By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 7, 1997; Page A1

DIZDARUSA, Bosnia – Workmen roll into this bombed-out village every morning to rebuild house No. 141, demolished during Bosnia's war. The idea is to allow the former occupant, a Muslim refugee, to come home now that the fighting has been over for two years.

By all appearances, the work here, in a suburb of the northern city of Brcko, should be proceeding under a comforting umbrella of American security. This part of northern Bosnia, contested by Muslims and Serbs, is administered by a U.S. diplomat and patrolled by heavily armed U.S. troops.

Despite all the security, something is amiss in Dizdarusa. Every other night someone – Serbs, say the workmen – comes and trashes house No. 141 again. Across the street, another house set for a Muslim refugee's return had its new roof shingles blown off by a hand grenade. A couple of workmen have been beaten up.

Rebuilding house No. 141 should be a 12-day job, but at this rate it will take longer. Just how long, no one can say.

As the reconstruction of house No. 141 goes, so goes the outlook for stable peace and reconciliation in Bosnia two years after Muslim, Serb and Croat leaders agreed to end the country's 43-month war. A tortuous process spearheaded by the United States, the pacification of Bosnia has consumed billions of the West's dollars and occupied tens of thousands of its diplomats, soldiers and aid workers.

As NATO officials begin discussions of the nature and future role of a NATO-led force, there are serious concerns over whether the foundation of its mission – creation of a multiethnic state – remains a viable blueprint for Bosnia's future.

Since the warring armies were separated by NATO peacekeepers two years ago, the peace process has produced only modest, and usually tenuous, gains toward inter-ethnic reconciliation, according to foreign and local sources interviewed here in the past few weeks. Nearly everyone agrees that few, if any, of the positive developments – the scattered but accelerating return of refugees to areas where they are in the minority, the ethnic integration of a handful of local police forces and town councils – would survive the withdrawal of the 31,000 troops under NATO command in the Stabilization Force for Bosnia.

Even as Western officials rail against Bosnia's entrenched, obstructionist hard-line leaders in the three main ethnic groups, they have achieved little that changes the war's essential legacy of ethnic partition. Some foreign officials concede privately that despite all the ringing diplomatic pronouncements about knocking down the walls of segregation and promoting freedom of movement, the West's real goal in Bosnia is stability, not reintegration of a society traumatized by bloodshed and hatred. Few diplomats, and almost no Bosnians, say it is possible to resurrect anything resembling Bosnia's prewar multiethnic society.

"The issue here is cost reduction – how can we solve the problem so there's a minimum foreign presence in the long run?" said a Western diplomat with long experience in Bosnia. "It's not about remaking a multiethnic society. You can't put Humpty Dumpty together again."

It is against this background that senior officials in the Clinton administration and Europe are arguing for an extended role for the NATO force after its 18-month mandate runs out at the end of June. If the United States withdraws its 8,000 troops by July, as President Clinton promised last year and some in Congress favor, the European allies say they will follow suit. A withdrawal almost certainly will ignite a fresh war that, quite possibly, could spread to neighboring Balkan states.

Conversely, if some version of the peacekeeping force remains in Bosnia, it likely will be able to keep the peace. What is less clear is whether the huge international presence will be able, or has the political will, to reshape the country.

In the peace agreement hammered out by U.S. diplomats in Dayton, Ohio, two years ago, the West committed itself to a paradox. On the one hand, there was to be a unitary Bosnia consisting of two halves: the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic. On the other, the accord granted a large measure of autonomy to each half, leaving only a small central government.

That awkward diplomatic construct recognized the reality on the ground: "Ethnic cleansing" had left Serbs, Muslims and Croats separated at the end of the 1992-95 war. It also preserved prewar borders and denied the territorial ambitions of neighboring Serbia and Croatia, each of which wanted to slice off a chunk of Bosnia to create a greater national territory for itself.

The resulting tension at the heart of the Dayton peace accord – between a Bosnia that is ethnically integrated and one that is ethnically partitioned – has bedeviled the West ever since.

