June 10, 2008
A Dark Corner of Europe, Part II
“The Balkans produce more history than they can consume.” – Winston Churchill
“Sarajevans will not be counting the dead. They will be counting the living.” – Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb leader, war criminal, fugitive
Sarajevo can be startling for first-time visitors. Shattered buildings, walls riddled with bullet holes, and mass graveyards are shocking things to see in a European capital in the 21st Century. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was more violent than the others in the former Yugoslavia, and it shows. If I believed in ghosts I'd say Sarajevo must be one haunted place. At the same time, the reconstruction and cleanup work is impressive. The destruction gave me a jolt, but at the same time I was slightly surprised I didn't see more of it.
Bosnia is a troubled country with a dark recent past, but it is no longer the war-torn disaster it was. Sarajevo was under siege for almost four years by Bosnian Serb forces on the surrounding hilltops who fired mortar and artillery shells and sniper rounds at civilians, but it’s over and it has been over for more than a decade. Most damaged buildings have been repaired, and many neighborhoods look almost as though nothing bad ever happened to them.
I was on my way to Kosovo to investigate the world's newest country after its declaration of independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. It made little sense to visit only Kosovo without taking at least a brief look at some of the other countries in the former Yugoslavia to get a little on-the-ground regional perspective.
My long-time friend Sean LaFreniere joined me on the road-trip portion of the trip from Serbia's capital Belgrade to Kosovo's capital Prishtina. It is of course impossible to acquire anything like a masterful understanding of the contemporary Balkans on a whirlwind trip in a rented car, but that wasn't the point. Both Sean and I have wanted to visit the region for personal reasons for more than ten years. And I knew I could see Kosovo, the focal point of my trip, with clearer eyes if I first had some context and could compare and contrast the brand-new country with some of its neighbors.
Sarajevo, though, is a bewildering place for a first-time visitor trying to get a handle on things, much as Lebanon was the first time I traveled there during the twilight of the Syrian occupation. Out-of-date books and simplified media reports for distant foreign consumption can only help so much in these kinds of places, I'm afraid. There is a great deal of local detail rarely covered by foreign correspondents that can only be absorbed through immersion. Acquaintances of mine who live or have lived in Syria say the same is true there, and I believe them. It’s probably true almost everywhere.
“Maybe in twenty years Bosnia will be nice again,” said a Bosnian I know who lives now in Oregon.
“I love Sarajevo,” an Albanian woman in Kosovo later told me, “but I was there recently and saw on their faces that they are unhappy, more than they were a few years ago. You could see it and feel it.”
On the other hand, Sean and I met a man named Avdo in the Turkish Quarter of the old city who says the situation is bad but getting better. His biggest complaint wasn't about politics, but the exorbitant price of real estate in the city.
Whether it's getting better or worse, I can't say. Serbian writer Filip David's basic diagnosis seems to be right, though. “In Sarajevo it is not a good situation,” he said to me and Sean in Belgrade the day before we left Serbia for Bosnia. “My friends who are Croatians and Muslims, they are not satisfied. It doesn't function. Serbs, Croatians, and Muslims in the [government] that must decide, they can't decide anything. Everybody must say yes.”
Bosnia-Herzegovina is ethnically divided between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks. No group commands a numeric majority. Muslims makes up a plurality of the population at just under one half, but everyone is a minority. The country is also politically divided between the Serb-controlled Republica Srpska and the rest of the country. Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Republica Srpska aren't three separate regions, however. Republica Srpska itself divides both Bosnia and Herzegovina. The map is a mess, and so is the country.
It doesn't feel like a mess on a brief visit, though, the way Baghdad does, for example. The Bosnian war was ferocious – worse than Iraq's – and seeing Sarajevo in reasonably good shape was a welcome reminder that terrible wars end. I could not have imagined Sarajevo looking the way it does now in the middle of the 1990s.
Some of my friends and family thought I was a bit strange for wanting to see Bosnia, even though the war has been over for more than ten years. The truth is that Sarajevo is great for cultural and historical tourism. Belgrade is sometimes described to would-be travelers as an undiscovered jewel of the Balkans, and it's true that the place is a bit underrated for what it has to offer, but that goes at least double for Sarajevo. Serbia is still known for extreme politics, but that won't affect visitors. Bosnia's former reputation as being go-there-and-die dangerous is a much harder one to live down no matter how out of date.
It’s a beautiful place, actually. Not only is it worth seeing, it is worth going to see. Sarajevo’s old city center is unique. One part looks and feels like Turkey, another like the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. There aren't many cities in the world where in less than five minutes you can walk from an Eastern urban environment to another that is unmistakably Western. Sarajevo reminded me of Beirut in both good ways and bad. Bad because, like Beirut, parts of it are still shot full of holes despite the massive and impressive reconstruction since the war ended. Good because, also like Beirut, there are sizable numbers of mosques and churches in a city that has been a civilizational crossroads for centuries.
Before the war, the percentages of Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the city were more or less even, with Christian Serbs and Croats together just barely eking out a majority. The war changed the demographics, though. Sarajevo is mostly Muslim Bosniak now. That’s fine as far as it goes, but the city sadly no longer is the same kind of living example of inter-religious tolerance and co-existence that it once was. Nationalists like Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, and their ilk made sure of that.
Aside from some of the architecture, however, Sarajevo doesn't necessarily look or feel like a Muslim-majority city. In this way it resembles Istanbul, only from outward appearances it is even more secular. Most Bosnians aren’t demonstrative about religion.
I saw very few women wearing Islamic headscarves. Alcohol is no less available than it is anywhere else in Europe – or in Turkey for that matter – for those who want it. It is hardly an Islamist environment. Sarajevo is a city of both the East and the West, but it is wholly European at the end of the day.
Sean and I stayed at the Holiday Inn, a hotel made famous by war correspondents in the mid-1990s. It looks like a modernist cube from the 1970s, though it was built in the 1980s. It fits in rather well in a part of the city near the center that is dominated by other modern buildings. Some are generically international while others look explicitly communist.
The war never left my mind while Sean and I were in Sarajevo. Something that struck both of us at once upon arrival in the city is how narrow it is in the old part of town. Serb snipers took up position in houses on the tops of the hills and fired at anyone they saw moving, including, of course, fellow Serbs who decided to stay. The infamous “Sniper Alley” was right outside our hotel. The narrowness of the city – you can walk from one edge at the bottom of one hill to the other side in just a few minutes – means the snipers always were close. If you can see the hills, the hills can see you, and the hills loom beautifully but ominously over everything.
That night I dreamed I was trapped there during the siege, scrambling to find a place where I couldn't see hills.
“[Serbs] say Republica Srpska has the right to separate from Bosnia,” Filip David said to me and Sean, “but they stopped because the United Nations asked them to stop. If Serbs speak in that way, they have no right to protest Kosovo.”
“So now they've realized the contradiction and quieted down?” Sean said.
“Yes,” David said. “They stopped in this moment, but in the future nobody knows. The Croatians in Bosnia are not satisfied. They [also] ask for their own territory and government.”
“So it may yet split into three,” Sean said.
I have no idea if Bosnia will ever actually split into three. Dividing it up peacefully, equitably, and in a way that would satisfy everyone wouldn’t be possible. Partitioning unevenly mixed countries, especially those with so many mixed families like Bosnia and Iraq, is a nasty business. Kosovo’s break with Serbia was a lot cleaner than what could be done in Bosnia or what could be done anywhere in Iraq south of the three Kurdish autonomous provinces. James Longley captured the gruesomeness of the idea well in his documentary film Iraq in Fragments. “The future of Iraq will be in three pieces,” says an old man. A young child, perhaps the man’s grandchild, answers him this way: “Iraq is not something you can cut into pieces. Iraq is a country. How do you cut a country into pieces? With a saw?”
It's on the minds of some in Bosnia, though, and Kosovo's declaration of independence makes the question more complex than it already was.
Sean and I met with Samir Beglerovic from the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo and asked him what he thought about it.
“What does the Muslim community of Bosnia think about the independence of Kosovo?” I said.
“I think everyone can support this independence,” he said. “Everyone who knows the situation in ex-Yugoslavia knows that Kosovo had maybe the worst position in ex-Yugoslavia before the 1990’s. So there is support for them. In the beginning all Kosovo wanted was to be a republic within Yugoslavia. They didn’t allow that, so then the problem began and they wanted independence, and finally they got it. People from Bosnia – Muslims and Croatian people – they are supporting this.”
“Does anyone here who isn't a Serb support the Serbian side?” I said.
