The Washington Post

Thursday, February 17, 2000

Out of Work and Hope, Serbs Evacuate Kosovo

By Edward Cody

BELGRADE -- Nenad Asanin was an unpretentious post office clerk in a small town in Kosovo. At age 29, he was married, had become a father and seemed lodged for life in a job that was steady if unglamorous.

Then, eight months ago, his world came to an end.

That was when, after 78 days of NATO bombing, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic abandoned his brutal repression of the secessionist revolt in Kosovo, withdrew the Serb-led security forces and ceded control of the province to its ethnic Albanian majority under protection of international peacekeepers. Since then, Kosovo's Albanians have been moving the mail, with international help, and Asanin, a barrel-shaped Serb, has been without a home, without a job and without a foreseeable future.

Asanin and his family have joined an estimated 230,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians, including more than 40,000 Roma, or Gypsies, who have fled Kosovo since NATO troops flowed into the province last June, according to a count by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Their flight has emptied the province of three-quarters of a Serbian population that stood at 200,000 to 250,000 before the war. They have added to a sum of Serbs, now reaching more than 700,000, forced out of their homelands in the past decade by the disintegration of Yugoslavia into its ethnic parts.

Milosevic's government has complained repeatedly that these refugees attract less international concern than the 850,000 Kosovo Albanians forced from their homes last spring by Serb-led security forces and the NATO bombing campaign. Officials in Belgrade pointed out that although most Kosovo Serbs fled soon after the Yugoslav withdrawal in June, the number has continued to climb since then, with 500 joining the parade in December and more in January. This is so, the officials charged, because KFOR, the NATO-run peacekeeping force, is not adequately protecting the Serbs from repeated attacks by Kosovo Albanians.

"A reign of terror is going on unabated right in front of the eyes of KFOR," the Yugoslav deputy foreign minister, Nebojsa Vujovic, told a news conference here last week. "This must stop."

Maki Shinohara, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Belgrade, said aid workers fear that the latest explosion of violence between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, at Kosovska Mitrovica, 22 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Pristina, will send still more refugees into Serbia proper. Although the peacekeepers' mission includes making the province safe for all, hardly any Serbian refugees who fled in the past eight months have dared to return, she noted, adding: "We certainly don't encourage it."

Since Yugoslavia began breaking up, the U.N. refugee agency has registered 200,000 refugees from Bosnia, almost 300,000 from Croatia, 1,300 from Macedonia and 3,200 from Slovenia, all of them republics in the former Yugoslavia. Most are in Serbia, which with minuscule Montenegro forms what is left of the Yugoslav federation, and have been living with relatives or in scattered facilities such as factory dormitories. Because the Serbian economy has fractured over a decade of wars, most have little hope of finding employment and restarting their lives.

"It's very difficult [to find work], because NATO destroyed half our industry, and even those who already were working here don't have jobs now," said Dragan Milutonovic, who fled with his family from the Suva Reka district just outside Prizren in Kosovo's southwest corner.

Serbs and other non-Albanians fleeing Kosovo--about 200,000 in Serbia and 30,000 in Montenegro--have been designated "internally displaced persons" instead of refugees. This is because Kosovo is still technically a Serbian province, although practically it has come under the governance of the United Nations and NATO. For Asanin and his family, the effect is the same: They cannot go home.

"All our houses were burned," Asanin complained at a construction worker barracks here where he has sought shelter and food handouts from the Republic of Serbia Refugee Commission. "The old men who were left behind were killed. There is nothing left there."

Asanin fled Istok, about 40 miles west of Pristina, as soon as it became clear that Serbian security forces were on their way out. A number of Albanians had been killed in a Serb-run prison there during the war (the prison was also bombed by NATO), and Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas were in no mood to be nice to their defeated Serbian neighbors.

With his wife and two children in tow, Asanin took refuge first at a school in Kraljevo in southern Serbia. There, his wife gave birth to their third child, a son now 7 months old named Darko. But Asanin and about 100 fellow refugees were forced out in September, when the school year began, and have been wandering since in search of a place to settle down.

They landed here 12 days ago at the barracks made available by a construction company that used to do business in Kosovo. But they had to force their way in because earlier arrivals--100 Kosovo Serbs who had a connection to the construction company--did not want to share the space. The refugee commission has given them food but urged them to move on.

"We want to stay here," Asanin insisted, saying baby Darko has been hospitalized nearby with pneumonia. "We have nowhere else to go."

Milutonovic and his companions from Suva Reka have had better luck. They stayed at a simple hotel that used to house weekenders in a stand of maples near the village of Avala, 10 miles southeast of Belgrade. Since they left with their pickups and tractors June 11, that is where they have been waiting--for what, they are not sure.

"We are waiting to see what is our fate," said Svetislav Zivkovic, 35, who ran a farm and worked in a tire shop back in Suva Reka. Then, with a note of defiance, he added: "But Kosovo will always remain Serb."

Milutonovic, a wizened 57, sneered at the younger man's bravado. "If the big powers would really protect us the way they protect Albanians, we would get back on those tractors and return," he said, and settled back for a smoke.

Serbian Refugees

Since the start of Yugoslavia's disintegration in 1991, almost 700,000 Serbs have fled their homes in republics that have gone their separate ways:

From Numbers of refugees

Croatia 300,000

Bosnia 200,000

Kosovo 190,000

Slovenia 3,200

Macedonia 1,300