Black smoke rises from a burning oil refinery Monday in Novi Sad, some 50 miles northwest of Belgrade. (AP Photo)

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 4, 1999; Page A1

BELGRADE, May 3 – For citizens of Belgrade and other Serbian cities, NATO attacks on major power plants have made plain that from now on the battle for Kosovo will be as near to them as the refrigerator that no longer works, the faucets that barely drip, the oven that stays cold, the elevators that won't run, the traffic lights that have gone dark and the bread that arrives late from bakeries that no longer operate through the night.

More frequent air attacks on largely civilian targets, coupled with a growing number of civilian casualties from errant NATO bombs, have left residents here tense, angry and mystified. The giddy defiance of the early days of the allied air assault, when thousands of people across Serb-led Yugoslavia pinned paper targets on their backs, challenging NATO warplanes to attack them, has given way to wonder about how long the bombing can go on.

Sometimes, hostility is directed only at NATO and the United States, but on occasion also at the Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic. Everyone seems to be clamoring for some sort of negotiated end to the conflict, no matter their opinion of its cause.

"I take this opportunity to send a message to the world and our leadership that all this must stop," said Milvoje Marjanovic, a retiree in the Serbian town of Valjevo.

Valjevo, which lies about 60 miles southwest of Belgrade, received a double shock from NATO aircraft Sunday. Bombs apparently aimed at a nearby tank-parts factory destroyed a two-story house and shattered windows and facades of surrounding apartment buildings. Two more bombs from the same attack landed on the grounds of the local hospital, breaking windows and sending glass shards into at least two operating rooms. The government reported 17 injuries.

Then, late Sunday night, the lights went out. Like many parts of Serbia, Valjevo gets its electricity from the Obrenovac power and redistribution station outside Belgrade. NATO's attack on Obrenovac – as well as on power facilities in Drmno, Kostoloc, Bajina Basta and Novi Sad – short-circuited power grids and plunged much of the republic into darkness. Sporadic power outages continued throughout today in Belgrade and the rest of Serbia – the dominant partner in the Yugoslav federation. Hospitals, most of which have standby generators, were assigned top priority for restoration of power.

"They want to make life impossible," complained Leposava Milicevic, the Serbian health minister. "Directly by killing, indirectly by ruining the water, the power, everything."

The civilian death toll here apparently climbed again today. Yugoslav media reports say NATO warplanes attacked a passenger bus traveling from Montenegro – Yugoslavia's other republic – to Pec, a city in western Kosovo, killing at least 17 people. The report could not be independently confirmed, and NATO officials said they had no information on such an attack.

On Friday, another bus, this one heading from the Serbian city of Nis to Pristina, the Kosovo capital, was incinerated by a NATO bomb as it crossed a bridge. More than 40 passengers died, the government said. Last Tuesday, a bomb or air-launched missile destroyed a house in the southern Serbian town of Surdlica, killing 16 residents who had sought refuge in its basement.

The Yugoslav government says that more than 400 civilians have been killed in NATO attacks, but it has neither produced a list of the dead nor specified when and where they died. Initially, civilian deaths were played down in the official media, but that changed two weeks ago when an airstrike destroyed the studios of the Belgrade government's radio and television station, and 16 workers were reported killed.

Nothing is said about deaths among government security forces in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where Yugoslav troops and Serbian police and paramilitary units have expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes in a brutal purge campaign. An occasional obituary in a newspaper here hints that soldiers or policemen may have died. "For Serbia," was the explanation of the death of one man reported in the newspaper Politika Sunday. "While on duty," was the explanation for the death of a policeman.

Today, Belgrade – a city of 2 million that is the capital of both Yugoslavia and Serbia – functioned in fits and starts. Power was restored to parts of the city, and the government appealed to residents to use appliances sparingly, even when electricity returned. In some areas of the capital, water pressure remained weak; everywhere, citizens found themselves inconvenienced in one way or another.

"They've painted us as savages, and now they want to bomb us to the Stone Age," said a beehive-coiffed woman who was preparing with dread for a 12-story climb to her apartment. "Say hello to Hillary and Madeleine," she sputtered, referring to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

Monday was the last day of a long May Day weekend, so the effects of the power disruption on business and movement were limited; still, it intensified survival strategies. "I'm not so much afraid for my life than I'm afraid of life," said Kocha Bulbuk, a mechanical engineer who became a taxi driver during Yugoslavia's long economic slide that began when U.S. trade sanctions were imposed on Yugoslavia at the outset of this decade.

The taxi business, which had earned Bulbuk up to $450 a month, is now threatened by fuel shortages and lack of business. Bulbuk did not even buy his quota of diesel fuel last month. Until recently, his wife, Vesna, earned about $150 a month at an auto parts store but has been put on $30 a month paid leave for the duration of the war.

"What to do? Will I work at all?" Bulbuk asked. He said he may become an itinerant auto mechanic, reasoning that people will need to keep their cars running in a period of parts shortages. For now, he's cutting back by wearing hand-me-up clothes from his two growing teenage boys.

The latest family crisis centers on the family dog, a huge Rottweiler. "We tried to feed him scraps, but of course he's spoiled," Bulbuk said. "He doesn't know we might end up eating him."

While Bulbuk is thinking of fixing cars for a living, other people are abandoning them altogether. NATO has destroyed oil refineries and fuel storage tanks across the country, and the civilian gasoline ration has dropped from about 10 gallons a month to about five. Bicycle repair shops are doing a booming business in repairing old two-wheelers rescued from basements and attics. "This really isn't a bicycle city; too many hills," said a shop owner who gave his name only as Zoran.

A discussion broke out over who was to blame for the Kosovo crisis. Milosevic, one customer said, because he used ethnic warfare to bring old communists back to power. "So what?" another said. "The bombing made me a backer of Milosevic."

Sonia Yovanevic, a government worker, is supplementing her income by taking in sewing. "I never thought it would last this long, and now I see that NATO's words about [civilians] not being the enemy were lies," she said. "I didn't believe them anyway."

Most Belgrade residents use electric ovens and ranges, but Dragica Sekuvic has dusted off an old coal-burning stove, just in case.. "I just have to find a chimney and stick it out the window," she said. "I never thought I would be standing in bread lines. It's something my mother told me about." Her family has stocked up on flour, sugar, noodles and detergent.

Such staple shopping is widespread here. At an open-air market, the hot items are toilet paper and detergent; no one is buying the little stereos or the Turkish clothing bearing Made In Italy labels.

No foreign goods are coming in. Men are forbidden to leave the country because of the general military mobilization, and women who try to face hostility from customs officials, commercial traders say. In any case, there is little demand to be met. "We'll end up picking mushrooms to live," said Nemad Zivkovic, a vendor who sells stereos at a salary of $3 a day.

Milan Jovanovic, a Belgrade butcher, decided to visit relatives in the countryside after his neighborhood was hit by three bombs last week. Boredom got to him, so he returned Sunday, just in time for the power blackout.

His friend, Branko Ivetic, expressed growing irritation with the NATO offensive and offered to settle the war the traditional Serbian way. "Bring 10 American commandos here, and I will fight them," he said. "Whoever wins, wins. But the bombing must stop."