If the news is true, why has it taken so long to arrest Milosevic?

Democratic reformers imagined a different scenario when Milosevic was toppled from power. The world warmly embraced President Vojislav Kostunica and Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, the mastermind behind the October revolution. But things quickly began to founder. Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer, insisted that democratic reformers take power legally, which meant gradually, and that meant nothing meaningful could be done before Serbian elections were held at the end of December.

That gave Milosevic cronies nearly three months to cover their tracks, a task they set to immediately. Meanwhile, Montenegro signaled it would push ahead with plans to leave the Yugoslav federation despite the democratic turnaround in Belgrade. At the same time, Albanian guerillas in southern Serbia began a new campaign that recently spread to Macedonia and now threatens to destabilize the entire region.

All the while, Yugoslavia’s relationship with the Hague Tribunal has been defined by a personal feud waged between Kostunica and Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. After a rocky meeting, he called her “ambitious,” while Del Ponte called him a “man of the past” and openly said she didn’t like him.

The U.S. has demanded that Yugoslavia cooperate with the Hague or lose American financial aid and support from world financial institutions. Back in November, Congress gave Yugoslavia a March 31 deadline to arrest Milosevic. The U.S. has agreed to allow him to be tried in Belgrade on charges unrelated to war crimes, with the promise of his eventual extradition to the Hague.

Serb authorities have had difficulty building a case against Milosevic, apart from a shady real estate deal. It’s no wonder: Milosevic’s pen rarely touched a piece of paper, and his entire regime seemed to function by word of mouth. Many high-ranking functionaries didn’t even have fax machines or computers in their offices.

“Before the revolution, the West had a much different attitude towards us and nobody mentioned deadlines and ultimatums,” said a Serbian minister who asked for anonymity. “I think there’s been a general lack of understanding as to what we were faced with in Belgrade.”

Like many Yugoslav leaders, Djindjic has stressed the need for the country to police its own criminals. “Our society must reconstruct what has happened over the past 10 years through the legal process. We deserve a chance to clean up our past,” he said.

Federal Police Minister Zoran Zivkovic has likened the pursuit of the dictator to the hunt for gangster Al Capone. “Capone walked around America for years while everyone knew who he was. Hopefully we won’t need that long,” he said.

Milosevic is practically my neighbor. I live less than a 10-minute walk from his current residence on mansion-lined Uzicka Street in the exclusive Belgrade suburb of Dedinje. He owns two properties in the neighborhood, but presently lives in a modest state-owned home whose red-tile roof is visible above a towering cement wall. Elite army units are reportedly stationed behind the wall, but out front Milosevic’s only protection is a friendly police officer and the “people’s guard.”

As news has come down in recent weeks of the arrests of former Milosevic officials, a few dozen loyalists have waited patiently outside his house to offer moral support and hopefully catch a glimpse of their beloved “Slobo,” whom they refer to as the “greatest leader” in their nation’s history. The sense of betrayal and confusion among them is palpable. What kind of world is this where Slobo could be king one year, a criminal the next?

“Not even the Soviet Union had the courage to fight the entire NATO Pact. Slobo will be recorded as the greatest leader in Serbia’s history,” said a retired police officer. Branko Ruzic, the president of Socialist Youth, said, “All this business of arrest is simply carrying out orders from the West. They want to be done with Slobo to justify themselves and their criminal bombing of Yugoslavia.”

The aging posse in front of Milosevic’s home is a daily reminder of just how little support the fallen leader has. The people’s guard is made up mostly of working class retirees who, taken together, don’t have one set of healthy teeth among them. The guard was formed a few weeks ago in response to the first premature statement from Prime Minister Djindjic that Milosevic’s arrest was imminent.

Droves of reporters landed at Belgrade’s airport. But the storm passed and journalists scampered back onto their planes and left. The common wisdom among Belgrade citizens has been that CNN’s Christine Amanpour is the oracle who will signal that the hour of Milosevic’s arrest is truly at hand. Serbs ascribe to Amanpour nearly supernatural and evil powers due to her marriage to former White House spokesman James Rubin. Both faces are associated with NATO’s Yugoslavian bombing campaign. “I’ve heard she is coming soon,” said Vesna, a 60-something member of the people’s guard, “but I don’t know what the bitch wants in Belgrade.”

