Mirsad B., 41

Paroš, Bosnia-Herzegovina

“At that moment he slapped my face several times so I could give them information that I didn’t want to give. I pretended like I didn’t know anything. Although I slept in the woods among them, then, I thought it was… it was better that-that I was killed alone rather than my whole family. My family had six members, four children, and my parents. Aah… in that moment, he faced me to the ground and put a knife against my neck sa...saying: ‘’Tell me you Balija motherfucker, or I will slaughter you!”

Interview originally conducted in BCS. 

So to begin with, tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? What was life like there?

My name is Mirsad B. I grew up in a village named Paroš, in the municipality Prozor. Well, childhood… not the way it usually should be, bearing in mind that most of it was spent in war.   

When did the war start for you? Was there a specific moment when you realized that war had arrived?

Well, I mostly remember the moment when our house burned down. Before that, before our house burned, we had been sleeping in the woods for some 10-15 days because in the nearby village all the houses had been burned.

My grandparents lived in that nearby village. And during the attack on the village, my grandparents were killed. Seven bullets were found in my grandfather and four in my grandmother. And so, after that, that was around April ’94… after that event, until 11th of August, we slept every night in the woods because we couldn’t wait in the house… we couldn’t let ourselves be surprised and to them to find us while we are asleep, to kill us, capture us, or burn us down. 

 Mhm and can you describe the ordinary day during the war?  

During the war, there was hardly ever a typical day…which… the day that other kids go through…it was very hard, very stressful because during one period, I was living in a territory that was controlled by the Croatian forces. And in the period from April ’93 until 8th November ’93, every night I slept in the woods because we couldn’t stay in our home where soldiers could come and capture us. 

Can you share how you managed to survive in the woods when it comes to the food? Were you alone there, or were there also other families? How did it all work? 

During the day, we would c-c-come back home, we would prepare the food to-to spend the night in the woods. While visiting home, we’d…someone would always keep watch on the nearby roads towards the village. We were always careful to make sure that nobody, like someone who would capture, kill or burn us down, came. [Sighs]… And as I said, we spent the night in the woods because it was safer than spending nights at home. 

Bearing in mind I was a kid of 13 or 14 years, I didn’t spend much time thinking about danger. Of course, there were moments when during the night… shooting was coming from all directions, with the “dum-dum’’ of bullets. So, the bullet is shot from one direction, and then it changes its direction, and then it explodes somewhere over our heads.

So we would often move from one place to another, in the middle of the night. And then you can…you can imagine how it feels to wander around, hiding in the woods at night. 

Sounds very hard. I assume you couldn’t go to school at that time? That wasn’t the option?  

No. Going to school wasn’t an option because we were in the zaleđe. In the territory controlled by Croatian forces, so Croatian children went to school, but the Muslim children were afraid to go to school in case they were captured or forced into something. On the other hand, almost all the schools were adapted to be military bases or recruitment points for the Croatian army

Aha. So, let me ask you, before the war, were you friends with Croatian children? Or you noticed some differences even then? 

Of course we were friends. Never… there was never a-a-a-any differences. Furthermore, we, as the children, couldn’t even tell who was Serb, Croat, or Muslim. We,  as children, weren't divided that way.  

Mhm, is there any particular moment you would like to share? That got stuck in your memory? 

  Well, I will tell you about this one moment, and it’s the moment when I got captured. One morning… I think it was July in 1993. As I said, I slept in the woods, in the meantime… like one month before that, my house was set on fire, but on that day I was at my grandma’s house. I told you earlier that my mother’s parents were killed in April 1993. A-a-and bearing in mind that we slept in woods, we would always be early to sleep and to wake up. So, every morning I’d be at my grandma’s house around 6am. A-a-and the morning I was captured, I also arrived around 6 AM at my grandma’s house. Nobody came from the woods yet. So, we all slept in the woods, in tents…improvised tents. The tents we made from wood, branches…Onaj… no one was home, so I sat on the wooden sofa in front of the house.

Then, from behind nearby house, a man in uniform yelled, “Freeze!’’

And I froze. At first, I didn’t know who he was because there were lots of our people, of military age, who were hidden in the woods. They were in between crossing towards free territory to Jablanica or surrendered–which they didn’t want to do. A-a-a he approached, and he had a US military hat, and on his shirt was written ‘’US Army.’’ His face was colored in camouflage, but he didn’t have any mark of any army. [Long pause].

