Slovenes Vow to Never Give Up Freedom Fight

MESTINJE, Slovenia â€”  Just north of this bucolic village in the wooded foothills of the lower Alps, Rudi Jugovar and fellow reservists have chopped down sturdy linden trees to block the road to the border with Austria.

The newly deputized warriors have left their office jobs and made sure their families are safe at home. At the barricade of felled timber, they wait with their rifles, ready to repel a threatened onslaught by the Yugoslav People’s Army.

Jugovar and other villagers never thought freedom would bring fighting. But now that the mighty federal forces have loosed their power against unarmed civilians, Slovenes have steeled themselves for battle and hardened their resolve to defend independence.

“We could have lived together. There are good, reasonable people everywhere. But now it’s impossible,� said Jugovar, a 33-year-old resort clerk now manning the roadblock to protect his village. “Never, ever, can we be together again.�

The punishing assault by the army against tiny Slovenia and its drive to secede appears to have backfired if it was intended to frighten the republic’s people back into the federal fold.

Likewise, ominous warnings from the Serbian-dominated federal army in Belgrade have angered Slovenes and transformed their ragtag militia into a soberly determined resistance.

Having spilled blood for the cause of independence, Slovenes now say they will never give up their quest to break free.

“We cannot even think about a suspension of our independence,� Slovenian President Milan Kucan told his compatriots by radio Saturday, noting that fellow Slovenes had already given their lives in what has become a national struggle for liberation from the “Yugoslav occupiers.�

“If there were a few people yesterday who thought we could still live together (with the other Yugoslav republics), today there is not one left,� said Franci Krizan, a hotel manager calmly marshaling food and activities for stranded travelers.

The severity of the army offensive aimed at forcing Slovenes to abandon their aspirations for statehood has validated their worst fears about the old federation’s commitment to democracy.

If the Belgrade government could sanction such a slaughter, they say, there is no sense in talking about a future alliance.

Many blame the federal prime minister, Ante Markovic, for feeding false hopes among Western leaders for preservation of the status quo of enforced unity in a federation financed by all six republics but effectively ruled by Communist Serbia.

Slovenes are pained by what they see as the West’s inability to grasp their problems. Simplistic appeals for maintaining the volatile Balkan alliance sabotaged attempts at a negotiated breakup, leaving Slovenes with the choice of secession or going down in the ethnic and economic flames consuming the rest of Yugoslavia.

Politically ostracized and poorly equipped to defend itself, Slovenia took a pounding when the Belgrade forces decided to attack. Casualties are reported in the hundreds, and the damage to their once-prosperous economy will take years to repair.

“Our tourism is ruined, not just this year but for years to come,� said Marko Butolen, a clerk at the Hotel Slovenia in the nearby spa town of Ragoska Slatina.

“No one could have expected or imagined what has happened,� said his colleague, Branko Vrhomnik. “This ferocity has only made us the more determined to defend our sovereignty.