nettime: The Balkans: State of the Union

["Ivo Skoric" <iskoric@igc.apc.org>]

The Balkans: State of the Union

There is one thing all the Balkan states have in common: they
don't want to be a part of the Balkans.  Ironically, that is
precisely what makes them Balkan: stubborn, spiteful, almost
surreal resistance to cooperation with one another.  Of course,
while each one of them thinks of itself as non-Balkan, it also
always blames all the others to be Balkan.  Then to establish
mutual friendship with any other Balkan nation for each
Balkan nation would be extremely prohibitive, because it
would make them look so Balkan.  Instead, they'd rather be
occupied by a non-Balkan country: Serbs call upon Russians,
Bosnians wail for Turks, and Croats would as of tomorrow
swear allegiance once again to Vienna.  If just Vienna would
accept it!  But nobody wants to occupy Balkans any more,
because the Balkans nations incessant desire to submit to
various foreign powers is matched only by their later
identically incessant struggle to get rid of them foreigners: just
look what they did in Bosnia as soon as IFOR landed -
everybody, including Bosnians, was against them. 

Therefore, I am not surprised with Tudjman's anti-Balkan-integration speech in Croatian Parliament.  Tudjman is facing
a difficult campaign this spring.  Even his own party insiders
privately admit that he might lose, that he is actually likely to
lose.  To talk against Balkan integration in Croatian
Parliament is like to talk against crime in American Congress:
it is a multi partisan issue on which everybody agrees. 
Croatian anti-Balkans sentiment goes beyond the arguments
laid forward in the first paragraph: Balkan is a "B" word in a
similar sense like Nigger is an "N" word in the U.S. It is a
synonym for the dirty, lazy, knavish, furtive, underhand,
Byzantine South.  Croatia, together with Slovenia and
Hungary, of all countries that World superpowers set
geopolitically in the Balkans region, had truly a different
history: instead of being occupied by Ottoman Empire, they
were occupied by Habsburgs.  Both empires were quite
decadent at the beginning of this century when they finally
collapsed, but the Ottoman Empire started to decay about two
centuries earlier, leaving its provinces with poorly developed
infrastructure and industry if compared to the Habsburgs
monarchy provinces.

Consequently, not all of the Eastern Europe had the same
start - as it is visible now, after the communist regimes, which
were a great equalizer, are down: countries like Poland, Czech
Republic and Hungary are catching up with the West quickly,
getting invited to NATO and E.C., etc. - while countries like
Romania, Bulgaria and Albania continue to linger in their own
misery.  People there live through a succession of governments
that patently denies them rights to pursuit of happiness,
freedom and sometimes even life.  Not only that they never
had democracy, but all those who ever ruled them stole their
property to fill up their own pockets like common thieves.
Therefore we can't expect that the people there would treat
such governments any better than a pile of garbage: burn it.


Simply speaking: Croatia and Slovenia believe that they belong
with Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic, and not with
Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. 
The "Yugoslav experiment" failed twice: even after 70 years of
attempted transfer of wealth the differences between Yugoslav
regions, acquired from their different histories, persisted - in
the end of 1980s Slovenia and Croatia produced more than
45% of Yugoslav GNP with less than 30% of population and
about 20% of territory.  Obviously, nobody in Slovenia and
Croatia would be eager to form another Yugoslavia.  After all,
this was the main reason for them to seek sovereignty and
independence and they even went to war to achieve that. 
Croatia and Slovenia today are the countries with the lowest
inflation and unemployment rate and still the highest per
capita income in former Eastern Europe.  Therefore, their
anger towards Western geopolitical tailors, who continue to
shove them in the same garbage bin with Bulgaria, Serbia and
Albania - only because they were part of Yugoslavia - is not
that shocking.  Anybody who ever were to Croatian coast, still
remembers the poor, drab Czech and Hungarian tourists, and
can't believe that the West today sees those two economies as
more developed.

There is of course an other end to it: Slovenia and Croatia
profited from common Yugoslav market, labor pool and energy
resources.  So, pride be damned, they would profit again from
either American or E.C. proposed South-Eastern-European
trade agreement.  Fears that this would lead them to a "new
Yugoslavia" are, except if they are used solely as a political
sound-bite, completely insane: Slovenia and Croatia are
buying F16s these days.  Croatia has perhaps the fittest
armed force in the region between Hungary and Greece.  They
set the terms there.  On the other hand it should be pretty
obvious to them by now that they are not going to be invited
to join E.C. any time soon, and that the reasons are political
and obscure.  So, they better make the best of what is offered. 
In any agreement the strongest party to the agreement will
always have the most benefit (as it should be plain if you
study NAFTA, for example), yet there will always be enough
isolationists and xenophobes to block it.

