Aida Masic is the only child in the village of Milicevici and its surroundings. The village is located on the banks of the Drina River along the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)and Serbia.
Eleven-year-old Aida says that her closest friend is six kilometers away from home.
“I am a fifth-grade student. My school is 12 kilometers from the village where I live with my parents. I like living in the village, despite the fact that I have no one to play with,” Aida told.
Aida’s parents, Mubina and Hajrudin, are the only residents of the village, which until 1992 had around 200 residents. The two returned 19 years ago.
“All residents of this village can fit in one car,” says Hajrudin.
I can say that the return was filled with pain and hard work. Everything here was destroyed and overgrown. It took time to put everything in order, to clear the forest that had grown on the burnt-out houses. For three years we lived in the basement of a ruin, and in 2006, UNDP built us a house,” he says and adds that he and his wife worked in a bull breeding farm, which was located near the village until ten years ago.
They lost their jobs after the owner closed the farm.
His wife, Mubina, states that she does not regret returning to the village, even though they are the only family there.
In the neighboring village, there are only four women
Four women live in the village of Skejici, which is 30 kilometers from Srebrenica, and they are the only former residents who have returned. The village is also located along the banks of the Drina river. By 1993, 40 families lived there.
Villages without pre-war residents
About 4,000 inhabitants lived in a dozen villages on the banks of the Drina river until the beginning of the war. About forty of them live there at the moment.
Until the beginning of the war in 1992, about 36,000 inhabitants lived in the municipality of Srebrenica, of which about 30,000 lived in about 80 villages.
The largest percentage, more than 75 percent of them, were Bosniaks. In the 1995 genocide, the forces of the Republika Srpska (RS) Army killed about 8,000 men and boys of Bosniak nationality in and around Srebrenica. About 1,000 missing persons are still being searched for.
According to the last census of 2013, the municipality has about 13,000 people, of which 10,000 live in villages. Serbs are the majority, with around 45 percent, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
