Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Sarajevo's female forces fight 'to live like girls' Date: Sat, 31 Oct 92 14:00:15 EST Message-ID: \SE A \SS (WS) \HD Sarajevo's female forces fight 'to live like girls' \BY Terry Leonard \CR ASSOCIATED PRESS \DT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - In a muddy trench just a rifle shot from the front, a dozen young women prepared for patrol on a steep Sarajevo hillside. Shouldering her Kalashnikov rifle and extinguishing a pungent Balkan cigarette, Velida Biharcic said: "I never in my life dreamed I would carry or shoot a gun. It's not right. I should be walking around with my boyfriend instead of sleeping with this gun." Miss Biharcic is a member of a 60-woman infantry unit from Pofalici, a northern Sarajevo neighborhood where some of the heaviest house-to-house fighting has occurred during the city's six-month war. To secure Sarajevo's northern flank from besieging Serbs, Pofalici's men stormed the nearby Zuc hill in May, leading to hundreds of deaths and hundreds of wounded. Since then, Pofalici's women have banded together to help keep the hill. "Some of us made the decision out of revenge. Most of us saw the need to help. The men were wounded; we had to replace them. There was no choice," said Mara Perisic, an infantrywoman. Automatic weapons fire rattled from Zuc's crest as she spoke. In Bosnia's outgunned, outnumbered army, the women are fighting alongside better-trained men on the front, rotating in and out every five days. Other women fight in the Bosnian army, but the Pofalici unit is the only one that is all women, except for the officers. Whether female soldiers should be sent into battle has been a divisive issue in the United States since the Persian Gulf war, when female troops had support roles. Even in Israel, which has a military draft for women, female soldiers do not see combat. In Pofalici, men were at first dubious about fighting alongside women but lost their doubts in the heat of battle, said Omar Gabela, the unit's male commander. The women, wearing distinctive blue headbands emblazoned with Bosnia's fleur-de-lis emblem, fought and held their ground. "They don't have as much training, but they show more courage than the men," Mr. Gabela said. "Perhaps it's because they're all volunteers." The women are Muslims, Serbs and Croats but say they consider themselves merely neighbors. The war in Bosnia began when Serbs rebelled against the majority Muslims and Croats, who voted for secession from Yugoslavia Feb. 29. More than 14,000 people have died. "I never even think that I am Serb when I am fighting. I am with my friends, my neighbors," said Daliborka Torbica, 20, one of the squad's two Serbian women. After five months of combat, the women insist they are the equals of any soldier, man or woman. They are proud of their accomplishments and ashamed of some Sarajevo men who are unwilling to fight. "They are just mice," Miss Biharcic said with undisguised contempt in her voice. Like soldiers everywhere, the women talk about their work with a mixture of bravado and black humor. "It's a nice feeling to kill a man, especially if you know he is going to kill you," Mirsada Hromo, 21, said. "You get a special feeling when you see him walking toward you, wanting to kill you, and you just shoot him." "Maybe we should charm them first so they'll walk a little closer," Miss Biharcic said. Nermina Isovic was an 18-year-old high school student when Bosnia's war began. Now, with long blond hair cascading over camouflage fatigues, she speaks bitterly of the life she lost. "What I do now is because I miss the life I used to have," she said. "I'm fighting for the life they took away from me. I think I have the right to live like other girls in the rest of Europe." Miss Biharcic said the Serbs must be surprised when they discover they are fighting women. "They obviously don't know who they are dealing with," she said. "But as soon as they find out, they're dead." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM