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                                                                                THE BALKANS, Page 55

Ever Greater Serbia


After Bosnia, Belgrade is likely to turn its guns on
predominantly Albanian Kosovo, which could ignite a broader war

By J.F.O. MCALLISTER/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by William
Mader/London, Lara Marlowe/Pristina and Jay Peterzell/Washington


    Given the horrors visited upon Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is
difficult to believe that the Yugoslav conflict could get much
worse. But that is exactly what Western officials fear is likely
to occur when Belgrade turns its attention to Kosovo, the
predominantly Albanian province that is a disputed part of
southern Serbia. A U.S. analyst says Serbian "ethnic cleansing"
there is "inevitable"; a senior Administration official predicts
the spark that ignites a bloody Kosovo war could come in "the
next two or three months."

    But this time, as in 1914, the conflagration could spread
beyond Serbia. A Serb slaughter of Kosovars "is the point where
the conflict will automatically trigger a wider Balkan war,"
says a U.S. official. It would almost certainly involve Albania
and perhaps Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria and even Turkey. If two
NATO members become embroiled, the alliance could also be
dragged in. "It's our nightmare scenario," says a senior British
diplomat.

    For Kosovars, life is already a nightmare. They vastly
outnumber the ethnic Serbs in the impoverished territory, 2
million to 200,000, but Serbs have the guns, control the
government and run Kosovo as a brutal police state. The Albanian
Human Rights Council reports an average of 190 beatings by
police each month for the past year, often followed by jail
sentences for "disturbing public order." It has also recorded
106 deaths and about 600 woundings of Kosovars by Serb security
forces since Kosovars evicted from the provincial government by
Serbs declared an independent republic in July 1990.
Unemployment among ethnic Albanians is estimated at nearly 80%
because Serb authorities have insisted upon mass firings -- more
than 112,000 workers -- since the independence declaration.
Kosovo's only university is closed to ethnic Albanians, and
Albanian-language media have been stifled.

    In the capital of Pristina, a dreary city of Stalinist-era
high-rises scattered amid factory smokestacks and weed-infested
lots, paramilitary units from Belgrade patrol the streets and
carry out frequent identity checks. Hundreds of Yugoslav tanks
are lined up at the large military base on the western edge of
the city, a constant reminder of Serbian power. "Albanians are
treated just like blacks in South Africa," says Avdush Bajgora,
a 29-year-old doctor from Pristina. "It's complete apartheid."

    One day recently, the doctor stashed some packages of
medicine under the seat of his car, drove out of Pristina by
back roads to avoid Serbian checkpoints and headed north toward
the mountains. Every time he passed peasants sitting by the
roadside he called out, "Any police up ahead?" If caught by Serb
patrols, Bajgora feared, the medicine would be confiscated and
he would be beaten and jailed. An hour later, he arrived in
Dabishevc, an isolated hamlet without running water, paved
roads, telephones or postal service, where no medical care has
been available since Serbian authorities shut the only clinic
two years ago. Alerted by the word-of-mouth network of the main
Albanian political party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, 150
patients were waiting at the local school. With great ingenuity,
Albanians have constructed an underground social network of
schools, clinics and a welfare system fueled by contributions
from Albanians abroad to replace what the Serbs have taken away.
As she waited in line, Aisha Emini, 66, an illiterate mother of
seven, said, "Many times I weep in my bed at night because I see
how our young people are treated. None of my sons has ever found
work. I was never happy in my life, and now is the worst time
of all. If I had a gun, I would fight the Serbs myself."

    Any provocation -- perhaps the full-scale implementation
of Serbia's announced plan to displace Kosovars from their
homes so that 140,000 relocated Serb refugees from Croatia and
Bosnia can be housed there -- could turn these festering
Albanian resentments into open war. Serbs' feelings about the
region are intense too. "Kosovo is the holiest place to an
Orthodox Serb, more holy than Jerusalem," says Father Miroslav,
a priest at Pristina's only Serbian Orthodox church. "We are
ready to die to defend it."

    The roots of the conflict go back centuries. In 1389 the
Serbs were defeated just a few kilometers from present-day
Pristina in a decisive battle with the Ottoman Turks, laying the
foundation for 500 years of Turkish rule. Most Serbs in Kosovo
moved north, to be replaced over the centuries by Albanians, who
largely converted to Islam. But Serbs are still powerfully
attached to this ancient heartland. In 1989 more than 1 million
of them trekked to Pristina for the 600th anniversary of the
battle, and Serbia's strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, began his
ride to power in 1987 by whipping up Serb anxieties about the
"repression" of their Kosovo brethren.

