Kosovo Fighting Moves ‘Bunker by Bunker’

The guerrilla war racking Serbia’s Kosovo province has exploded into a new phase after a fierce government offensive killed or wounded dozens of ethnic Albanian separatists, sent thousands of refugees over international borders and confounded an alarmed West.

Though portrayed by Serbian officials as a final push to crush the guerrillas, the offensive is the latest military operation in a devastating campaign that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic appears determined to sustain for a long time, military experts and diplomats said.

Fighting that continued Thursday is part of the Yugoslav government’s largely successful attempt to carve out a “security zone” along the border that its Serbian republic shares with Albania, ridding the nation of those who want independence for Kosovo province and severing rebel supply lines.

Serbian government security forces armed with artillery and flamethrowers were reported moving “bunker by bunker” toward guerrilla strongholds. Albanian sources, who say entire villages have been razed, claimed that Serbian shelling Thursday also targeted fleeing columns of refugees.

None of the reports could be independently verified because Serbian forces have sealed off the area.

“The conflict has reached the stage of free-fire zones, scorched-earth policies and search-and-destroy,” Serbian military affairs specialist Milos Vasic said in an interview. “There is no political solution in sight.”

Prospects for a peaceful solution dimmed further when Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian political leadership abruptly canceled peace talks, while skirmishes along yet another border--that with Macedonia--claimed additional casualties.

The United States and its European allies, clearly outfoxed by Milosevic--who had earlier pledged cooperation--appear undecided on a response, other than vague warnings from NATO headquarters and offers to “contain” the violence.

Ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in Brussels earlier this week said they were “weighing all options,” but no concrete action was imminent.

NATO has calculated that it would need 20,000 troops to secure Albania’s borders. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe announced Thursday that it is tripling, to 30, the number of monitors it has deployed along Kosovo province’s border with Albania.

Less than three years after the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina ended, the world now has been forced to confront the possibility of another Balkan war, one that threatens to ensnare neighboring countries.

Thousands of ethnic Albanians rallied on Thursday in Pristina, Kosovo’s provincial capital, to demand NATO send troops to “stop Serbian aggression.”

“NATO, just do it,” read one banner. “Tomorrow is too late.”

The demonstration, like others held on a daily basis, was peaceful. But the crowd repeatedly chanted the initials of the Kosovo Liberation Army, as the ethnic Albanian guerrillas style themselves.

More than 200 people, including ethnic Albanians and Serbian police officers, have been killed in violence that has mounted steadily since security forces began cracking down on armed separatists in late February.

The latest offensive, which has reportedly claimed more than 40 lives, was launched about 10 days ago in an attempt to recapture closed roads. Concentrating on about half a dozen villages around the town of Decani in western Kosovo, just a few miles from the border with Albania, the attacks were also designed to cut routes used by the guerrillas to smuggle weapons and reinforcements into Kosovo.

United Nations officials said tens of thousands of Kosovo residents have been left homeless. Between 40,000 and 50,000 have fled their villages, many hiding in forests and on mountainsides, the U.N. officials said.

About 12,000 refugees crossed into Albania, the Albanian Interior Ministry said, where they are enduring hunger, fatigue, heat and poor sanitary conditions. And 7,000 others trekked into Montenegro, the other republic that, with Serbia, makes up today’s rump Yugoslavia.

Fehmi Agani, a senior Kosovo Albanian official, said a round of talks with Serbian delegates scheduled for today was canceled because of the spiraling violence.

It would have been only the second session in talks brokered by U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who met with Milosevic last month. Milosevic agreed to the talks and to his first-ever meeting with Ibrahim Rugova, leader of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian community. As reward, economic sanctions threatened against Milosevic were scrapped.

But in the bat of an eye, Milosevic responded by clamping down on domestic opponents and independent media--and he launched the Decani offensive.

“It’s the mistake we always make with him,” a senior Western official said. “He is a master of the tactical approach of giving just enough to the international community to buy it off, without actually changing his behavior.”

With some success, Milosevic has argued that his government has the right to respond to an armed insurgency that threatens Yugoslavia’s internationally recognized sovereignty and borders. Neither the United States nor any other Western government supports independence for Kosovo.

Analysts say Milosevic--the consummate survivor who is widely blamed for instigating the Bosnian war--can now be expected to continue to stir up Kosovo as a distraction from what many consider a more potent threat to his power: a resounding electoral victory on Sunday for Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic’s party.

Djukanovic is a vehement critic of Milosevic and has won broad Western support. He poses the most credible challenge to Milosevic in years.

To confront that, analysts and diplomats say, Milosevic intends to use the conflict in Kosovo.

“What Milosevic counts on is that while the Kosovo crisis lasts, he cannot be removed because during war you can’t get rid of the authorities,” Serbian political analyst Bratislav Grubacic said. “He wants to use the crisis to strengthen his internal power base as much as he can since, in the end, he will have to give up Kosovo.”

It is unclear how long and to what extremes Serbia will go to hold onto Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs 9 to 1.

The Serbs regard Kosovo as the birthplace of their civilization. But festering discontent within Serbian security forces dispatched to Kosovo is becoming increasingly evident.

One hundred police officers from seven stations in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, were reportedly fired for refusing to serve in Kosovo, and anti-government newspapers are publishing bleak accounts of overworked, underfed, inexperienced officers who are scared and dispirited.

“We are constantly told not to waste ammunition and not shoot until we see the attacker. But if you see your attacker, then you can be sure it’s the last thing you’ll see,” an unnamed police official said in a long interview published in the Belgrade weekly newsmagazine Nin.

“It’s not just the fear--risk is part of the job,” the officer said. “We are all very bitter because of the bad organization. It is very demoralizing to find you’ve been sent to Kosovo to be sitting ducks.”