In the Balkans, Blame Debatable but Suffering Isn’t : Ethnic strife: From Belgrade to Zagreb, war is the inescapable theme of many conversations and the overriding influence on most thought.

When Djurevka Jankovic relaxes with her sewing after a long day on her feet at the shop, she tunes her radio to an all-music station. It’s the only way to tune the war out.

“I don’t want to know the details. It hurts too much,” said the 36-year-old fabric shop clerk. “As a woman, I try to stay out of politics. It’s a dark business and the cause of this war.”

Jankovic insists she is not a “political person,” yet she expresses reverence for Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, the man most often blamed for driving Yugoslavia to ruin.

“Milosevic has done something no one ever did for Serbia before. He has united the Serbs in this new Yugoslavia and ensured the future of Kosovo,” Jankovic said, praising the Serbian leader for the very actions that have subjected Serbs to international condemnation.

“We don’t have war in Serbia, but still we feel this conflict very much,” said Jankovic, who has two school-age sons and a husband who works as a gunsmith. “For now, my family is getting by. My husband has a lot of work these days, so our income isn’t falling. But we do worry about the future and whether there will be fuel or electricity to heat our home this winter.”

The Jankovices, like most working-class Serbs, see themselves as bystanders in the Yugoslav war, hapless victims of a tragedy that was somebody else’s fault. They see no complicity in their support for nationalist expansion or the arming of civilian society that has probably made Belgrade more dangerous than Belfast.

It is much the same in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, where hardly a soul can be said to be uninvolved in the war or untouched by the fighting that has killed tens of thousands and mauled the daily lives of millions of civilians.

The debate over who was to blame for the war will likely last for decades.

Meanwhile, the violence randomly metes out suffering and hardship, engulfing innocent and guilty, the active and passive alike.

It is the inescapable theme of most conversation, the overriding influence on most thought.

WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?

At a barbershop just across the street from the fabric store where Jankovic works, Djeordje Aleksic argues daily with his co-workers over whether the beaming countenance of Milosevic should be removed from the wall. “We have his picture up there, but we blame him for the war,” said the 55-year-old Aleksic, whose income buys one-fourth of what it did a year ago.

Aleksic claims to oppose the Serbian president but parrots his views on how the Balkan ethnic groups have come to war. “There are many Serbian volunteers going to defend Serbs in Bosnia, and I think that is right,” said the barber, stabbing the air with his scissors for emphasis. “If need be, we will all go to defend Bosnia. The Serbs there are still in jeopardy, and all they have been doing is defending themselves.”

No battle has physically touched Serbia. But Aleksic argues that its population is nonetheless confronted daily with the deprivations of war, most noticeably by the six-digit inflation pushing basics like food and electricity beyond the means of middle-class Serbs.

“Our standard of living is going down quickly as the prices keep going up. We all depend on electric heating, but even the non-peak tariff is now too high,” Aleksic said. “I could survive the cold, but I have a new grandson--only 2 months old. How will he survive the winter if the government can’t supply us with heat?”

*

Two years of money-printing to bankroll the war machine and five months of international sanctions have paralyzed the Serbian economy, gutting incomes at a time when everything has become more expensive. But most painful for many Serbs is the fact that they are being blamed for the conflict and shunned by the Western world, of which they have long considered themselves a part.

“This is an injustice, this claim that only Serbs are guilty,” complained Zivana Vukovic, a 67-year-old widow supporting two grown daughters on a meager pension. “Everyone knows that others are guilty for this war. People here feel insulted.”

The conflict, so far, has inflicted only a regime of belt-tightening on her family, but Vukovic worries that the consequences are about to get worse.

“My daughters can’t buy new clothes. They are not able to dress as well as they did before. But so far we are coping,” she said with a tinge of defiance. “But what if we have no heat this winter? There was a project under way to install a hot-water system in our building, but it depended on all the tenants contributing and now nobody has the money. We cannot rely on electricity alone as that will be too expensive. We have to have heat. I’m an old woman!”

