Read article, Stolac: A Town Deeply Divided

It is sacred to Bosnians of all faiths, and was proposed as an international cultural site by the Bosnian government. The village’s surroundings include a massive deposit at Radimilje of pre-Islamic Bosnian burial monuments, or stecci, of inconceivable value for the world Bosnia is a country with five historical

identities: Muslim, Sephardic, Serbian, Croatian, and Gypsy.

Although Sephardim have been absent in numbers since the Holocaust, they once accounted for one out of six residents in Sarajevo, and their literary achievements, mainly involving poetry and song, are well known to Bosnians. But Stolac is especially important to Jews as the location of the grave of a rabbi, Rav Moshe Danon. Beginning in the mid-19th century, Sephardim made regular pilgrimages

there from Sarajevo and elsewhere in Bosnia. The story of the rabbi of Stolac, as Rav Danon is known to surviving Bosnian Sephardim, reveals many facets of the mountainous country’s existence, and deserves to be retold — along with its contemporary postscript.

Rav Moshe Danon did not serve as rabbi in Stolac, and was not born there; he is associated with the town only because he died near it, on the road to Eretz Israel. But the events that led to his departure from Bosnia for the Holy Land are legendary, reflected even in beautiful Sephardic balladry. The tale begins in 1819, when a mentally-disturbed Jew named Moshe Haviljo, living in the old Turkish city of Travnik north of Sarajevo, converted to Islam and took the name “Dervish Ahmed.” The title “dervish” should have indicated an affiliation with the less-rigid intellectual traditions of Balkan Muslim mysticism. But whatever the circumstances of his apostasy, Haviljo soon emerged as a ferocious enemy of the Jews.

He posed as a holy man and miracle worker, and began inciting Muslims against his former coreligionists. Another Jew, Benjamin Pinto, went to the governor of the province, and denounced the swindles and lies of “Ahmed.” Soon theconvert died, or was killed. But in the words of a Sarajevo grand rabbi and community chronicler, Dr. Moritz Levi, writing almost a century later, “ignorant folk among the Muslims, believing the convert to be a true miracle-worker, lamented his death and complained to the new Turkish governor, Ruzhdi-Pasha. “The convert’s death provided a prete t for Ruzhdi-Pasha to attack the Jews in general.

The small and poor Jewry of Travnik did not offer much of a target, and they were left in peace. But the governor’s eyes had turned to the Jews of the great city of Sarajevo; he demanded a payment of 50,000 Austrian gold groschen from them, as indemnity for the dead convert. He then ordered the arrest of ten of Sarajevo’s leading Jews, beginning with Rav Danon, the outstanding Jewish spiritual leader in the country.

Furthermore, the fine was increased to 500,000 groschen to be paid within three days, or the Jews would be executed. Panic seized the Sarajevo Sephardim as they faced a wholesale assault on their security and their rights. The situation looked extremely grim. But then a well-known Sarajevo Jew, Rafael Levi, who was greatly respected by Muslims, had the idea of appealing to his neighbors’ humanity. On the night before the hostages were to be executed, Rafael Levi went to the coffee houses where he knew Muslims met and talked, and exhorted them with an emotional description of the dreadful threat hanging over the Jews.

The Muslims were profoundly touched, and consoled Levi for the tears he shed as he spoke. Then, “all together, as if they were one,” the Muslims swore an oath, pledging to give up their lives, if necessary, to save the arrested Jews.

Before dawn the next morning, some 3,000 Bosnian Muslims armed themselves, surrounded the governor’s palace, seized the jail, and liberated Rav Danon and the other imprisoned Jews. The Bosnian Muslims later denounced Ruzhdi-Pasha to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. A decade afterward, Rav Danon left for Palestine, but he died near Stolac in 1830. Annual pilgrimages to his grave, on his birthday,

Students escaping the smog of Sarajevo, we stepped out into the little valley
town late in the afternoon. The driver snapped off the skirting pop-kolo, climbed
down the coach steps and headed cafewards. Quiet -flowering lime trees round
the square, the rush of a river over a weir.

