Claiming the Black Mountain

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=9026
May 24, 2006

Claiming the Black Mountain
by Nebojsa Malic

Montenegro's Separatists WinAfter seven years of frustrated attempts, the separatist regime inMontenegro celebrated victory Sunday night, as it managed to drum up 55.5percent of the votes necessary to win the independence referendum. Whatwould be a landslide in any Western election was actually the narrowest ofmargins in Montenegro, as the acceptable threshold set by the Brusselsbureaucrats was 55 percent. It took weeks of pro-independence propaganda in government-monopolized media, multi-million-euro public works timed for thereferendum, shady political deals with ethnic minorities, and votershenanigans to secure that .5 percent margin between victory and defeat. And though the unionist parties are demanding a recount and complaining aboutirregularities, Milo Djukanovic and his separatists have already declaredvictory ? and more importantly, just about everyone, including Belgrade, has accepted it as fact.The outcome caused outpourings of joy at the International Crisis Group,among the Kosovo Albanians, and in the ranks of Serbophobic media. Theireagerness to celebrate the "demise of Greater Serbia" suggests that external support for Montenegrin separatism was never about Montenegro at all. Whathappens to the rocky republic next will be of little interest to itserstwhile partisans, as they continue to redraw Balkans maps to match those of 1941.Democracy in ActionIt has been said that it doesn't matter who votes as much as who counts thevotes. In Montenegro this weekend, what mattered was who counted the voters.In the run-up to the referendum, tens of thousands of "Montenegrins" living abroad were registered to vote, while hundreds of thousands who lived inSerbia were denied that right. While separatists complained that because ofthe 55 percent rule, their vote was worth only 0.82 percent of "a Serb's" (meaning a unionist's), it was people like Began Cekic, "a demolition expertfrom Brooklyn," who decided the outcome of the plebiscite.Writes Nicholas Wood of the New York Times:"Figures from the border police suggest that Montenegro's diaspora had a decisive role in passing the referendum. Some 16,000 Montenegrins fromabroad returned in the three days before the election, a number equal to 3percent of the total voter turnout."While people like Cekic, "an ethnic Albanian," flew in to support the separatists, none of the 350,000-plus Montenegrins living in Serbia wereallowed to vote. Most of them consider themselves ethnic Serbs, much asthose in Montenegro who voted against secession. But the Djukanovic regime has systematically denied Montenegro's Serb identity, establishing aseparate "Academy of sciences," a separate church, a separate language, eveninventing a separate history.Alexis de Tocqueville once warned that a democracy can easily become a mere "tyranny of the majority." The great irony of Montenegro's May 21 plebisciteis that the "majority" that won was actually an alliance of minorities ? theideological and pragmatic separatists among the Montenegrin Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Croats, and Muslims, who together outnumbered the plurality ofSerb unionists.The Gloating BeginsWhile news of Montenegro's secession generally merited a short wire reportin most American papers, the media establishment with vested interests in the "Bank of Collective Serbian Guilt" (Deliso) reacted to the outcome withebullience and gloating.The staff correspondent of New York's Newsday told his readers how Sundaynight's referendum was a defeat for "every Serb who ever yearned to expand Serbia's territory" and "a dream of a land called Greater Serbia." Insistingthat the 1990s wars were motivated by this mythical conspiracy ? somethingeven the Hague Inquisition has abandoned, due to complete inability to fabricate even halfway credible evidence ? the Newsday correspondentexplains that:"The hope of the United States, the European Union, and the internationalcommunity at large is that Serbia will accept its modest new status as a landlocked country of under 10 million people, give up its expansionist,nationalist impulses, and embrace the West."This sort of rhetoric is parroted by The Guardian's Ian Traynor, who opinedthat the loss of Montenegro, and the likely loss of Kosovo to follow, "may be just the tonic Serbia needs to divest itself of a disastrous 15 years anda nationalism that has brought nothing but grief." Continues Traynor,"[C]ertainly, the cream of Belgrade's liberal and democratic class is happy that an independent Montenegro also means, finally, an independent Serbiathat can get on with rebuilding itself."The "cream" he is referring to are people like Sonja Biserko, who told theLA Times that Montenegro's secession "marked the end of Serbia's 'imperialambitions.'" There's something incongruous about Biserko, the leadingsupporter of the Empire, talking about some supposed Serbian imperialism. In her Serbophobic crusade, she has supported the NATO bombing and advocatedthe occupation and forced "reeducation" of Serbia. That's some "humanrights" record, indeed.One of Biserko's detractors once asked the rhetorical question: How small would Serbia have to be for them to no longer consider it "imperialist" and"aggressive"? The answer he