The problem is that politicians in both Slovenia and Croatia
lack courage and leadership.  If Tito waited for NATO and E.C.
to take him, Yugoslavia would look like Albania by the time of
his death.  No, he said fuck Stalin and fuck NATO, let's play
them both.  He made his own "bloc" - non-aligned - which of
course today is obsolete since there are no "blocs" any more. 
Yet, Yugoslavia at times attained the Western levels of
standard, and - through the freedom of travel - even an
illusion of liberty.  The U.S. is always on a lookout for
emerging regional powers.  Yugoslavia was such a regional
power.  It had a "friendly", secular leader with a big sway over
other Balkan countries.  With the collapse of Yugoslavia, the
Balkans lost its regional power and became a crisis spot. 
Crisis spots are bad news for corporate capitalism.  They are
good for cowboy capitalism, though.  But you can't expect
large legitimate corporate investments and you certainly can't
expect E.C. or NATO to come and take you in.  They all want
STABILITY.  They all want a regional power which would
guarantee that stability.  Since, Yugoslavia/Serbia is
apparently not fit for the role any more, and nobody else
claims it (because everybody else wants to take their country
somewhere else from the Balkans), there is a power vacuum in
the Balkans, and, as it is known, the nature abhors vacuum. 
However, we just have heard a Croatian president saying that
he doesn't want to take the role.  He is too old and too sick,
probably.

Yet, his regime does have time to spend on little mind-games:
Radio 101 is now granted the concession, BUT this is pending
that they solve the ownership quandary, so we are back at the
square one.  There is of course no ownership quandary: Radio
101 is owned 75% by its employees and 25% by the City of
Zagreb - but this is heavily disputed by HDZ supporters who
will probably bring it to the court in following months.  As a
largest single shareholder, City of Zagreb, obviously holds a
big stick here.  Yet, HDZ lost City of Zagreb to the opposition -
and the Radio 101's problems started around that time:
Tudjman simply refuses to allow that his political opponents
get their hands on the most listened radio station in the
largest Croatian city, as he refused to let opposition Mayor
take the office.  I just wonder if it ever occurred to him that
this would be the  behavior of a typical Balkan leader.

-/-

Following their attendance of Clinton's inauguration Belgrade
Student Protest leaders were taken on a tour around the U.S.
conspicuously skipping New York, leaving Human Rights
Watch and Open Society Institute handlers pretty
disappointed.  It is as if they intentionally did not come here
so that they would not be associated with Soros.  Their tour
was organized by a Serbian-American group who took them
around to Serbian cultural centers where there were organized
fundraisers, the beaten path taken by Tudjman and other
Croatian anti-communist leaders in 1990 (of course they were
handled by Croatian-American groups and taken to Croatian
cultural centers).  Tudjman collected 6 millions dollars in six
months of touring the U.S., Australia and Germany.

New York also has a large Serb community and a Serbian
center, but perhaps they are not the same political affiliation
as the Serb-American group that took students around.  In
New York - if they appeared - they'd be invited to speak at
NYU, Columbia, HRW, OSI.  Of course there would be a fund-raiser for them and probably a party.  From some e-mail
responses to my announcement about them coming and
requesting that somebody, preferably from Belgrade, throw a
party for them, I gathered that their stardom (and they are
stars now after a month of CNN Headline News) is not taken
entirely serious.

It is also evident that they are now becoming politically astute,
so they are setting priorities, and those priorities are money
and support among Serbs, instead of the often
counterproductive support of the various American NGOs. 
NGOs are not needed now when they have the American
government open support.  Or at least they think that way. 
Do they really believe that we all bought that they are anti-war
and non-nationalist just because Clinton invited them to his
inauguration?

