Journeys of Horror

The State Department calls what’s occurring on the ground in Kosovo an “abhorrent and criminal action on a massive scale.” Even that falls short of describing the savage war that Yugoslav troops are waging against their countrymen. Tens of thousands of Kosovars are fleeing along snow-covered mountain roads for the chance of safety across the borders of Macedonia, Albania or the Yugoslav province of Montenegro. About 90,000 have already reached sanctuary and have immediate needs for food, clothing and shelter. The United States, its NATO allies and international relief agencies ought to be acting now to provide for them, in part to preserve the refugees’ welcome in the poor areas into which they are crowding.

The mayhem that Serbian soldiers and police units have waged against the Kosovars for daring to demand a return to the high level of autonomy they once enjoyed within the Yugoslav federation has mounted for months. What started as harassment, beatings and some political killings has turned in the past week to unbridled fratricide. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb, bears responsibility for this violence and for the NATO attacks on Belgrade, his capital, and on his soldiers in Kosovo.

The NATO air bombing campaign has risks, as the loss of a Stealth fighter on Saturday shows. That’s why it’s essential that pilots continue to seek out and suppress antiaircraft guns and missiles. While The Times has been reluctant to support the deployment of large numbers of American soldiers to any ground force in Serbia, we have supported air raids on Milosevic’s military machine since last year, when it became clear that he intended to wage war on his own citizens. We continue to believe that highly targeted bombing can break the back of his army. That possibility might now be a source of concern in Moscow, where President Boris N. Yeltsin dispatched Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov to Belgrade on Monday, reportedly to seek a political resolution of the crisis.

How this conflict might end is uncertain, but there is no question how it started: with Milosevic’s cruel demands for absolute political fealty from all Yugoslavs. Those who have resisted on political and cultural grounds are now under attack as their families stream toward the borders.

In neighboring Albania, whose culture and Muslim religion pervade much of Kosovo, United Nations officials said early Monday that at least 70,000 Kosovars had crossed the border in recent days. At the Kosovo-Montenegro frontier, thousands of refugees were reported moving west to safety out of the ravaged city of Pec.

These frightened and solemn villagers and townspeople, almost exclusively women, children and the elderly, are the victims of a centuries-old struggle, largely based on religion--the Serbs Orthodox Christians, the Kosovars primarily Muslim. But it’s the struggle for political power, not faiths, that launched this latest round of Balkan bloodletting.

Now NATO politics require that all members take part in its mission. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, the new NATO members, should help where they can--for instance, establishing aid stations for refugees crossing borders.