June 23, 2008
The Road to Kosovo, Part I
A gigantic poster of genocidal Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic hung on the outside wall of a hideous communist-style apartment block.
“Get a picture of that,” I said to my friend and traveling companion Sean LaFreniere as I drove our rented car through the outer suburbs of Serbia's capital Belgrade. I had the wheel and he had the camera.
“Too late,” he said.
We were driving fast on a four-lane road and were almost out of the city. Our road trip from Serbia to Kosovo via Bosnia, Croatia, and Montenegro was just beginning.
“That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll probably see another one.”
We didn’t, however, see another one, not anywhere in Serbia or in Bosnia’s Serb-controlled Republica Srpska. Europe’s worst living political leaders still have a base of support among Serbs, but it’s slowly dwindling.
Outer New Belgrade looks more or less like what I expected in a post-communist city in Eastern Europe, but Old Belgrade is beautiful, sophisticated, stylish, and fun. Neither Sean nor I had any idea what to expect from Serb villages aside from the fact that they’re in no way cosmopolitan as the capital is. Small Serb towns and villages – especially in the Republica Srpska – were also the least friendly places for any Americans brave enough to visit the former Yugoslavia as it violently came apart at the seams in the 1990s. Serbian-American relations are tense again since American-backed Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February this year. Extremists in the capital responded by firebombing the American Embassy and a McDonald's.
The countryside beyond the city limits was flat agricultural land that looked more or less like the American Midwest. Sean and I could have been in Iowa or Illinois. Bosnia, we knew, is famously much more rugged, and we'd be there in less than two hours.
“We have to stop before we reach the border,” Sean said. “I still have thousands of Serbian dinars.”
“Just exchange them in Bosnia,” I said.
“You can't exchange them in Bosnia,” he said. “You can’t exchange dinars anywhere outside Serbia.”
“You can’t?” I said. “Are you sure?” I hadn't heard that before and it didn’t sound right. He had a wad of dinars worth almost 200 dollars, though, so I pulled off the highway into a small town that looked just barely large enough that it might have a bank.
“Want to find a bar and drink some slivovitz with the locals?” I said. I was kidding slightly, but only slightly.
“Hmm,” Sean said. He didn't know if he wanted to down slivovitz with drunk villagers or not. Neither did I.
We both wondered, though, how well we’d be received if we sidled up to a bar in the Serbian countryside and asked for shots of slivovitz in American English. With only a single exception, everyone we met in Belgrade was perfectly friendly and pleasant despite Serbia's sometimes primitive anti-Americanism.
Sometimes I’m not sure what to make of even the primitive anti-Americanism, let alone the moderate variety. I later met an Albanian woman in Kosovo who frequently travels to Belgrade to visit friends. “I go there all the time,” she said. “I have friends there. I’m not paranoid about it. We go out and have a good time. But in the back of my mind I remember they are Serbs. One night I met a Chetnik guy. He couldn’t believe it when I said I was from Prishtina. He said Oh, I killed you during the war. I yelled at him. I screamed at him. I got so mad and felt my eagle coming out. But at the end he wanted to marry me.”
Our randomly selected small Serbian town had only one main street. Maybe we would see a bank and maybe we wouldn't.
“There,” Sean said. “On the right.” They did have a bank. “Park.”
There was nowhere to park in front of the bank, so I found a place a few hundred feet down the road.
A badly dressed scruffy Serb man in his fifties who had not shaved in days stared holes through me as he walked toward our car. Sean paid no attention to the man, flung open his door, and started toward the bank by himself. I guessed that meant I would stay with the car.
Scruffy Guy came up to my driver's side door. I looked around. Was I illegally parked? Was I in front of his house?
I stepped out of the car. He said something to me in Serbian.
“Do you speak English?” I said. “Do I need to move my car?”
He pointed to the license plate of the car and jabbed his open hand at me as though I owed him money.
“No,” I said. He wasn't a parking attendant. “I am not giving you money.”
Scruffy Guy pointed at the license plate again.
“Beograd,” I said. “The car is from Beograd.” That was obvious from the “BG” on the plate. “So what?” I knew he couldn't understand me, but I had to say something.
He demanded money more aggressively this time.
“No!” I said.
Scruffy Guy spat out an insult in Serbian and shuffled off. I impatiently spun the key ring around my index finger while waiting for Sean to change his money when Scruffy Guy grabbed the arm of a younger man on the sidewalk, turned him around, pointed at me menacingly as if I were a hated witch or a leper. He said God-only-knows-what in Serbian. He probably said “foreigner” in there somewhere, but I can't be certain. The younger man narrowed his eyes at me briefly, then contemptuously brushed off Scruffy Guy and walked away.
