One defiant mayor with a dream tries to make a difference

An angry mob broke into Mile Marceta’s mayoral office several months ago, dragged him from the building and beat him to a pulp with wooden staves, ashtrays and bricks. He survived by lolling out his tongue and feigning death until Canadian troops rode to the rescue and evacuated him to hospital. Within weeks Marceta was in a wheelchair and then on crutches, continuing a Quixote campaign which has earned him the hatred of hard-line nationalists and the admiration of some international officials – allowing the pre-war inhabitants of the west Bosnian town of Drvar to go home.

Marceta is an unlikely hero. A stout, greying middle-aged former salesman, he and thousands of fellow Serbs were driven from their childhood home in Drvar by Croatian and Muslim troops pressing the final offensive of the conflict in 1995. But in local elections permitting refugees to cast absentee ballots in their pre-war locations, Marceta was elected mayor of the town in 1997 and immediately began pursuing his dream.

Several thousand Serbs gingerly followed him back to Drvar in the most successful single return of refugees across ethnic lines anywhere in Bosnia. Though they had comprised 97 percent of the town’s population before the war, the region is now dominated by Croat nationalists determined to keep the region ethnically pure. Pursuing a similar cause in Republika Srpska, hard-line officials there were equally reluctant to dilute their own ‘purity’ by allowing fellow Serbs to leave.

Early last year, Croat nationalists decided enough was enough and launched an intimidation campaign – murdering two elderly Serb returnees in their beds, torching dozens of Serb owned houses and even turning their wrath on international officials, attacking several U.N. buildings. It was during this period that Marceta was personally targetted.

Even some international officials consider Marceta too abrasive, too pushy, simply too obsessed with his personal dreams. He is unrepentant. He is highly critical of the outside world: “There is still no security here, no housing. I do not call it the Dayton Peace Agreement. I call it the Dayton Trap.” But he recognizes that he still needs all the help he can get: “We want assistance. We want a cow from you, a chicken, a small fishpond. To help us restart our lives.”

The problem of minority returns remains the single most intractable problem in postwar Bosnia. Marceta recognizes the deep divisions which persist: “Whenever I cross the inter-entity boundary line (the artificial border between Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation) I am not a human any more in the eyes of the Croats. When I go back to Drvar I return to the stone age.”

He adds, “I will fight as long as I can breathe. We Serbs will never flee again.” Marceta is one of only a few individuals in Bosnia who have tried, and have been successful, in making a little difference.

Source: Refugees Magazine issue 114 (1999)