Yugoslav soldier tells of shame, haunting images (Chicago Tribune)

By Uli Schmetzer Tribune Foreign Correspondent July 7, 1999

KRALJEVO, Yugoslavia -- Cpl. Radovan Milicevic is still haunted by the memory of Albanian women with children wandering from village to village in Kosova and the sight of animal carcasses and torched buildings.

He recalls watching groups move out of a village, then on patrol seeing the same people camped in the woods. Days later he would see them again, ragged and hungry, dragging themselves back to their burned-out homes and empty stores.

Three months of fighting in Kosova have left him with bitterness for a government that sent him on a futile mission to the province, one that resulted in the mass expulsion of ethnic Albanians.

"There were no orders what to do with these wandering people. Our government had no strategy. We just left them to move about like sheep looking for shelter," Milicevic said.

A slim man with piercing blue eyes, Milicevic, 41, is a research engineer in private life. He is among a growing number of Yugoslav soldiers beginning to talk about what they saw and did in Kosova.

Many are angry over a war they knew they could not win, a sudden withdrawal they could not understand and a government that keeps telling Serbs that no mass expulsions or atrocities occurred in Kosova.

Most returning soldiers refuse to give their names to journalists. But the bitterness of their complaints -- about the sons of the powerful who were not called up for the draft, corruption in the upper ranks and the realization they were fed official lies -- indicate growing dissent in the armed forces.

Some soldiers are making their dissatisfaction public. Outside Kraljevo, reservist troops blocked a highway and a bridge with armored vehicles Monday, demanding more pay and back wages for their service in Kosova. It was the third such demonstration in this part of Serbia in a week, staged by disaffected troops such as Milicevic.

They are not alone. Crowds of frustrated civilians are taking to the streets with a growing boldness. Thousands gathered in the central Serbian town of Uzice on Tuesday, rallied by the recently returned opposition leader Zoran Djindjic, who called openly for the ouster of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Thousands more, meanwhile, clashed with police in the southern town of Leskovac in the second day of protests.

Milicevic's anger stems directly from his war experience on the ground in Kosova. He was stationed near the city of Pec, in the ethnic Albanian village of Kljna. By the time his unit arrived, two days before NATO started its bombing campaign, the entire village had been burned to the ground, presumably by Serbian paramilitary units and police.

"Yes, there was ethnic cleansing, and I saw the evidence during my three months' service in Kosova. Like many others, I felt sorry and I felt ashamed," the corporal said.

"I still see these kids and women move toward the Albanian border, then coming back next day, then heading east, then coming back. We used to give them some of our rations, but we didn't have much to give ourselves," he said.

Soldiers such as Milicevic insist the Yugoslav army maintained good discipline and a high sense of professionalism in Kosova, though they admit that in the guerrilla war by the Kosova Liberation Army, neither side took prisoners.

"The KLA were liquidated or ran away," he said, adding that his unit lost three men, two to KLA snipers and one to a mine.