Angry Bosnian villagers wait for help months after deadly floods

By Amel Emric and Daria Sito-Sucic

Drivers entering Donja Jablanica in Bosnia pass under a banner with an angry message from locals who say authorities have done little to help since deadly floods devastated the village in October.

"Shame on the State and Government of the Federation BiH," reads the banner, hanging from an underpass, referring to the Bosniak-Croat region of decentralised post-war Bosnia.

Heavy rain caused flooding and a landslide that swept through the village in a hilly area 70 km (45 miles) southwest of Sarajevo, wrecking homes, felling trees and disabling a railway line. Of the 27 people killed in the flooding across Bosnia, 19 died in Donja Jablanica.

Two months on, the disaster has laid bare the difficulties of channelling funds in the fragmented Balkan country whose multiple governments have struggled to respond. Locals say they have relied on charitable donations.

"We have got nothing from the state, not a single fening," said Esad Begovic, 72, while cleaning mud and debris from his house. "I don't sleep here. A man has let me use his apartment, and I even don't know the man."

Begovic said the only help has come from a local charity called Pomozi.ba which has collected donations and provided food, clothes and tools.

The local government of the southern Herzegovina-Neretva canton, where the floods inflicted the greatest damage, said it had sent funds to local communities and allocated 3.4 million marka ($1.83 million) to repair roads under its jurisdiction.

But it said it was not clear where the money would come from, or when it would arrive.

"This disaster has proved once again it is necessary to improve channels of communication between all levels of governance in Bosnia," spokesman Pero Pavlovic said.

Under a peace deal that ended its 1992-95 war, Bosnia is made up of two autonomous regions, the Bosniak-Croat Federation and a Serb Republic, linked via a weak central government.

The government of the Bosniak-Croat Federation, where the disaster occurred, did not respond to requests for comment. Last week it put the flood damage estimate at 308 million marka ($166.3 million).

Today Donja Jablanica is abandoned, its houses mostly destroyed by the collapse of a nearby quarry during the floods. Each week, people hold peaceful protests at the entrance to the village demanding government aid.

Dzevad and Mirsada Grlica wonder if they will be able to return to another mountain village near the town of Konjic after the road was destroyed in a landslide which left cracks in the foundations of their house.

They say that nobody has offered help, except for Dina Alic, an activist linked to a local women-run charity called NERA. Alic helped raise money for a new greenhouse for the couple.

Mirsada has already planted out green salad leaves, onion and spinach. "This means so much to me," she said. "It's a new beginning."