Younger people tend to see a connection between the politics of their elders and their nation’s plight. But they feel overwhelmed by the war’s hardships and too far removed from power to help arrest it.

“What I feel most is the lack of freedom to move around. It is not safe to walk alone in Belgrade anymore,” said Katarin Jovanovic, 18, a high school student. “Every day there are shootouts in what used to be normal cafes. We stay only in our own neighborhoods. We can no longer travel out of the city. My family used to spend the summer at the (Adriatic Sea) coast, but now they say Serbs are unsafe there.”

‘PURE FASCISM’

Radenko Lukic also feels constrained in the Serbian capital.

“I don’t feel good in this environment because everyone here believes something that I know is untrue,” said Lukic, a 28-year-old Serb who fled his home in Sarajevo when radicals began shelling the city in April. “They cannot convince me that I didn’t see Serbs bombing Sarajevo. Hitler never did to us what Serbs are doing to my city. It looks like Vukovar. What is happening in Bosnia is pure fascism.”

Lukic sees himself and other Serbs who supported integration and coexistence in Bosnia as the most victimized of the war’s innumerable civilian casualties.

“I tried to go to Switzerland at first, but I couldn’t get a visa. Everyone looks at me and thinks, ‘A Serb from Sarajevo--he’s to blame!’ I could have gone to Croatia, like many other refugees, but it’s not good there for Serbs. So I am here, where I don’t fit in. I would like to leave, but I have nowhere else to go,” said Lukic, who supports himself, his mother and sister by selling popcorn in a Belgrade park.

Lukic’s father stayed behind in Sarajevo to do what he could to protect the family home.

“We haven’t had word from him in a month and a half. We never expected this to last so long. Maybe I wouldn’t have left Sarajevo if I had known this was going to last so long,” said Lukic, resentfully surveying the park filled with strollers seemingly oblivious of the distant conflict.

In Zagreb, the outward signs of war are equally hard to spot. It has been months since a rocket crashed into the presidential palace courtyard; it has been more than a year since Serb-piloted jets bombed the television tower on one of the city’s northern hills. There are no more air-raid sirens, and no wrecked buildings standing in the city’s midst as a reminder of the fighting.

And yet the signs are there: The white U.N. vehicles--trucks, vans, cars and armor--are reminders of an enforced truce no one finds quite satisfactory. There are refugees everywhere, moving with a tired, almost bewildered appearance, the grateful and yet miserable recipients of the charity of relatives and even strangers.

WORRY LINES

Still more subtle are the lines of worry, etched on many faces--pensioners and parents, who find their money doesn’t stretch in an economy that is hit both by war and market restructuring. There are worries too over relatives and friends. Some merely were dislocated. Worse, some are locked in battle zones; such individuals last were heard from weeks or months ago.

In the end, it seems hard to find anyone who has remained untouched by war, anyone who is unwilling to say how his or her life has been altered by it.

“I’m here visiting from Karlovac,” said Anna Zilic, 38, an accountant. “My husband is a seaman. I live with my children and two parents. We had a terrible six months, beginning last September. It has been very hard to take care of my family alone. We had to leave Karlovac four times. First, we went to Slovenia, then to a village about 20 miles away, and then we went to Germany, my children and I, and stayed two months with a friend.

“Karlovac is OK now. But our house is a little damaged. Windows were broken. Our car has shrapnel holes in it. My parents stayed there the whole time, even when we left. If they had left, someone would have entered the house--not necessarily (Serbs), but other people who would have taken our things, or just moved in.

“We spent a lot of time, during the time of the shelling, in cellars. It was terrible. I still do not feel safe. Every night, I put a chair in front of the door. I don’t know why. I’m just afraid.

“Our street is a normal street with small houses. I remember before the shelling began, all our Serb neighbors left. It was over one day, or two. They packed and left, almost all. They have not come back. Most of these people were more or less young, educated, intellectual even. This still makes me nervous when I think about it, because it tells me there is a danger for tomorrow, an uncertainty for our future.