“There was some talk,” he said, “[about whether or not] it was good for Bosnians for Kosovo to seek independence now. Some thought it would be better if they waited three, four, or five years because we don’t have a clear situation [in Bosnia]. They say that now, by giving Kosovo independence, Serbia is sending a clear sign to the Republica Srpska that they can do the same thing to Bosnia. And now Bosnian politicians think from this perspective it would be better for us if they didn’t do it now.”
While it may seem reasonable to let the Serbs in Republica Srpska leave Bosnia if they want to, as many think it is reasonable to accept Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, there are grounds for rejecting the idea, and not just because it would be messy. There are also issues of justice.
“49 percent of Bosnia is Republica Srpska,” Beglerovic said. “But from 80 percent of it, people were killed and expelled from their lands. This is territory they won by war, nothing more.”
As you can see from the maps, Serbs made up an ethnic majority only in parts of what is now Republica Srpska. Kosovo never expanded its borders through war inside Serbia proper before the declaration of independence, but the Bosnian Serb Army and affiliated paramilitary units used mass murder and ethnic-cleansing to bring as many Serbs as possible inside Bosnia within geographically contiguous territory purged of Croats and Bosniaks.
Sean and I met Predrag Delibasic, a half-Serbian and half-Bosnian writer and film maker, in Belgrade the day before we arrived in Sarajevo. He told us about his childhood in Bosnia where his group of closest friends were from different ethnic backgrounds. They were the subjects of a documentary film he made called Maturity Exam.
His friends then and now were from different backgrounds. Filip David introduced me and Sean to Delibasic and the rest of his crowd who meet every day at the same cafe downtown. Members of their group hail from Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo.
“Everyone here is of the same opinion,” David said. “We are all in favor of good relations with Kosovo and each other. We have only one Serb, and he is an anti-nationalist.”
“We are all friends,” Delibasic said. “We don't care about ethnicity. But others, people around here...it's hard. The radish is too deep. It cannot be uprooted.”
Many at the cafe didn't speak English, so Sean and I spent most of our time talking to David and Delibasic, who did.
“My best friend now is a Serb who married a Bosnian woman,” Delibasic said. “Jovan Divjak, the Serb defender of the city of Sarajevo.”
General Jovan Divjak was the highest ranking Serb officer in the multi-ethnic Bosnian Army during the war. His very existence shows that even then the liberal idea of a cosmopolitan and ethnically-mixed Bosnia was still alive in the hearts and minds of some of its people. Not every Serb agreed with Slobodan Milosevic's and Radovan Karadzic's genocidal ethnic nationalist campaign, and some fought and died to put a stop to it. Many were singled out and publicly executed by nationalist Serb forces for resisting and for refusing to fight Bosniaks and Croats.
“Do you know who that man is?” Delibasic said and gestured behind him. “The man at that table there with the white hair?”
I looked to my right and saw who I thought he was talking about four tables down.
“The man sitting with the young woman?” I said.
“He was Tito's general,” he said.
Yugoslavia's communist dictator Josip Broz (Marshall) Tito must have had more than one general. “Which general?” I said. “What's his name?”
“He is General Jovo Kapicic,” he said. “His son owns this cafe. We are good friends.”
One of the small pleasures of traveling to the small capital cities of small countries is how easy it can be to meet important people even by chance. Sean and I didn't want to talk about Tito's general, however. We wanted to talk about Bosnia, where Delibasic grew up.
“When I was a kid in Sarajevo,” Delibasic said, “some visiting Montenegrin nationalists asked me, who are you? I had no idea, and I didn't care. So I made up an answer. I am Jewish! I said. My mother said no, no no. But I didn't know or care. My friends were Jews, Muslims, and Catholics. After I was told I wasn't Jewish, I said I was a Muslim. But that wasn't right either. So after that I've always just said I am a Yugoslav. If I could, I would take citizenship in Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro, as well as in Bosnia and Serbia. But I can't. I still call myself a Yugoslav, but the census-takers won't accept that as an answer.”
Explaining the crackup of Yugoslavia as a natural resurgence of “ancient hatreds” in a post-communist ideological vacuum is tempting for many observers, but it's wide of the mark. It's true that Tito kept a lid on nationalist sentiments in its varied republics during the communist era, and it's also true that the Balkans in general have a long bloody history. But nationalism, in particular Serbian nationalism, was deliberately crafted as a replacement ideology by Slobodan Milosevic and like-minded political leaders desperate to cling to power and grab onto whatever they could as the country came apart.
Milosevic's, though, wasn't the only violent nationalist movement in Yugoslavia’s history that Predrag Delibasic personally had to contend with. He is old enough to remember World War II vividly, and he told Sean and me about his experience with the Ustasha – the armed Croatian fascist movement aligned with the Nazis.
“Armed and drunk Ustasha men came to our house when I was thirteen years old,” he said. “They demanded our papers and couldn't find them. My mother was very brave. She screamed at them and told them it was their fault because they messed up the house. The commander put a gun in her mouth. I grabbed the man's gun and said Kill me, not my mommy!”
He and his mother were then taken to prison in Visegrad, just inside Bosnia near Serbia. They managed to escape and were smuggled across the border with the help of a train conductor. His family reunited in Uzice where his father waited for him and his mother.
Later he joined Tito's Partisans. “I was a member of the Communist Party,” he said. “But I was ideologically quiet.”
He didn't fare any better with the communists than he did with the Ustasha.
“I was falsely accused of being a Stalinist,” he said, “after Tito broke with Stalin in 1948. Only recently, almost sixty years later, did I finally receive a document explaining exactly why I was arrested.”
As it turned out, according to the document, Delibasic was accused of being a Stalinist because he met with a visiting film student from Moscow.
“They sent me to Goli Otok,” he said. “Tito's concentration camp.”
Goli Otok was a prison on an island in the Adriatic, now part of Croatia. It's name means Naked Island. The island is mostly bare, as were its prisoners. “They made us march naked,” he said, “and do forced labor.”
“That must have made you re-think communism,” Sean said.
“Yes,” Delibasic said and nodded as he widened his eyes. “The camp was run by Tito's general.”
“Which general?” I said. “Him?” Was he talking about the man he had just pointed out less than a half hour before? The man I had taken a picture of who was still sitting just a few tables down? Whose son owned the cafe?
“Yes,” Delibasic said and gestured by nodding his head in the direction of General Kapicic. The old gulag chief nursed his coffee only a dozen or so meters away. “It was the hardest time of my life. I could not believe that my beloved Partisans would build such an infernal place.”
I could hardly believe he was friends with the general who ran it, who made him work and march naked for meeting a film student.
Just a few minutes later, General Kapicic got up to leave and stopped by our table on his way out. Delibasic introduced me and Sean to him.
“He is a good friend to me,” Kapicic said to us in English, “and now to you. He is a very smart professor, and you should listen to him.”
After the general left, I had to ask. “How can you be friends with him? After what he did?”
“You heard what he said,” Delibasic said. “I accept it, and I don't hate anybody.”
Around a thousand Arab veterans of the insurgency against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan volunteered to fight a “jihad” against Serbs in Bosnia. The Bosnian Army was desperate for help at the time. European countries imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia which severely degraded the Bosnians’ ability to defend themselves. The Serb forces had most of the weapons, and the embargo preserved the imbalance of power. As it turned out, though, the Arabic mujahideen from the Middle East had no more effect on the war in Bosnia than they had when they ran off to Afghanistan. In each place they were basically tourists with guns who made little or no impact on the outcome of the war, or even the outcome of major battles. Some of these characters stayed in Bosnia where they still live today.
Bosnia has a bit of an Islamist problem, but they aren't its biggest cause. Saudis and others from the extremist Wahhabi school of Islam swooped in after the war ended to rebuild damaged mosques in their own severe style and to impose their rigid interpretation of religion, as much as they can, on culturally liberal Europeans.
Stephen Schwartz – journalist, author, and Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism – has done a much more thorough job documenting the phenomenon that I could even attempt here, but I wanted to ask Samir Beglerovic about it since he lives there. He's a Sufi and therefore detested by Wahhabis as much as Christians, Jews, and other so-called “infidels” are.
“How much of a problem is this?” I said.
“We have a problem and I think it is obvious,” he said. “In the beginning, during the war, mostly people didn’t realize what was going on. They had their priorities to deal with – how to survive, how to do this, how to do that. And after the war I think the majority somehow didn’t recognize what was going on. We have seen some changes, we have seen some things we didn’t know about before, different approaches, different attitudes. There is something we didn’t have before in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mostly they were targeting the common people, not intellectuals as much. They were students that had gone to study in other countries in the East, and when they had received their MA or PhD they came here to Bosnia.”
