · EU Donates $89 Million to Bosnia while Pressing for Elections
Berserkistan, June 7 · Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Says Bosnian Elections Can Undo Dayton
Berserkistan, June 5 · Frowick Angers OSCE Staff with Spin on Elections
Berserkistan, June 4 · Major Powers: Elections Must Stay on Schedule
Berserkistan, June 3 · Voter Registration Begins in Bosnia
Berserkistan, June 2 · Bosnia’s Elections Remain on Track Despite Karadzic
Berserkistan, June 2 · Bosnia: Fair Elections, but Not at Any Price
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