Word: serb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ljubica Milic was drenched with rain last Wednesday as she sat with her two sleeping children at an abandoned gas station on the road between Banja Luka, the largest city in Serb-held Bosnia, and Belgrade. As an equally sodden string of refugees streamed past, the young Serb from the Croatian village of Obrovac explained how she had been tricked by a war profiteer into making the worst deal of her life. "All I had was 200 deutsche marks [$139]," she says in a voice devoid of emotional inflection. "He asked me for 500 deutsche marks...
Nearly 150,000 Serbs like Milic spent most of last week fleeing before the army of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. Tudjman's soldiers needed just five days to conquer Krajina, the crescent-shaped region whose Croatian Serb majority seceded from Croatia in 1991 with the help and encouragement of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Tudjman's victory last week created the largest exodus of refugees since the Balkan wars began; at the same time, the offensive shook up the region's political and military balance of power, and as a result seemed to create an opportunity for peace. The White House...
...assault began at dawn on Aug. 4 with a bombardment of the Krajina Serbs' capital, Knin. When more than 100,000 Croatian troops attacked, the Serb army of some 50,000 men seemed simply to melt away. Croatians shelled cities and towns, harassed civilians and engaged in an orgy of looting and burning of Serb homes. "You're not going to see anything like what the Bosnian Serbs are doing, massacres of 3,000 people and such," said one U.N. official. "But it is still bad." Many Serbs still carry memories of the massacres their parents and relatives suffered...
...Milosevic does not come to the Serbs' aid, and if Tudjman is satisfied with retaking Krajina, the chances for peace in the region might actually be improved. A demonstrably strong Croatia could act as a counterweight to Serbia; a defeat for the Serbs might make them more amenable to negotiation; and a reintegrated Krajina would no longer be a source of instability. As American and European diplomats point out, the map looks much simpler with Krajina in Croat hands, the isolated eastern enclaves in Serb hands and some sort of Bosnia in the middle, making the way to a settlement...
...Milosevic may not be able to stay aloof, and Tudjman may reach for too much. If the situation of the Krajina Serbs becomes truly dire, nationalists in Serbia will press Milosevic to act. "I don't expect Milosevic to come to the rescue of the Krajina Serbs unless there is a barbaric massacre or the blowing up of churches by the Croats," says one State Department official. "That would put him under tremendous pressure." Thousands of refugees now pouring into Serb-held lands in Bosnia could also provoke sympathetic outrage in Serbia...