Bosnian refugees returning home

DZEVAR, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- It is freezing outside, but it warms Rade Kragulj's heart just to be able to fix the leaky roof on the house he left behind during Bosnia's war.

At 62, after six years as a refugee, he is finally home, even if he is a Serb and his home is in territory now under Muslim control.

With the return home of Kragulj and thousands of other Bosnian Serbs, U.N. officials feel they have turned a corner in efforts to undo the human tragedy of a three-and-a-half-year war that uprooted 1.8 million people.

"Finally this year, we're seeing real results for all of our work since 1996," Aida Feraget, the U.N. refugee agency's Bosnia spokeswoman, told The Associated Press.

Persuading Serbs, Muslims and Croats to return to the homes they abandoned during the war remains Bosnia's biggest challenge.

EXTRA INFORMATION In-Depth: Yugoslavia in transition

Many feel they can never live together again because of the ethnic hatred stirred up in a war that killed at least 200,000 people.

Bosnia is now under international administration, carved up into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Bosnian-Serb republic.

In some parts, nationalist politicians have obstructed the repatriation process with complicated bureaucracy. People who dared to return to territory no longer under their ethnic group's control have sometimes met a violent reception.

But in the first nine months 2001, these so-called minority returns were up by 65 percent to 56,683, according to the United Nations.

That is only about nine percent of those waiting to go home, but still, it's a "returnee boom," Feraget said.

The main reasons: New laws require squatters to give up homes that are not theirs; obstructive local officials are being removed, nd U.N. police and NATO troops are visiting returnees to make sure they feel safe.

These steps, along with an overall decline in violence and the simple passage of time, have made displaced Bosnians feel more secure, Feraget said.

The Kragulj family came back from 20 miles away to find that their house in Dzevar, 110 miles northwest of Sarajevo, had been shelled during the 1992-95 war, then blown up by vengeful Muslims.

"Friends gave us a pig and a few hens, and that's all we have," Kragulj told AP. Kragulj and his wife, Dusanka, barely get by on a pension worth $45 a month.

Although their town is now Muslim-controlled, their neighbours are friendly Serbs and Croats, also newly returned, and Kragulj says he will never move again.

"They looked sick all the time for six years when they were refugees," said the couple's 25-year-old son, Nenad. "As soon as they came back to their ruins, my parents suddenly looked alive again.

"There's no place like home."

Another returnee, Petar Rajlic, lives alone in a hovel but has laid the foundation for a new house where the old one stood.

"I don't have money to finish it and to bring my wife and daughter back," Rajlic, 68, told AP.

"Unfortunately, we are coming back on our own, without any help. But our only future is here, back on our own property."

U.N. figures show that of the 1.8 million who were uprooted in the war, about 785,000 have returned to their pre-war homes.

About 380,000 are abroad, leaving about 635,000 people in Bosnia who are living in someone else's house and waiting to return to their own rightful homes. About half are Serbs, the United Nations says.

Bosnians say more than 50,000 houses and apartments are needed to house returnees. But Slobodan Nagradic, a government minister for refugees, said the state does not have the cash and no longer can depend on donors.

"Foreign donations are now going to Kosovo, Macedonia and elsewhere," he told AP.

While most of the returnees are Serbs, the Bosnian Serb Republic is criticized for doing little to help Muslims and Croats return to their homes.

The biggest hurdle is simply getting squatters to move out.

Feraget, the U.N. refugees spokeswoman, said that if, for instance, the 24,000 Croatian Serbs in the republic would go back to Croatia, their homes could be reclaimed by the Muslims and Croats who own them.

"Then ... everyone would be back in their original property," she said. "We would finally solve this refugee problem."