Croatia's New Nationalism -- Symbols Of Pride Are Rekindling Terror For Ethnic Serbs

JOSEVICA, Yugoslavia - Bosiljka Juzbasic's voice quivers as she recalls when she and other Serbs living in Croatia began to fear that the new government of the republic was plotting to kill them.

``It was when they put up those flags and shields at the police station,'' says the bent-backed peasant, who looks 70 but is 52. ``I don't remember much of the war. I was too young. But I remember my mother carrying me, running with me away from that same shield.''

Croatia's shield was used as a national symbol only once before: during World War II, when the fascist puppet regime of the Ustase systematically executed Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

Now, the red-and-white checkerboard shield is back.

Since the republic's non-Communist government came to power in May, it has embarked on a quest to form an independent Croatia, and the shield is fluttering on new Croatian flags outside police stations and government offices throughout the republic. Enameled checkerboard pins have replaced the red star on the caps and badges of police and the territorial militia.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman dismisses Serbian fears, blaming them on a ``psychological war'' waged by the Communists who control the neighboring Yugoslavian republic of Serbia and the federal army, who would like to force Croatia back into their subjugated fold.

Newspapers in Serbia, controlled by the republic's president, Slobodan Milosevic, and other hard-line Communists, have whipped up an anti-Croatian hysteria with frequent claims that Croatian leaders are planning to round up and slaughter all Serbs.

While the unsubstantiated reports of an impending genocide might be disregarded by those who are educated and worldly, they have struck genuine terror in the hearts of Serbs in remote outposts like Josevica.

Flying of the checkerboard colors is seen here as proof that a civil war is about to begin. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Croats own guns, threatening an uncontrollable bloodletting if fratricidal fighting ever gets started.

``Why have they come here with their flags and machine guns, if not to kill us?'' asks Milja, a saleswoman at the only store in this village of 350 Serbs and two Croatian women who married into the community. ``All you have to do is turn on the television to see that Tudjman hates Serbs so much that he can't even say their names.'' The vendor did not give her full name out of fear of retaliation.

One anxiety for Serbians living in Croatia is the republic's deliberate erosion of Serbian influence on local police forces.

``The Serbs are upset because they are losing power,'' observes a Croat policeman in Petrinja, the administrative center of the ethnically mixed region incorporating Josevica. Outside precinct headquarters, a new Croatian flag whips in the late winter wind, and two policeman bearing checkerboard shields stand guard with automatic rifles at the ready.

``Up until now there were always more Serbs in the police force,'' says the 26-year-old, who, on condition of anonymity, broke with his station's policy of referring all comment to authorities in Zagreb. ``Now our numbers are approximately equal. We feel that this is what a democracy is all about - that the peoples have all the same rights and that our numbers are balanced.''

Interethnic struggles for control of local police have turned the law-enforcement offices into combat grounds. The Petrinja station was seized by angry Serbs in September, after rumors - apparently spread by Milosevic envoys - that Croatian militia troops were planning a takeover. After the Serbs disarmed Croatian officers, Zagreb dispatched a special police unit, turning Serbian fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A similar Serb-Croat conflict in Pakrac, about 45 miles to the east, erupted in gunfire on March 2 and prompted the intervention of Communist-commanded federal troops.

Pakrac, Petrinja and Josevica are links in a chain of Serbian communities within Croatia that once formed what is known as the ``vojnaja krajina,'' the military frontier. It stretches from near the Adriatic Sea in the southwest of Croatia to the north and then east along the border with Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Serbs who fled the brutal occupation of their homeland by Ottoman Turkey were encouraged by Austria-Hungary, starting in the 16th century, to settle in this region to provide a defensive buffer between the two great empires. The Serbian exiles were given land and relative freedom in return for preventing an advance of the Turks.

By 1918, when Yugoslavia was formed from the Balkan states long dominated by Turkey and Austria, nearly 25 percent of Croatia's residents were ethnic Serbs.

Relations among the nationalities degenerated between the two world wars, as economic hardship inspired ethnic resentment. When the Nazis invaded Croatia in 1941, fanatic Croatian nationalists - the Ustase - eagerly joined in the fascist atrocities, adding Serbs to the Jews and Gypsies on Germany's hit list. Some factions of the Serbian royalist Chetniks retaliated by killing Croats.

Of the 1.7 million Yugoslavs who died during World War II, at least half were killed in interethnic fighting. The proportion of Serbs in Croatia fell to its current level of about 12 percent.

Belgrade's strongly pro-Serbian media have reported in recent days that Serbs have been fleeing Croatia in fear of another genocide and that the exodus has reached 20,000.

``The tensions started in September, with the police station incident,'' says Petrinja's mayor, Stanislava Gregurincic-Zilic, a Croat who is married to a Serb from Josevica.

The 55-year-old former Communist blames supporters of Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union for waving nationalist symbols and stirring up the current fever of hostility.

``The Serbs are irritated by these displays of flags and shields. They don't accept them because they were the symbols of the Ustase,'' she says.

While Croats brush off such resistance to expressions of their national identity, republic residents of mixed nationality say the newfound chauvinism is at least insensitive.

Milena Radic, a Zagreb businesswoman born in the Serbian stronghold of Knin, has spent 30 years in the Croatian capital. Her predominantly Serbian ancestry was never heeded until recently.

``Even old friends treat me differently now. The politics of indoctrination are touching everyone, even little children,'' says Radic, whose father was executed by the Ustashas. ``I am a Serb, but one born in Croatia. My mentality is Croatian. My homeland is Croatia. The only difference is that Croats are mostly Catholics, and I adhere to the Serbian religion, Orthodoxy. Yet I'm told now that if I don't like it here I can go back to Serbia. I have the same rights in my homeland as a foreigner.''