ZAGREB, Croatia -- Within the war fought by artillery and machine guns in the former Yugoslavia, there is a quieter, no less bitter struggle over churches, religious icons and works of art -- a cultural war that might not end long after the guns stop firing.
The scenes from this war-within-a-war are as striking as the art objects that are the targets. Consider, for example, the militiamen who roamed house to house in the Bosnian city of Mostar with an art appraiser in tow, selecting their booty with discriminating taste. The militiamen were Bosnian Croats; the neighborhood was Serbian.
Or, there is the Serbian paramilitary unit that plundered six paintings of Yugoslavia's most respected 20th-century artist, Ivan Mestrovic, from a Croatian museum. There also is the mysterious odyssey of the priceless 14th-century Haggadah of Sarajevo, a gilded Jewish prayer book barely spared from shelling and floodwaters, now awaiting international inspectors in the same bank vault that shelters the Bosnian president.
This battlefield is populated in part by rogues and profiteers working only for themselves. But it is also the province of ethnic zealots, who view the control of culture as a means of solidifying territorial claims.
"We realized at some point that there was a concept of 'culturecide' at work," said Zelomir Koscevic, senior curator of the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art. "It was an attempt not to bomb something like the oil refinery, or the rail station even, but to try and destroy our cultural identity."
At first glance, there would appear to be few differences among the warring cultures. Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims are all Slavic peoples. They all speak the same language, Serbo-Croat. Their ancestors all lived under the same conquerors, the Ottoman Turks and then the Austrian-Hungarian empire.
But most Serbs belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, while most Croats are Roman Catholic. Neither has had much liking for the religion of the other or for Bosnian Muslims. The differences have meant that churches and mosques have taken a beating, along with their holdings of icons and medieval relics.
The Art Loss Register in Zagreb claims that attacks -- most of them by Serbs -- have destroyed 73 Croatian churches and monasteries, while heavily damaging more than 100 others. The organization also lists 46 museums, nine archives, 22 libraries and 60 historic buildings as damaged or destroyed.
Serbian cultural officials counter with a tally sheet citing the "devastation" of 300 Orthodox churches and 50 other ecclesiastical buildings, plus 50 museums and galleries.
The Bosnian Muslims have been too submerged in military defeat to make an assessment.
It can be hazardous taking these claims at face value. The accusations are often distorted by Balkan hatred.
"I've heard tales, and they may be just that, tales," said Dr. Colin Kaiser, who traveled through the war zones of Bosnia and Croatia compiling a report on damaged cultural landmarks for the Council of Europe.
Serbian claims included "striking cases of disinformation," Dr. Kaiser's report says. A wooden 18th-century church in Mali Zdenci was untouched, not destroyed as the Serbs claimed; another 18th-century church, in Grubisno Polje, was indeed closed, as the Serbs reported, but the key was in possession of the Serbs and the possessions were intact.
But even after sorting out the exaggerations, Marian Wenzel has heard and seen enough to be appalled. Ms. Wenzel, director of the London-based Bosnia-Hercegovina Heritage Rescue, heard the story of the roving Mostar militiamen -- the ones accompanied by the art appraiser -- from "a witness who watched this go on at the house next door."
She is also familiar with the Haggadah of Sarajevo, a gilded, leather-paged, hand-painted manuscript worth perhaps $1 million.
The Haggadah was held in the National Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina, on the Sarajevo thoroughfare known as "Sniper Alley." Looters apparently got the Haggadah as far as the basement, where it was then endangered by floodwaters. Along with other museum pieces, it is now stored in the vault of the Bosnian National Bank. Appraisers are scheduled to get a look within the next few weeks, to evaluate how much restoration work might be needed.
It is impossible to say how much art has been lost to outright plunder, most of which occurred in 1991-1992, when undisciplined paramilitary and irregular units led attacks on virtually defenseless villages.
Notable losses
The most notable such losses are probably the paintings and sculptures by Mr. Mestrovic, stolen from a museum in Drnis, a Croatian town now held by rebel Serbs. Mr. Mestrovic was a Croat who became a U.S. citizen before his death in 1962, and the Drnis museum had 24 of his sculptures and seven of his paintings.
