Behind the Serbian Lines

By EDWARD BARNES DOBOJ

Suddenly, sniper bullets spit into the dirt along the top of the trench. Down below the ridge, plum orchards in spring bloom conceal the Muslim lines. Exploding artillery shells trigger small avalanches along the rain-loosened earth walls. A young Serb slides into the trench, out of breath from his dash across a meadow of buttercups pocked by mortar craters. He has a question to ask that is important enough to risk his life. "Why does the world want to destroy us?" he wants to know. "We are victims too."

The fighters call this the "bicycle path," a narrow strip of bitterly contested ground cutting for nearly 150 miles through north central Bosnia to connect the Serb stronghold of Doboj to Serbia proper. Muslim and Croat lines ) pinch the corridor on both its eastern and western flanks. Daily shelling empties the town much of the day; by early afternoon the only sound on the main boulevard is the flapping of plastic sheets that cover shop windows shattered by artillery rounds. But when dusk closes in, fighters and young girls venture out to meet at a small park, whispering beneath the pine trees festooned with white paper death notices hung where friends might see them.

"If Doboj falls, the corridor will fall too. This is the most critical part of the line," says the local Serb commander. "We will never give it up." Under the Vance-Owen peace plan, Doboj (pronounced dough boy) would be handed back to the Muslims, an event that the Serbs insist will never happen. "This is our last stand," says a Serb who came here a year ago as a refugee from a Muslim town in southern Bosnia. "To take away the corridor is to kill us as a people. We would rather die fighting here."

It is in places like the slit trenches around Doboj that the success of any peace effort will be determined. Officers and men alike declare they would consider any concessions a betrayal. They will fight to the last man rather than give up one foot of the ground they have won. In an eerie way, the Serbs in Doboj are not unlike the Branch Davidians in Waco, devotees of a cult of victimization: isolated from the outside world, hunkered down against forces that want to remove them, certain of their beliefs. Like the Branch Davidians, they are ready for Armageddon if it comes. But they will not be moved.

These men are no freak sect, out of touch with the Serb mainstream. They are the mainstream. The deputies of the Bosnian Serbs' self-appointed parliament proved that last week: they showed the same intransigence as the men in the trenches when they effectively rejected the Vance-Owen plan. No matter that the bosses from Belgrade coaxed, wheedled, pleaded and finally threatened; the deputies rudely turned their backs on compromise. Their bellicose stance was a rebuke not only to the meddling international community but also to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who dared urge them to accept the plan.

Like the fighters in the field, the self-styled parliamentarians saw acceptance of the U.N.-mediated accord as an act of capitulation to a worldwide coalition set on annihilating the Serbian nation. "If we accept," said Radoslav Brdjanin, an ultra-nationalist leader of Banja Luka, "it means ) we fought for nothing and sacrificed the lives of our young needlessly. It is better to have an occupation by the Americans than be forced to live in a Muslim state."

This is more than bluster. The deputies spend more time in the battle zones than in assembly meetings, and they share the same grim, heedless determination as the men guarding the bicycle path. "The reality on the ground," said Ratko Adzic, the Bosnian Serbs' designated interior minister, "is very different from what the politicians think it is."

There was little doubt that the Serbian leadership badly misjudged the forces they had armed and set loose more than a year ago, and dangerously underestimated the will of the fighters to press on. The faint of heart, even those in political power, will now be ruthlessly cut out of the loop. Ever more convinced that they are the victims of history, the fighters and their political allies are unable to acknowledge that in any weighing of atrocities, the Serbs bear the heaviest load of guilt. On the bicycle path as in the so- called parliament, only the suffering of Serbs is considered relevant.

The trenches around Doboj are filled with green muck and spent cartridges. Last week a brief calm descended on this small stretch of front line for the first time in more than a year. The Serbs basked in the warm spring sun, talked and played countless rounds of a card game called tablici. At this moment, life is only intermittently dangerous. "We have the basics here," says a borac, Serbian for fighter. "We have food, cigarettes, a little money and our tank. It is enough. We can fight alone if we have to. We are not afraid to die."