“Do you think it is a big problem,” I said, “or a small problem?”
“It depends,” he said. “As far as individuals are concerned, we have to accept everyone, but regarding organizations, movements, we have to be very careful. As far as an individual is concerned, it is his choice, but if he wants to work within society, with students, you have to stop it, or you have to direct it through our traditional institutions.”
“What is it exactly that the Wahhabis are trying to do here?” I said. “Are they trying to make Bosnian Muslims more conservative, or do they have a bigger agenda?”
“They say We have to Islamize you,” he said. “That's the notion they are using, to Islamize. They think that even the practicing Muslims – that means going to mosque, praying – they think they are not good enough, they have to be better. And also that our perception of Islam is wrong.”
“What is your perception of Islam according to them?” I said.
“I don’t know what they think,” he said. “They say it is full of innovations, things you cannot find in Islam. We made it up or got it from the interactions with the non-Muslims living traditionally here in Bosnia-Herzegovina, here in this part, especially from Europe. So it is a religious position, the Islamization. You are not Islamic enough, we have to Islamize you more.”
“What is it about your version of Islam that they don’t like specifically?” I said.
“Every segment of it,” he said. “Meaning our clothes, we are dressing like Europeans, the way we look, we don’t say you have to wear a beard, or that it doesn’t have to be long. It’s also the literature we are using because mostly we are leaning on the traditional scholars of Islam while they are leaning on the so-called reformers. There are lots of things. The logical aspects of Islam, the interior and exterior of the mosques, everything. Almost everything we do is wrong. It's very hard to recognize why and from where they get this kind of attitude.”
“How popular are they here?” I said.
“We don’t have statistics,” he said. “That’s our major problem. We don’t do statistics. 1997 and 1998 were very hard years here in Bosnia, after the war. In 1996 it was still a kind of war. Sarajevo hadn’t been integrated yet in the first half of 1996, so 1997 was the year, you could say, you could begin to live a normal life. Or try to live a normal life. And then the first shocks came to you – you do not have a job. If you want to repair your house, repair your apartment, send your kids to school, go to school yourself, you need money. Therefore you need a job, and they were hard to find. So in the beginning people were mainly disappointed with the new aspects of life in Bosnia, post-war life, when everyone was expecting that the government would support people somehow, and we wouldn’t be having trouble with food and schools. And then there was this group that came in and started criticizing anyone who had any important position in the community, the government, or the political parties. The best way to recognize their strength may be from the newcomers on the Web sites, because in the print media they don’t have much space. We now have very strict regulations.”
“Today?” Sean said.
“Yes,” Beglerovic said. “In Bosnia-Herzegovina the Regulatory Newspaper Agency, the RAK. Radio stations and TV stations have to get a license from them.”
“After that are they monitored?” Sean said.
“Yes,” Beglerovic said. “They are monitored. And in the beginning if you do something wrong, first you pay, then you can be banished. There are a lot of inter-religious and nationalist...let's call it bad words.”
“So if you incite amongst the public,” Sean said, “the government will be upset with you.”
“Yes,” Beglerovic said. “There are some standards we didn’t have before.”
“This is a problem for the Wahhabis?” I said.
“For everyone,” he said, “but also for the Wahhabis because you are asking about them. The only space they can get is on Web sites.”
“What do Bosnian Muslims think of NATO and the US?” I said. “I know most Serbs don’t like us, but what about your community?”
Albanians in Kosovo love the United States for saving them from the mass murder and ethnic cleansing campaign waged against them by the Milosevic government. Bosnians, though, were left to twist in the wind and face Serbian guns alone for years with very little assistance. I would not expect Bosnian Muslims to feel the same way about Americans that Kosovar Albanians do, but some help is better than nothing, and it has not gone unnoticed.
“We consider NATO the only way for feeling secure in our land,” Beglerovic said. “And it’s said that the only friend we have is the United States. So that’s why each time when someone like Richard Holbrooke says that Bosnia could be a place for Al Qaeda, it scares us. It can mean that we lose our only friend.”
“It won’t happen,” Sean said.
“Historically,” Beglerovic said, “we had our friends in Austria and in Germany. But the only practical support we get is from the United States. I mean, okay, Germany accepted a lot of Bosnian refugees, and everyone helped in a way, but the most practical help is coming from the United States.”
I have no idea where all this is going, if Bosnia will be okay or if it won't. Will the country split into pieces? Will there be more fighting? Will the Islamists become dangerous to those who live inside and outside the country? I can't say, and I won't even guess. I've learned to be wary about predicting events in the Middle East – a part of the world I'm much more familiar with – so I know better than to guess what will happen in always-complicated and hard-to-read Bosnia. There are too many unresolved problems and too many variables. But the fact that it resembles, in some ways, a Yugoslavia writ small did not leave me feeling as optimistic as I would have liked. History there isn't over, that much is certain.
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Posted by Michael J. Totten at June 10, 2008 12:34 AMA year ago, I was in Croatia, which had had their own war of independence several years before Bosnia's. So much of what I see in these pictures looks somewhat familiar. Give Bosnia a few more years, and it may become as pleasant a place to visit at Croatia.
Posted by: Bigfoot
at June 10, 2008 6:04 AM
It is so fascinating to read about your travels to Bosnia and Serbia. I did refugee work in Frankfurt with IOM dealing mostly with bosnian refugees. I thought the comment about Germany was very interesting because I didn't know that the Germans allowed them to stay. The US took in thousands of Bosnians because they wouldn't let them stay in western Europe and the couldn't go home. I think Canada and Australia accepted some as well. You wouldn't believe how many I sent to Fargo, ND.
Posted by: kitkat at June 10, 2008 9:08 AM
While it might go without saying that this is another great read, it's worth saying again.
However:
"How can you be friends with him? After what he did?"
This is the attitude that leads to a desire for some form of a perfect justice -- but fails to understand that no justice system is peaceful. In many ways, all wars are about correcting some prior injustice, often with outside observers saying such post-war justice isn't worth the war.
Christian mercy allows the bygones to be gone, so that life today and in the future can be lived with happiness, even if not with justice.
Typically the injustice is clear -- but what is justice after the injustice? That's a grey area.
I think the nationalist Serbs are likely to want to leave -- with acceptance of Kosovo as the reason to call for a referendum in Republika Srbska with a call to join Serbia.
If the Croats also want to leave, but the Bosniak Muslims get Sarajevo, that would likely be economically OK.
My preferred solution and advice would be for Bosnia to attempt to copy Switzerland, and cantonize with strong local autonomous cantons, and a weaker central gov't. But central dictator & elite friendly UN & international community folks are always against cantonization.
Which I also advocate for Iraq.
Thanks also for more great maps. I think the ethnic cleansing was less in Bosnia area than that done by the victorious allies in the Czech Sudetenland. Commie Serbs remember fascist Croat attrocities from WW II -- "How could Serbs be friends with Croats after that?"
Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at June 10, 2008 9:19 AM
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 06/10/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
Posted by: David M at June 10, 2008 9:53 AM
I hear you, Tom.
I think, though, that it takes a deeper level of forgiveness to forgive what an individual does to someone personally than to forgive what a nation does to another nation.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 10, 2008 10:49 AM
Great article Michael,
I hope Bosnia doesn't succumb to the divisive and radicalizing efforts of the Wahhabis.
I think the Muslim extremists feed off of rancor and grievances to catalyze their incitement.
It is easier to point out issues people are still rotten about in Bosnia, since the displacement and ethnic cleansing by Serbs in the 1990s. Many Muslim Bosniacs know that where their houses used to be, now there live stranger Serbs in Republika Srpska.
Such facts, such unsettled injustices can serve as bridges toward inciting hatred for Christians.
Kosovo's detachment was much cleaner surgery, so I hope the wound doesn't fester.
By the way, that article Beyond "ancient hatreds" you liked to was great!
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 10:56 AM
Broadly I agree with Medaura, many Muslim Bosniacs know where their houses used to be and that they are occupied by Serbs in Republika Srpska. This is plain wrong and there needs to be restitution of some sort.
But this is true of Serbs from the Krajina and Western Slavonia too. Their homes are full of strange Croats who have settled in them after they were Ethnically Cleansed.
It is also true of some Kosovo Serbs who were forced out and have had their properties occupied or destroyed.
In all cases though, I believe there are government level efforts to address theses lingering injustices and grim after effects of ethnic war.
The challenge now is for regional governments to support each other in dealing with the problem.
