As any propagandist will tell you, symbols play a vital part in any conflict. In the right circumstances, a fluttering flag and uplifting music can spur loyal citizens into battle. (Something romantic yet martial works well.) The importance of symbols is particularly evident in Belgrade, where those itching to hit back at NATO must be content for now with thumbing their noses. Over the past month Serbs attacked Western icons in Belgrade with glee. Television stations broadcast short blasts of hatred made by local production houses. Hooligans burned flags and threw rocks at Western embassies and cultural centers.

The Serbs' great talent for symbols is matched by a dark sense of irony. The Kosovo crisis has brought out the best and the worst of that irony, which runs from street-level graffiti to slick video productions. The now-pervasive bull's-eye, Serbia's badge of defiance, is on everything from cars to dog collars. My favorite graffiti refers to last month's downing of an F-117 Nighthawk, a "stealth" fighter that can't be seen on conventional radar. "Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible," it reads. The references to President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky on seemingly every street corner are too crude to mention.

With little else to do these days, many Belgrade advertising and production houses spend their time thinking up ways to, as one creative director said, "give NATO a big Serbian middle finger." One of the funniest pieces lampoons the person Serbs hate more than anyone, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, whose family sought shelter in Belgrade after the Nazis occupied her native Czechoslovakia. An artist made a fairly accurate clay caricature of her, complete with the all-too-noticeable neckline (or lack thereof), and stuck it before a mike to sing the blues. Backed by a guitar banging out a throbbing beat, the figure wails in Serbian, "They called her crazy Mad-lena, she went to school in Belgrade, my mother was her best friend, she says she still loves us, and throws the bombs on our heads, we wont forget Mad-lena."

A more disturbing clip, reflecting the Milosevic regime's attempt to equate NATO with the Nazis, harks back to the Holocaust. The animated piece starts with the words "NATO's Final Solution," which fade to reveal a darkened wasteland of orange and black. Barbed wire surrounds a field of crosses. From the entrance a sign inscribed "Yugoslavia" creaks in the wind.

While these acts may make Serbs feel like they're flipping NATO the bird, their real purpose is to galvanize the masses behind Serbian leadership. Most of the clips play only on Serbian television. With the support of the Serbian people, that leadership has stayed resolute -- even as NATO missiles destroy its factories and infrastructure.

This, in turn, seems to have frustrated a NATO leadership that evidently did not plan for such lengthy defiance. As NATO scrambles to find a strategy -- and perhaps out of frustration over its own relative impotence -- it has begun targeting places that embody the very core of Milosevic's regime. On successive mornings, Business Center Usce, the presidential villa and state-run television have all gone up in flames. In the parlance of the military, a NATO spokesman refers to them as "high-value targets."

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