Bosnian Escape Route Also A Walk Of Terror

VLASIC MOUNTAIN, Bosnia-Herzegovina - The narrow road carved out of the mountainside is strewn with suitcases, toys and clothing piled several feet high, the remnants of a nation in flight. Corpses often litter the ravine below.

There is no guardrail for most of the cliffside path - indeed, no protection of any kind. Down this treacherous serpentine, the Serb military has herded about 40,000 Muslim and Croat civilians over the past four months, chasing them into the still-free portions of central Bosnia.

Every 30 feet or so along the two-mile gantlet, uniformed Serb soldiers cluster in groups of five or six, fire their submachine guns into the air and brandish knives as they rob and rape the expellees, according to witnesses. In the melees, usually in darkness, the men, women and children often abandon everything, even their identity papers.

"They robbed the people, they took their gold, their money, their jewelry, everything of value. They stripped the clothes off the men. I was naked as a newborn baby," said "Skija," 36, who made it down the mountain on Oct. 17.

Skija, who asked that only his nickname be used, said he witnessed Serb guards murder two men and then toss them into the ravine. Local authorities in nearby Travnik said at least 40 refugees had been killed in this way. Doctors at Travnik's hospital confirmed the deaths and said they had also admitted a man with severe knife wounds. A woman gave birth in the no man's land during the Oct. 17 convoy.

NO OTHER WAY OUT

Muslims and Croats fleeing "ethnic cleansing" in northern Bosnia describe the trek down Vlasic Mountain as the terror to end all terrors, yet they believe it also represents their last hope for survival. Since Bosnia's immediate neighbor, Croatia, closed its borders because other countries have refused to take in more refugees, it has been the sole path of escape.

There are many reports of mass graves north of Vlasic Mountain, where buses full of military-age men have been diverted and the passengers reportedly slaughtered.

"The people causing problems on the road were beyond anyone's control," said Beat Schweitzer, the chief Red Cross delegate in Banja Luka, who accompanied the Oct. 17 convoy to Travnik - the first organized by the International Red Cross.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic could not be reached for comment, but in the past he has denied all allegations of massacres, rape or even detention of Muslim and Croat civilians by Serb forces.

Several times a week, a slight, intense man, Zvonko Bajo, drives up the mountain. Bajo, a Croat, heads the commission on war-prisoner exchanges for Travnik and is usually the first city official to greet the expellees, who often arrive barefoot, unannounced and under fire.

Last week, after organizing the first purely civilian exchange since the war began in April, Bajo obtained permission from the Serb side for a reporter and photographer to join him at the top. He hung a flag with a red cross made by his wife out the window of his modest sedan.

An eerie silence hovered over the plateau. Here refugees disembark with a few belongings from the sometimes shot-up buses in the Serb government-organized convoys from elsewhere in northern Bosnia. Refugees say the plateau is the staging point for the final nightmare - the walk down the serpentine.

The only building, a ski lodge, had been gutted by fire, and Serb officers, operating out of a small trailer, quickly spotted their first Western journalist visitors. "Tell your readers that Serbs want a civilized world," said an officer who refused to identify himself.

As he spoke, half a dozen men in khaki uniforms without insignia silently approached. They did not utter a word, but surrounded the visitors, their sheathed knives evident.

These, Bajo later said, were the "vultures" who "rob, rape and kill" the refugees fleeing to safety. "They strip them of their clothes. They stab them. They throw them over the cliff."

But on this occasion, taking their cue from the Serb officers, they merely stood and watched as the conversation ended.

A Croat shepherd who tends his flock along the refugee road said he sometimes hears old people crying out after being thrown down the mountainside. "I've seen parents arrive with dead children in their arms. I've seen some old people arrive in wheelbarrows . . . In the last convoy they grabbed leather jackets. If anyone complained, they stabbed him," he said, asking that his name not be published.

During one convoy, a group of Croats had been held at the top all night. "The women arrived in tears. They had been taken off the buses and stripped naked. The pretty ones had been taken away. No one could see where they went. They could only hear the screams," said the shepherd.

DISGUISES SOMETIMES HELP

Treatment varies. On Nov. 3 civilians in an 11-bus convoy from near Kotor Vares were robbed but, according to one female passenger, left unmolested. The woman, 24, who asked to be identified only as "Biba," carried a 3-year-old in a sack on her back, as did other young women, in a ruse to avoid being molested. Biba herself is childless.

Biba said she witnessed one assault, when a Serb guard pushed the group leader down the cliff, but said he managed to save himself after dropping 50 feet.

The terror tactics of "ethnic cleansing" that drive Bosnians to risk the dangers of Vlasic Mountain have been widely reported. Less well known are the bureaucratic hurdles Serbs make them cross before allowing them to leave.

"In Banja Luka now you need to obtain 12 different certificates to get out of the city. You have to sign away your property to the state. You even have to obtain a certification from the library that you have no overdue books," said Saed Saric, head of the Bosnian Muslim office in Travnik that is collecting data on war crimes. The authorities then collect up to $200 for transportation to the plateau atop Vlasic Mountain.