| Where's Radovan? A Bosnian Serb leader indicted on genocide charges remains at large -- and few seem to care |  | |
| | ||
 Celebici is a remote gnat of a place. A few dozen houses and a church, a couple of hours way up a rough road from the ragged Bosnian hills, surrounded by forested peaks. But it was as big as the headlines it generated when NATO-led forces staged Operation Daybreak there in February 2002, ostensibly hoping to net Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who had been indicted by The Hague's war crimes tribunal for helping to lead a genocide in 1992-1995 that killed up to 200,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims. Helicopters disgorged black-masked troops who kicked in doors and blew open locks as they conducted a door-to-door search. They left empty-handed. Operation Daybreak remains the only serious action the West is known to have conducted to pick up Karadzic. Like Osama bin Laden, Karadzic is well known and physically distinctive. A tall man with a big belly, a dimpled chin and a dramatic gray bouffant, he ought to be difficult to hide. Like Saddam Hussein, he is considered a genocidal murderer whose most horrible crimes were committed a decade ago. And, as in the case of bin Laden, the fact that he remains at large is a cause of great instability throughout a strategically crucial region. Eight years after the Dayton peace accords -- following a process that was supposed to lead to reunification, and despite the efforts of hundreds of foreign aid workers and the expenditure of more than $5 billion -- Bosnia remains fractious and fractured. Efforts to create unity and long-term peace have been frustrated by the continued dominance in the ethnic Serbian state-within-a-state (known as Republika Srpska) of a corrupt clique said to be controlled by Karadzic. And, of course, the fate of the entire area holds lessons for other Western efforts at democracy- and nation-building, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Karadzic's continued freedom leaves the huge numbers of ethnic Muslims and Croats who fled Bosnia during the war, and who have been slowly returning to their prewar homes, with a sense that all has not yet been put right. At the same time, his aura of invincibility has grown among the 700,000 Bosnian Serbs. The NATO military command has increasingly issued tough statements and conducted a number of high-profile "raids" that failed to capture Karadzic. Serious observers consider these nothing but publicity efforts and perhaps attempts to send messages to the Bosnian Serb leadership. For example, troops twice conducted search operations in Pale, Karadzic's wartime capital and the home of his wife and daughter -- surely not the most likely place for Karadzic to hide. There are many obstacles to finding the man, ranging from the ruggedness of the terrain to the fierce loyalty of many locals toward Karadzic. But perhaps the largest obstacle is that the United States and its allies have not dedicated real resources to chasing him down. Many of the NATO soldiers -- 13,000 troops from 35 countries, down from 60,000 after the war -- share no common language, and those few who can speak to soldiers from other countries aren't necessarily inclined to do so. Each contingent has gotten a reputation. American troops -- now just 1, 500, all National Guardsmen, dentists from Ohio and laborers from New York -- are not exactly Special Forces quality and tend to stay pretty close to base. Italian and French troops like to live it up and have perhaps gotten too cozy with some locals. The Brits are the most enthusiastic about actually doing something. And, given their experience among a hostile, armed population in Northern Ireland, they're the best prepared -- and show it through deft use of intelligence and of lightning-fast raids. So far, they have apprehended most of the war criminals -- half of the 24 arrests reported by the NATO force to date have been in their zone. But the areas where Bosnians suspect Karadzic is hiding are controlled by Italian, French, and German troops, none of whom seem eager to fire their guns. The Germans I met in Celebici made clear that it would absolutely not be desirable, for obvious historical reasons, to have Germany in the forefront of a bloody international military incident that involved capturing someone accused of murdering large numbers of innocent people. The French, technically in charge of the area, have been historically close with the Serbs and opposed the creation of the Hague tribunal. On the morning of the Celebici raid, according to military sources, a French officer took a call from a Republika Srpska police officer inquiring about the unusually large NATO presence that day. In the conversation, which was monitored by peacekeeping forces, the Frenchman obliquely referred to the area as being of interest "today in particular." Capturing Karadzic is especially challenging because ordinary people revere him and because some extraordinarily ruthless and powerful people are joined with him at the hip. Everywhere one travels on both sides of the border between Bosnia and Serbia, and in neighboring Montenegro, where Karadzic was born and raised, he is a kind of folk hero, celebrated for defending orthodoxy against Muslim aggression and thereby playing a righteous role in what amounts to a 500-year- old quarrel. The Hague's evidence of his war crimes is dismissed as exaggerated, biased or trumped up. His calls for a single country uniting all ethnic Serbs, coupled with his credentials as a psychiatrist and author of poems, folk songs and children's books, have been used to polish his image as a hero. Calendars of Karadzic hang at bus stations, and on Christmas Day 2002, thousands of Bosnian Serbs received a text-message holiday greeting from Karadzic on their mobile phones. And last year, pro-Karadzic posters mysteriously appeared all over the ethnic Serb capital of Banja Luka, although authorities, undoubtedly worried about the reaction of Western forces, had them removed within hours. Yet many of the Serbs who defend Karadzic may be motivated less by nationalist fervor than by self-interest. Karadzic sat -- and presumably continues to sit -- at the center of an intricate web of political, legal, military and police and financial power. The network gained considerable wealth through wartime profiteering and won favorable treatment from the Karadzic and post-Karadzic regimes in Republika Srpska. Many government officials, including Cabinet ministers, are deeply involved in the underground economy and would potentially face charges and long prison sentences if the semi-independent republic were ever cleaned up. In the past year or so, Western forces in Bosnia have moved to crack down on the most corrupt among the army's top brass, but the army remains loyal to Karadzic. Republika Srpska is the only part of the former Yugoslavia that has yet to arrest a single war-crimes suspect -- despite being required to do so under the Dayton accords that ended the war. Karadzic's cronies spend about $200,000 a month protecting him, according to foreign diplomats. A sort of medieval tithing system, enforced by tough guys, includes a "tax" collected by civilians carrying police identification and skimmed profits from foreign electricity sales. U.S. intelligence services have tracked gasoline from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to merchants and distributors with close links to Karadzic. Republika Srpska also makes donations to the Orthodox Church for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding religious structures destroyed in the war -- donations that, by law, cannot be monitored or even audited. Officials in Banja Luka and foreign diplomats believe that some of this money finds its way to Karadzic. Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said monitored telephone communications had revealed that Karadzic was hiding at a mountaintop Orthodox monastery in Ostrog, northwest of the capital. Church officials denied sheltering Karadzic but praised him nonetheless. And the Orthodox archbishop of Sarajevo, welcoming new NATO troops from Greece (another Orthodox country), is said to have extended to them Karadzic's warm regards. Last month, the United States suspended millions of dollars in assistance to Serbia for lack of cooperation, including failure to hand over Karadzic's military chief and fellow war crimes indictee, Ratko Mladic. When officials learned the same month that Karadzic might be in the village of Zaovine, troops raided Pale instead. Not surprisingly, they came up empty-handed. It all seems like a strange way to treat an accused mass murderer. If capturing Saddam Hussein was as important a milestone for Iraq's future as the White House says it is, then what does it say about the future of the strategically important Balkans that an indicted war criminal of Karadzic's reputed brutality is allowed to roam free? Few doubt Karadzic can be apprehended, but, as the years pass, many wonder about the will of those with the power to do so. The eye of the powerful has turned away from this fragile land, and increasingly one hears the refrain, "Radovan who?" Russ Baker is a New York-based investigative reporter who has spent much of the past two years in the Balkan region. | ||
June 17, 2004
Where's Radovan?