One problem that I can foresee is the one mentioned by Filip David, namely that if it is legitimate for Kosovo to seceded, then there is literally nothing stopping the Republika Srpska from seceding too. Kosovo's independence has legitimised the ambitions of those elements in the RS who want to clinch the dream of a Velika Srbija through merging RS with Serbia proper.
Luckily Serbia is dead against this and rightly so.
For the record I am against splitting up Bosnia and I think that the Republika Srpska should be merged into the Federation as soon as possible.
I also marvel that the Bosnian Muslims, the most victimised and brutalised people in the region, are the most non-nationalist, forgiving and generally peaceful people I have come across.
One has to admire their "Ubuntu*".
I mean this in the African sense not the Linux distro sense - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 12:37 PM
Tom,
Just a note to support your points about forgiveness. One sees it already in the region (in my experience anyway). People want to move on.
I am not sure that Cantonization is the right road, although anything is better that the current situation.
My only reason, and it is not very solid, is that I think Bosnia is where we start the process of reinforcing the nation state after the troubles of the last 20 years.
It can be where we make a stand against ethnic nationalism and ethnic segmentation.
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 12:46 PM
Excellent article. In order for Bosnia to be at peace, serbian fascism needs to be rooted out.
Posted by: hamdija at June 10, 2008 12:48 PM
Nice to see some agreement here this time. Wonders never cease.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 10, 2008 12:50 PM
Limbic,
I have never heard you make a statement I agree with without appending to it mitigating ifs and buts.
It seems like everything you say in favor of or in sympathy with any other Balkan nation but the Serbs, is done for the purpose of equivocating Serbia's actions or bringing the discussion back the the "us poor suffering Serbs".
I know full well that the demographic disturbances which occurred in the 90s were often non-transitive in Bosnia: Serbs kicked off the Bosniacs, The Croats kicked off the Serbs, and so on and so forth.
If you look at the excellent "before and after" ethnic maps of Bosnia-Herzegovina which Michal has provided though, it is clear on which side the momentum of abuse was.
The Serbian population of Bosnia on average gained a lot of territory. The Croat population gained a little territory from the Serbs, whereas the Bosniacs got screwed on net balance.
Both the Bosniacs and the Croats were in defensive positions throughout the ethnic cleansing efforts in the 90s initiated by the Serbs.
The Arab states and every anti Semite on Earth screeches to this day about Israel's small territorial gains during its defensivewars in the Middle East and ask for Israel to unconditionally give back everything it gained.
The morality of these claims is very skewed: Had the Arab aggressors won the wars, Israel would have been wiped off the face of the Earth, no ifs or buts. But if they lose the wars, they should not give up anything and should retain control of all their territories. What is the deterrent factor then for aggressors? If they win, they destroy their target, if they lose, they shouldn't lose anything?
The point is that the ethnically cleansed regions of Bosnia were immediately colonized by a Serb influx from Serbia proper. Unless these colonizers go back home and make room for the displaced Bosniacs to go back to their homes, none of the other displacement issues can be solved, because this is the primary roadblock to settling the score.
Again, Serbian-initiated and propagated violence in so to be equivocated as 'a cycle of violence' (like Israel's actions against Gaza terrorists are almost universally portrayed).
"a pox on all your houses"---that's a bullshit attitudes that only goes to obfuscate what really happened in former Yugoslavia.
Limbic, I invite you to provide sources about your claims of "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs in Kosovo, because your preliminary numbers (200-270K Serbs 'ethnically cleansed' from Kosovo) make zero sense to me, as they imply that more Serbs left than there had ever lived in Kosovo.
Also, evidence, if you got any, that they didn't merely leave voluntarily, but were forced off their properties in the numbers you claim.
>>>taps fingers...
>>>waits...
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 1:16 PM
Perhaps it would be asking too much, but I would also love to find out when these alleged acts of ethnic cleansing took place in Kosovo.
Was it right under the noses of the KFOR troops?
That would be interesting.
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 1:38 PM
Michael,
The only thing that ruins this article for me is the link to that racist bigot Schwartz.
It is a matter of genuine regret that he seems to be a serious source for you in your understanding of the region.
Here is not the place to discuss that article, but please note that Schwartz is a self-confessed Serb-hater.
The man is clearly brilliant, but absolutely blighted by a genuine hatred of all things Serb.
It ruins his work, as his biases and bigotry lead him into distortion, inaccuracy and downright lies on just about anything to do with Serbs or Serbia.
You think I am being unfair? Being a bit hair-trigger with the Serbophobe label?
Well sample his own words:
"Serbs, except for the few that defended Sarajevo like my friends Jovan Divjak and Mirko Pejanovic, are pigs. You are welcome to love pigs, but remember, they eat human flesh." - Stephen Schwartz, 25/2/2008 - http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/open-serb-hatred-must-be-answered/#comment-15767 (read that post for my debunking of another one of Schwartz's Serb-hating diatribes).
I can provide you with more examples of his racist bile if required.
People reading that article should keep in mind that it is mostly speculation and guesswork, not even attempting to be even handed and is grossly unfair in its (mis)portrayal of Serbs.
It is a racist classic of the historical revisionist school written by a notorious on-record Serb-hater.
For those looking for a decent work about the Balkans, make sure you read Rebecca West's magnificent 1942 classic "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon".
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 1:41 PM
Limbic,
For someone so enlightened in critical thinking and formal logics as you profess yourself to be, I am surprised at your gaffe above.
Why don't you reproduce the actual quote?
Someone claiming to be Schwartz writes:
So if Albanians are savages and the KLA were terrorists, Serbs, except for the few that defended Sarajevo like my friends Jovan Divjak and Mirko Pejanovic, are pigs. (emphasis added)
If the moon is made of cheese then you are Slobodo's love child.
If I utter the above sentence, note that I am not revealing a belief that you are Slobodo's love child.
(if A then B) is not logically equivalent to B.
Beat it!
The person singing himself off as Schwartz is not saying that he thinks Serbs are pigs (with or without the cited exceptions), but that they are just as much flesh eating pigs, as the Albanians are savages and the KLA were terrorists.
For that matter, I have as little proof but as much intuition that you are not at all Irish/South-African but rather a Serb claiming to be a Westerner, as you have proof and intuition about the exodus being a KLA media orchestrated stunt.
Anyhow, please address any actual factual or interpretational falsehoods or inaccuracies regarding Schwartz's analysis, instead of dismissign everything he says because he is an alleged, or allegedly self-declared, Serbophobe.
Do I need to run you up to date with logical fallacies? Dismissing an argument because of its source's supposedly evil/tainted pedigree is also a logical fallacy.
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 2:02 PM
Kejda,
You wrote, "The point is that the ethnically cleansed regions of Bosnia were immediately colonized by a Serb influx from Serbia proper.
Please support this with some sort of evidence. This conflicts with what I have seen and heard in the Republika Srpska.
You invite me to post evidence, so her we go again.
There were two big "cleansing", the first in the immediate aftermath of the NATO occupation/Serb retreat:
Human Right Watch noted in 1999, a mere 7 weeks after the bombing....
"Life is returning to Kosovo as refugees return from Macedonia and Albania. Yet for the province's minorities, and especially the Serb and Roma (Gypsy) populations, as well as some ethnic Albanians perceived as collaborators or as political opponents of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), these changes have brought fear, uncertainty, and in some cases violence. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 164,000 have left Kosovo altogether. Many others have moved to Serb or Roma enclaves under KFOR protection within Kosovo." [ http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kosov2/ ]
They later upped their tally to 200,00 saying of the outbreak of ethnic violence in 2003 that "The attacks bear similarity to the campaign of arson, abduction, intimidation and killing directed at Serbs and Roma in the summer of 1999. This campaign of violence forced 200,000 Serbs and thousands of Roma from the province. " [ http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/03/18/serbia8129.htm ]
In March 2003, due to the violence their was another exodus, albeit smaller, and since then there has been a steady trickle of Serbs fleeing intimidation and ethnic violence.
In 2007, the "UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2006" [
http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/STATISTICS/478cda572.html ] put the number of Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees as:
- 98,997 persons with confirmed refugee status in central Serbia
- 206,504 IPDs from Kosovo Province
- 21,000 IPDs within Kosovo Province
According to that report, Serbia and Montenegro (then one country) was had the 3rd highest concentration of refugees in the world.
Just download the statistical annex, it says it all.
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 2:40 PM
Kejda,
The UN is the minimum figure as far as Serbs are concerned.