Scruffy Guy wanted money or worse, and he wanted help from his townsfolk. So he pointed his finger at me and yelled something awful in Serbian. Heads turned from every direction. I had no idea what to expect, and I prepared to jump back in the car and lock the door if even a single person approached me.
I no longer had any interest whatsoever in drinking shots of slivovitz in a run-down bar in this town with these people.
Nobody approached me, though. All eyes turned from me to Scruffy Guy, whose reputation in town – I'd be willing to bet at this point – is worse than the reputation of travelers from outside like Sean and myself. His fellow citizens seemed initially startled by my presence, but they seemed to have no interest in doing or saying anything to me. Scruffy Guy was clearly frustrated by his inability to gin up a big scene.
Even so, I was relieved when Sean came back after changing his money. I faced hostility the instant I stepped out of the car, and I was worried he might have run into some trouble as well. He didn't.
We crossed the border into Bosnia on a small village road in agricultural country. No cars were ahead of us in line at the remote border crossing, and none were behind us. The border police at each stop on our way out of Serbia and on our way into Bosnia stamped our passports without saying a word.
Bosnia didn't look or feel like a new country at first. We had only crossed into the Serb-controlled Republica Srpska. This region of Bosnia now has a Serb majority because they ethnically-cleansed it in the mid-1990s.
Sean and I tried our best to follow the map from the border to Tuzla, a city outside the Republica Srpska where we could easily find the main highway to Bosnia's capital Sarajevo. Almost every road sign, though, was in Cyrillic. Neither Sean nor I recognize most of the letters. It's an easy enough alphabet to learn, and we were both able to decipher some of the letters and read it slightly, but the signs were still not what I would call helpful.
Most road signs in Serbia proper are written in both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, but the Serbian government in the Republica Srpska couldn't bother with that courtesy even though the majority in Bosnia-Herzegovina use the Latin alphabet. I didn't see a single road sign anywhere in Republica Srpska that pointed toward Sarajevo in any language or alphabet. All signs, instead, pointed to Belgrade or to small nearby villages.
And so we got lost. Thanks only to the location of the sun in the sky could we tell that we were heading north toward Croatia instead of south toward Sarajevo. We need to stop for directions, so I pulled into the parking lot at a gas station.
“Let's both go inside,” I said and braced myself for another hostile encounter. Serbs in Bosnia tend to be more nationalistic than those in Serbia proper, and we had already had a few minor issues over there.
The station owner didn't speak a word of English, but he understood where we needed to go. He pointed at the map and used hand signals to give us directions to Tuzla. He was perfectly pleasant and charming, but another younger man coldly sized me up from head to toe and let his eyes linger on my watch. I smiled at him as though he hadn't just done that, but he kept up the Balkan Stare until Sean and I headed back to the car.
“Hey,” Sean said after another hour or so of driving. “There's a mosque.”
On the hill to our left was the first Muslim village we had seen since we entered Bosnia almost two hours before.
“It looks like a nice little town,” I said. It was just off the main road to Tuzla and Sarajevo, yet we both wanted to take a look and compare it with the Serb towns we had been driving through all day. So I turned off and drove up the hill toward the village with a mosque in its skyline.
The instant we entered the village we saw bullet and shrapnel holes in the walls.
None of the Serb towns or villages we passed through bore a single scar from the war that we could see, but the minute we saw a mosque, bang, just like that, we found ourselves in what was a war zone. I'm accustomed to seeing this sort of thing in the Middle East, but this was Europe.
Bosnia is a far cry from Iraq, though. Half the people we drove past on the village road were women. In an Iraqi village, all or nearly all would have been men. Women hardly ever leave the house in villages in most Arab countries. None of the women we saw in this Bosnian Muslim village wore an Islamic headscarf. In Iraq, all or nearly all village women wear an enveloping head-to-toe black abaya. This was the most outwardly secular Muslim village I had ever seen in my life, but it was typical of Muslim villages in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania as I would later see for myself.
The village was small and there was little to see, but neither Sean nor I were completely sure we had just pulled off the road to Tuzla. Perhaps we were lost again and didn't know it. So I pulled into a car repair shop and rolled down the window to ask. A man stepped out of the shop and frowned slightly when he saw the license plate on the car. The first letters were “BG,” which told him we were driving a Serb car from Belgrade. Here we go again, I thought.
“Hi!” I said and tried to sound as aw-shucks American as possible. We aren't Serbs, was what I meant to convey. We aren't the people who shot up your houses. We're from a country that kinda sorta helped you a little during the war.