Where's Radovan? A Bosnian Serb leader indicted on genocide charges remains at large -- and few seem to care
Related...
Celebici is a remote gnat of a place. A few dozen houses and a church, a couple of hours way up a rough road from the ragged Bosnian hills, surrounded by forested peaks.
But it was as big as the headlines it generated when NATO-led forces staged Operation Daybreak there in February 2002, ostensibly hoping to net Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who had been indicted by The Hague's war crimes tribunal for helping to lead a genocide in 1992-1995 that killed up to 200,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims.
Helicopters disgorged black-masked troops who kicked in doors and blew open locks as they conducted a door-to-door search. They left empty-handed. Operation Daybreak remains the only serious action the West is known to have conducted to pick up Karadzic.
Like Osama bin Laden, Karadzic is well known and physically distinctive. A tall man with a big belly, a dimpled chin and a dramatic gray bouffant, he ought to be difficult to hide.
Like Saddam Hussein, he is considered a genocidal murderer whose most horrible crimes were committed a decade ago. And, as in the case of bin Laden, the fact that he remains at large is a cause of great instability throughout a strategically crucial region.
Eight years after the Dayton peace accords -- following a process that was supposed to lead to reunification, and despite the efforts of hundreds of foreign aid workers and the expenditure of more than $5 billion -- Bosnia remains fractious and fractured.
Efforts to create unity and long-term peace have been frustrated by the continued dominance in the ethnic Serbian state-within-a-state (known as Republika Srpska) of a corrupt clique said to be controlled by Karadzic. And, of course, the fate of the entire area holds lessons for other Western efforts at democracy- and nation-building, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Karadzic's continued freedom leaves the huge numbers of ethnic Muslims and Croats who fled Bosnia during the war, and who have been slowly returning to their prewar homes, with a sense that all has not yet been put right.
At the same time, his aura of invincibility has grown among the 700,000 Bosnian Serbs.
The NATO military command has increasingly issued tough statements and conducted a number of high-profile "raids" that failed to capture Karadzic.
Serious observers consider these nothing but publicity efforts and perhaps attempts to send messages to the Bosnian Serb leadership. For example, troops twice conducted search operations in Pale, Karadzic's wartime capital and the home of his wife and daughter -- surely not the most likely place for Karadzic to hide.
There are many obstacles to finding the man, ranging from the ruggedness of the terrain to the fierce loyalty of many locals toward Karadzic. But perhaps the largest obstacle is that the United States and its allies have not dedicated real resources to chasing him down.
Many of the NATO soldiers -- 13,000 troops from 35 countries, down from 60,000 after the war -- share no common language, and those few who can speak to soldiers from other countries aren't necessarily inclined to do so.
Each contingent has gotten a reputation. American troops -- now just 1, 500, all National Guardsmen, dentists from Ohio and laborers from New York -- are not exactly Special Forces quality and tend to stay pretty close to base.
Italian and French troops like to live it up and have perhaps gotten too cozy with some locals.
The Brits are the most enthusiastic about actually doing something. And, given their experience among a hostile, armed population in Northern Ireland, they're the best prepared -- and show it through deft use of intelligence and of lightning-fast raids.
So far, they have apprehended most of the war criminals -- half of the 24 arrests reported by the NATO force to date have been in their zone.
But the areas where Bosnians suspect Karadzic is hiding are controlled by Italian, French, and German troops, none of whom seem eager to fire their guns.
The Germans I met in Celebici made clear that it would absolutely not be desirable, for obvious historical reasons, to have Germany in the forefront of a bloody international military incident that involved capturing someone accused of murdering large numbers of innocent people.
The French, technically in charge of the area, have been historically close with the Serbs and opposed the creation of the Hague tribunal.
On the morning of the Celebici raid, according to military sources, a French officer took a call from a Republika Srpska police officer inquiring about the unusually large NATO presence that day.
In the conversation, which was monitored by peacekeeping forces, the Frenchman obliquely referred to the area as being of interest "today in particular."
Capturing Karadzic is especially challenging because ordinary people revere him and because some extraordinarily ruthless and powerful people are joined with him at the hip.
Everywhere one travels on both sides of the border between Bosnia and Serbia, and in neighboring Montenegro, where Karadzic was born and raised, he is a kind of folk hero, celebrated for defending orthodoxy against Muslim aggression and thereby playing a righteous role in what amounts to a 500-year- old quarrel.
The Hague's evidence of his war crimes is dismissed as exaggerated, biased or trumped up. His calls for a single country uniting all ethnic Serbs, coupled with his credentials as a psychiatrist and author of poems, folk songs and children's books, have been used to polish his image as a hero.
Calendars of Karadzic hang at bus stations, and on Christmas Day 2002, thousands of Bosnian Serbs received a text-message holiday greeting from Karadzic on their mobile phones.
And last year, pro-Karadzic posters mysteriously appeared all over the ethnic Serb capital of Banja Luka, although authorities, undoubtedly worried about the reaction of Western forces, had them removed within hours.
Yet many of the Serbs who defend Karadzic may be motivated less by nationalist fervor than by self-interest.
Karadzic sat -- and presumably continues to sit -- at the center of an intricate web of political, legal, military and police and financial power. The network gained considerable wealth through wartime profiteering and won favorable treatment from the Karadzic and post-Karadzic regimes in Republika Srpska.
Many government officials, including Cabinet ministers, are deeply involved in the underground economy and would potentially face charges and long prison sentences if the semi-independent republic were ever cleaned up.
In the past year or so, Western forces in Bosnia have moved to crack down on the most corrupt among the army's top brass, but the army remains loyal to Karadzic.
