A L S O+T O D A Y Finally, the Flynt Report By Carol Lloyd Are these smutty tales true? Let the reader beware The unhappiest allies By Gabriel Kahn Italians question NATO moves in Kosovo as the country braces for more refugees Day Two: The airstrikes persist NATO bombards Yugoslavia for the second night, saying it will attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate and destroy Yugoslav forces unless Milosevic capitulates Verdict on Starr's witness By Murray S. Waas and Suzi Parker Whitewater figure David Hale is found guilty on Arkansas state criminal charges   T A B L E+T A L K Don't ask, don't Teletubbie? Know of any other gay icons for children? Do tell in the Headlines area of Table Talk   How-to, why-not and what-for -- find it all at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y The bombing begins By Jeff Stein Will NATO strikes push the Serbs to peace talks, or engulf the region in bloody chaos? (03/25/99) The Kosovo myth By Christopher Ott A battle fought 600 years ago animates the Serbian lust for a province now populated by Albanians (03/25/99) Banned in Belgrade By Janelle Brown The Web provides links to Serbian diatribes, Albanian liberation dispatches and Yugoslav radio you can't get in Yugoslavia (03/25/99) Where does Elizabeth Dole really stand on abortion? By Daryl Lindsey The question won't go away (03/24/99) Susan McDougal's moment of truth By Suzi Parker Bad day for Starr as she says Clinton told the truth about Whitewater loan (03/24/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		OUTLAW NATION? | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - While the misery of war is startling and new to many Serbs in Belgrade, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are used to the proximity, terror and uncertainty of conflict. Over the course of the past year, some 400,000 Kosovo Albanians -- almost a quarter of the population -- have been forced to flee Serbian security forces, who have gratuitously torched villages after shelling the people out. Some 2,000 people have been killed, many in cold blood. But though ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have for months longed for NATO to punish the Serbian government forces for their crackdown, now that the strikes have come, life in the province is even more terrifying. Armed Serbian civilians as well as Serbian security forces and paramilitaries have prepared a hit list of prominent ethnic Albanian intellectuals, political activists and journalists for revenge killings for the NATO airstrikes. On Friday, Human Rights Watch confirmed that a well-known ethnic Albanian human rights lawyer, Bajram Kelmendi, and his two sons, who had been abducted by Serbian forces on Wednesday, were found shot dead near a gas station outside of Pristina. A doctor in the southwestern Kosovo town of Djakovica, Azem Hima, was also killed by Serbs. "I am in hiding," an ethnic Albanian journalist told me when I reached her by phone in Pristina. The doorman to her newspaper's offices had been shot dead by Serbian police the day before when they raided the building. The editor in chief, Veton Surroi, who was one of the signers of the Rambouillet peace agreement, has also gone into hiding. The ethnic Albanian family who rents me a room in Pristina told me that daytime is better than the night, when the electricity is shut off across the entire city as the bombs drop. They're worried because their daughter-in-law is due to give birth next week. They're trying not to tell her too much about what is going on outside, but she can hear the explosions, and knows that her family has not gone outside in days, not even to buy food. It will be impossible to take her to a doctor when her time comes without exposing the entire family to danger. Last Monday, another Kosovar friend, a restaurant owner, was wounded by shrapnel when an explosion went off at the Magic cafe, across the way from his restaurant, killing a well-known 22-year-old ethnic Albanian actress. His wife told me that on the first night of airstrikes she sat with him all night in the state-run Serbian hospital, with the Serbian doctors and nurses looking at them with hostility. She took him home the next day. Though they live in mortal fear that their Serbian neighbors will attack them in revenge for the bombings, the Kosovo Albanians seem more willing to live through the terror in order to have a more peaceful future. Not so the Serbs, who feel they have nothing to gain from the NATO airstrikes. "For you Americans, this is like a computer war. You don't picture the civilian victims of your bombing," says Zarko Korac, the Belgrade psychologist. And in a way, he is right. As the misery unleashed by Serbian security forces in Kosovo was unreal to most Serbs in Belgrade, the suffering of Serbs under attack from NATO is unreal to American TV viewers as we note the first combat use of the $2.1 billion B-2 bomber, the explosions turning the night sky of Belgrade a video-game neon green, the dull Pentagon and National Security Council briefings. As we see Serbia as an outlaw nation, so they see us. SALON | March 27, 1999 Laura Rozen is a freelance journalist who covers the Balkans, and an analyst for the International Crisis Group. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - War in Kosovo Salon's complete coverage.