NATO Bombs Unite Serbs

by Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

Like in the days previous to March 24, when independent analysts warned that air strikes would not automatically achieve NATO's goals, many now fear that the ground offensive seemingly being prepared will be yet another gross miscalculation.

Analysts in Belgrade do not hide their surprise that top planners at NATO were not backed up by better research on the history, mentality and psychology of Serbs.

"In normal circumstances, Serbs are people who can endure a lot" says Jovan Maric, an internationally- respected psychiatrist at Belgrade's Medical School.

"Faced with outside aggression, they can only be ready to endure more, in spite of everything. The strong feeling is 'we have to stand up against the enemy.' That's the most likely reaction of Serbs, not irrational fear," he says.

"All those who thought that bombs, the terrible noise of explosions or the huge devastation of infrastructure would make Serbs bow their heads down were deeply wrong," Maric adds.

"Our basic aim is not to defeat NATO. We simply have to defend ourselves as good as we can," Yugoslavia's deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic said last week to journalists.

Leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, Draskovic has been for years a key figure of Serbia's opposition to president Slobodan Milosevic.

"This is not the right time to think about our profound political differences, but to defend the nation. After this thing (NATO bombing) is over, we'll have time to continue our political life," he added.

"If we had any doubts that the wars in Croatia or Bosnia were a matter of national interest for the Serbs of Serbia proper, there is no doubt about what's going on now," said in turn Goran Svilanovic, of the Civil Alliance of Serbia, another opposition group.

"This time it is our homes, our families and our survival at stake," he added.

Western military analysts seem startled and confused by the Serbian reaction in front of their country's devastation. In view of now massive "collateral damage" (a more palatable term for civilian casualties), Western media are also airing doubts and looking for explanations, some of them wild.

A NATO commander, for example, was quoted by the International Herald Tribune as saying that the reason for failure is the allies' overwhelming superior technology, suggesting that a better equipped enemy would be easier to defeat.

"Our high technology weapons' performance would be devastating against a sophisticated adversary fighting our kind of war, but they work much less well in a politically constrained campaign against Serbians who are skilfully using nearly obsolescent weapons to fight in ways we had almost forgotten about," the officer said.

As in Vietnam in the 1960's or Afghanistan in the 1980's the answer to a reality that is not fulfilling expectations is the escalation of military actions, involving more planes, missiles and now ground troops, with the subsequent growing human toll.

To most Yugoslav analysts, news about the Pentagon studying the Serbian resistance against Nazi Germans for their next phase of war against Yugoslavia, only brings about ironic smiles.

"So far, with all their technical supremacy, their 'smart bombs' and sophisticated weapons, they have only reached the level of 'death, lies and videotapes' " says an independent analyst in Belgrade.

"It would be pathetic to believe that our spirit can win against their computers, but we really thought they had better analysts," she says.

Patriotic rhetoric apart, even the top brass stress only one message -- their duty to defend the country and its people against the combined forces of the world's 19 most powerful countries.

"We'll do whatever is necessary and (utilize) all our human and other resources to defend the homeland" is the usual sentence by general Dragoljub Ojdanic, the Yugoslav Army's chief of staff.

"We know the supremacy of our enemy, its military power and potential, but there is nothing else we can do but defend our country, said general Nebosja Pavkovic, commander of the Kosovo-based Third Army.

"If it comes to a foreign ground-troops invasion -- be it from Albania or Hungary -- I can only say that we'll fight till the end," he concluded.

NATO ground troops can expect resistance from the some 95,000-strong regular army and another 55,000 reservists recently mobilized, with strong support among the population, Yugoslav military sources said.

"After all that they have done to our country, we can only say that if they plan another Vietnam, it will be three times worse here," Radovan Urosevic, a Kosovo Serb from Pristina says.

Most likely, Western television viewers will not see many Serbian soldiers kneeling down to kiss NATO troopers' boots as they did in 1991, when Iraq was expelled from Kuwait

In these hard times in Yugoslavia, where trains carrying civilians and refugee convoys are coldly mistaken for military targets, some "propaganda warfare" actions by the Western alliance provoke only sarcasm among people.

For instance, it is very hard to find anyone who admit having taken for serious several broadcasts over the frequencies of Belgrade's television last week, after NATO planes destroyed their relay stations.

A man reading a NATO message in a heavy-accented and grammatically poor Serbian was only ridiculed by those who heard it. The message said that NATO did not hate Serbs and informed of the ethnic Albanian refugees being thrown away from their homes in Kosovo.

"Really, they (NATO) should know that people here think that it was ethnic Albanians and their desire to have an independent Kosovo that caused the air raids against us. For an ordinary person here it's very hard to come to terms with whatever NATO says," Jelena Vasiljevic, a Belgrade psychologist explained.

The same goes for NATO leaflets calling the people of Serbia to overthrow Milosevic.

"Maybe later," says a retired engineer in Belgrade. "First we'll have to deal with them and then clean our house. It is not up to them to tell us what to do."

Nebojsa Vujovic, the newly-appointed Foreign Ministry spokesman stressed that Yugoslavia has "two strategic goals at this time: Its defense from aggression and a political settlement of the Kosovo crisis. That's what we're going to continue working on."

In that direction, and creating even more confusion about the effects of NATO's air attacks, Serbian president Milan Milutinovic met Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate Kosovo ethnic Albanian leader, in what Belgrade described as a process of negotiations.