ZEPCE, BOSNIA -- No soldiers cling to their weapons more tightly than Bosnia's ill-equipped fighters. So when Croatian troops began strapping cigarette packs to grenades and launching them -- with pins intact -- as gifts to bewildered Muslims, it became clear the peace in central Bosnia was real. "It's amazing," said a British soldier operating a new United Nations checkpoint between the two sides. "Two weeks ago these people were blowing one another's heads off. Now they are swapping cigarettes and chocolate." Indeed, the only development more stunning than the quiet is the speed with which it enveloped nearly 200 miles of confrontation lines. When the Croatian-Muslim cease-fire accord went into effect, the fighting stopped abruptly and almost completely.
People peered around sniper screens and waved at friends they had not seen since April. "When other cease-fires were signed," recalled Senala, a 20-year old refugee from Mostar, "we knew we'd be going back to our basements again soon because they meant more war." But as Croatian and Muslim soldiers filed down from the mountains, this truce generated trust. "I can't explain it," said Davor Markovic, a Croatian soldier who stormed up to a checkpoint in Stari Vitez and demanded to speak with his Muslim wife on the other side. "I can just tell this cease-fire is different." Roofs are now being retiled, sniper alleys are sporting kids' bicycles, and civilians are rediscovering streets and attics long off-limits. Instead of chopping wood for warmth, men are logging timber for mending houses and, appropriately, fences.
Foes then, friends now. U.N. troops boosted local confidence by setting up checkpoints that act as buffers and make front lines permeable for aid convoys and civilians headed home. Manned by Croats and Muslims, each checkpoint serves as a symbol of reconciliation. Soldiers who had glimpsed one another only through rifle sights now sip slivovitz together. They are under strict orders not to talk about the war, and remarkably they obey. "We were never enemies," explained Alojz Matijavic, a Croatian guard crouched beside his new Muslim friend. "Our leaders told us to fight. Now they are telling us to stop."
But the incompleteness of the amity is lost on no one. While the Bosnian Serbs have backed off Sarajevo, they still hold 70 percent of Bosnia and on active days pummel the Muslim enclave of Maglaj with four shells a minute. And as demilitarization progresses, the Muslims are pointing their heavy weapons away from Croats and toward Serbs. Some Muslims and Croats whisper about a renewed military alliance and even a consolidated force, an arrangement that, given the brutality of the Croat-Muslim war, may be years away. But, surrounded by hostile Serb forces on all sides, it is hardly an accident that the Croats are sending their future federation partners cigarettes on unprimed -- but not deactivated -- grenades.
