The accord meant to uphold the town as an example of a Muslim community in Serb territory. Now the population is officially down to 42,000, and still falling. But people who were ethnically cleansed from – or have left – areas now given to one of the other communities are unlikely to return. Refugee families I met in “The Balkans” are never going home. What may happen is that they drift away to Sarajevo.When Dayton brought the fighting to an end (no one knows for how long) there were about 50,000 people in the Gorazde pocket. “Just imagine! Till this week we had to heat water to wash with on a wood-stove! We had no electricity!”"Must’ve been awful,” said Oliver with a straight face.The Dayton peace agreement glibly announced that all refugees could go home. (What would have happened? “Unpleasantness,” said Oliver laconically, and after testing the waters of still-simmering hostility, I believed it.) We found some indignant Serbian refugees newly arrived from Muslim- controlled Sarajevo.”Why don’t we get aid? Conditions are terrible here!” said one well-dressed woman, living in reduced but not unbearable circumstances in a worker’s chalet.

It’s dished out off the back of the lorry, and winds up on the market But at least that brings prices down. There are rich and poor in Gorazde, but the poor aren’t all refugees.We did get to Visegrad – it’s not far, just over the mountain, but now, in Serb held Bosnia, it’s a different “nation”. We had to remember to call Nerma – our invaluable interpreter – Nina, lest the Serbs guess she was Muslim. Recently a well-known charity rolled up to Feed The Children’s Gorazde warehouse.”We have 5,000 children’s jackets! Will you store and distribute them for us?”" ‘Fraid not. You see, we have 7,000 children’s jackets and that’s all this town needs.”"But what shall we do with ours?”"Why not take them to Visegrad, up the road? They’re getting refugees now from Sarajevo, and we haven’t got a set-up there yet.”"Visegrad! Isn’t that Serb?”"Well yes, but there are children in need there.”"Oh, no, we couldn’t give it to the Serbs!”So it gets dumped Not literally. “Do you have to close our programme?” “Not at all,” he replies blandly.

“You just need to choose a new delegate, one you can trust to keep our rules.” A new rep is chosen and things get under way again.Running a relief operation.is not only a matter of making an unheralded mercy dash over potholed roads with a truckload of wardrobe-scrapings in black plastic sacks. And it’s not only misguided individuals who are being less than helpful. When he finds “irregularities” (a tin of meat mysteriously missing from each parcel, lists containing names of families no longer there) he simply closes the programme.Next day, someone will approach Oliver in the street. Oliver can’t deliver every item himself; he has to delegate, and those to whom this honour falls sometimes prove fallible He finds this out by doing frequent spot-checks. Oliver is not only their immediate source of food; they trust him to ensure that their food parcels reach them intact But there are hiccups. But they welcomed us with smiles, strong, freshly ground coffee, and something to eat; they posed willingly for photographs and children crawled into Nerma’s lap.Feed The Children is their lifeline.