Sullivan

Bashkim Fino, the young former mayor of Gjirokaster, watched wearily from his home a few weeks ago as armed insurgents took control of his city. The rebels, seeking the resignation of Albania's reviled president, Sali Berisha, seized control of a military barrack stocked with hundreds of automatic rifles, hand grenades, machine guns and over sixty tanks. They marauded through town, looting and burning stores and firing blindly into the air. This wasn't one of the problems of municipal governance about which Fino had been instructed when he attended a U.S.-sponsored program for overseas mayors in Scottsdale, Arizona, last year.

But in politics you never know when your break will come. And, as Fino quivered in his home, he got word that he was to travel to the capital at once. His Socialist Party, invited by a desperate Berisha into a "Government of Reconciliation," had chosen him as Albania's new prime minister. Dutifully, the obscure former mayor--and also, by reputation, small-time cigarette smuggler--trekked off to save his country from anarchy.

Upon assuming his new job, Fino appealed to Albania's insurgents to lay down their arms, but the insurgents were too busy shooting up everything, and nothing, to pay attention. Two days after his arrival, government soldiers abandoned three state armories on the outskirts of Tirana to rebels. Thousands of people--some as young as 8 years old--toted off automatic rifles, hand grenades and ammunition. Meanwhile, at the Tirana prison, guards abandoned theirposts, freeing both political prisoners and violent criminals. One of the escapees was Fatos Nano, the leader of the Socialist Party who is both Berisha'sgreatest political threat and Fino's party boss. Overnight, what was left of order in the capital vanished, as a now remarkably well- armed citizenry competed in a vast looting spree, emptying shops, warehouses and bakeries.

Suddenly, Fino's brand-new administration controlled only the 200 square meters surrounding the government buildings in the city center. The rest of the country had fallen to armed rebels. Desperate to regain control, Fino and Berisha appealed to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union for military intervention. They also armed volunteers who were willing to try to put down the rebellion, but the volunteers themselves began fighting--divided between supporters of Berisha and Fino's Socialist superior Fatos Nano. By the time eleven European Union advisers arrived on March17 to advise the new government on how to handle the crisis, things had settled down, but, in the capital, people spoke of this as a " dreadful calm" and said they feared even greater violence in the weeks to come.

This was not the way it was supposed to go. Berisha, after all, was blessed by the West as the man who would keep Albania stable. Back in 1991, before the war in Bosnia, Western governments feared it was the Yugoslav autonomous region of Kosovo, not Bosnia, that would erupt. Some 2 million Albanians in Kosovo, who grew up believing that the isolated Socialist Republic of Albania was paradise, were hungry to break free from their Serbian "oppressors" and linkup with their brethren in the motherland. Eager to avoid the bloodshed that any Kosovian break from Serbia would produce, the West, particularly the U.S., searched for an Albanian leader they could rely on to extinguish the flames of nationalism. Berisha, a heart surgeon and former Communist Party official from a mountainous village in the north, headed the newly established Democratic Party.In his 1992 run for Albania's presidency, Berisha assured the Americans that he would work to quell nationalist sentiment in Kosovo and Macedonia, which also boasts a significant percentage of Albanians. In exchange, the U.S. gave him full support.

Former American Ambassador to Albania William Ryerson actively campaigned for the young president-elect, standing next to him at campaign rallies and lending credence to the naive belief of Albania's electorate that ties with America would bring Albania into the modern world. The National Democratic Institute andthe International Republican Institute supplied computers, cars and election materials to the Democratic Party. After Berisha cruised to victory, the U.S. began a steady stream of aid to the impoverished Balkan nation--with roughly $60million pledged for 1997 alone, which figures out to roughly $17 to each of Albania's 3.4 million inhabitants.

All was well until Berisha began employing the police tactics he learned under the Communist regime of the late Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. America's man in Albania lost little time in assuming control of Albania's secret police force, known as Shik, and packing it with men from Tropoja, Berisha's hometown. Berisha's secret police imprisoned, harassed and beat his political opponents and critics in the press.

Concerned only that Berisha was not inflaming latent nationalism in Kosovo, the U.S. and the Europeans withheld their criticism. "Berisha interpreted the silence as a green light to abandon democratic institutions and consolidate power," said Fred Abrahams, a consultant for Human Rights Watch. "He just kept pushing the envelope to see how far he could go." The envelope finally broke after the parliamentary elections in May 1996, when the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe presented well-documented evidence of election fraud. Monitors found pre-stuffed ballot boxes with Democratic Party candidates marked off in identical pen strokes, and opposition politicians reported being beaten and threatened in the days preceding the elections.

The U.S. refused to recognize the new Albanian parliament, which has been boycotted since its inception by the few Socialists who managed to win seats despite the widespread fraud. But it was too late. Berisha had gutted Albania's fledgling democratic institutions and surrounded himself with hard-line "yes-men."

And if Albania's politics were bad, its economics were worse. The country's only real sources of revenue were sanctions-busting, drug-smuggling and arms-running, the proceeds of which filtered into a string of immensely popular pyramid schemes. The schemes, which allowed Albanians to believe they were reaping the fruits of capitalism, took in some 800,000 people, the equivalent of one person per family. The pyramids made Albania look like a country becoming richer instead of what it was, a country robbing itself. Although it produced next to nothing, Albania on paper was roaring along with an impressive growth rate of 9 percent per year. "Things looked so good in Albania that we didn't think we needed to have advisers in any of the government ministries," said John King, the International Monetary Fund's representative in Tirana. In 1992, Tirana boasted two restaurants; this winter it had 6,000. "It was like some kind of paradise," said Blendi Fevziu, an Albanian journalist. "You didn't have to do anything but keep your mouth shut, and wait for your pyramid payment to be disbursed."

American and European officials, as well as monitors at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, suspected what was coming and privately warned the Albanian government of the dangers of pyramid schemes. But, officially, they said nothing. Not until November, after the Democratic Party stole a fresh round of local elections, did international officials go public with their warnings. The warnings backfired. To counteract them, the pyramid builders pushed rates of return still higher, hastening the inevitable collapse. When the fall came, it shattered not only Albanian dreams of easy money, but Western illusions that it could base regional peace upon petty tyranny and fake capitalism.

With Albania now awash with guns, the prospect of instability across the border in Macedonia and Kosovo is greater than ever. The U.S. and Europe, having waited far too long to act, must now hope that the ingenue Fino, the hated Berisha, their ragtag police force and eleven men in white suits from the European Union can convince an enraged and desperate population to lay down their arms and accept that they will never get their stolen money back. As one local political analyst put it: "The Europeans and the Americans cooked this dirty dish here, and now they have to live with it. It's the price they have to pay for relying on a dictator to bring about stability."

Stacy Sullivan is a correspondent in Newsweek's Balkans bureau.

