January 20, 1996

Bosnia Foes Finish Pullback but Fail on P.O.W. Release

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  • Areas Set Out Under Peace Accord

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  • 1st Lieut. Ben Harris outlines the progress of military withdrawal (126K, 18 Secs.)
    By CHRIS HEDGES

    SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Bosnian Serb and Bosnian government forces Friday completed the pullback of most of their troops and heavy weapons from confrontation lines in compliance with one of the most significant deadlines set by the Dayton peace agreement, but failed to honor another commitment signed at Dayton to release all prisoners of war.

    "The parties have demonstrated compliance with the cessation of hostilities agreement, and they have refrained from offensive actions," Javier Solana, the secretary general for NATO in Brussels, said in a generally upbeat appraisal of the Bosnia mission so far.

    Little more than a month after the peace agreement was signed in Paris, the most daunting goals remained ahead: the restoration of homes to two million displaced people, the establishment of the rule of law, the rebuilding of a shattered country, and the strengthening of a peace that might outlast NATO's departure. The failure to release the prisoners was generally portrayed as a temporary setback, as each side used this human leverage to dramatize their mistrust of the others.

    Bosnian government officials, demanding information about the fate of thousands of Muslims missing in Serb-held Bosnia, refused to release all Serbian prisoners as called for by the agreement.

    The number of prisoners released at the Sarajevo airport Friday totaled 225, with roughly equal numbers exchanged by each side. The exchange still left some 700 prisoners of war in detention, about half on each side.

    The International Committee for the Red Cross, the organization named by the Dayton agreement to oversee the release, said the refusal to release the remaining 700 prisoners put both parties in violation of the Dayton agreement.

    "No one here is in the spirit of the peace agreement," Christophe Girod, an International Red Cross official, said on a darkened corner of the airport waiting for the exchange.

    But the NATO commanders, who inspected various sites along the 1,000-mile long cease-fire line, cooed with satisfaction Friday.

    They lauded the formal establishment of the two-mile separation zone, put in place over the last few weeks, as a milestone in the attempt to establish a permanent peace in Bosnia after nearly four years of fighting. And NATO commanders said it signaled the authority of the NATO-led force that began to deploy in Bosnia in December after the signing of the peace agreement in Paris.

    Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Walker, who commands NATO ground troops in Sarajevo, walked up a hill on the outskirts of the city to what was once one of the fiercest confrontation lines of the war, the Jewish cemetery.

    "What you see here is a microcosm of what is going on all across the confrontation line," the British general said, standing near Bosnian Serb and government trenches that snaked to within yards of each other. "We won't know if it's been a complete success for a while now. But by and large our forces throughout the country are having the same success we are having here."

    Bosnian government troops, who watched, bemused, as the general shook hands and moved about the hill with his entourage, nevertheless seemed to welcome the event.

    "We stopped because of Dayton," said Strik Sabahudin, 32, a soldier who helped man the trenches around the cemetery until a few days ago. "America, France, England and all the West signed it. I guess we can abide by it. Four years is enough war for anyone."

    The signs of peace, at least for now, were evident in many spots along the former front lines.

    The Serb-held town of Trnovo is a strategic hamlet 10 miles south of Sarajevo that changed hands three times and was one of the main objectives in the final Bosnian government offensive last fall.

    On a hill above the town Capt. Antoine De La Rochebrochard of France stood next to the smashed remains of the small Treskavica Hotel. Near the door lay a pile of old, black army boots. All the windows were gone, and the interior was wrecked by gaping holes, burst water pipes and shattered concrete. The town, whose gutted houses and debris-strewn streets were still, testified to the effectiveness of the military withdrawal, however.

    "The Serbs pulled out of here a week ago," the captain said. "It was all quite easy. The Serbian commanders seem to have been given the order to leave, and they left."

    On the front line between Sarajevo and Serb-held Vogosca, a handful of Italian troops with the NATO force spent the afternoon putting touch-up paint on their vehicles.