According to Serbia’s Commissioner for Refugees, "330,000 IDP’s from Kosovo arrived in Serbia in August 1999, of whom 209,579 remain in Serbia today". [ http://www.mfa.gov.yu/Bilteni/Engleski/b271107_e.html ]
All of this proves what I have said and supports the previously posted report "Final status for Kosovo – towards durable solutions for IDPs or new displacement risk?" [ http://tinyurl.com/5w66r8 ]
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 2:44 PM
Kejda,
As for evidence that they did not "merely leave voluntarily", I will set aside your blatant ignorance of the definitions of Ethnic Cleansing I invite you to Google and read these reports:
Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA - ABUSES AGAINST SERBS AND ROMA IN THE NEW KOSOVO
And it was not just Serbs of course, the Roma and Gorani suffered too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/19/bandonedinkosovo
There is always good old CNN
"NATO, the U.N. and OSCE, and several hundred non-governmental organizations, now populate Kosovo. Under their eyes, about 250,000 Serbs, Romas, Turks, Gorani, Bosnians, Croats and Jews have been ethnically cleansed from Kosovo by the very ethnic Albanian leadership with whom the West intimately cooperates." [ http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/kosovo/stories/present/kfor/ ]
I think that should settle this discussion once and for all.
[Sorry about the multiple posts, my comments kept getting eaten]
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 2:47 PM
Kejda,
We already know you and Schwartz are allies in your loathing of Serbs.
Nothing new there.
If Mr Schwartz was not calling Serbs pigs (which seems odd since he also called them canines, troglodytes and evil) then what did he mean by "Then you should go to Serbia and live with the pigs you love so much"?
Here are some choice cuts from his recent Pajamas Media article ( http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/02/heroic_serbs_storm_us_embassy.php )
"Serbs do not change" - RUBBISH.
Serbs...revel in their bravery when it comes to murdering children and old people...interpret diplomacy as aggression and attempted genocide" - LIE
Serbs "sold out the Jews" - LIE
"Serbs hate Muslims because Muslims wash before praying" - You cannot make this stuff up!
So this is a Serb LOVER Kejda? A Serb Lovers like you huh :-)
The man is an open unashamed on-record racist loon.
You are now on record defending him.
As for my poisoning Schwatz's well, that is EXACTLY what I am doing. I do not expect you to understand this, but there are circumstances where it is completely legitimate to reveal provenance and pseudo-authority. This is one of them, just as it is when I reveal Dr Bob recommending "Super Supplement" is a doctor of theology not medicine.
Schwartz is masquerading as a neutral authority. It lends him credibility. I am destroying that credibility by pointing out that he is heavily biased, has an axe to grind and is a raving bigot.
With that in mind, an intelligent reader will be able to make up their mind better about his claims.
I have already done my bit to discredit Schwartz.
There is no need for me to waste any more time on him. Schwartz is now recognised as a radical, an extremist and a bigot. Sadly it is only when people cite him do they find out from their readers, professors or editors that they are citing someone who is to Balkan studies what David Irving is to Germanic Studies, namely an agenda driven apologist masquerading as an objective scholar and analyst.
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 3:19 PM
Correction: Schwartz did not call Serbs "evil" (that I know of). I was confusing him with another commenter.
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 3:23 PM
I've looked into these numbers as well. I have to. It's my job.
United States Army officers (whom I trust a great deal) pointed me to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. They claim that 65,000 Serbs were displaced from Kosovo. That number makes a lot more sense than 200,000 because there weren't 200,000 Serbs in Kosovo to begin with. Kosovo's Serb population is not below zero.
It should also be pointed out that not every person who migrates is a victim of ethnic cleansing. There were revenge attacks, yes, and there is obviously no excuse for them. But there was no ethnic-cleansing campaign in Kosovo that even remotely resembled with the mechanized military offensive that the Milosevic government waged against Albanians. Kosovo's first elected prime minister after the NATO intervention was the noted pacifist Ibrahim Rugova. The KLA leadership lost that election in a landslide. And Kosovo has no armed forces. The KLA doesn't even exist anymore. The only soldiers in Kosovo are the international soldiers from NATO countries that make up KFOR.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 10, 2008 3:31 PM
Limbic,
Human Rights Watch is not a source. They do not conduct statistical report, merely second-handedly cite others.
You pointed me toward a big list of pdf documents. I have no time to parse through all of them. Please find me the exact direct document from UNHCR, or any other statistical report, not websites where I have to fish for more sources.
In any case, how do you account for the information on this study on the demographic changes in Kosovo?
Table 2, Page 11.
In 1991, according to the assessment of the ex-Yugoslav Federation Office of Statistics (YFOS), the Serbian population in Kosovo was 194,190.
In 2006, according to SOK, there are 111,300 Serbs in the province.
That puts the number of those who left, to be no more than 82,890 Serbs.
This number is largely inflated because the number of Serbs living in Kosovo now is likely under-reported, because many Serbs have refused to part take in these statistical studies in Kosovo (I wonder why)
So how does Belgrade's math work? 330,000 IDPs arrived in Serbia from Kosovo in 1999, though less than 200K Serbs ever lived in Kosovo?
From the IDMC link you provided, let me quote some interesting information:
- Debate about figures is ongoing
- IDP figures is based on registration but it is estimated that some 20,000 Roma IDPs in Serbia are not registered
(Anyone can register, and I know Belgrade's government to have encouraged Serbs to register. The definition of an IDP is not as strict as that of a refugee.)
- Since no registration of IDPs has taken place in Kosovo, the figure is a UNHCR estimate
It gets much more interesting!
However, other organizations indicate different figures. Some claim the actual numbers may be lower while other think they should be much higher as many IDPs, particularly Roma, have not officially registered.
Serbian authorities are so far reluctant to organise a new registration exercise of IDPs which would clarify the issue.
hmmm, I wonder why that is.
From the very same source: http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/website/countries.nsf/(httpEnvelopes)/E2928D405B865F3D802570B8005AAF37?OpenDocument
ESI (European Stability Initiative), 7 June 2004:
"While there are no official population figures in Kosovo, both Serbian and Kosovo government data suggest that there are currently around 130,000 Serbs resident in Kosovo. The Belgrade-based Kosovo Coordination Centre (CCK), which is the Serbian administrative body responsible for Kosovo affairs, published a detailed report in January 2003 which gives a figure of 129,474 Serbs in Kosovo in 2002. This corresponds closely with ESI estimates based on primary school enrolment figures from the Kosovo Ministry for Education. There are 14,368 pupils in Serb-language primary schools in Kosovo in 2004. Using data on the age structure of Kosovo Serbs from a number of post-war surveys, this suggests a total Serb population of 128,000.
According to the last Yugoslav census, there were 194,000 Serbs resident in Kosovo in 1991.
(what I had cited)
During the 1980s, the number of Kosovo Serbs had declined. It is unlikely that the number of Serbs increased again during the 1990s. In fact, during the 1990s, the Serbian government felt compelled to introduce various measures aimed at stemming the emigration of Serbs from Kosovo.
The extent of Serb displacement from Kosovo is therefore likely to be around 65,000.
Contrary to a widespread perception, two-thirds of the pre-war Kosovo Serb population actually remain in Kosovo. (...) Contrary to another perception, almost two thirds of the present resident Serb population in Kosovo live south of the river Ibar [separating northern majority Serbian Kosovo from South Kosovo]
The IDMC has the following comment to make about this:
Contrary to what the ESI report say the Serb population in Kosovo has increased in the 1990s. Between the 1991 census and 1996, some 19.000 Serb refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have been sent by Milosevic regime to Kosovo. (OSCE, 1 September1999, Part IV, Chapter 19).
(these people had been dumped by Milosevic by expropriating Albanians and turning their houses and property over to these newcomers, so they SHOULD have left after 1999, if they hadn't left already. But read below, most of them had left already:)
However, according to UNHCR Belgrade, most of these refugees have either left Kosovo, been resettled or taken citizenship of Serbia. (UNHCR Belgrade, email correspondence, 7 July 2005)
The Smoking Memo, Limbic, here it is!!!
I guess don't even bother to find me the right PDF document among that big list of links thrown against the wall, for the UNHCR report:
UNHCR's own documents repeat the results of the Serbian government registration exercise. UNHCR, which operates on the territory of Serbia by invitation of the government, has not carried out an independent investigation. In the fine print of some of its documents, however, it expresses serious doubts about the official figures.
(The report that claims over 140K-200K displaced Serbs from Kosovo is just propaganda admittedly fed by the Serbian government to UNHCR!!)
"The sum of the estimated number of minorities living in Kosovo, and the number of currently registered IDPs in Serbia and Montenegro, results in a figure significantly higher than the minority population that has ever lived in Kosovo…"
Bingo!!!