    Hundreds of thousands of Serbs decamped from the province
during Josip Broz Tito's reign. Serbs say Albanians drove them
away by intimidation; Albanians say the Serbs left for greener
pastures, since Kosovo is Yugoslavia's least developed region.
But there is no serious disagreement that Serbs loathe Kosovars,
divided as they are by language, culture and religion. At the
bar of a small restaurant in Kosovo Polje, a Serbian suburb of
Pristina, a woman drinking slivovitz and beer beneath a portrait
of Milosevic shouts, "Why shouldn't we kill all the Albanians?
Kosovo is ours, and the Albanians have no place here!"

    The dominant view among Western analysts is that Milosevic
still has his hands full with Bosnia, and will avoid extending
the war to Kosovo until his current charm offensive to secure
diplomatic recognition of Serbia's gains in Bosnia has stalled.
"But we have continually underestimated the savagery of this
war," says a Western diplomat. "Kosovo is the one unifying issue
he's got." If economic sanctions and international isolation
make Serbs restive about Milosevic's rule, he could find a
Kosovo clash very useful to prevent a coup by more radical Serbs
who would consider peace a betrayal. The U.S. has received
reports in the past few weeks that Serbs are moving heavy guns
to Kosovo and conducting military exercises there.

    With remarkably few exceptions, Kosovars have been willing
to follow their leaders' policy of nonviolence and passive
resistance. In May they evaded attempts by Serbs to block
unauthorized elections, but their new assembly has been barred
from meeting. The President of the unrecognized Independent
Republic of Kosovo, Democratic League leader Ibrahim Rugova,
says, "We hold meetings every week with local representatives"
despite repeated Serb arrests of Albanian activists.

    Far from the Muslim fanatic portrayed in Serbian
propaganda, Rugova, 47, seems an unlikely nationalist leader.
A Paris-educated Ph.D. in linguistics, he explains, "I opted for
nonviolence because there has been too much violence in the
Balkans. But since the war in Slovenia and Bosnia, Serbian
ideology is one of brute force. Nonviolence may become absurd
in these circumstances." The Kosovars harbor the dangerous
conviction that the U.S. and Europe will help them win
independence from Serbia -- the same conviction once held by
moderates in Bosnia. But because Kosovo has never been an
independent republic and is technically part of Serbia, Western
governments will have even more difficulty mustering a case for
backing the Kosovars against Belgrade.

    For more likely help, Kosovars must look instead to their
ethnic brethren in Albania and the former Yugoslav republic of
Macedonia, where an estimated 30% or more of the population is
Albanian, and possibly to fellow Muslims in Iran, Turkey and
elsewhere. That inevitably raises the threat of a wider war.
Serbian forces are not expected to respect international borders
if Albania gives sanctuary to Kosovar fighters. Macedonia, now
led by moderates in a delicate coalition that seeks full
recognition of its own independence despite bitter Greek
opposition, could feel compelled to intervene on behalf of the
Kosovars lest their own Albanians secede. Either outcome could
tempt the Greeks to intervene militarily. They are already
destabilizing the Macedonian government by choking off its oil
imports, idling tractors and trucks during the crucial harvest
period and leaving grapes and apples to rot.

    According to U.S. officials, Greece has informally agreed
with Serbia to divide Macedonia. The republic is setting up
frontier posts and rudimentary defense facilities along its
border with Serbia to blunt the spread of hostilities from the
north. In the south, Greece has held military exercises meant
to send threatening signals. An incursion into Macedonia could
provoke the Bulgarians, who recognize Macedonian independence
but also have their own territorial claims. Even Turkey, which
sympathizes with the Kosovars, could get involved -- on the side
opposite Greece. This would throw southern Europe and NATO into
serious disarray. "But no one is even looking at this problem,"
says a worried U.S. official.

    So far, the Geneva conference on Yugoslavia plans to
establish a Kosovo working group, and international monitors are
to be sent to the region. "But if the monitors find abuses,
where's the fire brigade?" asks a Washington-based diplomat.
Absent a credible threat of force, there is no reason to believe
Milosevic will be deterred from expanding his vision of a
Greater Serbia to Kosovo. So the military planners whose fear
of a quagmire has kept American, British and French combat
forces out of Bosnia may soon be facing even worse choices posed
by a general Balkan war.