Strange folks, the Bosnian Serbs. First, they perfect “ethnic cleansing.” then they complain they’re the world’s most misunderstood victims. They take nearly 400 peacekeepers hostage, then decry. the United Nations’ favoritism toward their enemies, Perhaps they take their cue from Karadzic–psychiatrist, gambler and failed poet–who explains the war in terms of pop psychiatry. Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital and a site of the 1984 Winter Olympics, could almost pass for a down-and-out village in Switzerland. Sheep and schoolchildren frolic in the hills, only 10 miles from where the Serbs still pound Sarajevo. “It’s ‘Twin Peaks’,” says a Belgrade journalist, “a little town cut off from the rest of the world, filled with paranoid murderers.”
In fact, Pale is filled with lots of normal people, scarred by war. There’s Milian Gavrilovic, 25, one of at least 15,000 Serb refugees from Sarajevo. Dressed in a fashionable skirt and smart jacket, she’d appear more at home in Paris than in Pale. where she sells plastic flyswatters and broom heads in the local market. “We’re here because we have to be,” says Gavrilovic, who has twin brothers fighting at the front near Sarajevo. “I miss the life I had.” which includes knocking around the capital with her best friend, Jasmina, a Muslim. But then there’s Sasha Radoslav, 12, who dreams of becoming a Serb fighter to “slit the [Muslims’] throats.” Or Ostoja Uljar, a 64-year-old retired plumber, who says, “I would rather commit suicide than live with them again.”
Many Bosnian Serbs have a right to be furious. The war has displaced 250,000 to 300,000 of them. as the Muslims have become better fighters–and pretty competent practitioners of ethnic cleansing themselves. But Serb suffering, measured in numbers alone pales next to the punishment they’ve inflicted on Bosnian civilians in the Muslim enclaves, who “are bombed regularly and sniped at,” says Pascal Vignier, coordinator of Doctors Without Borders in Pale. “That’s not the ease here.” Supplies of tinned meat and insulin have dipped, at times, to critical levels. But there’s been no shortage of slivovitx or nationalistic spirit–intertwined with martyrdom. Unappreciated by history, the Bosnian Serbs see themselves as the unsung saviors of Western civilization: from the Turks in 1389, from the Germans in World War II and now from “Islam” within their borders. “The Serbs were never a conquering people.” says a senior officer in the Bosnian Serb army. “We just want to live in our homeland. We cannot give away what belongs to us.”
That still includes the dream of Greater Serbia – uniting ethnic Serbs from the Adriatic to the Danube. The “government” in Pale intends to hold on to at least 53 percent of Bosnia and eventually to unite with Yugoslavia. Incredibly enough, it has a 10-year program to rebuild the economy via auto manufacturing, forestry and food processing, thanks to anticipated investment from Germany and Italy. “We’re talking about a complete revolution.” says Slavisa Rakovic, chief adviser to Pale’s prime minister. “There is a future. I’ve seen the plan.” Bosnian Serb leaders have their work it out. They may have wished Scott O’Grady well – but they still have to end the war they started.