Republika Srpska is the only part of the former Yugoslavia that has yet to arrest a single war-crimes suspect -- despite being required to do so under the Dayton accords that ended the war.
Karadzic's cronies spend about $200,000 a month protecting him, according to foreign diplomats. A sort of medieval tithing system, enforced by tough guys, includes a "tax" collected by civilians carrying police identification and skimmed profits from foreign electricity sales. U.S. intelligence services have tracked gasoline from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to merchants and distributors with close links to Karadzic.
Republika Srpska also makes donations to the Orthodox Church for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding religious structures destroyed in the war -- donations that, by law, cannot be monitored or even audited. Officials in Banja Luka and foreign diplomats believe that some of this money finds its way to Karadzic.
Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said monitored telephone communications had revealed that Karadzic was hiding at a mountaintop Orthodox monastery in Ostrog, northwest of the capital.
Church officials denied sheltering Karadzic but praised him nonetheless. And the Orthodox archbishop of Sarajevo, welcoming new NATO troops from Greece (another Orthodox country), is said to have extended to them Karadzic's warm regards.
Last month, the United States suspended millions of dollars in assistance to Serbia for lack of cooperation, including failure to hand over Karadzic's military chief and fellow war crimes indictee, Ratko Mladic. When officials learned the same month that Karadzic might be in the village of Zaovine, troops raided Pale instead. Not surprisingly, they came up empty-handed.
It all seems like a strange way to treat an accused mass murderer.
If capturing Saddam Hussein was as important a milestone for Iraq's future as the White House says it is, then what does it say about the future of the strategically important Balkans that an indicted war criminal of Karadzic's reputed brutality is allowed to roam free?
Few doubt Karadzic can be apprehended, but, as the years pass, many wonder about the will of those with the power to do so. The eye of the powerful has turned away from this fragile land, and increasingly one hears the refrain, "Radovan who?"
Russ Baker is a New York-based investigative reporter who has spent much of the past two years in the Balkan region.
Where's Radovan?
| Where's Radovan? A Bosnian Serb leader indicted on genocide charges remains at large -- and few seem to care | | |
| | ||
Celebici is a remote gnat of a place. A few dozen houses and a church, a couple of hours way up a rough road from the ragged Bosnian hills, surrounded by forested peaks. But it was as big as the headlines it generated when NATO-led forces staged Operation Daybreak there in February 2002, ostensibly hoping to net Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who had been indicted by The Hague's war crimes tribunal for helping to lead a genocide in 1992-1995 that killed up to 200,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims. Helicopters disgorged black-masked troops who kicked in doors and blew open locks as they conducted a door-to-door search. They left empty-handed. Operation Daybreak remains the only serious action the West is known to have conducted to pick up Karadzic. Like Osama bin Laden, Karadzic is well known and physically distinctive. A tall man with a big belly, a dimpled chin and a dramatic gray bouffant, he ought to be difficult to hide. Like Saddam Hussein, he is considered a genocidal murderer whose most horrible crimes were committed a decade ago. And, as in the case of bin Laden, the fact that he remains at large is a cause of great instability throughout a strategically crucial region. Eight years after the Dayton peace accords -- following a process that was supposed to lead to reunification, and despite the efforts of hundreds of foreign aid workers and the expenditure of more than $5 billion -- Bosnia remains fractious and fractured. Efforts to create unity and long-term peace have been frustrated by the continued dominance in the ethnic Serbian state-within-a-state (known as Republika Srpska) of a corrupt clique said to be controlled by Karadzic. And, of course, the fate of the entire area holds lessons for other Western efforts at democracy- and nation-building, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Karadzic's continued freedom leaves the huge numbers of ethnic Muslims and Croats who fled Bosnia during the war, and who have been slowly returning to their prewar homes, with a sense that all has not yet been put right. At the same time, his aura of invincibility has grown among the 700,000 Bosnian Serbs. The NATO military command has increasingly issued tough statements and conducted a number of high-profile "raids" that failed to capture Karadzic. Serious observers consider these nothing but publicity efforts and perhaps attempts to send messages to the Bosnian Serb leadership. For example, troops twice conducted search operations in Pale, Karadzic's wartime capital and the home of his wife and daughter -- surely not the most likely place for Karadzic to hide. There are many obstacles to finding the man, ranging from the ruggedness of the terrain to the fierce loyalty of many locals toward Karadzic. But perhaps the largest obstacle is that the United States and its allies have not dedicated real resources to chasing him down. Many of the NATO soldiers -- 13,000 troops from 35 countries, down from 60,000 after the war -- share no common language, and those few who can speak to soldiers from other countries aren't necessarily inclined to do so. Each contingent has gotten a reputation. American troops -- now just 1, 500, all National Guardsmen, dentists from Ohio and laborers from New York -- are not exactly Special Forces quality and tend to stay pretty close to base. Italian and French troops like to live it up and have perhaps gotten too cozy with some locals. The Brits are the most enthusiastic about actually doing something. And, given their experience among a hostile, armed population in Northern Ireland, they're the best prepared -- and show it through deft use of intelligence and of lightning-fast raids. So far, they have apprehended most of the war criminals -- half of the 24 arrests reported by the NATO force to date have been in their zone. But the areas where Bosnians suspect Karadzic is hiding are controlled by Italian, French, and German troops, none of whom seem eager to fire their guns. The Germans I met in Celebici made clear that it would absolutely not be desirable, for obvious historical reasons, to have Germany in the forefront of a bloody international military incident that involved capturing someone accused of murdering large numbers of innocent people. The French, technically in charge of the area, have been historically close with the Serbs and opposed the creation of the Hague tribunal. On the morning of the Celebici raid, according to military sources, a French officer took a call from a Republika Srpska police officer inquiring about the unusually large NATO presence that day. In the conversation, which was monitored by peacekeeping forces, the Frenchman obliquely referred to the area as being of interest "today in particular." Capturing Karadzic is especially challenging because ordinary people revere him and because some extraordinarily ruthless and powerful people are joined with him at the hip. Everywhere one travels on both sides of the border between Bosnia and Serbia, and in neighboring Montenegro, where Karadzic was born and raised, he is a kind of folk hero, celebrated for defending orthodoxy against Muslim aggression and thereby playing a righteous role in what amounts to a 500-year- old quarrel. The Hague's evidence of his war crimes is dismissed as exaggerated, biased or trumped up. His calls for a single country uniting all ethnic Serbs, coupled with his credentials as a psychiatrist and author of poems, folk songs and children's books, have been used to polish his image as a hero. Calendars of Karadzic hang at bus stations, and on Christmas Day 2002, thousands of Bosnian Serbs received a text-message holiday greeting from Karadzic on their mobile phones. And last year, pro-Karadzic posters mysteriously appeared all over the ethnic Serb capital of Banja Luka, although authorities, undoubtedly worried about the reaction of Western forces, had them removed within hours. Yet many of the Serbs who defend Karadzic may be motivated less by nationalist fervor than by self-interest. Karadzic sat -- and presumably continues to sit -- at the center of an intricate web of political, legal, military and police and financial power. The network gained considerable wealth through wartime profiteering and won favorable treatment from the Karadzic and post-Karadzic regimes in Republika Srpska. Many government officials, including Cabinet ministers, are deeply involved in the underground economy and would potentially face charges and long prison sentences if the semi-independent republic were ever cleaned up. In the past year or so, Western forces in Bosnia have moved to crack down on the most corrupt among the army's top brass, but the army remains loyal to Karadzic. Republika Srpska is the only part of the former Yugoslavia that has yet to arrest a single war-crimes suspect -- despite being required to do so under the Dayton accords that ended the war. Karadzic's cronies spend about $200,000 a month protecting him, according to foreign diplomats. A sort of medieval tithing system, enforced by tough guys, includes a "tax" collected by civilians carrying police identification and skimmed profits from foreign electricity sales. U.S. intelligence services have tracked gasoline from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to merchants and distributors with close links to Karadzic. Republika Srpska also makes donations to the Orthodox Church for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding religious structures destroyed in the war -- donations that, by law, cannot be monitored or even audited. Officials in Banja Luka and foreign diplomats believe that some of this money finds its way to Karadzic. Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said monitored telephone communications had revealed that Karadzic was hiding at a mountaintop Orthodox monastery in Ostrog, northwest of the capital. Church officials denied sheltering Karadzic but praised him nonetheless. And the Orthodox archbishop of Sarajevo, welcoming new NATO troops from Greece (another Orthodox country), is said to have extended to them Karadzic's warm regards. Last month, the United States suspended millions of dollars in assistance to Serbia for lack of cooperation, including failure to hand over Karadzic's military chief and fellow war crimes indictee, Ratko Mladic. When officials learned the same month that Karadzic might be in the village of Zaovine, troops raided Pale instead. Not surprisingly, they came up empty-handed. It all seems like a strange way to treat an accused mass murderer. If capturing Saddam Hussein was as important a milestone for Iraq's future as the White House says it is, then what does it say about the future of the strategically important Balkans that an indicted war criminal of Karadzic's reputed brutality is allowed to roam free? Few doubt Karadzic can be apprehended, but, as the years pass, many wonder about the will of those with the power to do so. The eye of the powerful has turned away from this fragile land, and increasingly one hears the refrain, "Radovan who?" Russ Baker is a New York-based investigative reporter who has spent much of the past two years in the Balkan region. | ||
Izbor za 15.jun
Former Yugoslavia in 1990: Why It Had a Bad Prognosis (by Håkan Wiberg)
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2004/Wiberg_BadPrognosis_YU.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ethnic Violence erupts in Kosovo (by Scott Taylor)
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_170.htm
Violence is not the path towards a European future
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/82343
Reuters: Interview: Ex-Rebel Leader Calls Time on UN in Kosovo (by Matthew Robinson)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/kosovo1/2004/0611interview.htm
Green Left Weekly: Washington Seeks New Military Base (by Stephen Katsinaris)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153359/posts
NYT: Editorial: Military Bases in Germany
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153178/posts
Halifax Herald: A detour with Kurdish secret police (by Scott Taylor)
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_192.htm
Halifax Herald: Kurdish Tensions Rising (by Scott Taylor)
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_188.htm
Kurds: Another American ally about to be betrayed (by Srdja Trifkovic)
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic04/NewsST061304.html
A very hot June (by Spyros Payiatakis)
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news/columns_2551898KathiLev&xml/&aspKath/columns.asp?fdate=14/06/2004
The consequences of weakness (by Gunduz Aktan)
http://www.turkishdailynews.com/FrTDN/latest/gunduz.HTM
European governments rocked by EU election results (by Peter Schwarz)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/euro-j15_prn.shtml
Europe votes Against (by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey)
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=13093
Izbor za 16.jun
206 paratroopers who shocked the world (by Alexander Khramchikhin)
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=13094
----------------------------------------------------
International observers welcome Serbia's progress towards electing president
http://www.osce.org/news/generate.pf.php3?news_id=4150
OSCE Kosovo Mission presents document on informal settlements
http://www.osce.org/news/generate.pf.php3?news_id=4153
Cyprus 'sets record straight' at UN (by George Gilson)
http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.prnt_article?e=C&f=&t=01&m=A11&aa=1
Kurdish releases could herald new era of peace (by Burak Bekdil)
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_world_3617097_15/06/2004_43937
Romania Won't Vote on Security Council Resolution on ICC (by Ovidiu Barbulescu)
http://www.balkantimes.com/default3.asp?lang=english&page=process_print&article_id=24619
Arms and the NATO summit
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid040610_1_n.shtml
Defusing the nuclear Middle East (by Bennett Ramberg)
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/mj04/mj04ramberg.html
Unity among imperialists? A pipedream! (by Yossi Schwartz)
http://www.marxist.com/MiddleEast/imperialis_unity0604.html
Izbor za 17.jun
Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf
Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument
Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408
Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360
Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985
Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html
Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml
A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html
IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf
Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument
Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408
Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360
Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985
Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html
Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml
A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html
IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html
Izbor za 17.jun
Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf
Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument
Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408
Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360
Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985
Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html
Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml
A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html
IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html
Izbor za 17.jun
Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf
Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
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dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument
Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408
Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360
Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985
Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html
Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml
A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html
IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf
Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument
Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408
Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360
Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985
Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html
Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml
A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html
IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html
Balkan ghosts
Balkan ghosts
So much has happened in theworldsincethe Balkan wars of the 1990s that the international community seems to have lost sight of the fact that the wheels of justice are still turning to bring Serbian and Croatian war criminals to justice. Even as we have debated the worth of the International Criminal Court, actual prosecutions of real crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia have slipped from public view.
This week, Judge Theodor Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was in Washington for consultations and in New York to argue at the U.N. Security Council for continued full funding for bringing criminals to justice.
"What worries me is that the international community becomes blase to the idea of the court. People get tired and they don't pay up their dues," he says. Judge Meron, a mild-mannered man, speaks with evident passion. As a Holocaust survivor from Poland, erstwhile resident of Israel and a U.S. citizen, his deep commitment to see the tribunal to its rightful and just conclusion is highly understandable.
