Mujahideen Resist Eviction
The planned eviction of mujahideen in northern Bosnia is threatening
to turn into a major crisis.
By Janez Kovac in Sarajevo (BCR No. 158, 21-July-00)
Showing they mean business, the new moderate leadership in the
northern town of Maglaj recently sought to remove one of the biggest
problems in the region - mujahideen and their families.
The Islamic fundamentalists living in the remote village of Bocinja
Donja are being forced to hand their homes over to their original
occupants - Bosnian Serbs.
The improved security and political situation in Bosnia has this year
led to a significant increase in refugee returns. More than 15,000
have been repatriated in the first six months of 2000, three times
more than in the same period last year.
Evictions of those who occupy refugees' homes often provokes anger,
tears. Its very mention brought about a crisis in Bocinja.
Locals blocked a main road through the region for three days. Police
eventually ended the protest, arresting and later releasing 19 people,
including several mujahideen. The real problems, however, are likely
to begin when police start evicting the Bocinja residents.
Before the war, Bocinja was home to some 3,000 Bosnian Serbs. After
the conflict, it hit the headlines when the Bosnian Muslim leadership
allowed a group of foreign and local mujahideens to move into the
abandoned Serb houses.
During the war, some of these Islamic fighters fought alongside the
Muslim-led government forces. When the fighting came to an end, some
of them married local women and were granted Bosnian citizenship and
accommodation, in recognition of their contribution to the war effort.
The scale of their contribution, however, has long been debated.
Bosnians claimed that many foreign mujahideen avoided combat. They
suspect they only came here to gather intelligence or train and plot
terrorist and criminal activities.
The existence of a mujahideen community in the heart of Europe was a
constant worry for western, especially American, diplomats. In 1996
and 1997, they persuaded Bosnian Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, to
expel several of those with criminal records.
At least 300 Islamic fighters, their local followers and women and
children, remained in Bocinja, where they lived separate lives
untroubled by local police, tax-collectors or any other authorities.
Outsiders never set foot in the small community.
Every so often, stories of mujahideen harassing "unbelievers" in local
towns appeared in the press. Several were alleged to have been
involved in criminal or terrorist activities both in and outside
Bosnia. Worst of all, since the end of the war, the Islamists were
never properly disarmed. Local police, army, and even UN and NATO-led
peacekeepers, were reluctant to search houses in Bocinja.
As a result of Bocinja's bad reputation, the Maglaj region received
little international reconstruction aid. Many local firms and
industries which survived the war are now close to collapse because of
the lack of funds.
The situation started to change after the April 8 local elections,
when the leading Bosnian opposition party, the Socialist Democratic
Party ,SDP, defeated the ruling Muslim nationalist SDA party in
Maglaj.
Soon after taking up his new office, the new SDP mayor of Maglaj,
Mehmed Bradaric, said one of his first priorities was to evict
mujahideen families from Bocinja to facilitate the return of its
former Bosnian Serb residents.
His statement prompted displaced Muslims living in two abandoned Serb
villages near Bocinja to set up roadblocks. UN and local police say
that mujahideen encouraged the protesters. They are said to have told
them that once they are evicted the Maglaj authorities will remove
refugees from other villages to prepare the ground for the mass return
of the pre-war Bosnian Serb population.
The Maglaj authorities, meanwhile, were facing yet another problem -
their own police. With the SDA still in power in the cantonal
government and interior ministry, local police were reluctant to
intervene in the unfolding Maglaj crisis, even after the municipal
authorities proclaimed a state of emergency.
Consequently, a humanitarian and security problem also quickly became
a focus for political conflict between SDA and SDP.
The Bocinja deadlock eventually ended after Bosnia's top international
mediator,the High Representative, Wolfgang Petritsch, said he was
holding Zenica canton Interior Minister "personally responsible" for a
speedy resolution of the crisis. The roadblocks were removed a day
later.
Following negotiations between local, cantonal and federal
authorities, it was agreed that local police would start evicting two
local Muslim households from Bocinja every day from July 24. "Foreign"
mujahideen would be left to the end. Meanwhile, the federal government
pledged two million German marks for the reconstruction of abandoned
and devastated apartments in Maglaj, to accommodate those from Bocinja
who have no where to go.
The one problem with the plan is that no one asked Mujahideen whether
they agreed with it. Local analysts fear that some Islamic fighters
might choose to take the law into their own hands.
Janez Kovac is a regular IWPR contributor
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