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-------- Original Message -------- Subject: IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 22 Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 16:29:26 +0100 From: "Tony Borden" <tony@iwpr.net> Reply-To: listmanagers@iwpr.net To: info@iwpr.net WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 22, 20 April 1999 CATCHING PILOTS, LOSING YOUR MIND. Belgrade's bunker mentality is contagious, says Gordana Igric, and you can catch it above as well as below ground. Ask the local spy. THE UN'S SURPRISING SUPPORT. The Security Council has not authorised the bombing. But whatever the legalities of NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia, the action has broad support at the UN. Ian Williams in New York reports. COMMENT: SERBIA'S WAR WITH HISTORY. The propaganda battle stretches well into the past. Official Serbia boasts of its defiant and heroic history. The only problem, argues Christopher Bennett, is the facts. ***************************************************** IWPR's network of leading correspondents in the region provide inside analysis of the events and issues driving crises in the Balkans. The reports are available on the Web in English, Serbian and Albanian; English-language reports are also available via e-mail. For syndication information, contact Anthony Borden <tony@iwpr.net>. The project is supported by the European Commission and Press Now. *** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net *** To subscribe to this service, send an e-mail to <majordomo@iwpr.org.uk>; in the body of the email write the message <subscribe balkan-reports>. To unsubscribe, write <unsubscribe balkan-reports>, Alternatively, contact Duncan Furey directly for subscription assistance at <duncan@iwpr.org.uk>. For further details on this project and other information services and media programmes, visit IWPR's Website: <www.iwpr.net>. Editor: Anthony Borden. Assistant Editing: Christopher Bennett, Alan Davis. Internet Editor: Rohan Jayasekera. Translation by Alban Mitrushi. "Balkan Crisis Report" is produced under IWPR's Balkan Crisis Information Project. The project seeks to contribute to regional and international understanding of the regional crisis and prospects for resolution. The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is a London-based independent non-profit organisation supporting regional media and democratic change. Lancaster House, 33 Islington High Street, London N1 9LH, United Kingdom Tel: (44 171) 713 7130; Fax: (44 171) 713 7140 E-mail:info@iwpr.org.uk; Web: www.iwpr.net The opinions expressed in "Balkan Crisis Report" are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. Copyright (C) 1999 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting <www.iwpr.net>. ************************************************* CATCHING PILOTS, LOSING YOUR MIND Belgrade's bunker mentality is contagious, and you can catch it above as well as below ground. Ask the local spy. By Gordana Igric There are two ways to lose your mind in Belgrade. One is to seek refuge in an air raid shelter. At least half of Belgrade now spends the hours of bombing in bunkers. The other is to watch television. At least this is what a little-known writer friend thinks. A few years ago he wrote a book critical of the regime. Now he fears that because of the book, the regime is about to knock on his door. He is convinced that his flat is bugged. As a result, over the dinner he prepared for a handful of like-minded friends, everybody whispers. Thus, imperceptibly, together with his guests, he too has acquired the bunker mentality which afflicts more and more of Belgrade's population. These days, everyone in Belgrade carries their own bunkers in their head. Ever since the bombing campaign started, two families with four children have lived together in the air raid shelter at the bottom of their building in the city centre, only occasionally running up to their flats to fetch something. They use Styrofoam for beds, prepare coffee underground, and leave the television permanently switched on. Mika is a plumber, Slobodan a salesman. During the day, their children, who have not attended school since the bombing started, paint slogans on pieces of cardboard that they then take to the open-air concerts that are daily events in central Belgrade. The placards read: "Serbia", "Down with NATO", "Clinton-Hitler". While making the placards, they sing along with the patriotic songs emanating from the television. Their mothers, both housewives, spend their time on the phone which they have installed in the basement. They call their relatives in the countryside and discuss how together they can "catch pilots". Catching pilots has become a national sport. Every day state television (and there is no other) claims that some ten NATO planes are shot down over this or that village. So the two women share suggestions as to the appropriate punishment for the captured pilots. One reports approvingly that a pilot caught near the village of Mladenovac was beaten to death with shovels. The other disagrees with this approach. When caught, she says, the pilots should be tied to Belgrade's bridges. In addition to pilots, spies crop up