"After half a century of doing nothing, we have shown that credible trials are possible. We have created a body of war crimes jurisprudence as well as a body of procedural international law. This is an important legacy for the future."
As we have witnessed many other horrors in the intervening years, a reminder may be in order.
For three years in the early 1990s, the war that raged between Bosnians desiring independence and Serbs refusing to allow them to part from the former federation of Yugoslavia resulted in horrendous war crimes committed by all sides. Detention camps sprung up, civilians were shelled, millions of people were driven from their homes, more than 20,000 women were systematically raped, 200,000 people were killed, and men of military age were murdered and buried in mass graves.
In Croatia, which had declared independence in 1991, Serbs attempted to keep control of the Vukovar region, bombarding the town for three months solid in 1992. Later Croatian troops swept through the Serb-controlled region of Krajina, forcing tens of thousands of Croatian Serbs to flee from their homes toward Serbia proper.
In Kosovo, in 1999, then-President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia attempted yet another ethnic cleansing campaign against the Albanian population there, burning houses and murdering residents to drive the population out and replace it with Serbs. After NATO finally intervened and bombed Serbia to stop this action, Albanian refugees came back and their leaders in turn drove 100,000 Kosovar Serbs from the province. Europe had not seen crimes against humanity like these since World War II.
With strong support from the United States, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was set up in 1993 by the U.N. Security Council. An ad hoc institution, it was later given jurisdiction over the prosecutions of the Rwandan genocide as well, an even more horrific event that took place approximately at the same time, costing more than 1 million people their lives.
The Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunal is designed to go out of business when its work is done, which the United Nations has decided will be 2008. There is already a freeze on the hiring of law clerks, which according to Judge Meron is premature.
The highly publicized trial of Mr. Milosevic is only now entering the defense stage, which the accused insists on conducting himself. After 35 prosecutions and 17 guilty pleas, there are still 33 prosecutions pending, and 20 wanted war criminals are still at large — mainly suspected of hiding in Serbia — including two of the most famous, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. And it's not just the suspects that are missing. According to Judge Meron, Belgrade continues to drag its feet on delivering documents and opening archives. This contrasts with the Bosnians and the Croats, who are largely cooperating with the tribunal.
Judge Meron has an idea for speeding things up. "I am going to propose in my monthly report to the Security Council that the future of prosecutions is in national courts ... I want to establish a special war crimes chamber at the court in Sarajevo to try people who had committed crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina." He would like to do the same for Croatia.
However, he says, "Belgrade has shown such a lack of cooperation that we cannot send accused Serbian war criminals back." The fact that the leader of the winning party in last weekend's Serbian elections, Vojislav Seselj, is one of the prisoners awaiting trial in the Hague does not bode particularly well for public sentiment among Serbs.
If we want to close the chapter on the Balkan wars properly, the tribunal's work must go on.
Helle Dale is director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Heritage Foundation. E-mail: helle.dale@heritage.org.
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040615-090332-2837r.htm
Milosevic wants Clinton, Blair, Schroeder subpoenaed as witnesses in his war crimes trial
| Milosevic wants Clinton, Blair, Schroeder subpoenaed as witnesses in his war crimes trial ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer |  | Thursday, June 17, 2004 |
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| (06-17) 06:51 PDT THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said Thursday he wants former President Bill Clinton, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be subpoenaed as witnesses in his war crimes trial. They were among nearly 1,400 witnesses Milosevic sought to call in his defense case, set to start July 5. U.N. judges at the Yugoslav tribunal did not immediately rule on the request. "In effect, you are asking us to subpoena those persons. You will have to produce, in writing, reasons for the issuance by the chamber of that subpoena," presiding judge Patrick Robinson said. Milosevic said he would call the Western leaders to testify about the "war waged against Yugoslavia" and pressed for a quick decision. The three headed their governments in the 1990s during the period covered by Milosevic's indictment. "Clinton has to appear here. Schroeder, Blair, others, too," Milosevic said at a procedural hearing. "The reasons for which Mr. Clinton should appear here are quite clear. He decided upon many matters which had to do with Yugoslavia. He uttered a series of lies as a pretext to the bombing of Yugoslavia. He gave the orders." Clinton was president during a 78-day NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia in 1999 that forced Serbia to end its crackdown on the ethnic Albanian population of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. The court set a four-hour limit for Milosevic's opening statement and reaffirmed he will have 150 trial days to present his case. It will consider his request that the court seek intelligence service documents from Britain, Germany and the United States. Milosevic said he has 1,631 witnesses in mind and has presented the names of nearly 1,400 of them to the court. Among other names submitted to the court were former NATO commander Wesley Clark and longtime West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Clark testified for the prosecution in December. "The most terrible accusations have been uttered here," Milosevic told the court. "The most flagrant lies have been spoken here as well, and the only means to fight that is to present the truth." Appearing energetic and characteristically defiant despite his frail health, Milosevic told the judges, "I should like here, before the public, to prove that these are all false indictments, false accusations against Serbia, against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and against myself." Robinson cut Milosevic short, warning him against making speeches. He instructed the former Serb leader to provide more details about witnesses he wants to call, such as the subject of their testimony. Milosevic is representing himself against 66 charges of war crimes filed by prosecutors, including genocide, during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He has had nearly three months to prepare his defense since prosecutors completed their case in February. He is assisted by several lawyers. The 61-year-old Milosevic showed no sign of the ailments that has delayed the trial for months. He has a weak heart and high blood pressure, and has complained of fatigue and stress. The judges said they won't limit the number of witnesses he calls, as long as doesn't his allotted 150 days. Milosevic has the right to keep the content of his case confidential but must disclose a witness list each week to prosecutors, the judges said. During the prosecution case, which began in February 2002, nearly 300 witnesses were called and thousands of documents were presented. The judges rejected Milosevic's request for an extra month to interview witnesses, questioning the relevance of many of them. On Wednesday, the three-judge tribunal dismissed a motion filed by three independent lawyers to drop the genocide charges. The judges dismissed the argument by the lawyers, appointed by the court to ensure fairness, that the prosecution had failed to provide sufficient evidence to support the charges. | ||
June 14, 2004
Karic odlucuje ko ce biti predsednik Srbije
June 13, 2004
Milosevic Ally Takes Lead in Serbia Vote
The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro
A nationalist supporter of ousted President Slobodan Milosevic took the lead in Serbia's presidential election Sunday, but faced a runoff with a pro-Western party leader, according to unofficial preliminary results.
Tomislav Nikolic of the Serbian Radical Party had 30.7 percent of the vote, while Boris Tadic of the reformist Democratic Party took 27.4 percent, according to the early count by the Center for Free Elections and Democracy, or CESID.
