By JUSTIN HUGGLER
LUCANE - They huddle together in utter darkness, in the skeleton of a half-built house. It is impossible to tell how many of them are here, crouched in the shadows. Outside, it is silent and bitterly cold. Snow is falling hard, but through a narrow gun slit knocked out of the wall, you can see the light 100m away - the light of the enemy position. "If they see us, they will shoot," says one of the men.
This is the Serbian frontline. The enemy 100m away are Kosovo Albanian guerrillas who have pushed 6km beyond the Kosovo border, into Serbia proper. The West may have bombed the Serbs out of Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic may be gone - but here, in this forgotten corner of southern Serbia, the fighting is still going on.
Could this be the tinderbox that will set the Balkans alight again? Preventing that is the first real challenge for the brave new Serbia of Vojislav Kostunica - and a problem for the United Nations forces in Kosovo as well.
The men edge carefully down the street. At the far end, a bright light shines from the minaret of the local mosque. Lean your head out into the light, and you are liable to be shot.
The village of Lukace has been cut in half by advancing guerrillas of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja. The mosque is under their control.
In the midst of all this live Aslan and Ramiz, two Albanian men spending their retirement cowering from gunfire in a house 3m from the front line.
Ramiz, who is 71, tells the troops - they are Serb police special forces, soldiers in all but name, in full battle dress and armed with rocket-propelled grenades - about his pilgrimage to Mecca. The two Albanians pray in the mosque on the guerrillas' side by day, and sleep in their house on the Serb side at night.
Aslan is 66, and has a weak heart. Often, when the shooting starts at night, he says, he and Ramiz have to lie flat on the cold floor of their house to avoid stray bullets.
The two men, who sent their families away when the fighting started, are staying to protect their property. "I was born here, and I will die here," says Ramiz stubbornly. "This is the third war I have lived through." The other two, he explains, are the two World Wars. "The Second War, now that was a real war," he snorts, as if Kosovo hasn't really made the grade.
Both men are ethnic Albanians, like most of the people in the Serbian regions of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja. The guerrillas of the Liberation Army say they are here to "liberate" the Albanians from Serbian "oppression," just as their cousins in Kosovo have been liberated.
Across the front line, similar positions in the snow are held by Liberation Army troops in black uniform, with red insignia - deliberately reminiscent of the uniforms worn by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought the Serbs in Kosovo. Here, it is clear the people fear the Serb police more than the guerrillas in black, and support the Liberation Army, many of whom are friends or neighbours.
Officially a ceasefire, negotiated by the UN force in Kosovo (K-For), has reigned in the area since November. But the Serbs say the guerrillas regularly fire on their positions.
In Bujanovac, on the Serbian side, a Serbian general, a police special forces colonel, and politicians huddle over a detailed map of the area.
Colonel Goran Radosavljevac, the head of the police special forces, was one of the heroes of the Serbian Revolution last year. He was one of three senior police officers who refused to obey Milosevic's orders to fire on demonstrators who stormed Parliament.
Now he finds himself cast in a different role. "We are ready to mount a classic anti-terrorist campaign," he says, "but we are waiting for a political solution first." The area occupied by the Liberation Army is the so-called "ground safety zone" of the treaty that ended the Nato bombing campaign in 1999. Under the terms of the treaty, Serbian forces are not allowed to enter the zone, which stretches 5km from the border into Serbian territory. It was the safety zone which allowed the Liberation Army to take control, and now any Serbian action would be a treaty violation.
The West is leaning heavily on Belgrade not to take military action. For now, international sympathy is with the new Serbia, but pictures of Serb forces storming Albanian villages could quickly change that.
- HERALD CORRESPONDENT
Herald Online feature: Revolution in Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
Serbian Ministry of Information
Serbian Radio - Free B92
Otpor: Serbian Student Resistance Movement
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