Just beyond it, N had promised us the finest mosque in the Balkans. Which turned
out to be a small, white, empty, perfect cube topped by a perfect white hemisphere1,
its interior picked out in mock-solemn green and red patterns of interwoven
vines heavy with grapes. Outside – chestnut trees, the fruit spiky and green,
and cheerful, turbaned gravestones. I leant with R, my English room-mate, over
the bridge as we left, spotting trout against the shingle. N joined us. ‘Nice
place to be buried,’ I quipped. She smiled briefly. ‘You know what happened
in the war? Here they threw the Muslims in the river.’ ‘Who did?’ She shrugged.
And then we noticed the inscriptions on the stones: so many from one year, 1942.
(Long after I have fixed this in writing, I am told that I have merged two
memories. One is of a winter visit eastwards to the magnificent AladÏa mosque
in Foa, built around a sacred meteoric stone; from the nearby bridge, many
Muslims were knifed and thrown into the Drina, both in World War II and the
war that was still to come. The other is of a spring visit southwards to Stolac,
near the necropolis of Radimlja; there, the simple mosque by the little river
was all the more exquisite for being disused, empty of everything save sacred
geometry. Somehow, over the years, the two sites had merged to form a single
archetype, like the two images on a stereoscope slide. The mosque was now a
place of the heart, not of the brain – which is why I have let it remain.)
Next day, Radimlje – the necropolis. It was hot; the morning breeze had dropped
by the time we arrived at the wire fence. Inside, the steci: rows of four-foot-high
stone oblongs in the straggling yellow grass, some with pitched roofs, like
houses for the dead. No guard, no visitors but ourselves. The gate opened and
we drifted in different directions.
On the near end of the first tomb, I saw a vine heavy with fruit. Along its
long side ran a frieze of crescents and crosses, beneath it a line of stylised,
full-skirted women dancing the kolo. About to turn to see the other end, I looked
ahead, and found myself face to face with a man whose head was the sun and whose
enormous right hand was raised palm-first at me – the Uncrucified, the Heretic
Christ? On the next stone, the sleeper under the stone, an armed giant brandishing
a bow in his left hand. And his right hand again raised – to do what? A snake
as thick as my wrist – no stone dragon this – slithered in panic half a metre
in front of me, heading for the long grass round the tomb. I turned and sauntered
in feigned nonchalance back to the others.

Raised to do what? No-one knows. There are theories, of course. To ward off
the evil eye. To stop the sinful, the enemies of the True Christ. Or in greeting
to the stranger. No-one knows.

We regard the persistent endeavours of Don Rajko Markovic, parish priest in Stolac municipality, to affirm and maintain the effects of the crimes perpetrated against us through his demand that a church be built on the site of the Carsija mosque in Stolac, as an extreme form of threat to our human dignity and rights.

We do not know whether Don Rajko Markovic is doing so in his private capacity, by way of continuing the policies of his brother, mayor of Stolac municipality at the time the atrocities of the destruction of our mosques and our being driven from our homes were carried out, or whether on the other hand his entire conduct has the support of the official church.

We kindly request you, as the representative of the Pope in our country, to let us know what the position of the Holy See is on this issue.

We have today sent a similar letter to His Eminence Cardinal Vinko Pulji, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina, requesting that he too make his position on this issue clear. We cannot believe that the Catholic Church could uphold the activities of Don Rajko Markovic and others like him, but the Church’s silence on this matter has given rise among a large number of our members to the painful sentiment that we are wrong in so believing. We therefore request you to contribute to clarifying this issue in conformity with the need to strengthen confidence and tolerance among the citizens of our country.

