June 1, 1996
Along an Ethnic Fault Line, Bosnians Fear Hard-Liners
By MIKE O'CONNOR
RKOTIC, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- A fearful young Muslim couple arrived here this week, fleeing their home to escape what the United Nations is calling the worst "ethnic cleansing" since the Bosnian war ended.
They also left behind a town full of Bosnian Serbs who feel nearly as frightened as they do, many of whom say they are sad to see the harsh face of Serbian xenophobia finally confront their Muslim friends and neighbors.
For Sabahudin and Murisa Huskic, who survived three years of repression in a town under the thumb of Serbian hard-liners, finally joining the sad ranks of Bosnia's dispossessed is a personal tragedy.
At least 100 Muslims have fled the Teslic area in the last few days, terrified by a wave of violence that included beatings and hand grenades being thrown at Muslim homes, according to the United Nations.
The inability of international troops, monitors and relief agencies, or even sympathetic Bosnian Serb neighbors, to protect these people exposes the fundamental weakness of the peace plan here, with its vision of an ethnically mixed, reunited Bosnia.
For months Teslic has been routinely patrolled by fiercely armed NATO troops in menacing convoys, and its local police officers are watched by United Nations monitors, but the power to terrify and control seems to remain in the hands of the same small group as before.
The expulsion attempts are continuing, and refugee officials say they fear there is no way to stop them.
Most of those who have fled are taking shelter in the war-damaged and overcrowded homes of other Muslims in villages like Mrkotic a few miles away, just inside Bosnian government territory.
"It is only a few of the police and a few nationalist thugs who are doing it all," said Huskic, 22. "Most of the other Serbs want peace to work, and they want the Muslims to stay."
But, a few thugs, backed by a few people in power, have been enough to suppress the will of the moderate Bosnian Serbs of Teslic, according to expelled Muslims and many Serbs in Teslic itself.
Huskic and others who fled recently said that the 1,700 or so Muslims who managed to hang on in the area during the war rejoiced with local Serbs when the Dayton agreement to end the war was signed last year.
"We thought, this is the big chance we all want," he said. "The army will go away and the people will have a say, finally." Then, said his wife, Murisa, their hopes slowly slipped away.
"We saw that the men who used to control still had the power," she said. "We saw that our relatives in Bosnian territory could not visit us, that the Muslims who had been expelled during the war could not return, no matter what Dayton promised."
And, according to a number of Serbs interviewed in Teslic, seeking reconciliation with the rest of Bosnia is not to be tolerated by Bosnian Serb officials in control.
Most of the Serbs said they were afraid to give their names, but there was one man who dug into the long narrow shoulder bag still favored by former socialist bureaucrats in Bosnia, pulled out his business card and slapped it loudly on a table.
"This is who I am, and you can tell anyone. We have to stop being afraid."
The card read: Rade Pavlovic, Gen. Manager, Hemijska Industrial.
Pavlovic runs the biggest factory in town, a state-owned wood products plant. He was twice mayor of Teslic before the war.
"It is time, once and for all, to make things clear," he proclaimed. "We cannot suffer anymore under these nationalists. The people have had enough, but they are afraid, they are very afraid."
He said there are some Serbian refugees who have moved into homes abandoned by Muslims and who are not eager for there to be good relations between Serbs and Muslims. But, he said, almost everyone else in Teslic wants the life of tolerance and cooperation they had before the war to return.
He described Teslic and the surrounding area as a police state in the hands of a few hard-liners supported by the highest Bosnian Serb authorities.
"They have the police, the press, the courts," he said. "They have all the power, the rest of us have only the rights they allow."
Pavlovic, with the authority conferred on him as the biggest employer in the area, said he had been successful at protecting the approximately 120 Muslims of the 600 workers at his plant and protecting himself as well.
"My workers tell me, and I tell the nationalists, that the Muslims will stay," he said. "It is one small victory."
He said he had failed in his appeals to NATO forces based nearby and to the United Nations police monitors for help in breaking the control of the hard-liners.
The problem, which the Huskic couple and Mr. Pavlovic say they are only now beginning to recognize, is that neither NATO nor the United Nations, nor any of the other international governmental organizations spread across Bosnia has the responsibility to change an oppressive political system -- or even to protect an individual being forced out.
At times, the agencies seem not even to recognize the oppression.
Huskic said that when he reported to U.N. police monitors that a hand grenade had been thrown at his front door, he asked that his name be kept confidential. Instead, he said, the monitors brought the local police chief to his house and told him to make the report in person.
"I told them I had nothing to report or complain about." he said. "What else could I say? It was probably a police officer who threw the hand grenade."
Officers at the Polish base, who work under the command of the American general responsible for northeast Bosnia, praised the police chief as "a good man who is very open to the people."
Lt. Ryszard Kowalski, who is the liaison to the civilian authorities in Teslic, said he was confident the police were doing everything they could to stop the attacks against Muslims.
