By Slobodan Trbojevich As the Yankees come into Bosnia, nobody should be surprised that ordinary Bosnian people have expressed strong pessimism about a real, peaceful solution. They've looked for help for too long. The scepticism which is evident on their faces hides their real feelings: fear. They know that none of the problems which caused the war have been solved by the peace agreement. Two parallel states established by the Dayton contract, and two or three parallel armies and police forces, have not given even minimum guarantees that the peace terms are going to be realised. Indeed, it would be very difficult to imagine any Muslim family going back to the zone from which they had been banished if they knew that the same police force which expelled them should now be the guarantor of their security. It is no less difficult to imagine the return of a Serbian family to Krajina, in the west of the country, where Serbs used to live for centuries and which now belongs to the Bosnian-Croat federation. It seems that the US administration which brokered the final agreement was motivated much more by the almost desperate need of the world community to solve the problem than by the real possibility of restoring a traditional Bosnian multinational entity. Of course, this slightly artificial peace probably will not fail completely, but neither is it going to be completely successful. From the very beginning, the most difficult problem will be to find a solution to the problem of the almost 2.5 million displaced persons inside the country or all over the world. At this point there are more than 1.5 million refugees inside Bosnia who live in very difficult conditions. During the terribly cold winter there now, they are surviving poverty and starvation, the result of the total communication blockade, war economy and destruction of industry. Only some of them have managed to find a new home and adapt themselves to new, and often unfriendly, surroundings. The shocking exodus which has changed the fragile national balance of the Bosnian state once and for all has made them strangers in their own land. Embittered and violated, humiliated and offended, they brought to the new environment both the melancholy of the homeless and their different and, for the original inhabitants, mainly unacceptable way of life. It is almost impossible to predict the social consequences of their battle for survival. These people are expected to create a new life and rebuild the destroyed state in unknown and strange surroundings. Timber workers in the west are now expected to become coal miners in the east of the country. Those who lived in the mountains now have to adapt to the valleys. Townsfolk will try to adjust to the countryside. It sounds absurd, but they face a period almost as difficult as it was during the war. The battle to rebuild the country is not going to be less complicated than the battle for peace. The second big problem is the fact that the same political figures who led the country into the conflict are still on the political stage. Intolerance and arrogance, a tendency towards absolutism and an obsession with political messianism are still the main characteristics of Bosnian political life. Even if the Serbs' most prominent political and military leaders, Karadzic and Mladic, face a war crimes tribunal, the political philosophy of the movement will remain the same. Growing poor and facing full economic dependence, Bosnian people on both sides have become completely subordinate to their leaders. In the atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion, with a controlled and economically dependent media, it would be very difficult to bring about a free and democratic election, which is probably the most important promise of the peace agreement. Add to this the private interests of the local political and military commanders who made a fortune through the war economy and black market, and maybe the lowest level of religious tolerance in history, and one can get a picture of Bosnian reality. The Bosnian people have shown an extraordinary ability to survive under very difficult circumstances, but this battle would make sense only if they achieved a certain level of economic and political freedom. On the contrary, all this situation will produce is further instability and conflict.