With Lull in Siege, Sarajevans Relish Suffering of Serb Tormentors : Balkans: Visitors across front lines tell of disillusioned fighters among rebels, lack of freedom and gun-slinging thugs.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  After 28 months on the receiving end of a nationalist siege that has shattered Sarajevo, survivors like Fatima Veletovac are now relishing a primitive pleasure.

“My only happiness is that those thugs in the mountains now have it worse than we do,” the 36-year-old wife and mother insists with ferocious glee, gesturing toward the forested hilltops that shelter Bosnia’s rebel Serbs. “I’m glad I survived all of this so that I could see them suffer just a part of what they put us through.”

Veletovac, a vendor at the capital’s central market, describes herself as a sympathetic soul usually inclined toward forgiveness. But she admits she is currently overcome with zluradost --an evil happiness spurred by another’s suffering.

As budding signs of life have returned to this city that much of the outside world had left for dead, Sarajevans have been surprised and satisfied to learn that their tormentors are now paying a price for the misery they have inflicted.

Sarajevans recently allowed to make U.N.-escorted visits to family members across the front lines have returned with frightening tales about the rebel-held territory, where a political power struggle with neighboring Serbia has unleashed tension and fear.

“My neighbor went to Pale to see his brother last week and came back saying we live in paradise by comparison,” Veletovac relates in a scandalized tone. “He says the people are terrified over there, that the soldiers are drunk and morose and get into fights with each other. Everyone is afraid to say anything against (Bosnian Serb leader Radovan) Karadzic. We may be ruined on this side, but at least I can curse our politicians without having to worry about being killed.”

Whether material life on the Bosnian Serb side of the front line is much worse than in Sarajevo is open to question, as few people on either side have work that provides them with money. But the recent blockade imposed by Serb-led Yugoslavia has caused gasoline and manufactured goods to disappear and prompted a state of alert that prohibits cafes from operating.

What is measurably different, recent visitors say, is the atmosphere and lack of freedom. All adult men and women are obliged to serve on work brigades, disillusioned fighters drink themselves into oblivion and menace their neighbors, and the gun-slinging thugs who protect Karadzic and other leaders have generated a fear among the common people akin to that suffered under the most ruthless Communist regimes of Eastern Europe.

The Bosnian Serb gunmen who have bombarded this once-elegant European capital--but failed to take it--appear to be on the run now, having seized more land than they can hold and having defied so many foreign-mediated compromises that the international community is now leaning toward arming the rebels’ enemies.

While the risk of another escalation in fighting instills fear in some Sarajevans, zluradost has perked up others who take pleasure in anticipating a comeuppance for the rebels.

Psychologists say the emotion is a predictable response among victims, and believe the misery-loves-company reaction will eventually dissipate as Bosnians recover a capacity for empathy that has been damaged by their own suffering.

But for the moment, they are savoring small expressions of normal life denied the rebels: sun-splashed cafes; reopened shops and theaters, and an on-again, off-again tram network that generates envy on the other side.

A U.N.-brokered pact signed in March by Karadzic and government forces allowed Bosnian traders to truck in food and supplies via a dirt track that crosses contested Mt. Igman.

Cooking oil, coffee, canned goods and even designer lingerie are available only for hard currency. But the massive imports that took place before Serbian gunmen cinched off the so-called Blue Route in early August brought astronomical prices down to a level that at least some Sarajevans can afford.

“For the first time in three years, I can take my children out for ice cream,” boasts Elvedin Heric, an elementary school principal, settled beneath an umbrella at the Egipat outdoor cafe. “The Serbs can see us from the hills, and they don’t like it that we can sit out and enjoy ourselves while they dig trenches.”

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Karadzic mobilized the entire adult population of his occupied territory into work brigades last month after Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic announced he was cutting all support to the rebels as punishment for their refusal to agree to the latest international peace plan.

Western diplomats here and in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, are skeptical that Milosevic has completely sealed the border, and journalists who have traveled through northern Bosnia report heavy truck traffic by night through the supply corridor linking Serbia to Serb-occupied western Bosnia and Croatia.

But the Serbian strongman’s public denunciations of the Karadzic regime and the genuine disappearance of fuel, at least for public consumption, have generated serious concern among the rebels that their military superiority may be eroding.

Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic attributes the rebels’ reneging on the Blue Route treaty to their growing awareness that the tide of the protracted war is turning.

“The Serbs don’t want that road open because they see life getting back to normal here. They see the cafes open, the trams running, and they’re jealous,” says Silajdzic. “Those on the other side know now that their cause is hopeless. Whatever happens to us, they will still be the biggest losers.”

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Hints that Serbian gunmen are now paying for their aggression have nurtured a collective mood swing that began with the end of heavy artillery shelling in February and the first battlefield advances of the Bosnian army this summer.

“Time is on our side now,” insists Sasha Zuzo, an expelled Muslim from the Serb-held Grbavica neighborhood who recently opened a restaurant in central Sarajevo. “While countries like Germany, France and America are conquering the world with money and art and industry, the Serbs are still stuck in the Dark Ages, using force to make a name for themselves. They are not going to prevail in the end, and they know it. We’ve already won morally, and we have the civilized world on our side.”

Sociologist Nijaz Durakovic says the sense of smugness enveloping Sarajevans in recent weeks is based mostly on illusion, as few here have jobs, intact homes or the wherewithal to survive another winter.

“But a lot of people are feeling a little more hopeful now that those on the other side are seeing their misdeeds come back to haunt them,” Durakovic says. “There is some kind of pleasurable feeling that, as our saying goes, the bear is now dancing at their door.”

The expression is a favorite Balkan equivalent to “What goes around comes around,” and zluradost is that tee-hee feeling that accompanies getting even.

Sarajevans’ expectations of a change in fortunes have been boosted by U.S. politicians’ renewed efforts to end an arms embargo that has hamstrung the Muslim-led government’s defense of its territory. President Clinton has said he will push the U.N. Security Council to revoke the ban on weapons sales if the Karadzic regime refuses to sign an internationally mediated peace plan by Oct. 15.

While the hostile reaction has worsened an already bleak shortage of food and utilities for those with no money, it has confirmed Sarajevans’ suspicions that the insurgents are scared and that their attacks are motivated by envy.

“People on this side have gotten used to the blockade. It’s almost as if they have become immune to the hardships,” says psychologist Ferid Ovcina. “There are many people who have been psychologically damaged by their experiences in this war, but a much bigger part of the population has gained strength from it. They know they can survive, and they know the other side is now wondering if it can.”