TALLYING THE HATE

By MASSIMO CALABRESI/DOBOJ

The last time Esad tried to visit his old house in the northern Bosnian city of Doboj, the leading Serb candidate for city council there punched out two of his teeth. Esad had crossed the former front line into Serb territory with several hundred other Muslim refugees from Doboj in April hoping he would be allowed to return home. After all, the war had ended four months earlier. Instead, he was met by several thousand angry Serbs wielding pitchforks and throwing rocks. Among them was the prospective Serb city councilman, Predrag Kujundzic, 35, a massive, one-time bouncer responsible for the "ethnic cleansing" of several Muslim villages in the area in 1992. After flattening Esad with his thick fist, Kujundzic left him to other Serbs who pummeled him with clubs and stones until, bleeding and immobile, he was thrown back into Muslim territory.

This Saturday, as prescribed nine months ago by the Dayton peace accords, Bosnians are to go to the polls in national elections. But many cannot even vote in their hometowns, including Esad, who asked that his real name not be used. "There's no way I'll go to vote in Doboj," says the gaunt, soft-spoken former factory worker, sitting in the tiny room he shares with his wife and two daughters in Muslim-held territory south of the city, "I'm still too shocked from the beating I got the last time I tried to cross." Wherever they vote, Bosnians are expected to vote along rigidly ethnic lines. Every indication is that these elections--intended as the means to reunify the country by creating a three-member presidency and a bicameral parliament--will instead solidify and ratify the divisions.

"It is as if we allowed the Nazi Party to compete in postwar elections in Germany and then permitted the SS to handle internal security," Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees told the New York Times. In their areas of dominance, all three sides have bulldozed their own voters to toe the line and other voters to stay away. Kujundzic and other Bosnian Serb leaders remain determined to gain independence for the territory they seized at the beginning of the war. The two most important preconditions for free and fair elections laid out in the peace agreement--freedom of movement and the return of refugees--have not been met. Almost no Muslims or Croats live in the Republika Srpska, and discrimination against Serbs is widespread in the federation put together by Muslims and Croats, who themselves live in ethnic enclaves.

Why are elections being held under such conditions? Mostly because Bill Clinton wants them. Postponement "would have been an acknowledgment that the [U.S.] troops would have to stay in Bosnia a long time," says Morton Abramowitz, head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Clinton guaranteed Congress that U.S. troops, operating under the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR), would remain in Bosnia for one year. Americans are not particularly attentive to the complexities of foreign affairs, but voters would certainly notice if the timing of withdrawal unraveled. And it would hand Bob Dole and the Republicans a "quagmire" stick to whack Clinton with.

So no matter how flawed, the elections must go ahead. While the Serbs have been the major culprits in flouting the Dayton guarantees of freedom of movement and return of refugees, Croats and Muslims joined in as well. The Croats blocked the return of refugees to territory they hold in the southwest of the country, and the Muslims prevented Serbs from coming back to their homes in the suburbs of the once proudly multi-ethnic capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. All three groups have actively trampled other preconditions for fair elections as well: blocking freedom of association and freedom of expression. Forty miles east of Doboj, in Tuzla, for example, the ruling Muslim Party of Democratic Action (S.D.A.) has disrupted opposition rallies and oppressed non-S.D.A. members with brazen disregard for the Dayton agreement. Until last month, Merdzana Fisca, a Bosnian Muslim belonging to an anti-S.D.A. party, was director of a Tuzla detergent factory that survived the war in mint condition under her leadership. One day she arrived at work to find her office locked with all her personal belongings inside; she had been fired--illegally--by S.D.A.-appointed directors above her.

Such behavior by the ruling parties, combined with the grass-roots nationalism stirred by years of brutal fighting, has left it all but certain that the very people who perpetrated the war will gain recognition as its postwar rulers. Add to that the absolute control of the media on each of the three sides and victory for the micronationalists seems inevitable. "We're under a blockade," says a Socialist party Serb opposition candidate, Zivko Radisic. "In the state media, you won't find a single word about us except to call us traitors and communists."

The tripartite presidency, with one position per ethnic group, is unlikely to lead to a truly unified Bosnia. Just the opposite, says the front-running Serb candidate for the joint presidency, Momcilo Krajisnik. "If the Muslims try to press for a stronger [central government for] Bosnia and Herzegovina, that could lead to collapse," he threatens. Dismissing any talk of reintegration, he adds, "Bosnia is only a thin roof under which it has two, completely sovereign entities." Krajisnik even carries his vision for division to the bicameral parliament's architecture. He has suggested constructing a building on the former confrontation line with two entrances, one for the Serbs coming from their side, and one for Muslims and Croats from the other.

For the time being, NATO and IFOR have more immediate concerns, however. On election day as many as 300,000 refugees could try to cross into the towns where they used to live. That promises great volatility and places IFOR in a novel position: acting to support the free movement of peoples. The force has often stood by as Serb thugs, for example, beat up Muslim refugees trying to return home. Such decisions not to intervene came from the highest levels. "The defining moment of the post-Dayton process was the flat refusal of NATO to do anything other than defend itself and enforce the military separation line," says a former U.S. diplomat. "NATO had this enormous amount of force on the ground, facing a group of bullies who respected NATO but nothing else. The reason for the military hesitation is Vietnam. The commanders were afraid of casualties."

Despite the miserable conditions for balloting, the U.S. asserts it is better to have a sham vote than no vote at all. "There are two ways to approach the elections," says Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, John Kornblum. "You can approach them idealistically, as an exercise in pure democracy. Or you can view them as a building block in a flawed but so far very successful peace process." Some observers are less optimistic. Says Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the Dayton accords: "Suppose a reasonably free and fair election chooses people who are pledged to separatism, when the Dayton accords call for a single country? These people--or at least their leaders--just don't want to live together."

For the inhabitants of Bosnia, the Dayton process is fundamentally flawed and a cause for dejection. "The elections won't change anything. The parties in power will win again," says Biljana, a Serb living in Doboj. The Muslim wife of Esad, Kujundzic's victim, also sees little gain from this Saturday's exercise. "For four years we have begged for shelter and dug up other people's potatoes. We want to go home," says Asmira, 36. "If we can't, we might as well go back to war."

--With reporting by Dean Fischer/Washington and Alexandra Stiglmayer/Sarajevo

With reporting by DEAN FISCHER/WASHINGTON AND ALEXANDRA STIGLMAYER/SARAJEVO