Interview
IVP: Is the Serbian population aware of the humiliations inflicted on the Kosovar Albanians?
Catherine Samary: Not really. There are a few exceptions, in the human rights groups, and there is a tradition of multi-lingual theatre which brings together artists from across former Yugoslavia. Some opposition parties like Vesna Pesic’s Civic Alliance, have denounced Serb violence in Kosova, but without recognising the Albanian national question. There is a kind of anti-nationalist "civic" consciousness among progressive Serbians. They tend to put equal blame on Serbian and Albanian nationalisms.
The horrors of the Bosnian war have pushed some Serb nationalists into the anti-war camp: intellectuals like Dobrica Cosic and vice-president Vuk Draskovic. They still consider Bosnia or Kosova to be "Serb lands", but no longer support ethnic cleansing there.
But the twists and turns of Serbian politics have confused the battle lines. Zoran Djindjic’s Democratic Party was so determined to oppose Milosevic that, when the Serbian leader broke with the "Great Serbian" plan to annex Bosnia, the ’democrats’ formed a block with ultra-nationalist leader Radovan Karadjic against Milosevic.
Things have also been complicated by the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) attacks against Serb civilians and more moderate Kosovar Albanians. Many Serbs who had tried to build dialogue with the Kosovar Albanians have now accepted the Serbian regime’s discourse on "Albanian terrorism."
Many Serbs have also accepted the regime’s claims that the main reason Albanians are fleeing Kosova is the NATO bombardment. Of course, the fact that Milosevic hides behind the NATO attacks, rather than admitting the ethnic cleansing, suggests that there is little public support for these outrages. Young Serbs are not ready to die in a struggle to expel the Kosovar Albanians.
But nor are most Serbs ready to accept Kosova’s secession, after the "International Community" accepted the expulsion of 200,000 Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia, and refuses any kind of self-determination for the Serb-populated Krajina region of Croatia.
Of course, many Serbs have forgotten the ethnic cleansing which Krajina Serbs imposed against their Croat neighbours. But the main lesson here is that no serious alternative politics in this region can avoid explicit support for the right of self determination for all the peoples of former Yugoslavia.
IVP: What is the current state of the democratic opposition inside Serbia?
CS: The "Zajedno" (Unity) coalition against Milosevic has fallen apart. Zajedno won an impressive victory in 1996 elections, and all through the winter there were demonstrations, particularly among young people, demanding that Milosevic respect the election result. Opposition to Milosevic was the cement in this fragile coalition. It included Vesna Pesic’s non-nationalist Civic Alliance (which has its origins in Ante Markovic’s Reformist Party), and two moderate nationalist parties: the Democratic Party of Djindjic and the Serbian Renaissance Party of Vuk Draskovic. Zajedno had no real programmatic coherence, and suffered a disastrous series of power struggles and corruption scandals in the municipal governments of Belgrade and other towns.
A few small social democratic groups have formed, and split away from Zajedno. But they are very marginal. It is hard to be a leftist in Serbia, where Milosevic’s own party is called the Socialist Party of Serbia.
Milosevic’s wife Mirjana Markovic leads a smaller "Yugoslav Left Union" (JUL) which includes many Serbian anti-nationalists and supporters of the original Yugoslav federation. Milosevic sometimes uses JUL support to present himself as an anti-nationalist, and sometimes distances himself from them to demonstrate his Serbian nationalist credentials. JUL’s social base is among peasants and pauperised workers, and the party exploits its links to the regime to build clientelist support structures.
The far right is very present in Serbian politics. Vojislav Seselj’s Radical Party is the real party of ethnic cleansing, and the bloody construction of a Greater Serbia. Seselj has been the main supporter of Radovan Karadzic’s faction among the Bosnian Serbs.
Milosevic allied himself with the far right in 1990-93, but then distanced himself from them. But Serbia’s last elections denied him an absolute majority. Milosevic has now positioned his Socialists as the centre-ground, working in coalition with Seselj’s extreme right and the more left-wing JUL. At the Yugoslav federal level, Milosevic has formed an alliance with his old enemy Vuk Draskovic (the other former Zajedno parties called for a boycott of the elections)
Leaving the purely political sphere to one side, Milosevic has built a strong base of support in the police, special forces and paramilitary groups. He has rather less confidence in the Yugoslav Army, which is more diverse in its thinking. Though the army has provided arms and uniforms for the far-right militias which have carried out most of the dirty work in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosova. The Yugoslav army has preferred to play a support role in most cases, with the militias doing the killing.
To understand the Serbian regime, you have to analyse this combination of a legal face, and a rotten, thugish interior. There is a very similar dynamic in Croatia, where the extreme-right HVO militia has been much more integrated into the regular armed forces.
There are many small liberal and social democratic parties, particularly outside Belgrade, and in Vojvodina, the most multi-cultural and multi-ethnic region of Yugoslavia. Most of these have recently formed a Coalition of Democratic Parties (SDP), which proposes regionalism and decentralisation, anti-war and anti-nationalist demands, and a "fast and fair privatisation process." In Montenegro, local ex-Communist leaders want their little republic to keep most of its tourism earnings, and greater control of Yugoslavia’s only sea port. Growing separatist sympathies (until the NATO air strikes) reflected a similar dynamic as in Croatia and Slovenia, the richest republics of former Yugoslavia.