HEADLINE: A Case of Alarming Anarchy

BYLINE: BY STACY SULLIVAN With ALTIN RRAXHIMI in Tirana

INSIDE THE U.S. EMBASSY COMpound in Tirana last week, children wearing life jackets and helmets screamed as they waited for their saviors: U.S. Marine helicopters in flight from Bosnia to rescue them from the bloody free-for-all engulfing the Albanian capital. As the helicopters swooped down on Friday, shots were fired at two of them. One Marine Cobra was hit by small-arms fire, temporarily suspending the operation to remove the 2,000 Americans from the country. On Saturday, the Marines resumed their mission, evacuating not only Americans but also Russians, Swiss and others holed up in the compound. American Bob Durham, his Albanian wife, Eva, and their 19-month-old son were among the first to leave. "[My mother-in-law] was hit in the head by a bullet yesterday and my brother-in-law was hit in the face with a bullet today," said Durham.

The gunfire rattled throughout the capital as Albania's armed revolt swept northward from the ravaged south. Almost overnight, the national police force, army and most of the government collapsed, leaving only chaos. In Tirana alone last week, at least 21 people died and 300 were injured, mostly from stray bullets. After government soldiers abandoned three state armories on the outskirts of the capital, thousands of residents -- some as young as 8 - carted off automatic rifles, hand grenades and fistfuls of ammunition. In the streets, people fired randomly, testing their new weapons. Tonin Pellumbi was at home in the suburb of Laprake when a bullet struck just above his hip. Said Vladimir Goga, a neighbor: "Everyone is afraid, and there is so much noise."

Those who could leave left. Italy evacuated about 1,000 nationals, airlifting some from Tirana's football stadium. At the German evacuation field, two Albanian police vans began firing, engaging German troops in their first exchange of fire on foreign soil since World War II. Even as Americans fled in droves, U.S. Ambassador Marisa Lino took pains to assure the Albanians that they were not being abandoned. "The United States of America is not leaving Albania, "she said on TV. "I and some of my team will remain." Tiny Albania, the poorest nation in Europe, is not strategically important to Washington. But instability there could unleash a tide of refugees -- and spill into the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, where the majority of the residents are ethnic Albanians.

Still, no outside country offered to intervene. NATO rejected outright calls for help. "I don't believe there's an outside force anywhere in the world that could impose order on every [Albanian] village," said U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. European leaders were more painfully ambivalent; at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Netherlands on Saturday, they reported "solid disagreement" over whether to send in an international force. France and Italy favored intervention, while Britain and Germany were staunchly opposed. "You have to ask whether you can really intervene whenever anarchy erupts," said German Foreign Minster Klaus Kinkel. The only thing the European ministers could agree upon was that reviled Albanian President Sali Berisha should quit.

That is what the civilian militias now tearing up the country want, too. Though their revolt began in January as a peaceful protest against collapsed investment schemes, it has since escalated into an all-out attack on their authoritarian leader. But the country has slid hard and fast into anarchy, and there is no guarantee that Berisha's resignation would restore calm. According to some diplomats, it could actually make things worse. Albania has virtually no democratic institutions in place. The opposition is splintered and has been harassed by Berisha for years. Because Berisha has governed by micromanaging, his departure would leave a power vacuum. Albania's revolt is aimless and diffuse. At times last week, the country became a rioting crowd, its citizens caught up in the melee without knowing -- or caring -- why.

For most, the main goal now is merely survival. Dogged by persistent gunfire, prison guards abandoned their posts last week, freeing not only political prisoners but also violent criminals. That spurred a mad hunt for weapons. "The prison was opened, so who is safe now?" asked Artan Yderizi, a 20-year-old student who bought an automatic rifle from some children for less than $ 2. Many took advantage of the anarchy to loot clothing shops. On Kavaja Street, Tirana's most affluent shopping area, stores removed their inventories and barricaded their doors. But the chief concern of most residents was finding enough food. Terrified residents looted Tirana's flour depots and hauled away 100-pound bags. "We have to take this to survive," said Zenun Hoxha, a bedraggled 45-year-old. At the last remaining bakery, people waited in a long line to take home a few loaves of bread. Riza Lahi, a retired military pilot, carried home bags of feta, olives and frozen hamburgers. "I just spent all the money I had in my pocket," he said. "I love my motherland, and I don't want to leave. But I'm waiting to see what happens."

Already, more than 1,000 Albanians -- including former defense minister Safet Zhulali and President Berisha's children -- have fled to Italy. In the port city of Durres, thousands stormed a Greek frigate that had come to evacuate diplomats. The flood of refugees understandably makes Albania's neighbors nervous; in 1991, more than 40,000 Albanians flooded Italy in the wake of communism's collapse. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees pleaded with neighboring nations to have mercy. "We are asking these governments not to send Albanians back because it is a crisis situation," said spokeswoman Maki Shinohara. Envoys were sent to Greece and Italy to help set up refugee camps.

By Saturday, there were small signs of improvement in Tirana. People shopped. Uniformed police walked the streets. Newly appointed Justice Minister Spartak Njela announced that the government had set up special highly paid police units to disarm gunmen. Tanks rumbled through Tirana, their hatches occupied by men pointing their automatic weapons skyward. No one knew exactly who they were, butthey appeared to be part of the force working to restore peace. Still, government appeals for people to turn in their weapons went largely unheeded; atone collection depot, a single 80-year-old man handed in an automatic rifle he had taken. With nearly half a million automatic weapons still out there, Albaniahas a long way to go.

HEADLINE: Genocide Without Corpses

BYLINE: BY STACY SULLIVAN

IN THE HILLS OUTSIDE SREBRENICA, winter's onset has forced United Nations war-crimes investigators to lay down their shovels. When the ground thaws next spring they will resume the job of exhuming mass graves and trying to identify the remains of Muslims who were murdered in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb troops allegedly carried out Europe's deadliest atrocity since the end of the Third Reich. The International Committee of the Red Cross lists more than 6,600 Muslim men and women as missing since the Srebrenica massacre. The Bosnian government puts the number at 10,300. Yet after nine months of searching and digging, fewer than 750 corpses have been found. Why so few? The Bosnian Serb leadership says the bodies are scarce because the massacre was wildly exaggerated. The U.N. investigators are convinced they're lying. Evidence collected so far suggests that the Serbs have compounded their crimes against humanity with a massive cover-up to bury the truth. NEWSWEEK examines what the mass graves have revealed.

Sahanici: At this site, also called Lazete, investigators expected to find 800 bodies, based on the testimony of survivors and an examination of U.S. satellite photos. The grave yielded the remains of 160 victims. But the ground had been freshly disturbed when the U.N. team arrived there in April to begin digging. David Rohde, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for finding the grave late last year, says the soil there was "flat and hard" on his first visit. When he returned to the site in April, it had become a plowed-up mess of mud and green but half-buried sod. Fresh tire tracks led from the site. Investigators are sure some bodies were removed beforehand. "We have several bags of extra limbs and other body parts," says Dr. Robert Kirschner, a forensic specialist who worked with the U.N. team. "The fact that we found parts of bodies indicates there has been tampering." The war-crimes tribunal's sleuths say the missing corpses may have been reburied in a railway tunnel nearby. They plan to check it out next spring.