Slobo has emerged three times from behind the gate to chat with supporters and I’ve missed him each time. One Sunday I missed him by a painful 15 minutes. The commotion was immediately visible as I approached the few dozen supporters. “What’s going on?” I asked the first familiar face. A man clutched his head in astonishment, “Oy, you didn’t see him? Where were you? Why weren’t you here? He just came out! He was here among us!”

Slobo had emerged, holding his grandson Marko, with his daughter-in-law Milica at his side. He was wearing a white oxford shirt with “sweet little blue stripes,” as one woman described it, no tie, and a blazer. “I touched him! I touched his face,” said another woman, her hands still trembling with emotion.

“Did he say anything?” I asked everyone. Several people recalled that, yes, he had said something, but nobody could remember what. Everyone was either too stunned or weeping.

I finally found a young man who hadn’t completely lost his composure. “It seemed that he had intended to speak, but was immediately swarmed by supporters. The women were crying and kissing him. What could he say?” said the man. Finally, someone recalled one simple phrase: “Things will be better.”

Not likely.

But this story is far from over. A denouement worthy of the Milosevic family’s abuse of power is still lacking. The Ceaucescus finished lying in the mud riddled with bullets, while the son Niku drank himself to death.

Standing in front of his house with a dozen or so loyalists, I have pictured Slobo sitting in an armchair sipping a whiskey, his drink of choice, while he stares at a wall, wondering where it all went wrong. He turns 60 this year and all he has to look forward to is a life behind bars.

He has been living out his last days of freedom in the company of his wife Mira Markovic, his 2-year-old grandson Marko, and his daughter-in-law Milica, the bombshell girlfriend of Milosevic’s son Marko. Marko fled the country after the October uprising and is reportedly tramping around the former Soviet Union where he is protected by a Russian mafia leader.

In interviews, the Milosevic family refuses to take the slightest responsibility for the country’s utter devastation, which included four regional wars, plundered savings accounts, unsolved political killings, the criminalization of society and the highest inflation rate recorded in history. “Our family has been the subject of a pogrom in which Stalinistic and fascistic methods have been perfected,” Markovic recently told the Belgrade weekly Vreme. “Our family has been exposed to media terror since 1990. For a decade there have been circles that have threatened to kidnap, poison, arrest and kill [Milosevic],” said Markovic.

Markovic has always been the ideologue behind the Milosevic operation, and held a cult-like influence over her followers. “As hard as it is to believe, people are still scared of her,” said a source in the democratic coalition who maintains contacts with former Milosevic cronies. This could partially explain why Milosevic cronies who have already been arrested, including former security chief Rade Markovic, have refused to implicate the former first couple.

Many believe Milosevic would commit suicide before spending the rest of his life in jail, a theory based on his family history of suicides. As rumors continue to circulate, we will wait to find out if he has evaded capture once again.

With the nation’s police and army in disarray, protesters swarming the streets and the opposition firmly in control of television, Milosevic must be looking for a way out. Indeed, news reports of the suspicious departure of three military planes Thursday evening fueled speculation that Milosevic might be trying to flee the country.

Serbia’s opposition had scheduled a massive rally Thursday afternoon that was billed as the “final push to oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.” And that rally now appears to have turned into just that.

A day earlier, Yugoslavia’s Constitutional Court, controlled by Milosevic loyalists, issued a statement claiming it had annulled “parts” of the election, and later a judge serving on the court told Radio Free Europe that the decision effectively nullified the results of the election and would permit Milosevic to remain in office until his term expires in July.

Milosevic lost decisively in Sept. 24 elections, but has so far refused to concede his defeat to opposition leader Kostunica despite mounting evidence of electoral fraud. The Milosevic government insisted on a runoff election, but the opposition claimed it had won an absolute majority, over 50 percent, and a runoff was therefore unnecessary. The Milosevic government repeatedly refused demands for a recount or international mediation.

But the vast majority of Yugoslavs didn’t buy the court ruling, and instead interpreted the technical legal maneuvers as an attempt by Milosevic to cling to power. People from every corner of Serbia turned out in droves Thursday to stop that effort.

By the time the protests were mounted, Milosevic’s support had eroded so badly that his own government-controlled media was turning against him, and his security forces seemed helpless to fight the incessant throngs that stormed police blockades across Serbia.

In villages like Majdan and Ljiga, located an hour’s drive from Belgrade, protesters overturned police vehicles with virtually no resistance.