    The Bosnian troops, the Italians said, pulled out about two weeks ago. The area was covered with coils of barbed wire and barricades that troops of the NATO force, known as IFOR, said they would demolish.

    "You won't see anything for as far as the eye can see," Hilmo Suljevic, 27, a Bosnian government military policeman said at his post two miles away.

    "We cleared out all our men and armor weeks ago. Everyone was sick of life in the trenches, sick of the weapons. We were glad to move them."

    Suljevic, wearing an American camouflage uniform, lifted his AK-47 from where it was leaning against his guard post.

    "If I want to patrol past this checkpoint and go up the road, I can't even take this with me," he said. "All I can carry is my pistol. IFOR controls this."

    In a mountainous area northeast of Sarajevo, the zone of separation also seemed largely clear.

    Dozens of Serbian bunkers and other positions stood empty, strewn with spent machine-gun shells, artillery rounds and flattened blasting caps as well as eggshells and stale loaves of bread.

    A 50-caliber machine-gun stand that on Wednesday was still active near the front-line hamlet of Pelemisi was abandoned Friday, as Apache helicopters passed through the valleys between the Muslim-held town of Kladanj and the Serbian town of Sekovici.

    "Anything, sergeant?" Lt. Joseph DiPento, 29, of Durant, Okla., yelled on a knoll to Sgt. Manuel Ortiz, 37, originally from the Philippines, who was leading a squad of soldiers through trenches and bunkers. "Good, the natives have cleared."

    In hours of patrols on foot and in vehicles, scouts from Company C, 4th Battalion, 12th Regiment, discovered one group of 20 Serbian soldiers in the zone of separation. The Serbs were warned to clear out of the zone by Saturday, and the Americans asked them to remove the clips from their AK-47s. The Serbs said they planned to leave by 8 p.m. Friday.

    But even as the separation zone was demilitarized, there were a few isolated incidents that indicated that military activity on the Serbian side of the line was ongoing.

    The U.S. soldiers stopped a truckload of 10 armed Serbian soldiers moving in the direction of the zone. And a cluster of five artillery pieces, on a ridge just outside the zone, were still pointed toward the Muslim lines, despite repeated American warnings.

    About 50 heavy weapons were left abandoned in the separation zone around Sarajevo, and it was not clear whose they were, said Lt. Col. Mark Rayner, a spokesman for the NATO-led force. Only policemen will be permitted to carry side arms in public, and all automatic weapons are prohibited from the zone.

    Along some parts of the line there was some confusion about what demilitarization entailed. On Mount Vis, in the U.S. sector, Capt. Robert Ivy told the local Serbian commanders that men could stay in the village, but could carry weapons only for personal use.

    But at a U.S. base some 20 miles to the north on the Posavina corridor, the Americans said the Serbs had to turn over all weapons if they stayed in the zone of separation.

    While the military withdrawal seemed to go without many glitches, the deep enmity that fueled the war remained.

    Western diplomats said they did not expect a speedy conclusion to the impasse over the release of prisoners. And Serbs and Muslims living along the new separation line raised problems that they said could undermine the peace agreement.

    Trnovo, for instance, will see its northern edge turned over to the Muslim and Croatian federation as part of an agreement to provide a corridor between Sarajevo and the Muslim-held enclave of Gorazde. And in that swath of land lies the town's fuel depot and water pumping station.

    Savo Popovic, the town's burly mayor, a flowing black beard extending down to the middle of his chest, walked through the streets in his green uniform.

    He said that 12 percent of the 2,100 Serbs from Trnovo had died in the war and that many doubted that peace would last once the IFOR forces withdrew in 12 months.

    "Once they build this corridor, most of the town will be surrounded by the Muslims," he said. "We can all travel freely now because IFOR is here. We know we can get our water and fuel. But what happens when IFOR leaves? Who will stay to make the Muslims respect this agreement? And if they don't respect it, then you will see another war."

    Other Places of Interest
  • BosniaLINK The Pentagon's Bosnia Site