Yugoslavia The Human Cost of War

By Jill Smolowe

The scars may be just months old, but they cut deep enough to last a lifetime. In Dubrovnik, the architectural jewel of the Adriatic that has been under siege since Oct. 1, 50,000 civilians spent last week huddled in underground cellars and shelters while shells tore apart their matchless city. With potable water and food in ever diminishing supply, terrified Yugoslavs subsisted on powdered milk and the forlorn hope that the international community might finally come to their rescue.

To the north and east along the banks of the Danube River, the stench of decomposing livestock, pets and people wafted through the rubble-strewn streets of Vukovar. Through 12 weeks of fighting, 58,000 townspeople had fled. The 12,000 who remained behind cowered in the town's cellars and sewers, rolling cigarettes from tea leaves and burning strips of doused cloth for light. "This is hell," Vesna Vukovic, a Croatian television reporter, pleaded over the airwaves. "We just cannot stand it anymore."

It was a cry of despair from a civilian population that has seen its collective lives, homes and loved ones laid waste by artillery and gunboat bombardments. The relentless barrages on Dubrovnik and Vukovar were only the most dramatic reminders of the human toll in this vengeful war between Europeans -- the worst on the Continent since 1945. No one had even begun to add up the economic and physical damage to the country. Was anybody with the power to stop the carnage listening?

Only perhaps. After almost five months of hostilities, 12 failed truces and a death tally of more than 7,000, the Croatian and Serbian militias signaled last week that even they may finally have had enough. In the most promising bid yet for a true cessation of hostilities, both sides agreed to the proposed dispatch of United Nations peacekeeping forces. Croatia, which has lost control of almost a third of its territory, for the first time invited U.N. troops to be stationed in areas populated by Serbs. In exchange, the Yugoslav federal army, which has acted in tandem with Serbian militias, announced that it would withdraw from Croatian territory if the security of the Serbian enclaves could be assured.

The move toward a resolution of the crisis seemed to take a little of the ferocity out of the fighting. In Dubrovnik, where the guns were stilled at midweek to permit the evacuation of wounded civilians and 14 European Community monitors, a tenuous cease-fire held from one hour to the next. In Vukovar the fighting also subsided, largely because the Serbs seemed to have subdued the Croatian forces, despite reports that an organized force of holdouts had taken refuge in the sewer system. Although the army continued to pound Vukovar with rockets and artillery, a Western diplomat said, "They're not doing much now but making the rubble bounce."

Silencing of the guns in Vukovar would be a symbolic achievement. The quaint town in the eastern Slavonian region of Croatia is one of two largest areas in the republic populated predominantly by Serbs, which gives it a significance disproportionate to its size and population. The federal army intervened in force to show that it could defend embattled Serbs; the Croatians dug in to demonstrate that they could hold out on their own soil. The results proved only how futile this war really is. The ill-armed paramilitary forces fielded by the Croatians learned they could not stand up to the overwhelming military superiority of the army. As for the army, it "defended" Serbian civilians so thoroughly that barely a single Serbian house is left intact.

The months of war have touched every pocket of Croatia, where the lessons learned are certain to breed hatred for generations to come. An estimated 500,000 Croatians and Serbs have fled the republic since war erupted following its June 25 declaration of independence. Zvezdana Miovic, 30, is one such refugee, currently living with 136 others in a children's summer camp south of Belgrade. The daughter of a Croatian mother and a Serbian father, Zvezdana and her Serbian husband had lived peaceably among mostly Croatian neighbors in the western town of Zadar until the fighting began.

"Suddenly my neighbors refused to greet me," Zvezdana says. "My husband lost his job as a watchman in a factory." The fabric of her family life also unraveled quickly. "My uncle, my mother's brother, cursed the Serbs in the most awful language," she says. "I can see that he had to say those things in front of others, but he never came to me privately to apologize. That hurt me very deeply." The psychological strain became so great that Zvezdana fled with her two children. "There is nothing in Zadar for me anymore," she says. "I have no contact with my mother." Zvezdana's husband joined the legion of jobless, estimated at more than 1.5 million, fully 12% of the Yugoslav labor force. Frustrated and angry, he has signed up with one of the many local paramilitary forces in a Serbian-dominated area.

It is precisely such groups that give Serbian, Croatian and federal army authorities little hope that the fighting will soon end. Although officials reached agreement on a 13th truce late last week, none of them exercise full control over the hotheaded paramilitary forces. Major General Milav Pujic, a Deputy Minister of Defense, estimates that to hold territory one peacekeeping soldier will be needed for every 10 civilians. It remains an open question whether the international community has the manpower, the stomach or the sympathy for such a massive operation.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Belgrade