An ugly sign” “

Radovan Karadzic, former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, is formally on the run. Yet his presence continues to be felt: he continues to heavily disturb the delicate balances of the countries that compose the former Yugoslavia. He did not hesitate in recent days to re-appear in the two main dailies of Montenegro (“Dan” and “Pobjeda”) to sign his name to an obituary commemorating the death of his 83-old-mother, who died at Niksic, a small town in Montenegro. Several days after the emblematic and brazen re-appearance of Karadzic, instigator of the policy of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Serbs in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 against the Muslims and the Catholics (for the most part Croats), and the man most wanted by the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, the reverberations of his gesture continue to be felt. THE SUSPICIONS OF NATO. The main suspicions of the NATO military forces regarding a possible hiding place of Karadzic, all trace of whom has been lost since 1996, following his incrimination by the International Penal Tribunal in The Hague, are concentrated in the Serb Republic and Montenegro, as in Banja Luka, the capital of the Serb Republic, in the territorial entity with a Serb majority in Bosnia. Karadzic in the Serb Republic? “Of course it cannot be excluded – point out some members of the large Italian community in Banja Luka -, but it’s also true that there are many here who cannot stand the former Bosnian leader. They consider him guilty, together with his general Ratko Mladic, of having especially defended his own interests”, and of having laid the premises for a republic with a Serb majority, though in fact in a minority within the Bosnian State, and considered – together with Serbia – guilty of the tragedy of the former Yugoslavia. A STATE THAT NO ONE WANTS IN THIS WAY. The Serb Republic, which together with the Muslim-Croat Federation (with its capital in Sarajevo) composes the Federal Bosnian State, is however just one of the many paradoxes that characterise present-day Bosnia, “a State – observes Father Ante Komadina, director of Caritas in Mostar – that no one wants to be organised in this way”. It’s a country divided into two parts, but that conceals further sub-communities (the Federation consists in fact of cantons), in theory administered by an autonomous government elected by the people but de facto ruled by the senior representative of the international community (at the present time the Englishman Paddy Ashdown). The country’s currency, the convertible mark, is pegged to a value that no longer exists; unemployment has soared to 50%; and hardly one youth in twenty normally bothers to vote. The city that is emblematic of the contradictions of Bosnia is Mostar (literally “guardian of the bridge”). First damaged by the Serbs – who among other things completely devastated the Catholic church of Saints Peter and Paul -, it was bitterly contested between the Muslims of Bosnia and the Catholic Croats in the second phase of the Serb-Bosnian-Croat conflict. The result was a city of 100,000 inhabitants almost completely razed to the ground, with rare exceptions. The city’s ancient bridge, built over the river Neretva in the seventeenth century, collapsed under heavy shelling by Croat artillery in November 1993. Reconstructed in its original form, the monument that symbolises the city was newly inaugurated on 22 July 2004, but the traces of the violence of ten years ago still scar the streets of Mostar. “Mostar – says Father Komadina – is now subject to a particular status: each of the three ethnic groups present (the majority Croatian Catholics, followed by Bosnian Muslims and Orthodox Serbs) regularly elects its own leaders, but the UN electoral mechanism ensures that none can attain a majority”. THE LEGACY OF THE WAR. The war has in fact left as its legacy a city divided in two (with a Moslem quarter and a Catholic quarter), but “the political tensions, fortunately – continues the director of Caritas – are in part being alleviated: the communities dialogue between each other and a shared solution is sought to many problems”. The emergencies are now of another kind: “Work – he adds – is increasingly hard to find and inevitably pensions are inadequate; it’s enough to think that pensioners receive, on average, 100 euros per month”. The situation is aggravated by the progressive withdrawal of the humanitarian organizations, which until last year played a decisive role in the reconstruction of the city. The cost of this is especially being paid by families with elderly people, children and the handicapped to look after: “The State – concludes Father Komadina – makes no contribution and last year we handed out thousands of packs of emergency food aid for the poor. It’s an ugly sign: since 1995 we had never found ourselves having to cope with so grave a situation”.