The non-government group's preliminary counts have proven reliable in the past and initial results from the candidates' campaign headquarters showed similar outcomes.
Official results were expected late Sunday or early Monday.
None of the candidates was expected to win more than 50 percent of votes, leaving the top two contenders to compete in a runoff in two weeks.
The Sunday balloting is Serbia's fourth attempt to elect the head of state since 2002. Previous elections failed because less than half those eligible cast ballots. That requirement has been dropped. Sunday's turnout was estimated at around 45 percent.
A Nikolic victory would push Serbia into renewed isolation and block U.S. and other Western financial and political support for the impoverished republic.
He has promised to block further extradition of the Serbs to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, which is trying Milosevic and Nikolic's boss, Vojislav Seselj. Cooperation with The Hague court is the key condition for future U.S. aid for Serbia.
"The voters are choosing whether their country will be isolated or open toward Europe," Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus declared as he cast his ballot in a downtown Belgrade school.
Millionaire Bogoljub Karic, a supporter of the ruling coalition, was running third with 18.7 percent of the votes, ahead of the candidate of the ruling coalition, Dragan Marsicanin who garnered only 13.2 percent. The remaining 11 candidates trailed far behind, according to CESID.
Nikolic, who voted at a municipal building in Belgrade, said he expected an outright victory and predicted a political crisis and early parliamentary elections afterward.
"We did all we could to make sure that I win in the first round," he said.
The soft-spoken Tadic has insisted he is the best choice if Serbia to join the European Union, and said Sunday the vote was "extremely important for the future of this country."
The Democrats have spearheaded economic and political reforms since Milosevic's ouster in 2000, but they lost parliamentary elections to conservative groups months after their leader, former prime minister Zoran Djindjic, was assassinated in March 2003.
Vuk Draskovic, a leader of the ruling conservative coalition, said he expected Serbs "to vote for the road ahead to Europe not back to the past and isolation."
"A possible victory by Tomislav Nikolic would be dangerous for Serbia," he said.
The candidate of the current government, former parliamentary speaker Marsicanin, has said that his election would grant political stability.
Karic - whose lucrative businesses include a mobile telephone network, a bank, a large construction company and a television station - told the voters that his wealth was proof he can make Serbia rich.
All the candidates have vowed to improve Serbia's economy marked by high unemployment and average monthly salaries of $300.
By MISHA SAVIC Associated Press Writer
Kari? presre?an
 |
"Narod je odgovorio daleko iznad mojih oèekivanja. Ja sam presreæan zbog svega toga i zadovoljan, ne zbog Bogoljuba Kariæa, nego zbog Srbije. Koga æu podržati u drugom krugu – mogu da podržim samo onoga koji bude potpisao da æe izvršiti sve ono što sam ja obeæao graðanima Srbije", rekao je Kariæ
August 11, 2003
Forgotten peoples of the Balkans
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Who has lost and who won in the Balkan wars of the past 12 years? The biggest losers have been those 'minorities' who were never directly part of the main conflicts of identity, but were often forced to choose sides.
By JEAN-ARNAULT D�RENS *
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ALAIN Finkielkraut asked more than 10 years ago if it was possible to be a Croat (1). But the real question is whether it is possible still to be a Goranac, a Torbes, a Vlach, a Ruthenian or a Roma. A decade of Balkan conflict, from the Croatian war to Macedonia, has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and created millions of refugees and displaced persons. Always the smaller peoples of the region are the forgotten victims, crushed between rival nationalisms of major ethnic groups.
The first Yugoslav war, in 1991, ended with a massacre in Croatian Slavonia. Croats who wanted independence fought the local Serbs, who had seceded from Croatia when it began to move towards independence. The Serbs won with the support of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), which was enlisted in the service of Serbian nationalism. But not all the victims of the confrontation were Serbs or Croats.
Petrovci was a rich farming village 10km from the city of Vukovar. Before the war some 250 Serbs lived there in peace beside 250 Croats and about 1,000 Ruthenians and Ukrainians. The Ruthenians of Petrovci are western Ukrainians who came not from Russian-owned territories like Bukovina and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, but from areas formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They arrived in the Balkans in the 18th century, in the reign of the Austrian Empress Maria-Theresa, brought in as agricultural colonists to repopulate and farm lands liberated from Turkish rule. The Ruthenians are Uniates or "Greek Catholics", who recognise the authority of the Pope but observe the Greek Orthodox rite.
When the war reached Vukovar, some Petrovci Ruthenians enlisted in the Croatian army. Others helped get food into Vukovar, which was besieged by the Serbs. When the Serbs occupied the region, these pro-Croat Ruthenians went into exile along with the Croats. For some six years Petrovci was part of the self-styled "Serbian Republic of Eastern Slavonia, Srem and Baranja". Dozens of Petrovci's young Ruthen ians did their compulsory military service in the Serbian forces. An additional agreement signed in Erdut in 1998 set the seal on the gradual restoration of Croatian sovereignty over the region (2): then it was the turn of the Ruthenians who had collaborated with the Serbian author ities to go into exile, most often to Serbian Vojvodina, where there were sizeable Ruthenian communities. The pro-Croat Ruthenians returned and are now triumphant in Petrovci. The Uniate priest watched helplessly as his community was torn apart by nationalist confrontations that were not really its concern.
Forgotten peoples of the Balkans - Map
Click to download the file
(PDF, 237.8 kb)
All the wars of former Yugoslavia provide such tragic stories. They began when burgeoning nationalism demanded that small ethnic communities choose sides. The first to be pressurised were individuals who wanted no part of a conflict of nationalities, because of their family background or because of ideological opposition to nationalism. Bosnian citizens born of mixed marriages (with parents from different communities) were among the first victims. The territory controlled by the Sarajevo government was a little safer for them, since Bosnia was officially defended as "multi-ethnic". But even in Sarajevo pressure towards homogeneity from the ruling Muslim nationalist party (SDA), widely backed by a society traumatised by war, eventually ended any dream of multinational coexistence.
In Kosovo Albanian nationalists claimed the situation was a conflict between Serbian author ities and Albanian civil society. This ignored the presence of Serbian civilians, as well as many members of smaller communities. According to the 1981 census, Turks, Roma, Goranci, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats formed 10% of the population of Kosovo (3). After the establishment of the international protectorate in 1999, all these communities suffered from Albanian nationalism. Roma and Kosovo Egyptians (4) were accused of complicity with the Serbian regime and "ethnically cleansed". Kosovo Turks are generally trilingual, speaking Turkish, Albanian and Serbian; but to remain, they had to renounce their separate identity and declare themselves Albanian. The Ashkali, an Albanian-speaking ethnic group related to the Roma, tried, like the Turks, to outdo the Albanians in national patriotism in the hope of being tolerated by Albanian society. It did not save them from violent attacks.
