Among Bosnian Serbs, the Reigning Fear Is Now NATO : Balkans: Near the route to Gorazde, east of Sarajevo, peace enforcers are seen as the enemy--just like Muslims.

In the muddy backyard of a home gutted by fire and mortar, a Bosnian Serb family enjoyed a favorite December ritual over the weekend for the first time in four years.

Sprawled out on a rickety wooden table, its head severed and soaking in a pail of pinkish water, was a 200-pound hog bought with money sent by a generous relative abroad.

Jovo, 61, sliced ribbons of fat from its hide as his sisters stoked a fire beneath a bubbling kettle. The fat was boiled for lard. The rest of the animal was carefully carved up for the long winter ahead.

“We haven’t slaughtered a pig since before the war,” his brother Danico said, grinning with excitement. “We had no money, and until not long ago we were getting shelled from the hilltops.”

It was a happy scene in an otherwise unhappy place, a town that is barely standing after being overrun three times in the war between rebel Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-led Bosnian government.

Thanks to the peace accord expected to be signed this week in Paris, the fighting has stopped here and across Bosnia-Herzegovina. But among the people of Trnovo and a dozen other Serb-held towns and villages south and southeast of Sarajevo, the capital, the fear exists that another menace awaits them.

Its name is NATO.

About a mile down the road, not far from a river crossing pummeled by North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes in September, a new front line is about to emerge. A corridor to be controlled by the Bosnian government will be cut reaching from Sarajevo to the government-held town of Gorazde east of here, a finger of enemy land poking the ribs of Bosnian Serb territory.

The Gorazde corridor, a key provision in the peace accord, is to be patrolled by NATO troops. People on the Bosnian Serb side, including those here in Trnovo, are being encouraged to stay put. Those living in the path of the corridor are packing up and, the hope is, will find homes in nearby Bosnian Serb villages, including this one.

The pain of turning over land won during years of bloody battles is difficult for some here to bear. They have no patience for talk of Bosnian Serb blame, nor do they care to hear about world condemnation of their brutal part in the Balkan horrors.

Most here believe that the 3 1/2-year war was provoked by the Muslims and was won with the intervention of NATO warplanes and the United States. NATO is an enemy, therefore, just like the Muslims, making unfathomable the pending arrival of NATO troops as so-called independent peace enforcers.

“You journalists and NATO have been helping the Muslim side all along,” said Nada, one of the sisters boiling lard, who, like her siblings, was too afraid to give her full name.

“How can we trust any of you?” she asked. “Look at our houses, how they have been destroyed. We don’t even have a hospital here, and with the Muslim corridor surrounding us, how will we get medical help?”

Losers in the war, barely able to make do in battle-wrecked towns, the Bosnian Serbs near the Gorazde corridor fear for their lives and what little property they have left. Who will stop vengeful Muslims from slitting their throats? How can they turn to soldiers from NATO, a military alliance that has openly supported their enemies?

Even a contingent of Russian soldiers joining the NATO forces provides no solace, they say, because the Russians did nothing to prevent attacks on Bosnian Serbs.

“If the Serbs were to bomb your towns, how much confidence would you have in them?” asked Petko Cancar, the mayor of Foca, a large Bosnian Serb-held town southeast of here where many of those displaced by the Gorazde corridor are resettling.

Five of Foca’s eight bridges were knocked out by NATO warplanes in September, as were some apartment buildings near one missed target. The mayor keeps a shard of a NATO bomb in his office as a constant reminder of the Western menace.

“I know of two people who have had heart attacks on the thresholds of their homes that they now have to leave,” Cancar said. “For years our bones have been cracking--now our souls are beginning to break as well.”

Most questions about whether NATO will create more problems than it solves in Serb-controlled territory have no easy answers because the implementation of the peace deal is still being worked out. Few here, however, believe that NATO troops will come under attack by disgruntled Bosnian Serbs, largely because they are tired of fighting--and losing--and because those with the biggest grudges will hold off attempting reprisals until the foreign troops leave in a year.

But the distrust and animosity run deep.

“At the moment, I am angry at everybody,” said Vlako Markovic, a refugee from the small village of Ustikolina, which will be swallowed up by the new corridor and where departing Serbs are reportedly setting their homes ablaze as they leave.

Markovic moved his wife and four children on a horse-drawn cart to a shell of a house along the Drina River near Foca. Abandoned by Muslims who were forced out years ago, the house must now be rebuilt for his Bosnian Serb family. There was nothing left of the kitchen but rubble.

It is a daunting task with winter already upon Bosnia. As Markovic took a break from repairing the roof, his wife and two daughters stood huddled around a fire. In a grim irony, the house he so desperately needs was gleefully destroyed by Bosnian Serbs reveling in victory over their Muslim neighbors.

When asked if any good came from the war, he said: “Nothing. You can see for yourself what came out of it.”

A Bosnian Serb soldier spending the weekend with friends here in Trnovo reached a similar conclusion, but he talked tough about getting even with one of the main culprits: NATO.

“We are not afraid of our enemies,” Miroslav Mistovic said. “We would like peace, but we will never grow tired of war. We will fight for 100 years if we have to, and our children will fight too.”