All those items were believed lost until June, when a British journalist happened to ask the Serbian caretaker of the hilltop castle overlooking Serb-held Knin what he knew about them.
The caretaker, Budomir Miljoko, led the journalist to a cellar, where one of the paintings and most of the sculptures were haphazardly piled together. The other items are believed to have been stolen. Mr. Miljoko said that the artworks would remain at the castle under the Serbs' care until the end of the war. But he offered no assurances that the works would ever be given back to the Croats.
The "safekeeping" is more complex in the case of art collections removed from museums in the Croatian city of Vukovar. Serbian artillery began flattening Vukovar in the autumn of 1991. Even before the shelling began, museum officials tried to evacuate their collections to Zagreb, only to find the roads already blocked. They hurriedly crated thousands of items and moved them into cellars. The bulk ended up in a Franciscan monastery.
That's where the items stayed until Serbian soldiers found them, in December 1991.
The Serbs moved the material 50 miles east to the Serbian city of Novi Sad. And that's where the items remain.
Croatian cultural officials say the removal was tantamount to theft. Serbian officials say they were only trying to protect the items from looters, and last month they invited Christoph von Imhof, an art consultant for the Council of Europe, to inspect the collection.
Mr. von Imhof inspected about 2,000 items. "The paintings are taken care of -- the curator has done an inventory," he said. "According to the numbers I have, I don't think we have a major loss from this particular collection."
And whatever losses there are probably occurred in Vukovar, he said. "I'm not afraid that a lot has been looted. But a lot has been destroyed out of hatred."
Serbian officials haven't said when or if Croatia will ever get back the items. The head of the Serbian government's recovery operation, Nikola Kusevac, didn't inspire much confidence in Zagreb when he told Belgrade television: "The Croatian and Catholic garbage should be left to be destroyed."
In this war, keeping artworks out of the hands of enemy armies is not necessarily enough to ensure that the objects will be safe.
Mostar, for example, has been controlled at one time or another by all three sides in the Bosnian fighting.
"The museum was left virtually intact by the Serbs. Then refugees came and things started to disappear," said Dr. Kaiser of the Council of Europe. "So, in this case, it was not the aggressor who was lifting items. It was the 'good guys,' perhaps so they could sell them to survive."
Desperation has become a common theme as the war drags on.
Ms. Wenzel of Bosnia-Hercegovina Heritage Rescue mentioned the case of a man she met at an art conference in Turkey, a well-to-do figure with a collection in Serb-controlled territory. "He left it behind and gave his friend next door the keys," she said. "That man died, and his daughter then gave the keys to the Serb army, to buy her way out of the country."
Network of citizens
Ms. Wenzel is also worried about the fate of objects from Sarajevo's National Museum that were moved to private homes for safekeeping early in the war.
"A network of citizens was organized to put some of the items in people's homes," she said. "Unfortunately, the network has become intermingled with people who wish to make money from those things."
But the anticipated flooding of the European art market by Yugoslavian icons, relics and paintings has yet to materialize.
"London is a magnet for this type of thing, probably the leading center in Europe, and so far nothing has turned up," said Detective Chief Inspector Charles Hill, chief of the Scotland Yard department presiding over the Art and Antiquities Squad.
Instead, sightings have been limited to icons being peddled for a song at flea markets in Mostar.
And amid all the stories of loss and plunder, there is at least one case of a long-lost item that has been found because of the war, as recently told by United Nations spokesman Alun R. Roberts, based in the Serb-held Croatian town of Knin.
In a zone of bloody fighting in southern Croatia known as the Medak Pocket, United Nations troops from Jordan noticed a giant iron bell in a ruined home. They lugged it to their checkpoint as a decoration.
A local man working as a U.N. interpreter could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it. It turned out to be the bell from the Orthodox Church in nearby Ornice, missing since 1941. And, as Mr. Roberts wrote in his report on the matter: "No one was more surprised than the local priest."