Ex-Yugoslavia and Afghanistan: the tragedy repeats itself. Interview with the bishop of Banja Luka, Franjo Komarica and Maria Rita Saulle “No, the war didn’t arrive here, but we are still suffering from the damage it caused. The Catholics were expelled en masse, following the policy of ethnic cleansing pursued by the Bosnian Serbs during the conflict. I recall Karadzic, leader of the Serb militias, saying in a TV interview that no Croat Catholic should remain within the frontiers of Bosnia. And that’s why of the 80,000 Catholics formerly in my diocese, only some 6,000 are left. And of those 80,000, barely 1,500 have since returned“. So says Msgr. Franjo Komarica, bishop of Banja Luka (Bosnia) who, five years after the end of the Balkan conflict, can never forget the thousands of refugees who fled from his diocese and have never come back. “Most of them he says went to Croatia, the others went into the diaspora abroad. The objective was to eradicate the Catholics from Bosnia”. Ever since then, the bishop has never ceased recalling the attention of public opinion and of the international community to the situation. “We ask for he affirms a concrete support for Catholics which is at once political, legal and material”. The problem, says the bishop, is that in the field “everyone acts by himself”; there is no liaison. “We are witnesses he adds to the fact that the situation has crystallized and that a new war may break out. People don’t realise that in this way it is the weakest, the refugees, who are punished. Why punish the victims of war and reward the aggressors? An injustice was committed and people live with hatred in their heart and with a desire for revenge. They are feelings that can easily be transformed into terrorism. Here the dignity of man was denied. The right to live in the land in which people are born was denied. People’s identity was denied, obliging thousands of men and women to live in exile”. Msgr. Komarica appeals to Europe: “What must we still do to be heard?”. In reality the bishop has already done a great deal: on several occasions he has gone to the European Parliament, he has made appeals in public and statements to the press. In August he took the floor at the Communion and Liberation Meeting in Rimini. “We will never resign ourselves he reiterated so long as there are men and women whose rights and whose dignity have been denied. If we say and believe that God is love, it is up to us to bear witness to that love to all men. I haven’t given up hope and each day, with my assistants, strive to eliminate the causes of the destruction that subverted and fatally wounded our land”. We asked Maria Rita Saulle, lecturer in international law at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and member of the Commission for property claims by refugees from Bosnia Herzegovina, for her view. The situation experienced in Bosnia recalls that now taking place in Afghanistan. “ It takes half an hour to destroy a country with more or less intelligent missiles she says – but some 50-60 years are needed to reconstruct it“. Families destroyed and dismembered due to the war: Bosnia, observes Saulle, “will still need at least a further 20 or 30 years to be reconstructed”. “This she continues – is the situation of Sarajevo and this situation will be reproduced, in turn, in Afghanistan”. Referring to the American and British strikes on Afghanistan, Saulle comments: “The outrage suffered by the United States was of the utmost gravity and there were so many innocent victims, but the reaction will not be proportionate to the injury suffered. Already what is taking place at the present moment makes us think that the joint action for which provision is made under art. 5 of the Atlantic Pact goes well beyond that article’s scope. A military attack, however much conducted with surgical precision, always involves civilian victims, mass destruction and huge territorial damage. No form of military attack guarantees immediate success and minimal victims”. Maria Rita Saulle also recalls the experience of the Balkans: “Two years were needed, the destruction of entire cities and the involuntary killing of civilians, to obtain the result of bringing Milosevic to The Hague”. “Every military action today Saulle concludes – which ought to be commensurate with the offence suffered, according to article 5 of the Atlantic Pact, risks exceeding the limits and arousing still greater rancour on the part of the adversary”. Maria Chiara Biagioni
