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This is more than bluster. The deputies spend more time in the battle zones than in assembly meetings, and they share the same grim, heedless determination as the men guarding the bicycle path. "The reality on the ground," said Ratko Adzic, the Bosnian Serbs' designated interior minister, "is very different from what the politicians think it is."
There was little doubt that the Serbian leadership badly misjudged the forces they had armed and set loose more than a year ago, and dangerously underestimated the will of the fighters to press on. The faint of heart, even those in political power, will now be ruthlessly cut out of the loop. Ever more convinced that they are the victims of history, the fighters and their political allies are unable to acknowledge that in any weighing of atrocities, the Serbs bear the heaviest load of guilt. On the bicycle path as in the so- called parliament, only the suffering of Serbs is considered relevant.
The trenches around Doboj are filled with green muck and spent cartridges. Last week a brief calm descended on this small stretch of front line for the first time in more than a year. The Serbs basked in the warm spring sun, talked and played countless rounds of a card game called tablici. At this moment, life is only intermittently dangerous. "We have the basics here," says a borac, Serbian for fighter. "We have food, cigarettes, a little money and our tank. It is enough. We can fight alone if we have to. We are not afraid to die."
These men do not understand why the world judges them so harshly. They will have nothing to do with the peace plan others are trying to impose on them. To sign it would be treachery, Serbs destroying Serbs. "We can never accept the plan under any circumstances," says a fighter as he listens to sniper fire rip across the valley. It was the chance to right the wrongs of 600 years of defeat and betrayal that led these men to make war on their neighbors.
Revenge for more recent horrors also inspires them. Many of the Serbs in the First Brigade of the Doboj Regiment defending this ridge were driven from homes in territory now controlled mostly by Muslims. They have come to these trenches as refugees, often after harrowing escapes; they have lost everything and say they will not run any farther. The great majority are peasants who have no skill at politics but a great capacity for hardship when they are certain of their course. They are Serbian true believers. No matter what the politicians order, no matter what the world thinks, they will not yield these trenches, this town.
Ljuba Mikerevic, 34, walks from a bunker built of old cartridge boxes packed with dirt and covered with logs and sod in the middle of the Serb lines to his home every four days. It is about two miles down the steep hill past two military checkpoints, a dozen gutted homes and a file of soldiers walking in the other direction. Mikerevic is lean, with a dark mustache and hair that is turning prematurely gray. His rifle swings easily from his shoulder. At home his wife and two young girls, ages six and three, are waiting in the cramped apartment they were given by an aid organization.