The New York Times

Thursday, July 1, 1999

Stop the Exodus

By ALEKSA DJILAS

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Does Serbia without Kosovo inevitably mean Kosovo without the Serbs? President Clinton and other NATO leaders have repeatedly said no and promised that Kosovo would be a multi-ethnic democracy. While they fought Serbian nationalism with more than 1,000 combat aircraft, however, they use mostly words against Albanian extremists.

As a result, many units of the Kosovo Liberation Army have not been disarmed, even though the K.L.A.'s leaders said they would comply with the peace deal. Since the armistice on June 10, several Serbian civilians have been killed every day, and more than 50,000 Kosovo Serbs, close to a third of the province's Serbian population, have already left. In the general climate of fear, other, smaller ethnic groups like Roma Gypsies are also fleeing.

Serbia already has more refugees than any other country in Europe. There are more than 600,000 of them -- mostly Serbs expelled from Croatia and the Muslim part of Bosnia.

Both President Slobodan Milosevic and NATO leaders pretend not to notice them. Mr. Milosevic knows that Serbian refugees are an irrefutable proof of his failure to "solve" the Serbian national question through war in Croatia and Bosnia. And NATO prefers not to be reminded how it failed to reverse the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs.

The Serbs escaping Kosovo rarely reach Belgrade.

Mr. Milosevic rightly fears Belgrade's reaction to the appearance of a long column of old trucks and tractors bearing refugees and their scant possessions. Police officers stop fleeing refugees and point them to other towns and villages in Serbia. However, for the limousines of the well-heeled and corrupt Serbian elite who ruled and plundered Kosovo, the highways are always open.

A leading Serbian poet wrote that for Kosovo Serbs, the roads are their only homeland. He was referring to some 200,000 Serbs who had left Kosovo in the 1970's and early 1980's. Today, Serbian television avoids showing the refugees. They are mentioned briefly and with obvious unease. One can almost hear the news anchors sigh: Why can't they be like American stealth bombers -- invisible, distant and passing by quickly? This sin of omission had already been committed toward the Albanian refugees. Serbian viewers hardly ever saw their camps in Albania and Macedonia.

Mr. Milosevic himself rarely addresses his people. He enjoys being filmed shaking hands with foreign dignitaries and talking to them, but during the NATO bombing President Clinton had more "messages" for the Serbs than Mr. Milosevic did. Mr. Milosevic also failed to visit any Serbian refugees or wounded soldiers in hospitals. Earlier, some Serbs defended his absence, saying it was necessary because he had to conceal his intentions from the evil West. Now his silence is almost without exception interpreted as proof that he is a callous authoritarian, contemptuous of his own people.

For several years Mr. Milosevic has had the support of less than a third of the electorate. According to an opinion poll taken after the peace deal, less than 20 percent of voters had a positive opinion of him. And Mr. Milosevic's calculation -- that if Belgrade is quiet, the rest of the country will be even more so -- is turning out to be wrong. For example, in Cacak, a town in western Serbia, the opposition leaders ignored the police ban and on Tuesday addressed several thousand protesters. Similar protests are likely elsewhere in Serbia.

The NATO countries would love to be rid of Mr. Milosevic. But they would be na ve to expect that his democratic successor would accept without complaint the Serbian exodus from Kosovo and Kosovo's becoming an Albanian-run quasi state. Even the justly maligned partitioning of Kosovo, where the Serbs would keep some 25 percent of the territory and Albanians the rest, would be fairer than the complete expulsion of the Serbs, which is now taking place.

Ancient Israelites in Babylonian exile had many prophets. The Serbs consider Kosovo to be their holy land. But if the present exodus produces prophets, they will not be prophets of peace. Never a forgive-and-forget nation, the Serbs will dream of returning to Kosovo, if necessary by force. By insuring that Serbs can stay in Kosovo, NATO leaders will help prevent future war.

Aleksa Djilas, a historian, is the author of "The Contested Country."