BOSNIAN STUDENTS: TWO AT SEMO WORRIED ABOUT STRIFE

Although it's on the other side of the globe, Esina Alic and Nikola Stankovic cannot escape the fighting. It is a constant torment.

And while the two Southeast Missouri State University freshmen try to remain on friendly terms, the civil war in the former nation of Yugoslavia divides them.

Alic, 18, is from Sarajevo, a city of about half a million people in Bosnia that has been left devastated and besieged by the fighting. She said Serbs are largely to blame for the violence.

She hasn't heard from her parents in more than two months and fears for their safety.

Stankovic, 19, is from Novi Sad, a city of about 200,000 to 250,000 near Belgrade in Serbia. That area of the former Yugoslav nation remains free of violence. But he says the area has suffered from a United Nations trade embargo.

"They don't have any fuel. Cars are not running, basically," he said.

He contends Serbs in Serbia are not to blame for the violence. He maintains the Serbs involved in the fighting are those residing in Bosnia. But he admits that many Serbs are sympathetic to the cause.

A year ago, neither Alic nor Stankovic could have foreseen the violence that would erupt in their homeland.

Both came to Missouri last fall to attend high school as exchange students. Civil war subsequently broke out.

After graduating, both decided to remain here rather than return to a war-torn country.

Stankovic graduated from Clayton High School. Alic spent the first half of her senior year at a St. Louis high school and the last half at Marionville high school near Springfield.

"My mother was in St. Louis 25 years ago as an exchange student," said Stankovic. He said he stayed with the same family, while attending Clayton High School.

Both Stankovic and Alic elected to go to college at Southeast, at least partly because they received scholarships.

Stankovic and Alic met each other at Southeast at the start of the fall semester. "The first night we met, we had an argument. We are friends now. We just try not to think about it (the war)," he said.

For Alic, that's particularly hard to do. She last talked to her parents in July. "I told them I was going to stay and go to college."

She said she can't reach them by telephone or mail. "The mail doesn't work. The phone lines are out."

Most of Sarajevo is without electricity and few relief supplies have reached the city.

Residents there are in desperate need of food, said Alic. "It's real bad."

She said it's not safe to walk the streets as Serb rebels in the surrounding mountains have repeatedly shelled the city.

Alic's father is a doctor who works in a hospital. She said her father told her that there was no running water and the hospital was without anesthetics.

Alic's mother was a math professor before the war. Now she works in a civil defense capacity, trying to get food for people.

Alic talks of the horrors of the war as related to her by her parents and others.

She said Serbs have killed Muslims and others in an effort to clear non-Serbs out of the region. Children too have been casualties of the war.

Alic said the war is at its worst in Bosnia because the area has been home to various ethnic groups, including Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. As a result, she said, neighbor can turn on neighbor.

Alic said Bosnians are helpless in the face of Serbs, many of them former soldiers of the Yugoslav army who are heavily armed. "Our people cannot fight back," she said.

Stankovic said all sides are to blame, contending that they all have concentration camps and "they kill children too."

Alic said she realizes that not all Serbians are to blame. "I cannot accuse everybody. It's not his fault," she said of Stankovic.

At least 10,000 people have been killed in the civil war, which began after Bosnian Muslims and Croats voted in February for independence from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia.

At times, Alic thinks of returning home to fight. But she says that's impossible. The war has made such travel home impossible.

"I can't do much about it. I'm trying not to think about it," she said. "I try not to watch the news anymore."

Thinking about it makes her depressed.

"I'm pretty good in that I concentrate on studying and then I work a lot on campus," said Alic. "Anything to stay busy.

"If you sit and think, that's not good," she said.

Five months ago, Alic was still writing letters to Serbian friends in Belgrade. But the war has come between them. "Now, I just can't do it."

Alic considers herself Bosnian and Yugoslavian. But she said, "We want a Yugoslavia. We do not want a greater Serbia."

Stankovic considers himself a Yugoslav. His father is Serbian. His mother is from Sarajevo. Her family is Muslim.

"It's terrible," he said of the war.

Stankovic said he would like to see a unified Yugoslavia once again, as would his parents back home. "My parents are definitely for peace," he said. "My parents were basically socialists. They fought for the Yugoslav idea."

Under communist rule, ethnic, religious and economic tensions were kept under control. But when communism collapsed, those tensions and regional interests resurfaced, Stankovic said.

He estimated there are about 8 million Serbs, 4 million Croats and 2 million Muslims in what was formerly Yugoslavia.

He pointed out that Yugoslavia has long had deep divisions rooted in history. Northern Yugoslavia was for years part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. It is a more developed region than southern Yugoslavia, which was at one time part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Stankovic said.

But Alic said past history shouldn't be used as justification for the fighting. "Leave the past alone," she said.

Unlike Alic, Stankovic believes the Serbian rebels are little more than guerrilla groups and not an organized military force. "It's just people shooting in the streets."

Alic and Stankovic agree that economic concerns are at the heart of the civil war.

"I don't have a clue how the war will stop," said Alic.

Stankovic said, "The one thing, I think, has to happen, nobody must win this war."

But he said he doesn't see it ending soon. In the meantime, he said, the war is devastating the economy. "The economy is just going down, down, down. It's just suicide."

With the uncertainty at home, Stankovic says his future schooling here remains in doubt. "I live basically from day to day."

Alic worries about her country's future. "I know the country won't be the same anymore, and I'm scared of that."

She says she feels like a woman without a country. "When I came over here I had a Yugoslavian passport. What do I have now? Just a piece of paper."