Today, with international aid and peacekeepers, the survivors are trying to overcome their hatred and reclaim their homes -- neither one an easy task.
Our special report is from Fred de Sam Lazaro.
FRED
DE SAM LAZARO: It was a crisp fall evening in Montenegro,
as a bus-load of mostly Serb refugees began an overnight
journey to Sarajevo, capital of neighboring Bosnia. The
purpose of the trip: to press claims to homes they fled
or were driven from during the brutal civil war that pitted
Bosnia's Serb, Croat, and Muslim communities against one
another, turning an integrated, multicultural nation into
a patchwork of ethnically-cleansed enclaves.PAVLE BELOSAVIC (Refugee Resettlement Officer): I suppose they believe that after all those years, time has come to go back, because, after all, their roots are there, they have some friends, old neighbors, maybe they believe that [a] new beginning is possible.
DE SAM LAZARO: Refugees trying to reclaim their old homes face an often painful game of musical chairs. Their homes, if they're still habitable, are often occupied by people driven from their own homes elsewhere in this divided country. All told, as many as 800,000 people were displaced during the war.
The next day, Ljiljana Avramovic tried to visit her old apartment, but found no one home. Still, the former school teacher, whose spent seven years in refugee shelters, will press on with her claim with city authorities, even though Avramovic, a Serb, says the neighborhood she fled has changed from multicultural to mostly Muslim.
LJILJANA
AVRAMOVIC (Refugee): This is the city of my husband
and my children. I am doing it especially for my children,
they want it. There is a lot of change here, a lot of new
people. I don't have a problem with this, but things will
never be the way they were before.DE SAM LAZARO: One prominent reminder of the change: right across from her bomb-ravaged high rise is a brand new mosque, funded by the Saudi Arabian government. One thing the war did was bring a mostly non-observant nation, Communist since World War II, back into places of worship. It changed largely ethnic identities into religious ones: Serbs as Orthodox [Christians], Croats [as] Catholics, and Bosnians as Muslims, according to Paul Taylor of the American Refugee Committee, a resettlement agency
PAUL
TAYLOR: It was a source of support and comfort to be
amongst your own. I know from my experience, when I was
working in Mostar, the churches were packed every Sunday
in '95. People who never went to church before decided they wanted to appear there; that was a source of solidarity
for them.DE SAM LAZARO: Another big reason for religious congregations was funerals.
This is a symbol of the massacre on the 23rd of October, 1993. The Ustache units killed 38 innocent civilians -- inhabitants of this village who had to pay a price.
Klisura Elzedin, a Muslim cleric in the village of Stupni Dor, recalls how Croatian militiamen murdered 38 [Muslim] men, women, and children here.
KLISURA
ELZEDIN (Muslim cleric): We just commemorated the seventh
anniversary of it. But we must go on, and we only go on
if we are spiritually stronger and if we always remember
what happened to us. Muslims are offering the hand of reconciliation,
it's interesting that it's the victims who are offering
reconciliation.FATHER MATO MAJIC (Catholic priest): We are all victims in some way.
In the neighboring village of Borovica, the story is almost the same ... this time, the storyteller is a Catholic priest, standing in the rubble of a church destroyed by Muslim militiamen. Father Mato Majic is rebuilding with aid from [a] German Catholic organization, proudly pointing to a construction crew of both Croats and Muslims.
FATHER
MAJIC: There is no other way than the way of forgiveness
and love -- that's the only correct way to lead us to a
better future. There is no other way than the way of living
together.DE SAM LAZARO: The Dayton Peace Accords did in effect call for citizens of all three groups to live together, and restoring displaced people to their former homes has been a condition for [the] Western aid that's poured into Bosnia.
After a seven-year silence, the Muslim call to prayer is heard again in Vecici -- a village that now finds itself in a region claimed by Bosnian Serbs during the war and named the Republic of Srpska.
Kasima
Shekovic, who lost her husband in the fighting, is among
a few dozen Muslims who've returned. Her home has been restored.
So far, the 52 year-old mother of six daughters said, there
have been no problems.
FATHER
PREDRAG JEFTIMIR (Serb Orthodox priest): There were
incidents when the Muslims returned. I was spit on by some
of them, which means that they were spitting on our church.
But I didn't tell people in the village at the time, I did
not want to provoke more trouble. 
GORAN
DJURIC (Refugee): Our old house used to have three levels.
This one here does not even have running water, it doesn't
have indoor plumbing. Our son does not have much of a future
here, there is not much industry; at least in our old place
there were factories, some industry, some job prospects.
NICK
HAYES (Professor of European history, St. John's University):
The truth is [that] these local people never had much to do with
what caused their problems. All of them will tell you that
it was caused by outsiders, manipulated by outside politicians.
Everyone has their own particular memories, and the problem
is [that] everyone sees themselves as having been victims: Bosnian
Muslims, Croat Catholics, Serb Orthodox [Christians]. And
when everyone sees themselves as being victims, as each
of these villages do, no one can come out and recognize
that, perhaps, in their larger identities, they too were
part of the crimes -- they too were part of the atrocities.
And unless they can acknowledge that, I'm afraid these local
villages can easily become part of the politics of hate
once again.
