Terror Still Stalks Grbavica
They are out in the night, boozy young men with temper and purpose. They threaten with guns, knives and gasoline, beating old men in their homes and setting apartment buildings on fire.
“When the sun goes down in Grbavica, it’s like being in a bad alley in the Bronx,” said Joseph Byrnes, a United Nations doctor who patrols what in four days will be the final Serbian enclave in the Sarajevo area to come under Muslim and Croat rule.
“These guys see anyone who wants to stay here after the transfer as a traitor to the Serb cause,” he said. “And it’s the old people, the ones who have nothing to do with this war, who are paying the price. They take the brunt because they have no place to go.”
A few thousand people are all that’s left in this bastion of Serbian nationalism, where rusted tanks sit among the hills, their turrets still pointed at the Bosnian capital below.
Most have already fled, like their counterparts in Vogosca, Ilijas, Hadjici and Ilidza, the other towns transferred to the federation under the Dayton peace accord.
The elderly and the frail sat tight in their apartments, afraid to even venture across the street, while men in camouflage uniforms and long beards mill about outside waiting for cans of gasoline or stealing what they can.
Others had knapsacks bulging with guns and makeshift weapons, including clubs fashioned from umbrella handles. Some of these discharged soldiers loitered in front of a “safe house” established by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees - a place only one or two people a night dare to enter - eyeing all those who come. Others move stealthily through the sniper shields and tightly packed apartment complexes, setting fires and threatening old people.
“It’s getting worse,” said one of the 95 international police monitors patrolling the city, as he stood outside a burning building Friday. “This is the second one already today. At first, it’s this apartment, then it’s that apartment. It’s just unbelievable and we can’t understand it. Bosnia is just a different world.”
By dusk, the radio frequencies used by the monitors and IFOR, the NATO force, were abuzz with confusion as Vogosca comes alive with licking flames.
The violence intensified Saturday, when four fires brewed simultaneously by noon. Gunshots could be heard near the old front line, as flames ignited ammunition. Monitors and French soldiers stood about helplessly, unable to even get a fire truck from Sarajevo to cross the divide and put the blazes out.