The man smiled. He didn't speak English, but he understood when I told him we were driving to Tuzla and he verified that the road we had just turned off was the right one.
So we continued driving toward Tuzla, in Bosnia proper outside the Republica Srpska, and wherever we saw mosques we also saw blown up houses.
There was pain and suffering on all sides during the war. No faction was entirely innocent. I take seriously the following observation written by Rebecca West in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon shortly before the outbreak of World War II: “English persons...of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer.”
Nevertheless, it's obvious just from driving around that the Muslims of Bosnia really got hammered the hardest in the last war. I don't mean to pick on the Serbs, but the visual evidence, as well as the documented evidence, is just overwhelming.
Two years ago Sean and I drove on a lark from Istanbul to Iraq, and we passed through dozens of Turkish towns in the countryside on the way. Many Bosnian cities looked awfully familiar. “Welcome to Turkey,” Sean said. “We're in Turkey.”
We weren't, of course, in Turkey. But Bosnia was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. The similarities didn't surprise either of us in the slightest. There would hardly be any Muslims in Bosnia at all if it hadn't been for the Turkish Empire's expansion into the Balkan Peninsula.
Turkey is politically secular, and culturally secular to an extent. The Muslim parts of Bosnia are noticeably much more so. I don't know why. Maybe it's because Turks were Eastern Muslims before they ever pushed into Europe while Bosniaks were Europeans long before they converted to Islam. Perhaps the answer is simpler than that, or more complicated. I'm no expert in Balkan history, especially not ancient Balkan history, but I know what an Islamist environment looks like and Bosnia isn't one of them. Wahhabi Islamists are trying to radicalize Bosnia, and they are a bit of a problem, but in no way did Bosnia remind me of heavily Islamist areas I've visited, such as Egypt and the Hezbollah-occupied regions of Lebanon.
We drove past a post-modern mosque outside Sarajevo.
“I want a picture of that,” I said and pulled the car into the driveway. Sean and I got out. A Muslim man walking out of the mosque flicked his eyes downward at the license plate and jabbed three fingers at Sean, muttered something rude-sounding in Bosnian, and walked around the car.
“Hi,” Sean said. “We’re Americans.” The man just walked on.
“What was that about?” I said.
“He just stuck three fingers at me,” Sean said.
“Like this?” I said and made the tri prsta, the three-fingered Serbian Nationalist salute.
“Yeah, that,” Sean said.
“Why the hell would he do that?” I said.
The tri prsta means different things depending on who you ask, but they’re all related in one way or another to Serbian Nationalism. Predrag Delibasic, a half-Bosnian and half-Serbian writer Sean and I met in Belgrade, told us the three fingers stand for the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Academy of Science, and the Military.
“Maybe he thought we’re nationalist Serbs,” Sean said, “and he was mocking us?”
I don't know. Maybe he didn't really mean to jab three fingers, and maybe he was just annoyed that I stopped the car in his walking path. Either way, I didn’t like how so many people looked at the license plate on the car to figure out who we were – or supposedly were – but I found myself doing the same thing to other people and their cars after I saw that they did it to us.
The next day Sean and I drove up one of Sarajevo’s big hills to get a look at the city from above.
A defunct Austro-Hungarian military fort still sits up there, and it looks like it was used recently by at least one armed faction in the Bosnian War. We saw several mortar-sized holes in the walls.
I parked the car in front of some residential homes at the steps leading up to the fort. A group of young Bosnian men sat at a table in the yard right in front of the car.
“Hi!” I said in English and tried to sound as American as possible. “How are you guys?”
“Hello,” one of them said.
I wanted them to know we weren’t Serbs in case they looked at the license plate. I wasn’t paranoid and thought it awfully unlikely that they would key the car or worse if they actually thought we were from Belgrade, but it only took one second’s worth of effort to make sure they didn't.
“We need to stop in Mostar,” Sean said on our way out of Sarajevo toward Dubrovnik. “We have to see the Mostar Bridge.”
I wanted to see it, too. It's a famous bridge built by the Turks in the 16th Century, and it was recently rebuilt after being destroyed by the Croatian Defense Council during the Bosnia War in 1993.
“We also need to get to Dubrovnik before dark,” I said. “This might be the only time we'll ever get to see it, and I want some pictures.”
Dubrovnik is a spectacular walled city on the Croatian coast near the border with Montenegro. We booked a hotel room in Montenegro and needed to leave for Kosovo first thing the next morning, so there would be no time to go back to Dubrovnik if we missed it during daylight.
