DIVIDED BY HATE

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

FROM THE FURIOUS DEBATE IN THE U.S. Congress and the press, one might think the Bosnian accord is an exclusively military agreement on separation of forces, to be policed by 20,000 American G.I.s and 40,000 other NATO troops. But in fact the agreement reached near Dayton, Ohio--which will be signed this week in Paris unless the French derail it over an unsettled dispute about the fate of two French pilots shot down in August--envisions a process of peace and reconciliation in which ethnic cleansing will stop. The estimated 2 million people driven out of their homes will either return to them or receive compensation. The murderers and rapists who turned Bosnia and Herzegovina into a slaughterhouse are to be arrested and extradited to the Hague for trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Finally, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serbs' Republika Srpska, though remaining largely autonomous, are to join in forming a new, federated Bosnia. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has said that such successful multiethnic nations as Switzerland and Belgium "are frequently created this way, indeed, in a sense, I suppose our nation as well."

Switzerland? If Christopher expects the Dayton agreement to transform Bosnia into a placid land of bankers and cuckoo clocks, he should listen to the recollections of Smail Hodzic, a farmer from Srebrenica. When Bosnian Serbs overran the town last July, he was taken to a basketball gym a few miles away, where at least 2,000 men were being held. Eventually, he was blindfolded, given some water--which he said had something in it that affected his vocal cords so that he could only whisper--and taken away by van with 15 or so other prisoners. "We had to get out, and the soldiers lined us up. We got scared and tore the blindfolds down. We were in a big field covered with dead bodies. Instantly, the soldiers opened machine-gun fire at us." Hodzic threw himself on the ground, and bodies toppled over him. Soldiers, he says, walked around finishing off the wounded, but did not notice him. He hid in a forest, traveling for five days until he reached safe territory.

The experience of Hodzic and thousands like him has left a legacy of hate and fear in Bosnia that makes the ideals of the peace accord--refugees returning home, justice for war criminals, a multiethnic government--look like fairy-tale dreaming. The horrors of the 44-month war have permeated down to the smallest village, in cycles of brutality begetting retribution begetting counterretribution. It seems idle to think Muslims, Serbs and Croats can ever again live together peaceably. Far more likely: if the U.S. and NATO troops pull out in a year or so, they will leave behind a country split--in fact if not in name--into two or three ethnically monolithic, antagonistic parts where refugees still live in makeshift homes and where war criminals still rule.

The peace pact is supposed to put a stop to ethnic cleansing, but the practice continued a week after the signing, when 93 ill and elderly Muslims in the Serb-held Banja Luka region were driven into Bosnian government--held territory. Last week they were joined by up to 250 more victims. These Muslims were expelled by Serbs who had earlier been ethnically cleansed from Muslim-held territory. The Serbs were resettled around Banja Luka and proceeded, as a U.N. official puts it, to "kick out their hosts." Right now Bosnian Croats are also getting in some last licks, despite the pact. They are supposed to give up Serb towns captured in a fall offensive, and they are doing so, but not before looting and burning the houses, hoping to hand back only charred ruins.

The hatreds hindering reconciliation come sharply into focus in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza, from which Serb forces shelled the Bosnian capital for almost four years. It is one of a handful of suburbs that will revert to Bosnian-government control, and several thousand Ilidza Serbs shouted defiance at a rally after the Dayton signing. Jovan Bugarin was one who talked of armed resistance: "Everybody here has guns. And we will send our children out on the streets. The NATO soldiers won't kill children. Or we will drag NATO soldiers through the streets like in Somalia."

This may be posturing, but it seems unlikely the Muslims who were driven out or fled to Sarajevo can ever peacefully return to Ilidza. Jasna Hadzimehmedovic, a Muslim fashion designer, left early in the war with her mother, but her father stayed behind and was arrested and tortured before he managed to escape. "I will never forget what he looked like when he joined us in Sarajevo," says Hadzimehmedovic. "He had cigarette burns all over his face and hands and this utterly forlorn and empty look in his eyes." As in Ilidza, so in the rest of Bosnia: the expectation that refugees will return to their old homes seems wildly unrealistic. Says Kris Janowski, a U.N. official in Sarajevo: "It is ludicrous to talk about people going back. We are still trying to get them out because their lives are in danger."

It is not only the Serbs and Muslims who despise each other; both despise, and are despised by, the Croats as well. They and the Muslims cooperated against the Serbs at the very beginning of the war and at the end. In the interval, they conducted horrific battles among themselves. Jasna Hadzimehmedovic recalls how she heard that her soldier fiance had been killed by Croats in the Bosnian town of Vitez. "It was on Christmas Eve" in 1993, she says. "My mother and I were cooking when the phone rang. When they told me, I felt I had aged 50 years." She was then 22. The Hague tribunal charges that Croat militia forces stormed the village of Ahmici, near Vitez, killing everyone on the streets, throwing grenades into cellars where villagers tried to hide, then burning bodies and houses and shelling mosques into rubble. The Croats claim they were responding to massacres by Muslims.

