Fueled by public outrage at Serbia's humiliating loss of Kosovo and the destruction of its industrial economy by NATO bombs, Serbia appears to be either in the early stages of a revolution that will topple Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, or spiraling into a situation that could rapidly degenerate into civil war. Street protests have erupted in tough industrial towns that formerly served as the staunchest supporters of Milosevic's neo-Communist Socialist Party of Serbia -- towns now crippled in the wake of the airstrikes. Many of the protesters have been unpaid Yugoslav army reservists just back from Kosovo, who have yet to be disarmed, and who have found that their families have not had enough to eat, and that Serbia lost Kosovo just the same.
"What Serbia is experiencing now is like an ancient Greek drama," said Zarko Korac, a Belgrade psychology professor known for his liberal views. "There is going to be a confrontation between angry citizens and the government. There will be a bloody confrontation. We cannot exclude the possibility of a civil war."
Anti-Milosevic protests in Serbia are nothing new. In the winter of 1996-97, pro-democracy reformer Zoran Djindjic and Serbian nationalist Vuk Draskovic put aside their rivalry to lead a series of massive daily street protests that regularly brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of Belgrade and smaller Serbian cities. Their movement -- which they led together with Vesna Pesic, who headed the Serb Civic Alliance, a party known for its anti-war views -- was called "Zajedno," or "Together"; it was formed to protest Milosevic's overturning of local elections, which showed opposition victories in 14 cities.
Throughout the three months of protest, the Zajedno daily street demonstrations had a carnival atmosphere. MTV was among the media outlets on hand to film the protests as Gypsy bands played and vendors sold popcorn, sodas and whistles to demonstrators. Through it all, protesters played cat and mouse with the Serbian police -- girls put flowers in their guns, while pensioners scolded individual Serbian police in riot gear for threatening the well-being of their own people.
(It is difficult to believe now, but back in '96-'97, Zajedno demonstrators carried German and American flags at the street protests -- symbols of the protestors' desire to be part of Europe and the West. That attitude has changed since NATO spent two months bombing the Serbian capital.)
But some Serbia watchers see signs that the protests this summer are more powerful -- and more volatile -- than earlier ones, despite the fragmentation of the political opposition. "The dissatisfaction of people with this regime is more powerful than three years ago, no doubt," Korac said.
While the street protests have tapped into a deep well of discontent among the Serbian public, they might not lead to Milosevic's fall. In a show of force Friday, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic -- head of the 3rd Army Corps, which fought in Kosovo -- reaffirmed the military's support of Milosevic. "The Yugoslav army will ... give its unconditional support to the state institutions and their legally elected representatives, from the lowest officials to the president of the republic," he said.
"The fact that people are dissatisfied with the Milosevic regime does not necessarily mean the regime is going to be changed," Korac said. "One reason is [that] this regime has nowhere to go. Milosevic and his close associates have been indicted for war crimes. The fact that they have nowhere to go gives Milosevic and his cronies an additional reason to cling to power. Instead of them being in jail, all of Serbia is in jail."
While protesting Serbs share bitterness at Milosevic for losing Kosovo and for the country's crippled post-war economy, the Yugoslav leader's opponents are crippled by internal differences and political rivalries.
"After Milosevic's capitulation in Kosovo," wrote veteran Serbian political analyst Bratislav Grubacic on Friday, "the Serbian opposition has a great chance of grabbing power. [It's] now or never. The fact that the country is on the verge of total economic collapse only plays into its hands. However, rifts within the Serbian opposition have appeared once again."
Grubacic, who publishes the VIP daily news report, explains these rifts that might allow Milosevic to ride out the current wave of protests as the opposition again destroys itself.
Jealousies between Serbia's two leading opposition political figures -- Djindjic and Draskovic -- are intense and personal. Djindjic heads the Alliance for Change, a coalition of pro-democracy parties. A political science professor who lived in Germany, Djindjic spent the three months of the NATO airstrikes in the smaller, more liberal Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, trying to avoid getting knocked off by a hard-line Serbian assassin.
