Rebels Moving In on Kosovo as Serbian Forces Pull Back

On the bullet-pocked side of a gas station that is a front-line police base, red-painted graffito has dripped down the white wall like blood: It spells Serbia.

A couple of hundred yards farther on, past the burned shell of a mosque with a silver-topped minaret, and past the fresh corpses of two farm dogs lying in the ditch, the narrow road enters guerrilla territory in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo.

The fields, forests and vineyards in this stretch of countryside, about 30 miles southwest of Pristina, the provincial capital, now belong to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Its uniformed fighters walk patrols along low hills beside the road, within shooting range of the Serbian paramilitary police checkpoints.

As Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic gradually pulls back some of his security forces under threat of NATO airstrikes, ethnic Albanian guerrillas are quickly retaking territory they had lost in the war, Serbian police and civilian witnesses said Saturday.

A day earlier, just after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gave Milosevic a 10-day extension on the deadline for withdrawal, guerrillas launched their biggest attack on this hamlet in days, the witnesses said.

“It was heavy shooting,” said Natalia Vuckovic, 76, who choked back tears and crossed herself as she spoke. Then she asked a journalist what he thought was going to happen.

“I’m really scared because I have all these little kids with me,” Vuckovic said through an interpreter. “One is 6 years old, the other is 4 and the last one is a baby.”

Vuckovic was wearing a black sweater beneath a black dress and another black sweater on top of that. A silver-colored safety pin held it closed. Her rubber shoes were black too, just like her stockings and the woolen kerchief knotted under her chin.

She was walking along the side of the road with a grandchild as the sun was setting on her village near the main road between Pristina and Pec.

Serbs and ethnic Albanians lived as neighbors there before all-out war erupted more than seven months ago. As Serbian forces swept through, they turned vast swaths of the province into deserted ruins.

Now Vuckovic’s home is an ethnic enclave surrounded by paramilitary police who say they come under attack almost every night from ethnic Albanian guerrillas controlling the surrounding countryside.

“We are really afraid,” Vuckovic said. “The police cannot help us unless the army comes here.”

The ethnic Albanian guerrillas, who are fighting for an independent Kosovo, charge that Serbian forces are attacking villagers. The government accuses the guerrillas of what it calls daily terrorist attacks, usually on police targets.

The clashes are continuing as the first 50 civilian monitors out of an expected 2,000 are due to arrive in Pristina today to begin planning their mission.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe hopes to have a significant number of civilian monitors in the field within two weeks. They may find themselves in the middle of a low-intensity war.

NATO began checking from the skies Saturday with U.S. spy planes that will also help verify whether Milosevic reduces his forces in Kosovo to the level of February, when the war suddenly escalated.

Just hours before Friday’s midnight deadline, NATO extended it to Oct. 27, a delay that angered the Kosovo guerrillas. They suspect that NATO is cooperating with Milosevic to crush the rebellion.

Although thousands of refugees are still waiting in forest and mountain camps for Serbian soldiers and police to leave, about 35,000 had returned to their homes by Friday, the CIA estimated in Washington.

There are many theories here traded among those who wonder how, in a matter of a few months, a minor guerrilla force that few people had ever heard of was suddenly closing in on Kosovo’s capital.

One holds that Milosevic used a classic military feint: He let the guerrillas come until their supply lines were overstretched and the poorly equipped rebels had more territory than they could possibly defend.

Then he ordered a counterattack that not only routed the guerrillas but ruined village after village and sent about 300,000 ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing for their lives.

If that was Milosevic’s plan all along, he may still be sticking to it. By withdrawing most of his forces just before winter, which would freeze the battle lines anyway, he can satisfy Western demands for a troop pullback.

And if separatist rebels simply take back territory that the world agrees should remain part of Yugoslavia, he could have the perfect excuse to strike them again next spring.

The fighting around Bubovac was only one of a dozen attacks that police reported Friday night and early Saturday. The Kosovo guerrillas have a list of their own that alleges attacks on unarmed villagers.

Police said fighting erupted around Bubovac about 7 p.m. Friday, when rebels opened fire from fields to the east with automatic rifles and rifle-launched grenades.

The battle lasted about an hour, according to police.

Vuckovic’s account confirmed those of Serbian police stationed at two separate checkpoints and at the gas station post that marks the limit of Serbian control outside the former KLA stronghold of Malisevo.

Three police officers, one in a track suit and the others in blue-and-black camouflage fatigues, agreed to speak only if their names were not published. They said they did not have permission from senior commanders to be interviewed.

They sat on plastic stools around an overturned milk crate that served as a table for two field radios, a couple of newspapers, a plastic bowl of sugar, a bottle of mineral water and two demitasses of thick black coffee for the visitors.

Like the enlisted men of most any war, they complained about the low pay and the high risks, and they spoke of how they wanted to stay alive just a few more days, long enough for their turn to go home to Belgrade.

A couple of them griped about the politicians who sent them here to defend a front line that is so blurred that they can’t tell where it is anymore, only to pull out and leave it for the enemy.

If that’s the plan, no one told the dwindling unit of Serbian police ordered to defend the checkpoint at Bubovac. Those men said the guerrillas seem better organized, and closer, with each night’s strike.

“Sooner or later, they’re going to come and take control of this territory,” one Serbian officer said. “Then we’ll have all of these allied observers around, who are probably going to be attacked.

“Then who is going to be blamed for this?” he asked.