A joke circulating in Belgrade says: "Serbia
until Tokyo, Kosovo until April". But after brisk smiles, the tone gets
more serious. In April 2007 the United Nations Security Council has
been discussing the United Nations special envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan,
announced on 2 February 2007, for the future status of the territory -
which proposes effective independence for Kosovo under international
supervision. A fact-finding mission from a still-divided Security Council is preparing to visit Kosovo as the delicate end-game reaches a vital stage.
The
public feelings in Belgrade about the outcome in Kosovo are more mixed
than might be expected. On the one hand, many would like to turn the
page and start a new life for Serbia within well-defined borders,
resolutely looking towards a European future. On the other, there is
anguish about the fate of Kosovo Serbs and their security, and a fear
that the definitive loss of the territory
will follow with the deportation of the remaining ethnic Serbs from
Kosovo. Between these positions - and within the hearts of people who
espouse them - there is a combination of confusion, powerlessness and
uncertainty.
Srdja Popovic
cannot be labelled a "Serbian nationalist". He was one of the founders
of Otpor, the youth movement that led the struggle to bring down
Slobodan Milosevic. After the 2000 "October revolution" in Serbia, he
was elected a member of parliament, and appointed advisor to prime
minister Zoran Djindjic. After the assassination of Djindjic, he co-founded the Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (Canvas) which is engaged in spreading the experience of "colour revolutions" abroad.
Yet,
Popovic is revolted by the stand of the international community over
Kosovo. What is happening in Kosovo now is a "reverse ethnic
cleansing", he told me, for which "the United States should bomb
Kosovo, but instead they are giving it independence." This malaise is
very much shared by many pro-democratic political activists in
Belgrade, where frustration towards the loss of Kosovo is mixed with
disillusionment with political change after the fall of Milosevic, and
with the unfulfilled promises of the west.
The international community would like to place
"the last piece of the Balkans jigsaw" on the map, the notion being
that independence of Kosovo will end the epic hurricane of violence
that started with the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991-92, and the
internecine wars that followed. UN officials fear that in case the
current situation is frozen further, the growing frustrations among
Kosovo Albanians will lead to violent explosions. There were
demonstrations by some Kosovo Albanians on 10 February after the Ahtisaari plan failed to endorse full independence, and amid violent clashes, UN police in Pristina shot dead two protestors and wounded seventy others. The incident was a disturbing echo of the far more widespread clashes in March 2004 that led to twenty-two deaths among both main populations and scores wounded in orchestrated attacks on Serbian targets.
The latest revisionism
The UN officially wishes to see Kosovo's future
in a "multi-ethnic" society that "(governs) itself democratically". Yet
there is little sign that Kosovo Albanians, Serbs, Roma, and other
minorities will live side-by-side the day after Kosovo becomes
independent. The ethnic Serb enclaves in the north and west of Kosovo,
around the town of Mitrovica, live cut off from their Albanian
neighbours; new roads have been built to allow them to avoid passing
through Albanian-held territories; and even the source of their water
and electricity is different. When Serbs travel, their convoys that
pass through Albanian land is protected by United Nations Interim
Administration Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) troops.
The Serbian authorities - who are relying on Russian and Chinese
support for their stance in the UN Security Council - have rejected
Ahtisaari's plan. On 15 February, the Serbian parliament overwhelmingly
rejected
it. The statements of prime minister Vojislav Kostunica were
particularly harsh: "Serbia warns that, no matter what, it will not be
an accomplice to such violence," and added, "if anyone dares seize
Serbia's territory, it must take into account that it takes full
responsibility for such violence."
Kostunica also dismissed
the fact that 90% of Kosovo's inhabitants are ethnic Albanians, saying:
"we don't need the talk about a sense for reality. The reality is that
Kosovo is part of our territory". The head of the Serbian Radical
Party, Tomislav Nikolic, went further, threatening an uprising in Serbia if the United Nations Security Council accepts the Ahtisaari plan.
Dubravka Stojanovic
is a historian at University of Belgrade. She is a specialist of
contemporary Serb historiography, and studies the manner in which
Serbian history schoolbooks have been revised in the last two decades
(see Dubravka Stojanovic, "Serbia: History to Order", Transitions Online,
20 March 2007). She concludes the current revision of the past is not
on the right track, and that there is a revival of nationalism in
Serbian political as well as academic circles today: "the new wave in
current history is anti-communism... we are not only facing [revision
of] interpretations of the wars in the 1990s but also the second world
war"... this revision is important because the new historical line is
that "the wars of the 1990s were led by the communist Milosevic, and
they keep saying that communism was defeated on 5 October (2000) -
which is not true. Communism was defeated when Milosevic
came to power and he went to war for nationalist ideas (...) he never
said he's going to fight Croatia for the interests of the working
class, he was fighting for Serbia's interests."
