MILOSEVIC HOLDS ALL CARDS IN YUGOSLAVIA.

Byline: Dejan Anastasijevic

AFTER nearly nine months of threats, NATO has finally made good on its promise to carry out air attacks against Serbia.

The questions now are, What happens next? and What will Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic do?

Does he see the current situation as his last stand, and is he already anticipating his eventual fall? Or does he seriously believe his forces can deter, or even defeat, the armies of the West?

And how valid is the scenario that he actually needs the airstrikes as a political excuse to eventually give up territory in Kosovo, a region still regarded as sacred to most Serbs?

After the series of bombings, the hope is that Milosevic will then offer some unspecified concessions to the Kosovo Albanians. But if he remains defiant, more missiles would be launched, with these attacks lasting for perhaps weeks or until, according to this theory, the Yugoslav leader agrees to cut a deal or is replaced by someone more sensitive to Western demands.

However, things are not likely to evolve this way at all.

Even as its air defenses are shredded by NATO's attacks, Yugoslavia's ground forces are likely to remain intact and capable of launching retaliatory actions against Albanian civilians.

And it's clear that, should they be forced to leave Kosovo, the Serbs will certainly slam the door hard on their way out. And a breakdown in the Serbian military's chain of command and communications caused by the current NATO assault will certainly increase the risk that major atrocities will be carried out by renegade army units and self-styled local militias.

Meanwhile, the Kosovo Liberation Army is unlikely to stay put and wait for Milosevic to change his mind and invite NATO ground troops into the region. The KLA is capable of launching its own version of an ethnic-cleansing campaign, especially in rural areas, eliminating smaller Serbian enclaves and besieging larger ones.

In Serbia proper, the consequences of the airstrikes are harder to predict. One possible outcome could be the meltdown of Milosevic's regime due to massive army desertions and damage to the nation's infrastructure.

While Milosevic would probably be able to retain power in Belgrade and the surrounding area, the rest of Serbia would be exposed to troops retreating in disarray. Soon, Serbia would be broken down into regions ruled by local thugs with access to military hardware. What would follow would be a humanitarian crisis comparable to the chaotic situation in Albania after the demise of Sali Berisha.

The West needs to make some tough decisions. Probably the best course would be to immediately deploy ground troops in overwhelming numbers, not stopping until both Kosovo and Serbia itself is saturated with NATO troops.

However, Western leaders will find this idea a hard one to sell at home. Already, President Clinton has expressed his reluctance to deploy U.S. troops on the ground. And military experts have said that NATO simply doesn't have the manpower available for such an occupation. Certainly its 10,000-man force in Macedonia is nothing like what would be needed.

It's much more likely the airstrikes will be followed by a period of hesitation and half-measures by the West. This will only make matters worse. The cost and scale of the eventual Western intervention will only increase.

Although this may look like the worst-case scenario, it is unfortunately much more likely than the predictions that bombs will change Milosevic's mind or trigger a coup by Western-friendly elements within Serbia.

It may be that Milosevic knows that he has painted himself into a corner and now has no way out. It may be that he prefers to see all of Serbia break down into chaos rather than go down in history as the man who lost Kosovo.

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Photo

PHOTO Firemen hose down an unidentified building in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia after the NATO air strikes.

Associated Press