PAKRAC, Croatia -- After four years of savage war in the former Yugoslavia, the specter of a Balkan explosion again haunts the ruins of towns such as this one.
Here, among churches and homes destroyed by shelling, the fault lines of past and present conflicts run together like cracks in a mended glass, and the most fragile seam of all is a year-old cease-fire boundary next to Pakrac's village green.
With its checkpoints and barbed wire, the line divides Serbs and Croats, former neighbors now in an uneasy peace that has held despite the ethnic war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 20 miles to the south.
But there are worries that the fighting will return to Croatia at the end of this month. And after four years in which the Serbs have been cast as the aggressors, this time a Croat, President Franjo Tudjman, is being blamed.
Mr. Tudjman announced in January that the 14,000 United Nations troops in his country would have to leave Croatia's stalemated battlefronts beginning March 31, when the current U.N. mandate expires. The peacekeepers, he said, were doing little more than protecting Serb renegades who seized nearly a quarter of Croatia in 1991. If the U.N. forces left, Croatia could try to recapture territory held by the Serbs.
Besides rekindling the old dread that the Yugoslav fighting will begin spreading throughout the region, his demand has raised the possibility that U.S. troops will be dispatched to support a potentially difficult U.N. withdrawal.
Mr. Tudjman's decision also has drawn the sort of criticism he has long avoided. Previously considered one of the more predictable players in the chaos of Balkan politics, he now is being cast by diplomats as the latest trigger man in a war without good guys.
What he apparently wants is the means to fight the Serbs.
"The Croatian establishment wants a quick fix, and for them the quick fix is military," said Alun R. Roberts, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Knin, the self-declared capital of Croatia's rebellious Serb minority.
Mr. Tudjman's aides stress that their army has no plans to attack after the United Nations leaves. But their careful words are being drowned out by blunt talk of revenge and territorial gain in the towns along 500 miles of front lines, where U.N. officials say both sides are rearming, reinforcing and digging in for the worst.
"If we leave," said U.N. policeman Harris McLean, a Canadian on duty in Pakrac, "all hell's going to break loose right here." He pointed from the steps of the old Town Hall across the village green, toward the checkpoint at the cease-fire line, 50 yards away.
Just in front of him was an iron statue honoring Yugoslavia's World War II resistance fighters. It depicts a soldier lying on the ground in agony, a carbine clutched in one hand.
There are new bullet holes through the chest and forehead. The statue faces toward a Serbian Orthodox Church. The church is gutted, and soldiers have shot out the faces of Jesus and Mary in the mosaic above the entrance.
Hundreds of similar scenes are scattered along the Serb-Croat front, each a potential trouble spot if the United Nations leaves.
The war in Croatia began in March 1991, as the country was making its move toward independence from the disintegrating nation of Yugoslavia. Croatian Serbs who feared they would be persecuted by the government of the Croatian majority clashed with the new nation's police. The Serbs soon declared their own breakaway state: the Republic of the Serbian Krajina. When the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People's Army joined forces with the Krajina Serbs, the balance shifted against the Croats.
A brutal 'prelude'
Because of the fighting and "ethnic cleansing" that has since taken place in neighboring Bosnia, Croatia's war is often remembered as only a prelude to the main event. But its brutality is evident in the scores of cities and towns that were destroyed, forcing nearly 400,000 Croats from their homes.
The fighting ended in 1992, with the Krajina Serbs in control of nearly a quarter of the country. The gains all but severed the Croatian capital of Zagreb from the country's ports on the Adriatic Sea.
There has been relative quiet since a cease-fire agreement a year ago, when the United Nations began policing a 1.2-mile-wide buffer zone along most of the front. But if the U.N. departs, both sides could rush to grab the hills and villages in that zone.
"If you are a commander and [U.N. forces] are on a hill and the enemy is on the other side . . . you will decide to try to get to that hill before the enemy," said Radomir Knezevic, an adviser to the president of the Krajina Serbs, who have set up their capital in the mountain town of Knin. "The enemy will decide the same thing. Then there is a fight, and that's that."
In the disputed territory around Pakrac there isn't even a buffer zone.
"In some places they are only 50 meters apart, and they stand there screaming at each other," said Martin Shankey-Smith, deputy commander for the U.N. police patrol in Pakrac.
