Milosevic’s Shame

President Slobodan Milosevic is writing his darkest chapter of Yugoslav history yet with the cruel manipulation of Kosovar refugees. Driven out of their homes and towns in Kosovo province to diminish their majority over Serbians there, the refugees walked, drove or crowded onto trains to reach international relief camps across the borders of Albania and Macedonia.

Had they reached safety? The stark news photos Thursday posed the question. A vast field at the Blace camp at the Macedonian border was littered with clothes, suitcases and other belongings, but there was not a sign of the tens of thousands of Kosovars and others who once were in the valley. Most were later found to have been roughly shoved by Macedonian soldiers onto buses headed elsewhere, though aid officials could not account for several thousand. A similar puzzlement appeared on the Albanian border. Relief officials said 24,000 had crossed a bridge into Albania on Tuesday. On Wednesday just 27 walked over. Yugoslavia had closed the border, but where were the fleeing Kosovars? One man surely knows--Milosevic.

The Yugoslav leader had ordered his troops in Kosovo to drive out the 90% ethnic Albanian population to establish a fact on the ground, that Kosovo province would become Serbian territory, not Kosovar. The result was an incredible tragedy. By rail, truck, private auto and on foot, even in wheelbarrows, inhabitants of major cities like Pristina and small towns as well were driven across the border into Macedonia, Albania and the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. Some, it appears, were slaughtered. Estimates put the number who crossed the frontiers since NATO began its airstrikes on March 24 at nearly 500,000. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees says the United States and the European Union each have agreed to shelter 20,000 displaced Kosovars. Turkey too will accept 20,000, and other countries will take in lesser numbers.

Now, military analysts say, Milosevic has awakened to the possibility that NATO will show less reluctance to extend its bombing targets over Kosovo province since most Kosovars have gone. This could explain his sudden decision to block the outward flow of refugees and perhaps draw them back as a shield. If so, this is a cruel strategy that the Yugoslav strongman should be made to regret.

Refugees historically have been the unintended victims of wars, forced from their homes, often with the flames of combat licking at their heels. To manipulate this tragedy for tactical advantage is dishonorable and shunned under all codes of war. If that is the aim of President Milosevic, history will record it in shame.