Pilica: Drazen Erdemovic, a confessed Serb executioner, testified to the Hague tribunal that roughly 1,200 Muslims died here on July 16, 1995. The U.N. team found only 200 bodies, along with miscellaneous unmatched limbs and appendages. U.S. satellite photos made the day after the killings show bodies and earth moving equipment at the site. The equipment returned three months later. About the same time the satellites spotted activity at a nearby aluminum plant that had been shut down. The factory's former manager, a Muslim now living in Tuzla, says the plant had 62 vats of sodium hydroxide, a highly caustic chemical used in turning bauxite ore into aluminum. Kirschner says industrial quantities of sodium hydroxide could be used to dissolve human corpses. "It would probably leave a big sludge, but it would definitely destroy soft tissue and hair."

Nova Kasaba: Roughly 600 Srebrenica men were thought to have been buried in four graves after being executed on a roadside during the night of July 13, 1995. According to Dutch troops who were in the area that night, the gunfire, squeezed off one shot at a time, continued for more than two hours. Two of the graves have been exhumed now, but they held only 33 bodies. The team has discovered no signs of tampering, either from satellite pictures or from evidence on the ground. The two untouched graves don't look much bigger than the two that have been dug up. Investigators can't say why more bodies haven't been unearthed here.

Karakaj Dam and Glogova: The two sites, neither of which has been excavated yet, could contain more than 1,000 victims. Although survivors of the mass execution at the dam say the bodies were trucked away to an unknown destination, U.S. intelligence spotted heavy equipment working at the dam a few days afterward. Test probes in the soil have found human bone fragments, but they were scattered in a way suggesting that the graves have been disturbed. Satellite photos from Glogova show new excavations taking place three months after the grave there was first dug on July 27, 1995. Investigators say they believe that bodies from Glogova were moved to another location just south of Srebrenica where three new mounds of earth have been discovered. The teams will go back next spring to find out. They can only hope they won't be beaten by the war criminals who live there year-round.

HEADLINE: Starting Over?

BYLINE: BY ROD NORDLAND AND STACY SULLIVAN

EMPTY BUSES MAY PROVE TO BE symbol of what didn't happen in the Bosnian elections last week. The Western allies had hired thousands of them to take refugees to their home villages to vote on Saturday. The West's logic: for Bosnia to become a multiethnic state again, with Muslims, Croats and Serbs living side by side, the voters would have to choose an ethnic mix of representatives, too. That meant taking people back to places where they'd been "ethnically cleansed" -- that is, slaughtered and forced out -- during 3 1/2 years of war. So the buses were scheduled, some even for every half hour, to shuttle voters all over the desecrated Bosnian map. The passengers were pitifully few. Election organizers had predicted that as many as 120,000 people would make such pilgrimages. Only 20,000 actually did, either from fear or from lack of faith that the elections could really matter in their lives. By midday in the chunk of Bosnia guarded by Americans, a mere 17 Muslims had dared venture into Serb areas to vote.

No one, especially the voters, ever thought the elections would be fully free or fair. The more modest goal was maximum voter participation and minimal violence, and that, at least, was achieved. More than 60 percent of Bosnia's 2.9 million voters turned out for the balloting, and the only shooting, near a polling station in Sarajevo, produced no casualties. NATO deployed every available soldier to guard 4,000 polling places and in effect instructed troops to shoot anyone who tried to disrupt the process. President Clinton sent his favorite Balkan emissary, Richard Holbrooke, to monitor the vote (box). For the West to declare the election a success will hardly save Bosnia, however. The Serbs and Croats may still pull out of a unified government and establish mini-states of their own.

Can peace stick in the Balkans? Most people seem to think it depends on whether the NATO forces now patrolling Bosnia decide to stay past their December deadline for pulling out. According to NATO sources, British and French officials have won agreement from other Europeans in NATO for a long-term deployment, and are hopeful of getting American backing. That seems a reasonable hope; Clinton is running well ahead of Republican nominee Bob Dole and the U.S. role in Bosnia hasn't been much of a campaign issue. NATO defense ministers will meet in Norway on Sept. 25 to debate a longer stay. One top-ranking NATO general reckoned that there would be a substantial follow-on force, perhaps half the current 48,000, that would remain for two years -- just in time for the next scheduled elections.

In last week's election, voters faced a mind-boggling set of choices: candidates for Bosnia's three-member presidency, plus the presidency of the Bosnian Serb "entity" within Bosnia, plus national and regional legislatures. "If you go into a reception now and say, 'Mr. President,' half the room turns around," joked Zlatko Lagumdzija, leader of a Muslim coalition. "If you say, 'Mr. Minister,' the other half turns around." Official results weren't expected until midweek, but the winners for the top jobs were not in doubt. The vote split along ethnic lines, with the Muslims backing their embittered wartime president, Alija Izetbegovic, and the Croats electing Kresimir Zubak, another hard-liner.

The Serbs couldn't vote for Radovan Karadzic, their former president and an accused war criminal, because the Dayton accords barred his participation. (Karadzic himself somehow managed to vote without drawing the attention of foreign observers.) But they overwhelmingly backed his proteges and members of his Serbian Democratic Party. When the final results are tallied, the legislatures may show greater ethnic variety. But in the rotating three-person presidency, which is meant to be the highest executive body in the new Bosnia, the candidate with the highest vote will become the first chairman, for a term of eight months. That may well be the Serbian ultranationalist Momcilo Krajsnik.

Opponents of the multiethnic state hardly disguised their aims. "Why not just say it?" said Biljana Plavsic, the probable president-elect of the Bosnian Serbs. "Our final goal is a united Serb state in the Balkans." Yet on the eve of the polling, Western election officials forced Plavsic to eat crow on Serb TV, reading a statement avowing that her party did not aim, "neither now nor in the future . . . to unite all the Serbs in the Balkans into one single Serb state."

If the election is to have long-lasting effects, it have to reconcile the bitter divisions that have long split the country. Do the voters buy the multiethnic ideal? Some Muslims do. Other Muslims see the elections as a way to buy time while their army bulks up, thanks to an American-led train-and-equip program. Says Muhamed Gafic, a policeman and a mountaineer, "If the Serbs do go for partition, the Bosnians think, 'Oh, the hell with it, we can fight again'." If war resumes, it will 0be against people like Col. Milan Ivancivic of Banja Luka. Head of the organization Serbs created to try to legalize the expulsion of Muslims from their homes, Ivancivic was blunt about what he wanted on Election Day. "These elections will make sure that Muslims and Croats are never allowed to return here."