We include here the text of our letter to the president of the Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cardinal Vinko Puljic, which reads as follows:

Dear Mr Puljic, respected President,

We have no doubt that you are aware of the nature of the atrocities committed
against the Muslim population in Stolac municipality.

The entire Muslim population of that municipality were driven from their homes
in 1993. Many of them were tortured and killed. All the mosques of Stolac were
destroyed at that time. As you know, this was done by the then authorities of
the Croatian Defence Council and Herceg-Bosna, with the direct involvement of
the services and organizations of the Republic of Croatia.

The occasion for our addressing you at this time is the continuing agony of
the people of Stolac and the systematic maintenance and prolongation of the
effects of the atrocities. The destruction of the mosques of Stolac was carried
out in 1993, when the mayor of the unicipality was Andjelko Markovic. At that
time, along with all the other mosques, the Carsija mosque was destroyed, one
of the most significant religious monuments not only of Stolac but of the Bosniac
people as a whole.

When the inhabitants of Stolac began to reconstruct the Carsija mosque, on the
site where it had stood for five hundred years and in its original form, Don
Rajko Markovic, parish priest and full brother of that same Andjelko Markovic
who had incited and overseen the destruction, filed an application for a church
to be built on the site, basing his claim on assertions that are none other
than a justification and prolongation of the crimes previously committed. The
local authorities, who in large part are also perpetuating the situation brought
about by the perpetration of these atrocities, are seeking to support Don Rajko
Markovic in his endeavours. A session of the Town Council has been convened
for 28 June, at which the application will be discussed.

We are convinced that the criminal nature of Don Rajko Markovic’s application
is not in dispute. It remains unclear to us what the official position of the
Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina is on this issue, as well as your
own personal view. We therefore kindly request you to let us know whether the
Church as a whole upholds these destructive attitudes and activities, which
are a threat to the normalization of life in our country. In the assumption
that such cannot be the position of the Church or your personal stance, we kindly
request you publicly to condemn these actions and, if possible, to prevent the
spread of such conduct, which cannot be justified from any standpoint on the
basis of which we can successfully build a joint future for all of us and for
our homeland.

Your Excellency, in looking forward to your understanding and support for our
endeavours to establish human rights and the rule of law in Stolac and in our
country as a whole, we should like to express our readiness to provide you with
further information about the situation in Stolac.

With best wishes,

President of the Association

Dr. Senad Mehmedbasic

I first came upon his legacy when I was assigned by the United Nations to
be the International Police Task Force commander in Stolac, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Stolac, which lies in southern Herzegovina, is, or I should say was, one of
the most significant historical sights in Herzegovina. It contained an eclectic
blend of architecture which included a medieval fortress, several mosques, Serbian
Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, the Radimlja gravestones, a bathhouse,
art museums, libraries and many historical homes. It had once been considered
for , preservation by UNESCO as a world heritage site like its neighbor to the
south Dubrovnik Although I had been briefed about the condition of the city,I
was completely unprepared for what I saw.

Stolac in 1997, when I`arrived, had been 75 percent destroyed during the war
Most buildings were gutted, their roofs collapsed and their contents gone. There
are no mosques left in Stolac. The main mosque located in the city center is
now an empty lot. It had been mined, then its remains removed stone by stone.
The same fate was suffered by virtually every building that could be connected
to the Ot toman period. The literary and art collections housed in the city’s
museums were burned. Virtually every house that had been occupied by a Muslim
family was destroyed and its contents looted. The Muslim Majotity~ population
suffered a similar fate. From a pre-war population of nearly 6,000 there remained
only two families. Many would believe that the destruction death; internment
and theft was perpetrated by the Serbs in their efforts to cleanse the Balkans
of every non-Serb they could find. But the truth is that the once beautiful
city of Stolac and its unfortunate Muslim residents were the victims of the
Croatian-sponsored army of “Herceg-Bosna.”

