On and on towards the border came the overcrowded tractors, with their cargo of exhausted and traumatised people. Many broke into tears as they realised they were safe. Yet these were Serbs, not Albanians. Flash back to the last Balkan exodus of farmer families, which preceded the forced deportation of a million Kosovans this spring, and the victims were Serbs - fleeing from Croatia in August 1995 in advance of a hostile, approaching army.
Flash forward to the latest refugee crisis, and it is Serbs again. The columns of battered cars and farm vehicles with their anxious passengers, are already on the move as Kosovo's last remaining Serbs start to leave the province to escape the revenge of their returning former neighbours. Good riddance, some may say. Serves them right. Yet, if there is to be any chance of reversing the 10-year tide of injustice in the Balkans, instinctive responses are not the best reaction.
As the Kosovo war winds down, the most pressing problems are those which face the Albanians as they drift back to their ruined and looted villages from camps abroad or hiding places in the mountains. But Serbs are also deeply scarred, and it would be a real triumph of political wisdom if the return of the Kosovan Albanian refugees could trigger a concerted international push to do more for earlier waves of Balkan refugees, starting with tens of thousands of Serbs who lost their homes in Croatia, as well as other refugees throughout former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia.
Several times during the past few months when the Albanians have dominated the headlines I have heard Serbs complain "Why didn't the international media cover the plight of the Krajina Serbs in 1995?" They usually answer their own question before you have a chance to. It is yet another example of the unending bias against us, they thunder. Vainly, I try to stop them, since I did cover the Krajina exodus along with many other foreign reporters, and it was a miserable sight.
In the cold light of subsequent events historians may judge it to have been less massive and terrible than the Kosovo deportations. The 1991 census of the Krajina region counted some 140,000 Serbs and even if this number swelled before 1995 as a result of Serbs fleeing to Krajina from other parts of Croatia, the overall departure cannot have exceeded 200,000. The Serb refugees were not forced from their homes at gunpoint and stripped of their jewellery and papers at the border. They fled before an invading army which was raining shells from afar. Their own Serb army and paramilitaries ran with them, or in many cases ahead, leaving the civilians in the lurch. There was no rape on the way, no separation of young men from women and children. It was more like the Israeli exodus from ancient Egypt, a whole defenceless society in flight together.
But there were atrocities. Up to 4,000 elderly Serbs who decided to stay in their Krajina villages, hoping their age and infirmity would save them, ended up being murdered.
The crisis produced a great outpouring of generosity. Thousands of Serb families put up distant cousins in their flats in Belgrade and other towns for weeks and months. But there were bad moments too. I remember being stunned at how quickly victims can turn into villains. In the town of Gibarac just inside the border of Serbia, I watched newly arrived Serb refugees being helped to find shelter by local relatives who went into homes and evicted Croatian families. One refugee created another. Marginally more subtly, in the Belgrade suburb of Zemun I saw Serbs from the Krajina park their tractor and plonk themselves down on the grass outside a Croatian home, waiting for the owners to get the message.
The saddest episodes played themselves out in Kosovo. Anxious to build up the Serb population, Slobodan Milosevic ordered the authorities to entice or force as many Krajina Serbs as possible to go down there. Not wishing to be an ethnic minority again, Serb volunteers for settlement in Kosovo were rare. So other methods were used. There are few images from the second world war more poignant than that of refugees loaded on to trains against their will, and when this happened to tens of thousands of Kosovan Albanians in Pristina before they were shunted across the border to Macedonia this spring, people felt a catch in their throat.
I saw a grim variant of it happening at the station of Kosovo Polje in August 1995, though here it was a case of refugees being ordered off trains, not on to them. Serb police stood on the platform ordering reluctant Serb refugees to disembark. Many had not realised the train was going to Kosovo. After a stand-off lasting several hours, the train shunted back to Pristina where the refugees were bluntly told the carriages with their tractors had been unhooked from the engine and they had better get off too.
It was not surprising that the Krajina Serbs were the most worried when Nato prepared to start its bombing this March. More than 100 were still living in the run-down Hotel Kosovski Bozor on Pristina's main street, almost four years after fleeing Croatia. "We originally came to Kosovo because my husband was promised he would never be mobilised as a reservist if we settled here," said Nevenka Grozdanic. "Now I don't know. I feel more afraid than the other Serbs who've never been through this before. We were 12 days on the road from Croatia. I don't want that fear again."
An estimated 80,000 of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs have left since March. The peace-keeping force must try to provide secure guarantees, so that the rest do not feel tempted to follow. It may be a futile endeavour, since a partial exodus by an ethnic minority, once started, is hard to reverse. Collective panic sets in, and no one wants to be the last of their kind to go.
But Serbs are going to come out of this war with a huge new motive for bitterness and victimhood. The Nato govern ments should try to lessen this by keeping the Kosovo Serbs in place and putting real pressure on Croatia to end its obstruction and take back the Serbs from the Krajina. By the same token, Nato governments must drop the argument that Serbia will get no reconstruction aid as long as Milosevic stays in power. As was the case with the bombing of Serbia's power stations and water plants, this will only hurt ordinary citizens, and not their leader. Nato magnanimity may seem hollow to ordinary Serbs after the pounding of recent weeks. But it is better than continuing the punishment. Let peace be peace.