Syndicate: Balkanazing the Balkans

[Dejan Sretenovic <dejansr@yubc.net>]

Balkanazing the Balkans
by
Zoran Cirjakovic, (from Newsweek)

> In the spring of 1991 Serbian paramilitaries in Croatia started a brutal
> process that was later called "ethnic cleansing." At the time Yugoslavia
> was the most multiethnic country in Europe and, as a liberal-minded Serb, I
> believed that this cold, new vision of an ethnically clean, one-nation
> state stood no chance. But eight years and four bloody wars have proven me
> disastrously wrong. Today, in what has become "former Yugoslavia," I am
> witnessing the disappearance of the last remaining islands where different
> ethnic groups live together. Even as Serbian forces cleanse Kosovo,
> minority ethnic groups in the only three remaining multiethnic regions are
> on the move -- heading for those areas where their co-nationalists are
> dominant. The Muslims of Sandzak, ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina and
> Macedonians living in predominantly ethnic Albanian-populated western
> Macedonia are performing what can be best described as "self-cleansing."
> Where they live, unlike in Kosovo, no cleansers came knocking on the doors.
> They just decided not to take any chances by staying on the wrong side of
> emerging ethnic walls.
> Why? To find the answer, I just look around me at the state of former and
> current Balkan battlefields. Everywhere the endgame points to a common
> result: total ethnic segregation. Slovenia -- which happens to be the most
> prosperous and peaceful of the former Yugoslav republics -- is the only one
> that has always been ethnically clean. Croats cleansed their rebellious
> Serb minority in 1995 and turned Croatia into a one-nation sate. Three
> years after the Dayton Peace Accords had ended the war in Bosnia, the
> country's multiethnic past is no more then a fading memory. A benevolent
> virtual cacique from Spain was installed by the American-led peacemakers to
> maintain the illusion that Bosnia -- a set of three ethnically clean
> reservations -- is a real state. Some 30,000 NATO soldiers are still
> necessary to prevent Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats from once again
> being at each other's throats.
> But Bosnia's ethnic ghettos nowadays seem like paradise compared to the
> nightmare of Kosovo. Over 100,000 NATO troops might be needed if bombs fail
> to stop an ethnic bloodbath in Kosovo. NATO decided to bomb my ill-fated
> homeland on March 24 arguing that the air strikes were the only way a
> multiethnic society in Kosovo can be saved and the evil Milosevic defeated.
> Ironically Milosevic has used the strikes as an alibi to order a ruthless
> campaign of ethnic cleansing that is set to make multiethnic life in Kosovo
> impossible. Six weeks of bombing later, Milosevic seems to be stronger then
> ever and I know of no Kosovan capable of envisioning Serbs and Albanians
> living together in Kosovo ever again.
> And it's not only in Kosovo that the prospects for the survival of
> multiethnic society are gone. Ethnic Macedonians are moving out of Tetovo
> in noticeable numbers. Tetovo is a bustling town with an ethnic Albanian
> majority in western Macedonia 30 miles west from the capital of Skopje --
> and a major destination for some of the 80,000 Albanian Kosovar refugees
> living with relatives or host families. Many Macedonians there are selling
> their property and relocating in what they describe as a "safer" area --
> the Macedonian-dominated east of the country. The criterion for safety is
> not the crime rate but the rate of ethnic homogeneity.
> The pattern now emerging in Macedonia is a familiar one in the region.
> Vojvodina, Serbia's prosperous northern province that used to be the most
> diverse and ethnically mixed part of former Yugoslavia, is also becoming
> ethnically clean. Members of the largest minority group in the province,
> ethnic Hungarians, are leaving. Hungary joined NATO only two weeks before
> the air strikes started and Serbs now view it as an aggressor state. With
> Novi Sad, the capital of the province and Serbia's second largest city,
> being one of NATO's main targets, Hungarians of Vojvodina now that they are
> likely targets for Serb revenge. Muslims of Sandzak, an isolated,
> mountainous region just north of Kosovo covering south of Serbia and north
> of Montenegro, are leaving for Sarajevo and other Muslim-controlled parts
> of divided Bosnia.
> It is in the Sarajevo's suburbs swollen with refugees where the tragedy of
> the Balkan ethnic segregation is the most absurd. Last month [April]I
> visited houses that had been emptied in 1996, when their fleeing Bosnian
> Serb owners decided to cleanse themselves before the Serb-controlled
> suburbs were reintegrated with the overwhelmingly Muslim Bosnian capitol.
> Rather then living under Muslim authority, the Serb owners opted for a
> refugee life in Serbia. Their abandoned homes are now occupied by
> mono-ethnic mix of the misfortunate: Muslims from eastern Bosnia (who had
> been ethnically cleansed by Serbian paramilitaries in 1992) are squeezed
> together with newly arrived "self-cleansed" Muslims from Sandzak. Although
> up to 40 people were living in houses built to accommodate a single family,
> the residents told me that they -- being "alive and safe among their own"
> -- are the lucky ones. The graves of the unlucky reveal the fate of some of
> those who stayed on the wrong side of new ethnic boundaries for too long.
> But deepening ethnic fault lines are not the only signs of the ultimate
> "Balkanization" of the Balkans. For the first time since 1991 even ties
> linking tiny, tolerant, pro-Western elites in the republics of the former
> Yugoslavia are being broken. NATO's war against Yugoslavia viewed from
> Belgrade appears completely different than viewed from Sarajevo or
> Pristina. Many outspoken critics of Milosevic's regime in Belgrade view
> NATO's action as an unselective, misconceived attack that is, not unlike
> many of Milosevic's actions, hurting the innocents. Even Belgrade's Vreme
> magazine, a longtime gutsy symbol of resistance to Milosevic, seems
> nowadays to Sarajevo and Pristina's liberals no different than Milosevic's
> mouthpieces.
> Viewed from liberal circles in Sarajevo, NATO's action is the just, if
> late, punishment for the Serbs. Vreme's writing, easily accessible on the
> Internet, is taken in Sarajevo as evidence that there are no innocents left
> in Serbia. An uncompromising response came within weeks in an article
> published in Dani, the leading liberal magazine in Sarajevo. "Serbia is
> having collective orgasm aroused by Albanian blood... The war against the
> Milosevic's regime should be transformed into the war against all of
> Serbia... Let intellectual Belgrade burn", reads the article in the
> magazine that recently won an international award for promoting tolerance.
> This racist article, also available on the net, outraged many readers in
> Belgrade. Even the Internet, set to bring people together and remove
> barriers, is helping Balkan neighbors drift further away.
> The Internet, unfortunately, is not Milosevic's only unexpected ally. Most
> Balkan leaders over the last decade had aspired to preside over one-nation
> states -- and repeatedly won the support of the voters for their
> aspirations in elections that always divided neatly along ethnic lines.
> They didn't share Milosevic's ruthlessness, but they used the bloody cover
> of his unspeakable crimes to turn their own mono-ethnic visions into
> reality. You needed a Milosevic in power in Belgrade so that Croatia could
> become a one-nation state or for Kosovo to win independence. Serbian voters
> were not the only ones who wanted to see Milosevic in the presidential
> palace in Belgrade. Many nationalist (and openly anti-Serbian) politicians
> in Pristina, Sarajevo and Zagreb rejoiced Milosevic's electoral victories
> and some even helped prevent a different outcome.
> Still, many believe that NATO bombing will resurrect the multiethnic
> society that Milosevic killed repeatedly at the ballot box and in the
> battlefield. I guess that that means that one day I might be again living
> in a multiethnic state like the one in which I lived until the spring of
> 1991. People say that miracles sometimes do take place.
> 
>
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