The climate of confrontation is reflected in the bullet-scarred Scorpio Bar, off the village green.
In a spot above the counter -- the place where a neighborhood bar in the United States might display photos of Little League squads and softball teams -- the Scorpio has mounted a photo of a local Croatian military unit, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, bandoleer and grenade launchers. The tall fellow in the upper-left corner owns the bar.
The currency of rage
On a nearby wall is a frame holding eight faded bills of the currency used in Pakrac during World War II, when ultranationalist Croats organized the militia called Ustasha and joined forces with the Nazis to execute thousands of Serbs. The Ustasha's currency was called the kuna. Last year, Croatia changed the name of its currency from the dinar to the kuna, further enraging the renegade Serbs.
Franjo Pejsa, 68, stood at the bar, working on a shot of whiskey and a glass of beer. He's old enough to remember the Ustasha days, but lately he's preoccupied with what's coming March 31.
He has already had to repair his house because a grenade tore through the roof in 1991; at least he wasn't hurt. Next time he might not be so lucky.
"I am afraid," he said. "They [the Serbs] are dug in, and we have only pistols in the town. If something is provoked, we are %J helpless. I would like the U.N. to stay."
A differing view
Bartender Ruzica Rajkoric disagreed. She's 33, with an 8-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son. They have abandoned their house because it was on the front line and now live in a refugee center. She is ready for more fighting, even if it means more killing.
"I want to go back to my house," she said. "This time, I think we will win."
That's the sort of talk that pushed Mr. Tudjman to act, according to Slavan Letica, his former national security adviser. But the demand that the U.N. troops leave was especially disheartening to Western mediators, because it came just as peace seemed to be taking root among some of Croatia's most contentious people.
During the past year, economic agreements between Croatian and Serbian officials had reopened the Zagreb-to-Belgrade highway and an oil pipeline from the Adriatic. There was talk of cooperating to rebuild damaged telephone and electrical networks.
In Pakrac, Serbian and Croatian farmers met before each of the last two spring plantings to divide up nearby fields. And local Serbian and Croatian military commanders resumed regarding each other as the neighbors they once were, passing greetings to each other's families through U.N. intermediaries.
Intolerable status quo
But in solidifying peace, U.N. forces were hardening the cease-fire lines into new borders, Mr. Tudjman reasoned. Meanwhile, the economy of his country was being strangled by the Croatian Serbs. The status quo, even if peaceful, was no longer tolerable.
"The whole idea behind the cancellation of the [U.N.] mandate is to change some of the basic ingredients in this Balkan brew," said Zoran Bosnjak, a foreign affairs adviser to Mr. Tudjman. "We hope we will get some movement in the peace process."
This change in strategy caught Western leaders by surprise. But Mr. Tudjman has often seemed an enigma, a person whose public image has been at odds with his actions.
"He holds a Ph.D. and is seen as anti-intellectual," said Mr. Letica, his former adviser. "He is an active anti-fascist with a pro-fascist reputation."
As foreign criticism of Mr. Tudjman has mounted, Croatian officials have begun looking for a way to soften their position without losing public support. They now say that they would allow an international task force to replace U.N. troops along the cease-fire lines, if that new force also secured Croatia's borders.
But NATO and the European Union -- the organizations most likely to substitute for the United Nations -- either cannot or will not take the assignment. Meanwhile, the Krajina Serbs say they won't even look at new peace plans unless U.N. forces stay.
That has left some people wondering whether Mr. Tudjman knows what he will do once the deadline passes.
"I don't see where the Croatian government has any credible strategy after April 1," said Michael Williams, spokesman for U.N. forces in the former Yugoslavia.
Preparing for war
The only new activity is in the field, where in the last two weeks soldiers on both sides have stepped up patrols, moved closer to the confrontation lines, dug new trenches and built more bunkers.
Officials on each side base their stubbornness partly on the belief that the Belgrade government of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic will eventually back them up. The Croats talk of Mr. Milosevic eventually coming through with formal recognition of their borders. The Krajina Serbs say they're counting on his military help if attacked.
Mr. Tudjman's assumption seems especially risky.
"His faith in Milosevic is unreasonable, and something I haven't understood from the very beginning," said Mr. Letica.
The result of the uncertainty is that March 31 now looms as a date when even peaceful intentions in high places may not be enough to stop local tensions from becoming a war.