Placid Slovenia Turns Itself Into a Fortress

The thick cordons of parked trucks that had barricaded Ljubljana for more than a week seemed to have lifted with the morning mist.

The first stretch of this main road headed east from the Slovenian capital toward Croatia appeared, deceptively, to be clear of defensive blockades.

Two Slovenian reservists manned the sole checkpoint at the highway entrance, slouching against their car, smoking with one hand and sporting AK-47 assault guns with the other.

But after half an hour’s drive through an obstacle course of heavy trucks left behind days ago by their drivers, the illusion of traffic and life returning to normal in battle-ready Slovenia was abruptly shattered.

“Obvoz, “ the sign said, indicating a detour but giving no hint of the mayhem ahead.

Overnight, placid Slovenia has been transformed into an impregnable and near-inescapable fortress.

Slovenes have welded rusty railroad tracks into tank traps that look like giant jacks and positioned the spiky jumbles across the highway.

They have dumped piles of gravel and sand in thick berms that prevent any vehicle from moving beyond the halfway point between Ljubljana and Zagreb, capital of Croatia.

At the entrance to side roads, they have dragged cement blocks to the middle of the roadway and strapped on mines and gas bombs to deter anyone from breaking through.

Slovenia’s territorial defense forces--or TDs, as journalists have dubbed them--have thrown up a veritable force field against the menacing hardware of the Yugoslav People’s Army.

Throughout the embattled republic, Slovenes have scurried to defend their freedom, working together with the determination and productive single-mindedness of a colony of ants.

Despite a two-day-old cease-fire that appeared to be holding, the 2 million people of Slovenia believe they are confronted with war.

The massive civil defense work began in Ljubljana and at strategic locations such as airports on June 27. But the erection of obstacles to prevent the advance of the federal titan accelerated with alarming intensity early Friday, isolating the republic from the Yugoslav federation it is struggling to leave.

Still, a way out of Slovenia into neighboring Croatia can be negotiated with perseverance and a lot of gas.

U-turns on the highway to back away from the barriers pose little danger, as there is no one else on the road.

Rutted country tracks through cornfields and lush green vistas are the best bet for linking up with a back road that leads east. Yet even here, miles from nowhere, armed TDs guard all junctions.

With the right language and license plate--that means either Western or Slovenian--a driver can get good directions and even an escort-guide.

In the village of Sentjernej, seven turns and 12 miles east of the town of Novo Mesto, a red Niva jeep carrying two camouflage-clad territorials stopped a rented car carrying two American journalists across an old wooden bridge.

Concerned that the travelers would never find the sole loophole in the Slovenian defensive net, they jumped in the jeep and led the way past overturned trucks reinforced with sandbags, past piles of scrap metal welded into impenetrable masses, past raised bridges to a junction blocked by an articulated bus. To the left of the road, between a tree and a cottage, was a path wide enough for a car to squeeze through.

“Go to the left at the next road, then under the freeway to Krsko, then take the old road to Brezice,” a ponytailed reservist explained, drawing the route in the air with the muzzle of his gun.

The route is a lunacy of double-backs and dodges, of driving 10 miles the wrong way to catch another road back, which leads to a path rejoining a minor highway a few feet beyond the barrier that originally sent the driver looking for another way through.

Aggravation would be an understandable consequence of the numerous reroutings and wasted time. But all about this embattled republic, there is an unshakable serenity that mocks the madness of war.

The hilltop of every village is crowned with a pastel-colored church sprouting a spindled spire, reminiscent of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire that ruled Slovenia until World War I. Neat tile-roofed houses cling to the wooded flanks of slow-moving rivers, and the ubiquitous rose bushes are all in bloom. Battered bicycles and sputtering farm equipment are the only other movement on the narrow roads edged with storybook gardens and picket fences.

The trip takes on a sporting challenge, testing alertness and savvy and map-reading skill. One can also search for the evidence of battle. Burned-out tanks and charred sections of roadway mark the scenes of deadly firefights between armored columns of the federal army and the TD foot soldiers.

There is no sense of a getaway when the final hurdle is cleared and the motorist crosses a tiny back road into Croatia. It is almost an anticlimax and might go unnoticed if a local shopkeeper hadn’t put out his Croatian flag just beyond the Bregana River.

On the other side of fortified Slovenia, there is little but the bustle of farmers tending their crops.

It is only deeper into Croatia, two hours beyond Zagreb on the road to Belgrade, that Croatian sharpshooters man pedestrian overpasses and watch for suspicious cars or the army’s approach.

There has been much shooting and some death in Slavonia, an ethnically mixed area of Croatia that stretches toward the Serbian border.

Croatian police flag motorists with non-local license plates, checking car registrations, back seats and trunks. One of them explains that there is a gun battle raging in Mirkovci, just north of the highway, where ethnic Serbian rebels have penetrated to challenge the army.

A few troop transports are visible on the side roads, but there is little evidence of this week’s massive deployment on the main road. On Wednesday, the military high command in Belgrade dispatched 180 tanks and armored vehicles to Slavonia and other spots where ethnic clashes have occurred, leaving 43 dead over two months.

The deployment followed a menacing warning to Slovenia from the renegade army, igniting the secessionist republic’s radical drive to deter intervention.

For the last two hours of the drive to Belgrade, the filling stations are out of gas and attendants are sleeping. Fuel is increasingly short in Yugoslavia, a consequence of the transport blockade imposed by the war.

In Belgrade, the federal and Serbian capital, there is an unfamiliar atmosphere of business as usual.

It is a rude shock after the topsy-turvy world of Slovenia, and too much to absorb in the time it takes to drive in. Traffic picks up toward Belgrade, almost approaching a normal pace, contrasting with the stillness on the Slovenian roads that gives one the feeling that it is always Sunday.

Roadblocks hamper vehicles just south of the airport turnoff. But in Belgrade, the diversion is not around battle scenes, but around construction sites--men at work.