But the most dramatic scenes were reserved for Belgrade, where a rally staged by the opposition was bursting with tension after only 30 minutes. A series of speakers proclaimed the beginning of democracy, vowing to “take what is ours.”

Bogoljub Arsenijevic “Maki,” an outlaw artist with militant political views, riled up the crowd with a revolutionary speech. “Belgrade will fall today,” he told a euphoric audience from a makeshift stage.

The masses cheered, “Victory!” and “He’s finished!” as other opposition leaders addressed the crowd.

Belgrade’s new mayor, Milan Protic, a former history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told the crowd, “Tonight it’s over in Serbia. Everything around us is ours. Every hole they’re hiding in is ours!”

The crowd inched forward, gradually pushing the police cordon back a few yards.

One hundred lightly armed police officers stood between the Parliament building and hundreds of thousands of angry citizens.

A half-hour into the demonstration, a small group of journalists, including this writer, stormed the police line in order to get a better view of the crowd. We had intended to get a good view from the steps of Parliament, but a demonstrator shouted, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!” Thousands surged up the steps. A melee ensued, but the police showed no signs of resistance. They appeared simply flabbergasted by the events swirling around them.

Stones came smashing through windows, often hitting protesters by mistake.

Police soon withdrew inside the Parliament building, and fired dozens of volleys of tear gas into the crowd. Opposition supporters fought back, tossing tear gas canisters back into the building. Hundreds choked and vomited on the pavement, thousands more lay incapacitated in the park across the street.

But soon the protesters returned, angrier than before, desperate to storm the building. Such scenes were repeated several times, but then came the farmers.

A bunch of villagers on a tractor reenergized the crowd with their attempt to drive up the Parliament steps and smash through the front doors. When the villagers discovered that the steps were too steep, the battered yellow tractor then simply began ramming the building itself.

Dozens of teenagers climbed through the windows in the south wing and encouraged the crowd to continue their fight.

“No retreat,” the crowd chanted, all the while screaming in agony from the wafting tear gas that stung their eyes. The crowd seemed propelled by a suicidal sense that the agony wrought by Milosevic had to end now, and thousands seemed ready to make a sacrifice.

One man fell over with an apparent heart attack; another went into seizures. One man took a blow to the head from an uprooted lamppost; countless others were struck by rubber bullets. Wave after wave of ambulances arrived continually to pull out the wounded. Two people were killed and 65 injured in the rioting, according to Tanjug, a government news agency now controlled by the opposition.

Hundreds stormed side entrances of the Parliament and eventually lit fires inside the building to drive out police. Several police and state vehicles were flipped upside down and burned.

All the while, a rave party was underway in front of the National Bank on Boulevard Revolution, a mere 100 yards from Parliament.

Branko Ilic, a key organizer of the Otpor, or “Resistance,” student movement, stood on a makeshift stage where a wall of speakers blasted dance music. The black smoke of the burning Parliament building mixed with white tear gas to set a dramatic backdrop to the dance scene. While some danced, others fought.

The dozens of police inside Parliament gave up after battling for less than an hour. Protesters soon emerged with their war booty: blue helmets, police shields, bulletproof vests and a tear gas gun.

One man emerged with an antique coat rack. “This will look fantastic in my hallway,” he proclaimed in a postmodern mixing of rioting and decorating.

The crowd pummeled a number of police and even lit fire to some, but none were reported killed.

By nightfall, a party atmosphere descended upon Belgrade, especially in front of Parliament, where revelers carried out furniture and anything else useful they could find.

After Parliament fell, hundreds of special police units launched a counterattack from nearby Tashmajden Park, but again the crowds fought back, hurling bricks and stones at police.

Milosevic’s security forces appeared spread thin as countless demonstrations erupted across the country. The police showed repeatedly that they no longer had it in them to fight back.

In some instances, the protesters showed goodwill toward the police. One officer was nearly killed by an angry mob, but his life was spared after a good Samaritan talked sense into the crowd. “What will this gain us? He’s just another poor victim of this regime, like the rest of us,” the man said.

Protesters then focused their attention on the much-hated Radio Television Serbia, which has served as Milosevic’s primary propaganda vehicle for 13 years. Thousands converged on the station, which is located only a few hundred yards from Parliament.

The police holed up inside RTS put up a strong resistance, pummeling the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets. But, as they had done at the Parliament building, protesters set fires to drive the police out of RTS.

Young men tossed Molotov cocktails into the building, then hid behind other buildings as police fired a burst of rubber bullets at exposed protesters.

