May 24, 1999
Belgrade's People Still Defiant, but Deeply Weary
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By STEVEN ERLANGER
ELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- The daily rock concerts in downtown
Belgrade continue, because officials
said they would until the bombing
stops, but the audiences have dwindled from 10,000 to a few hundred.
The heavily promoted night-time
rallies on Belgrade's bridges, sponsored by the political party of Mirjana Markovic, the wife of President
Slobodan Milosevic, no longer take
place.
The venomous language on Serbian state television and radio, aimed
at NATO and its leaders, is much
reduced, and in the last week or so,
television has even stopped claiming
that NATO planes are being shot
down regularly, as if they were
ducks.
Parents wait anxiously for the war
to end and their sons to return from
the front; the civilian casualties and
material destruction steadily
mount; strangers ask a foreigner,
"When will all this end," as if anyone
really knows; Serbian jokes, if anything, are becoming darker.
But it is weariness that hangs
heavily in the air, not defeatism. The
citizens of Belgrade, interviewed by
the dozen this last week, feel that
they are right to be fighting for Kosovo. Some express shame at what
they have heard about the purging of
ethnic Albanians; most express anger at Western support for the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army.
They are proud of their war, of their
brave if inevitably futile defense
against all the might of NATO.
They smell a political settlement
that will bring foreign troops into
Kosovo, and they do not know why it
is taking so long to write down the
obvious. They say they fear that people are now dying for the reputation
of politicians on both sides, and that
NATO will somehow double the
stakes as it continues to bomb hospitals, bridges and power stations.
They feel that they have no more
control over Milosevic than they
do over President Clinton or Prime
Minister Tony Blair of Britain. And
while they want peace, they also fear
the aftermath of this war: the ravaged country, the joblessness, the
sharp potential for internal political
strife or even a form of civil war.
Dejan Cukic, a rock star here who
played Friday's concert, as he had
played in the very first rock rally two
months ago, when the bombing started, says that people are simply exhausted, and that "in a way, we've
made a kind of peace with the war."
It has gone on longer than anyone
expected, he said, and "now we're
stuck, on both sides, and it's irrational and it's wrong."
Cukic, 39, said he cannot believe that the West believed in its
aims, which he defined as helping the
Albanians of Kosovo and bringing
down the Milosevic Government.
"For anyone who has spent more
than five days in Serbia, and wasn't
drunk all the time -- which is hard,
but spies should be sober for at least
half-an-hour a day -- it should have
been obvious that the bombing would
set off a humanitarian catastrophe
and empower this Government,
maybe forever," he said.
"But people here believe the violence in Kosovo started with the Kosovo Liberation Army that killed
Serbs to get independence, and that
the state is right to defeat them."
And even if one hates the leader of
the state, he said, "first comes the
war -- we'll vote later."
NATO missiles have largely been
so precise that many Serbs no longer
believe that NATO ever bombs in
error, even if the damage is to the
Chinese Embassy or a hospital.
"Psychological warfare," said a doctor named Zivko, demands attacks
on hospitals, trains and buses "to
demoralize the people." He said fervently, "I don't think NATO ever
makes a mistake." If NATO truly
wanted to change this Government,
he said, "they should hit the person
of the President."
There is, as among lab animals, a
kind of rapid adaptation to the war.
Belgrade is bombed in fits and
starts, which Serbs are convinced
are timed to any improvement in the
prospects for peace. Belgrade was
badly bombed the night the Rev.
Jesse Jackson arrived, and it is badly bombed whenever the Russian envoy, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, comes
here, noted a neurologist, Dr. Dejan
Sumrak.
"Either NATO doesn't want
peace," he said, "or it bombs from
frustration."
Belgrade lost its electricity again
on Saturday and today, to NATO
attacks on power stations. But even
this kind of powerlessness has lost its
novelty, and is only serving to get
residents angry at NATO, not at
Milosevic, who has been signaling his
readiness for a peace settlement for
more than a week now. No one thinks
that attacks on electricity supplies
are militarily justifiable, rather than
simply an effort to demoralize civilians.
"It's almost better to have no electricity or water, because it makes
you realize that it's a war," said
Ljiljana Smajlovic, a Serbian journalist. "It's almost worse if it's a
quiet night, if you wait up and there's
no bombing, if everything seems normal, because you know something
horrible is happening elsewhere."
Velimir Curgus-Kazimir, a communications specialist, says the tension keeps him from reading or concentrating. "The most important
thing is to organize yourself in some
small, practical things," he said.
"Today, I'll stock up on water, and
tomorrow, some batteries and vitamins. Practical things become most
important, and it makes you feel
competent, like you can win over
these difficulties and control your
life. If there's electricity and hot
water, take a bath."
A man whose son is serving in the
army in Kosovo is nervous about his
fate. But he is also proud that his
son's unit, based near the Albanian
border, is avoiding the fierce NATO
bombing and is keeping up morale.
"A good trench will defeat a cluster
bomb unless it lands inside," he says
knowingly, then adds, "At least
that's what the boys say."
After weeks of no news at all from
his son, which had him frantic, another soldier from his son's anti-aircraft unit of 100 visited last week,
bringing cheerful messages. "Of
course, my son tells me that everything is less dramatic and dangerous
on the ground than it seems from the
outside, and I tell him that everything here is normal," said the man,
who asked that neither his name nor
that of his son be printed.
"But what I am proudest of is that
he's mentally fine," he said. "He
doesn't pretend to be a hero and he
hasn't ruined himself. I recognize his
spirit, that he is the same man in
absolutely disastrous conditions."
The father described his son's horror at seeing a column of ethnic
Albanians being marched around
Kosovo under the control of the police. "He described the cries and
tears of Albanian children who were
on the road, and he said we gave
them all we had, all our food, but he
said we couldn't do anything about
it," the father said. "He said that it
was terrible, that we are soldiers and
should be fighting against soldiers."
The father obviously wants to believe the best of his son, but there
was no reason to doubt the account.
"The regular army has behaved
well," he said. "But they will be
happy just to come back home."
But the soldiers, like most people,
"psychologically can't think about
the end of the war," he said. "We
have to live as if it will go on forever."
That is not true of everyone, of
course, especially the young and educated, many of whom are not discussing political change, but emigration from a broken, postwar Yugoslavia still ruled by Milosevic.
Sandra, a vivacious office worker
in her 30's, with striking short platinum-dyed hair, goes dancing every
weekend, in a round of apartments
turned into informal nightclubs. But
when this war is over, she says, she
wants to leave, before her whole life
is wasted and the country degenerates into civil war.
"We've lived with this for 10 years,
and we're so sick of it," she said,
adding with reference to Milosevic: "He's ruined our lives, the best
years of our lives. We just can't take
it any more. We all thought it would
get better, but it just gets worse."