Though never indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague,
Franjo Tudjman is widely believed to be responsible for the destruction and
ethnic cleansing of most of Muslim Herzegovina. Many members of his administration
have been indicted, but Croatia has been slow to turn them over to international
authorities. Tudjman himself was a virulent racist and anti-Semite. Although
he fought with’ Tito’s partisans:against both the Nazis and their Croatian puppet
Ante Pavelic, he later became an apologist for the Pavelic regime. Pavelic was
responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Jews and Serbs at his death camp in Jasenovac.
But Tudjman. in his ongoing effort to re-write history in a pro-Croatian way.
puts the number, of Jasenovac victims at just 59,639, in spite of the fact that
the Nazis themselves were so shocked by the numbers and methods of killing at
Jasenovac that they raised a protest with the Pavelic government. In 1989 he
wrote in his book, “Impasses of Historical Reality” that.the number of
Jews killed by the Nazis during.World War II was only one million and that the
Jews in the concentration camps “retained their bad characteristics -selfishness,
perfidy, meanness, slyness and treachery.” In 1992 he apologiezed to B’na’i
Brith for the “misinterpretations”‘ of his book and promised that in subsequent
editions those references would be deleted. How ever, he later stated publicly
that he was happy that his wife was neither a Serb nor a Jew.

While it may sound un-Christian, I am glad that Franjo Tudjman is neither
alive nor kicking.

I lived with a Croatian family while working in Stolac and spent many off-duty
days traveling throughout Croatia. As a result of my travels and experiences
with the Croatians, I can understand now how it was possible for my father’s
generation to reconcile their abhorrence for the Nazis and the fascists in Italy
and Japan with their affection for those countries and their people. I hope
the democratic and free Croatia that Thudjman helped found can find it in itself
to seek peace and reconciliation with its neighbors and the world. Steven Smith
is a Scotts Valley resident.

– by Steven A. Smith

Borojevic is hidden from the main road, high in the hills above Stolac, at the
end of a winding dirt track. Its sole asset is the land in the rich river valley
below. Land holdings are tiny – Meho Obradovic´ has two hectares – but even
tiny plots can produce an income and the family’s situation is still vastly
better than their five years of displacement in Mostar.
Mr Obradovic´ boasts he can grow everything except coffee and bananas on
his plot although cultivation was easier before the war when he had better equipment.
Now much more work is done by hand, he says, pointing to his drying tobacco leaves,
golden in the sun, and fields planted with onions and spinach. This year he will
make around 400 Bosnian Marks a month after selling his tobacco to the Agroplod
cooperative in Stolac.
People began returning to Borojevic after homes were reconstructed with support
from the Danish Refugee Council with European Union support. The village still
has a makeshift feel but it is again indisputably full of life – typified
by the young children who peer from verandahs and clamber over walls.

Situated high on the open moorlands, the Serb village of Kozice seems much smaller
and sadder. Before the war, Kozice was home to 50 families. Although some homes
have been reconstructed, only 15 families have returned – and there are
no children here, just older people. As in Borojevic the tobacco crop is the major
income earner. A local farmer proudly shows us his harvest, the dried leaves stacked
safely awaiting transport to the processing centre. He too is contracted to Agroplod
which provides the necessary start-up capital.
Not far distant is Trijebanj, a Croat village. Today there are only six families
living here, before the war there were 28 families. The entire village was burnt
out – since that time some homes have been reconstructed, once again with
help from the Danish Refugee Council and the European Union.

Ruza Goluza and her husband are two of the returnees. They farm one and a half
hectares, growing vegetables such as onions and potatoes. Next year they hope
to grow tobacco as well. Mr Goluza has a pension of around 130 Bosnian Marks a
month and they receive support from their two sons who live on the coast. But
life is still very hard – there is no electricity and until more homes are reconstructed
few families will return. Mrs Goluza says that, in any case, families have scattered
all over the world and many will never return to Trijebanj.
It is clear that displaced people will only return when two key elements are in
place. One is safety – physical and mental – and the other is economic security
– a regular income, however, modest. The two elements are clearly linked.
Central to the effort to create a good economic climate in Stolac is the revitalised
privately-owned Agroplod agricultural cooperative at the town’s western
outskirts.

