I Am Beautiful: A Celebration of Women in Their Own Words

IN THE MEANTIME, SHE IS HELPINGto counsel elderly widows at aprogram run by the U.S.-basedInternational Rescue Committee. "Itry to give these women hope, evenif it is false," she says gently, "becausethat is what they want to hear.Everyone needs hope." Senada'ssalary is paid in food. During thewar, Bosnians who were fortunateenough to be employed usuallyworked for free or for food parcels.Today, an estimated 60-80 percent ofcity-dwellers are currently unemployed;in rural areas, the situationis worse.Psychological counseling is rarely available now becauseinternational bodies, such as the United Nations andUSAID, that fund the humanitarian relief agencies have decidedthat it is no longer necessary in Bosnia. Instead, "reconstructionand reconciliation" are the current bywords ofthe international donor community. There are many criticsof this decision."The war didn't end with the Dayton Accord, not in ourheads. It isn't over just because you say it is over. It is afragile peace, as fragile as the most delicate porcelain," saysProfessor Rado Boric, who used to teach languages (she isfluent in eleven) at Zagreb University. When the war brokeout Boric, a former Fulbright scholar at Indiana University,stopped teaching to help run an indigenous humanitarianorganization, "Women for Women War Victims.""There is tremendous war trauma," she says. "People arefacing reality for the first time. Mass graves are only nowbeing excavated, people remain missing, refugees want toreturn home but can't. The men are either dead or depressed,suffering from post-traumatic stress. Suicide is up,so is alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic abuse." So too isdivorce, hi Sarajevo alone, the rate is reportedly eight timeshigher than it was before the war. "Everybody has armsnow, so men are threatening women with weapons broughtfrom the battlefield," says Professor Boric. "I know of acase just recently when a woman was locked in the bathroomby her husband, who placed hand-grenades outsidethe door, telling her she could not leave. He threatened todetonate them if she came out."By some estimates, it will take decades for Bosnia's psychicwounds to heal. Yet despite this, the UN and USAID aretelling NGOs (non-governmental organizations) not to applyfor funding for psycho-social programs, says Boric. "Theyinform us, 'There is no longer any need for counseling ofwomen. We don't fund it anymore.' As if saying it makes theproblems go away. It's become almost a joke, except that itisn't. Such decisions are clearly made in a vacuum."Foreign 'experts' come here as consultants to study theproblem. Based on those brief visits, they decide the fashionof the day will now be X or Y. Right now, it is reconstructionand reconciliation. Recently, an official fromUNHCR (the United Nations High Commission forRefugees) admitted to me that they were 'inventing' whatthe next phase for funding would be, and that this iswrong. Why don't they ask us what we need, instead ofimposing on us what they think we need?"One of Bosnia's resources is its large numberof highly educated women. But more need toassert their rights: Last October, only onewoman was elected to parliament.Left, Halima Hadzijamakovk, head of Sarajevo'slargest municipality. Below, parliamentarianMediha Filipovic, M.D.Boric points out that becauseof such attitudesduring the war, therefugees received, for example,vast quantities oftampons, for a culture thatdoes not use them. "Wehad warehouses full ofthem and no sanitary napkins,which women reallyneeded. But then they alsosent us semen to inseminatecows when hospitalsfor humans had no antibiotics."As one Bosnianpolitician put it, "When we needed a doctor, you sent us apriest. Now that the war has ended, and we need a priest,you send us a doctor." (A dramatic example of this is theU.S. refusing to supply Bosnia with arms during the war,but now that the fighting is over, sending them $400 millionof weapons and the specialists to teach the Bosnianmilitary how to use them.)Maurice Cronly, who heads the British Charities AidFoundation, concurs with Boric. "UNHCR brings in consultants,who get paid $300 a day, to learn what Bosnianscould teach them. There are many highly educated menand women in the former Yugoslavia. This is not an underdevelopedAfrican nation." The former Yugoslavia is, ofcourse, in the heart of Europe; Sarajevo is as close to Rome,as the crow flies, as Milan is. Education was stressed underthe socialist system for both sexes, and the country has proportionatelymore college graduates and postgraduatesthan many European countries, hi fact, by that same ratio,there are more technically qualified women engineers, architects,etc. in Bosnia, than there are in the U.S."One of our major resources is the very high level of educationhere," says Halima Hadzijamakovic, a 41-year-oldwoman economist who was elected the president of Sarajevo'slargest municipality the day before we met. "RebuildingBosnia will fall to women because so many lost theirhusbands. Fortunately, we have strong, very talentedwomen. But under socialism, we also had a cradle-to-gravementality. We now have to change that. We also need to developa free market economy to compete in the world."IF BOSNIA IS TO SURVIVE IN THIS POST-WAR ERA IT HAS SEVeralkey transitions to make: from war to peace, communismto democracy, and planned economy to a freemarketsystem. The Dayton Accord is far from ideal, callingas it does for a triumvirate of Presidents to head the country,one from each ethnic group—Muslim, Croat, Serb. Ithas been likened to insisting that Clinton, Dole and Perotsit together in the Oval Office and simultaneously leadSpring 1997 • O N THE ISSUES 31