Fikrita Didic, 41 and a Muslim, dared to challenge that thinking by boarding one of the Election Day buses. She and hundreds of fellow refugees traveled to their old hometown of Doboj, now held by the Serbs, in the hopes of casting a vote -- and visiting the homes they hadn't seen for nearly four years. But the bus took Didic to a polling place on the edge of town, where she had only a tantalizing glimpse of her house, on a faraway hill. She accepted a NEWSWEEK reporter's offer of a ride home -- and burst into tears at what she saw. Windows, toilets, bathtubs, floor tiles and all of their possessions were gone. "I thought maybe I could salvage family photos," sobbed Didic. "But there is nothing." The enormity of Bosnia's bloodshed and loss makes voting, no matter how difficult it was to achieve, seem like a small victory indeed.

HEADLINE: Born Under a Bad Sign

BYLINE: BY STACY SULLIVAN

ALEN MUHIC'S BIRTHMOTHER wishes she could forget Feb. 20, 1998, the day he was born. "When I heard him cry, I asked the doctor to bring him to me," the 33-year-old the woman recalls. "I wanted to strangle him." Instead she abandoned him in the besieged Bosnian town of Gorazde, at the hospital where the delivery took place. He was a living reminder of the rape and torture she had survived. The sickly, malnourished infant might have died there. But a repairman at the hospital fell in love with him. Muharem Muhic took the boy home to his wife in the daytime and brought him back at night. Food was scarce in the Muslim enclave, and the Muhics had no heat or running water. They formally adopted Alen when he was 5 months old. Now he's a talkative, friendly boy obsessed with airplanes. He calls the Muhics Mama and Papa. He has never been told the circumstances of his birth. "I love him so much, more even than my own daughters," says Avdia Muhic. "I don't know how I'm going to tell him, but I must."

If the Muhics don't tell him, someone else 'He has wounded me in a way that I will never heal' is bound to. The story was all over town even before they adopted him. Alen's natural mother, a Muslim now living in Sarajevo, came from Miljevina, a coal-mining town in eastern Bosnia. She says Alen's father was one of her neighbors, a married Serb with a daughter her age. He forced himself on her after the town was captured by Bosnian Serb forces in April 1992. When he was done, he slashed her with a knife, held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her if she told anyone. She says he continued to rape, beat and threaten her several times a week. In October she escaped to Gorazde. She was five months pregnant. Doctors in Gorazde told her it was too late for them to perform an abortion. She thought about drowning herself. What keeps her alive now is her dream of taking vengeance on the man who raped her.

Casualties of war: Thousands of women were raped during the war in Bosnia. The European Union estimates the number at 20,000; Bosnia's Interior Ministry says it was closer to 50,000. No one knows how many children were born from those rapes. Most pregnancies ended in abortions rather than births. But some women were too far along for an abortion by the time they reached a doctor. Hardly anyone is willing to talk about the babies they had -- "children of hate," they are sometimes called. The victims believe they have brought shame on themselves and their families by being raped. Most say they never want to return to their former homes. Relief agencies that care for the unwanted children are almost as reluctant to address the topic. "[The subject of] rape here is much more taboo than it is in the West," says Toril Araldsen, a psychologist who oversees a women's counseling center in Tuzla run by Norwegian People's Aid. "It is so taboo that even the local therapists are hesitant to bring it up."

The silence doesn't seem to have done the children much good. Uprooted and unwanted, they often inhabit a bureaucratic limbo. Until last year Human Relief International, an Islamic aid group, ran a small home in Croatia for nine Bosnian orphans, most of them children of rape. The group says it heard from plenty of foreigners eager to adopt, but the Bosnian government insisted that the children were Bosnians and belonged in Bosnia. Last May, at the government's insistence, the children were moved to the state orphanage in Zenica, an industrial town in central Bosnia. It's a big, impersonal building, fallen into disrepair after years of war and housing 148 children. The director, Aisa Klico, 57, refuses to answer questions about anyone's background. "We do not single out the children of rape," she says. "They will be told their names, dates of birth and citizenship, and that is it."

Their hopes of finding new homes keep dwindling. Most children of wartime rapes in Bosnia are 3 or 4 now, and most prospective parents prefer newborns. Besides, not many Bosnians these days are in a position to adopt children of any age. Average family income is about $ 100 a month. Half the population is displaced. Klico says she never gives up trying to find new families for the children in her care -- and she insists that breaking the orphanage's policy of secrecy would only make the job harder. "Adoptive families want to know everything," she says. "But very often they do not want to adopt children of rape." Especially not the children of ethnic cleansers.

Not even the most loving home can lock out the hatred that pervades Bosnia. The Muhics' neighbors describe Alen as "a great kid." But many of them don't know his name. Some call him "little Chetnik," a derogatory term for a Serb. Others casually greet him as "Pero," a common Serb name. "I hate it when people call me Pero," Alen says. "I just hate it." The teasing and outright hostility aren't likely to stop as he gets older. "Sometimes when I go into town, people sneer at us," says Avdia. "Sometimes I just wish we could go away from here."

The man Alen's birth mother identifies as her rapist still lives in Miljevina. He denies her accusations. "Why would I rape her?" he says, laughing. "She wouldn't be worth it . . . I would like her to look me in the eyes and tell me why she says this." Alen's mother says she dreams of doing just that. "But I want to do it at The Hague," she says. "There is not a punishment strong enough for what he has done to me. He has wounded me in a way that I will never heal." She is unlikely ever to get her chance. Prosecutors at The Hague are focusing on the worst offenders -- and even then it's tough to make a case. Rape charges against Dusan Tadic, the first indicted war criminal to go on trial, had to be dropped because the woman who accused him withdrew her testimony. But the vision of getting her day in court makes Alen's mother glad she didn't kill her baby. "I am so happy he is alive," she says. "That child is my only proof."

HEADLINE: Death of a Village

BYLINE: BY ROD NORDLAND with STACY SULLIVAN in Srebenica

ZINA HASANOVIC TAKES OUT her most treasured possession, a picture of her husband, Haris. She smiles down at her year-old daughter, Lejla. "See, it's Papa. Give him a kiss," she says. The toddler grabs the photograph, kisses it and proudly says, "Papa." Her grandmother weeps in the comer of their one-room home, which is shared by eight refugees from the Muslim village of Lehovici, outside Srebrenica. The women are teaching Lejla to say "Father" and "Uncle" and "Brother," despite the fact that most of her male relatives are almost certainly dead.

They disappeared last July, when Bosnian Serb forces overran the Srebrenica enclave, which the United Nations had proclaimed a "safe haven." The Serbs drove out the women and butchered the men, according to numerous eyewitness accounts, burying most of the bodies in mass graves. Officially, as many as 8,000 men from Srebrenica are still listed as missing. Zina Hasanovic is one of the few women to know exactly what happened to her husband. Haris was executed on a killing field in the village of Grbavci. As Serb bullets swept the tightly packed ranks of Muslim prisoners, Haris fell on top of Mevludin Oric, his first cousin and best friend. Mevludin lay there for hours, covered by bodies and blood, while the Serbs finished off the wounded. Then he escaped to tell Zina what had happened.