The political consequences of this historic revision
are important: Milosevic "did not lead these wars in a proper way
because a communist cannot lead a proper Serbian war. He by definition
does not understand Serbian position and Serbian interests" and in
consequence he could not lead the war of the Serbian nation "until the
end". The implied conclusion is that the new leadership is capable of
better defending Serbian national interests, and if they had been in
power in the 1990s Serbia would have scored victories and not a series
of defeats.
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Also in openDemocracy on Serbian politics and Kosovo in the early 2000s: Dejan Djokic, "Serbia: one year after the October revolution"
(18 October 2001) Dejan Djokic, "Serbian presidential elections" (18 September 2002) Katerina Bezgachina, "Serbia: the election that wasn't"
(23 October 2002) Dejan Djokic, "The assassination of Zoran Djindjic"
(13 March 2003) Dusan Velickovic, "Belgrade: war crimes in daily life"
(28 June 2005) Julie A Mertus, "Slobodan Milosevic: myth and responsibility" (16 March 2006) Eric Gordy, "The Milosevic account"
(17 March 2006) Vesna Goldsworthy, "Au revoir, Montenegro?" (23 May 2006) Eric Gordy, "Serbia's elections: less of the same"
(23 January 2007) TK Vogel, "Kosovo: a break in the ice"
(2 February 2007) Marko Attila Hoare, "Kosovo: the Balkans' last independent state" (12 February 2007) |
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After the declaration
What will happen the day after Kosovo is declared independent? "The Albanians will make a big party", said Dejan Anastasijevic, a reporter from Belgrade weekly Vreme
and an expert on Kosovo. "But the Serb National Council [which
represents Kosovo Serbs] will declare its own independence" from
Kosovo, and try to keep the links between the region of Mitrovica and
Belgrade. "There will not be violence, not immediately. But after few
months it is a possibility", according to Anastasijevic. A few days
after our discussion, Dejan Anastasijevic himself was a victim of violent attack: on 14 April his house was targeted by two grenades, though luckily no one at home was hurt (see Dejan Anastasijevic, "The Price of Speaking Out in Serbia", Time, 17 April 2007).
"Part
of the reason why changes are so slow in Serbia is that we are
intentionally humiliated by the international community", said Srdja
Popovic. This feeling of humiliation is the result of Serbia's
inability to move neither forwards, nor make a definite retreat. Kosovo
was lost by Belgrade following the 1999 war
between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (yes, it was Yugoslavia at
the time) and Nato, when after eleven weeks of aerial bombing,
Milosevic gave in to the demands and withdrew his forces from Kosovo.
Yet, in the current political atmosphere in Serbia, the fact that
Kosovo was lost back in 1999 is hardly mentioned by the political
elite, and the most vestigial consent to Kosovo's independence is seen
as "betrayal".
Since the 5 October 2000 revolution,
Serbia continues to be haunted by the national question. The
international community continues its pressure to hand suspected war
criminals to the international court at The Hague; the relationship
between Serbia and Montenegro, after long discussions and a referendum,
was decided in May 2006 by Montenegro declaring
its independence; and the status of Kosovo continues to sap energy much
needed elsewhere. On all those matters, Serbian society remains
polarised between conservative nationalist positions, pro-western
democrats, and an intermediate group reflected by Kostunica's attempt
to articulate a desire for "national unity".
Today, the
fact is that most of Kosovo is outside the rule of the Serbian state.
The return of this territory to Serbian rule could only be made
possible by the use of massive violence. Many people in Belgrade think
that most Serbian leaders - despite their bellicose positions - are
conscious that Kosovo is "lost". Yet in the current political
atmosphere, no political party - with the notable exception of the
marginal Liberal Democratic Party of Cedomir Jovanovic (which fused with the Civil Alliance of Serbia [GSS] on 7 April 2007) - is capable of publicly supporting the Kosovo's self-determination.
Belgrade must decide what is most important in the Kosovo issue: the land or the people?
If it is the land, the problem is one of symbolism, identity politics,
and myth-making - which cannot be addressed by pragmatic political
steps. If it is the people - the security and well-being of Kosovo
people, minority as well as majority - then a totally new approach is
needed. For the moment, Belgrade is a city in suspension, not knowing
in which direction it should take its next step.
