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Shy, thoughtful and quiet, Mikerevic once worked as an engineer in a steel mill. He had what he calls a good life in the central Bosnian city of Zenica, before he was forced to flee in March of last year. He had already lost his job at the local steelworks when he was warned that the Muslims were coming for him and he should get out quickly. At 2:30 one morning he awakened his wife and daughters and told them they were taking a trip. They took no clothes, no toys, no mementos, nothing that would make the Muslims suspect they were fleeing. They walked for several days through the woods until they reached a Croat area, where they were given food, water and directions to avoid Muslim soldiers. "It took 21 days to reach Doboj," he says, a distance of just over 50 miles.
"We had everything in Zenica, and now we have nothing," Mikerevic says, seated in his family's small two-room apartment. It once belonged to Muslims, but Mikerevic does not want to know what happened to them. In the narrow living room filled by a sofa and a crib, an icon of the Virgin Mary now presides, next to a photo of an uncle who is with the military but hasn't been heard from in a year. Mikerevic rests his rifle in the crib next to the doll his wife found on the street.
The flat is on a steep hill overlooking the city. Every third or fourth house bears the mark of a night of ethnic cleansing that came last year, when the mosque that stood next to the 14th century Turkish citadel was reduced to rubble and about 10,000 Muslims were driven away or killed. The entire neighborhood has been repopulated with Serbs from Zenica.
All of them have tales of pain and loss as grievous as any Muslim's, they say, but no one cares about their suffering. "The West says we are aggressors. We are just defending ourselves," says Mikerevic. He feels he has no choice but to stand and fight: he will not leave his home again. "This is a struggle for survival," he says. "Here is where the destiny of my people will be decided. To leave here means the world wants to exterminate us."
This is no regular army, with an orderly command and a habit of obedience. All but one or two of the top officers are professionals from the old Yugoslav People's Army, but the ranks are filled by farmers, laborers and shopkeepers fighting for their homes. Many live no more than a few minutes' walk from the front lines. They will not be persuaded to give up these homes and move again.
There is no unified command: the Serb army is more a loose federation of fighting units, each with its own agenda and objectives. The units often decide tactics on their own and rely on their own stockpiles of food and ammunition. Field officers operate with a great deal of independence from the political leadership and think little of overriding the high command's orders when they are inclined to do so. Many soldiers have the same attitude toward their officers as the officers do toward the politicians. A frontline colonel admitted he commands only as long as the men listen to him. "I am willing to listen," says a fighter, "but I decide in the end."