Mind Game

Everyone knows the truth about this war. It started with unprovoked attacks on civilians, grew into widespread aggression and is now an unchecked attempt to destroy an entire people. Ask any Belgrader whether that's true, and he'll say yes--but he won't be agreeing with you. For most people in Yugoslavia, it's NATO's attacks on Serbia that are the crime, not Serbian attacks on Kosovo. While NATO accuses Serbs of aggression, Serbian media accuse NATO of aggression. When NATO cries genocide, Serbian media cry genocide. And with almost no outside points of reference in Yugoslavia, who's to know the difference? It is the ultimate Orwellian nightmare: from the streets of Belgrade to the rural villages of Serbia, truth and lies are evenly transposed.

That wasn't always the case. Before NATO's campaign began, the propaganda of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic hit its limits in the credulity of many Serbs. His message mostly found purchase with the impoverished, rural and uneducated. In the cities you could seek out independent sources of information that put Milosevic's retrograde, neocommunist line in context. But with the war on, those independent voices are either snuffed out or taken over. Now, even among the educated elite, a slow, sad transformation is taking hold as Milosevic's distorted media prism resolves every shade of gray into black and white.

This is partly why NATO officials have insisted that propaganda--along with the special police--is one of Milosevic's two keys to power. It is also why, in a brutal attempt to end that information imbalance last Friday, NATO blasted a Serbian state television station in Belgrade. A barrage of bombs hit the building before dawn, killing at least 10 of the estimated 70 people inside. But if the attack was brutal, it was also ineffectual. Serbian state TV was back on the air within six hours, broadcasting its regular fare, including a statement by the Serbian Information Ministry saying that "by targeting [Serbian TV], NATO aggressors have revealed criminal intentions that would make even Hitler wince."

The air war has played a big part in making such wild accusations credible with Serbs. Nothing lays the groundwork for propaganda like seeing parts of your hometown blown away. NATO has bombed targets ranging from bridges to office blocks in its attempt to weaken the Serbian war machine and break Milosevic's resistance. But with "collateral damage" now including Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians alike, the strikes have also provided all the material that Milosevic's minions need to win over even die-hard skeptics. NATO, the propaganda insists, simply wants to kill Serbs at any cost. "Most people--myself included--see this as an aggression against Serbia, not just against Milosevic," says Goran Svilanovic, 39, the chairman of Civic Alliance, a once ardently critical anti-Milosevic party.

It helps, of course, that Serbs are a captive audience. Most independent media were closed down or co-opted as soon as the bombing started, and throughout the country there is a uniform hum of pro-Milosevic, anti-Western diatribe. What's more, the bombing has become less terrifying to Serbs. The sirens still sound at 8 o'clock each night in Belgrade, but the wail is now muted. The residents of the embattled city have given the sirens an affectionate nickname, "Esmeralda," after the popular Mexican soap opera that used to appear on Serbian television at 8 p.m. Increasingly the war seems like just something to watch on the tube, a long-running melodrama with only occasional plot twists. "In the beginning we used to run to air-raid shelters every night, but we don't bother anymore," says Mirjana, 42, a government-employed clerk. "In the morning we turn the TV on to see what's been hit."

If the bombing campaign has become melodrama, Serbian TV and a crackdown on dissent have helped ensure that NATO is the bad guy. A series of new government decrees have piled even more repression on top of the already draconian media laws passed last fall. Says a Belgrade lawyer: "They can now put people away for up to two months without even notifying anybody from the judiciary system. Law doesn't live here anymore."

NATO's nonviolent attempts to redress that propaganda imbalance haven't got far. Assurances from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that they have deep affection for the Serbs are falling on deaf ears amid the noise of war. "[The NATO propaganda message] sounds utterly cynical from this end," says a tired, frustrated onetime pro-Westerner in Belgrade.

Among so many in Belgrade, white has indeed become black. Many Serbs believe that NATO has lost dozens of warplanes so far, not just one. Even the horrors of Kosovo are explained away. Whether by word of mouth or the Western media, much of Yugoslavia knows something of the "ethnic cleansing" going on in the province. But the quick, brutally cynical response from the government--that NATO bombings, not Serbian soldiers, are to blame for the flood of refugees--is parroted by many Serbs.