By Nikola VRZIC
The demilitarized zone, a belt five kilometers wide along the administrative border with Kosovo, ceased to be demilitarized last Tuesday, when members of the "Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac" (UCPMB) opened mortar and artillery fire on the positions of the few Serbian policemen present at the time in the zone. These policemen were armed lightly, in accordance with the provisions of the Kumanovo agreement between the Yugoslav Army and the NATO alliance, and were forced to retreat.
In the meanwhile, the Serbian and Yugoslav governments gave the UCPMB an ultimatum to withdraw (by Monday at 7:00 p.m.) to which the Albanian extremists responded by digging in even deeper; consequently, an hour before the deadline it was extended until Friday.
Until then, the new army and police units are also being brought in, tanks are arriving in Presevo even though things are quiet everywhere except in Bujanovac.
Only a few kilometers behind the graying policeman from Lucane, in Bujanovac, life goes on in the usual manner. This would be the conclusion of anyone visiting for the first time this small town on the crossroads of routes leading from Serbia toward Skopje and Gnjilane. Except, of course, for the policemen in camouflage uniforms and the combat vehicles at every step, and the fact that the entrance to the police station is protected by machine guns. But it's not just that; there are many other things far from being usual, explains Bujanovac resident Bratislav Lazarevic "Bata", a representative of the "Nezavisnost" trade union in this town. "There are far fewer people in the streets and the Albanians are almost nowhere to be seen. Almost all of their shops are closed and those that are still open close early," he says.
He is correct; the Albanian part of town is covered with thick silence and desolate. The only thing to be seen is a cat running across the road and an old man with traditional Albanian headwear who turns his head away from passersby.
On the other hand, the president of the municipal administration of Bujanovac, Stojanca Arsic, says that "there exist traditional good neighborly relations and our joint position is that they need to be preserved". By whatever means, commercial transactions between the two (divided) communities are continuing their usual course, which Bujanovac residents describe with the sentence "the Gypsies clothe us and the Albanians feed us".
Despite claims to the contrary and CNN's filming of Serb refugees, there is no large scale movement of population out from Bujanovac. "I can responsibly state that news regarding people moving out is misinformation," says the head of the secretariat of internal affairs (SUP) in Vranje [regional Police headquarters], Colonel Novica Zdravkovic. President Stojanca Arsic tends to agree: "The security of citizens in Bujanovac municipality is absolute and such comments are just common rumors."
There was talk that on Monday the Albanians tried to move out of Veliki Trnovac but the police turned them back. Colonel Zdravkovic, however, says that "the Police did not turn them back but only talked with them and explained that they were safe, and they decided on their own to return home".
The residents of Bujanovac, which is small enough for people to know who is where, agree with the assessments of Zdravkovic and Arsic with respect to the number of those who have left (a generally accepted number is a total of 2,000, of which two or three hundred are Serbs). The opinion of "ordinary" people is described with a leisurely smile by sales clerk Zorica Stojanovic: "Where am I supposed to go, to sleep in sport auditoriums? But as far as tension is concerned, it is tense; this is just an imitation of normal life. Even a cretin would react to this, let alone ordinary people."
"We are in a difficult situation, caught in a sandwich between the two sides. People can't wait for the situation to improve," explains Galip Beqiri, the head of Veliki Trnovac, in very good Serbian. He says that approximately 1,500 Albanians have fled and that they have had no problems to date with the local Police. "God forbid we should ever see the police from somewhere else," he says and claims that the Police has killed 14 Albanians since the end of the war.
Our conversation with Beqiri ends after only a few sentences as he hurries off to attend the funeral of two children and a woman killed on Monday while fleeing from the zone of conflict when their tractor hit a landmine planted by members of the UCPMB. On his way to the funeral, Beqiri talks as we walk: he says that the villagers of Veliki Trnovac "have no desire for contact with the KLA" and that they "don't want to secede from Serbia" but only "to be treated like people". To which this reporter's guide, a Serb from Bujanovac, commented bitterly and barely audibly: "They could talk like that until last week. Two men from Veliki Trnovac and one from Bujanovac were caught while attempting to smuggle ten kilos of explosive in a school backpack."
The sniper from the beginning of the story is propped up on his elbow on a low concrete wall to the left side of the entrance to the house of 78 year-old Mehmet Dostani. "Here is good, excellent; there I do not know," says Mehmet with great difficulty and with his hand motions toward the side of the village leaning against the hills which is occupied by the UCPMB. "Police took me in a car to see a doctor. My sons are in Switzerland; here only me and wife."