There was no time to stop for proper food in a restaurant, so we pulled into a gas station to stock up on road food. I hoped oranges, bananas, or anything that had some nutritional value would be available, but gas stations all over the world sell little other than junk food, it seems. They had peanuts and pistachios, but the rest of our stock was a pile of cookies, potato chips, chocolates, and croissants. And the croissants were really just Twinkies from Turkey in the shape of croissants.
Sean and I wanted to speed through Bosnia and get to Croatia as quickly as possible, but the Opel we rented in Belgrade drove like it was built with a moped engine. Step on the gas and nothing much happens unless you're at a dead stop on a flat road. Passing slow trucks was impossible if there was a bend in the road anywhere in the same time zone.
The destruction wrought from ethnic-cleansing, including mass graveyards as well as blown-up houses and villages scourged by artillery fire, stretched from one end of Bosnia to the other. It was horrible.
In one otherwise beautiful town on the shore of a lake we drove past a mosque minaret with its top shot off.
“Let's drive to that mosque,” Sean said. “I want a picture of that.”
“No time,” I said. “We have to get to Dubrovnik before dark.”
“It will just take a second,” he said.
“Would you rather photograph that mosque or Dubrovnik?” I said.
“It will just take a second!” he said again. “Just make a left here.”
I made a left.
“You have a second,” I said.
I gave Sean a hard time, but was quietly glad he talked me into it. I wanted to be talked into stopping at least once in a while. We were short on time, but neither of us wanted to see Bosnia beyond Sarajevo only from the inside of a car.
The top of the minaret just above the muezzin's speakers for the call to prayer had been blown clean off. Seeing destroyed churches and mosques in the Balkans reminded me of the Taliban's destruction of Buddha statues at Bamiyan with anti-aircraft guns. Two blocks away from the decapitated mosque was an intact Serbian Orthodox church. This town may once have been a model of inter-religious co-existence, but it's not anymore.
“Okay,” I said. “Let's get to Dubrovnik.”
This time Sean got behind the wheel. I had done much of the driving and needed a break.
Bosnia is a troubled country with a dark recent past, but it's also extraordinarily beautiful. For some reason that I can't quite explain, it's hard to imagine such a terrible war erupting amid such breathtaking scenery. Sean nearly ran the car off the road when we drove through a canyon between Sarajevo and Mostar. “Oh my God,” he said, “look at this place!”
I was glad he was driving or I might have actually gone off the road while gawking at the mountains and canyons.
Mostar, also, is stunning. Sean and I couldn't just drive through it without stopping, at least briefly. And besides, we were tired of road food. Potato chips and chocolate chip cookies could pass for lunch when we were in college, but not today.
So we sat at an outdoor cafe near the recently repaired bridge, ate Bosnian kebabs, and drank from bottles of locally brewed beer as the muezzin's haunting call to prayer from local mosques echoed off the looming walls of the mountains.
Parts of Bosnia look and feel like Turkey, but Mostar looks and feels like nowhere other than Bosnia.
It's a beautiful place and, aside from the mosques and a few blown-up buildings that hadn't been fixed yet, it felt no different from anywhere else in Europe. Westerners who may be afraid of Bosnia for its Islam, and who may worry that places like Sarajevo and Mostar might resemble Iraq or the rough and reactionary immigrant neighborhoods in cities like Paris and London, have no idea what they are missing. We saw no hijabs or bearded fanatics, but plenty of liberated women and their hipster boyfriends drinking beer and wine and having a wonderful time. Bosnia, despite its troubled past, is benign.
“Let's go,” I said. “Mostar is great, but the sun is going down and we don't want to miss out on Dubrovnik in daylight.”
We weren't far from the Croatian coast. It was obvious that many Catholic Croats live in Mostar and in the surrounding region. We saw lots of Croatian flags flying from houses and draped over electrical wires as we moved to the edge of Bosnia and toward the Croatian border.
The coastline of Croatia is extraordinary. Steep hills and mountains rise sheer from the shores of the sea. Wooded islands just off the coast mean the view is stunning in every direction.
The sun went down just as the outskirts of Dubrovnik came into view.
“We're just minutes too late,” I said and sighed. “Out pictures are going to suck.” I almost said we shouldn't have stopped in Mostar, but it would have been a mistake to skip Mostar. What we needed was more time.
Perhaps it was just as well. It's impossible to capture the magic of Dubrovnik in photographs. The medieval walled city on the water is gorgeous and perfect from every possible angle, but what's really special is the feel of the place as an organic whole.
“This is the most amazing place I have ever seen,” Sean said.
