100,000 Serbs May Flee Kosovo

by Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

Politicians and historians are foreseeing a repeat of the 1995 refugee crisis in Krajina, when more than 200,000 Serbs were expelled by Croatian troops from the land they had lived in for 400 years.

Thousands of Serbian families are already moving north together with troops pulling out from the province under agreements reached last week between the commanders of NATO and the Yugoslav army, reports from Kosovo say.

"That's the only thing we can do -- leave," said a Serbian high school teacher reached by IPS in Pristina, the Kosovo capital. "There is nothing good waiting for us here once the troops leave," he said.

The overwhelming feeling among Kosovo Serbs is that Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters will unleash bloody reprisals against Serbs, he said.

As the number of refugees will be comparatively small -- 100 000 people against some 800,000 ethnic Albanians -- it will not create much concern abroad, Belgrade analysts said.

High-ranking NATO and Pentagon officials have reportedly said that "Kosovo is not going to be a happy place for Serbs" and that they were "free to go."

"We wanted the guarantee that there won't be the security vacuum," he added, but declined to clarify if the guarantees were actually obtained.

"Yes, we are afraid that one humanitarian catastrophe - of ethnic Albanian refugees -- will now be replaced by another one, of Serbs leaving Kosovo," Vladan Batic, head of the opposition Alliance for Change, told IPS.

"I'm sure that we're going to see another exodus like the one in Krajina," he added. "The world was indifferent then and will be indifferent now."

"We saw the end of 400 years of Serbian history in Croatia with columns of refugees streaming on tractors into Serbia in 1995," said in turn Dusan Batakovic, a Belgrade historian.

"Now we'll probably see the end of the very history of Serbs when they leave the place where it began seven centuries ago -- in Kosovo," he added.

The last census in the former Yugoslavia (1991) showed that the Kosovo Serbs were 200,000, or 10 percent of the province's population.

The number of ethnic Albanians -- who boycotted the census -- was estimated then at 1.9 million. According to Orthodox church sources in Kosovo, not more than 100,000 Serbs remain in the province.

Yet the Serbian Orthodox church, whose seat for centuries was Kosovo -- cradle of the medieval Serbian state -- launched an appeal for Serbs to stay in the province, as a matter of "national interest."

In a written address to numerous churches in Kosovo, Artemije, the province's Archbishop, instructed the clergy to advise Serbs "to remain in their homes, villages, towns and find a way to survive."

"At this time, this is our only and the most important personal and national interest. Leaving our homes and this sacred land, at this historical moment, would mean that Serbs from Kosovo would lose their homeland forever. That would be an irresponsible, unpardonable act," said Artemije.

Archbishop Artemije also called the clergy to cooperate with the international security forces only in matters of humanitarian aid and "protection of our people from all uncontrolled violence."

"When the international security forces arrive in Kosovo, Serbs should behave in restrained manner and refrain from any insulting or provocative behavior. They should also respect all the rules of conduct introduced by the international security forces and civil administration," the letter says.

Despite the call, most political leaders here believe that very soon there will be no more Serbs in Kosovo.

Opposition politicians blame Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, for abrogating in 1989 the broad autonomy enjoyed by ethnic Albanians since 1974, when Kosovo and Vojvodina (a province with a substantial ethnic Hungarian population) were given a special status within Serbia.

Soon after becoming president of Serbia, Milosevic orchestrated a constitutional change to abrogate the autonomy, based on the aggression suffered by Serbs from Albanian mobs in Kosovo.

"No one will dare to beat you again," Milosevic is remembered to have said to an angry group of Serbs in Pristina, surprising many at a time when nationalism was strictly excluded from the official language of then communist-led Yugoslavia.

Zoran Djindjic, head of the opposition Democratic Party (DS), sent an open letter to the mediators who brought the Kosovo peace plan to Belgrade -- Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and Russian special envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin -- plus the U.S. deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

Djindjic warned that Serbs could become the target of indiscriminate violence by returning KLA members. "If no guarantees are given to Serbs in Kosovo, the return of ethnic Albanians to the province will be parallel to the exit of columns of Serbs."

The war in Bosnia (1992-95) left an estimated two million refugees and displaced people, of which only 550,000 have been able to return to their places of origin, because the peace achieved in the former Yugoslav republic is based on an ethnic division of the territory.