Belgrade Youths Resist the Federal Call to Arms : Yugoslavia: About 85% of the city’s reservists reportedly have ignored mobilization orders.

Milan figures he’s safe, as long as he doesn’t sleep at home at night.

Like thousands of other young men in Belgrade, the 22-year-old Serb rotates among the homes of friends and relatives where the long arm of the Yugoslav army conscription force is unlikely to pluck him from his comfortable life.

His reserve unit has been summoned to the front of Serbia’s war against Croatian secession. But Milan, too young to nurse grudges from the last war and accustomed to the peace and relative prosperity in which he was reared, is evading the army’s call for what he considers a pointless fight.

“This war is being waged by the older generations, and young people don’t feel they are part of it,” insists Milan, who is far from alone in his refusal to fight.

About 85% of Belgrade reservists ordered to active service this month have reportedly ignored the mobilization order, providing the first signs of popular resistance to a war that has quickly exploded from sporadic skirmishes to an uncontrolled bloodletting between Yugoslavia’s largest states.

Elsewhere in Serbia, reservists have been more obedient, with at least half of those in the provinces answering the call-up notices.

The widespread evasion of military service among young men in Belgrade is likely a consequence of their exposure to the privilege and special protections accorded the children of government and Communist Party figures in this city, which is both the Serbian and federal capital.

“These kids wear Gucci loafers and eat lunch every day at McDonald’s,” observed a Belgrade journalist. “They may like talking tough and strutting around in Chetnik uniforms”--a reference to the Serbian nationalist fighters in Croatia--”but you’re not going to get them to go out into the cornfields and fight.”

A glance around the capital’s boutique-filled streets reinforces the argument that many Belgrade youths are used to a good life built during the 1970s, when Yugoslavia borrowed heavily from the West and spent the money mostly on consumption. Sidewalk cafes are teeming, day and night, with young people clad in imported clothing and designer sunglasses. Although inflation is climbing toward 500% and industrial production is tumbling, restaurants are full and the most exclusive shops are still doing a booming business.

The capital’s trend toward draft-dodging highlights a flaw in the Serbian leadership’s thinking that propaganda and a perceived threat to fellow Serbs elsewhere in Yugoslavia is enough to bring its coddled youth to arms for a political cause that could cost them their lives.

“Most young men are against fighting in the war. One reason is very simple and completely understandable--they don’t want to die,” said Lina Vuskovic, who runs Belgrade’s fledgling Center for Anti-War Action.

The center, housed in a condemned building and little known because of the Serbian leadership’s control of the most popular media, has been set up by Serbian women’s groups to assist those refusing the army’s call.

“All we can do is give them advice, and even that can be dangerous,” Vuskovic said. “We tell them what their legal rights are regarding resistance, but we have to point out that we do not have a lawful system.”

Neither Serbia nor the Serbian-commanded federal army has formally declared war on Croatia, an omission that effectively prevents activated reservists from invoking the option of conscientious objection to armed service.

The official Tanjug news agency has issued “interpretations” by unnamed military law experts claiming that anyone willfully evading the call-up can be imprisoned or even executed. Faced with a possible death penalty, few dodging the draft or harboring resisters are willing to give their full names.

Unsure where they stand and reluctant to risk the wrath of the Yugoslav army, hundreds, if not thousands, of young Serbian men have fled abroad or to the homes of relatives in other republics.

“I can’t even go visit my parents in Belgrade,” said a 40-year-old Serb working in Zagreb. “I’m not supposed to be eligible (for active service), but who knows what the army will do?”

There are abundant horror stories about entrapment of reservists by zealous conscription officers.

One young man answered a daytime knock at the door by a woman claiming to be lost and in need of directions. When he stepped out the door of his suburban cottage to help her, two soldiers grabbed him and hauled him off to the front, according to a close friend now taking refuge in Slovenia.

Workers at Belgrade’s Hyatt Hotel tell of an ambush laid for one colleague who failed to answer his mobilization order. When the resister failed to show up for work three days in a row--apparently tipped by friends that the army was looking for him--the officers took one of the hotel doormen instead.

Conscription officers have taken to calling on evaders late at night, patrolling hangouts favored by the capital’s draft-age youth and staking out airports and border crossings to bring reluctant youths to the front.

“Not being at home is the favorite sport of young men these days,” said Milos Vasic, a senior editor at the respected weekly news magazine Vreme. “The regime media have done a lot of damage with their shameless warmongering, but this is a language that young people don’t understand.”

Those whose parents are well connected with the Serbian Communist leadership manage not to get called in the first place, which has placed a proportionately higher burden on provincial areas of Serbia and on other ethnic groups within the Yugoslav federation.

Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall complained to Belgrade authorities last week that ethnic Hungarians in Serbia’s province of Vojvodina comprised nearly 20% of the army casualties--at least five times their proportion in the Yugoslav population.

Ironically, many of those who have ignored the mobilization orders have no philosophical opposition to the war. They share Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s view that Serbs are endangered by an independent Croatia and that armed conflict is the necessary price to pay to prevent the division of Serbs among several states.

But family and work are even greater concerns.

“No one believes this is a real war until they knock on your door,” said Nebojsa, a 36-year-old reservist with a wife and two children. “It’s hard to say whether you’ll fight or not until they come for you.”

Others insist that they would go if called, but they say they won’t volunteer because the army assault on Croatia has been disorganized.

“If the army has decided to fight, it should say so and fight to the end, because each cease-fire has led to even more victims,” said Lazar Cvijevic, a 20-year-old economics student at Belgrade University.

Students are still accorded deferments, but many suspect that status could change soon if there is an escalation of the fighting.

Asked if he would go to the front if the army called him, Cvijevic replied, “Naturally, because otherwise the Serbs in Croatia would be massacred.”

Even those who insist that they will serve if needed refrain from condemning the multitudes of fellow Serbs evading the army.

“They don’t understand why we are fighting,” Cvijevic said of the draft dodgers. “They say it’s all propaganda created by the media.”

No political party has come out openly against the war, which retains strong moral support from Serbs. But the few voices speaking out for peace contend that time and tragedy will work in their favor.

As the cost of the conflict becomes apparent and more families lose their husbands and sons, attitudes will change toward the war.

“Up to now, no one has come to our side,” said Vuskovic, referring to the handful of women running the Center for Anti-War Action. “There have been no death lists, so no one really knows how many have died. But when they are released, you will see a real revolution here.”