Muslims venture warily back to Srebrenica

By Daria Sito-Sucic

SREBRENICA, Bosnia (Reuters): Five years after Bosnian Serb forces massacred thousands of Muslim men in Srebrenica, hardly any Bosnian Muslim refugees have dared go back home there.

As in other parts of Bosnia, the return process to this remote, eastern town remains slow with many people still too afraid to venture back to the homes they were expelled from during the brutal ethnic cleansing that characterized the 1992- 1995 conflict.

But officials and analysts now say they see some encouraging signs, and urge the international community not to endanger progress by cutting financial aid to the Balkan country.

"If we can make progress in Srebrenica, we can make progress anywhere," said Graham Saunders, projects director of the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a U.S. aid agency.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a think-tank, said Bosnia's refugee logjam had been broken with a growing number of people going home, albeit from low levels.

It said more than 12,500 Bosnian Muslim, Croat and Serb refugees returned between January and April to areas where they would be part of an ethnic minority -- four times more than in the same 1999 period.

"This provides an opportunity to reverse wartime ethnic cleansing and make substantial progress toward achieving a core goal of the international community and the Dayton peace agreement," the think-tank said in a report.

The U.S.-brokered 1995 Dayton accord, which ended the war by dividing Bosnia into a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation, included the unconditional right for all refugees to go back to the houses they lived in before the bloodshed.

But realities on the ground, with continuing ethnic tensions, have made it difficult to implement that right in practice.

In what is widely seen as one of the main shortcomings of the five-year old peace process, more than one million people still live internally displaced or as refugees abroad, unwilling or unable to go back.

In what could be a sign that the situation is changing slowly for the better, Bosnian Muslim refugees in early June resettled in the vicinity of Srebrenica for the first time since Bosnian Serb forces overran the town in the summer of 1995.

Eighty families returned to their devastated homes in the village of Suceska 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) west of Srebrenica, which was a Muslim-majority community before the war but is now populated almost entirely by Serbs, many themselves refugees.

"Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) are those who now feel there is some hope, that there is some possibility to go back home," said Saunders of the CRS.

His agency is the first and so far the only Western Non- Governmental Organization working in Srebrenica. Other agencies have made assessments of needs but soon gave up, citing security and political obstacles.

Only two Muslim families have returned to the town itself, including an 86-year-old man and his 80-year-old wife who said they came back to die.

Sacir Halilovic, the husband, said he came without anyone's help. Waiting for his house to be rebuilt, he stays in a makeshift cabin with his wife.

"One has to take a risk if one wishes to return," Halilovic said. "There is nothing better than one's own home."

The establishment last year of a multi-ethnic municipal council, with both Serb and Muslim members, could also help boost returns to Srebrenica.

"It seems to me that the climate has changed for the better," said Bosnian Muslim councillor Abdurahman Malkic.

Malkic and 14 other Muslim municipal officials stay in Srebrenica during the week, going to predominantly Muslim areas to be with their families during weekends.

He said continuing security concerns prevented Muslims from returning to live in the town, which was captured by Bosnian Serb forces in the final months of the war despite having been declared a UN "safe area" in 1993. Up to 8,000 Muslim men are believed to have been killed following the town's capture.

Muslim refugees had returned to Suceska on their own, ignoring security warnings, Malkic said.

But in a sign that more Muslims may soon follow their example, the CRS is rebuilding houses of 15 Muslim families wishing to return to Srebrenica as well as the damaged houses of 10 Serb families now living in Muslim homes there.

"It is step by step, we want everybody to be comfortable about it. The chain of return is starting to work. As one person moves and vacates the property someone else can come back," Saunders said.

But he and others voiced concern that a reduction in international aid to Bosnia would hamper the return process as refugees need help in rebuilding their damaged homes.

"Five years after Dayton we have just begun to make these inroads, and at the same time the donor community is sort of dropping resources significantly here," said Greg Auberry, head of the CRS mission in Bosnia.

The ICG voiced similar concerns in its report, warning that the international community and Bosnian authorities would make a grave mistake by failing to take advantage of the opportunity offered by spontaneous refugee returns.

"Just when refugee returns are beginning to increase, major donors, such as the European Union, lag far behind -- in some cases years -- in the expenditure of pledged aid," the ICG said.

"Now, when the long-awaited refugee returns are finally taking place, donors are willing to support only a small fraction of these returns," it said.