Now spring is coming, and the thawing earth begins to give up its dead. Last week six forensic investigators from the U.N. war-crimes tribunal probed the mud of Grbavci, shielded from Serb interference by U.S. troops. Proving that death was caused by murder, not by battle, is a delicate task (page 55), made more complicated in this case by recent tampering with the mass grave. Even so, the investigators quickly found traces of a vast atrocity; the field was still littered with human bones, empty ammo boxes and blood-soaked blindfolds.

So far, the tribunal has indicted 46 Serbs for war crimes, including Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb president, and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the military commander. Only two of the suspects are in custody. Mladic says he will never give up and claims his army "waged war in accordance with all international norms." Now, through the U.N. investigators, the dead of Grbavci are giving evidence. And the few Muslim survivors have important stories to tell. Mevludin Orie, a 25-year-old factory worker, is one of two survivors interviewed by NEWSWEEK who can place Mladic at the scene of the crime-giving orders and watching executions.

The village of Lehovici has its own story to tell, a microcosm of the terrible suffering and loss inflicted by the Serbs. The village, six miles from Srebrenica, was so isolated that all of its residents were related to one another; Hasanovic was the most common family name. Today, Lehovici lies uninhabited in Serb-held territory. Of its 126 residents, 33 are listed as missing-31 men, a boy and a woman. The rest, mostly women and children, are scattered in refugee camps all over northern Bosnia. During the past two months, a NEWSWEEK photographer and I visited Lehovici twice, hiking in on foot after bluffing our way past two Serb checkpoints. We tracked down all of the refugees and brought them together for a reunion in Tuzla, where U.S. forces are headquartered. They wanted to see pictures of their village and ask for information about their missing menfolk. The news was mostly all bad.

It was eerily quiet the first time we visited Lehovici. All 25 of the houses had been destroyed-most by fire, some by dynamite. Recent footprints apparently belonged to looters and scavengers, Serbs who even nine months later found things to take: the electric wiring, bits of metal kitchenware, cattle feed fromold corncribs. The only living thing in the village was a tan mongrel dog, who fearfully skirted Our path near the home of Redzep Hasanovic (chart). On a subsequent visit, we saw Serbs taking building materials away on packhorses.

On the day Srebrenica fell, last July 11, all the men of the enclave, combatants and noncombatants alike, gathered at a village near Lehovici. There were about 15,000 of them, and they planned to flee northwest through the mountains. The women, children and those too old or infirm to hike the mountains were told to go the other way, down the valley to a U.N. base manned by Dutch peacekeeping troops at Potocari, three miles away.

The women from Lehovici were lucky at Potocari. They were among the first to be bused out to Bosnian-government territory, and none of them were pulled off the buses and raped, as happened to other evacuees in the following days. Then, as thousands of terrified refugees milled at a factory in Potocari, the Dutch troops surrendered to the Serbs, and the Serbs began culling the Muslims.

On the first day, July 12, they took only the old men: later they began taking boys as young as 12. None of the men arrested at Potocari have been seen again, with the lone exception of Hurem Suljic. Like Mevludin Oric, he escaped by surviving his own execution. Some of the other men were tortured and murdered in buildings near the factory, according to the war crimes tribunal. Others were taken to killing fields farther away; some were forced by the Serbs to dig their own graves and then were buried alive in them.

With the other men of the Srebrenica enclave, Mevludin set off on what survivors call "The Road of Death." It was a trail through the mountains that during the war years had been used to infiltrate supplies from Tuzla. He knew the way well, because he had made the trip four times before. The progress of the column was painfully slow, and it took two days to reach a narrow, open valley near Kamenlea. There, in broad daylight, the refugees fell into the first of many Serb ambushes. Tanks and artillery pounded the area from the road below; Serb troops on high ground fired into the column. Thousands had come this way ahead of Mevludin's party, and the ground was littered with bodies already. A Muslim commander ordered all the civilians to lie down, and with a few armed men tried to cover them. It was hopeless. Shells pounded the column every few seconds.

Most of the men who survived the Road of Death were soldiers, who led the march out. Civilians were less fortunate. Haso Hasanovic, 16 at the time, was captured at Kamenica and taken with other Muslim prisoners to the warehouse there. Sent to fetch water for the adult prisoners, he saw a 13-year-old girl with her throat slit, among other bodies near the spring. A Serb with a Mohawk haircut and a long knife was leaving the scene. At other points along the road, Serbs with loudspeakers-sometimes wearing uniforms taken from the Dutch peacekeepers-called Muslims to come down from the hills and surrender. Exhausted and often starving, many did. Some killed themselves instead; others simply went mad.

YOUNG HASO ESCAPED THE FIRST he was captured. He was caught again at Bunica on the Road of Death. He was taken to a large field called Konjevic Polje with $00 Muslim men, all of them with their hands tied behind their backs. The field was already full of bodies, and the 500 were told to lie down on top of them. The Serbs laughingly told them they would be executed, too, but instead shot over their heads. Then a Serb officer arrived and ordered his men to separate out the children; Haso was one of four who were spared and later released. None of the other prisoners were seen again.

Those who survived the first big ambushes at Kamenica still had to get across a heavily patrolled Serb highway, the Vlasenica-Zvornik Road. Mevludin and his cousin Haris Hasanovic waited two days for a chance, but were caught as they descended in the dark. "Don't worry," their captors told them. "We'll exchange you for Serb prisoners." They were taken to Grbavci, where as many as 3,000 Muslims were jammed into the school gymnasium. On July 14, trucks arrived every few minutes, each taking a load of the Muslims away, blindfolded-to be exchanged, said the Serbs. At one point, not yet blindfolded, Mevludin Oric saw the Serbs' military commander, Ratko Mladic, outside the gymnasium door, issuing orders to the officers.

The men from Lehovici stayed together and were on the same truck. They were driven to a field across a railroad track, only a mile away, lined up with their backs to their captors in two rows of 10 or so. Haris and Mevludin were next to each other. They held hands. "They're going to kill us," Haris said. Mevludin replied: "No, they wouldn't do that." Then the Serbs opened fire, and Haris fell on top of his cousin. For a full minute he convulsed, and then he died. Mevludin lay under him for hours. "He was as heavy as a house," he recalls.

Every few minutes, another truckload arrived at the field. "I still couldn't believe they would kill us. Who could do something like this?" Mevludin says. "They were laughing like crazy men-they must have been on drugs, that's all I can think. If a wounded man asked to be killed because of the pain, they would say, 'Take it easy, old man, you'll be dead soon.' And they said things like, 'Damn Muslims, the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim'."