Under the previous system, villagers had to sell their produce to the state co-operative.
Agroplod is an attempt to combine the best features of public and private enterprise.
While it continues to contract with and buy from local farmers, it pays market,
rather than fixed, prices, looks for a quality product, and provides technical
assistance and advice when needed. In the past two years, the managers Enver Zele
and Osman Obradovic, a Muslim and a Croat respectively, have scrambled for funds
and grants to rebuild the main building and buy equipment – not an easy
task when you have little capital and no collateral.
One of the organisations that helped them was CARE International in Bosnia through
its Quick Impact Facility (QIF). Funded by the European Union, in early 2000 QIF
was able to provide a grant of 36,000 German Marks (about £12,000) for essential
equipment to grow and dry tobacco. The outcome has been better than anyone could
have hoped as the grant helped to fuel business of around half a million DM through
the sales of tobacco.

Initially, Agroplod started with contracts with around one hundred farmers but
is expected to develop links with up to four hundred by 2001. They have taken
on an extra employee, a local Serb man, who will manage the office administration
allowing Zele and Obradovic more opportunities to meet and advise farmers. The
next step is to turn part of the main building into an agricultural warehouse
and store.

Tobacco has long been the main cash crop in the Stolac valley and this is an especially
good time to be a producer, given the current problems in Zimbabwe. But QIF and
other backers recognise that prices can drop as well as rise and that diversification and flexibility is the key to a prosperous economy. Some potential backers may balk at backing an unhealthy product such as tobacco, however good the initial results, and this is another reason to diversify. Before the war, the fertile valley produced a much wider range of food and vegetables and it should be able
to do so again. For the moment, QIF will continue to support and assist Agroplod
and the farmers of Stolac.
Kaye Stearman is a press officer for CARE International UK. She visited Bosnia
as a guest of QIF and CARE Bosnia in November/December 2000.

– by Kaye Stearman

A tale of three villages
Article originated at CARE International UK.
Click here for original document.

AS FIRST-HAND observer to the aftermath of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic’s
policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I agreed
with the NATO air campaign to save the Kosovars from a similar fate. The brutal
war started by the Yugoslavian Army through their vassal Bosnian Serb allies
came dangerously close to destroying an entire people. Two-hundredfifty-thousand
people are missing and presumed to be dead and 1.5 million are refugees (out
of a prewar population of only 4 million). Virtually every mosque, religious
school, library and museum that had any connection to the Ottoman period that
was or is in Serbian-held territory was destroyed. The ground in what’s left
of Bosnia and Herzegovina is sewn with more than 100,000 land mines. Thousands
of villages and hamlets sit empty as the residents have fled or are dead. The
transportation system is largely destroyed, electric production is a fraction
of pre- war levels and unemployment is 60 to 70 percent – all in a nation that
prior to the war had a higher standard of living than Portugal, Greece or Turkey
(all NATO members).

There were no pitched battles, other than perhaps the siege of Sarajevo, during
the last Balkan war. The Bosnian Federation Army had no Air Force and only one
battle tank It was a war waged by a modem and well-equipped army against a mostly
unarmed people whose taxes paid for the arsenal that was now destroying them.
The United Nations’ attempts to end the war through negotiation, U.N. declared
“safe zones” and arms embargoes was a complete failure. Poorly armed U.N. troops
stood idly by and watched the death and destruction, while the Security Council
in New York drafted resolution after resolution condemning the atrocities that
were occurring. In 1993. during the dedication of the Holocaust Museum and Memorial
al in Washington D.C., President Clinton declared that the United States would
never allow another holocaust to occur. But a holocaust was occurring and he
knew it Reports from news reporters, relief workers and troops in Bosnia were
confirming it every day.

