Waiting for NATO
This time Italian reporter Giuseppe Zaccaria’s suitcases were heavier than usual as he departed Rome for Yugoslavia. To the usual question "Anything you need?" during last minute phone calls to colleagues and friends already on the scene, he got, "Yes, please bring lots of packs of coffee."
The threat of war is making itself felt this time on the streets of Belgrade. Goods are beginning to become scarce in the shops. According to the "Dnevni Telegraf," the state has begun printing food ration stamps. The health minister is scrambling to deny that an order was issued suggesting that hospitals send home non-emergency patients to liberate bed space in case of the worst. There are long lines at the gas stations and diesel fuel is almost impossible to come by: The army has precedence on those two commodities, as B-72 tanks continue to work their way down to Kosovo.
Although the threat of rationing seems to be more ominous than the peril of the impending presence of those jet bombers from the West, the atmosphere in Belgrade is definitely more looming than it was when the last NATO bombing threats occurred a month ago. At that time fear seemed to be a sentiment extraneous to the Serbs. "Will NATO bomb us?" "Yes, dear, but look at what a gloriously sunny day it is. Why don’t we go for a walk?" "Are the Americans coming?" "Sooner or later they’ll have to come down off their damn planes." More than the vigil of a catastrophe, the Serbian capital seemed like it was getting ready for a long weekend. Although the Serbs seem to be more concerned about sustenance than about bombs, instead of walks in the countryside, the people of Belgrade are now contemplating automobile exoduses toward semi-distant destinations like Budapest and Montenegro.
A month ago during the last NATO bombing countdown, Zaccaria went out into that countryside, 50 kilometers from the capital. He visited the marketplace of Baric, a poor little town on the Sava River. Zoran, a local street merchant, gave him the impression that if the bombs were to start dropping, he would have been more likely to open his arms and lean over the counter in a desperate effort to protect his long shriveled up carrots and flaccid tomatoes than to run for cover.
Why would NATO be interested in Zoran’s vegetables? Three hundred feet behind the marketplace lies the chemical plant Prva Iskra. Though Zoran knew that the factory produced chemicals for the military and that that made it as good a target as any for the NATO bombers, his attitude was fatalistic. What can I do? This is where I sell whatever I can find. Among other things Prva Iskra produces chlorine and phosgene, a poisonous gas used in making glass, dyes, resins, and plastics. An explosion there could produce a toxic cloud capable of polluting the Sava and the tributaries that run toward Belgrade.
In another village, Zaccaria spoke to a tired housewife carrying two half-empty plastic bags in a last minute attempt to get provisions for her family before the bombs started falling on the nearby radar center just down the street from her home. She could have been forty or sixty. It’s not easy to tell a woman’s age in places like Batajnica. "I know that the biggest radar center in Yugoslavia is just over there. We’ve been complaining about it for years. With all of that stupid fencing and the secret military police, the buses can’t circulate anywhere near there. In order to go home everyday, I have to make a long detour." "And if they were to start bombing, what would you do?" "I’d stay home, put my arms around my children and ‘boge pomozi,’ God help us."
In this Serbian suburb, the six-floor residential palaces in Socialist Realist style surround the military area like an amphitheater. It is obvious to anyone that if NATO were to decide to blind these radars, the missiles would have to move with the accuracy of champion slalom skiers in order to avoid casualties among the civilians.
In Pancevo, along the Danube sixty kilometers to the south, the refinery, Perohenja, lies adjacent to Azotara Nitrogen, a chemical plant. One single missile, for that matter even just the strike of a match, and the gas contained in those enormous encrusted cisterns could wipe out an entire region. There, too, the people appeared apathetic.
How can these people be so nonchalant about such imminent danger? Many wouldn’t really have anywhere else to go. Besides, the succession of ultimatums has provoked a kind of dark resignation. Their reflex reaction might be to embrace and protect their beloved, children or vegetables as they may be, but in terms of their own security, their collective unconcern almost seems to say "the worse the better."
March 1999
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