He asked… [sighs]… He asked if there was anyone in the house. I said there wasn’t. He said: “You motherfucking Balija, if there is anyone–it’s over for you’’. And then he pointed riffle at my back a-a-and took me through house to see if there is anyone left. When he realized there was no one in the house, we went out and he said: a-a “Do you love the Army?’’… Bearing in mind that previously he told me ‘’You motherfucking Balija,’’ it became clear to me which army he was referencing…the Croatian forces in question. Then I began giving some poor excuses, I’d say why would I love the Army, I am here at my own house…this and that… I was hoping to get away with it. 

At one point he told me: “You motherfucker, I crossed all the way from Zenica to save you, get you to free territory, just for you to say you don’t love the Army.’’ But for me, that didn’t make sense to make me believe his story, because the fact he pointed the rifle at the thirteen years old boy’s back… it spoke for itself. Then he asked: ‘’Do you love Croats?’’ and I told him I do. Then he asked: ‘’Why so?’’… pa eto, I would say those were my neighbors, I never had any problems with them, I went to school with them. [Sighs]. At one point, another soldier jumped out from the back of the nearby house and he invited us there. We came in front of that house and he asked me: “Where are the men?’’… actually, he meant, “Where are men of military age who are hiding in the woods,” because the goal… the goal of their action was capturing men of military age and taking them to concentration camps. I told them I didn’t know that, that I slept in the woods and I don’t where they were. 

At that moment he slapped my face several times so I could give them information that I didn’t want to give. I pretended like I didn’t know anything. Although I slept in the woods among them, then, I thought it was… it was better that-that I was killed alone rather than my whole family. My family had six members, four children, and my parents. Aah… in that moment, he faced me to the ground and put a knife against my neck sa...saying: ‘’Tell me you Balija motherfucker, or I will slaughter you!’’

And honestly, I was so afraid at that moment, I started crying. But I was determined not to say…onaj… where they were hiding. Because… um… I was stuck with the thought that it is better for-for just me to be the victim rather than have my whole family be the victim of all this… and not to mention all of the other people who were hiding in the woods. 

Then he hit me several more times by foot and he turned off the rifle safety, and he asked me: ‘’Do you the safety is off?’’… A bearing in mind my age…at that time, I was in 7th-grade. I was familiar with such weapon because the territorial defense was organized in a way that almost every household had a rifle, and people knew a lot about the weapons. I knew what the off-safety meant. He repeated…he asked me: “Do you see it is off-safety?’’ I said: “Yes.” He repeated (the rifle): “Do you see it’s off?’’, “Yes’’.  And then he pressed the rifle on my forehead: “Tell me you Balija motherfucker…I will kill you!’’

I kept crying, but I didn’t want to say anything.

I was determined not to say anything. He slapped me a few more times. I didn’t want to say anything. Then, the other guy, who captured me first, to say: “Let him be, motherfucker, can’t you see he is a child, he doesn’t know anything.’’ And so, he stopped, and he walked me deeper towards the village. Then, right there, exactly in front of my house we found several civilians that had already been captured. Among them, my younger brother, who was in fifth grade…and uncle… and grandma, but the rest of my family hadn’t been captured. That’s where Croatian forces were assembled behind nearby houses, because as they captured civilians, they would bring them there. At the moment when I got to the road… so… on the street in front of my house, my neighbor, Đuzel B., was handcuffed to my house’s iron gate.  

At that moment, he was saying [to Croatian soldiers]: “Leave me in peace, I have a heart condition I am a senior.’’…and he really was senior and he really had a heart condition. But at one moment, um, Nikola Marić, aka ‘’Niđo,’’ who was even convicted of war crimes, took [Đuzel’s] handcuffs off and took him some thirty meters away, under an apple tree, took him down…to kill him. But when Đuzel saw the knife, he got him off his back and he started to run and at that moment…a-a-a… Niđo gunned him down.

Of course, we all got scared. 