Several police jeeps are parked behind the high wall surrounding the disproportionately small house of Mehmet Dostani. Members of police special forces (the combat sort), dressed in green camouflage uniforms and matching cowboy hats stroll among the jeeps. "Before (in Kosovo) we took action immediately; now there are delays, they are taking us for a ride, we are made to appear incompetent," complains one of the policemen. Hasn't he had enough of war? "No, it's my job," he replies. "They're impatient," he says as he peers through his binoculars. "They want to take everything as soon as possible. No f... way." "They can get us here with a Browning," adds his colleague, trying to frighten the curious newcomers. "Can we get a little music here for these people!" he shouts to a third policeman "We want them to feel welcome here."
The sounds of "City Records" hits blasted from the jeep, followed by a somewhat more Eastern rhythm accompanied by the verse "You were not born to love/You are led by a wrong star". The DJ in uniform jumps onto the hood of the jeep, spreads his arms and sings at the top of his voice, deeply struck by the meaning of the song and this fundamental dilemma of life, here in the first line of fire. But he quickly descends from the hood upon receiving word that "something is happening over there", "they're buzzing around over there". Several policemen, crunched over, run toward the other side of the village; the rest warn us that this is no longer a good place for us to be.
Nevertheless, the policemen, itching for a fight that day (Tuesday), missed out only to regain control over the entire village of Lucane the next day, Wednesday morning, again without a fight.
In the village of Oslare, however, on the Yugoslav Army watchtower which replaced the local village patrols, some one-half kilometers from the positions of the Albanian extremists, there is far less enthusiasm. This is hardly surprising because regular recruits, young men who are serving their compulsory military service are deployed here.
Last week the residents of Bujanovac demanded that they be given weapons to defend themselves. Those from the town were refused but we learned that some weapons were passed out in ethnically mixed villages such as Oslare despite official denials. These are the same people who maintained local patrols until they were relieved by the Army.
Standing on a tank which has been camouflaged so as not to be seen until one is approximately ten meters away from it, soldiers in mismatched uniforms and with the Communist star on their helmets unhappily observe the opponent's trenches, jumping in place to keep from freezing. "It's ugly," say the soldiers who have already spent five days in position and "don't care about anything anymore".
The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of six soldiers who escort the reporter to the commander of the watchtower and then back to the village, first passing through its eerily empty Albanian part. Not a soul in sight. An invisible border is symbolically marked by a pig [local Albanians are Muslims and do not eat pork, or breed pigs] that freely wanders down the muddy village path; a little further on, little children are returning from school. The lady of the house in one of the Serb houses closest to the enemy, 60 year-old Slavka Stankovic, analyzes the situation over coffee and domestic plum brandy: "As we say, the heart betrays us. They should clean things up already; whoever perishes, perishes. As things are, in two-three years they'll attack again, the mongrels."
An Albanian from Bujanovac who barely agrees to say a few words says something similar to this: "When an Albanian comes, he stays for good," says this man and heads off toward the Albanian part of the town in the twilight.
The president of the municipal administration of Bujanovac, Stojanca Arsic (Yugoslav United Left) puts his hopes, nevertheless, in the diplomatic wisdom of Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica. "Our diplomats will find a solution in the near future through President Kostunica and through dialog with the international community," he says. At the same time, he probably justifiably accuses that same international community, that is KFOR, of responsibility for the fact that weapons arrived for the Albanians in Bujanovac municipality at all and for the fact that, during the course of this year alone to date eight policemen have been killed and 26 wounded in approximately seventy incidents in the municipality.
However, the consensus in Bujanovac is that the Albanians, Hashim Thaci "who is in a hurry because Rugova is winning and so he wants to quickly take everything he can", KFOR and the Americans are not exclusively to blame for the present situation which is neither war nor peace and which has practically lasted here since the NATO bombing. "Our police also bears much of the blame," says one younger resident. "An Albanian gives him a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and the policeman lets them do whatever they want." He also says that "they don't like this situation any more than we do because they can't smuggle when they're surrounded". "They'll run dry," he adds with a smile.
Whether they will truly run dry as a result of these conflicts or will the saber rattling stop under pressure from the West (Europe? America?), in light of the contradictory prognoses, is a big question. The most likely possibility, however, appears to be that the current situation, with possible insignificant modifications, will last until spring. After that, no one knows; however, the above mentioned statement of the Albanian from Bujanovac seems frighteningly realistic. Or, if we take into account that members of the Yugoslav United Left are now most vociferous in claiming that they wholeheartedly believe in their new president, whom they until recently considered to be a traitor, should we believe that diplomacy will win after all?