Kosovo
(JPEG, 64 kb)
Bosniaks and Croats, both of whom speak Serbo-Croat, were assimilated by the Serbs for linguistic reasons, as were the Goranci, a small group of Muslim people who live in the mountains in the far south of Kosovo and speak a Slavonic language closely related to Macedonian. So far the international protectorate has failed to protect the linguistic, cultural and educational rights of these communities (5).
These peoples rightly feel they have been manipulated by all parties. During the Rambouillet negotiations in 1999, Slobodan Milosevic cleverly included several representatives from them in the Yugoslav delegation, discrediting them in the eyes of the Albanians and the international community. The prevailing logic in Kosovo was mirrored in Macedonia, where the ethnic, religious and linguistic mosaic is particularly complex. From the first clashes between Macedonian forces and Albanian guerrillas in 2001, the international community sought only to achieve a political dialogue between the Macedonians and the Albanians, ignoring the Turks, Roma, Serbs, Vlachs and Torbesi (Macedonian-speaking Muslim Slavs) (6).
During the conflict the complex social pattern was reduced to a confrontation between two major nationalities, and small ethnic groups were forced to affiliate. The Serbs and Vlachs, both Orthodox, naturally identified with the Macedonians, but the Torbesi were in a more complicated situation. As Macedonian speakers they were rejected by Albanian nationalists, but Macedonian nationalism violently opposed any Islamic group. Mosques mainly frequented by Turks and Torbesi were destroyed by demonstrators in Prilep in 2001. The official Muslim organisations in Macedonia, which are dominated by Albanians, have been trying to assimilate non-Albanian Muslim communities for many years, especially the Turks and Torbesi (4% and 3% of the population respectively) (8). If the political situation gets any worse, smaller communities will not only be forced to choose sides. They will have to give up much of their separate identities.
Political divisions and wars that have ravaged the Balkans have all increased the drive towards national homogeneity. To use an image often applied to central Europe after the first world war, a complex mosaic, in which a thousand tints mingled, has become a fresco with only large splashes of a few colours. Must the Yugoslav wars end in the emergence of monoethnic nation states in which only a few minorities manage to survive, with their rights guaranteed and monitored by international organisations?
The terminology is full of pitfalls. What do we mean by peoples, nations, minorities, and nation states? For the ordinary Western European, seeing images of "inter-ethnic" conflict, ethnic groups are inferior to nations: they represent an earlier stage in a supposedly linear development. In 1992 President Mitterrand spoke at a colloquium on "Europe and the tribes", language suggesting the Balkans as a region of primitive savagery that could never be truly European.
The Yugoslav system distinguished between "constituent peoples" of the Federation and one or more of the federated republics - Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins and, from the end of the 1960s, Muslims (in the national sense of the Muslim Slavs of Bosnia and Sanjak Novi Pazar) - and the "national minor ities", meaning ethnic groups lacking a national homeland in a federated republic. All peoples, however numerous, defined by their connection with states outside Yugoslavia (the Italians of Istria, Hungarians of Vojvodina, and the Albanians) were also classified as national minorities.
So the word "minority" was a legal term having nothing to do with numbers. In any town or region, a minority could be a numerical majority without that affecting its legal position. Albanians in Kosovo resented their minority status, since they were a clear majority in the province of Kosovo, although they were a minority in the Republic of Serbia as whole, of which Kosovo was part. Since the establishment of the international protectorate, the Serbs have refused to be considered a minority in it. Albanians want Kosovo to be the unit of reference and Serbs demand that it be Serbia or Yugoslavia. This is not just a legal squabble. The term minority has unpleasant implications in the Balkans, despite the promises of international guarantees.
In the Balkan tradition, minority rights mean rights conceded by the majority. As such, they can always be withdrawn. This view follows directly from the millet status of protected communities under the Ottoman empire [millets were intermediary organisational groups to which non-Turks owed primary loyalties: the head of a millet then owed his loyalty to the Ottoman state]. Minorities also lack the legitimacy of aspiration to statehood, and the aim of all Balkan nationalism is to create or defend a state defined in terms of nationality or ethnicity, whose legitimacy rests on a popular feeling of belonging to a geographical, political and cultural entity.
But what is a nation, or a people, in the Balkans? The commonly recognised objective criteria of language or religion come in varying combinations. Religion is the clearest divide between Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats, but the Albanians are a single people, although they are divided between Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics. This complicated situation is rooted in the Ottoman past; the Sublime Porte did not acknowledge the existence of national groups. It recognised only religious communities, which were protected by the Sultan and granted a degree of self-administration under the millet system. The modern Balkan nations developed on that foundation, which is why the Orthodox churches of the region have an ethnic character, although the identification of Orthodoxy with an ethnic group was condemned as a heresy, "ethnophyletism", by an ecclesiastical council in Constantinople in 1872 (9).
Can the millets be seen as proto-national structures? For centuries the peoples of the Balkans lived in composite societies in which an individual's identity was defined by variable factors. Religion was an important criterion, as was membership of a social group or profession. People spoke several languages: besides a liturgical language (Arabic for Muslims, Greek or Church Slavonic for the Orthodox), they used the language of administration, Turkish, other languages (often Greek) for business, and their own mother tongue, which could vary between towns or micro-regions. This prevailing multilingualism was directly attacked by the modern nationalist movements, which codified and imposed the use of languages that had been given national status. The identity spectrum narrowed as modern nationalist movements emerged, with territorial claims aiming at the establishment of states.
Macedonia
(JPEG, 57.4 kb)
The new states, whose elites were often educated in Paris, Vienna or Berlin, deliberately took Western nation states as their model, while adopting a narrowly ethnic definition of the nation based on community of religion and a single language. The new nations were enforced and possible identities were limited to the few parameters that defined national identity. Populations, often Muslim, resistant to this new model became national minorities.
The appearance of national minorities was a direct consequence of the drive to create nation states: where the political legitimacy of the state is not founded on ethnic/national criteria, the concept of national minority is meaningless. And areas within the new state frontiers could not possibly coincide exactly with the territories of the new nations, which were mostly ideological constructs. The inevitable result was the creation of transborder minorities. All the wars that have affected the Balkans, from the eastern crisis of 1878, the Balkan wars 1912-13, and the two world wars, to the Yugoslav wars 1991-2000, can be seen as attempts to make state frontiers coincide with idealised national territories. The clearest examples are the maximal claims for Greater Serbia, Greater Albania or Greater Bulgaria.
