RENTING a crowd is no problem in Bosnia. Last weekend, a mob of 150 Serbs marched into the town of Gajevi and burned down houses built to accommodate returning refugees.
In Stolac, the fourth attempt to bring back Muslims to the now almost exclusively Croat town ended when a crowd hurled stones and eggs at the busload of refugees. In Mostar, gangs have repeatedly driven non-Croats from their homes in the west side of the city. The evictions have become increasingly violent; some have clear military involvement.
Over the last six months, attacks, night bombings, evictions and intimidation have continued, despite the presence of 31,000 international peacekeeping troops in the divided country.
In Bosnia the right of refugees to return to their own homes in territories that have been ethnically cleansed, a right guaranteed in the Dayton agreement, remains largely the stuff of dreams.
At least half the people of Bosnia either fled or were expelled or killed during the war. Over a million refugees continue to seek shelter abroad; another million are displaced within Bosnia. Mr Kris Janowski, spokesman for the UNHCR, the UN High Commission for Refugees, is visibly frustrated by the continuous obstruction the organisation faces in trying to return people to their homes. After Dayton, the organisation expected 500,000 refugees to come back to Bosnia.
If anything the figures have been in the negative, Mr Janowski says, citing the case of one refugee who returned from Ireland to his home village in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity his return infuriated the Serbs living there to such an extent that they "cleansed" the whole street.
Republika Srpska is openly hostile towards the return of minorities, he insists. Likewise, the Croats always come up with an excuse when you try to return people to their area. Crowds of grannies hurl rocks and stones.
The torch from the Sarajevo Winter Olympics of 1984 takes pride of place in the office of the Mayor of Pale, Mr Vojislav Milutinovic. Before the war the capital of Republika Srpska was a ski resort, home to some 16,000 people. The flight of Serb civilians from nearby Sarajevo has doubled the population.
Mr Milutinovic's son (24) was killed by Muslim soldiers in an ambush during the war. "We can't live together any more, he says frankly.
"A quarter of a million Serbs were forced out of Krajina. Do you think they will be allowed back to their homes? The model of brotherhood and unity cannot be implemented. We need a new model where we can learn to live apart, but as good neighbours."
He adds: "We are not some breed of savages here. We appreciate peace. We are all victims - Serbs, Croats and Muslims."
In Stolac, the Catholic church is full for Sunday Mass. The sermon is about sacrifice, the attentive congregation made up largely of young people. A girls choir sings hymns of peace.
Two weeks earlier Muslim returnees were stoned on the outskirts of the town. The families who had once lived in harmony with their Croat and Serb neighbours were due to return to their newly renovated homes but were forced to turn back. The houses remain empty. Posters of Stolac's Muslim leaders are pasted to the walls, with the words "War Criminals 94" written over them.
The parish priest, Father Mato Puljic, says he is sorry about what has happened. "Those people were used by the people who led them from Mostar, just as those who waited for them were used by politicians here," he says. "The politicians play games with people."
The reality is that these people cannot return to their areas, he says. "They are trying to reorganise their life in Stolac. Their children speak with local accents. They are now the citizens of this town.
"If the Muslims who lived there before the war eventually succeed in resettling in Stolac, extra police will be needed to stop both sides from fighting. There's nobody shooting in the hills, but there is no real peace here either."
Police wearing Croatian uniforms patrol the street where the Muslims used to live. The mosque at the end of the road has been gutted. The middle-aged woman living in one of the Muslim homes says she has nothing against them, "but they hate us." She and her family were forced to move from Zenica where, she says, Muslims have occupied her home.
Only a trickle of people returned from countries outside the former Yugoslavia to Bosnia last year. Germany, which took in more than 340,000 refugees, says it is now time for them to go home. Thousands have received letters ordering them to leave the country; those not complying face deportation.
The prospect of compulsory expulsions is not a comfortable one for Germany, but Bonn is tired of bearing the burden of more refugees than any other EU country. With Germany suffering from record unemployment, the cost of keeping the refugees is estimated at DM10billion (£3.74 billion) a year.
Sixty per cent of houses in Bosnia were damaged during the war. The countryside is scarred with the bombed-out remains of towns and villages. Anywhere inhabitable is by now inhabited, says Ms Teresa Kehoe of Irish aid agency Refugee Trust.
In Mostar, where Ms Kehoe is based, 29,000 of the 49,000 Muslims living on the east side of the city are displaced and resentment is building up in the local community towards them. In these areas people live in fear of their own.
Mr Kresimil Bozic, his wife, Hevenka, and their daughter, Dijana (14), have spent their fourth winter in an abandoned train carriage in Capljina. Pictures of American singer Mariah Carey and the Virgin Mary decorate the walls. The Bozics worked all their lives in a shoe factory in Travnik; they missed out on their pensions by a year or two and now survive on hand-outs.
Their adult son and daughter fled with their own families to Germany at the outbreak of the war. "We have just had a message from our daughter," says Hevenka. "She has been told she has to leave Germany once the children finish school this summer. She wants to know if they can stay with us. What can we do?"