[ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph 6

[Agron Alibali]

 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)

February 10, 2000, Thursday

Pg. 21



HEADLINE: The Balkans: legacy of war: A populace
blinded by patriotism and
politics His country may lie in ruins after last
year's Nato attacks, but
Milosevic is a master at persuading Serbians he is not
to blame

BYLINE: By BORIS JOHNSON

 BODY:
HERE is what they have been through, this crowd of
Serbs now sitting on the
steps of a forest lodge on a mountain outside
Belgrade.

   They have been bombed by Nato for three months.
Many of them have lost
relatives and are wearing little black oblong badges
to indicate bereavement.

   When Nato came in, they fled on their puttering red
Zastava tractors in sheer
terror of reprisals.

   They have lost their homes, many of them smashed
and burned by  Albanians. 
They have no jobs. They have no real hope of going
back to Kosovo; and what, I
ask, do they think of the man who brought them to this
pass?

   There are now 265,000 such "displaced persons" in
camps, barracks and hostels
around Serbia, and there was a time when we Western
journalists fondly imagined 
that their presence would be such a reproach to
Slobodan Milosevic and his
asinine policy that he must fall.

   So I put the question again to Stanko Antic, a
lanky fellow with rug-like
hair and piercing blue Slavic eyes, and immediately
they all set up a clamour of
protest.

   Old women, busily crocheting stringy oddments, get
up and join the crowd.
"Why are you blaming Milosevic?" demands Stanko. "Our
president did not force
us to leave. It was 19 foreign governments and
Clinton.

   "Who do you have in charge of your country? A
queen, yes? We love Milosevic
as much as you love your queen. Milosevic is not doing
bad things to his own
people, like Vuk Draskovic [an opposition leader]
intends to. Milosevic is not
kissing Albright's hand!" he says, and there is much
nodding and muttering of
assent.

   Listening to Stanko, it is hard to believe that
even these avowedly "simple
peasants" could be guilty of such gross
self-deception; except that one sees
this everywhere in Serbia.

   Milosevic encourages them to believe they are
victims, even when it was they 
who began the cycle of violence.

   I was there on the road south of Pristina in early
June, when the great
convoy came over the brow of the hill, with mattresses
piled on the same
wood-framed carts now parked around.

   They were escaping in fear because Serb troops and
policemen, with the help, 
no doubt, of Serb villagers, had responded to the Nato
bombing by launching
purges.

   As soon as the air strikes began, the homes of
ethnic  Albanians  were
torched and looted, and the  Albanians  were booted
out. Weren't they?

   Oh no, says Jovan Jovanovic. "Many of the 
Albanians  went of their own free 
will. They just decided to leave their houses during
the bombing and go into the
woods for a while. We had the keys to their houses and
we didn't touch a thing."

   "We were crying when they left," says Mladen Antic,
slightly overdoing
things. Perhaps they genuinely believe it; perhaps
not.The important thing,
politically, is that, in the words of Stanko, "people
from Kosovo are behind
Milosevic 100 per cent". Of the 250 seats in the Serb
parliament, 38 notionally 
represent Kosovo, and, in the past, Milosevic has had
them in his back pocket.
That is why he is making such a frenzied effort to
register these people for the
vote.

   The chances are - since he broadly makes the rules,
and since the  Albanians 
boycott the elections - that Milosevic will be able to
claim his Kosovo bloc
vote. Even if he does not, there are other reasons for
thinking that he will
hang on to power for at least a while longer.

   The army has remained loyal. Milosevic, who has
never shown any previous
enthusiasm for decorations, has dispensed about 5,000
gongs to campaign
veterans.

   The economy is weak, in the sense that the dinar
has declined from six to the
German mark at the time of the bombing, to 22, and an
old age pension for a
month - 50 dinars - will only buy a short cab ride.
Yet there is money around.
The regime has decided to let the black market rip, so
that the wayside is
littered with hawkers of bootleg petrol.

   The lights are working again, and every night the
RTS state news drums home
the message: that Slobo and his patriotic supporters
are rebuilding Serbia.

   Some of the bombed buildings are just as Nato left
them, but around others
the scaffolding is up, and the remains of bridges are
being dragged from the
Danube. It is true that if you talk to sophisticated
Belgraders, they will
assure you that they wish Milosevic was gone; that
they despise him and his
wife, and the corrupt cronyist culture that surrounds
them and their children.
But if you ask them to pick the man they would like to
replace him, they groan. 

   The opposition has made a hash of things. There
might have been a moment in
August and September, when the distress at the loss of
Kosovo was at its peak,
for a mass protest movement which could have carried
him from power.

   But throughout the crucial period, Vuk Draskovic,
the bearded charismatic on 
whom so many Western hopes have been pinned in the
past, has been unable to
decide whether he is primarily an opponent of
Milosevic, or whether he is a Serb
nationalist.

   And that, fundamentally, is the dilemma which
Milosevic has exploited to stay
in power. If you are a Serb, you do not mind Western
attacks on Milosevic. But
you do mind attacks on your own country, and Milosevic
has comfortably sheltered
himself behind the natural patriotism of the Serbs.

   In the end, it will not be enough for Slobo to
blame the people's ills on
sanctions. People will see through his trick of using
resentment of the West to 
fortify his position.

   Though it must be said that, in earning the
resentment of the Serbs, the west
has certainly helped Milosevic to stay in power.

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