Serbia also has a multitude of NGOs and civic associations, including the Women in Black and other peace groups, SOS Battered Women, independent trade unions, and a range of sympathetic and leftist intellectuals. These groups are small and weak. But given the weakness of similar groups in "democratic" countries like Germany and the United States, we should recognise the real difficulties that progressive Serbians face. International contacts and support for these initiatives is very important.
IVP: What impact is the war having in the neighbouring countries?
CS: The massive arrival of Albanian-speaking refugees in Macedonia is perceived as a danger by more conservative currents, which worry that the country’s own 25% Albanian minority will grow in size, and demand autonomy or even secession. The mistreatment of some refugees reflects the growing climate of hysteria.
Macedonia was the poorest republic of the old Yugoslav federation (though richer than Kosova), and suffers economic discrimination from its southern neighbour, Greece. Macedonian leaders have struggled to retain good relations with Serbia, and are reluctant to allow NATO troops to use their country as a base for anti-Yugoslav interventions. All signs of weakness in Macedonia are seized and exploited by nationalist currents in neighbouring Bulgaria, which have never recognised the Macedonian language as more than a dialect of their own, and would like to dominate or annex the two million Macedonians into Bulgaria.
Albania itself is fast-becoming a key NATO base. Humanitarian organisations are already protesting that troops are using them as camouflage, thus reducing their capacity to aid the civilian and refugee populations. Extreme poverty and the influx of huge numbers of deportees from Kosova has encouraged Mafia-style behaviour of all kinds.
Corruption and power struggles since the collapse of the Stalinist regime have repeatedly provoked violence and insurrection in Albania. The Kosova Liberation Army has profited from this confusion to build a number of bases in northern Albania (and in the Albanian-dominated north-west of Macedonia).
Bosnia-Hercegovina is again on the edge of an explosion. The United States are trying to strengthen the Croatian army, so as to encircle Milosevic from the north and west. But even Washington knows that Croatian dictator Franjo Tudjman has only limited control over his Bosnian-Croat allies, and is willing to destabilise Bosnia if it suits Great Croat interests. Washington has offered to welcome Croatia into NATO, if Tudjman will control the Croatian separatists of western Bosnia, and surrender the numerous war criminals at the head of the Croatian army to the International Permanent War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
The United States persuaded Tudjman’s HDZ party to dissolve the Bosnian Croat statelet of Herceg-Bosna into the current Croat-Muslim federation. But Bosnian Croat leaders are again demanding a "Croat entity" in the Mostar region, which reinforces the dynamic towards the partition of Bosnia. In the Serbian-held part of Bosnia, the Radical Party of Seselj is promoting a very similar dynamic. In the most recent elections across Bosnia, "international" (i.e. multi-ethnic and anti-nationalist) candidates were physically attacked by both Croatian and Serbian nationalists. The only good news to come out of Bosnia recently was the reunification of the various social democratic organisations. Though their programme offers little to comfort progressive voters.
IVP: So what are the solutions to this crisis?
CS: It is impossible to present any kind of coherent and progressive "solution" at the moment. Every day brings fresh evidence of an uncontrolled dynamic which is degrading the conditions for progressive struggles.
So we should busy ourselves with the urgent solidarity tasks, and maintain our critical spirit in the face of all proposals for "action" which actually make the disaster worse. And, at the back of our minds, we should continue working on a number of long-term questions which are essential to a solution to the whole Yugoslav crisis.
The Berlin wall has been replaced by new walls of capital and wealth. The peoples of Eastern Europe deserve an alternative to NATO’s realpolitik of balancing the various nationalist regimes in the illusive search for stability. The European Union has used its Schengen border agreement to keep Balkan refugees and conscientous objectors out. In the long term, we need another Europe, with a different economic logic. With individual and collective democracy. Recognising the right of all the peoples of the continent to decide about their future.
But we should admit that we have had only limited success in building the progressive alternative even in the "democratic" conditions of Western Europe. We shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties facing the emerging progressive currents in the Balkans.
We shouldn’t reduce all the competing claims in the Balkans to the same level. There are dominant nations here, and dominated ones. But they are possibly more intermingled in this part of the world, where each minority contains pockets of other groups, which are exploited in turn.
Taking the perspective of the underdog means looking through Kosova Albanian eyes in Serbia, through Serbian eyes in Croatia, through Bosnian Muslim eyes in Bosnia, and in all parts of former Yugoslavia to look through the eyes of those ’cosmopolitans’ who claim an identity of mixture and intermingling. We should encourage the existing, painful process of building small links between civic, anti-nationalist, trade union and feminist groups across the new borders. Because no "political solution" can be imposed from outside or from above.
And the most urgent task are clear: the Kosovars have the right to defend themselves, and we should organise material and political support for the refugees and the deserters. It is already obvious that NATO bombing is not assuring the defence of the lives and liberties of the Kosova Albanians, and that the Serbian people, rather than the Milosevic regime, are suffering the effects of NATO aggression. The bombing must be stopped. The way to save lives and reopen a political space where Milosevic can be challenged, and the crimes of Kosova exposed will come through a process of return of the deportees, with a multi-national presence that excludes NATO.