The return of refugees is central to hopes of rebuilding Bosnia, which was torn apart in the war (1992-1995). Since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, 310,000 refugees and another 250,000 displaced people have returned home. But only a fraction have gone back to areas where they formed part of an ethnic minority before the war; 400,000 Bosnian refugees and 800,000 displaced are still blocked from returning.
Many critics of Dayton feel that the partition of Bosnia is an accepted fact, and that Bosnia can never return to the multiethnic society it was before the war. The international community, they say, should accept this and move on, instead of pushing vainly for returns that can never happen.
Lippman concedes that the obstacles are great -- particularly in the form of opposition from nationalist politicians. He also accepts that in many respects the Dayton agreement made repatriation more difficult by legitimizing the division of Bosnia into two "entities," at least one of which -- the Serb Republic -- is monoethnic.
But, he says, "as long as Bosnia's Muslims, Croats, and Serbs are geographically separated, politics will be based on ethnic representation and ethnic fear, rather than on democratic principles. Displaced people are living in collective centers and relatives' homes, as well as in the apartments and houses abandoned by others under duress. These people are disenfranchised,
unemployed, and miserable. Many of them want to return home, regardless of what they have experienced in the war. They want to live at home, support themselves, and not spend the next couple of generations as a new Bosnian underclass."
Lippman's own interest is in the way that Bosnians deal with the tribulations of living in exile, and their efforts to return home. Combining analysis with personal profiles, he helps to bring their struggle alive.
Overshadowing everything are the memories of a vicious war, in which neighbor killed neighbor. In one early dispatch, Lippman accompanies Emsuda, a Muslim refugee and director of Srcem do Mira (Through Heart to Peace), a women's grassroots refugee return initiative in Bosnia, back to her home in the town of Kozarac -- now part of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Along the way, she recalled
how she had escaped in 1992:
"We passed Prijedor and headed towards Kozarac. The notorious concentration camp Keraterm, previously a ceramics factory, was on our left. The even more notorious camp, Omarska, was off the road but not far away. We passed a gypsy town. Half of its inhabitants
had been killed. Emsuda pointed out two houses on the main road (not in the gypsy town). She said, "They killed people in that house." Further on was the intersection leading to Trnopolje. Emsuda said, 'A policeman was going to shoot me here, but another Serb soldier who knew me saved me.'"
In spite of their appalling experience, people like Emsuda never lose hope. "To say that Emsuda has a deep-seated optimism would be an understatement. She seems to recognize no obstacles in achieving her goals. The freedom of movement proclaimed by the Dayton agreement is often only an illusion, as people who try to exercise
that right are met by violence. But Emsuda brushes off any suggestion of resistance, calling upon her right to live in her own home as paramount. In addition, she works tirelessly for reconciliation between ethnicities," writes Lippman.
A native of Seattle, Washington (USA), Lippman is uniquely qualified for this challenging writing assignment. He studied in Novi Sad (Yugoslavia) in 1981, and has visited the region regularly in the years since, including serving as an OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) elections monitor in Bosnia on
three occasions.
This series begins with an account of how his interest in the Balkans began -- which includes first-hand experience of Kosovo. Last year, as tensions were beginning to boil in the Serbian province, Lippman traveled with six other Americans to Pristina, the Kosovo capital, to work alongside Albanian community activists. The group included Advocacy Project member Teresa Crawford.
Lippman, Crawford, and their colleagues found the experience both exhilarating and frightening. Before they were arrested and expelled from Kosovo, they made firm friends, and were deeply impressed by the courage and commitment of the Albanian non-violent movement. At the same time, they felt that the experiment was living on borrowed time. "After 1989, to be an Albanian in the
cities of Kosovo was to be insecure," writes Lippman.
Setting the scene for his series, Lippman writes that the current war in Kosovo has greatly added to the obstacles facing refugee returns in Bosnia. In the first place, he writes, thousands of Albanians and Serbs have left Kosovo for Bosnia, swelling the number of refugees. Second, NATO air strikes have infuriated the Bosnian Serbs and made them even less willing to cooperate in rebuilding Bosnia along the Dayton model. This comes after the international community has ruled against exclusive Serb control of the strategic town of Brcko, and dismissed the nationalist president of the Serb Republic.
In the last four months, Lippman has traveled extensively in the Serb areas of Bosnia -- which he features in his dispatches.
This series will consist of between two and three reports a week for a period of five to six weeks. Lippman starts in northwest Bosnia, where ethnic cleansing began in the spring of 1992 and where Bosnian Serbs erected several notorious concentration camps. Perhaps surprisingly, an increasing number of refugees are swallowing their doubts, and returning home. Lippman returns with them, and witnesses first-hand their tentative efforts at
reconciliation.
This series will also include a special issue written from the town of Kozarac in Northwest Bosnia. The occasion will be the sixth annual meeting (May 22-29, 1999) of the Bosnian womens' initiative Srcem Do Mira (Through Heart to Peace), which will bring together
community activists and refugee leaders from throughout Bosnia.
On the Record is produced by The Advocacy Project, an association of professionals that has been set up to work with advocates and campaigners on information. Four series were produced in 1998, covering the establishment of an international criminal court, refugees and displaced persons, human rights defenders, and the
campaign against landmines; and a fifth one in early 1999, which was a special report on violence against women in Southeast Asia. These can all be found on the Project's website: The Project will also shortly be issuing a new series on the efforts of civil society in Central America to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Mitch.
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