An undetermined number of minority returnees who have returned to Kosovo, including those who left during the NATO bombings but returned immediately after, never de-registered.
Bam!! Does that sting, Limbic?
"Realistically, therefore, much lower numbers than those non-Albanians currently registered as IDPs in Serbia are truly IDPs, or remain IDPs in search of a durable solution, or await voluntary return." (ESI, 7 June 2004, D.1.Return)
So Limbic, all your sources were bogus, do you have any other sources?
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 3:49 PM
Michael, you link to the same source I did above???
How did you miss the headline "IDPs from and within Kosovo: 206,000 in Serbia and 21,000 within Kosovo"
That is basically what I have said all along (including their points about Roma and Gorani).
As for quibbling about whether these IDPs were Ethnically Cleansed, the accepted definitions:
I use the definition offered by the Commission of Experts, in their first Interim Report 10/2/1993
'Considered in the context of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing means rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force and intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area."
Andrew Bell-Fialkoff says "...ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of an `undesirable' population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these."
[http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19930601faessay5199/andrew-bell-fialkoff/a-brief-history-of-ethnic-cleansing.html ]
Given these definitions, and the facts of not onky what happened and CONTINUES to happen daily in Kosovo, the question is beyond doubt in my mind.
The the mechanized military offensive in 1998/99 was against the KLA with undeniable crimes also commited against civilians (mostly after the bombing).
The deracination of Serbs, and the obstruction of returnees, is an ongoing problem in Kosovo today.
It is low intensity operations conducted at the level of all ethnic war - machetes, drive-bys, hand grenades, stonings, arson....
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 3:59 PM
So Limbic,
All your sources relate either directly to the UNHCR report, or indirectly (because the Human Rights Watch takes it at face value).
But it turns out that the UNHCR report consists merely of numbers fed to them by the Serbian government (which also claims a total of 330K Serbs displaced from Kosovo, a number which the international monitoring authorities agree with me, in that it is bigger than the number of Serbs to have ever lived in Kosovo in the first place).
All your sources are either direct figures of the Serbian government, which are absurd and do not stand up to minimal scrutiny, or second-hand figures of the Serb Government (the UNHCR report), or third-hand figures of the Serb Government (the Human Rights Watch, citing the UNHCR report).
All the independent estimates not cooked by the Serbian government neither directly nor indirectly, converge at 65K, which is the figure Michael was given.
Also, like he points out, many of these people left voluntarily. Emigration of Serbs from Kosovo had started way before 1999, as the above sources reveal.
Next!
Throw me something else to debunk!
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 4:03 PM
Limbic said:
"Michael, you link to the same source I did above???
How did you miss the headline “IDPs from and within Kosovo: 206,000 in Serbia and 21,000 within Kosovo”
That is basically what I have said all along (including their points about Roma and Gorani)."
Your very source, which you didn't think people would read beyond the first sentence of two, explains that the basis for those numbers are mere estimations from the UNCRH, and then proceeds to explain that the UNCRH seriously doubts these numbers itself, because it was not allowed to conduct independent studies in Serbia, but was merely fed data by the Serbian Government.
Did you miss the memo?
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 4:05 PM
Off topic, so as to ease Limic's embarrasement over being caught using the Serbain Government's bogus data as "independent sources":
Without needing citation, the Republika Srpska agreed to the creation of the constituent parts of Bosni-Herzegovina via the Dayton Accords.
So when Limbic claims that this entity has the same "right" to secede just as the Kosovars do, then basically he is arguing that the Dayton Accords are null and void as far as the Serbs are concerned.
The Dayton Accords may indeed have been forced on the Serbs but that's what happens when you lose a war.
No country can initiate a war, lose it, and expect there to not be unpleasant consequences.
The treaty is unlikely to be very pleasing but the leaders did sign and agreed to abide by it.
Kosovo had no such treaty as the area was taken by fiat and declaration rather than by treaty.
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 4:19 PM
Limbic: How did you miss the headline “IDPs from and within Kosovo: 206,000 in Serbia and 21,000 within Kosovo”
Oh, Limbic. Read the whole damn document.
The extent of Serb displacement from Kosovo is therefore likely to be around 65,000. Contrary to a widespread perception, two-thirds of the pre-war Kosovo Serb population actually remain in Kosovo. (...) Contrary to another perception, almost two thirds of the present resident Serb population in Kosovo live south of the river Ibar [separating northern majority Serbian Kosovo from South Kosovo]
Contrary to what the ESI report say the Serb population in Kosovo has increased in the 1990s. Between the 1991 census and 1996, some 19.000 Serb refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have been sent by Milosevic regime to Kosovo. (OSCE, 1 September1999, Part IV, Chapter 19). However, according to UNHCR Belgrade, most of these refugees have either left Kosovo, been resettled or taken citizenship of Serbia. (UNHCR Belgrade, email correspondence, 7 July 2005)
UNHCR's own documents repeat the results of the Serbian government registration exercise. UNHCR, which operates on the territory of Serbia by invitation of the government, has not carried out an independent investigation. In the fine print of some of its documents, however, it expresses serious doubts about the official figures.
"The sum of the estimated number of minorities living in Kosovo, and the number of currently registered IDPs in Serbia and Montenegro, results in a figure significantly higher than the minority population that has ever lived in Kosovo…
Your own source bolsters exactly what I and Kejda have been saying, and undermines you what you have been saying. You have to read past the headlines and wade into the details.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 10, 2008 5:03 PM
Great post, Michael.
I have just been reading this amazing book on Leftism by von Kuehnelt (supposedly a great influence on W. Buckley). I think he would probably argue that the Balkan permanent state of war is a result of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire after WWI, which removed any real buffer state able to resist Naziism, all in the name of democracy. First the Anschluss, and then hell on earth...
Maybe the Balkans were better under Tito, because he stopped the inevitable savagery that results from pure direct democracy (just like in the French Revolution). Maybe they do need a Tito type, a sort of constitutional monarchy.
It is certainly a fool's errand, and a bloody one, to still try to subdivide and reassign every ethnic subgroup to a certain autonomous area. The Wahabbis and the nationalists know that this direct democracy provides them a rich field in which to plant their seeds of hate.
Posted by: PJ at June 10, 2008 7:03 PM
PJ:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."-Ben Franklin
So long as you recognize that, why do you recommend authoritarian regimes to other peoples of the world instead of a constitutional republic (not a democracy) based off of the template of the US?
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 7:10 PM
That's what I am recommending, medaura, some sort of constitutional republic with--and this is they key--checks and balances on all facets of government. It's the checks and balances that save us. We have the electoral college, we have states' rights over federal, we have the Supreme Court, we have a non-political military. But a state like Kosovo, half the size of Germany, which is smaller than Wyoming, may be in need of other solutions. Certainly not fascist or nationalistic, but perhaps not in the style of the US.
(And BTW von K also also uses Franklin quote!)
Posted by: PJ at June 10, 2008 8:02 PM
Oh, well first of all I thought you were referring to Bosnia-Herzegovina or Serbia, not Kosovo.
Kosovo Albanians don't have any history of aggression toward their Balkan neighbors.
I think the checks and balances of a classically liberal republic are very scalable for large as well as small communities. It is ultimately all about the protection of negative rights (life, liberty, property, due process) and the enforcement of contracts.
I wish American Diplomats with balls and confidence in their country's political structure would push such a model on Kosovo. It might fly there, given the overall hysterical love for everything American.
"Maybe they do need a Tito type, a sort of constitutional monarchy."
That, though, is not only a far inferior solution, but there is no chance in hell it will happen in Europe at this day and age, especially in Kosovo.
Franklin has some amazing quotes. Him and Jefferson are my all-time favorite Americans.
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 8:26 PM
"Kosovo Albanians don't have any history of aggression toward their Balkan neighbors."
No, but Kosovo still must defend itself against aggression, so you can't ignore the military question. Can NATO do this and for how long?
And, yes, a republic is all about protecting the liberty of individuals, but that includes defense too.
Perhaps Karzai is a better example than Tito. He is elected, answers to two houses of parliament and a judiciary, but he is clearly more of the statesman or aristo class. He's a professional, in other words, not a demagogue, and governs within the law, not above it, not matter his popularity. The checks and balances imply a US-type system; maybe this would work in Kosovo as well.
Posted by: PJ at June 10, 2008 9:01 PM
Terrific reporting, thank you.
"But a state like Kosovo, half the size of Germany, which is smaller than Wyoming, may be in need of other solutions. PJ
Percisely, and that's something that is not being roundly considered. After all, the term "Balkanization" implies something deleterious for a reason, a set of reasons, and the full force of that is not often allowed to register.
