Bihac

BOSNIANS are going bananas about bananas. In spite of many

deprivations, the once-forgotten yellow fruit symbolising pre-war luxury

is making a comeback as the hottest-selling commodity.

Suddenly bananas are everywhere in this north Bosnian town which broke

out of a three-and-a-half-year Serb siege in August.

''It's because we've had no bananas for three years and we loved them

before,'' said a seller at the main market. She said the banana had

recently taken on a cult status in Bihac.

After years of siege and utter deprivation, worrying about what to eat

to survive, or who got killed and what would happen tomorrow, the

inhabitants of Bihac buy bananas with abandon.

''We are selling two boxes a day,'' said a woman in a kiosk next to

the busiest of Bihac's three hotels.

She is one in a line of hawkers selling Marlborough cigarettes,

Coca-Cola in large plastic bottles, cans of Austrian beer, and lots of

big fat bananas.

In the market, they fetch 1.5 marks a kilo (40p per pound). Fresh,

hard, shiny yellow bananas without a single blemish sell for up to two

marks (80p).

Everybody seems to be eating them. A girl strolls down a gravel path

in a city park on the bank of the Una River, enjoying a tasty bite on a

sunny afternoon.

A bunch of soldiers in a frontline town crowd around an improvised

store with nothing but bananas on display. Tough men in uniform armed to

their teeth peel and chew them with religious devotion.

Next minute they are on a bus and off to the front line, leaving a

pile of banana skins on the sidewalk.

A tall, skinny soldier with a killer's face under a red beret stuffs

his mouth with a banana.

Edin Besic, a Bosnian army soldier in his early thirties, thinks there

is a political reason for the banana bonanza.

During the siege, the people of this mainly-Muslim enclave fought

Bosnian Serbs, as well as Serbs from the neighbouring Krajina region of

Croatia, and renegade Moslems loyal to the maverick former chieftain of

a nearby town, Fikret Abdic.

Of the three enemies, the people of Bihac most detested Abdic's

break-away state in Velika Kladusa, which they dubbed Autonomija

(Autonomy).

''During the Autonomy, their Radio Velkaton would tease us all the

time by saying 'You have nothing and we have plenty of bananas','' said

Besic, a machinegun mechanic.

''But the 'Autonomy' has fallen and we are here, and we have bananas

now and they don't,'' he said, smiling triumphantly.--Reuter.