Serbs’ Exodus From Sarajevo: Another ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  The scene Wednesday on a snowy road leading out of this Sarajevo suburb presented a timeless snapshot of the Balkan war, a fleeting moment of suffering, helplessness and fear that has been played out countless times in this country.

A dented, decades-old station wagon sat limp on the roadside, packed with old flour sacks containing the earthly possessions of the Molevic family.

Nebojas Molevic and his father-in-law frantically fiddled beneath the hood, wet snowflakes clinging to their eyebrows. In another rickety car, Molevic’s wife stared blankly from behind a foggy window, their infant son balanced on her knees.

“I am leaving two farms behind,” said the older man, his ruddy face too hardened to show his fear but his heart too broken to hide his pain. “We must not wait. Nobody is coming to help us.”

The Molevic family is among the thousands of Bosnian Serbs--most poor and desperate--fleeing the Serb-populated suburbs of the Bosnian capital in a voluntary “ethnic cleansing” in advance of the towns’ gradual reversion to the control of the Muslim-led Bosnian government this week.

The evacuation is especially troubling because it comes during peacetime and despite an effort by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other international organizations to prevent it.

“We all expected this would be hard,” said Michael Steiner, deputy to the U.N. high representative for Bosnia, who oversees civilian provisions of the Dayton, Ohio, peace accord. “If they choose not to live under Muslim rule, what can we do? We cannot force them to stay.”

The exodus, the dimensions of which are still unclear, has been spurred by a propaganda barrage by Bosnian Serb authorities, apparently bent on dashing long-standing international hopes of preserving Sarajevo as a symbol of multiethnicity in a country largely segregated by war.

In the war of words for the minds of 50,000 Bosnian Serbs still living on the outskirts of the city, Bosnian Serb authorities appear to be scoring a major victory.

“What the [Bosnian Serb] radio and TV are doing is portraying the international community as the enemy of the Serbs of Sarajevo,” said Kris Janowski of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “And the people seem to be listening.”

The Bosnian Serb media, controlled by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, an accused war criminal indicted on charges of genocide, have broadcast repeated warnings that it is dangerous for Serbs to remain in the Sarajevo suburbs.

Reports have told of Muslim extremists who might try to exact revenge against those who stay, and they have advised against expectations of help from the international community, which, they say, has a long history of anti-Serb bias.

Karadzic, talking to reporters Wednesday in Pale, the Bosnian Serb headquarters outside Sarajevo, denied that leaders have encouraged people to leave. As he spoke, scores of trucks--some from as far away as Serbia--passed through town en route to the Sarajevo suburbs, where they have been sent to assist with the evacuation.

“Our wish was to have Serbs stay in Sarajevo, and we have done everything to persuade them to stay,” he said. “However, they do not feel safe and secure. . . . The international community did not give them enough guarantees.”

NATO, the International Police Task Force and the U.N. high representative have tried to counter the media message, but their efforts have been too slow, disorganized and unconvincing.

In a tacit acknowledgment of the failure, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher entered the verbal campaign Wednesday.

“I hope that many of the Serbs will remain in Sarajevo, especially those who had long-standing residences in Sarajevo,” Christopher told reporters in Washington. He urged residents not to “succumb to suggestions or pressure that they leave.”

Providing a sense of security--a degree of safety so that people of all ethnic groups feel comfortable in their homes as well as traveling across ethnic lines--was a top priority of the U.S.-brokered peace agreement.

But as the people of Vogosca and other nearby suburbs are demonstrating with their feet, the effort is failing an important test.

Hundreds of U.N. police, whose presence was supposed to bolster confidence in the incoming Muslim-dominated police force, have not yet arrived because donor countries have not delivered officers. The United States has sent one of 200 pledged officers because funding has not been authorized by Congress.

NATO has the manpower and the firepower, but its officials have done little beyond distributing leaflets to dissuade Bosnian Serbs from leaving the Sarajevo area.

A NATO spokesman said the exodus, while opposed and regretted by the alliance, is a police, not a military, matter.