Nationalists always prefer territories defined this way to those delimited by natural frontiers. They speak of ethnic Albania rather than Greater Albania, forgetting that the Albanians have shared the territories in question with other communities for centuries. The Balkans have proved too small to accommodate all these territorial claims. In the resulting conflicts, identities resist ant to the new national model have been crushed.
Yet models other than territorial state nationalism were possible. Geographical dispersion prevented the Aromanians from harbouring territorial claims. According to Serbian statistics, there were 69,000 Aromanians living in Macedonia in 1889. Bulgarian statistics put the figure of 1990 at 80,700 Aromanians. But Greek statistics of 1904 reported only 25,100 (10). Clearly the Greeks had counted many Aromanians as Greeks, whereas the Serbs and Bulgars had an obvious strategic interest in minimising the Greek population of Macedonia. In the vast territory of Macedonia still under Ottoman rule, the various Christian peoples fought each other mercilessly to determine national identity. The school and the Orthodox priest, whether Serb, Greek or Bulgarian, often decided the still fluctuating identity of a local population, and governments in Belgrade, Athens and Sophia stopped at nothing to support them. The future partition of Macedonia, enshrined in the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, was already taking shape.
The Ottoman model was imperial: the all-powerful central authority was the guarantor of social equilibrium. Nationalism, in contrast, was inextricably linked with political democracy. It can be said to be the father of democracy, since the first task of the national emancipation movements was to define a framework within which democracy would operate. Serbia's emanci pation movement dates back to the 1804 uprising, and its autonomy was recognised as early as 1830, so it is no coincidence that it can boast one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the region. In Serbia the two main features of polit ical modernity, the creation of a nation state (with reference to the French model) and the establishment of political democracy, went hand in hand.
Vojvodina
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Yugoslav federalism drew largely on the im perial tradition, combined with influences from Austrian-Marxist nationality theory, which dissociated the nationality of individuals from the territories in which they live (11). In the Titoist system, the regime secured the loyalty of all the communities in exchange for real guarantees of protection. For 10 years Slobodan Milo sevic managed to preserve internal equilibrium in Serbia by basing his legitimacy on this, while drumming up Serb nationalism beyond its borders. Paradoxically Serbia became one of the most multi-ethnic countries in the Balkans, with its Muslim Bosniak community in Sanjak Novi Pazar, its large Roma population spread throughout the country and, above all, the ethnic mosaic in Vojvodina.
Despite a few cases of violence directly attributable to Serb extremist followers of Vojislav Seselj, inter-ethnic coexistence persisted in Vojvodina because the central authority did not want an outbreak of violence in an agricultural heartland crucial to Serbia's economy. Vojvodina proves that inter-ethnic wars are not inevitable, and that a composite society is not necessarily more fragile than one that is ethnically homo geneous. When the scales tip in favour of war, it is always because of the relations which the central authority maintains with the communities.
In multiethnic societies political pluralism often leads to political division along ethnic lines. Bosnia is a classic example. In the multipartite elections of 1990 the three nationalist parties -the Party of Democratic Action (SDA- Muslim), the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) - obtained results in line with the relative size of the groups they claimed to represent, even if a third of Bosnia's citizens voted for non-national parties (12). Since then, no political movement transcending ethnic barriers has succeeded in establishing itself.
The Titoist model that protected the ethnic identity of Yugoslav citizens collapsed with the Yugoslav Federation. The successor states rested their claims to legitimacy entirely on their national character. This approach more or less succeeded in the case of Croatia, at the cost of the exodus of the greater part of its Serb population (13). In Macedonia, the attempt to found the legitimacy of the state on ethnicity brought the country to the verge of civil war. Serbia still remains one of the most multi-ethnic states in the region, and the democratic revolution of 2000 once again raised the issue of its constitution as a nation state.
The probable break-up of the Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the last vestige of the Yugoslav Federation, will make Serbia independent. Will it seek to define itself as a mononational state or a multi-ethnic society? And will the Balkan states finally rest their political legitimacy on any other basis than ethnicity (14)? It is crucially important to break away from an approach that presents the nation state as the only viable political framework, enshrined in a universal law of human development. Failing that, the Balkans will inevitably witness new territorial conflicts in which the minorities forgotten in the clash of nationalisms will again pay a heavy price.
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* Jean-Arnault D�rens is a journalist in Belgrade and co-author, with Catherine Samary, of Conflits yougoslaves de A � Z (L'Atelier, Paris, 2000)
Maps by Philippe Rekacewicz
(1) Alain Finkielkraut, Dispatches from the Balkan War and other writings, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1999. Parts of this book were originally published as Comment peut-on �tre croate?, Gallimard, Paris, 1992.
(2) See Jean-Arnault D�rens and Catherine Samary, Les conflits yougoslaves de A-Z, L'Atelier, Paris, 2000.
(3) See Michel Roux, La guerre du Kosovo : dix cl�s pour comprendre, La D�couverte, Paris, 1999.
(4) Kosovo Egyptians, recently listed as a separate ethnic group in the nationality statistics, do not consider themselves Roma but are considered Gypsies by most non-Romani Kosovars.
(5) See Stanislav Milojkovic, "De l'enseignement des langues au Kosovo", Courrier des Balkans,www.balkans.eu.org.
(6) The Goranci of Kosovo and the Torbesi of Macedonia are closely related to the Pomaks of Greece and Bulgaria.
(7) The Vlachs, also known as Aromanians or Tsintsars, speak a Romance language very similar to Romanian.
(8) According to the 1994 census. The final figures from the 2002 census have not yet been published.
(9) The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople acted in response to an imperial firman (edict) of 1870 recognising the Bulgarian Church as an ecclesiastically autonomous exarchate.
(10) See Georges Castellan, History of the Balkans: from Mohammed the Conqueror to Stalin, translated by Nicholas Bradley, Boulder: East European Monographs, 1992.
(11) See Otto Bauer, The question of nationalities and social democracy, translated by Joseph O'Donnell, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London, 2000.
(12) See Xavier Bougarel, Anatomie d'une poudri�re, La D�couverte, Paris, 1996.
(13) See Diane Masson, L'utilisation de la guerre dans la construction des syst�mes politiques en Serbie et en Croatie: 1989-1995, Harmattan, Paris, 2002.
(14) See Jean-Francois Gossiaux, Pouvoirs ethniques dans les Balkans, PUF, Paris, 2002.
Translated by Barry Smerin
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