“I know it is not finished. Because half of Croatia is now in (Serb-occupied) Krajina. It cannot stay this way. I am against war. I am against armies. But you cannot answer force except with force, and I know it is not over. I fear for my son. He is 15 now, and at 18 he will have to join the army, and I don’t want to lose him to the war.”

*

Mladen Plakovic, 28, spent three months last year assigned to a Croatian brigade from Zagreb, defending the Croatian front south of the city of Sisak.

“Before the war,” he said, “I had two or three very good Serbian friends. Now, none. One went to Switzerland, one to the U.S. and one to Canada. The one who went to Canada works for the (Serbs). I see now he has changed, and I see too that I have changed. Hate has changed my life. I hate Serbia now.

“I think most people are not now the same. They changed too. Life has changed. There are not so many parties. People are not so willing to go out, to have fun.

“I have grandparents from Dubica. Of course, the war forced them to come and live with us. They have no idea what has happened to their house. They don’t know what happened to their horses. My grandfather is a farmer. They are both 83. They are practically crazy in the city. They just hope to get back someday.

“If the war stopped now--but no, it can’t. The Serbians have one crazy idea--for a Greater Serbia, and so they take territory they never had before. So, yes, I hate. I once had Serbian friends. But now it is impossible for me.”

Tomislav Rubcic, 70, said he and his wife, both retired, find their meager savings eaten away by the rapid increase in costs. Last year, when air-raid warnings were sounding in Zagreb, Rubcic’s wife had just come home from the hospital after surgery for breast cancer, and he remembers the struggle of helping her to get to the bomb shelters in the basement of a neighborhood building.

“What we all feel now is the economic situation,” he said. “My friends and I would sometimes like to sit out and have a drink, but if you are on a pension, you can’t afford that anymore. I’ve had to sell my car.

“The war is the reason for that--not only for troops and arms,” he said, “but the cost of the refugees, not only from Croatia but also from Bosnia.

“The worst thing that happened to us is that my son, my daughter-in-law and their two children are completely out of touch with us,” he said. “We know they left Sarajevo, and we think they went (north) to Travnik, but we really don’t know. We heard from them last in March, when they left Sarajevo.

“My daughter-in-law,” he added, “has relatives around Travnik, and they thought their children would be safer there. I think my son is in the army, but I don’t know if he is fighting or not. From the very little I know, he could be on the front lines in Bosnia. We have tried to get a message through by the Red Cross and the (U.N. refugee organization), but all communications have been cut.

“I think the future is going to be very sad. Before the war broke out, we never knew who was Croat, who was Serb, who was Muslim,” he said. “You could tell by the names, sometimes, but it was never important. Now, if I meet ex-colleagues who are Serbs, they turn away and don’t want to talk to me. This war has been much more difficult for me than World War II. I was wounded then. . . . Perhaps I was younger then, or perhaps I am worried about my children, my grandchildren. But I am much more afraid now.”

Mediha Grubic, 31, sells clothing from a stand in the big central market area of Zagreb. She was born in Zagreb, has lived there all her life and is a Muslim. She has multiple sclerosis and walks with a crutch.

“Very much I am touched by the war,” she said. “First, I sell about 1,000% less than before. People don’t have money, and they get by with what they have. You can see, these are not fancy clothes, just T-shirts, simple things. But people are wearing 10-year-old clothes.

“We are all subsidizing refugees,” she noted. “Me, personally, I have seven refugees at home in my apartment--one room, kitchen and hallway. They are all relatives. . . . None of them have work, and they have no money. They get some food from the Red Cross. It is very hard. You cannot blame them, but we all suffer with them. The apartment is very crowded, and it is very difficult.

“I think my illness is getting worse, because of the stress,” she said. “I didn’t have to use the crutch before. I am afraid it will just get worse and worse. . . .

“The time comes when you feel bitter toward them. You cannot blame them, but it is uncomfortable and very difficult.”

Williams reported from Belgrade and Powers from Zagreb, Croatia.