I almost objected. Paris is amazing. Istanbul is amazing. The old city of Jerusalem is amazing. Is Dubrovnik really better than those three? I couldn't bring myself to object, though. If Dubrovnik isn't the most amazing place I've ever seen, it certainly ranks at the top with the others.
We both kept saying “wow,” around every new corner and wondered why on Earth it took so long to finally visit. I should have gone to Dubrovnik years ago, just after the war ended.
You would not have wanted to be there during the war. At the gate leading up to the old city walls is a map that shows every site that was hit and how much damage it caused.
“Grad Dubrovnik,” it says. “City map of damages caused by the aggression on Dubrovnik by the Yugoslav Army, Serbs and Montenegrins, 1991-1992.”
Dubrovnik was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site twelve years before the Yugoslav Army shelled and burned it. Aside from the map, however, I saw no evidence that it had ever been under siege during the war. The reconstruction job in Sarajevo impressed me, but they have done an even better job in Dubrovnik.
Many Croatians still nurse a grudge against Serbs – and many Serbs answer in kind – for what happened during the violent demise of Yugoslavia. Some Croatians would like to secede from the region altogether and claim that they are not Balkan people at all.
Croatia, however, is part of the Balkan Peninsula – at least its southern half is.
And Croatia was involved in two of the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia. They were victims of ethnic-cleansing and mass-murder by Serbs, but they dished out the same treatment to both Serbs and Bosniaks in Croatia and Bosnia. They haven't liberated themselves from geography, nor have they exempted themselves from the rough and dirty politics of the region.
Even so, the minute Sean and I stepped inside the walls of the ancient city of Dubrovnik, I felt that at least this part of Croatia really was different, even though it lies below the Danube-Sava-Kupa line that commonly defines the region. For the entire trip so far I had half-jokingly called Bosnia and Serbia the “Middle East of Europe,” but the joke is I was only half-kidding. Politics in Serbia uncomfortably resembles politics in the Arab world. Bosniaks share the religion of most of the Arabs. Belgrade and Sarajevo felt unmistakably Eastern in different ways.
Dubrovnik, though, looked and felt emphatically Western. I felt like I had passed through an invisible barrier in the dimension and had returned “home” the instant I walked through the gate. I can't tell you what, exactly, made me think of Dubrovnik as “home.” I had never been there before, I knew almost nothing about the place in advance, and I stayed for such a brief period I had no time to get past the disorientation and confusion of being in a strange new city and country. But I know what “home” looks and feels like when I freshly return from somewhere else -- especially while my heightened sense of stranger's awareness is still at its peak.
Historian Peter F. Sugar notes Dubrovnik’s unusual history in the region in Southeastern Europe Under Ottoman Rule, 1354 – 1804. “The relationship between the little city-state and the large empire,” he wrote, “is extremely interesting and sui generis. Dubrovnik was the only vassal state of the Ottoman Empire whose territory was never invaded during its long vassalage, in whose internal affairs the Ottomans did not once interfere, and whose status was ambiguous from the point of view of Muslim-Ottoman jurisprudence.”
Most churches in Croatia are Catholic. Maybe it was all in my head, but I felt closer to Italy on the other side of the Adriatic than I did to Bosnia even though Bosnia was less than five miles away. More tourists poked around Dubrovnik than I had seen in Sarajevo or Belgrade. Much of the city inside the medieval walls was designed on a grid pattern. The city once rivaled Venice, and it looked the part.
Still, there was an elusive and undefinable X factor about the place that was unmistakably Western, and I couldn't pin down what it was. I do not know why, but it was somehow obvious to me that, unlike much of the Balkan Peninsula, Dubrovnik had never been culturally transformed by the Turks. Dubrovnik's compass points only West. The East is at their backs just over the mountains.
Montenegro didn’t strike me as Western the way Dubrovnik had just done. Montenegro is just…Montenegro.
Montenegro means Black Mountain. In the local language, Black Mountain is called Crna Gora. The Turks absorbed Montenegro into their empire, but it remained a largely autonomous island of Christianity in a sea of Muslim rule – much as Maronite Catholic Mount Lebanon did. Its mountains – which are actually green with forest – are so tall and so sheer that it must have extraordinarily difficult to safely send ground forces in and keep them there if their purpose was to put the country’s people under the boot. Anyone who would have wanted to forcibly oppress Montenegrins would have been wise to look upward in terror and say never mind. The Ottomans were, in fact, thrown out entirely at the end of the 17th Century.
Sean and I couldn't see Montenegro yet, though, because we drove along the coast in the dark. It's spectacular. I knew that. I've seen the pictures. But we drove along some of the world's most extraordinary coastline on a moonless night and missed it entirely.