Posted by: Michael_B at June 10, 2008 10:00 PM
Ha!
Kosovo is MUCH smaller than half the size of Germany. It's more like, half the size of Albania, which is itself about one eighth of the size of Germany.
Size has nothing to do with it though. You have tiny states like Monaco or Luxemburg, which precisely because of their size, never had any illusions of colonialist expansion (military spending), and became prosperous and attracted wealth as free trade low taxes islands within Europe.
Though Kosovo does not have the luxury of forgoing self-defense measures, given Serbia's chauvinistic rhetoric "Kosovo is and always will be Serbia".
Michael_B:
Percisely, and that's something that is not being roundly considered. After all, the term “Balkanization” implies something deleterious for a reason, a set of reasons, and the full force of that is not often allowed to register.
What do you think is inherently deleterious in the formation of new states, be it also in the Balkans, and how do you think it applies to the issue of Kosovo specifically?
Posted by: medaura at June 10, 2008 11:17 PM
Michael and Kejda,
I am sorry to say that it is you, NOT me that has misread the report and you are selecting the one paragraph of the arguments section to support your claim.
"Debate about figures is ongoing".
The ARGUMENTS are listed and you see fit to selectively quote the only one that questions my figures, and that is based in data from 2000 and is disputed by the UNHCR!
The conclusion and current thinking and summary ALL support exactly what I have said.
I mean why not just call the US Embassy in Belgrade and ask them. It is more honest and accurate that selectively citing reports.
Here are the organisations and reports listed there that support me. Please note they are the ones with up-to-date reports from last year (2007) and include the Red Cross, UNHCR and OSCE:
Coordination Centre of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republic of Serbia for Kosovo and Metohija (CCK), 20 November 2002, Principles of the Program for Return of Internally Displaced Persons From Kosovo and Metohija
Council of Europe (COE), Commissioner for Human Rights, 16 October 2002, Kosovo: The Human Rights Situation and the Fate of Persons Displaced from their Homes, CommDH11
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), July 2003, The Vulnerability Assessment of Internally Displaced Persons in Serbia and Montenegro
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 31 May 2005, The situation of internally displaced persons in Serbia and Montenegro: issues paper
Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), 1999, Human Rights in Kosovo, As Seen, As Told
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), August 2004, Estimate of refugees and displaced persons still seeking solutions in South-Eastern Europe
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), 26 April 2002, Humanitarian Risk Analysis No. 18, Humanitarian Situation, Protection and Assistance: Internally Displaced Persons in Serbia Montenegro
UNHCR Belgrade/Praxis, March 2007, Analysis of the situation of internally displaced persons from Kosovo in Serbia
Here are the two report, using data from 2000, that support you:
European Stability Initiative (ESI), 7 June 2004, The Lausanne Principle: Multiethnicity, Territory and the Future of Kosovo's Serbs
U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), April 2000, Reversal of Fortune: Yugoslavia's Refugees Crisis Since the Ethnic Albanian Return to Kosovo
Folks, go there and read the thing and then decide for yourselves.
It is Kejda and you Michael that ought to be squirming after trying to pull a fast one like this.
Posted by: Limbic at June 10, 2008 11:38 PM
Kejda,
You revived our fruitless discussion about Kosovo in Dark Corner 1, and now it blights what could have been a decent discussion about Bosnia here.
Now that I have correct you and Michael in your premature gloating about the number of IDPs cleansed from Kosovo (see my post above), I think it is worthwhile dancing on the grave of your claims a little.
A few facts. The Republika Srpska did not agree to Dayton, it was created by Dayton.
It is widely considered to have been a terrible move that rewarded the Bosnian Serbs for successful ethnic cleansing.
Their right to seceded is the same right that the Kosovo Precedent has given to all ethnic nationalists, namely that if it is OK to change the borders of a sovereign democracy (Serbia) and create an ethnic state (Kosovo), then what political or moral objection can one assert against the RS if they want to turn their discrete ethnic entity into a state?
You can point out the injustice of how they acquired their territory, but you cannot deny that there are 1,500,000 Serbs in a territory that have the same right to Self-determination that Kosovars do.
You say that The Dayton Accords were "forced on the Serbs", which again reveals your ignorance about what actually happened.
Dayton was a boon for the Bosnian Serbs. They were delighted with Dayton. It silenced the guns just at the point that their military fortunes were turning, at near the height of their territorial control in Bosnia.
Republika Srpska did not even exist before 1995, so it could not have "initiated" the war. The Bosnian Civil War was just that, a civil war between competing Ethnic Alliances for territory.
Additionally RS it did not "lose" the war. It is widely considered to have a gross unfair proportion of territory.
Dayton, just like all treaties, is only binding so long as the actors agree to it. It was a hasty and desperate accord designed to stop the bloodshed, not foster a nation.
As such it needs to be updated. The problem is that Kosovo has really opened the door to the twisted dream of Greater Serbia like never before.
I am dead against any more of this Ethnic Nationalist madness. Thankfully the political elites of Croatia, Albania and Serbia are also against any more nationalist border changing.
Posted by: Limbic at June 11, 2008 12:43 AM
Limbic: ...is disputed by the UNHCR!
Your own pet number is disputed by UNHCR.
From your own link:
UNHCR's own documents repeat the results of the Serbian government registration exercise. UNHCR, which operates on the territory of Serbia by invitation of the government, has not carried out an independent investigation. In the fine print of some of its documents, however, it expresses serious doubts about the official figures.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 11, 2008 12:52 AM
Limbic: what political or moral objection can one assert against the RS if they want to turn their discrete ethnic entity into a state?
This was already covered in the main article: it's because a huge amount of that territory was won by war and does not belong to Serbs.
If the Serbs have the right to all of the RS, then Israel has the right to annex the West Bank and Gaza forever by the same logic. If you don't like that example, then also by the same logic the Palestinians have the right to annex Tel Aviv to their statelet in Gaza if they can conquer it.
If the Serbs in the RS hadn't stolen all that land in a genocidal war, I'd agree that they should be able to leave Bosnia if they want out. But that's not what happened. See the maps I published.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 11, 2008 12:58 AM
Kejda,
Final post here for a while, I have to get to work.
I have addressed the fraud that you (and sadly Michael) tried to pass on us all by pointing out that you (and he) selectively cited the only paragraph of the arguments section of the IDMC report that even questions my figures.
That is both intellectually dishonest and smacks of desperation.
The IDMC and up-to-date reports from the UNHCR and International Red Cross are unequivocal: There are over 200,000 IDPs in Serbia, around 20,000 within Kosovo and around 16,000 in Montenegro. They seem to think that the numbers could be boosted by the uncounted Roma IDPs.
You are welcome to flatly deny the reports of independent humanitarian organisations and the UNHCR, who working on the ground have had 9 years to gather the facts and make their annual assessments.
You are also welcome to dispute that they were Ethnically Cleansed, but in so contradict the accepted definitions posted above.
If the Serbs left "voluntarily" then I suppose the Bosnian Muslims formerly of the Republika Srpska left "voluntarily" too?
Choose carefully now Kejda, you are already biting the proverbial bullet, soon you will be chewing it.
Posted by: Limbic at June 11, 2008 1:07 AM
Limbic: If the Serbs left “voluntarily” then I suppose the Bosnian Muslims formerly of the Republika Srpska left “voluntarily” too?
Oh, come off it, Limbic. You know damn well that nothing Albanians did in Kosovo even remotely compares to what Radovan Karazdic's Bosnian Serb forces did to get rid of Bosniaks in the Republica Srpska. Show us the Albanian Srebenica or retire this equivalency game you are playing.
You're the one who is desperate here. I have no dog in this fight. I am not from the Balkans, nor have I "gone native" among Albanians as you have among Serbs. You're emotionally invested in your pet group. I'm not. If the Albanians did what Karadic's army did, I would say so.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 11, 2008 1:16 AM
Michael,
About Republika Srpska, please see my response to Kejda and you above.
I agree about the injustice how it acquired their territory, but you cannot deny that there are 1,500,000 Serbs in a territory that have the same theoretical right to Self-determination that Kosovars do.
I cannot see how one can grant that right to Kosovars and deny it from Serbs without resorting to a double standard.
As for that report and the disputed figures.
You are quoting a report by the European Stability Initiative (ESI) from June 2004 which claims that the "In the fine print of some of its documents, however, [the UN] expresses serious doubts about the official figures."
The UNHCR e-emailed the IDMC in 2005 to DISPUTE the ESI report, noting that Serbs were settled in Kosovo in the 90s, thereby explaining the apparent discrepancies between estimated pre-war populations and the REGISTERED current IDP populations.
