BOSNIA: NOW IT'S SERB AGAINST SERB

FOR FOUR YEARS, RADOVAN KARADZIC was the Bosnian Serbs' fuhrer. The self-proclaimed President of the Republika Srpska defied the world, and his course as leader was as unrestrained as his trademark double-winged haircut. A psychiatrist and sometime poet, Karadzic based his implacable ideology on ethnic purity and enforced it with paramilitary storm troopers who intimidated moderate Serbs and used brutality and terror to drive Muslims out of his lands. But last week it was clear that his authority as voice of his people was at an end. He could barely command the attention of a group of fellow Bosnian Serbs at a strategy meeting in Pale, the shabby ski resort outside Sarajevo that he made his headquarters.

Bitterness over the war and its conclusion spells finis for the career of Karadzic and possibly that of Bosnia's military commander, General Ratko Mladic. So does the Dayton peace agreement negotiated in the U.S. last year. It bars both of them from political office because they have been indicted as war criminals by a special tribunal in the Hague. Karadzic's slide is triggering a struggle for power inside the Serb Democratic Party, the movement he heads. In addition, opposition parties have arisen in a new power center, the northwestern Serb city of Banja Luka, which has long been a stronghold for critics of Karadzic's. While some determined Serbs cling to their outposts in Sarajevo, all leading participants in the power scramble seem likely to reject the fanatic nationalism of Karadzic and Mladic and to opt for at least temporary cooperation with the Implementation Force of NATO and its associates.

The scene in Pale last week could not have taken place even two months ago. The Serbs at the meeting were of the diehard variety, and as Karadzic and Momcilo Krajisnik, speaker of the Serb assembly, sat a few feet away, critic after critic stepped to the podium inside the looming Hotel Bistrica to denounce their leadership. Under the Dayton agreement, four Serb-held districts and suburbs of Sarajevo, which are Karadzic's main power base, must be turned over to the Muslim and Croat government of Bosnia by March 19. The Serbs remember the Vance-Owen peace plan that was much more favorable for them but was rejected by Karadzic in 1993. "We distance ourselves daily from our political leadership," said Rajko Koprivica, head of the Sarajevo suburb of Vogosca.

Having lost confidence in their leadership, the Serbs are fleeing Sarajevo at the rate of about 100 families a day. In an overt challenge to Karadzic, who wants to control their movements, they are loading cars and trucks and trekking toward Serbian territory. Some are even digging up family members' coffins and taking them along for reburial. Columns of vehicles laden with household goods rumbled across the runway of Sarajevo airport into Serbian areas of Bosnia last week.

As many as 70,000 Serbs could join the exodus by March 19. After talks with NATO officials, Krajisnik said that if the handover is not deferred, many Serbs will abandon the city, "and those who stay might organize armed resistance." The day before he spoke, one or more Serbs fired an antitank rocket that hit a streetcar in downtown Sarajevo, killing a 55-year-old woman. But Carl Bildt, civilian administrator of the peace accords, insists the transfer of power will go ahead.