Well, almost entirely.
“Look at that!” I said.
What looked like a well-lit Great Wall of China shot straight up the side of a mountain.
The wall rose above the ancient city of Kotor, presumably to prevent any hostile force from raining hell upon the townsfolk from higher ground. I wished we could have slowed down and seen Montenegro properly in the daylight, but we had to content ourselves with seeing part of it the next afternoon as we took the winding narrow road up into Kosovo.
The country is tiny, but it seemed like it took us all night to reach our hotel on the dark and twisting coast road.
“Where exactly is our hotel anyway?” Sean said.
“It's just outside Bar,” I said.
“Bar?” he said. “The town's name is Bar? I don't trust a city with only three letters.”
Kotor. Budva. Ulcinj. Bar. Who outside of the Balkans has heard of these places in Montenegro? I knew the capital of the country was called Podgorica, but it wasn't until I actually went to the former Yugoslavia that I had a clue how to pronounce it. (Pode-gore-EET-suh.) If I weren't a long-time geek about the Balkans, and if I didn't have a jones to see these countries for myself, I would not have heard of any of these places in Montenegro.
The only thing we really saw of Montenegro on our single night in the country was our hotel room that looked like the inside of the Brady Bunch house.
I unfolded our map to plot our route for the next day. Sean and I noticed that if we cut short our sleep time we could make a quick detour around Lake Skadar inside Albania before heading up into Kosovo.
“We could have breakfast in Shkodra,” Sean said.
“Shkodra,” I said. (The city is also known as Shkoder.) “It sounds exotic and strange. Like a city named by Klingons.”
Many cities and countries in the Balkans have strange-sounding names in their original languages. Most Westerners couldn't even name which continent they belong to if their names were not translated. Some are straightforward enough: Serbia is Srbija, Kosovo is Kosova, and Macedonia is Makedonia. But Croatia is locally known as Hrvatska. (I like that name, Hrvatska. It's fun to say, and it has more gravitas than Croatia. I think we should all start calling Croatia Hrvatska.) Montenegro is Crna Gora. Albania is known by Albanians as Shqiperia. Its name means Land of the Eagles.
“I should call up my mother,” Sean said, “and tell her we just left Hrvatska, we're in Crna Gora, and we're on our way to Shqiperia. What? she'd say. Where the heck are you? I thought you were in Europe. We are, I'd say. These are countries in Europe. No they aren't.”
Neither Sean nor I knew the first thing about Shkodra, the mysterious-sounding place in the supposedly wild north of Shqiperia where tourists just do not go. Hardly anyone went anywhere in Albania until recently. Most outsiders' mental maps of the place might as well have been marked with the words Here There Be Dragons. All I knew then is that Northern Albanian had a reputation as the most lawless place in Europe after a devastating economic and political collapse in the late 1990s.
Robert Young Pelton's Web site Come Back Alive still warns would-be travelers about the region where Sean and I were going under his heading Dangerous Places: “In just a few short years Albania has had the distinction of changing from a country with the most paranoid and overcontrolled communist state ever to a country without a state. It was tricky, but Albanians have risen to the challenge to become Europe's most lawless people at the turn of the century...Being a foreigner, unless you happen to know a couple of the local banditos, you stand an excellent chance of being fleeced. The minute you walk in the door and open your mouth, the $ sign will start ringing for just about everybody there - except you.”
Whether that was still true of Northern Albania or not (it isn't), I didn't know. And neither did Sean. And we were going in there with Belgrade plates on the car.
We left first thing the next morning.
To be continued...
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Before all the fun starts! Hrvatksa does sound an awful lot like a cheese from Denmark but short a few vowels.
Posted by: Pat Patterson
at June 23, 2008 5:08 AM
Nice road story. I liked old Belgrade as well, as I visited it last month, and found the new city rather attractive, for its long living socialist style.
But have an objection though: You can exchange dinars outside Serbia. At least, I did so in Greece. Plus, I thing you were a bit biased against Serbs. At least it seemed so, especially as you described the story of the Scruffy Guy.
In any case, I wish you a good trip.
Posted by: ch.ntzani at June 23, 2008 6:33 AM
Wow. I have been to Dubrovnik both before and after the war and just love the city and it's people.
I had forgotten how beautiful Bosnia is, from what little I saw of it.
Thanks for the pictures.
Posted by: Marc at June 23, 2008 8:01 AM
'Hrvat' (a Croatian, who lives in Hrvatska) is also the origin of the word Cravat, for a part of the military uniform that some of them wore in a 19th century western European army whose nationality I forget.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive at June 23, 2008 8:20 AM
What a beautiful place!