One man fell unconscious when a rubber bullet struck his head. Citizens rushed in to pull him out of the line of fire, and delivered him to a nearby ambulance.

Another was struck by a massive electricity pole that came loose from leaning protesters. One man died when he was crushed by the same tractor used earlier in the day to take the Parliament.

Police launched volley after volley of tear gas at the growing crowd in front of RTS, but some protesters had already secured police gas masks from their previous confrontations. Still others wore makeshift masks created from the tablecloths of a ransacked restaurant.

The battered yellow tractor that had become a symbol of the fall of the Parliament building made a second appearance, charging the television station. But the farmer steering the tractor was temporarily driven back by a hail of rubber bullets.

Again and again the crowd charged the front doors of the state media. As hundreds retreated from tear gas exposure, thousands of replacements arrived. Finally, some anonymous soul issued the final charge order. Thousands of protesters launched a final attack and poured into the television station courtyard. The building was well in flames by then, and police were simply daunted by the sheer number of people storming the television station.

The next attack came from the rear of the RTS building. Only this time, police fired live bullets on occasion, shooting one man in the stomach. Countless more were struck by rubber bullets, and hundreds suffered massive tear gas exposure.

But the rowdy throng refused to be deterred, and hurled a storm of rocks through the windows where police hid.

More cars were set on fire, and one man played demolition derby in the television parking lot. Cars occasionally exploded below the windows where police made their last stand.

After one hour, the police gave up. A dozen officers emerged from a side door with a handful of RTS employees. They were jeered and taunted, occasionally swatted, but no one was injured.

Around the corner, dozens of police simply surrendered. Apart from an occasional bully, the crowed embraced the officers and chanted, “The blue are ours!” referring to the color of the police uniforms.

“I was only out here to protect myself. I hope it’s over!” one officer reflected, standing under a waft of smoke.

Draskovic and his entourage were traveling in three vehicles when a large
transport truck smashed into the first two vehicles,
killing four people instantly. The Serbian opposition leader announced on
Thursday evening’s 10 o’clock news on his Belgrade television station,
Studio B, that the crash was in fact an assassination attempt.

“The truck came out of nowhere,” he said. He warned the perpetrators to “think well about what they’ve done.”

Though he did not explicitly say who may have been responsible for the attack,
Draskovic certainly has no shortage of enemies. After almost bringing down
the Milosevic regime during the winter of 1996-97, Draskovic was viewed as
a traitor for joining Milosevic’s government. But he resigned from the
Milosevic government in April, in the middle of the NATO bombings of
Yugoslavia, and quickly reemerged as the primary opposition leader in
Yugoslavia.

One of Draskovic’s chief rivals is also a member of the anti-Milosevic movement. Ever since the acrimonious split of their anti-Milosevic coalition “Zajedno” in early 1997, Draskovic and Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic have been jockeying for position as the natural successor to Milosevic. Some in the Serbian opposition, however, have accused Draskovic
and Milosevic of entering into a wink-and-nudge agreement to help divide the Serbian opposition, and keep both men in power.

Draskovic’s party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, has not joined Djindjic supporters in the nightly demonstrations in Belgrade, in which dozens of protesters have been beaten by police.

But there have been signs of goodwill among the anti-Milosevic factions.
Last week, one of Draskovic’s representatives met with rival opposition
parties for the first time in three years to discuss conditions for fair
elections and political opposition strategies.

Meanwhile, Milosevic has been cracking down. Not only have the daily
anti-Milosevic protests ended in violence, but police have been conducting
door-to-door interrogations to confirm that citizens reside in their declared place of residency. There have been reports of police entering apartments and intimidating
occupants.

Dozens of Belgrade cafes have been shut down for unpaid taxes, and a popular
opposition newspaper, Glas Javnosti, was ordered to stop publishing for 15
days because it employed three illegal workers. The newspaper’s printing
press had been publishing an opposition newsletter that advertised the anti-Milosevic rallies.

Nearly half of the academics in Serbia’s Academy of Arts and Sciences signed
a recent letter calling for Milosevic’s resignation.

After the world condemned last week’s brutal use of force against
demonstrators and journalists, police stopped indiscriminately beating
people during the nightly march. On Sunday evening, hundreds of well-armed
police blocked Belgrade’s streets and kept marchers corralled within a few
square blocks.

