Sections

Serbs flee as Muslims look to take control

Thousands of Serbs leave suburbs in voluntary "ethnic cleansing"

Los Angeles Times

VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The scene yesterday 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 the front seat of 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 NATO 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 longstanding international hopes of preserving Sarajevo as a symbol of multi-ethnicity 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."