NATO began bombing Yugoslavia on March 24, in an effort to get Milosevic to end his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Since March, more than 600,000 refugees have fled Kosovo, many forced out by Serb troops, and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and displaced in Kosovo. Scores of factories are destroyed. So is much of the country's oil industry. Already crippled by eight years of international sanctions and decades of mismanagement, the economy is being dismantled piece by piece, missile by missile.
Nobody is likely to starve.
Serbia, which makes up 80 per cent of Yugoslavia, has always been self-sufficient in food, and stores even now are full of meat and dairy products. Vegetables are plentiful at Belgrade's farmers market. It is also uncertain whether the economic dislocation will lead to any serious challenge to President Slobodan Milosevic's rule. Yugoslavs have a long history of authoritarian rule. And Serbs have long considered themselves a people forced by outsiders to suffer unjustly.