LATER IN THAT LONG DAY, AS THE field piled high with bodies and the drainage ditch at the foot of it flowed with blood, one of the victims jumped up and tried to run. His wounds prevented him from getting far before the Serbs finished him off. Mevludin heard an officer shout at the executioners that they were doing a lousy job -- "he told them to go shoot each one in the head. Look, there's one twitching, go shoot it." As the pistol shots popped in rapid sequence, Mevludin passed out from terror. He woke up alive. His cousin's body covered him, and perhaps the killers mistook Haris's profuse blood for his own. Or perhaps they just grew weary of shooting dead bodies.

Late that night Mevludin heard the killers leave. He got up and crawled off the field. Amazingly, he found another survivor: Suljic, 56, a carpenter from another town who had been crippled before the war and could walk only short distances. As a handicapped person, Suljic had gone to the Potocari factory under U.N. guard with the women and children of Srebrenica. But he had been selected out for execution anyway. When the Serbs started shooting, he fell, unhurt, and played possum. From where Suljic lay on the field in Grbavci, with his blindfold partly off, he could see General Mladic arrive with one of the truckloads of victims. He says Mladic stood only 10 yards away from him, watching as the prisoners were shot in the back. Suljic stole a glance at his watch, and it was 8:15 p.m. on the 14th of July.

When Suljic met Mevludin, he told him: "I have a handicap. Leave me." Mevludin refused. For the next seven days they helped each other to safety through Serb territory. Suljic gathered white mushrooms for them to eat. Mevludin helped the older man hobble up the hills and waited while he rested. Suljic still had a tube of toothpaste in his pocket; when there was no water, they sucked on it to moisten their mouths.

Mevludin was one of 11 Lehovici men to reach safety in government-held territory. Only two of 21 family heads made it. Mevludin had to tell the families about the fate of the other men. Zina believes his story. So does young Haso, whose father, Edhem, died on the same field in Grbavci. But to this day, Haso's mother, Saliha, clings to the hope that her husband may have survived. She points out that Mevludin didn't actually see him die; he was in another part of the field. "Mevludin told us he was at the killing place," said Saliha, "but we don't really know what happened after that. We have no other news. It could be . . ." Her voice trails off. Listening to her, Mevludin hangs his head, blushes deeply and doesn't argue.

THE FATE OF LEHOVICI'S 126 INhabitants closely parallels the fate of the 39,000 people still in the Srebrenica enclave when it fell to the Serbs. Only a few victims were confirmed killed by eyewitnesses: three in Lehovici, several hundred in the enclave as a whole. Many more are simply missing, presumed dead. A quarter of Lehovici's residents perished, and five out of every six men. The International Committee of the Red Cross thinks as many as 8,000 people from Srebrenica may have died, including all 3,000 whom it had registered as taken prisoner. The Bosnian government's estimate of 11,000 dead from the enclave is closer to the death rate for Lehovici.

Last November eight men from the Srebrenica region turned up after 130 days on the run, living off apples. They were the last to escape. The ensuing winter was particularly hard, the apples and mushrooms long gone, and it's doubtful anyone else could have survived. But the women of Srebrenica keep hearing rumors about places where Muslim prisoners are said to be held by the Serbs. The Red Cross, the United Nations, human-rights activists and journalists have visited all of the sites, and so far, no missing Muslims have been found alive.

Not long after the fall of Srebrenica, two men from Lehovici were spotted in Kravica, a village near the site of the first ambush. One of them was Sefik Hasanovic, who was seen by a relative as he was taken to a warehouse with other men who had surrendered. When I visited Kravica, I found the warehouse riddled with bullet holes. In a nearby field, there were scores of skeletons dressed in rags, many of them beheaded. No one had bothered to bury the dead, and Serb farmers drove their tractors over corpses lying in their way. Sefik's mother, Ramiza, still doesn't know for sure what happened to him or to her missing husband, Sevko.

Today many Lehovici villagers are living in the Tuzla area, but most were widely scattered in refugee camps and lost touch with their old neighbors until the reunion organized by NEWSWEEK. The joy of seeing each other after nine months was muted by anguish. The villagers kept looking around the room, bursting into tears at the tangible evidence of how few men remained. "There is no Lehovici without the men," said Mevlida Hasanovie, whose husband and two sons are among the missing. Her daughter-in-law, Zulfiya, bounced her year-old son onher lap; the toddler was dressed in combat fatigues and a colorful scarf. "There we women can do is try to comfort one another and live for the children," Zulfiya said. "But can you understand? I lost my husband, my brother, my father. So my son has no father, no uncle, no grandfather."

The villagers gathered in small groups to watch a video we had made of their destroyed hometown. They all wanted to see the evidence with their own eyes, and despite the anticipated devastation, they wanted another, nostalgic glimpse of Lehovici. The children were delighted to recognize the spring, the streams, the pastures they had played in. Their parents burst into tears at the sight of their ruined homes, even though they expected as much, but they gasped with relief at the one piece of good news the video brought them: "Look," said one villager, "the cemetery hasn't been destroyed." Headstones dating from Ottoman times were still intact, and the refugees could discern the more recent graves of loved ones.

The kids especially were delighted to recognize the tan mongrel we saw on our first visit. One shouted: "That's Redzep's dog!" Redzep Hasanovic, one of the missing villagers, was the tallest man in Lehovici by a whole head; beside his now burned-down house was a basketball hoop on a grass court. His teenage children are all taller than 6 feet already, even 16-year-old daughter Ermina. "Let us go back there," said his wife, Sadeta. "To look for them, or at least for their bodies." Zina Hasanovic, whose husband's body shielded Mevludin, had no hope of finding her spouse alive, but still she wanted to go back to the Srebrenica enclave. "Now I want to be able at least to see the mass grave," she said. "To know where he is. And to show Lejla so that she'll know where her father is." Even that minimal act of closure is still denied to the villagers. They may not get any peace of mind until the ground finishes giving up its dead and the world finds a way to punish the murderers.

Autopsy of a Muslim Village Up to 8,000 Muslims, mostly men, were killed last July after the Srebrenica enclave fell. Nearby Lehovici (population: 126) was one of the towns ravaged; every house and family was torn apart.

Houses 1, 2: Family of Dasan Oric, six members. Dasan is missing. Son Harudin, 19, escaped to Germany.

House 3: Family of Sejdalija Oric, five members. Sejdalija is now missing.

House 4: Family of Azem Dautovic, seven members. Azem is missing. Wife, mother, four kids survived.

House 5: Family of Becar Hodzic, four members. Becar was killed as a soldier in 1998. Wife and three children survived.

House 6: Family of Sejfan Hodzic, six members. Sejfan's father, Salko, was taken prisoner and is now missing.

House 7: Family of Salein Hodzie, six members. His grandson saw Salein killed in an ambush. Son Sefik, 43, is missing.

House 8: Family of Becir Hodzic, nine members. Becir, 55, was last seen at Kamenica.

House 9: Family of Arif Hasanovic, nine members. Arif is missing. Son Haris executed near Grbavci.

