Bosnia Immigrants
By Joe Whetham, Staff Writer

 Imported foods and supplies sit neatly stacked in Tatjana and Jasmin Fazlovic’s quiet Balkan Food Grocery Store. CDs and stickers from the couple’s homeland fill a small glass case in front of the cash register, as sounds from their mounted television echo throughout the store. Nestled inside a small strip mall in Fargo, their store is best described as modest, but its existence is anything but.
    Prior to 1992, the Fazlovic family flourished in the town Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was home to nearly 88,000 people, roughly 100 miles north of Sarajevo. The couple owned their own business -– similar to their store in Fargo – and Jasmin was a local firefighter. Hills and valley, warm temperatures and low crime provided a stable environment for the Fazlovics and their two children, Ismer, 13, and Irma, 11.
    But in May 1992, a horrific civil war gripped Yugoslavia and the Fazlovics’ life was nearly shattered.
    “Everything was turned upside down,” said Tatjana, who’s Catholic while her husband is Muslim. “[Serbs] took all the Muslim’s houses and they killed a lot of Muslims. Roads were closed and we were getting just a little bit of food, sometimes nothing. We were without electricity for one full year.”
    Bosnian Serb guerrillas, unhappy with the independence of Yugoslavia republics, in addition to multi-ethnic mixing of Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox Serbs, carried out deadly campaigns of ethnic cleansing in a struggle for territory. Serbs eventually occupied Brcko and its once diverse population went from 44 percent Muslim, 21 percent Serb and 25 percent Croat to 5 percent Muslim and 93 percent Serb in just two years. During that time, Brcko’s population dwindled to 30,000.
    The Fazlovics eventually fled to a nearby village after Serbs occupied their homeland. Jasmin joined the Bosnian national military and served four years on the front line in a situation Tatjana described as, “Kill or be killed.” Work wasn’t an option for Tatjana and she fell out of contact with her mother, who lived only one-half hour away. Only after U.S. involvement was Tatjana able to see her mother.
    “The day they came, I had a chance to see my mother after three years,” Tatjana said.
  

Bosnian Immigrants Continued.......

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