The nub of the problem is that the integrationist elements of Dayton, which aim to build some semblance of a unitary state, are stunningly difficult to implement. In some respects, the West has balked at using its muscle to force the sides to accept a unitary state. Yet some of the problems do not lend themselves to resolution by force.

Across the Interethnic Boundary Line, which divides the two halves of Bosnia, no sports are played and no professional organizations for teachers, doctors or engineers convene. Even the Red Cross chapters barely speak to each other. The Serb member of the collective presidency, Momcilo Krajisnik, agrees to attend occasional meetings with his Muslim and Croat counterparts only under intense Western coercion.

In a society stoked by incendiary media and inflamed by nationalist politicians, people have few ways to identify themselves other than by ethnicity. The three main nationalist political parties – the very ones that led their people into war – have each held onto power at the ballot box by promising to protect their corresponding ethnic supporters from the other two groups. The West has done little to promote moderate opposition politicians, who have little support. And the idea of civil society, which is thriving in other post-communist states of Eastern Europe, remains in its infancy.

Diplomats concede that the chasm between effort and achievement here is vast. Despite the outlay of $2 billion in two years by international civilian agencies and many billions more by NATO and its military partners, the West has managed only to chip away at, not crack, the walls of inter-ethnic partition.

"There's been so much money spent for a very, very lousy effect," said Zdravko Grebo, a Sarajevo professor of jurisprudence. "I still believe normal life is possible in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But almost everybody and everything is pushing toward partition."

Grebo is unwilling to give up hope. He is considering a quixotic campaign for president next year against the entrenched ruling Bosnian Muslim party. But at this point, he said, the idea of forging a coherent inter-ethnic state is "almost utopian."

Within the shaky Muslim-Croat Federation, the divisions are as deep as they are between the federation and Serbian authorities. The Muslims and Croats maintain separate armies, tenuously linked only at the highest levels but strictly segregated in the barracks. Other institutions are similarly split. Last month the federation's two top education officials, one of each ethnicity, agreed on a plan to segregate Muslim and Croat children in the federation's schools. Faced with international pressure, as well as a public outcry, the plan is being re-examined for next year's academic calendar. Yet deep divisions remain in what children of different ethnic groups are taught.

In some parts of central Bosnia inhabited by roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Croats, towns remain split as they were during the war. The problem is not one for NATO peacekeepers to resolve. But diplomats and local aid officials are confounded by it, and as often as not they simply throw up their hands.

"In the villages where I work, there might be a Croat mayor and a Muslim head of the municipal assembly," said Davorin Pavelic, a Croat veteran who now works on aid and reconstruction projects for International Management Group, which helps coordinate aid programs for local organizations. "When they receive a delegation from the international community, they sit together. But when the meeting ends they're going back to their own buildings and dealing just with their own national groups."

While there has been undeniable progress in the past year, and especially in the past few months, nearly every apparent step forward must be couched in caveats:

It is now possible to see some Serb license plates on cars in the mostly Muslim city of Sarajevo and a few Muslim or Croat license plates in the Serb town of Banja Luka. But despite months of Western pressure, the three sides have not agreed on ethnically neutral license plates, which would promote freedom of movement.

Aggressive NATO moves since the summer have weakened the grasp of hard-liners in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia by depriving them of police stations, broadcasting towers and the veneer of impunity. But despite the tough new stance, the Serb-, Muslim- and Croat-controlled parts of Bosnia are no closer to agreeing on a common flag, currency, passport or refugee-return policy.

Although it can still take hours to put a call through, limited telephone service has been restored between the Serb- and Muslim-Croat-controlled halves of Bosnia. But Serb authorities still refuse to accept Muslim and Croat mail.

There is plenty of interest in a new U.N. program promising injections of Western cash to towns that allow minorities to return to their homes. But despite more than $7 million in international funds spent or pledged since spring, and a good deal of reconstruction in progress, only a couple of hundred refugees have returned to their homes this year under the program, known as Open Cities. International refugee agencies concede that NATO troops cannot accompany every refugee family back to its home, let alone stay to keep watch after it settles.