House 10: Family of Semso Hasanovic, five members. Semso is missing.

House 11: Family of Mevludin Oric, seven members. Mevludin survived at Grbavci. His father is missing.

House 12: Family of Ibrahim Hodzie, six members. Ibrahim, two sons and daughter never returned.

House 13: Family of, Edhem Hasanovic, seven members. Edhem was executed.

House 14: Family of Ismet Hasanovic, five members. Ismet and son Jusuf, 20, are missing.

House 15: Family of Nusret Hasanovic, seven members. Nnsret and his son, Nijaz, 15, are missing. Brother Osman is also presumed dead.

House 16: Family of Redzep Hasanovie, nine members. Redzep missing since he was separated from his son at Kravica.

House 17: Family of Abdullah Hasanovie, seven members. Abdullah killed by land mine. Son is missing.

House 18: Family of Sevko Hasanovic, three members. Sevko and son Sefik last seen near Kamenica.

House 19: Family of Memsur Selimovic. Brother-in-law Hazim Harbas is missing.

House 20: Family of Hassan ttasanovic, six members. Son Hazim fled through forest, not seen since.

House 21: Family of Nurif Hasanovic, six members. Nurif, with sons Nuriz and Sabahudin, are missing.

HEADLINE: Karadzic: 'We Didn't Kill Them'

RADOVAN KARADZIC, the Bosnian Serb president, has been indicted for war crimes by the international tribunal in The Hague. But last week Karadzic and his entourage drove right past a U.S. Army base camp at Vlasenica, blatantly obvious in a Mercedes and a BMW. No one stopped them. Later, Karadzic discussed war crimes in an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK'S Stacy Sullivan. Excerpts:

On His Role

Everything concerning the Serb Republic is in my hands. I want a free society and a market economy. Our state is a democracy, and we did not commit a single crime.

On Wartime Atrocities

This is a civil war. It is a continuation of the second world war, and there aremany things that happened that were not the policy of my command. Our policy wasnot ethnic cleansing or imprisoning the civilian population. The Muslims did terrible things. We had prisoners of war, but we didn't kill them.

On the Hague Court

If The Hague was a real juridical body, I would be ready to relate to them and go there to testify, or do so on television. But it is not a juridical body. It is a political body that was created to blame the Serbs. I issued the strongest order at the beginning of the war that my command was to stick to the Geneva Conventions. There are many others who mined Yugoslavia. What about Alija Izetbegovic? [ Bosnia's Muslim president] is responsible for the beginning of the war, as was Hitler. Alija Izetbegovic has destroyed more than Hitler.

On the Srebrenica Massacres

We have discovered more than 50 mass graves of Serbs killed by Muslims around Srebrenica in 1995. There are 10 to 50 people in each of those graves. Nobody under my command would dare kill those who were arrested or captured as prisoners of war. We would appreciate any evidence [the war-crimes tribunal can] submit to us. If they give us evidence, we will try suspected criminals here.

HEADLINE: The Dead Cry Out

BYLINE: BY MELINDA LIU AND STACY SULLIVAN With Rod NORDLAND in Banja Luka and TARA SONENSHINE and JOHN BARRY in Washington

THE HORROR STARES AMERIcan troops in the face. When one unit bivouacked in the Bosnian village of Gradina two weeks ago, the tents went up in empty yards between the burned-out homes of Muslims routed by Serbs in 1992. "This was not a frontline area," observes a lieutenant. "There are no bullet holes in these houses. It's no secret what happened here." Four miles farther into the wooded hills above the mining town of Vlasenica, shoes and bits of clothing poke from the churned surface of a 40-foot-wide pit. Empty bullet casings cover the ground. Witnesses say Serbs apparently used a blue back hoe that still sits at the site to bury hundreds of executed Muslims. And the Serb who commanded a local detention center for Muslims, Dragan Nikolic, still lives openly in Vlasenica -- even though an international tribunal in The Hague has charged him with war crimes.

So why don't the GIs go get the suspect? Under terms of the U.S.-brokered Balkans peace deal, it's not their job. IFOR, the 60,000-member NATO force, is under orders only to safeguard a "secure environment" -- by keeping the adversaries apart. The Serbs, Croats and Muslims all pledged to aid the war-crimes tribunal; a new police force is supposed to help them to do that. But NATO's month-old deployment already has brought an outpouring of attention-grabbing new atrocity tales. Peace also makes it feasible, for the first time in many places, to fully investigate war crimes and to pursue the criminals. Plans for the new police force are lagging, and NATO's mandate expires in a year. The result is a collision between the demands of justice and of realpolitik. As the moralists gain ground in a play for NATO activism on human rights, the military shudders over the prospect of Somalia-style "mission creep."

The disastrous U.S. hunt for a Somali warlord was exhibit A when top NATO planners met at the State Department before the Dayton talks. "They decided unanimously that [troops] won't go out and search and capture -- ever," said one participant. But the White House wasn't nearly so categorical. And as the deployment went quietly forward, press reports that Serbs were destroying evidence of genocide took center stage. Near their stronghold of Banja Luka, the Serbs were said to be exhuming bodies from mass graves, grinding them up with mine machinery and obliterating the evidence under tons of rock.

Collective guilt: The fresh allegations gave Richard Goldstone, head of The Hague tribunal, a boost in his campaign to have NATO troops guard evidence and protect his staff. In the Clinton administration, national-security adviser Anthony Lake and U.N. representative Madeleine Albright also pushed hard for activism. European diplomats say President Clinton now is convinced of the need for a successful hunt for war criminals. They say it's an attempt to salvage honor from a peace settlement that amounts to partition, an outcome Clinton resisted for three years. The top U.S. human rights official, John Shattuck, visiting some of the alleged execution sites last week, argued that bringing Balkan war criminals to justice is "an essential part of the peace process," necessary to "lift the burden of collective guilt." Shattuck toured under the protection of State Department security officers and Serb police -- because Adm. Leighton Smith, the theater commander, had declined his request for a NATO escort.

The message to troops in the field is unmistakable. "We've got far more important things to do," said British Maj. Robert Polly of the British Light Dragoons, asked about allegations that Muslim dead lie in strip mines near Banja Luka. But the growing pressures on NATO to change that tune may well prove irresistible. "Smith says he won't protect sites, even if evidence is being destroyed -- but he has to," says one senior Clinton administration official. Each time a mass grave or war criminal is found under the noses of NATO troops the heat will increase. Unless there are U.S. casualties, "mission creep" won't be an issue. "Smith worries about the risks of trying to do too much," says the official. "In fact, he runs the risk of doing too little." Smith's toughest battle in Bosnia may turn out to be a rearguard action.

The Times
August 28, 1995, Monday

HEADLINE: Envoy warns Serbs to expect airstrikes if they obstruct pact

BYLINE: From Ian Brodie in Washington and Stacy Sullivan in Sarajevo

NATO is prepared to launch heavy airstrikes against the Bosnian Serbs if they continue to reject renewed attempts for a peace settlement, Richard Holbrooke, the chief American negotiator, said yesterday.