These men do not understand why the world judges them so harshly. They will have nothing to do with the peace plan others are trying to impose on them. To sign it would be treachery, Serbs destroying Serbs. "We can never accept the plan under any circumstances," says a fighter as he listens to sniper fire rip across the valley. It was the chance to right the wrongs of 600 years of defeat and betrayal that led these men to make war on their neighbors.

Revenge for more recent horrors also inspires them. Many of the Serbs in the First Brigade of the Doboj Regiment defending this ridge were driven from homes in territory now controlled mostly by Muslims. They have come to these trenches as refugees, often after harrowing escapes; they have lost everything and say they will not run any farther. The great majority are peasants who have no skill at politics but a great capacity for hardship when they are certain of their course. They are Serbian true believers. No matter what the politicians order, no matter what the world thinks, they will not yield these trenches, this town.

Ljuba Mikerevic, 34, walks from a bunker built of old cartridge boxes packed with dirt and covered with logs and sod in the middle of the Serb lines to his home every four days. It is about two miles down the steep hill past two military checkpoints, a dozen gutted homes and a file of soldiers walking in the other direction. Mikerevic is lean, with a dark mustache and hair that is turning prematurely gray. His rifle swings easily from his shoulder. At home his wife and two young girls, ages six and three, are waiting in the cramped apartment they were given by an aid organization.

Shy, thoughtful and quiet, Mikerevic once worked as an engineer in a steel mill. He had what he calls a good life in the central Bosnian city of Zenica, before he was forced to flee in March of last year. He had already lost his job at the local steelworks when he was warned that the Muslims were coming for him and he should get out quickly. At 2:30 one morning he awakened his wife and daughters and told them they were taking a trip. They took no clothes, no toys, no mementos, nothing that would make the Muslims suspect they were fleeing. They walked for several days through the woods until they reached a Croat area, where they were given food, water and directions to avoid Muslim soldiers. "It took 21 days to reach Doboj," he says, a distance of just over 50 miles.

"We had everything in Zenica, and now we have nothing," Mikerevic says, seated in his family's small two-room apartment. It once belonged to Muslims, but Mikerevic does not want to know what happened to them. In the narrow living room filled by a sofa and a crib, an icon of the Virgin Mary now presides, next to a photo of an uncle who is with the military but hasn't been heard from in a year. Mikerevic rests his rifle in the crib next to the doll his wife found on the street.

The flat is on a steep hill overlooking the city. Every third or fourth house bears the mark of a night of ethnic cleansing that came last year, when the mosque that stood next to the 14th century Turkish citadel was reduced to rubble and about 10,000 Muslims were driven away or killed. The entire neighborhood has been repopulated with Serbs from Zenica.

All of them have tales of pain and loss as grievous as any Muslim's, they say, but no one cares about their suffering. "The West says we are aggressors. We are just defending ourselves," says Mikerevic. He feels he has no choice but to stand and fight: he will not leave his home again. "This is a struggle for survival," he says. "Here is where the destiny of my people will be decided. To leave here means the world wants to exterminate us."

This is no regular army, with an orderly command and a habit of obedience. All but one or two of the top officers are professionals from the old Yugoslav People's Army, but the ranks are filled by farmers, laborers and shopkeepers fighting for their homes. Many live no more than a few minutes' walk from the front lines. They will not be persuaded to give up these homes and move again.

There is no unified command: the Serb army is more a loose federation of fighting units, each with its own agenda and objectives. The units often decide tactics on their own and rely on their own stockpiles of food and ammunition. Field officers operate with a great deal of independence from the political leadership and think little of overriding the high command's orders when they are inclined to do so. Many soldiers have the same attitude toward their officers as the officers do toward the politicians. A frontline colonel admitted he commands only as long as the men listen to him. "I am willing to listen," says a fighter, "but I decide in the end."

A cult of bravery and militarism exerts a grip so strong that military leaders might not be able to overcome it even if they wanted to. The young soldiers strut down the streets; they are treated as heroes. They are not willing to return to their old peasant lives. This is a victorious army that has not tasted decisive defeat.

The fighters live in what can only be called "Serbian reality," the world as defined by the propaganda, lies, myth and aggrieved sense of history that have been swallowed whole by the population. They are certain that the fascists and the Islamic fundamentalists are at their throats. They are sure that the Muslims and Croats who once lived next door are nothing short of monsters. An army medical officer explained that Croat children are taught that Serbs' most popular sport is killing children. A major insists all the pictures of atrocity victims are really of Serbs, but the world press lies and calls them Muslims.