postulated, based on the Jacobin language ofBiserko and the rest of the "liberal and democratic class," was, "Never small enough."Taking a CueAlbanian separatists in the occupied province of Kosovo have cheeredSunday's results the loudest.Alex Anderson of the International Crisis Group, which has championed Montenegrin and Albanian separatism, did not hide his pleasure at theoutcome of Sunday's plebiscite, commenting that "there's an expectation ofdomino-effect" in Kosovo now."Before the end of the year, Kosovo, too, will join Montenegro as a new state, and these new countries will be an important factor for stability ofthe whole region," said the Albanian "prime minister" of Kosovo, Agim Ceku.A commentator named Dukagjin Gorani distilled the Albanian argument thus: if 650,000 residents of Montenegro have the right to independence, why wouldn'tthe 2 million Albanians in Kosovo? One could respond that Montenegro was a"republic" in the old Yugoslavia, and that according to the EU's own ruling from 1991 only "republics" had the right to self-determination andsecession, not provinces or peoples. That was certainly the argument usedagainst the separatist movements of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. But the Abramowitz Doctrine clearly rejects the application of principles tothe Balkans. Arguments rejected out of hand when they came from 2 millionSerbs are now widely recognized as valid when coming from 2 million Albanians. It's all in who does the rejecting and the recognizing, you see.AcceptanceReactions in Belgrade have been a mixture of shock, disbelief, sorrow, andsatisfaction. The expression most wire services used was "grudging acceptance." By Tuesday afternoon, Serbian President Boris Tadic ? now defacto a full head of state ? publicly announced Serbia's acceptance of theplebiscite results. It isn't quite clear whether he had the authority to do so, but the notoriously blurry lines of authority in Serbia have just becomeeven more fluid.To many in Serbia, Montenegro's separation comes as a relief, after almostnine years of incessant provocations and tension-building by the separatists. Admittedly, the sundering will abolish the costly and uselessunion government, for years almost entirely funded by Serbian taxpayers.According to the charter negotiated in 2002, Serbia will automatically succeed to all international memberships, treaties, and charters, whileMontenegro will have to start from scratch. Abolition of the Union will haveanother consequence ? the independence of Serbia from Javier Solana, the man who presided over Serbia's 1999 bombing, and who was instrumental increating the Union charter.And yet, Montenegro's departure comes as a body blow to the Serb nationalconscience. Quite the contrary from Imperial claims of "Greater Serbia," the prevailing view in Serbia itself has for decades been the Communist-inducedprovincialism, which regarded their close relatives in Croatia, Bosnia, andMacedonia as somehow different and alien. Montenegro, however, had always been regarded as more quintessentially Serb than Serbia itself. Throughoutthe 19th century, Austria-Hungary did its best to keep Serbia and Montenegroapart, finally failing in 1913. After the Great War, Montenegro was annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia, something the tactless Serbian monarch handledabout as gracefully as the creation of Yugoslavia.Even so, it was not until the Italian occupation of 1941-45 and thesubsequent Communist creation of the "People's Republic of Montenegro" that the idea emerged of a "Montenegrin" ethnic identity as distinctly separatefrom Serb. Djukanovic's brand of separatism did not appeal to freedom from"Milosevic's tyranny" or notions of regional autonomy ? it rooted itself firmly in this anti-Serb concept of Montenegrin nationality. When even theproudest Serbs go as far to deny their Serb heritage? what does it meananymore? This is the sort of question the foreign backers of Montenegrin independence wanted asked, for the explicit purpose of forcing Serbia to"accept its modest new status" and "embrace the West." (Newsday)The loss of compass in Belgrade is perhaps best described by Monday's call from Vuk Draskovic, soon-to-be-former foreign minister of the now defunctUnion, to reestablish monarchy in Serbia. While a great idea in principle,Draskovic chose to justify it as "a shortcut to full membership in EU and NATO." What's Next?The true consequences of Montenegro's separation remain to be seen. Serbiaobviously has a lot of soul-searching to do, even as it is facing enormouspressure to surrender Kosovo. In the rocky republic itself, life after secession does not look to be all milk and honey, as the separatistspromised their electorate. For years, Montenegro has lived on U.S. foreignaid, while Serbia subsidized its share of government expenses and foreign debt. Now that it can no longer be used as a leverage against Belgrade,Podgorica may find its American sugar daddy inexplicably AWOL. Moreover, itsrulers now owe favors to Croats, Albanians, and Muslims from the north ? favors they may have to repay with special privileges, maybe even territory.For years, Milo Djukanovic wanted to be president of an independent state.Now he has his wish, and may well live to regret it, as flags, marches, and hymns give way to grim realities he can no longer blame on Belgrade.