The Serbs of Croatia committed well-publicized atrocities in 1991, when they set up their own enclaves in the newly independent republic. The Croats paid them back in retaking two of those enclaves this year: Western Slavonia in May, Krajina in August. An estimated 160,000 Serbs fled those areas or were driven out. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman hardly needed to say, as he did in October, that "a mass return [of refugees] is out of the question." As in many areas of Bosnia proper, there is nothing left for refugees to return to. Nor has the killing stopped. U.N. officials in Zagreb charge that the Croats are slowly starving the few thousand Serbs left in Krajina, mostly old and sick people who also need medical care that they do not get.

All sides in the war have been guilty of appalling inhumanity. A few U.S. officials agree with U.S. Air Force General Charles Boyd, who until this summer served as the Pentagon's No. 2 man in Europe, that "there are no qualitative differences" among the three sides. "All have committed unspeakable atrocities." Nevertheless, it was the Serbs who set up concentration camps for Muslims, raped Muslim women and systematically killed civilian Muslim men. A 1995 cia report estimated that Serbs perpetrated 90% of all the atrocities in Bosnia. And the cia's calculation predated the Serb conquest of the supposedly U.N.-protected "safe area" of Srebrenica in July, which was followed by particularly hideous massacres.

How can people who have committed such horrors on one another now live together? Officially, at least, the answer in part is that the worst killers and rapists will be hauled to the Hague for trial and imprisonment. That supposedly will satisfy the demand for justice (and the understandable thirst for vengeance) and reassure refugees that the lands they return to are no longer ruled by murderers. To that end, the pact pledges the parties to give war-crimes investigators free rein to hunt for evidence. All parties are further required to arrest those indicted and hand them over to the tribunal.

Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African who is the tribunal's prosecutor, notes that failure to comply would violate the U.N. Security Council resolution that set up his court and would subject the violator to the reintroduction of the economic sanctions lifted after Dayton. Certain sanctions--those that restrict access to international financial institutionsh--ave not yet been lifted, and the U.S. has threatened to keep them in place if the parties don't comply. State Department officials speculate that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic just might hand over Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, to avoid reimposition of the sanctions that strangled his economy and pushed him to negotiate peace.

But there is no mechanism for hunting war criminals. While the tribunal has handed down 52 indictments, it has only one defendant in custody. The U.S. and NATO forces being sent to Bosnia can arrest only those whom they might stumble across in carrying out their other duties. As for voluntary extradition by the signatories to the Bosnian agreement--well, consider the case of six Croats indicted by the tribunal for the massacres at Vitez. Officials of Herzeg-Bosna, the Croat entity that is to be merged into the Federation, flatly refuse to hand them over. One of the accused has been named to a top job in Croatia proper by President Franjo Tudjman.

Genuinely cleansing Bosnia of all suspected war criminals seems out of the question. It would require arresting and shipping to the Hague for trial much of the leadership of Herzeg-Bosna and of the Serb republic--the very people who will have to carry out the other provisions of the Dayton pact. A perfect example of the dilemma is Milosevic. The tribunal could indict him, but he is the man the U.S. has relied on to end the war. Some small fry, and perhaps a symbolic big shot or two like Karadzic and Mladic, might be tried. But basically the people who waged a murderously savage war will be in charge of making peace.

What sort of peace? The Dayton design to create a multiethnic Bosnian state out of autonomous and antagonistic pieces seems unwieldy even in theory. In practice, some experts fear it will actually create more refugees and further deepen animosities. To begin with, the Federation will have a Croat-Muslim government, and its citizens are likely to elect Croat and Muslim nationals to the Bosnian central presidency and parliament. The Serbs remaining in the Federation, at least 50,000 people, will be unlikely to have any political clout. In the same fashion, the ethnically cleansed Serb republic will be governed by Serbs, leaving Muslims and Croats--if they ever returns--hut out of both governments. Both parts of Bosnia will be run by extreme nationalists, predicts Adil Kulenovic, a Muslim intellectual in Sarajevo. Consequently, the Serbs in the Federation, the last hope for Bosnian multiethnicity, may flee from lands in which they will have no political voice--and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia will be complete.

The peacekeepers might be able to keep things quiet for a year or so and then pull out without suffering many casualties. Whatever they leave behind, though, is likely to bear little resemblance to the Bosnia envisioned by the Dayton accord and all too much resemblance to the shattered country of today.

--Reported by Massimo Calabresi/Banja Luka, Dean Fischer and Mark Thompson/Washington and Alexandra Stiglmayer/Sarajevo

With reporting by MASSIMO CALABRESI/BANJA LUKA, DEAN FISCHER AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON AND ALEXANDRA STIGLMAYER/SARAJEVO