Stevo Lalic, who witnessed the killings, said the Serbs were killed with automatic weapons in a wheat field, then run over with tractors.

Serbian Bishop Artemije and other Serbian leaders met with the head of the U.N. mission, Bernard Kushner, to demand that more be done to protect Serbs.

“We placed our hope in you, but we can no longer do that and therefore do not ask for our cooperation until the evil which is being committed against Serbs comes to an end,” Artemije told Kushner.

At an anti-Milosevic rally Saturday, Serbia’s most popular opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, said that Serbs who chose to stay in Kosovo with the intention of living with Albanians have been disappointed by KFOR and the behavior of some Albanians.

“We believed that accepting an international peacekeeping force from the world’s leading countries, operating under a Security Council resolution, would protect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and the human rights of all citizens in Kosovo. But Western countries are supporting separatists and have erased the border with Albania.”

Draskovic said 100,000 Serbs have been driven out of Kosovo under the aegis of Western countries and the U.N. flag.

Serbs have been increasingly the victims of revenge killings and brutal attacks. Every day across Kosovo, dark pillars of smoke point to Serbian homes going up in flames.

Serb leaders in Kosovo canceled a meeting with Albanian leaders after Friday’s attack.

Hashim Tachi, the leader of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, denied that the KLA had anything to do with Friday’s murders. The attacks appear to be the result of widespread rage over the murder of thousands of Albanians and the torching of tens of thousands of Albanian homes during the Yugolsav offensive in Kosovo.

Just as Serbs burned Albanian villages to dissuade them from returning, Albanians are beginning to do the same.

On Saturday in Kosovo, the deserted Serbian village of Belo Polje, located less than two miles outside of Pec, was quietly burning six weeks after the Yugoslav army pulled out of the region.

In the village of Decani, a 14-year-old boy proudly watched a Serbian home burn under a dull afternoon sun. A woman dressed in fatigues wearing a KLA belt approached him, kissed him on the cheek and said, “Now you’ve earned your manhood.”

Even in Prizren, which was left intact by Serbian forces, Serbian homes can regularly be seen burning at night on a hill overlooking this exotic city.

Last Thursday, the 500-year-old home of Serbian doctor Ljubisa Lukic was the latest architectural victim of Albanian rage. Every vacant Serbian home was looted, many were burned.

A handful of mostly older Serbs are determined to stay, no matter how great the risk.

“I was born in this city, I will die here. Of course we’re scared, but I hope they will leave us alone because we haven’t done anything,” said 68-year-old Prizren native Vera Jeftic, who lives with her retired husband and another family member.

“We can’t even go into the city to buy food. It’s a shame because we really did get on well with Albanians. I speak their language well, but also feel this land is just as Serbian as it is Albanian,” said Jeftic.

German soldiers guard the Serbian neighborhood 24 hours a day, only 50 meters from the Jeftic home. But the city’s small and seemingly endless meandering alleyways and passages are perfect cover for would-be arsonists and looters.

Just down the street, 190 mostly older Serbs live like prisoners in Prizren’s theological seminary. The scene is beyond depressing. Dozens of older Serbs fill a small courtyard and stare into nowhere. The silence is crushing, interrupted only by the mad ravings of a woman screaming at a journalist.

Just outside the seminary walls, three German soldiers protect Prizren’s last Serbs from thousands of angry Albanians in the city center.

Many of the elderly display scars, bruises and broken bones from being beaten by vengeful Albanians.

“We just want a military escort out of here,” said Father Nikola, an Orthodox priest. “This is not life anymore. We’ve been waiting for weeks for our situation to be resolved. Nearly 150 of us have family in Serbia where we can go live peacefully.”

Cveta Vasiljevic, a frail, 75-year-old woman, showed a track of stitches in her head from a beating received a week ago at the hands of angry Albanians in a village near Prizren. There are many like Vasiljevic: an 80 year-old woman with a broken arm, another septuagenarian removes his shirt to show off the bruises on his back from a fierce beating just a few days ago.

“They keep arriving,” said Nikola. “People who thought, ‘Look, I’m innocent. I haven’t done anything so I’ll stay.’ Then they show up here beaten nearly to death.”

For Albanians, Prizren has never been better. The city has an air of liberation; the streets are bustling, the cafes filled with festive chatter.

“We never used to be able to gather at night, we were always scared of Serb police. Now the few Serbs who are left know how we felt for years,” said Amil, the owner of a cafe.