The Ethnic Cleanser

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Defender of the Serbs--it was a seductive image, one that reached back across 600 years of Slavic victimization and imbued the solid, fleshy-faced and silver-haired man with the mystique of historical destiny. In a nation searching for a post-cold war identity, the aura served as an express ticket to total power. Conducting a new symphony of ethnic hate, Milosevic stepped into the top slot once occupied by Tito. Virtually his first act was to revoke the autonomy Tito had granted to the Albanians in Kosovo. Playing up nationalist passions, Milosevic helped ignite full-scale ethnic rivalry among some of the country's other republics. During that period, even the intellectual elite supported his nationalist euphoria. But once he had used them to cement his position, he cast them aside. He is faithful, says biographer Slavoljub Djukic, to no one except his wife once a person's usefulness is past.

Firmly ensconced as Serbia's boss, Milosevic proved to be smart, articulate and cunning. "He does not believe in ideas," says a Russian-born observer. "He makes no value judgments." So far as anyone can tell, he brought with him no grand plan for Serbia. His ambition appeared to consist of staying on top--forever. While he has showed a genius for tactics, he is perpetually forced to react to events, even ones he provokes.

Perhaps it is no accident that Kosovo, the venerated scene of Serbia's great defeat by the Ottoman Turks in an epic battle fought in 1389, marks both the beginning and possibly the end of Milosevic's career. Milosevic has displayed an uncanny knack for defeats. His 1991 war in Croatia to retain control of the old Yugoslavia eventually ended with hundreds of thousands of Serbs forced out of their homes, farms and villages. Today they make up a refugee population living hand to mouth inside Serbia, not even granted the privilege of Yugoslav citizenship. Yet the war served to polish Milosevic's nationalist credentials with the Serb masses.

Milosevic's war in Bosnia to expand Greater Serbia ended in another defeat. To save himself, he had to knuckle under to international diplomacy. Ever ready to discard what has become harmful, he dropped his backing for Serb kin in the breakaway state, eventually making peace at their expense at Dayton in 1995. He turned this humiliation into another kind of triumph when he paraded on the world stage as a peacemaker equal to the superpower leaders negotiating with him. Yet he was no more a man of peace than he was a communist or nationalist. He simply did what he had to do to stay in power.

Power, say those who know him, is the one thing he truly loves. He exercises it daily, in matters large and small. From his subordinates, he brooks no challenges. When Serb officials began several months ago to obstruct the work of international monitors in Kosovo, it was clearly at his orders, a way of saying, notes a diplomat involved, "This is my turf, and I'm boss." He does not flaunt decorative symbols of office or stage showy ceremonies and cares nothing for state protocol. But if he shirks the glamour of power, he still loves delicious moments of control. When foreign diplomats appear at his door, he glows as he picks the chairs on which they will sit.