It sounds like it might be a good idea to rent a local car (with local and appropriate license plates) every time you go to an area that's hostile to the neighboring ethnic and/or political group. But the question is, how often would you have to rent a new car?
About "Come Back Alive" - that sounds like a handy source for people who travel to interesting and weird places. Did you find their information was generally accurate?
Posted by: maryatexitzero at June 23, 2008 10:40 AM
Mary: About “Come Back Alive” - that sounds like a handy source for people who travel to interesting and weird places. Did you find their information was generally accurate?
No, what is posted about Albania is now out of the date. I mentioned that parenthetically at the end of the piece. From what I heard from Albanians, though, that information was accurate a few years ago.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 23, 2008 10:45 AM
No, what is posted about Albania is now out of the date.
I know, but I was just wondering if you found that other information about other places was generally accurate.
Even if it's not completely accurate, I've got to give them credit for a great title. Really to-the-point.
Posted by: maryatexitzero
at June 23, 2008 11:03 AM
Mary: I was just wondering if you found that other information about other places was generally accurate.
Hmm, I don't know, I'll have to look.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 23, 2008 11:06 AM
The Road to Kosovo Part 1 was both smug and insulting to Serbian people. It appears by your own words that you went through Serbian with preconceived ideas. Did you ever think to ask someone to translate what the "Scruffy Guy" was saying instead of pretending your were clairvoyant?
You cleverly or intentionally ignore the fact that today, June 23rd, 2008, there are 1.2 million Serbian refugees in Belgrade from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. That represents twice the combined number of Croat, Muslim and Albanian refugees. Over 95% of these Serbian refugees have been denied a right to return to their homes.
Did it ever occur to you that some of those bombed-out houses in Bosnia once belonged to some of these Serbian refugees? Apparently you were willing to be hoodwinked into believing that every destroyed house you saw was a Muslim property? A mosque in a village does not automatically mean the village is Muslim, there were many villages throughout Serbia and Bosnia with mosque, churches and even Jewish synagogues.
Bosnia and Serbia had 8 distinct ethnic populations speaking 11 languages. Bosnia and Serbia were the most multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious spots on earth. Since World War I Serbs have become a minority in their own country. Apparently you did not read Rebecca West very thoroughly? After the Holocaust in the Balkans in which 1.5 million Serbs, 80,000 Roma and 60,000 Jews were liquidated the Serbs ranked in 4th place in government positions under 50 years of communism.
When the war was declared on Croatia in 1991, Milosevich was not even in office. Prime Minister Markovic, a Croatian, was the one who ordered Serbian troops to attack Croatia. He then resigned and fled to Croatia knowing full well what he had unleashed.
Your remarks about Dubrovnik were astonishingly arrogant and somewhat ignorant. It is a well known fact the Croats burned old auto tires throughout the walled city and photographed Dubrovnik with telephoto lenses to compress the range. The world was lied into believing that Dubrovnik was burning...it was only smoking. Imagine you actually believe that in the middle of a war with the Serbs when food and medicine could not get into Dubrovnik that marble, mortar and roofing tiles were getting in and that the Croats were able to match 15th century construction so perfectly that you could not detect the damage done? Is there no end to your self-serving ignorance?
Dr. Peter Maher, a linguistic professor from Chicago went to Dubrovnik 6 weeks after its apparent destruction. Being a Roman Catholic they did not bar his entry. He reported on Chicago Pubic Television that Dubrovnik was "barely scratched" and that the only damage done was to the home of the Serbian priest, the Serbian church, and the Serbian Icon museum that was blown up from within.
I also note that not a single word was mentioned in your travel log that 91 Serbian churches were destroyed in Croatia in 1991, that 285 Serbian churches were destroyed in Bosnia from 1992-95 or that since the end of the war in Kosovo 170 ancient Serbian churches, many listed with UNESCO as World Treasures have been razed right under the noses of 17,000 NATO troops. There were entire Serbian villages razed in this war and during the bombing in which more than 170 Serbian schools were destroyed, dozens of Serbian hospitals and nursing homes were bombed and $60 billion in infrastructure damage was done to Serbia, yet you did not see any of this evidence?
Spinning a tale to imply that the Serbs are to blame for all of the ills in the Balkans was bigoted at best, and racists to the core.
Shame on you for having such a closed mind. I suggest the old adage: "There is none so blind as those who refuse to see."
William Dorich
Los Angeles
The writer is the author of 5 books on Balkan history and music including the 1992 book, Kosovo.