The vacillation and indecision that permeated Washington, New York and most
European capitals gave Slobodan Milosevic the time he needed to perpetrate the
worst crimes against humanity since the Nazis. It is true that U.S. led air
strikes finally ended the war. But those strikes came too late to save most
of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The damage had been done. Milosevic lost only the
territory he had gained in Croatia (Eastern Slavonia and the Krajina). The U.S.
brokered Dayton Peace Accord meant that Bosnia itself was to become, in effect,
two countries the Bosnian Federation nearly surrounded by the Serb-dominated
and ethnically cleansed Republika Srpska. Ties between Yugoslavia and the Republika
Srpska are so close that RS citizens can legally carry Yugoslav passports. The
Yugoslav dinar is the currency, and the police least as of June 1998 when I
left Bosnia) were still wearing Yugoslav uniforms. In spite of what Dayton mandates,
for all practical proposes there is no dif ference between the RS and Yugoslavia.
Many of the troops being used by Milosevic in Kosovo today are mercenaries from
the RS. Dayton left behind one other legacy, and that is Milosevic himself.
By signing the Dayton Agreement, he became an almost indispensable agent of
its success. The US and its allies in the UN and NATO became, however unwilling,
partners with a war criminal.

Kosovo today is exactly at the same point in history that Bosnia was in 1993.
But for Slobodan Milosevic the stakes are even higher. Kosovo, although it is
90 percent populated by ethnic Albanians (who are Muslims), is the seat of the
Serbian Orthodox Church and virtually every Serb is orthodox. It is also the
scene of the greatest battle in Serbian history. In 1389 the Serb Prince Lazar
fought a heroic but unsuccessful battle against the invading Ottoman army. Kosovo
thus became the Serbian Alamo. During the intervening 600 years, however, the
region became dominated by ethnic Albanians. This distinction was codified in
1974 when Marshal Tito granted Kosovo autonomous status within the Yugoslavian
Federation. In 1989 Slobodan Milosevic gave a speech in Kosovo to commemorate
the 600th anniversary of the battle. During his visit (in what is believed to
have been a staged event) Serbs living in Pristina complained of mistreatment
at the hands of the police. Milosevic’s answer was, “No one will touch you again,”.
That event and those words propelled Milosevic to the Yugoslavian Presidency.
Milosevic thus owes his political success to those events. In 1989 he revoked
Kosovo’s autonomous status. Virtually every Kosovar civil servant, from police
officers to teachers, was fired. The Albanian language was forbidden and the
University of Pristina was closed. Protests followed but were ignored. Milosevic
who regards himself as the guardian of Serbian civilization, cannot be seen
by his people to yield to what they believe to be an inferior and foreign presence
in the heart of Serbdom.

Ironically, the NATO led air strikes are helping Milosevic achieve his goal
of Serbian domination of Kosovo. The failure of the peace talks and subsequent
bombing : campaign means that Milosevic no longer needs to maintain even the
pretense of seeking a peaceful solution. Yugoslavia is now in a state of war
against the Kosovars, and the Yugoslavs are winning. The rate of refugees leaving
Kosovo into Albania was estimated on March 29 to be 4,000 per hour. At the border,
the Kosovars are stripped of their passports and national identity cards by
Serb policemen and told never to return. Kosovar men of fighting age are being
summarily executed and entire villages are being laid to waste. Sound familiar?
For Milosevic, the prize is Kosovo and his own political survival. Milosevic
knows that NATO, and in particular the United States, does not have the stomach
for a ground war and he knows that air attacks alone cannot stop him. They didn’t
‘ work in North Vietnam, they didn’t work for the Nazis over London, they didn’t
work for the allies over Germany and they alone didn’t work in Iraq.

