Peace Pits Hope Vs. Memory

Every evening, after walking his beat in this suburb newly transferred from rebel Serbian control, Radovan Zidovic, a police officer for the Bosnian-Croat Federation, drives to a hospital in Sarajevo.

He weeps at the bedsides of his daughter and father, who were gravely injured by a Bosnian Serb grenade, and wonders why he spends his days cheerfully greeting his former enemies, offering them his hand and the reassurance that they should stay in their homes.

“That is what I do, but sometimes I think that I really want them to leave because of what they have done to my family, what they have done to my country,” said Zidovic, scratching at his mustache and pointing to some of the few apartments still occupied by Serbian residents.

“I feel for the old people who are left here and have nothing,” he said. “And I know they are innocent of the crimes that have been perpetrated over the last four years. But my heart still bleeds for my own,”

He added: “It is especially hard for me. I am a Serb. I am here to be a symbol that the Federation wants them to stay.”

Convincing the thousand or so elderly Serbs stuck in Vogosca that they will not be killed in their sleep or harassed during the day has become one of the main tasks for the Federation police officers now making their rounds here. It is a difficult job, because many of the officers find it hard to offer condolences.

Many of them have watched loved ones killed during their country’s 43-month war. Nearly all have lost friends or seen the deadly aftermath of a hit by a Serbian shell. And as they walk amid their former enemies, it is sometimes a challenge to hold back from swinging a billy club out of anger or uttering words of retribution.

So far, the Federation officers patrolling Vogosca have offered forgiveness and taught the necessity of inclusion. And they have done their job with a professionalism that has surprised not only the foreign journalists, but also the few Serbs who found themselves trapped in the town.