A Year After NATO Bombings, Trauma Lingers

by Vesna Peric Zimonjic

A year later, people still jump at the sound of a dumpster lid slamming or a car alarm going off. Children play a game called "run to the shelters," and many have turned to experts for help to overcome the stress.

Ana Djapovic of the IAN psychology center in Belgrade says most of the patients she sees are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

Symptoms include severe anxiety, panic attacks, depression, hostility, claustrophobia and a terror of venturing outside.

Another psychologist, Stanislava Vukovic, said children were the most affected by the raids.

"It will take a lot of care and explanation from both parents and experts to explain to children that detonations they still hear in their dreams are not happening now and that there is much more to life than running to shelters," she said.

The White Book on the NATO campaign, issued last August by the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry, says over 7.5 million Serbs were affected and over 2,000 died in the raids.

What was widely described in the Western media as "surgical hits by computer guided missiles" drastically affected the entire country. Trains and buses were burnt to a cinder and millions of people lived for days without electricity or proper water supplies.

The buildings were empty when they were hit, but some 10 passersby and security guards were killed in dozens of separate attacks on the premises.

One of the most picturesque parks in the city, Tasmajdan, faces a wreck of a building, which once housed Radio Television of Serbia (RTS), where 16 people were killed on April 23.

Across the Sava River is the remains of the Chinese embassy, where three people died in May. Airports and oil refineries, fuel and ammunition depots around Belgrade were hit.

Psychologists say the impact of the raids on the human population was equally devastating. Explosions would be heard for hours, smoke from fuel depots drifted on the wind for days, and sleepless nights became the norm as the raids usually came after dark.

Jiri Dienstbier, the UN human rights special envoy to the former Yugoslavia, said on March 19 that the failure of the international community to decide on a clear future for Kosovo meant NATO's mission to the province was thus far a "total failure."

"The present situation in Kosovo just confirms the total failure to achieve the goals of the operation," Jiri Dienstbier told journalists in Belgrade during a tour of Yugoslavia, during which he has held many meetings on the Kosovo problem.

He said that the main problem facing the NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers was that the mission had no clearly defined aims, adding that no one on the international scene seemed ready to provide one.

"We have UN resolution 1244 saying that Kosovo is a part of Yugoslavia, but nobody wants to confirm it and say that it is a solution and that nobody will dispute it and that Kosovo remains a part of Yugoslavia," he said.

"On the other hand, nobody wants to say that Kosovo will be independent," Dienstbier concluded.

The drive for independence by ethnic Albanians expressed through the armed uprising of Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998 led to Belgrade's swift crackdown and triggered a sequence of events that ended with the NATO intervention in Serbia.

However, a recent opinion poll reveals that Serbs still regard Western countries as being "democratic" and look to them for help them in their economic recovery and return from isolation.

According to the survey, conducted by the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade, 56 percent those polled said Serbia needed to work towards rejoining Europe and establishing closer ties with the European Union.

The consensus was that this was the only way the country could rebuild its future.