THE SPECTRE OF WAR AND EXPERIENCE

Voivodina on the Problem of Kosovo

AIM, BELGRADE, March 8, 1998

Reasons for the fear and anxiety which the escalation of violence in Kosovo caused in Voivodina should be primarily looked for in the precise interpretation of the reverse thinking matrix. The tragedy that is happening there is seen here as a consequence, albeit with the awareness of the regime's endeavours to present it as a cause. The official claims that "without any shooting there, the country would have been at peace" the civil opposition in Voivodina interprets as a question "Why are the people shooting there?", although experience shows that such a question has been avoided for some six-seven years if and whenever there was shooting there. No one here has forgotten the quagmire of Vukovar. Memories of that war and the one in Bosnia are still fresh also because of the fact that every sixth denizen of Novi Sad is a refugee.

In the general competition as to who would be louder in shouting "Kosovo is the internal affair of Serbia" and silent side-glancing at the White Palace, the center of decision-making, the question "Why?" sounded quite differently. Equally isolated remained the early warning of the Social-Democratic League of Voivodina (LSV) issued at the very beginning of the conflicts (March 2) that "actions against terrorism must not cause the loss of civilian lives".

Speaking in the region of Drenica at the very beginning of conflicts Nenad Canak, President of the Social-Democratic League of Voivodina, said that the events in Kosovo "were not unexpected", that Slobodan Milosevic's regime, although guilty for everything that was happening in Kosovo, was not yet ready to resolve the problems in a principled manner, that "after all the bad things that had happened in the last ten years everything remained unresolved" while the opposition was still mumbling the same old phrases about nationalism, and added - "I hope that these are but incidents and not a beginning of something else". Three days later for AIM he said: "This has all gone too far long ago".

"There is a war going on in Kosovo. When human lives are lost and no individual perpetrator is accused and when there are prisoners - that is war. A number of men that the police has captured and taken in never came back, but only their dead bodies were returned. That means that they were killed. If a person gets killed during investigation, and according to my sources some ten men were thus killed, that means that he was killed while imprisoned. If there is war in Kosovo, then we have to treat it with all the gravity that a war demands, which primarily implies an urgent political action".

Meanwhile the rest of the opposition and the regime unanimously voted for the much disputed federal budget "because of the situation" and rejected a proposal on initiating a debate "about the situation" which was submitted by Mile Isakov (RDSV), deputy of the "Voivodina" coalition which, in addition to the LSV also includes the Reformist Democratic Party of Voivodina. The insistence of Nenad Canak on convening a session of the Defence and Security Board of the Republican Assembly (which he is a member of), remained unanswered unless the answer was contained in an explanation that there were not enough deputies interested in this problem and that a debate could be organized only when there is a sufficient number of assents, as envisaged by the Rules of Procedure. According to deputies from Voivodina, both parliaments - the Republican and the Federal - have been equally "dispossessed" of the information on the events and the authority. The absence of a parliamentary debate and the exclusive right of the state media to patriotism, the autonomist part of political Voivodina interpreted as a part of a broader context within which Milosevic is supposed to "finish that business" ("we are all hostages of Milosevic's politics") using a possible multi-party Government of Serbia as an alibi and the entire nation as an "accomplice in his shameless trade".

Assessments that the Belgrade opposition "has no ideological matrix" with which to oppose Slobodan Milosevic's regime and that "in his pragmatism Slobodan Milosevic can always be more pragmatic than the opposition, in his nationalism more nationalistic than the opposition and in his efficiency more efficient than the opposition", actually serve as an argument in favour of the need to examine the problem on the position of Kosovo. According to Nenad Canak the Kosovo problem has been defined, but no one dares admit that. Kosovo has to become autonomous but must not leave the Serbian territory. According to this interpretation, what degree of autonomy and how would it be implemented is the question Slobodan Milosevic does not dare ask as that would mean the failure of his policy. The leaders of the extremist part of the population do not dare accept it for the same reasons so that because of their careeristic interests the spectre of war is haunting Kosovo.

Nenad Canak begins his analysis of the regime's guilt by reminding that all question have been reopened after Slobodan Milosevic destroyed a number of postulates on which the SFRY was founded - with six republics and two provinces. When ("despite what anyone thought could be still done") it was agreed what was to become of Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, in his opinion three major problems remained: Kosovo, Montenegro and Voivodina and a number of small problems which would grow if they remained unresolved and the hitherto practice of the regime has shown that all minor issues which were not reacted to on time, turned into major problems. It became obvious, says Canak, that banging one's hand on the table and swearing by Serbdom only brings persecution and misfortune.

"Kosovo could remain within Serbia only if Serbia becomes a state of all its citizens. Slobodan Milosevic has tried to turn a state of citizens into a state of his party followers and a lower race in which all that do not fall into the former category belong to the latter".

Reminding that in political processes it is not always possible to say when will something happen, but in which practically everything can be identified, Canak gloomily reminds that all that is happening now is included in the last chapter of his book "Wars Yet to Come" published in 1993. Comparison of the space of Greater Albania from the times of World War II, with that part in which the conflict has broken out shows that, apart from a tiny part of the north-eastern Kosovo, the rest is envisaged for, what the Serbian extremists call "amputation" and the Albanian extremists "liberation".

"I do not know whether anyone remembered that during amputation, which the Serbian academicians - widely known as the worst political analysts of recent times - so benevolently offer, the patient can also bleed to death. In this case the patient is the entire Balkan region".

Sceptical about the dialogue which the authorities constantly refer to, Canak says that "a dialogue requires two sides which can resolve something through agreement, and that at this moment such two sides do not exist, because no one is in control of the situation to such an extent to be able to guarantee that, as the military would say, his command would be obeyed, in other words predict what his side would do".

The situation has been intensified to the extremes. Too many things are unknown. It seems that the picture would be less bleak if the inclination to paint black and white everything that goes on in Kosovo could be overcome since even those who should be well versed in the situation are unable to say who are protagonists on the Kosovo political scene, what they stand for and what is this all actually about.

Milena Putnik (AIM)

Entrefilet:

WRONG IDENTIFICATIONS

"Kosovo and Voivodina are two different things. The autonomy of Kosovo was created on the territory of Serbia as an attempt to resolve the Albanian national question, while Voivodina with its autonomy, its territory and its population became a part of Yugoslavia at the time it was created. Any possible identifications of the two are essentially to the detriment of Voivodina, because if reduced to national basis then the autonomy of Voivodina would be brought into connection with all the misfortunes of Voivodina, which is wrong. Everyone in Voivodina can be a part of the autonomist movement, but only the Serbs can carry it through simply because they are predominant", says Nenad Canak for the AIM.

Essentially, Voivodina and Kosovo have lost the autonomy they once had when Slobodan Milosevic came into power in Serbia. The anti-bureaucratic revolution which preceded the amendments to the Republican Constitution and centralisation of Serbia, was conducted under the pretext of protecting the Serbian population in Kosovo.

Since, according to Nenad Canak, the position of Voivodina is one of the major issues demanding an answer, "the essence of the story is the following - the autonomy of Voivodina must never again be used for mere outvoting of others and in case that happens, we shall once again have the same problems we are faced with today".

M.P.