regularly in conversation. Both these women have heard that a car with a Belgian licence plate was spotted near the city's police station. Loyal citizens reported this to the police, who immediately arrested the spies. Their mission, it emerged, was to place homing beacons in blocks of flats. The fathers have a different routine. During the day, when there is no bombing, they sleep in the bunker. At night, when air-raid sirens echo across the city, they climb to the roof of their block of flats to observe. With the confidence of experts, they explain to each other where the air defences are located and the types of radar that the Yugoslav Army possesses. They place bets on how many NATO planes will be shot down that night. They haven't given up hope that at least one pilot will land on the roof on their building . . . Indeed, betting has become a popular pastime in Belgrade cafes these days. Drinkers, who boycott Coca-Cola since it is a symbol of everything American, compile lists of potential targets for NATO's war planes, and place bets on whether it will be the military headquarters, the main police station in 29 November Street, or some bridge anywhere in Serbia. Bridges have recently been a safe bet. More than ever, television shapes the warped reality. The language is always along the lines of "NATO's criminal machinery", "the criminals from the Black House", "the monstrous American armada", "the criminal missiles of the world's neo-Nazis", "the world's killers and executioners gathered round the hardened murderer Clinton". Occasionally, other issues feature: the planting of sunflower seeds is under way, the distribution of diesel fuel for the spring harvest is proceeding without problems. In other words, everything is under control. Miki Vujovic, director of TV Palma, a commercial station famous for pornography and pop videos, has refined his television presenting skills in tune with the war. He addresses the public each night, dressed in black, lying back in his armchair. Twirling a pen in his fingers, he explains, enthusiastically, that Serbs possess a noble gene that predisposes them to martyrdom. He suggests that this gene should be removed once and for all and concludes his monologue with a message to foreign troops: Just come, you will not return. Between the television bombing and the real thing, other news passes most people by. This is the case, for example, with the proposal of Justice Minister Dragoljub Jankovic that conditions for detention be changed as a result of the war, as well as conditions for the protection of private mail and property. Capital punishment is outlawed by the Yugoslav constitution, yet Jankovic proposed that it be reintroduced. Some ten days ago, the Serbian President, Milan Milutinovic, decreed, among other things, that the Ministry of the Interior pass "a measure for sending all persons who represent a danger for the security of the Republic to a certain place." It is impossible to predict who the Ministry will deem "dangerous", much less where that "certain place" might be. But one lonely Belgrader may live to regret his bravado. Mocking the regime, he has scribbled on a wall: "I am the spy in the neighbourhood." Gordana Igric is an independent journalist from Belgrade. THE UN'S SURPRISING SUPPORT The Security Council has not authorised the bombing. But whatever the legalities of NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia, the action has broad support at the UN. By Ian Williams in New York The NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia may not have the UN's seal of approval in the sense of a formal Security Council resolution authorising it. But it does have support from a number of delegates who otherwise look askance at US military interventions. The Islamic bloc, for example, seems pleasantly surprised to discover that US weapons are not for exclusive use against Muslims. Their support has ensured that perennial US critics like Cuba and Iraq in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) have not had their way--which in this case was an attempt to get the NAM to adopt a position condemning the bombing of Belgrade while overlooking the killing of Kosovo Albanians. In addition, considering the 50-plus Security Council resolutions against rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), and the decade-long trail of blood across the Balkans that the UN itself has collectively traced to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's door, the Europeans and many other countries have shown themselves prepared to overlook the failure to get UN approval, which they know is the result of Russian veto threats. That feeling is reinforced by uncompromisingly stark daily reports from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other UN agencies on the scale of atrocities in Kosovo. Even so, the Russians and the West were equally surprised at the result of Moscow's attempt to get a Security Council resolution condemning the NATO action shortly after it had begun. Only Russia, China and Namibia voted for, while traditionally anti-Western countries like Malaysia sided with the British, Americans and French to defeat Moscow's proposed resolution by 12-3. NATO did not make as much of this backhanded endorsement as it could, and perhaps should, have. This was partly perhaps out of surprise, but also because of deference to mixed feelings in the US. In Washington, the security establishment does not like to admit that the UN has any business with NATO operations. And US diplomats, used to being outvoted on the defensive end of resolutions against Israel, are hardly in a position to question the appropriateness of a Russian veto. An even more significant indication was the UN Human Rights Committee, which voted 44 votes to one to condemn Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Russia was the sole dissenter, and could only look to the silent support of six abstentions by China, Congo, Cuba, India, Nepal, and South Africa. Of the abstentions, South Africa has shown signs of viewing Milosevic as in some way the heir of Tito, instead of the destroyer of Titoism. India, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has itself been sensitive to criticism of its mistreatment of the country's Muslims, worries about the future fate of the predominantly Muslim province of Kashmir, resents US hegemony, and, incidentally, overlooks its own very similar intervention in Bangladesh (in 1971) when it was part of Pakistan. Nepal tends to follow New Delhi's lead, while Cuba, Congo and China have their own human rights bills to pay. Delegates confess to some ambivalence. The US's long track record of ignoring the UN except when it suits its own purposes inhibits some of them from vociferous support, even if they would vote for the NATO action in the end. As a result, the US has been unable to use the "Uniting for Peace" procedure, a measure it originally pioneered during the Cold War to take issues vetoed (by the USSR at the time) to the General Assembly. Through this procedure, a simple majority in the General Assembly can vote to authorise an action by the organisation, including legitimising military operations. Last year, the frequent US veto on Israeli issues led the Palestinians and Arab states to turn the procedure against its originator to overcome the US veto of a resolution condemning Israeli behaviour in the Occupied Territories. In this way, the US has effectively spent the past year or so detracting from the legitimacy of its own invention, thus precluding use of such a procedure now for the Balkans. Ironically, the Russians have blustered about using the same procedure to overturn the defeat of their Security Council resolution condemning the bombing of Serbia. It is indeed bluster, since the West, bolstered by Muslim support, would have little problem mustering a General Assembly majority. But Russia's efforts on this issue are targeted at a home audience rather than towards effective diplomatic results. The Russians have also spoken of a reference from the General Assembly to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to determine the legality of NATO's action. Since the ICJ has already ruled that there is a prima facie case of genocide to answer against rump Yugoslavia, and since the Bosnian government is still pursuing the case, this, once again, must be regarded as pandering to Russian public opinion rather than serious diplomacy. The other UN actor, is, of course, the Secretary General. Kofi Annan's line is in fact very robust. Initially, he issued a somewhat confused statement recognising that when diplomacy fails, military action can be necessary--but almost wistfully wishing that the force had UN sanction. His advisers stepped in to make it plain that they preferred the media to emphasise the first part. The following week while he was in Europe, Annan's message to Milosevic was even less compromising. Belgrade had to withdraw its forces, and allow the Kosovo Albanians to return under the protection of an international force, before the NATO bombing would stop. He also used the word genocide, perhaps under the influence of Mary Robinson, the outspoken UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Reflecting the confusion of the allies, this had the Quai D'Orsai and the State Department both protesting to the UN. (The UK government, notably, has used the G-word with abandon.) Dismissing Annan's proposal as "more or less" the same as NATO's and Clinton's, Vladislav Jovanovic, Yugoslav charge d'affaires at the UN, reiterated Belgrade's opposition to any foreign military presence when he rejected it on Friday 16 April. It may be slightly less galling for Milosevic to climb down to Annan than to NATO, and the Secretary General is eager to play a role, if only to rescue the organisation from the marginal position that Security Council deadlock has condemned it to. However, his efforts there will not be helped by another UN agency. Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in The Hague, has hinted that the case is building for an open indictment against Milosevic. Indeed, there have been suspicions that he has had a sealed indictment against him for some time. "You don't see him leaving Belgrade for talks," one senior court official commented to me last October. That may be interpreted as good news in some quarters, but it is hardly conducive to a UN-brokered accord. In the end, the UN is likely to have to settle for the inglorious role of putting its seal on whatever deal emerges from the ruins of the region. It may give its "blessing" to an international force in Kosovo, but the ghosts of Srebrenica suggest that it is unlikely to be trusted with operational control. Ian Williams, UN correspondent for the Nation and author of "The UN for Beginners", was for many years US editor of the IWPR magazine, WarReport. COMMENT: SERBIA'S WAR WITH HISTORY The propaganda battle stretches well into the past. Official Serbia boasts of its defiant and heroic history. The only problem is the facts. By Christopher Bennett As Serbia challenges the might of the West, many Serbs boast that their history proves that despite the imbalance in firepower, they will never be vanquished. The trouble is that the version of the past recounted in Belgrade does not stand up to scrutiny. Serbia is not only fighting NATO, it is also at war with history. The passion and apparent expertise with which so many Serbs talk so often and at such length about their country and its heroic past conceal a depressing lack of balance and understanding. Opinions are almost invariably based on prejudice and conditioning. From the infamous 1389 battle of Kosovo to the events of this century, history and myth have been intertwined into a quasi-religious national creed. Anyone who questions the articles of faith is branded a heretic. According to the Kosovo legend, the Serbian leader, Prince Lazar, was offered on the eve of battle a choice between a kingdom on earth or in heaven. Vowing that "It is better to die in battle than to live in shame," he chose the other world, and was duly killed the following day in what is commemorated as a glorious defeat ending the medieval Serbian empire and ushering in nearly five centuries of darkness under alien, Ottoman rule. And indeed, a battle did take place on St. Vitus's day in 1389 in Kosovo Polje, the field of the blackbird, in which both Prince Lazar and Sultan Murat, the Ottoman leader, were killed. That much is clear. However, almost every other aspect of the battle--including the result itself--remains a mystery. Based on the historical evidence, both the Serbian and the Ottoman armies were probably multinational forces. Indeed, it is likely that most of the Christian peoples of the Balkans, including the Albanians, contributed troops to the Serbian cause and that Serbs and Albanians fought on both sides. Concerning the outcome, it seems that the battle was not as decisive as it has been portrayed. The result was more a draw than an Ottoman victory, since the Turkish forces subsequently withdrew from the region. The Serbian empire itself had disintegrated some 30 years earlier, though independent statehood remained for another 70 years. Historical myths are by no means exclusive to Serbs, of course, nor are they necessarily harmful. Indeed, most societies draw strength from legends--whether Arthurian or about Washington and a cherry tree--which, if critically examined, are historically unsound. The difference with the Kosovo covenant, however, is that it has been abused to inculcate a sense of victimisation in Serbs which has blinded them to the plight of other peoples in the Balkans. The deadly Greater Serbian agenda for the late 20th century grew out of the thinking and writing of Dobrica Cosic, one of Serbia's most distinguished novelists, a writer of popular, historical epics. Cosic had been a partisan during the Second World War and a friend of Tito's for more than 20 years, yet he could not come to terms with Tito's attempts to emancipate Yugoslavia's Albanians and was purged for nationalism in 1968. In his frustration after his fall from grace, Cosic developed a complex and paradoxical theory of Serb national persecution. Over two decades, this evolved into the Greater Serbian program which Slobodan Milosevic first hijacked and then pursued. The Serb national psyche which has so revolted the world since 1991 is thus not the product of centuries of historical evolution, but has been deliberately manufactured and intensively cultivated by the Serbian media since Milosevic's arrival in power in 1987. Myth, fantasy, half-truths and brazen lies have been packaged each night into television news. The conspiracy theory dreamed up by frustrated nationalists such as Cosic in the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s became the literal truth. Every conceivable event from Serb history was dredged up and distorted to feed the persecution complex of ordinary people who, at a time of collapsing living standards, were gradually taken in by the barrage of xenophobia. The atmosphere was so heated and the campaign so all-encompassing that people lost touch with reality. According to the new orthodoxy, Serbs were victims exploited by and in danger from Yugoslavia's other peoples. While they had made huge sacrifices in blood to create Yugoslavia and had been victorious in war, they had allegedly been cheated in peace and thus divided between several republics in Tito's decentralised state. Like any conspiracy theory, there is a kernel of truth in the new Serb orthodoxy. But it is a very small kernel. Consider, for example, relations between Serbs and Croats. While