Bosnian refugees return home

US Department of State Dispatch, Sept, 1998

Remarks to returning refugees, Stup, Bosnia.

Thank you Ambassador Kauzlarich. Friar Andelovic, Cardinal Puljic, Friar Vujica, thank you for your warm welcome to the Seminary. President Zubak, President Ganic, Vice President Soljic, elected officials.

[Spoken in Serbo-Croatian]

DRAGI PRIJATELJI, HVALA VAM STO STE MI DOPUSTILI PRIVILEGIJU DA VAS POSJETIM V VASEM DOMU I HVALA VAM ZA VJERU I HRABROST DA SE PONOVNO VRATITE KUCI.

[English translation]

Dear friends: Thank you for allowing me the privilege of visiting you in your home, and thank you for having the faith and courage to come back home again.

[End translation]

People who look at Bosnia from the outside often see it in a detached and abstract way. We make a list of goals and we check them off--a road built here, a meeting held there, an agreement signed somewhere else. We talk about a multiethnic society, a multisyllabic abstraction that cannot possibly capture the richness of the lives people led here.

Before the war, 1,000 people dwelt in Stup, earning a livelihood from industry, business, tourism, and farming. Among them were Croats, an equal number of Bosniaks, and a smaller number of Serbs. They lived and worked together. They raised their children together. They married whom they loved. There were families here with ties to every one of the religious, cultural, and ethnic communities that have long co-existed in Bosnia.

I imagine many saw themselves simply as Sarajevans. When they looked down the street they saw simply neighbors. When they looked up, they saw crosses, minarets, and orthodox church spires, and they knew they were home.

Then the war came, and Stup found itself on the front line between Bosnian Government and Bosnian Serb forces. A community that once welcomed every man and woman became a no-man's land. People were driven out; everyone ended up in the wrong house.

We can still see the ruins over which the armies fought. But today, Stup is on the front line of a different struggle. Assistance from the United States, from the EU, from the UN, and from NGOs, is helping to rebuild a welcoming community here. Houses, power lines, and roads are being fixed. Jobs are being created. People are coming home.

And what we need to remember today is that you are not coming home to invent something new; you are certainly not coming home to lead lives that have been designed for you by outsiders. You are coming to reclaim your lives and to assert your identity. You are coming to take back what you had before.

[Spoken in Serbo-Croatian]

DRAGI PRIJATELJI, ZELIMO DA, NA SVAKI NACIN KOJIJEMOGUCE, IMATE SVE ONO STO STE PRIJE IMALI.

[English translation]

Dear friends: In every way that is possible, we want you to have what you had before.

[End translation]

I do not want to suggest that any of this is easy. I know this is a community of proud, hard-working people who have been forced to live the lives of refugees for all or most of the last 6 years. I have no illusions that you can forget what you have suffered or regain all you have lost. I know you will be living here with the memories of loved ones the war took away. I will not pretend that a house built on rubble can replace the homes where your children and perhaps your parents were born and your memories stored. But it is precisely because what you are doing is hard that I wanted to come here to stand with you and to salute you.

I want to salute you for not letting the war destroy a way of life that belongs to you, for having the courage to build on what was once a battlefield, for having the faith to believe that the future can be made better than the past. And I want to explain why what you are doing is so important to us. For if you can come back here and give this community the identity it once had, despite all you have seen and suffered, then so can all of Sarajevo. And if Sarajevo can become an open city and Canton again, if its people can forgive without forgetting the horrors they have witnessed, then the promise of Dayton can be fulfilled throughout this once-divided nation. And if Bosnia can be united by common interests and aims, if it can face its past and still move forward, then so can any nation struggling to overcome a painful legacy.

Slowly but surely, I believe the people of Bosnia are overcoming the legacy of the war. I have been here many times over the years. Every time I fly over Sarajevo, as I did today, it looks better. Houses that were roofless shells now shelter families. There are cars, trucks, people--life---on the streets.

The signs of progress are certainly more evident today than when I visited here last summer. Then, hardly any refugees were returning home. Most Bosnian leaders were resisting integration. Hardliners did not worry about competition. Many Bosnians had no access to free media. Few indicted war criminals had been arrested. Many people had the impression that the international community was biding its time, settling for the status quo instead of striving to improve it.

The United States pledged then that the only aid we would support for Bosnia would be aid to help people who were helping Dayton to succeed. We also made a long-term commitment to see this process through; we made it clear that our mission would determine our timetable, not the other way around.