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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1996)
- - • m • * ~ • ■ m rr • • « v * M * am n i a^^m “Let us live for love. Let us stop the war. ” - Graffiti on the wall In a Bosnian apartment elevator .. ‘V - . * * : - . f v . Far right: Mehmed Atic said a pair of “lucky” uniform pants kept him alive on the front lines near Tuzla. Right: Adnan Pejcinovic says his future is Bosnia’s future. He is standing in front of a memorial for 81 people killed in a single-shell attack. 30115 Continued from Page 1 But the two are lifelong friends. They have been friends since primary school. The civil war in the former Yugoslavia has tom them apart and brought them back together. And it has sent them down two very different paths. They will be part of the first generation of Bosnians out of college to enter the work force, to raise families, to shape the future of a country clinging to a fragile peace. They are two sons of Tuzla. Learning to live Mehmed Atic has many pictures of old friends. Pictures from trips with his friends to the Adriatic Sea when he was still in high school. Pictures of parties during the summer after he graduated. Pictures of old friends he has not seen in many years. Atic also has pictures of friends from when he was a conscript in Yugoslavia’s People’s Army in 1991. Young men were required to serve one year in the army, and Atic was one of the last groups to serve before civil war broke out. Some of his soldier friends are Muslims, some are Croatian and some are Serbs. Sitting in the flat he shares with his parents in this northwestern Bosnian city of 160,000 people, Atic is reluctant to elaborate on the pictures. He tells who the people are, where they were and what they were doing at the time. And then, almost as if he didn’t want to say it out loud, he says whether or not the friend in the picture is still alive. Most of them are not. The others, he does not know. , - • • •* _ * _ j'% m * fw * • . • Atic is not proud of his service.in the army, known here as the JNA. He has hidden his uniforms and thrown away many of his medals. He was involved in one of the first conflicts of the collapse of Yugoslavia, auuiuucu in vrnniKa, a smau ciiy in Movenia. Slovenia was one of the first republics to secede from Yugoslavia, and rebels sur rounded the camp where Atic was stationed. After a 13-day siege, with little food and water, the JNA soldiers were freed from the camp and required to leave Slovenia. There were no casualties. Atic went home to Tuzla after his year in the JNA to a welcome that only further jaded him. “When 1 came home, I was a hero — I was in war,” he said, lighting his second cigarette in almost 10 minutes. “But that was for kids.” After his return in August 1991, he started college as an electronics major. His studies lasted only until April 1992. Fighting had started in Bosnia between the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslims, who repre sented the majority in Bosnia. Atic joined the Bosnian Muslim army to defend his home. He spent the first year in a factory making grenade launchers. “We had to improvise,” Atic said of the makeshift factory. “We took the original from the BiH Army and went piece by piece.” The factory was the beginning of the military industry in Bosnia, which is rumored to still exist. Atic said everyone in Tuzla knew about the factory that sat under the noses of international observers. Atic refused to say where the factory, illegal under the Dayton Peace Accords, was located. After his year in the factory, Atic was sent to the front lines. He was stationed at Majevica, a hilltop near Tuzla that the BiH used as a defensive position. Lighting yet a third cigarette, Atic said he didn’t have any stories from battles in the war. Pulling out a pair of frayed camouflage pants—his “lucky” pants he said kept him alive — he sighed and said he was in two battles. Battles over the hill were at times vicious. Atic said the Serbs shelled and assaulted the hill for 20 days straight, but were repelled by the Muslims. Driving the Serbs back toward the Sava % River, Atic said, the BiH was successful in the fall. When winter hit, the Muslims were unprepared. After a few seconds of silence, he puts out his cigarette. Atic spent three days in a foxhole, waiting for the shelling to stop, nothing but a frozen jacket to keep him warm. An international arms embargo choked off the number of weapons available to the Muslims. Many times, Atic did not have a weapon on the front lines and could only help his own troops. “I had to bring the wounded,” Atic said, lighting yet another cigarette. When a Muslim fell on the front lines, Atic had to carry him to a checkpoint. The wounded then would be moved to another checkpoint, and then another and another. At times, it would take four hours before a wounded Muslim could see a medic. “That’s very cold,” Atic said, staring into his ashtray, which was quickly filling with ash. Trying to pass off the importance of what he had done, Atic scoffed at his own words. “That is an ordinary story,” he said. “Nothing special.” One month before the Dayton Peace Accords were signed in December, the BiH let its student soldiers go back to their studies. That transition from soldier to student has been hard, Atic said. For one, professors have been fleeing Bosnia en masse since the start of the war. Where there were 40 professors in Atic’s college before the war, there are now 15. And the materials are old. “We have 49-year-old information on some material,” he said. “In Sweden, they learn maybe 6-year-old material. “They (the professors and students) don’t have the literature to know what is going on in the world. That is a mistake of the system.” And the memories of war have not made studying any easier. “My mind has changed,” he said, his sad eyes looking into the living room table. “I can’t forget Si that I have lived. But I have learned to live with that. mere is one comer of my brain for that. The rest is for normal life.” In the puzzle Adnan Pejcinovic, known to his friends as Ardo, never has been one to keep quiet. An independent student newspaper editor before the war, Pejcinovic has had time to hone his opinions. He has had war to make them powerful. In broken English, using a translator to help him only with a few words, Pejcinovic used his words and his hands to drive home his points. He spent a year in the JNA, the same time as Atic, and he spent a year in the BiH headquarters division. But for two hours in a western-style night club in the basement of the Hotel Tuzla — the only club open past the city curfew of 11 p.m. — Pejcinovic avoided talking about his military experience, offering instead a history lesson and a political speech over the din of a band playing American songs in Bosnian. While he worked in headquarters, Pejcinovic tried to study at the university. But learning was hard when he would walk to class and pass by a dead body on the street, he said. “I was ashamed that I learn while some body die from shell,” he said. “There is no matter to me if it was very hard for me to study,” he said. “It is more important for my people and my country.” Pejcinovic quit his studies to focus on the defense of Bosnia, and he told everyone they should do the same. “Everyone who would have helped in any way, should help in the defense,” he said, taking a sip of his tea. It was Ramadan, and no Muslim is allowed to drink alcohol. That didn’t stop several BiH soldiers, still dressed in their camouflage, obviously drunk and dancing in the small club. Looking across the dance floor and laughing, Pejcinovic continued his sermon. “It is better now... than during the war,” he said to no one in particular.