The Dayton agreement may bring peace to the former Yugoslavia but it comes too late to restore the multicultural identity that has defined Sarajevo for centuries. PNS commentator Paul Hockenos has reported on the former Yugoslavia for the last decade.

SARAJEVO -- After a four year siege, peace may arrive too late to rescue this city's centuries-old multi-cultural identity.

Muslims, Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and even Jews and Gypsies still live together here, respecting religious holidays and attending services. The Bosnian government has written multiculturalism on its flag, insisting that a sovereign, multi-ethnic, multi-denominational Bosnia remains its goal. If a spirit of tolerance and solidarity can survive in Sarajevo, the Bosnian leadership argues, it can and should be restored throughout the country.

But even its staunchest supporters admit the ideal that Sarajevo once embodied has been badly battered. The severe conditions of the siege have triggered a mass exodus of native Sarajeveans from the city. Before the war, roughly half of Sarajevo's 500,000 population was Muslim, a third Serb and ten percent Croat. Today, the Serb and Croat populations number only about 45,000 and 20,000 respectively. At the same time, wave after wave of Muslim refugees from rural, Serb-captured territories has entered the city, people with different backgrounds and values than the cosmopolitan Sarajeveans.

To most Sarajeveans, the ethnic passions that ripped apart their country are still incomprehensible. "Nationality and religion were never issues between me and my friends, and they're not now," says Bogdan Zivotic, a 26-year-old photographer, whose mother is Croat and father Serb. He says he feels no pressure or resentment from the Muslims, even at his workplace, the police department. "I'm still here because I believe in Bosnia. I'm treated just like everyone else, like a Bosnian."

In Cafe Lora, a small coffee bar, the last remaining members of the city's once-vibrant cultural scene still gather in the evenings. But the young journalists, artists and students admit the handful of cafes and clubs are just a shadow of what thrived before the war. "Our cafes are like a world unto themselves," says Alma Duranovic, a Muslim, who writes for a weekly magazine. "Amongst ourselves we try to live like before. But it's hard, we know it's just not that way anymore."

Sarajevo's non-Muslim communities have been decimated by the war. Once a week, one of Sarajevo's four synagogues opens its doors to the roughly 400 Shepherdic Jews still in the city, down from a pre-war population of 1500. "We're hoping that many of our people will come back when there's peace," says Dragica Levy of Sarajevo's Jewish relief agency. "Otherwise, this war will spell the end of nearly five centuries of Jewish life in Bosnia."

In contrast to the sparsely attended churches, Sarajevo's mosques are full. The war has prompted a boom in religious interest among Muslims. "When I was a teenager I didn't even know what it meant to be a Muslim," says Zlatan Nezirovic, a 24-year-old computer programmer.

Now for the first time in his life, Zlatan is observing Islamic holidays and abstaining from alcohol and pork. "The Bosnians were never good Muslims," he says laughing, referring to their reputation in socialist Yugoslavia for relishing life's earthly pleasures. "But today many more Muslims are taking Islam seriously, exploring this part of themselves."

The religious upsurge among Muslims is also a consequence of the sheer number of refugees in Sarajevo, which UN officials estimate at over 115,000. "Even the Muslims from villages and towns weren't deeply religious before the war," says Alija Isakovic, a writer and president of a Bosnian Muslim society. "But today everything that was certain to them is gone. They have nowhere else to turn."

The ethnic antagonisms and resentment that have engulfed Bosnia have inevitably taken their toll on Sarajevo. The remaining Serb and Croat populations have become tiny minorities in a Muslim-led and dominated state. While most Serbs and Croats say they feel no pressure from the state or their Muslim neighbors, others tell of harassment and intimidation.

Mirko T., an elderly Serb who asked to remain anonymous, says that he has been under police surveillance since the war began in 1992. His flat has been searched many times and he has spent three nights in jail.

"They accused me of collaborating with Chetnik snipers," he says, referring to the Bosnian Serb gunmen who fire on Sarajevo from the surrounding hills. "Even some of my Muslim neighbors now call me 'the sniper."' Mirko says that he will leave Sarajevo for the Serb-held territory as soon as he receives official clearance, which, for security reasons, the government refuses to give him.

Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat politicians loyal to the Bosnian government are sharply critical of government policy and the ruling Muslim nationalist party, the SDA. They charge the SDA has ruthlessly brought state and municipal structures under party control, pushing Serbs and Croats out of all important positions. Government critics say that the non-Muslim nationalities are being made to feel unwelcome.

"The Serbs and Croats who have stayed here have defended Bosnia and the idea of Bosnia," says Sarejevo's Catholic Archbishop Pero Sudar. "But this government is slowly forcing them out of the country. Its methods aren't as brutal as those of the radical nationalists, but they have the same effect."

Should these trends continue, Sudar says, the spirit that defined the city for centuries will be lost forever.