Overall, just 20,000 Bosnians dared return to their shattered houses in areas controlled by another ethnic group this year – twice last year's number but a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of such refugees still stranded in Germany, Yugoslavia, Croatia and within Bosnia.

"Anything that takes place here is entirely artificial and any progress that has been made here is extremely fragile," said a diplomat in Brcko who has monitored the internationally orchestrated return of Muslims to Dizdarusa and other villages south of Brcko.

If not for the heavy presence of American troops, he said, local Serbs would chase away Muslims who have returned to the area, a narrow, strategically vital ribbon of land connecting the eastern and western halves of Serb territory. The Serbs regard any Muslim presence in the area as a potential military threat that could divide the Serb territory if war resumes.

"All they have to do is blow up a few houses and the 2,000 Muslims who have returned would go back to the [Muslim-controlled] federation," said the diplomat.

In light of the halting progress toward reintegrating the country, there is talk among Western officials about a partition of the country's ethnic communities. The idea has been pushed forcefully by Henry Kissinger and embraced by many Bosnians and others. Even those who dislike the idea acknowledge they may have to look harder at it if, after next fall's elections, hard-line ethnic parties keep their grip on power.

But officials here warn that partitioning Bosnia might not achieve its advocates' primary goal of curtailing Western involvement. Tens of thousands of people likely would have to be uprooted, and diplomats believe an international force would be needed for many years to keep the peace.

Some in the international community here credit the West for generating a new sense of momentum in Bosnia since the summer.

The NATO force has acted more aggressively to rein in Bosnian Serb hard-liners. After extensive negotiations with U.S. diplomats, 10 Bosnian Croat war crimes suspects were persuaded to give themselves up for trial before the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

But NATO troops have balked at going after most Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects, including Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Serb Republic, where he still exercises considerable influence. Despite the enormous powers they were granted under the Dayton accords, Western diplomats have not foisted solutions on factions locked in protracted fights over a common currency, flag and other such issues.

The West, according to many observers, is hamstrung by the electoral support still enjoyed by hard-liners and wary of retribution should it move more vigorously against them. Yet without tougher action, they say, the West in effect serves as an accomplice in preserving the walls of partition.

In Pale, the stronghold of the Bosnian Serb hard-liners, officials cling to a theology of ethnic partition, doing everything they can to block plans to integrate police officers and judges in their territory. Serbs who dare admit they would like to return to their prewar homes outside Serb-controlled territory are intimidated. And the few members of other ethnic groups who have returned to their homes in Serb-controlled territory have been greeted with all the obstructions a small state committed to ethnic purity can muster.

The Serb leadership in Pale installed a handful of Serb families in Dizdarusa to form what diplomats called a "biological line" designed to block Muslim refugees from returning. Diplomats say the families – nearly all of whom had lost a relative in the war – were picked to ensure that Muslims would get a frosty reception.

"I don't even want to see them," said Sanka Veljancic, 56, who said her son, a Serb fighter, was killed by a Muslim sniper in Sarajevo at the war's outset. "I won't go back to living with them."

The Bosnian Serb leadership is not unique in its intransigence. In the divided city of Mostar, Ivan Prskalo, the Croat mayor of the city's western half, has refused to adopt even the vaguest plan for Muslims to return to their homes in his jurisdiction. Prskalo has spurned overtures from his Muslim counterpart in east Mostar to come up with a plan to resettle refugees.

Prskalo says he will think about how to accommodate Muslims in his sector only when he has seen a nationwide plan for the resettlement of displaced Croats and Serbs. He also has not reinstated 86 Muslims expelled from his half of the city last year, despite Western pressure.

The Bosnian Muslim leadership, although it pays lip service to ethnic integration, has been no more accommodating. In Sarajevo, for instance, the Muslim-dominated government effectively has blocked most Serbs, who comprised 30 percent of the city's prewar population, from returning to their apartments. The federation cabinet's move disregarded Dayton's provisions guaranteeing all refugees the right to return home.

"I don't see a future for Bosnia as a multiethnic, multi-religious country," said Pavelic, the aid worker. "The same people started this war, finished the war and are being reelected to govern. They have general support for their policy of breaking up Bosnia-Herzegovina."