It is not surprising that they concluded that there is no use of
NGOs.  You can't eat their reports, and their moral support
and a pat on the shoulder will not keep you out of prison,
whereas if you end there, they'd write a cute report about you. 
The Croatian opposition had the same experience before.  The
Bosnian government can tell you stories about that, too.  I
already said once that, in my opinion, Western NGOs are self-serving entities that are created to employ all those law school
graduates from fine families who either don't want to be
lawyers (because it's so uncool) or are too incompetent to be
lawyers.  So, I don't blame Student Protest leaders for dissing
NGOs.  However, it was not particularly smart to do that. 
They should have sent at least one of them to attend those
events in New York. Why?  Because the Belgrade Student
Protest leaders that avoid OSI and HRW and instead spend
their time in Serbian cultural centers, which just a few years
ago held fundraisers for Raskovic, Babic and Karadzic, will not
make particularly favorable media response.  I can already see
Chris Hedges bouncing around his New York Times office
shouting: "I was right, I was right, they are all damn Nazis."

There is an acrid taste associated with the near-perfect
organization of such fundraisers.  For example, as if somebody
used a magic wand, opposing Croatian emigree factions were
at that time (end of 1989) driven together and, after 40 years
of hate and disgust against anybody that came from
Yugoslavia, herded into Croatian cultural centers, where they
just kept signing fat checks to Tudjman and his aides. 
Communists were still in power in Croatia, but again as if by
providence, Tudjman, who just a few months before was a
non-person without a passport, was neither arrested nor
anybody bothered to tax his funds. Then Tudjman won and
Communists became the second largest bloc in the
parliament.  All this sudden spontaneity is mathematically
probable as a black hole hitting the Earth in April. I am
divining from my crystal ball now: I see opposing Serb emigree
factions suddenly falling in together and writing fat checks to
a group of choice, and I see that group winning elections and I
see "Socialists" getting in as a good second.  But whose choice
is it?  Balkan is a place of mysterious ways.  Things are often
the opposite of what they appear to be.

To me the most amusing detail is the use of word TOGETHER
in the region where everybody just watches how to stab
somebody else in the back: in Croatia we have HDZ - Hrvatska
Demokratska ZAJEDNICA: Croatian Democratic Union, and in
Serbia we have emerging political power of ZAJEDNO
(Together).  Union and Together have in
Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian the same root, however: ZAJEDN
(which would mean "for the one", "everybody for one thing").

For example a friend of mine just complained to me how she
got screwed by B92. Good grief.  Wasn't that the only
remaining oasis of decency in the evil empire of the late
Khazars gone mad?  So, she and that other guy were for years
corespondents for B92 from the US - she covered New York
and he covered Washington DC.  She did it for quite a longer
time. Of course, B92 didn't pay a dime.  He, however, was also
a correspondent for some big Yugoslav newspapers (and as
such probably a ranking member of the Communist Party). 
With the change of winds, he dropped the Party and remained
just a simple Serb, and with being a Serb increasingly
becoming a burden, he schmoozed himself in among the Soros
people.  Now, the time has come for B92 to pick a
correspondent from the US, a real one who'd get paid, and
they picked up him.  She is pissed.  But this does not come to
me as such a surprise: after all B92 is financed by OSI, so it
seems logical that the people affiliated with OSI and in
position to be correspondents would enjoy the priority.

-/-

War crimes tribunal chief prosecutor held a press conference
in Sarajevo, where she said that Serbs from Republika Srpska
agreed to cooperate on all issues regarding the war crimes
EXCEPT for extradition of the indicted war criminals. 
Cautiously, she agreed with the reporters, that there is not
much left to cooperate about with Republika Srpska once we
exclude the request for extradition of the war criminals living
there.

It is outrageous enough that the current government of
Republika Srpska does not discourage local officials of
preventing refugees to return to their homes as it was
stipulated by the Dayton agreement.  It is shameful that it was
allowed that the people who participated in the former
government of RS, which perpetrated all those admittedly
heinous crimes, are today forming the new RS government.
Obviously they will never be willing to extradite their former
colleagues and bosses.  That's if the Allies allowed Germany to
keep a Nazi government after 1945 and then expected that
government to extradite Goering.

Biljana Plavsic should be warned that she is going to be
indicted for being an accomplice to war crimes (which would
mean that he'd have to step down from the power), if she and
her government do not comply wit the International War
Crimes Tribunal requests.

Meanwhile, Bosnian foreign minister was invited to Germany. 
In Bosnia today however everything comes in triplicate: like a
holy trinity.  So, Bosnian foreign minister is actually
comprised of three human beings - a Bosnian Muslim, a Serb
and a Croat who are supposed to travail the world together
like Three Stooges.  The problem arose when the Serb part of
the Bosnian foreign minister decided to book a separate flight. 
Bosnian Muslim part of Bosnian foreign minister got very
upset about this and canceled the visit.  Germans gave up.

ivo

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