Today, in 2008, the UNHCR, International Red Cross, IDMC and every NGO actually working with IDPs in the region ALL AGREE that the number of IDPs from Kosovo is in the region of 220,000 .
I am not sure how I can offer any more proof than this?
Danish Refugee Council? - http://www.flygtning.dk/Serbia.2722.0.html
Catholic Relief Services? - http://crs.org/serbia/projects.cfm
The US State Department? - http://www.state.gov/g/prm/refadm/rls/rpts/2007/92585.htm
I am not wasting time on this any more. I live here, I trust the experts on the ground, and my sources (which include US embassy staff) are both impeccable and fresh.
Posted by: Limbic at June 11, 2008 2:19 AM
Michael,
You are absolutely right, Albanians in Kosovo were and are not nearly as bad as the Bosnian Serb forces in Bosnia. But since I did not say that, though, you can consider that straw man dead.
I said Serbs, tens if not hundreds of thousands, have been Ethnically Cleansed from Kosovo.
The means are not generally the same as those used in Bosnia and the Krajina, but the ends are.
You can label me "desperate", and accuse me of having "gone native" and being "emotionally invested" in my group (Serbs), but none of this challenges a word of what I have written.
You do have "a dog in this race", Kejda, and she revived the fruitless Kosovo discussion here.
You called bullshit on my figures, I defended them.
You accuse me of trading in equivalence, when what I am doing is drawing parallels and revealing hypocrisies and double standards.
- Right to self-determination: Kosovo - si! Republika Srpska - no!
- Ethnic Cleansing: Bosniaks from RS/Kosovars from Kosovo - si! Serbs from Krajina and Kosovo - no.
- General All Round Bad Guys: Serbs - si! Everyone else - no!
Forgive my cynicism about the Balkans, I picked it up in discussions like this one.
Posted by: Limbic at June 11, 2008 2:37 AM
Michael,
Update on the figures.
The IDP project in the US Embassy in Belgrade officially say that the 200,000+ figure is right, but off the record they say that they believe the figure is less, estimating the number of IDPs from Kosovo in Serbia as being in the region of 100,000.
As you are a US citizen, I fully understand that you would trust those figures. Since anything from the Serbian government is immediately junked as "biased" in this forum, please understand those that reject that that lower unofficial US government figure in the same way.
My own opinion is that 100,000 sets a bottom level for numbers, considering the Serbian government estimates are in the 300,000 range, the UNHCR is in the 200,000 range and the US Embassy is in the 100,000 range.
No one I am talking to is suggesting anything like 65,000. The Roma organisations alone claim that number of Roma IDPs.
Until there is more clarity and definitive evidence either way, I am sticking with the UNHRC's figures.
Here is the funny thing, I do not really care what the exact figure is because my points do not, and have never, depended on the exact numbers.
100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000 - take your pick.
None of this changes the undeniable fact that Kosovos's minorities, already tiny, have been and continue to be displaced by the ongoing Ethnic Violence and intimidation in Kosovo. I call that displacement Ethnic Cleansing, and that conforms to the accepted definitions of the phrase posted above.
To me, this means that crimes against minorities in Kosovo TODAY are largely ignored whilst we all focus on crimes committed by Serbian dictators and Ethnic Nationalists nearly a decade (or more) ago.
I think it is time for some balance and relevance to the situation on the ground today.
That said, this discussion, like the one in the previous post about Serbia, is now off-topic and no longer fruitful.
Sayonara for now.
Posted by: Limbic at June 11, 2008 4:55 AM
Limbic,
The deleterious thinking on your behalf that it producing your "arguments" is giving me a headache.
Republica Srpska was created per the Dayton Accords, conditional on the Serbian residents occupying that area abiding by the Dayton Accords. Hence, the Dayton Accords bind Republica Srpska to the Bosnian confederation.
Republika Srpska did not even exist before 1995, so it could not have “initiated” the war. The Bosnian Civil War was just that, a civil war between competing Ethnic Alliances for territory.
Serbs started the war, not Republica Srpska. Don't twist my words again. Republica Srpska and its binding into the Bosniac confederation was a result of the war.
Dayton, just like all treaties, is only binding so long as the actors agree to it. It was a hasty and desperate accord designed to stop the bloodshed, not foster a nation.
Uh, no. It only needs for its actors to have initially agreed to it, and doesn't necessarily require for them to be pleased with the results of their treaty today.
That's how treaties work. If they were as fickle as to be rendered null by the mere future dissatisfaction of the parties with its results, it would be a very different political world indeed.
The only practical and political recourse Republica Srpska has in coming out of the Dayton Accords is to start another war.
Kosovo, on the other hand, never owned its existence within Serbia or Yugoslavia to any treaty agreed to by its population's representatives. The terrirtory was merely annexed to Serbia in 1912 by the invading Serbian forced.
No one asked Kosovoar Albanians how they felt about it, so by proclaiming independence, they are not breaking any agreement they had previously entered with any third party.
What part don't you understand?
Also, as far as the numbers of displaced Serbs go, I mean come on. Aren't you embarrassed to even show your face here now?
Michael and I did not merely quote a single paragraph that clashes your numbers; pretty much the entire entry on IDMC is a disclaimer on the numbers presented on the headline.
Information overload won't get you very far here either: You quote a ridiculous number of "sources" without any websites for me or anyone else to check their validity.
The burden of proof here now is on you: It was revealed very clearly that the Serbian Government has not allowed independent investigations into the demographics of displaced Serbs from Kosovo as late at 2006.
You are welcome to flatly deny the reports of independent humanitarian organisations and the UNHCR, who working on the ground have had 9 years to gather the facts and make their annual assessments.
The UNHCR has not been allowed by the Serbian government, as per their own admission which you are furiously turning a blind eye to, to do any independent work on the ground. It has merely been reporting figured of IDPs as reported by the Serbian Government.
I invite you to find a single independent study with proof that it was allowed to conduct independent work, instead of relying on Serbian figures.
By the way, even such "independent" work would be inherently prone to inaccuracies, since anyone in Serbia can go up to the investigators and claim to be an IDP from Kosovo, a behavior greatly encouraged by the Serbian government.
The most telling objective assessments of Serbs displaced since 1999, are the before-and-after statistics. These reveal a number around 65K.
Before screeching 'ethnic cleansing!' about this number too, consider that almost all of Kosovo's strata of bureaucrats and state administrators were imported from Serbia. Kosovar Albanians were largely excluded from local government. This strata of government stooges had no employment prospects in Kosovo outside the realm of Serbian government, and was hated by the Albanians for its tyrannical tendencies. They packed their bags and left. Good for them!
I am not denying that acts of barbarism, arson, vandalism, and even murder were directed at some ethnic Serbs by some ethnic Albanians. These, however, were sporadic incidents that were punished when/if the culprits were caught by KFOR, and cannot be blamed for the fact that about 65K Serbs left Kosovo.
That I personally know of, many of those who left sold their properties off since they didn't have prospects of returning.
Some of those who left never really owned their houses anyway; they had been recently sent off as colonizers so they abandoned their houses to their rightful Albanian owners who had been expropriated to make room for them.
No, it certainly not my intention (and even less so Michael's) to blight this discussion. But you couldn't help sneaking in equivocating claims, bullshit statistics about 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo, and the likes. You can't expect people to just let you get away with it for the sake of the discussion going on.
at June 11, 2008 7:43 AM
> Sarajevo is mostly Muslim Bosniak now.
First you complain about the evil Serbian wiping out muslims in Serajavo. Next Sarjavo has been cleansed of Serbs. There is a logical error here.
Posted by: Onslo at June 11, 2008 7:49 AM
> An ethnic map of Yugoslavia in 1994.
This map is a bit misleading.
Muslims are pink
Other major groups are orange.
But the other major groups are muslims too.
The labels are not perfect.
at June 11, 2008 7:52 AM
> The point is that the ethnically cleansed
> regions of Bosnia were immediately colonized
> by a Serb influx from Serbia proper.
> Unless these colonizers go back home
This is laughable, considering that the mess started with eastern Europe being occupied and colonized by the caliphate some 800 years ago.
Posted by: Onslo at June 11, 2008 7:55 AM
Limbic says:
The UNHCR e-emailed the IDMC in 2005 to DISPUTE the ESI report, noting that Serbs were settled in Kosovo in the 90s, thereby explaining the apparent discrepancies between estimated pre-war populations and the REGISTERED current IDP populations.
Contrary to what the ESI report say the Serb population in Kosovo has increase