CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VIII (1) ContemporaryEurasia81 | Page 115

BEATA BOEHM
With UN Civil Affairs leading the negotiations, community
representatives from both sides agreed on a street that had been inhabited by
a multi-ethnic population before the armed conflict, now located on the
Croatian side. The street “Ulica Malesevica” directly abutted the ceasefire
line somewhat outside the city. It consisted of several family homes and was
located between the destroyed hospital on the Croatian side and the
Canadian UNPROFOR position on the Serbian side. Croats called the street
“Ulica Vukovarska”, while UN personnel called it “Street of Hope”. Both
names had major but controversial symbolic significance.
Local authorities on both sides of the ceasefire line assured their full
support for the project. Owners of the destroyed houses willing to participate
in the Reconstruction Programme were subjected by the “other side’s” police
to stringent security checks, regarding their possible participation in the
former armed conflict.
It was planned to lend the equipment to the families and subsequently
make it available to other parties interested in reconstruction of their houses,
together with the residential containers provided by CARE.
Before the families could begin their work, however, the clearing of
mines from the street and its surroundings turned out to be an intractable
problem. This made it impossible to implement the pilot project according to
plan. Therefore, the reconstruction project design had to be planned anew
and CARE Austria had to re-negotiate its donor agreements.
Meanwhile, on the Croat-controlled side, the tools that had been made
available for the pilot project in agreement with the Croatian community
administration were commandeered, without CARE´s prior agreement, for
general clean-up operations and the renovation of communal facilities, such
as schools, kindergartens, the youth club, the culture hall, the community
centre, the club house, the former boarding school, the soccer club, the
health centre, the Red Cross building Pakrac, the old-peoples’ home, the
park, as well as private homes chosen by the local social services. The
equipment was also made available to repair war-damaged homes of the so-
called “labour brigades”. These homes had been chosen by the community’s
social services in accordance with certain social criteria, such as socially
disadvantaged families with many children, single old people or the families
of war-wounded individuals. The labour brigades consisted of local men
who had not been drafted in the war and who were deployed against little
pay by the Croat central government for clean-up work on facilities chosen
by the community. They worked alongside international volunteers.
During the second phase of the reconstruction project in the summer
of 1993, an agreement between CARE Austria, UNOV and the community
administration of the Serb-controlled part of Pakrac was signed. The
agreement allowed debtors to obtain building materials for the repair of their
homes according to a so-called “Bricks for Work” scheme. Bricks and other
building materials were “sold” in return for project-related community
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