August 14, 2003

A BALKAN TRAVELOGUE (1)

by Srdja Trifkovic

After a fortnight in the Balkans, spent in at least three and perhaps as many as five countries, the task of writing a concise report intelligible to a non-specialist outsider presents a challenge almost as formidable as explaining the recent war itself.

Take the number of countries visited: to the uninitiated, Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia add up to three. Montenegro's ruling separatists would insist, however, that the union with Belgrade-inaugurated under European Union auspices earlier this year-is a temporary device, confederal in nature, which implicitly accepts Podgorica's de facto independence. By visiting Serbia and Montenegro, they'd argue, I was in two countries that merely happen to be represented by one UN seat for the time being. That view is disputed by many Montenegrins who are loath to be separated from their kinsmen in Serbia-which explains the separatists' reluctance to stage a referendum and decide the issue once and for all-but in the Balkans the will of the people seldom stops their rulers' determination to do what they know is best for them.

Bosnia-Herzegovina illustrates the point even more aptly. Its foreign rulers, headed by a failed British politician by the name of Paddy Ashdown, want to blend the two entities established under the Dayton Accords-the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) and the Muslim-Croat Federation-into a centralized, unitary state ruled from Sarajevo. They insist on establishing the type of "multiethnic" arrangement imposed from above that had failed so tragically in the broader, Yugoslav context. Their efforts continue to be frustrated, however, by the stubborn refusal of "Bosnians" of all three faiths to return to the model of enforced unity that produced the war in the first place. Last fall they expressed their preferences by voting en masse for the three nationalist parties, and even within the "Federation" its Muslim and Croat components remain firmly segregated. While the entities lack the legal attributes of sovereign statehood, it is difficult to imagine the three communities staying together under any "Bosnian" framework once the "international community" stops propping up the Dayton edifice. Go from Serb Trebinje to Croat Mostar to Muslim Gorazde and on to Serb Visegrad, and you'll grasp that in reality Bosnia-Herzegovina is three countries, not one, and that a majority of its citizens do not see it as a permanent answer to their aspirations.

In Serbia the gap between the rulers and the citizenry is also wide-wider, in fact, than at any time under Milosevic. The ruling DOS coalition is composed of an array of small political parties, all but one without prior parliamentary representation. They have been able to take power solely due to ex-president Vojislav Kostunica's blunder in accepting them under his aegis at the general election in December 2000. Having consequently conspired to rob him and his party of power and influence, the Dossists ("Dosovci") continue to rule without electoral legitimacy and under a series of dubious quasi-constitutional arrangements calculated to postpone the day of reckoning at the polls. They need the time primarily to complete the sellout of Serbia's remaining profitable companies to themselves and their cronies.

A series of privatization-related scandals most recently included the disclosure of two middle-ranking government officials' involvement in money-laundering schemes through bank accounts in the Seychelles. One of the two men, Nemanja Kolesar (32) initially offered the eccentric explanation that he was given hundreds of thousands of euros from his parents-not known for independent wealth-as a wedding present, but subsequently changed the story and claimed that the money was lent to him by the other accused, Zoran Janjusevic. In reality the money came from the kickbacks that they (and possibly other government officials) received in connection with the privatization of a cement factory near Popovac, in central Serbia. The funds were paid into their Seychelles bank accounts as soon as the company was sold to the Swiss company Holcim.

It is now clear that the clampdown on crime in the aftermath of Zoran Djindjic's assassination last March-the famed "Operation Sword"-was no more than the crackdown by government-sponsored oligarchs on their less savvy former associates who had fallen out of favor. The real powers behind the throne, such as the King of Balkan Tobacco, Stanko Subotic known as "Cane," remain inviolable, just as Berezovsky had been at the time of his clampdown on Gussinsky. "Once the redistribution of assets is complete it will matter but little who is the nominal power holder," says a former senior government advisor now in deep disfavor: "Serbia will be but another oligarch-ruled satrapy, part-Paraguay, part-Moldova."

Aware of their unpopularity, some government leaders-most notably Serbian prime minister Zoran Zivkovic, federal defense minister Boris Tadic, and foreign minister Goran Svilanovic-court foreign support and favors, including the offer of Serbian troops for US-led "peacekeeping" operations around the world. Their latest gesture, summary retirement of 16 most senior generals-including many who had distinguished themselves in resisting Clinton's war against the Serbs in 1999-is widely seen as a mortal blow to the ability of the Army to respond to similar future threats. Premier Zivkovic said the decision would help usher in a "young and reformed army leadership"; the true meaning of his words may be found in the parallel statement by an advisor to the Union's figurehead president Svetozar Marovic, to the effect that the "reforms" will end when the army is reduced to an anti-terrorist and peacekeeping-trained force of between 15 and 25,000 men.

Many Belgrade intellectuals are despondent by all this. "The twentieth century was an era of the Imperialism of the Lie, but we have now stepped into a new epoch, a century of the Globalized Lie," says former Yugoslav president Dobrica Cosic, a leading writer and foremost dissident of the Tito era. Ours is still a totally ideological society, says he: "Communist lies have been replaced by democratic lies, lavishly funded by foreign powers-that-be. The regime has been changed, but the rule of the Lie in public discourse has not."

Cosic's lament was echoed in a gloomily satirical poem, "A Contribution to the Critique of the Reformist Spirit," by Matija Beckovic, whose work is not unknown to Chronicles readers:
This is the triumph of the First Century!
Hey, this is no longer the First but the Second Century!
Surely we are not going to resort in the Third Century to the methods of the Second!?
The Fourth Century is the end of the darkness of all previous centuries!
Some among us still do not grasp that this is the Fifth, and no longer the Fourth Century!
We are the children of the Sixth Century, freed from the prejudices of the Fifth!
The Seventh Century is miles ahead of its predecessors!
Is the Eighth Century not the end of the Seventh?
A hundred years was needed to grasp that we live in the Ninth, not the Eighth Century!
Let's be worthy of the Tenth Century, of which the boldest minds of the Ninth could but dream!
The Eleventh Century is mercifully beyond the bloody Tenth Century!
Let us not allow the Eleventh Century to be repeated in the Twelfth!
With the dark experience of the Twelfth, we can boldly face the Thirteenth Century!
How long this tyranny? This is the Fourteenth Century!
How long this injustice? This is the Fifteenth Century!
How long this misery? This is the Sixteenth Century!
Down with the horrors of the Sixteenth, this is the victorious Seventeenth Century!
The Eighteenth Century gives us a chance never to repeat the Seventeenth!
The Nineteenth Century is a successful exit from the tragedy of the Eighteenth.
The Twentieth Century has been and remains the crown of the humanity's century-long strivings!
The Twenty-First Century is not the end of the Second, but the beginning of the Third Millenium!
(To be continued. Tomorrow: Why everyday life in Serbia still can be joyful.)

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