Syndicate: Some thoughts on Belgrad

["Michael Benson" <michael.benson@pristop.si>]

[also to nettime]
 
1. Listening to Kustunica's lengthy interview on TV Serbia last night, I 
suddenly realized that extent to which the madness of the last decade -- a 
madness that consumed an entire country and took hundreds of thousands of lives 
-- was the extension of the pathologies of one diseased, brilliantly cunning, 
and utterly ruthless man. The question arises of whether there even would have 
been armed conflict anywhere in the former Yugoslavia if he hadn't stabbed his 
mentor Stambolic in the back in 1987, and seized control of the Serbian 
socialist party. Would Yugoslavia still exist? Or if not, would it have been an 
amicable divorce, as with the Czechs and Slovaks? I think more likely the latter 
-- and in that maybe I underestimate the Balkans (always a dangerous move). But 
I remember very clearly the mood in Slovenia in 1989 and '90. The majority of 
Slovenes thought it was too risky to go the way of a separate state. Then 
Milosevic's group seized two thirds of the entire federal budget of Yugoslavia 
during the course of one weekend -- and I could almost palpably hear a majority 
of Slovenians click over to the other side as they came to a simultaneous 
realization that it would always and forever be impossible to work with a Serbia 
under the control of that man.
 
As for Croatia, I very much doubt that things would have come to war if it 
hadn't been for the constant and consistent moves by the Serbian side to 
relentlessly fan the ashes of nationalism. After Milosevic consciously started 
that fire in Kosovo in '88. Tudjman was always reactive, not active. But that's 
another discussion.
 
Kostunica's moderation, obvious intelligence, and most of all, repeated 
emphasis on legality and the rule of law (and what's permissible 
constitutionally -- he is after all a constitutional lawyer) is like a window 
opening in a room that has grown exceedingly stuffy over the course of a decade 
and a half. Not to mention the blood on the floor. Even if I disagree with him 
on the issue of the Hague.  
 
2. Watching corpulent Eagleburger, the former US Secretary of State and 
one-time ambassador to Yugoslavia, on TV last night, I could feel my gorge rise. 
(Great name, b.t.w., for an ambassador, isn't it? Not to mention a secretary of 
state?) This is a man who, under Bush, was more than ready to declare to the 
world that the massacres that were taking place in the former Yugoslavia were an 
internal matter, or Europe's business, and in any case the US wasn't at all 
interested in getting involved. (I believe his actual phrase was "this is a 
swamp into which we shouldn't wander", or some such.) Now here he is on TV 
delivering himself of the opinion that we should look the other way while 
Milosevic is given asylum somewhere, presumably in some country like Belarus -- 
and this at a time when it was already clear that Milosevic seems to have lost 
all ability to fight back, and is therefore at the mercy of what the opposition 
wants to do with him! Eagleburger belongs to the Kissengerian school of 
realpolitic, in which moral considerations are scorned as the territory for 
wimpy liberals, presumably because K qualifies as one himself (something rarely 
mentioned during the course of that Pinochet-in-London episode last year). The 
presupposition that Milosevic retains some possibility to fight is supposedly 
the rationale for letting him get away -- but there's no evidence that he has 
that ability. Which just goes to show that Eagleburger is either getting 
increasingly inept in his old age, or simply thinks that apprehending war 
criminals is a bad idea.
 
3. Kostunica paints the Hague tribunal as being a US puppet court, even 
though the US has consistently refused to hand over the results of its high-tech 
spying on Bosnian Serb military communications over the last few years (and 
despite the US resistance to setting up a permanent international war crimes 
tribunal, which would have the possibility of trying US war criminals as well. 
Let's not forget that Kissinger's still alive...) On the other hand, CNN's guy 
Alessio Vinci says that Kostunica isn't making it a "high priority" 
that Milosevic be handed over to the Hague -- which makes it seem like he's only 
holding his cards close to his chest while M remains at large, and might 
consider it. My strong view is that Serbia will never recover its balance and 
the possibility of returning to something like normality unless it hands of 
Mladic, Karadzic, Milosevic, and the other mass murderers (Seselj, for example). 
It would be too much to hope that they could be tried in Serbia. It would also 
be interesting if TV Serbia opens its airwaves, for example, to a program like 
the BBC's "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation" (Allen Little and Laura 
Silber). But it will take a long time to undo the damage done by 13 years of 
relentless nationalist propaganda (see point 1).
 
4. If Kosovo came up in the Kostunica interview, I didn't hear it because 
CNN cut away early. But clearly this is bad news to the Kosovo Albanians (sorry, 
I can't bring myself to use one of those politically-correct "Kosov@" 
spellings). I'm afraid that the West, pushed by the French (who don't want their 
collaboration with Karadzic brought into an open court) will now move rapidly to 
forgive and forget the Bosnian butchery and decade-plus of apartheid crimes in 
Kosovo. Part of this will involve a re-think of the status of Kosovo, which in 
any case is in a kind of bureaucratic purgatorio state, with the jury out on if 
they will be ushered back to hell or allowed a shot at self-government. My own 
view is that the Serbs gave up any right to Kosovo with their behavior there 
since 1988. Not to mention the demographics -- even before the war last 
year.
 
5. I happened to be in Belgrade, waiting for two months for a Soviet visa, 
when Milosevic seized power in '87. I'll always remember the panicky atmosphere 
in the city at that time -- not because of Milosevic, but because the inflation 
was so radical that you could clock the dive of the dinar by the hour. There 
were long lines at every store as people desperately tried to amass basic staple 
foods before the prices doubled or tripled during the course of a single day. 
Now we're at the other end of the story, but the economy is if anything much 
worse. If he is really well and truly gone, Serbia will still have to be in a 
kind of intensive care ward for years. Having spent quite a bit of time in 
Croatia recently, I saw for myself how ravaged the Croatian economy and sense of 
self is after Tudjman -- and in Serbia, as I said, it's much more grim. If this 
guy really did spend his ninth life, clearly it's cause for celebration. But 
Serbia will never really recover until it becomes candid with itself about the 
extent of its willing complicity in his madness. In that sense, it's a similar 
situation to the one facing Germany in 1945 -- only the Serbs are already in a 
better position, because they got rid of him themselves. Or are they? It took 
the victorious allies who imposed "de-nazification". Who will do that 
in Serbia? 
 
6. Meanwhile, whatever happens, a celebration's definitely in order.
 
Cheers, MB
 
 
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