Tuzla, Bosnia June 9: I arrived in the Bosnian town of Tuzla last Saturday to visit the weavers of Bosfam. As anyone familiar with the Advocacy Project will know, Bosfam is the women’s group that trains displaced Bosnian women from Eastern Bosnia in weaving and knitting. Many of its beneficiaries were widowed after the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica.

Pia Schneider, our intern from the Georgetown Business school, has been with Bosfam for a week and the weather has been getting her down. Tuzla has none of the architectural grace of Sarajevo, or the natural beauty of Srebrenica. Its high-rises look particularly unappealing through rain.

Today Pia and I visited the largest refugee collective center for refugees from Srebrenica. Our goal was to try and find out how many would return home if they had the chance.

The international community is giving up on return. We’ve heard that most of the Srebrenica refugees have now been in exile for so long – nine years since the massacre – that they’ve “built new lives” and have no wish to return to their original homes. Even Beba Hadzic of Bosfam, talks of her former home in gloomy terms: “Srebrenica empties in the afternoon,” she says. There are no jobs, and no night life. “There is sadness everywhere.” Who would want to go home? Well, Beba’s husband for one. He works in the Srebrenica municipality. We’re looking forward to meeting him.

Pia and I will guage the mood in Srebrenica when we visit tomorrow, but in the meantime we need to know what life is like for those refugees who are still in exile. This takes us to Mihatovici, which was built with Norwegian aid for 1,500 Srebrenica survivors. The Swiss Red Cross provides basic services, but will be pulling out soon.

Nijaza Kharic hams it up in the Mihatovici refugee
center, Tuzla.

Ten years later, 950 refugees are still living here, and the vast majority are survivors from the 1995 massacre. From a distance, Mihatovici looks like an alpine village, but close up it’s a lot like any refugee camp. The dwellings are more permanent, but boredom hangs in the air, kids play in the dusty streets, and the garbage piles up. The people are dirt poor. Some scrape a living from odd jobs in Tuzla. The luckiest are widows of soldiers. who receive an army pension of 350 Bosnian marks ($225) a month.

In two hours we do not meet a single family that wants to remain here. All, without exception, want to return to Srebrenica – so that myth can be laid to rest. The problem is that their houses have been destroyed and there’s no work. The solution? Rebuild the houses and find people work, and you create a magnet for return.

The question is – what kind of work? The answer is to be found hanging on the clothes lines, covering the tables, worn by the kids, and collecting mud in front of doors. Carpets, sweaters, clothes are everywhere – and all of them were made here. These people have knitting and weaving in their blood. One old lady drums away with her knitting needles as she hams for my camera. Nijaza Kharic, who invites us in for a tea, displays yards of delicate crochet that she has woven, with little hope of selling.

It’s the same thing we see at Bosfam and it leads us to conclude that the reconstruction of Srebrenica should be built upon small family businesses, particularly those involving women. Why not start with looms and sewing machines?