contemporary propagandists (on both sides) claim that these peoples have been at each others' throats since time immemorial, Serb-Croat rivalry is actually a 20th century phenomenon. In the 19th century, Croat nationalists, who were preoccupied with a struggle against Austrians and Hungarians, had actually been great admirers of Serbia and the keenest advocates of a Yugoslav state. And the ruling party in the Croatian parliament in 1914 which voted to go to war with Serbia was the Serb-Croat Coalition. And then there is the Second World War. For Serbs, this conflict is the ultimate proof that they have a near monopoly on suffering and can therefore do no wrong. After all, they will tell you that they fought together with the Allies against the Nazis and suffered great casualties. But is this really an accurate picture of what actually happened? To a large extent Second World War in Yugoslavia was several civil wars which had little to do with the world war raging outside the country. All groups, with the exception of the Slovenes, fought against Serbs, though not in unison, while extreme nationalists on all sides were able to indulge their wildest fantasies. The backbone of Tito's partisan army initially consisted largely of Serbs escaping Ustasa atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia, but not of Serbs from Serbia proper. Apart from an immediate uprising in 1941, which was savagely put down, Serbia remained more or less quiet until close to the end of the war. Hitler installed a Quisling leader, Gen. Milan Nedic, who was loyal to the Nazis. In the absence of fighting, Nedic was able to wipe out Serbia's Jewish community under German supervision, more efficiently than the Ustasas could wipe out the Jews of Croatia and Bosnia. Nevertheless, Serb propagandists in the 1990s did not hesitate to claim a special affinity between Serbs and Jews. The issue of war dead has also been seriously distorted. The official number of Yugoslavs who died fighting against the Axis powers was 1.7 million. The figure was only a rough calculation arrived at immediately after the war for reparations and propaganda purposes. Tito aimed both to maximise war compensation from Germany and to demonstrate to the world the scale of Yugoslavia's heroism and suffering. But in Serb nationalist circles, operating on the principle "the more the better", estimates of Serb dead extend to absurd levels--sometimes upwards of 700,000 at the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp alone. During the 1980s, however, independent research into the question by two men, Bogoljub Kocovic, an emigre Serb, and Vladimir Zerjavic, a Croat, produced very similar results. Both investigations were based not on body counts or survivors' recollections but on computer analysis of census returns and demographic indices. According to Kocovic, whose figures are marginally higher than those of Zerjavic, a total of about 1,014,000, or 6.4 per cent of Yugoslavia's 1941 population, died during or in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War on all sides. According to their findings, in absolute terms, Serbs were the biggest losers, with 487,000 dead. The figures are shocking--and numbers alone cannot adequately convey the horrors. But mercifully they are well below the official number, and certainly those of the most extreme nationalists. Yugoslavia's contribution to the overall Allied effort has also been greatly exaggerated, first by the victors themselves and more recently by statesmen wishing to justify a policy of non-intervention in the present conflict. Given the extent and the chaos of Yugoslavia's own civil wars, Germany never needed to commit large numbers of troops. The only time when significant numbers of German troops were in Yugoslavia was during the initial 12-day invasion in 1941 and in 1944 when units stationed in Greece retreated across the country. Otherwise, Germany relied on its allies, the Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians, and on local collaborators to keep Yugoslavia under control. The fighting itself took place largely in Bosnia. No matter what aspect of Serbian history one cares to examine, the official version emanating from Belgrade appears to be at odds with the facts. What is especially depressing is that not so long ago, before Milosevic's emergence, Serbia was, in many way, the most liberal and progressive of Yugoslavia's republics. The Serbian media were remarkably open by the standards of eastern Europe and political opposition was tolerated, if not encouraged. Looking back further in Serbian history it is possible to interpret many events in a very different manner and even to highlight periods of enlightenment and cooperation between Serb and non-Serb. Whatever the results of the NATO campaign, Serbia's future may ultimately depend above all on its war with its own history. Christopher Bennett is former director of the International Crisis Group in the Balkans and author of Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse (Chris Hurst). IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 22 -- ### -- ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/east/ to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress