April 22, 1996
Violence Flares as Bosnians Try to Regain Prewar Homes
By MIKE O'CONNOR
OBOJ, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- NATO troops in the sector of Bosnia under the control of U.S. peacekeepers fired warning shots Sunday to stop Bosnian Serbs from attacking Muslims trying to visit homes from which they were expelled during the war.
NATO military officers and refugee workers said that the confrontation is likely to be one of many as Bosnian refugees -- Serbs, Muslims and Croats alike -- try to return home.
An estimated 2.4 million Bosnians were forced from their homes by the war. The peace agreement reached last year in Dayton, Ohio, guarantees their right to return home. But facing opposition from officials and from some of those now living in the areas the refugees were forced to leave, virtually none have returned.
In this north central town, the NATO troops used armored personnel carriers and six tanks Sunday in a vain effort to block as many as 1,000 Serbs who were moving on foot to prevent hundreds of Muslims from crossing a bridge into the town. The damaged bridge provides access only by foot.
The town, now populated almost entirely by Serbs, is in Bosnian Serb territory under the peace agreement.
The Serbs forced their way past NATO troops, who fired the warning shots hoping to keep them back, NATO officers said. Then the Serbs began throwing rocks at the NATO forces, the U.N. police and the Muslims. Under the Dayton agreement, a group of U.N. police monitor local police activities.
After more warning shots were fired, some of the Serbs began to disperse, the officers said. But it was not until two U.S. helicopters began to hover close to the ground over the crowd, causing a blast of air with the rotor blades, that the Serbs retreated, as did the Muslims.
One of the helicopters was carrying Brig. Gen. Stanley Cherrie, an American who is an assistant commander of the American-led NATO division responsible for the northeast area of Bosnia.
"It was an extremely touchy couple of hours," said Major Terje Myklevoll, a peacekeeper from Norway. Faced with hundreds of aggressive but apparently unarmed civilians, the major said, the NATO troops were in a very difficult position.
The violence here seems to be only a small outburst of the much larger problem of refugees returning to areas where others have taken up residence. Neither the major foreign peacekeeping authorities nor Bosnian officials have been able to come up with a plan to solve the problem.
NATO officers and U.N. refugee officials describe the issue as explosive. They say wider violence seems certain as more groups of people attempt to go home.
In the last two days, there have been two other outbreaks of violence when refugees tried to visit their homes. On Friday, Czech soldiers fired warning shots to keep back a crowd of Serbs moving on Muslims who were trying to reach the town of Bosanski Novi, NATO officers said.
Sunday, U.N. police officers said, two busloads of Croats were attacked by Serbs throwing rocks near Modrica. No injuries were reported in either incident.
Three busloads of Bosnian Serbs were able to visit their town, Drvar, in western Bosnia. A NATO spokesman said U.N. police and refugee officials, as well as British peacekeepers, were able to persuade Bosnian Croat authorities in the town to allow the Serbs to enter without being harassed.
Though the Dayton agreement places responsibility for the free movement of civilians and the return of refugees on the shoulders of government officials, the officials often are responsible for the obstacles, U.N. refugee workers say.
"Nobody wants freedom of movement -- nobody wants the other side's refugees to come home," said an official of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Most of the homes to which refugees want to return are now occupied by refugees of another ethnic group. They feel they will be displaced if the refugees return and -- because they are not being allowed to return to their homes either -- that they will have no place to live.
Refugee workers say that NATO must do more to escort civilians who want to visit their homes or even return to live.
However NATO officers say that this is one more area in which they find themselves being forced to monitor civilian aspects of the Dayton agreement, which are not their responsibility and for which they are not prepared.
Military officers in the American sector, which includes peacekeepers from several countries, say they are spending much more time than they expected trying to negotiate with local officials to allow refugees to return, often finding that government authorities refuse to cooperate.
Here in Doboj, Myklevoll said, officers urged officials of the Muslim-led government and Bosnian Serb officials in the area meet to discuss how the Muslims could visit the town peacefully.
The Serbs said they were willing to meet. Local Muslim authorities were willing to cooperate at first, but were ordered not to do so by their superiors, he said.
"We've just been waiting for a incident to happen, so we were trying to prevent it," he said.
When it became clear that the Muslim refugees were going to come without an arrangement with Serb officials, the local Bosnian Serb radio station broadcast an appeal for Serbs to go to the edge of town and to prevent the Muslims from entering, he said.
Sunday night, the official Bosnian Serb news agency said that the assault by Bosnian Serb civilians had been led by Doboj's mayor. The mayor and others, it said, "heroically" defended the town from Muslims who intended to occupy the town and to force Bosnian Serb refugees into the streets.
