Worldandnation: Now it's the Serbs behind the fence

Now it's the Serbs behind the fence

Once a powerful minority, the Serbs remaining in Kosovo now must be protected.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN Times Senior Correspondent

GORAZDEVAC, Yugoslavia -- When the war between NATO and Yugoslavia ended in June, 20-year-old Bojan Srbljak feared he was a marked man. He was young, fit and -- most dangerously for him -- Serbian.

Srbljak, a college student, says he had never done anything to hurt any of the ethnic Albanians who lived near his village in western Kosovo. Still, as they began their violent revenge this past summer, he decided it would be safer to move to another part of Yugoslavia.

He went to Belgrade but stayed just two months. He couldn't find a job and residents there treated the refugees from Kosovo as unwelcome reminders of yet another war lost, yet another disgrace for the Serbian people.

Srbljak returned home. Only now, home seems more like a prison.

To keep vengeful Albanians out, Gorazdevac and its 600 Serb inhabitants are guarded night and day by Italian NATO troops. Approaching cars must inch their way through a maze of barbed wire, tires and sand bags. Soldiers with machine guns search every vehicle and, when tensions in the area are high, they close the road altogether.

Within the confines of their village, Srbljak and others can move about freely. But they dare not leave without a NATO escort, and gunfire at night in the nearby hills spooks even the most fearless.

"It's hard being here," says Srbljak, who spends most of his days walking the dirt streets or hanging out with friends in the courtyard of the Serbian Orthodox church. "No one is working, there is nothing to do."

NATO's stated goal in last spring's war was to stop Serb oppression of Albanians in Kosovo, and to pave the way for a multiethnic society where everyone could live and work in peace. But the situation in Gorazdevac and other Serbian enclaves shows how hard, if not impossible, it will be to achieve that aim.

In the first few weeks after the war, as angry Albanians returned to find their homes and stores in ruins, tens of thousands of Serbians fled. Some did not leave fast enough; here in the Italian-controlled sector of Kosovo, at least 20 Serbs have been murdered since June and countless others, including old women, shot, beaten or forced out of their homes.

Violence has decreased but it continues. Just last week, a group of young Albanians in Pristina killed a Bulgarian-born U.N. employee whom they mistook for a Serb. He had arrived in Kosovo only hours earlier.

NATO's show of force has not ended the ethnic attacks. However, it has restored order throughout Kosovo and convinced many Serbs that it is safe to stay or, if they left, to come back. Of the 200,000 Serbs who lived in the province before the war -- about 10 percent of Kosovo's population -- some 70,000 remain.

Here in Gorazdevac, all but a few of the 2,500 residents went to Montenegro or Serbia in June as Albanians began their killing rampage. About 600 have returned, reassured by the Italian tanks and soldiers surrounding the village.

"We are trying to do our best to let life go on smoothly in this area, and I think we have done a pretty good job," says Lt. Col. Gualtiero De Cicco.

Restoring calm has been especially hard because of the massive damage that Serbs inflicted on nearby Albanian towns and villages. Albanians claim that most of the Serb paramilitaries responsible for the burning and looting came from the Gorazdevac area.

The Italians have been disarming Albanians bent on revenge, but concede it is nearly impossible to find all the munitions they have stashed away. In August, an elderly Serb woman in Gorazdevac was killed when a fragment from a mortar shell crashed through her window.

"Around this village are several Albanian villages and it's so easy at that range of 3,000 to 6,000 feet to fire a 60mm mortar and get away," De Cicco says.

Compared to Albanians in the area, many of whom are sleeping in tents because their homes were so badly damaged, the Serbs appear at first glance to be fairly well off.

Not a single house was destroyed during the war. They still have their clothes, their furniture, their cows and their tractors. The power is on, albeit sporadically.

The one thing they seem to lack is a future.

Before the war, when Serbs controlled Kosovo's government and industry, many of the Serbs from Gorazdevac worked in the big shoe and Zastava auto factories in nearby Pec. But both were heavily damaged, and when they reopen it will be with an all-Albanian work force if the Albanians have their way.

Some of the younger villagers, like Bojan Srbljak, hoped to finish their college educations and get good-paying jobs in Belgrade. But Srbljak's two months in the Yugoslav capital taught him a lesson.

"There are no jobs in Belgrade -- people are starving there," he said.

Despite the claims of paramilitary activity, men in Gorazdevac insist they like the Albanians and never did anything to harm them. However, they are so fearful of revenge they will not venture alone into Pec, a city of 100,000 that is now entirely Albanian.

Srbljak's uncle, formerly an engineer at the shoe factory, rode in a NATO jeep on a recent visit to a doctor's office. Even with Italian soldiers guarding him, he was afraid to get out and buy a sack of potatoes on the way home. A soldier got them for him.

For Srbljak and other villagers, the only breaks from the tedium of life are weekly bus trips to Serbia and Montenegro arranged by the Serbian Red Cross. Escorted by Italian troops, the bus brings former residents back to see friends and relatives, and lets villagers go to a city where they can shop or do other things without fear of being killed.

Srbljak, an engineering major, rides the bus eight hours to Belgrade to take exams in his college courses. He also visits his mother and sister, who are still afraid to return to Kosovo.

The bus used to keep a regular schedule, but Albanians were able to tell when it would pass through Pec and heckled the passengers. Now, arrival and departure times vary, with the bus often leaving Gorazdevac late at night. Because the villagers are so isolated, the Italians have set up a clinic with a military doctor and are making arrangements to bring in a dentist. That has angered some Albanians, who lack similar amenities in their own villages and feel Serbians are being rewarded for their brutish behavior.

The Italians are aware that the Serbs -- enemies of NATO just five months ago -- often seem happier to have them in Kosovo than the Albanians do. Italian soldiers have picked up some Serbian words, and the Serbs often greet visitors with a cheery buon giorno.

"We have to guard and protect all communities in this area, especially the Serb communities because they are the minority," says De Cicco, commander of the Italian unit here.

De Cicco has tried to bring together leaders of Gorazdevac and nearby Albanian villages but has managed to get out of them only a few forced handshakes. He will not say so directly, "but it should be clear from what I am telling you" that his doubts about the prospects for a multiethnic society in this part of Kosovo are very strong.

The villagers themselves express little sympathy for Albanians who have lost their homes, businesses and, in many case, relatives. Like most Serbs, the residents of Gorazdevac consider themselves victims, and say the Albanians caused Kosovo's hardships by trying to become independent from Yugoslavia.

"Everybody's heard about Albanian refugees, about Albanians' burnt houses," says Srbljak. "It is good that somebody hears about us. We had no problems before NATO began bombing but you see what is happening here now."

He escorts visitors to the little cemetery where two friends are buried, shot last summer by Albanians. There are many more fresh graves in the Albanian cemetery a mile or so away but he makes no mention of that.

As darkness falls, Srbljak heads toward the lights of home. His father and uncle are drinking plum wine, pressed in September from the fruit that grows abundantly here.

There are no lights in the Albanian villages and nothing to drink but water.