None of those campaigns would have been or were successful without the use
of ground troops In Kosovo, Milosevic has them and NATO and the Kosovars do
not As much as I hope for Milosevic’s defeat, arrest, trial and lifetime of
miserable imprisonment, I do not believe that the current NATO air campaign
will succeed. Worse I believe it means defeat and death for the Kosovars. Steven
A. Smith – an inspector with the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office,
was a United Nations International Police Task Force Commander in Stolac, Bosnia
and Herzegovina from

June 1997 to June 1998.

– by STEVEN A. SMITH

SUMMARY:
During the period of March 26-28, 1998 the Stolac IPTF area of responsibility
witnessed one of the most intense periods of criminal vandalism since the program
of Bosniak returns began. Several dwellings were destroyed by explosions and
many more were burned. There were no physical injuries in any of the cases as
the structures directly effected were uninhabited, however, the psychological
trauma to residents living in nearby dwellings must not be overlooked. The incidents
were concurrent with the return of Bosniak displaced persons to areas outside
of the pilot project area in Stolac town, which was in itself concurrent with
a highly visible SFOR military exercise. Their impact on the continuing return
process remains to be seen.

THE CASES:
26.03.98 – 98/STO/034 – Podglavica – (YH356-754) – EXPLOSIONS – IPTF
Stolac was notified by a LP patrol that there had been an explosion in the village
of Podglavica. Upon further investigation it was found that three uninhabited
Bosniak dwellings had been destroyed by two explosions. A further five structures
including two occupied Croat dwellings were damaged. Although damaged and looted
prior to the explosions all dwellings were structurally intact.

26.03.98 – 98/STO/035 – Kucista – (YH350-758) – ARSON – IPTF
Stolac was notified by Spanish SFOR of several fires in the village of Kucista.
Further investigation identified three uninhabited dwellings that had been recently
burned. All three dwellings were Bosniak owned, had been previously vandalized,
looted, and were not inhabitable. Burn patterns in the structures and on surrounding
vegetation indicate the use of an accelerant.

28.03.98 – 98/STO/036 – Pjesevac Greda – (YH356-784) – ARSON – IPTF
Stolac was notified by a LP patrol that there had been an arson fire to a dwelling
in the village of Pjesevac Greda. The fire brigade had been called to this fire
and extinguished it before the building was completely burned. The dwelling
was Bosniak owned, vacant, somewhat vandalized but structurally intact. The
odour of the building suggested the use of an accelerant.

28.03.98 – 98/STO/037 – Todorovici – (YH422-762) – STONING – IPTF
Stolac was notified by a LP patrol that a bus used by Bosniaks for return to
the village of Poplasici was stoned and vandalized as it attempted to turn around
near the black market on the Berkovici road. One suspect yelled at the driver
and damaged the rear-view mirror, and another threw a block of concrete through
a window on the left rear side of the bus. SFOR has since identified two suspects
and their names have been provided to the local police. One is believed to live
in the village of Borojevici near Podglavica.

28.03.98 – 98/STO/039 – Pjesevac Kula – (YH349-762) – ARSON – IPTF
Stolac was informed by Spanish SFOR that there had been an arson fire in the
village of Pjesevae Kula near the village of Kucista. One unoccupied, vandalized,
but structurally sound Bosniak house was damaged by the fire.

28.03.98 – 98/STO/040 – Kukawsa – (TH363-778) – ARSON – IPTF
was informed at the same time as case 98/STO/039 of an arson fire in the village
of Kukawsa in the area of Sveu Nikola. Again, one unoccupied, vandalized, but
structurally sound Bosniak house was damaged by the fire.
STRUCTURES DESTROYED BY EXPLOSION 3
STRUCTURES DAMAGED BY EXPLOSION 5
STRUCTURES DAMAGED BY FIRE 6
VEHICLES DAMAGED BY VANDALISM 1
TOTAL 15
Note that in all of the cases involving structures the villages, if occupied,
were occupied only by Croats.

Source: http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/rferl/1998/98-02-26.rferl.html