Draskovic, the dark-bearded, wild-looking head of the Serbian Renewal Party, shocked opposition supporters earlier this year by joining the Milosevic government as deputy prime minister. (He was fired from the post during the airstrikes for speaking out against Milosevic.) Of the entire political opposition only Draskovic controls a television station, Belgrade's Studio B.
At the end of the winter of Zajedno's protests, Milosevic yielded, and gave the 14 towns back their election results. Djindjic became mayor of Belgrade, and Draskovic prepared himself to run in presidential elections later that year. But then the rivalry between the two became so intense that Djindjic lost the mayoral post in Belgrade, and called for Zajedno supporters to boycott the elections Draskovic was campaigning in. Both lost, and Serbia was more than ever under Milosevic's control.
The fact that three months of daily street protests and a united political opposition failed then to crush Milosevic makes some analysts skeptical that the smaller, angrier and more fragmented protests this summer can achieve what Zajedno could not -- the ousting of Milosevic.
"There is very deep discontent with Milosevic. But the grass-roots opposition is at this point probably not ready to harness that discontent in a useful way," suggested Dejan Anastasijevic, a political analyst and journalist with the independent Belgrade weekly Vreme. "The opposition can shout against Milosevic on the streets all they want. But beyond the protests and civil disobedience, the Serbian opposition should also try to build institutions to replace Milosevic, to replace the current corrupt political structure. This is still a very young movement."
According to Sonja Biserko, one of Serbia's leading human rights activists, who fled for Vienna after the NATO airstrikes, Serbian citizens have not reckoned with their own responsibility for the policies of extreme nationalism that permitted atrocities to be committed against the Kosovo Albanians. She says that despite Milosevic's control of Serbian state television and all the lies that are broadcast, Serbs know what happened in Kosovo. But they are still in serious denial. The Serbs are not protesting atrocities committed in their name, but rather their own misery and poor standard of living, and the loss of Kosovo.
"So far, there has not been any real sobering up," Biserko said by telephone this week from the headquarters of the International Helsinki Federation in Vienna "except maybe the Kosovo Serbs, who know what happened in Kosovo and who is responsible."
Biserko has called for a "de-Nazification" of Serbian society, which she said would force Serbs to confront the atrocities committed by Serbian forces -- not just in Kosovo, but also earlier in Croatia and Bosnia. But so far, none of the Serbian opposition has said what the Serbs did to Albanians in Kosovo was wrong; rather, they say Milosevic's policies led to Serbia losing Kosovo.
Ironically, Serbs may be the next victim of Serbian violence, warns journalist Anastasijevic.
"Serbia will be Milosevic's next victim," Anastasijevic said. "All these paramilitaries and nasty people who withdrew from Kosovo -- and they are really nasty people -- are now in Serbia. And during the past several years covering these wars, I have actually met some of these people. And I can tell you, that most of them had one thing in common: They are not ethnically biased. They didn't hate Muslims or Croats or Albanians. They are just killers with a license to kill. And they are ready to kill and rob and loot anyone, provided the bosses pay and there are no consequences."
"Milosevic is playing his favorite game," he adds. "To cause conflict and then impose himself as a peacemaker after the blood has spilled, as he did in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo with a great degree of success. But his playground has shrunk a bit. And the only place he can do it now is in Serbia proper."
Anastasijevic's colleague, Nenad Stefanovic, also a writer at Vreme, had the same thought as he was leaving a recent protest in the city of Prokuplje.
"This is the first night I thought there could be a civil war," Stefanovic said by cell phone, driving back from the Prokuplje rally to Belgrade. "This rally showed there are certain capacities for civil war among the Serbs, and not such negligible capacities. Because the tensions are getting higher and higher."
"This is just warming up for a very hot end of summer," Stefanovic said. "Come September and October, the standard of living in Serbia will be even worse, people will be trying to store food for the winter, kids will be going back to school, and the crisis will get worse. This country will be more and more isolated."
"It's very difficult to predict what will happen in six months," Stefanovic added. "I think we can make no plans longer than tomorrow's lunch."
