Syndicate: an article: kosovo crisis as hatred power engine]

[Zarana Papic <zpapic@f.bg.ac.yu>]

Zarana Papic
Women's Studies Center
Belgrade


Kosovo Crisis as Hatred Power Engine


        Kosovo crisis is at the heart of the decade long war drama of
the late country called Yugoslavia. The symbolic
sign of the scope of immensely shallow (mis)understanding of the late
country's destiny is (for us who remember) today
painfully visible in CNN headlines: "War in Yugoslavia". 
        What "Yugoslavia" the world is talking about today? The trick
with people's memory and amnesia is maybe
unintentional, but it's equally misleading. The "Yugoslavia" CNN is
talking about today is exactly the "phantom
Yugoslavia" Milosevic would like us to take it for granted. 
        "Yugoslavia" does not exist any more. Serbia and Montenegro
proclaimed themselves as Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia in 1992, but have never been recognized by UN. Milosevic's
Serbo-centric claim to be the only rightful
"inheritor" of the former Yugoslavia is yet unfulfilled, as its seat in
the UN is still empty. 
        Even more, this war is not the war of this self-proclaimed
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, at all, but only a
war of Milosevic's Serbia. Montenegro is, in an ironic sense, a double
collateral civilian victim: by Milosevic who
persists in keeping her puppet-republic status and by NATO that is
bombing Milosevic controlled military forces there.
        The war in former Yugoslavia practically started in 1987 when
Milosevic, upon his Stalinist style taking
state-power by taking over Serbian Communist Party, started to build up
his power-system on one basic principle: feed
the antagonisms among people - endless series of antagonisms among
Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians:
cultural, historical, ethnic, national and racist antagonisms. And, at
the same time, claim shamelessly to be the only
"true' defender of the "Yugoslavian Idea"
        Yes, "racist" first, because "race/ethnicity/nationality" today
is, in fact, a political category - an
instrument of the "definitive Other" with whom life together is no
longer possible. That's why the Kosovo crisis is at
the heart of the decade long drama of the late country called
Yugoslavia. The destiny of former Yugoslavia was directed
towards war when Milosevic started to feed the hatred of Serbians
against Albanians as the "legitimate" feeling and
even as the "basic" part of "immagined" post-communist Serbian national
identity. When this big, undeniable (as Serbs
and Albanians are not of the same "race") hatred was unleashed, the
series of "minor" hatreds were imminent - and wars
in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were made possible. Now,
the circle of crime came to its starting
point.
        The series of wars in former Yugoslavia is a series of
culturally, politically and military produced hatreds.
Milosevic is a master of handling hatreds to its own ends. Among men,
above all. More precisely, wars in former
Yugoslavia is a series of ill fated, unsuccessful and deadly revengeful
"broken brotherhoods". Tito's Yugoslavia laid
all its hopes in multi-national, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional
federation vitality on one identity/difference
male dominated principle: under the slogan "brotherhood and unity". 
        After a decade full only of "brotherly killings", it's more than
obvious that former Yugoslav "brothers" were
the easiest tool of destructive politics. Milosevic (ab)used the Serb's
"trauma" under Tito as the most lethal
instrument against all other nations. Instead of slowly democratic
process of disillusioning from the Changer-la of
ideological "brotherhood and unity", their waking-up was more like from
a cultural delirium tremens: since 1987
politically and culturally defined "Serbianhood" didn't know exactly
what "it" is but was absolutely ready to find that
out only through hating others, or being coldly indifferent to their
destiny.
         That's why, among other things, in Serbia there has never been
significant democratic alternatives to
war-politics of Milosevic. Even the so-called opposition "men-leaders"
could not help themselves and took part, each to
his abilities, in this "I-don't-mind-if-you-are-cleansed" game. The only
political subjects in Serbia who dared to
challenge this deadly game, since the beginning of wars in 1991, were
some (now very much marginalised) women
politicians and some feminist and pacifist groups, whose significance is
mostly of symbolic and marginal weight. Women (and some men) from
Belgrade's Women in Black were the only
ones who, ever since 1991, raised their voice against hateful
elimination of the Others. They were the only ones who
cared enough and opposed the hate-politics publicly stating: "Bosnian,
Albanian, Croat, Roma women are our sisters".  
        Now, as the series of wars since 1991 came to Kosovo as its
"birth place", the indifference to the destruction
of the Other is more evident than ever. The
"happy-to-persecute-traitors" new marshal law, the media and otherwise
(public&private) legitimated indifference to violating life of many
others, the dominant "taboo" on remembering (not to
mention speaking loud at this moment) that Albanians are human beings
brutally cleansed from Kosovo, and the seductive
narcissim over being (finally) a victim of NATO bombings, shows now so
clearly the real face of all previous wars, of
Kosovo war, and of what politically and historically became of Serbia
today.


Belgrade, May 20th, 1999


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