We were all witnesses, eyewitnesses of that murder. Maybe 10-15 minutes later, they took us all to the north part of the village for interrogation. When they brought us to that house, they placed all of us in one room, and in the other room they did interrogation. They put people who had already been interrogated in a third room. The room was open [sighs]… you could see…whoever got out of the integration room was entirely bloodied from being beaten by the Croatian forces. When my uncle was released… it was nearly impossible to recognize him. Uncle, who was bald… they were hitting him using (pistol) butts… his face and head were covered in blood. He was barely recognizable because of the blood that was all over his head and face.

Then, one of those soldiers came and asked, from the doorway, “Where are those two youngsters whose father is still hiding?’’ 

I knew right away that it referred to me and my brother, but I didn’t know who told them our parents were hiding…in the woods. I was hiding behind the door, thinking he (my brother) would be in a better position, bearing in mind that he was smaller… shorter and a few years younger. As I already said, at that moment, he was in the fifth grade. So, he was around eleven years old. And… a-a…he responded, they took him out. Later I found out, he told me, that they first offered him konzerva…as they thought he was so young they could bribe him with konzerva to say where our men of military age are, or where our parents are. When he didn’t want to say it, they offered him Croatian currency to give them information. But he didn't want to share information even then. They slapped him a few times, but that didn’t work out either. Then they sent him back into the room. When he came back inside, I noticed his face was wet… and he was crying. I assumed they were…they were beating him.

A-a-after they had questioned all the people…they said: “We are heading to Skrobučani.” A nearby village…mixed, Croatian and Muslim. “We will leave the  two oldest women…’’ and those were my grandma, my father’s mother, and my neighbor “…to tell the people, who are hiding in the woods, to surrender.” Otherwise, they will kill the rest of us who were captured. 

And that was the case. They left those two women, the oldest ones, and we were heading towards the nearby village Skrobučani [sighs], by foot. Halfway, halfway there…they made us carry their ammunition. I… I carried rifles, grenades, and my brother carried their body armor. Of course, they also harassed us. At one point, we were crossing a barbed-wire fence, and the wire ripped one soldier’s uniform. He pointed his rifle to kill all of us. But the other soldier hit his rifle and it shot up in the air. Then they started arguing, they were cursing, “It is one thing to kill them, but you will kill the rest of us as well …can’t you see we are mixed now?!’’

We continued further towards the village. It was a half-hour walk from one village to another. When we arrived in Srobučani, we found other soldiers who captured other civilians from that village. And [sighs]...we all gathered in front of the house that belonged to some Muslim. They forced the owner of that house to bring out all the food she had… for the people to eat. We had a bit of a meal there and then they took us to-to the mosque. And they locked us all there. Before we entered the mosque, they’ve were already there… they destroyed all marks of Islam there, took out the Muslim flag, and forced us all in there. Afterward, they separated men of military age, who they…who they [sighs] were supposed to put in concentration camps and they took them (there). They left the women and children with the message not to leave the mosque, and a-a-a allegedly, someone would come and pick us up, and to not even try escaping because we are all under surveillance. 

As soon as the night fell, I wanted to escape. But as I was the oldest male there in a mosque, nobody wanted to run away with me. And I didn’t dare to run in the dark all alone, bearing in mind my age…I was very young. 

A-a that night, we spent the night at the mosque. We covered ourselves with the carpets, as there wasn’t anything else that we could use [as blankets]. And the day they took away those civilians, the men of military age a-a-a… from the mosque… around seven or eight villages were set on fire. There was a lot of shooting. It was horrible. 

The next morning morning, two neighbors from that village, Croats, came in and they told us we were free. Of course, me and my brother started running back home right away to find our father and mother and brother and sister [sighs]. When we got there, we saw several people were killed… and as I said previously, I witnessed the execution of one of those neighbors. But, on that day, four civilians were killed. A-and when we arrived there, to my village, we found those dead civilians. They were just covered in blankets. 

We went… to the woods next to the village, and called… called for our parents, looking for them in the places where we were previously hidden. It took us around half an hour to hear or see anyone, just to hear our father in one moment shouting across the river: “Go to Gorica, mom is in Gorica.”A-of course, me and my brother went to Gorica and we found civilians that weren’t captured. They were hosted in houses that belonged to Muslim folk. Gorica is a mixed village, with Croats and Muslims, living together. We were there for a couple of days… we were in those houses… and we slept there as well. In a way, it was safer, bearing in mind those were the people we grew up with, who we knew, and they could protect us from soldiers. 

For several nights we slept there. During the day, we would go back to our village under the excuse that we have to feed the cattle. Basically, we carried food to the village and would leave it in certain places and… so that the men of military age could take food in order to survive in the woods. One morning, a-a-at five o’clock in the morning, in this house in Gorica, my father arrived and, onaj, he said there were ten soldiers from Jablanica, and he came to inform rest of the group, that we could go with them to Jablanica, by crossing the frontline. Of course… not many people dared to go because it was too risky crossing frontlines, especially because you would need to walk for two days. A-a-a around ten o’clock… my father went  back to the woods and he told my mother where we would meet, if anyone was interested in going to Jablanica. And around 10 o’clock, we went back to our village under the excuse that we were going to feed the cattle… and-and actually, we just went straight ahead to meet my father and brother in the woods. None of the other civilians dared to go with us besides my grandmother and aunt. We met at the nearby hill, around three hours after noon. Bearing in mind that we knew the territory, we knew the exact location where we would meet with those soldiers to take us to Jablanica. 

When we arrived at that camp where our civilians were hiding… where the soldiers from Jablanica were supposed to wait for us…we found everything to be burned... were so afraid because we thought they were exposed and captured. [Sighs]. Wandering around, we heard someone, around 500m above us. And then we saw that they actually moved up a bit and we found them there with other civilians from another nearby village. It turns out that those soldiers set the fire in the woods to cook lamb at eat well, because they came all the way from Jablanica and they were hungry, bearing in mind that it was 1993, a year when a lot of people were hungry. 

After we ate [sighs], around six o’clock in the evening, we headed up the hill towards Jablanica. The day after, at 4 o’clock, we got -we got to-to our frontline a-a-above Jablanica, that was controlled by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But, it would have been difficult to pass even in the best of times. Firstly because… because of the logistics of passing the frontlines. We saw Croatian soldiers on the front lines, we were passing through the minefields. For example, while we were passing those minefields, we saw… we saw two goats who were already killed in those minefields. We went over inaccessible terrain.

So, the trip itself, towards-towards free territory was difficult…but, when we got to free territory, when we got down to Jablanica, we slept on the floor of a cinema. We didn’t have anything else to cover ourselves with. 

Do you have any other questions? 

When was the moment the war ended for you? When did you realize that everything is over?   

When the Dayton agreement was signed. Then.

Was there anyone who helped you during the war? 

While we were still in the territory controlled by the Croatian Defense Council in Prozor, there was a neighbor from the nearby village. My father helped his father, actually, before the war. It was a Croatian family, and he had many children, so they didn’t really have much. So he was often forced to ask my father for help, financially, and materially. Because, as I already said, the man had five or six children, but my father would always find a way to help him out, then, before the war.

So one of his sons would come into the woods carrying konzerva and cigarettes to my father and he would always say: “Don’t ever surrender!’’ 

 I have one more… several more questions [laughter]. Did you notice some change in the culture and tradition of the people before and after the war? Can you say specifically about your region and generally in Bosnia?  

Well, what I could say is… ha-a and basically it is like that in general, people… people e-e-how to say, in some heavy situations, when they are in danger, they tend to become more God-fearing. During the war, people were in danger and they became God-fearing, they became more religious… I guess…just for that trend to continue after the war. In a way, the conclusion I could make, in all of this, both for better and for the worse, a decent man is a believer, because there is no such belief that promotes evil. 

Is there anything you would like to say to future generations when it comes to war? And to people outside the Balkans? 

What can I say?! War is the greatest evil. Whoever has an opportunity to avoid it, I would advise them to do so. An individual, can hardly impact… impact the specific events which lead, as an individual, but definitely, war is the greatest evil. 

 And the last question, this organization, for whom you gave the interview, is named BUREK Initiative… So do you have any opinion or story to share about burek? Loved by everyone in the Balkans? [Giggles].

What to say when it comes to food!?... That is an individual thing. I would probably prefer something else [laughs]. 

[Laughter] Well thank you, this would be the end of the interview. Thank you for your time.

… You’re welcome, the pleasure is mine.