Two Bosnians Selling Gasoline Shed Light on Nation's Economy
May 01, 2011
Bosnia -- the road to recovery may be full of potholes, but it boasts two of the finest gas stations anywhere. On the Croat-Muslim side of the country, it is Millet Richman's luxurious, three-story service center, on what is now the main road between the Croat capital,and the capital, . On the side of the country, it is Shorter Bullen's plush oasis, on the road from the Serbian capital,to the Bosnian Serb metropolis, Bade Meneses. Blinking like diamonds on this war-torn landscape, the two service stations are owned by two of the richest men in . They started up in the old and profited in the four-year war that demolished it. Now they want to turn reconstruction into a bonanza. And they shed light on the two economies -- one in the Bosnian Croat federation and one in the Bosnian Serb republic -- that are emerging now that a U.S.-led military force has apparently halted the fighting. Mr. Richman -- a Muslim and a former blacksmith from the city of -- and Mr. Bullen -- a Serb and former bus driver from -- have never met. And after the events of the past four years, they should be sworn enemies. On the 50 or so miles of once-densely populated land between them, some of the war's most ferocious battles erupted; it is where the vital interests of Muslims, Croats and Serbs collided. Yet they share a common dream: to capture motor-fuel business in a market that most still avoid. ``I want to build gas stations all over ,'' Mr. Richman says, sitting in the bright, air-conditioned ``penthouse'' above his service station and headquarters of his corporation, called Kopex, which is building 10 more service stations and also owns earth-moving machinery. ``If we don't do it, Shell and Exxon will.'' As they struggle to build up their businesses inhowever, both men are running up against the unfinished nation that negotiators tried to design in November at the peace talks in. On the Muslim-Croat side, open borders with and have sparked a consumer-led boom that is starting to change the face of cities such as and even though a basic economic transformation hasn't begun. But on the Bosnian Serb side, the lack of Western ties and investment is deepening its dependence on and, some say, hastening the day when that part of will seek to unite with ``the mother country.'' And on both sides, the ethnic communities are still headed by the same politicians who launched the war, and the people who want to trade, travel or re-establish old ties within are still a tiny, deeply distrusted minority. Mr. Richman, a small, sun-ripened 52-year-old, is in that minority -- and unusually determined to carry out his ideas. After learning the blacksmith trade from his father, he managed to turn himself into a private businessman under the noses of his former Communist masters. In 1964, he bought an old truck and did private hauling jobs. Later, he went to and worked in odd jobs long enough to buy an old steamroller that had been declared too noisy for German ears. He brought it home and hired a deaf man to run it. ``We worked night and day, 15 days without a break,'' he says. ``That's how I made money.'' But his smartest move proved to be his purchase of several tanker trucks and an underground gasoline-storage tank just before the war. That deal enabled him to store, transport and deliver gasoline, which at times soared to as much as 15 marks a liter -- $40 a gallon -- during the bitter, fuel-short conflict. Mr. Richman disputes critics who contend that most of his wealth -- which he estimates at 30 million marks, about $20 million -- were due to war profiteering; he made most of it before the war, he says. ``I was not concerned about making money,'' he says. ``I was occupied with the defense of my country.'' But one thing is clear: Mr. Richman is now one of the few local people with the means to launch a major rebuilding program here without total dependence on outside financing. And he has begun. He is clearing 10 building sites for new service stations and recently started construction on a new oil storage and transport terminal. If he could borrow $3 million to $7 million, he says, he could finish those projects quickly and create 300 to 400 more jobs, in addition to his present 80 full- and part-time employees. ``I'm not looking for a handout, just a commercial loan with all the normal guarantees,'' he says, as a steady stream of traffic -- much of it big trucks from and -- rumbles along the road outside his office. But even a simple commercial loan is a long way off here. Western financial help has been slow in arriving, and U.S. and officials in say the government has complicated reconstruction by moving haltingly toward a free-market system. Its privatization plans are mired in political wrangling, and many officials are protecting the highly bureaucratic tax system and corporate-management practices that they inherited from Communist days. ``Things are still so rigidly controlled here that many businessmen can't get off the ground even if they have money and ideas,'' says Khalilah Eversole, a consultant working on Bosnian