The mothers of young soldiers stationed in Kosovo will protest again today in front of Belgrade's army headquarters demanding that their sons be allowed to return home.
The citizens of Belgrade are used to military defeat and the deaths of young soldiers by now, and these mothers who have protested for several days are fearful. In Croatia and in Bosnia since 1991, wars encouraged by President Slobodan Milosevic have been lost. Calls for national efforts to fight for areas which the government sees as part of Serbia have been followed by defeat and the return home of dead troops.
These mothers insist that their protest is not political, and do not offer an opinion on the recent Serbian crackdown in the majority-Albanian province.
"We are looking at this from the point of view only of being mothers of soldiers down there," says Ms Ruzica Milosevic, a woman in her early fifties whose 21-year-old son has been posted to Popovac in Kosovo. "I want him to be moved out of Kosovo."
Her son is one of 400 young men from her suburb of Belgrade who began their compulsory one year's military service in March. "That whole group has been sent to Kosovo. They are supposed to have five or six months' training but these boys have just eight weeks. We have a professional army and these are the ones supposed to be fighting, not boys with no training."
However Serbia has problems with its trained soldiers too, a number of whom are reported to have refused to serve in Kosovo.
For most Serbians from outside the province, serving there is a deeply unattractive proposition. The territory is unfamiliar, mountainous and hostile. Almost all Kosovo's ethnic Albanians - 90 per cent of the local population - regard them as the enemy.
Serbian police and soldiers are subject to regular ambush from the KLA, a guerrilla army which knows the terrain intimately in a way the government forces cannot. It is impossible to get an accurate figure for the number of soldiers killed there since the Serbian clampdown began in February, but it is believed to be between five and 10.
The relatively low casualty figures do not comfort Mrs Milosevic. "The situation is getting worse. We have been reading about foreign mercenaries and mujahideen fighters from the UK and Jordan coming to fight on the Albanian side. We are scared out of our minds."
There is no independent evidence that mujahideen - Islamist fighters often associated with suicide attacks - have been seen anywhere in Kosovo. While this is likely to be a Serbian propaganda story, it has inspired fear among the families of soldiers in Kosovo.
A Belgrade newspaper reported at the weekend that two soldiers from Montenegro (which together with Serbia makes up Yugoslavia) have been captured and are being held hostage by the KLA.
President Milosevic faces a more political problem in relation to Montenegrin soldiers. Montenegrin political leaders, including the new President, Mr Milo Djukanovic, have demanded that no Montenegrin soldiers in the Yugoslav army be sent to fight in Kosovo. While the army is an overall Yugoslav army, the Montenegrins see it as a Serbian, not a Yugoslav war.
In the Vojvodina province where a substantial Hungarian minority lives, there have been similar political objections to their soldiers fighting in Kosovo. The president of Vojvodina's parliamentary opposition, Mr Mile Isakov, told The Irish Times yesterday: "Responsibility for the situation in Kosovo is with the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and his politics of the last 10 years."
He said that many parents of soldiers did not know where their sons were, or whether they were alive or dead. He warned that the campaign to have Vojvodina soldiers brought home from Kosovo would be escalated, and could possibly include the blockading of roads and other acts of civil disobedience.
The number of police who have been killed in Kosovo is considerably higher than the number of soldiers. There have been many reports in local media about police refusing to serve in Kosovo and being sacked as a result.
In terms of size, firepower and professionalism, the Serbian police, under the control of President Milosevic's closest associates, compares favourably with the largely conscript-based army. The police are relatively well paid and their special forces have weapons normally associated with an army - helicopters, armoured personnel carriers and mortars.
A regular force of 13,000 police is present in Kosovo, with 21,000 reservists and some 25,000 others who could be transferred there quickly. The police have been doing most of the fighting, and bearing most of the casualties.
Officially the army's role has been limited to protecting Kosovo's border with Albania to try to prevent the smuggling of arms across to the KLA. There have been several reports that the army has gone beyond this role and has been clearing areas near the border of their populations.
Parents of young soldiers gathering in Belgrade many mornings last week have been criticised by some politicians. An extreme right-wing government minister, Mr Vojislav Seselj, has commented that the soldiers are young men, not kindergarten pupils.
A number of parents who joined the protest initially have become frightened of the authorities and dropped out. Others, however, have spoken of the possibility of going on hunger strike in front of public buildings if their demands are not met.