A method to the madness
Serb forces aren't just killing. They have a blueprint for terror

BY MICHAEL SATCHELL

If a single image captured the plight of Kosovo's refugees–and NATO's inability to protect them–it was an old woman, slumped in a wheelbarrow, being trundled to safety last week by her grandson. Their expressions of shock, fear, and exhaustion bespoke an ordeal shared by many thousands of ethnic Albanians fleeing the Balkan killing fields. Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing seems to have a simple goal: to rid a province the size of Connecticut of its ethnic majority. But if it seems like madness, there is definitely a method to it.

Milosevic's forces are using most of the same tactics they employed in the earlier Bosnian war. Looting and burning. Roundups and reprisals. Forced expulsions. Summary executions. With foreign journalists, aid workers, and government officials ousted from the province, the accounts by refugees reaching Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro last week were difficult to corroborate. But their stories were remarkably consistent–and quite credible given the Serbs' vicious record.

Within hours of the first NATO bombs falling, death squads apparently working from hit lists hunted down intellectuals, journalists, doctors, human-rights activists, and community leaders. As the pogrom widened, those with known connections to the United States or Western Europe fled or went into hiding. Hundreds of local employees of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe became targets. They included drivers, guards, clerks, and even homeowners who had simply rented lodgings to the OSCE's 1,400-member Kosovo Verification Mission, which was sent to Kosovo last fall to monitor human rights and was pulled out on the eve of NATO's airstrikes. One guard quoted a Serbian policeman as promising: "If you have any association with the OSCE, you are shot."

Ski masks. Throughout the province, able-bodied males were rounded up. Women, children, and men deemed too young or too old to fight were ordered to leave their homes–and their homeland. Seventeen-year-old Adil Avdylaga was rousted with his family from their dwelling in Dashinov. "This place is ours," snarled a voice behind a ski mask. "If you want to live, then you must go. Go to Albania. That is your country."

The Avdylaga family joined a column of 3,000 refugees marched at gunpoint to the border. Others traveled in farm carts pulled by tractors or horses. Babies were pushed in strollers; people hobbled along on crutches. At Kukes, just inside Albania, a crowd fought last Thursday over a few loaves of bread tossed from a relief van.

In Pristina, Kosovo's rapidly emptying capital, thousands jammed onto trains, evoking images of World War II. Several refugees used the word holocaust to describe being marched to the station and forced into impossibly crowded carriages and boxcars. "On the platform three women gave birth, and two old people died," said Migjen Kelmendi, a 35-year-old TV reporter. "I counted 12 cars . . . 10,000 people. There was no air, no water. It kept stopping. That was the worst thing."

At numerous crossing points, Serbs stripped refugees of money, identification cards, and license plates. So intent was Milosevic on wiping out all vestiges of Albanian society that public records of births, marriages, deaths, real estate, banking, and education were destroyed.

It may never be possible to determine the number of dead. Civilians were reportedly held in factories as human shields to deter NATO bombing. Germany said it had reports of thousands herded into makeshift "concentration camps." A stadium was said to hold 10,000 people.

Arkan. For the most part, though, violence was not necessary to achieve Serbian aims. Rumors that Belgrade had unleashed the mad-dog paramilitary leader known as Arkan set off panic. By week's end, the number of new refugees was approaching 300,000–on top of 200,000 who had fled the province in the past year.

The ethnic cleansing began in northern Kosovo, around Podujevo, along a strategic road into the province. Then Serbian forces fanned out, pushing refugees west, toward Albania and Montenegro, and east toward Macedonia. In village after village, the Serbs set deadlines–often 5 a.m.–for everyone to get out. Then they looted and torched the homes.

The Serbs concentrated first on rural villages, alleged havens for the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. But by the middle of last week, Serbian forces were moving against the cities. Pec, a community of 100,000, was set ablaze. Then it was Pristina's turn for terror. Most of the capital's 200,000 residents huddled in apartments, waiting for the dreaded hammering on the door. It meant the arrival of paramilitary thugs in blue camouflage, Yugoslav soldiers in green uniforms, or newly armed Serbian neighbors. The attackers often wore masks or had daubed their faces with greasepaint.

The Serbian forces appeared to be taking pains not to destroy important buildings and upscale neighborhoods, likely viewing Pristina as a future Serbian administrative center.

So far, there is no evidence in Kosovo of the kind of systematic rapes that took place in Bosnia. But some young women have disappeared, their fates unknown. In the town of Suva Reka, Serbian thugs plucked two girls out of a refugee convoy. Their father cried out in protest–and was immediately shot, according to witnesses interviewed by James Ron, a consultant for Human Rights Watch.

With Philip G. Smucker in Macedonia, Gillian Sandford in Albania, Warren P. Strobel, James Morrow, and Kevin Whitelaw