Serbia After Rambouillet

Who Cares About Airplanes

AIM Podgorica, 24 February, 1999 (By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

"There are no real negotiations in there, only some small pieces of paper circling", declared president of Serbia Milan Milutinovic, having come out from the castle into the street on the day before last of the negotiations. At that time, in FR Yugoslavia, the currency exchange rate of the German mark on the black market was slowly but surely going up, ruling parties were competing in verbal patriotism, a significant part of conscripts in Serbia were summoned to report to their army units, and rumours circled Pristina that local Serbs and Albanians would attack each other as soon as the first missile exploded.

The peace conference ended as it did on 22 February - as a complete failure of its creators. Official Belgrade and representatives of Kosovo Albanians do not hide pleasure although nobody can explain what they are so happy about and what they expect from the future. Nevertheless, after Rambouillet ordinary people in Serbia acted as if they had just won a lottery prize. Such disposition acquired such proportions that after a long time, cafes in Pristina were crowded again and what is more important, people even agreed to sit with their backs turned to the door which is considered to be a very risky thing to do in Kosovo.

The crisis in Kosovo even before the peace conference marked the political life in Serbia and homogenised all parliamentary parties - the Socialist Party of Serbia, the Yugoslav Left, the Serb Radical Party, the Serb Revival Movement. While it lasted, not a single issue but Kosovo and NATO arose in public. Regime propaganda traded on "patriotic rhetoric" assessing that the citizens are more than fed up with all kinds of threats and sanctions. What effect has been achieved, it is hard to tell. The only thing that is certain is that the reformist and the pro-European movement in Serbia is in a grave crisis.

The variagated opposition coalition - League for Changes - as the only serious rival to the current regime, in its statements restricted itself to accusation of president of FR Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic and his immediate associates as guilty for the situation in which this state is. More precisely, they advocated that world powers, primarily the USA, under threat of force were solving internal problems, pointing out that sovereignty had never been so narrowed down, and that the authorities would in the end agree to everything they would be asked to do. In not so many words, foreign troops which Belgrade is so opposed to will come anyway, in this or that form; the only problem ishow to present then to the domestic public so that it does not turn out that NATO is coming, but United Nations or something similar. The stand of the opposition in Serbia can in a very simplified manner be retold as follows: accepting the dictate is inevitable, let us remove Milosevic from office, and when we acquire democratic legitimacy we will set out to solve the problem of Kosovo all over again.

To what extent this is acceptable for the average citizen, it is very questionable. Exceptionally skilfully, Milosevic has presented all the failures of his policy in te past decade as defeat of the nation, and indeed hardly anybody in Serbia could be convinced that after dissolution of former Yugoslavia, the international community can and may demand for the Albanians in Kosovo what it did not seek for the Serbs in Croatia - while they were still there. Especially because the illegal Kosovo Liberation Army (Alb. UCK) actually did resort to terrorist methods, measured by any criteria. A large part of Serbian public feels that as far as Kosovo is concerned, official Belgrade is right. This does not refer to foreign troops or a higher degree of autonomy for the province. There is a feeling that existence of the state is seriously questioned and that in such circumstances, two blind eyes, not one, should be turned to the acts of the regime. If nothing else, it has at least declared that it was obliged to defend integrity of the homeland at any cost.

As local cynics claim, the Serbs perhaps can accept losing Kosovo in battle, but never can they - as "sacred land and the cradle of Serbdom" - settle down to giving it up without a fight. The presentation of the crisis of Kosovo in the manner in which the great powers, as "allies" of ethnic Albanian separatists, demand that the province in which a large number of very significant Serb churches and monasteries are located and, in general, Serb sanctities, be given up, is the reason for support to the authorities. Hardly anyone in Serbia is actually ready to die for Kosovo, but an even smaller number of people is ready to accept its secession from the state.

Whether leader of the Serb Revival Movement, Vuk Draskovic, understod this in this or in any other way is an utterly futile question. As a leader of the once most powerful opposition party, by entering the federal government, he has given the regime the necessary legitimacy. However, contrary to the Socialist leaders, Draskovic returned from Rambouillet quite fascinated by various threats and offers of the international community and in this sense he was ready to accept most of what had been demanded there. Interpretations of his statements are different: according to ones, Milosevic is keeping him far from all important information, and since he has no experience in similar situations (like the president of FR Yugoslavia and his associates) he takes a lot for granted; according to others, this is the result of a very skilfull assigning of roles, and Draskovic is playing the role of cooperativeness, aware that his time is yet to come. In everything Draskovic is saying at least when Kosovo is concerned, there is quite a few issues with which one has no difficulty agreeing.

Among other, that it would be better - under the condition of guaranteed sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia - if NATO disarmed UCK than have Serb policemen and soldiers killed, and than to wage war against the whole world. The only problem is that Draskovic and his party in Serbian cities where they are in power quite clearly demonstrated how wide the gap between words and acts can be.

Hardly anybody in Serbia doubts that in Rambouillet or somewhere else, an agreement will in the end be reached about a broad autonomy of Kosovo and presence of foreign troops as a guarantee of imlementation of this document. As it happened so many times before in the past, Milosevic was after that given a free hand to square accounts with all those who are in some way a threat to the regime. Last time, after the agreement with American envoy Richard Holbrooke, independent media and autonomy of the university suffered unprecedented repression. At the time it was believed that he had agreed to exceptional concessions; it is a question what will happen after "Rambouillet II"?

In the meantime, brainwashed by wars, armies and threats, isolated and lonesome, muddy and impoverished, Serbia will continue to live as it is living now. There are no good political jokes for a long time already, grafitti on the walls of buildings are terse but apathetic, students are waiting to graduate in order to emigrate, serious journalists do not trust even their own judgement any more, and South-American tear-jerking soap operas are the most popular TV programs. At the height of the negotiations in Rambouillet and NATO threats, there was a frenzied search for oil and sugar. No - dear reader - not in order to create a warlike psychosis, but simply because there is an actual shortage of these commodities.

Philip Schwarm

(AIM)