/ Colonel Lika -- a nom de guerre -- who commands one end of the Serb salient, is absolutely convinced that the Germans are really behind the war. "We are completing a war against German expansion and the creation of a new world order," he says. "The Croats and the Muslims are the tools of a new German expansion and they can be sacrificed." He is not alone in this conviction. "This is a war against Germany and the Pope," insists another fighter. "Germany wants a warmwater Adriatic port." Never mind that this makes no logical sense. Though many who express this view are not old enough to remember World War II, the recounted horrors of Croat and German atrocities against Serbs have been kept as alive as yesterday. However implausible, many Serbs believe without doubt they are finally getting their chance to defeat the Germans and avenge one of the most tragic chapters of Serb history. The wounds, anger and even the dread remain fresh after 50 years. Pleads an impassioned major: "Why can't you understand the Serbs' fear?"

Up on the bicycle path, Nenad Gustimirovic, 35, carves cigarette holders when he is not taunting the Muslims just opposite his firing position. He used to be foreman in a marble quarry that now lies in Muslim territory. He is quick-witted, hearty, good with his hands, and loves to laugh. He has rigged a church bell to an old electrical tower behind the ruined chalet the Serbs have transformed into a machine-gun bunker. "I ring it because it annoys the Muslims," he says. "They open fire when they hear it. We just laugh at them."

At night he often exchanges insults with the enemy, only a few hundred yards away. "They ask what we are going to do when they come to Doboj," Gustimirovic says. "How are you coming to Doboj, I ask them. They shout back that America will act soon." We just laugh, he says.

Occasionally, farther up the line, where the Serbs are fighting Croats, there are meetings in no man's land. Many of the fighters know one another by name and occasionally they meet and talk -- careful always to keep their guns at their hips. But that does not happen in his sector, Gustimirovic says, because the other side is Muslim and cannot be trusted.

Gustimirovic has no home save the small couch he sleeps on and the coffeemaker he has scrounged and placed neatly in what must have been the chalet's laundry room. A mess tin near the bed is filled with red and yellow tulips. Nearby stands a pile of straight branches; these will become cigarette ) holders when the line is quiet.

"This war is needed by no one, but we are not clever enough to stop it," he admits. "But Serbs cannot be separated. History has told us we must be united for our survival. To be divided is to die. The world cannot deny that is the historical truth. We have the right to decide who lives with us. This is a very personal war. It will decide who I shall live with, and we can never live with the Muslims again. I do not mind spending the rest of my life in the trenches if it will finally settle the question of who owns the land. Then my children can live in peace."

There is a Serb soldier who cannot believe his own people have imprisoned him. He says he had been sent to the front lines to kill Muslims and had been very successful. When he came home he continued to kill them and, to his surprise, he was arrested. "If it is O.K. there, why not here?" he asks.

Colonel Slavko Lisica heads the Doboj Corps. He claims to have 45,000 men -- a gross exaggeration according to intelligence estimates that put the total Serb troops in Bosnia at no more than 90,000 -- under his command, and controls about 400 sq. mi. of territory substantially "cleansed" of Muslims. The situation map behind his desk shows his lines extending like a pointed finger into Muslim territory. All that would be needed to trap the corps would be for the Muslims to cut through the 10-mile-wide base of the finger with an assault on Doboj. It is an uncomfortable position.

To his men Lisica is a hero, a former Yugoslav Army officer who has battled his way across Bosnia. He thinks he may be tried as a war criminal if the Americans come but says he cannot worry about that. From his office, bare except for the desk, eight chairs and a cot, he can hear the NATO planes. They trouble him and often, as they roar overhead, he will stop in mid-conversation and begin a tirade against the forces that are arrayed against his men. But he is defiant about the possibility of foreign intervention. "I draw the maps around here," he says, "not Mr. Owen."

The Serbs of the Doboj bicycle path do not care if the whole world is poised against them. They share the determination of Colonel Lika to grab their destiny or die. "The time of living together is over," he says. "We may be able to live side by side but not together. Never again together."