Mr Holbrooke, the US Assistant Secretary of State, who embarks on a new round of talks in Europe today, said the next week or two were potentially critical to the peace process.

His clear-cut threat to the Bosnian Serbs followed days of hints from Washington that President Clinton's new peace plan calls for Nato strikes if Bosnian Serbs go on the offensive again against Bosnian Muslims.

The Clinton Administration is planning a nine-month bombing campaign against Serbia if the latest peace initiative fails, according to Newsweek today. Nine months is how long the Pentagon estimates it would take Americans to equip and train a Bosnian force able to face the Serbs.

Mr Holbrooke identified the Bosnian Serbs as the chief stumbling block to peace. Appearing on NBC television's Meet the Press, he said: ''If this peace process does not get dramatically moving in the next week or two, the consequences will be very adverse to the Serbian goal. One way or another, Nato will be heavily involved. Nato will either assist the UN withdrawal, or there will be more active Nato air action.''

Asked to clarify if Nato was prepared to launch bombing raids beyond anything seen before against Bosnian Serb positions, Mr Holbrooke replied: ''That is a fair inference to draw, but it is part of a larger package.''

Pressed on the threat, he said: ''I do not want to leave the impression that Nato airstrikes start automatically if we don't make a breakthrough in the next few days. I am not going to get into a tight time frame.''

Mr Holbrooke denied that Washington was trying to hurry up the preace process to give Mr Clinton a foreign policy victory to carry into his re-election bid next year. Rather, the need to move expeditiously was driven by the approach of winter in Bosnia and by British and French talk of pulling out, he said.

Mr Holbrooke's mission will begin today in Paris by meeting President Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Muslim leader, and will go to Belgrade tomorrow to see President Milosevic of Serbia. They will meet the five-nation Contact Group.

Mr Holbrooke said Mr Milosevic, who has maintained that he cannot bring the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table, will need to make some ''very tough decisions''.

America will not make any significant concessions to persuade the Bosnian Serbs to negotiate. Mr Clinton's plan sticks to the Contact Group's proposal of allotting 49 per cent of Bosnia to the Serbs and 51 per cent to the Muslims and Croats. Having captured 70 per cent, the Serbs insist on keeping 64 per cent. The new plan apparently recognises the territories carved out by the war, granting a chunk of land to the Bosnian Serbs and a chunk to the Croats, leaving a rump Muslim-led Bosnia in between.

Mr Holbrooke said the door was open to minor territorial swaps if the parties agreed, but added: ''We are not going to start that rockslide.''

The American plan appears to bank on the hope that the Bosnian Serbs, who have now begun to lose territory, may be more willing to accept a peace settlement before they lose any more. Their leadership has splintered, and their allies in formerly Serb-occupied Krajina suffered a crushing military defeat at the hands of Croatia.

Yet there is no indication that the Bosnian Serbs have softened up enough to accept the 51-49 plan. Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, still says any settlement that gives the Bosnian Serbs less than 64 per cent is unacceptable.

There have been skirmishes around eastern Slavonia and United Nations officials at the weekend described the area as tense. Serbia and Croatia signed a ceasefire agreement around the region on Friday, but Serbian radio reported that Croatian troops broke it on Saturday.

HEADLINE: The Game of Survival

BYLINE: ROD NORDLAND with STACY SULLIVAN in Sarajevo

IN SARAJEVO, U.N. WAREHOUSES ARE nearly empty, but people don't seem very hungry. There's no electricity, but residents unhook their car batteries at night to run their television sets. In between snatches of locally dubbed CNN and subtitled reruns of Schwarzenegger and Van Damme movies, they might catch a commercial on TV Bill, such as the one for At-Mahir Pizza: "For the best pizza in town, delivered in 15 minutes, call 581-532." Call? No problem; the government has installed a satellite earth station, rumored to be hidden in a roofless building somewhere, so phone service is excellent within Sarajevo -- and even to "free Bosnia" outside the Serb siege lines. At-Mahir's uses bullet-pocked, wind-shield-shattered cars to deliver pizzas that arrive piping hot, in Croatian-made cardboard pizza cartons, smuggled through the tunnel under the city's airport.

After years of futilely waiting for the West to rescue them, Sarajevans have learned to depend on themselves. They have little choice: Serbs have grounded the U.N. airlift for more than three months and relegated NATO airstrikes to a historic footnote. (Late last week the Serbs even took a potshot at a chopper carrying Carl Bildt, the new European Union mediator.) A top U.N. official all but concedes the international community has given up. "The Bosnians have to say we're doing nothing," he says, while mortar shells explode outside his open window. "That happens to be true. Yesterday we played chess all day in here."

Sarajevans play a different game -- called survival. In the absence of U.N. aid, almost every aspect of their lives has an improvisational feel. Dignitaries go in or out of the city by a narrow mountain track under Serb guns; place names on the Mount Igman route, such as Dead Man's Corner, explain the risks. Travelers without armored ears had best walk. Prime Minister Hafts Silajdzic complained recently that he got his best shoes muddy on the hike down. Most innovation comes from ordinary folks. During a storm last week, many funneled water from roof and street gutters into buckets. The absence of traditional foodstuffs has given rise to new recipes. There's meatloaf -- stale bread crumbs, onions and U.N. yeast; or an increasingly popular cocktail, made from rose petals, lemon juice and water left to ferment in the sun a couple of days.

In many ways, Sarajevo's travails are worse than ever -- and yet the city seems much better off than it was when Western cargo planes brimming with aid landed 20 times a day. Sniping and shelling against civilians has picked up again, but people are more adept at protecting themselves. Instead of closing, cafes have moved to basements. Bread lines have gone indoors, and people gather water behind sandbagged lean-tos. PAZI SNAJPER (BEWARE OF SNIPERS) signs everywhere warn of angles of fire, and most people can negotiate them safely; kids sometimes make a sport of it, forcing Ismet Cengic, a municipal official, to order them off the streets recently: (Frustrated, Serb shooters made target practice of people in their beds at Kosevo Hospital.)

In the city's back alleys, children play a game called "The U.N., the aid worker and the victim." One kid falls down from an imaginary blast, a second runs to help him, and the "U.N." stands by and watches. This game is too real. Not long ago, 9-year-old Sidbela Zimic, who had blond hair to her waist and a chipped front milk tooth, stepped into the tiny playground behind her apartment building when a shell laded, killing her and three other children. A day later, another playground took a direct hit -- two more dead kids. Sidbela's father, Sabrija Zimic, a Bosnian army officer, brought his wife and two children home toSarajevo from Croatian refugee camps last year. Despite his loss, he doesn't regret that decision. "We're here to share our destiny together," he says. "There's no question now of running away; the only solution is to defend ourselves -- and to win." Or, at least, to do what it takes to stay alive.