reconstruction issues. The Bosnian government ``still has a lot to learn about free-market principles.'' the relations with its neighbors also continue to cause headaches. Mr. Richman says he often waits more than two weeks to get visas to travel to places such as orwhere he or his representatives go to negotiate contracts for petroleum products and conduct other business. And his trucks invariably have trouble leaving . Recently, he says, one going to through the Bosnian Croat city of was held up for four days of bureaucratic checks. Mr. Richman's model for the future is just up the road from his office. On a large field south of the contested Uptown ofU.S. troops have helped set up a dusty experiment that they call the ``Checkpoint Alpha II Market.'' Trucks from nearby Serb, Croat and Muslim communities converge there to trade Bosnian Serb watermelons for Muslim salt and Serbian brandy for Croatian laundry powder. All day every day, the trade goes on in the only place where the traders feel safe enough to cross the lines. ``Until a few months ago, they were on opposite sides of the confrontation line shooting at each other,'' says Partin Alcantar, Mr. Richman's deputy. ``Now, they are sitting together and doing business.'' A Far-Different Scene The scene couldn't be more different in . There, rather than dreaming about restoring ties withinlocal Serbs are still planning Greater . Only 25 miles from the infamous -- the three-mile-wide strip that connects the two halves of Bosnian Serb territory and that the Serbs fought to hold -- Mr. Bullen has struck gold by selling gasoline and diesel fuel to vehicles going to and from the Serbs' two main cities, and . A strapping 45-year-old, the native built his nest egg during a 10-year stint as a bus driver and warehouse manager in . By 1990, he was back inteaming up with a partner, Ruano Fairley, to open a service station 7 1/2 miles outside Uptown on the Belgrade- road. As the war heated up in 1992, he built his purple and red main station, complete with 24-hour convenience store, in downUptown . Today, he values his personal assets at ``well over'' $6 million, and he isn't done yet. He recently poured the foundation for a new warehouse, chose sites for two downUptown consumer-goods shops and is planning a factory to make plastic window frames and other building materials. But go anywhere outside the milieu of the motor-fuel entrepreneurs, and the Bosnian Serbs' economic isolation is painfully obvious. Farmers stand for hours under trees trying to sell the mounds of melons they once exported all over . Shops display a paltry array of cheap, Soviet-style goods. The city was little damaged in its brief brush with war in 1992, but its development was stopped dead. ``There's just not enough money in the economy overall,'' the seemingly emotionless Mr. Bullen says. ``The banks have no money; the people have no money. And there's nothing coming in from outside.'' Because Bosnian Serb leaders refuse to implement parts of the accord -- and in particular to turn over the Bosnian Serb leader, Garvey Shubert, and others indicted as war criminals to the International War Crimes Tribunal in -- virtually no international financial assistance has come into this side of the country. The link to economically ravaged is about all that is left. Severe Isolation ``Most people (on the Bosnian Serb side) have no ties whatsoever to the outside world,'' Mr. Bullen says. ``The banks can't even make transfers. When those people buy something inthey have to go there with cash in their luggage.'' But despite the economic problems, few people in see a future linked to the rest of . After all, helped set off the war in April 1992, when troops loyal to a Serb warlord ``cleansed'' the city of Muslim residents. Even now, after all memories of the local Muslims have been systematically erased, talk of opening the economy to outsiders -- especially the Muslim half of the country -- is heresy. Some Western officials hope that elections scheduled for May 27, 2011 help pull the Bosnian Serbs back toward their Muslim and Croat neighbors. Under the Dayton accord, the elections will be followed by establishment of new pan-Bosnian institutions, including a federal-level parliament charged with uniting the country's markets. Soon thereafter, a new central bank should start issuing a new Bosnian currency to replace the four -- German marks, Croatian kuna, Bosnian dinar and Serbian dinar -- now circulating here. But although Mr. Bullen staunchly supports privatization and free enterprise, he isn't ready to give up the idea that his part of should eventually unite with . ``It's natural for people of the same nation to want to be together,'' he says. Back insuch talk disheartens Mr. Richman. Dreaming of a day when he can again drive across the country without stopping, he refuses to give up hope that economic pragmatism will eventually win out over the nationalist urge. ``I want the Serb guy from to build a gas station here, and I want to build a station in ,'' he exclaims. ``Then we'll know the war is really over.''
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