The war over Kovoso is a sterile, faceless one. NATO cannot see the Serbs it has killed, and Serbia’s state-run television, while showing ruined civilian homes, shields its viewers from bloodied corpses that might spread panic among an already anxious population.
Along with the bombs and missiles, a propaganda war is developing between the two sides. NATO is exploiting the jingoistic tendencies of some Western broadcasters, while Belgrade relies, as it routinely has, on the tightly controlled Radio, Television Serbia (RTS).
Few Serbs are aware of the scale of the refugee movement in Kosovo–tens of thousands are fleeing into neighboring countries–because RTS shows no images of them. In occasional references to displaced ethnic Albanians, it explains that they are trying to avoid NATO bombing raids.
Both sides are able to exploit the virtual absence of foreign reporters in Kosovo. Most fled or were expelled last week when the NATO bombings began. Government leaders, such as Britain’s Tony Blair, can talk freely in Parliament about the “massacres” of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, as recounted by refugees, because no one is able to confirm or deny them independently.
In Belgrade, the 20 or so foreign reporters who ignored an expulsion order issued by an ultra-nationalist information minister last week and stayed behind have been barred from visiting bomb sites. Similarly, they have been denied information from hospitals when trying to verify Serbian claims that many civilians have been killed.
RTS has shown heart-wrenching images of crying women and children outside the ruins of their homes, but no independent confirmation of the incidents has been possible. Officials said Tuesday that many people had been killed in bombing raids in Kosovo’s capital of Pristina the night before, but no corpses were displayed.
Some Serbs suspect images of the dead are kept off the screens because they are too stressful and inherently negative, but they also doubt reports carried by Russian media of more than 1,000 killed since Wednesday.
Similarly, a Serb general said Tuesday that Serbia’s armed forces had downed seven NATO aircraft and three helicopters. Many Serbs believe this, especially after the downing Saturday of an F-117A Stealth fighter, but there has been no evidence presented to support the claims. The exact cause of the crash of the F-117A has not been officially confirmed by the Pentagon.
Most of the world’s media have been reduced to reporting from the borders of Serbia or relying on briefings by NATO commanders in Brussels or U.S. officials in Washington.
NATO has presented television pictures of what it says are targeted buildings before and after bombing, but viewers must take it on faith that the buildings shown are, in fact, the ones that were originally targeted.
Emotive language used by both sides is remarkably similar. President Clinton drew parallels between the “ethnic cleansing” committed by Serbs and the mass killings by Germany’s Nazis in World War II. British Defense Secretary George Robertson has accused the Yugoslav regime of “genocide.”
For the Serbs, who were exterminated in the hundreds of thousands–the exact figure is still disputed by historians–in Nazi and Croatian death camps, allegations of “genocide” touch a raw nerve. In return, RTS routinely compares President Clinton with Hitler, and the most common graffiti daubed on Western embassies in Belgrade is the Nazi swastika.
More subtle is the choice of Hollywood movies shown on Serbian channels this week–“Wag the Dog,” about an American president who fabricates a war in Albania to detract attention from his personal problems, and the Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now.”
