The Washington Post
August 23, 1992
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia – Stana Milanovic broke into her new home with a crowbar the other day.
Milanovic, 25, is a Bosnian Serb. Along with her husband and three children, she was chased out of her farmhouse in a village controlled by Croats. When the family arrived here as refugees, they heard about a vacant apartment formerly occupied by Muslims.
“The apartment was empty, so we broke into it the same way Croats broke into ours after we left,” said Milanovic.
The front door is splintered and the nameplate of its Muslim owner is missing. Pale rectangles on the wallpaper mark the places where Milanovic removed paintings she did not like. Milanovic’s 3-year-old daughter plays with dolls left behind by fleeing Muslims.
The Serbs’ ethnic cleansing is a two-step process. First, the Serbs get rid of the people they don’t want around. Second, they replace them with people they do want, such as Milanovic.
In Serb-controlled northern Bosnia, the unwanted people are Muslims and Croats. About a million have been forced to leave. Tens of thousands have been jailed, and an unknown number have been executed.
Now step two is underway. Though northern Bosnia has not yet been fully “cleansed,” enough Muslims and Croats have fled to permit the replacement process to begin. Even though the region is bankrupt and dangerous, local warlords want to consolidate their hold by quickly repopulating it with Serb refugees.
There is one road to Banja Luka from Serbia, where refugee camps are filled with ethnic Serbs uprooted from war-torn parts of Bosnia and Croatia. The road runs through a land corridor newly conquered by Serbs, and busloads of Serb refugees are using it to get here.
The newcomers are not concerned that breaking into another person’s apartment is against the law. This is Serb territory now, and Serbs can do pretty much what they want with what they find here.
Muslims and Croats who manage to escape to “the other side” know that they will probably lose their homes here, but that is the least of their concerns. Faced with losing their jobs and being arrested or shot, all they want to do is get out.
A Muslim man sitting in a municipal office tapped his foot nervously while waiting to learn whether he could join a bus convoy to Croatia.
“I had to work hard to get my home, but now I would be happy to leave it behind,” he said.
Some Muslims and Croats are lucky enough to arrange a swap before they leave. They find Serb refugees from Croatia or other parts of Bosnia and trade houses with them. But it is difficult for Muslims and Croats to find partners because they outnumber the Serb refugees.
Banja Luka’s local government, seeking to get rid of its Muslim and Croat constituents quickly, has set up an office to expedite the transfers. It is called the “Bureau for the Removal of Populations and Exchange of Material Goods.”
The government is even privatizing this part of ethnic cleansing. About two miles away from the municipal office is Euroagent, a one-room company presided over by Senka Gatavic, who said she is trying to help people by arranging the transfers. Serbs come to her office looking for local Muslim or Croat homes; Muslims and Croats also come to her office, looking for Serb homes on “the other side.”
Gatavic would not say how many transfers she has arranged, but there is usually a line outside her office. She has a notebook filled with pictures of houses — with patios, fancy shingles, front yards — that she has helped swap.
Gatavic conceded that business is booming. She would not say how much money she was making, but the swapping families must pay her 1 percent of the value of their homes. “I earn a lot of money,” she said.
Gatavic, a Serb, said she does not think she is profiting from other people’s misery. In fact, she said ethnic cleansing is not going on in Banja Luka. Muslims and Croats are desperate to leave because “it’s a fashion,” she said.
Despite Gatavic’s thriving business, swapping or stealing an apartment is not easy. Across town from Euroagent, Stana Milanovic is having trouble settling into the apartment that she broke into two weeks ago. “Even if I was given a house of gold in Banja Luka, I would prefer to go back to my village.” The apartment building is filled with Muslims and Croats who are not treating her well.
Milanovic said she was forced out of her home near the Croat-held town of Travnik. After Serb militiamen began carving up Bosnia three months ago, a nationalist Croat militia surrounded her village and ordered the Serbs out. There was shooting at night, Milanovic said, and her sister’s house adjacent to hers was burned down.
Milanovic and her family fled, driving away in their car with just a few belongings. They left their rambling farmhouse, their furniture, three cows, one pig and a flock of chickens. They left their lives.
“We feel terrible here,” Milanovic said. “My children feel that this apartment is a jail . . . Even if I was given a house of gold in Banja Luka, I would prefer to go back to my village.”
