March 17, 1996
Night Brings Terror and Arson to Sarajevo Suburb
By KIT R. ROANE
ARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- They are out in the night, boozy young men with temper and purpose. They threaten with guns, knives and gasoline, beating old men in their homes and setting apartment buildings on fire.
"When the sun goes down in Grbavica, it's like being in a bad alley in the Bronx," said Joseph Byrnes, a United Nations doctor who patrols what in four days will be the final Serbian enclave in the Sarajevo area to come under Muslim and Croat rule.
"These guys see anyone who wants to stay here after the transfer as a traitor to the Serb cause," he said. "And it's the old people, the ones who have nothing to do with this war, who are paying the price. They take the brunt because they have no place to go."
A few thousand people are all that's left in this bastion of Serbian nationalism, where rusted tanks sit among the hills, their turrets still pointed at the Bosnian capital below.
Most have already fled, like their counterparts in Vogosca, Ilijas, Hadjici and Ilidza, the other towns transferred to the federation under the Dayton peace accord.
The elderly and the frail sat tight in their apartments, afraid to even venture across the street, while men in camouflage uniforms and long beards mill about outside waiting for cans of gasoline or stealing what they can.
Others had knapsacks bulging with guns and makeshift weapons, including clubs fashioned from umbrella handles. Some of these discharged soldiers loitered in front of a "safe house" established by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees -- a place only one or two people a night dare to enter -- eyeing all those who come. Others move stealthily through the sniper shields and tightly packed apartment complexes, setting fires and threatening old people.
"It's getting worse," said one of the 95 international police monitors patrolling the city, as he stood outside a burning building Friday. "This is the second one already today. At first, it's this apartment, then it's that apartment. It's just unbelievable and we can't understand it. Bosnia is just a different world."
By dusk, the radio frequencies used by the monitors and IFOR, the NATO force, were abuzz with confusion as Vogosca comes alive with licking flames. As the cycle of fire and intimidation restarted, monitors and French troops rush off to combat damage already done.
"Do you have any knowledge of a high school burning?" the radio crackled. "Over . . . No, have other building. Two families inside. Over."
At 5:45, three fires burned simultaneously in different parts of the city. The Snoopy Cafe, which was gutted several days ago, has been lit again, an often-seen Serbian nationalist in a Waylon Jennings-style cowboy hat and beard smiling from across the street. Nearby, another apartment burns for a second time in a day. And on the hill in back of town, a sixth-floor fire threatens to engulf everything below.
"They came yesterday and pistol-whipped my husband," cried one woman, as her husband and three children were dragged from the smoke-filled building by French soldiers. "They said we have to leave. Now they have burned down our apartment and we have nowhere to go. We asked the Serb police to come but they said it wasn't any of their business."
Other monitors scurried to the center of town, where Byrnes is calling urgently for more help at the "safe house." The night before, it had been closed after residents overheard thugs talking about firebombing it. On Friday, some men pulled a truck up to the entrance and looted one of the apartments above.
Nearby, a middle-aged Serbian woman sat scribbling English phrases on scraps and smoking the few remaining cigarettes in her apartment. Smoking kept her calm. The phrases were there to rattle off when NATO staff members respond to the attack she fears will come.
"I am afraid . . . I have a husband and two kids," she wrote. "Please take care of us . . . We want to stay here."
On Thursday she had pleaded with a visitor. "Will you come every day? I don't speak good English but I know to say that I am afraid. I fear the Serbs who are leaving and the federation that is coming. Will you protect me?"
There are many in the same situation, said Byrnes, as he went through the day's events over a stiff drink before returning to Sarajevo.
"I just saw a man who was too far gone physically for help in these conditions. He'll be body-bagged and hauled in the next couple of weeks. And I visited two old women with minor ailments who were basically just scared to death, get out little to none, and wanted to talk," said the doctor.
"Then, we've got this Duke of Grbavica character who appears at every fire and just walks away right under IFOR's nose. And there are three Serb policemen sitting outside our office as the building is being looted."
"If this was happening in America, we'd be under martial law by now," he said. "It's got to stop."
The violence intensified Saturday, when four fires brewed simultaneously by noon. Gunshots could be heard near the old front line, as flames ignited ammunition. Monitors and French soldiers stood about helplessly, unable to even get a fire truck from Sarajevo to cross the divide and put the blazes out.
Little but the old residents stand in the way of the devastation. Over the last several days, as their apartment buildings have been set afire and young Serbs have harassed them, stalwarts have banded together to try to curb the violence and save their neighbors' homes.
Old men have been seen trudging up stairs to deliver buckets of water to burning apartments that are not their own, while the elderly who are capable of walking often brave the streets to deliver supplies to those so infirm that they cannot move.
"I am staying," said one disabled man as he climbed six flights to toss water on a fire and complain about "bad neighbors."
He said: "We are good people. We are all staying. They can't make us leave."