Posted by: wdoric at June 23, 2008 11:42 AM
One of the disadvantages of visiting Dubrovnik and Venice as a child is how long it to me to realize that the rest of the world would almost entirely fail to be that great.
Of course it also means that when you confront arrogant Californians who believe their collection of strip malls is the acme of civilization, you can shut them down with less effort than stepping on an ant. I used to think I did this public service of humiliating poseurs from the Bear state so easily because of living in Oregon.
Thanks for reminding me of the wonder of Dubrovnik and its salutary effects on personal development.
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at June 23, 2008 11:46 AM
--William Dorich
Los Angeles
--The writer is the author of 5 books on Balkan history and music including the 1992 book, Kosovo.
---After the Holocaust in the Balkans in which 1.5 million Serbs
an OBVIOUS lie as only about 1 Million Yugoslavs were killed in WWII, but what's new. Bill Dorich makign things up. How many of those Jews were killed by ZBOR, Serbian State Guard or by the Chetniks?
The writer wrote 5 books to blame everyone but the Serbs.
Posted by: nameless-fool at June 23, 2008 11:54 AM
William Doric: the author of 5 books on Balkan history and music including the 1992 book, Kosovo.
You claim to have written five books, but your name only gets 86 hits on Google and zero on Amazon.com. Have you actually published any books, or do you just type them? How about a single article in a reputable publication?
Either clarify your remarks in your bullshit bio or you will not be welcome to post comments on my Web site. Lots of people lie about who they are on the Internet, but you aren't welcome to do so here if I catch you.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 23, 2008 12:10 PM
William Doric: I also note that not a single word was mentioned in your travel log that 91 Serbian churches were destroyed in Croatia in 1991, that 285 Serbian churches were destroyed in Bosnia from 1992-95 or that since the end of the war in Kosovo 170 ancient Serbian churches, many listed with UNESCO as World Treasures have been razed right under the noses of 17,000 NATO troops.
You know what, buddy? There are lots of things I didn't write about in this piece. I also did not write about the massacres and exterminations campaign at Srebenica and Vukovar. I could have, but it doesn't mean I'm "pro-Serb" for neglecting to mention these particularly barbaric war crimes from your side.
This is a travel article.
You aren't my editor. You will never be my editor. Write your own goddamn blog. This one is mine.
You're done here. I'm tired of you and your bullshit already.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 23, 2008 12:15 PM
It's always nice for someone to come in and make my rude comments about Californians look sedate by way of comparison.
Sorry you had to clean out the trash again, Michael.
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at June 23, 2008 12:20 PM
Reading your latest makes me wish I'd had two or four extra days around Dubrovnik, since then I would have gone to Mostar and Sarajevo. Also, although you said, "More tourists poked around Dubrovnik than I had seen in Sarajevo or Belgrade," that really doesn't do the situation justice. In the summer, it's packed, even at the decidedly nondescript beach of which the sign was the most entertaining aspect.
The European low-fare airlines, combined with the still-inexpensive private rooms, make it so that an extended weekend for a German or a Londoner in Croatia is even more financially feasible than an extended weekend for a Oregonian in Vancouver or a Missourian in New Orleans.
(I've posted the best of my 2007 Croatian trip - Zagreb, Plitvice, Split, and Dubrovnik - at slide.com for anyone curious to see what things would have looked like had Michael had come to Dubrovnik from the north rather than the east.)
Posted by: calbear at June 23, 2008 12:26 PM
---You cleverly or intentionally ignore the fact that today, June 23rd, 2008, there are 1.2 million Serbian refugees in Belgrade from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
and another lie by William "Serbs were setup /forced to kill, destroy and rape" Dorich:
First. Serbs have 49% of the territory with 32% or so of population and every trace of Bosniak identity from schools to houses to mosques has been wiped out in Republika Sprska.
They can't even place flowers at cemeteries as Arkan wannabes threaten them. So who is stopping whom in Bosnia if Serbs were really throw out? Seems like there were enough Muslim land for those angels.
In Kosova: There were only about 200,000 Serbs or 10%, give or take a few. Now they are about 130,000 there between Mitrovica and the "concentration camps" so do the math.
In Croatia: How many Serbs were in Krajina to begin with? Less than 300,000 and I am being generous.
Lastly, Serb sources disagree with you:
"International Refugee Day is being marked today, with Serbia home to some 100,000 refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, the highest figure in Europe.
There are about 75 collective refugee centers in Serbia sheltering some 6,000 people, while the rest live in private accommodation or with family members.
The number of people with refugee status was 550,000 in 1996. With many receiving Serbian citizenship in the meantime, that figure has since fallen to about 100,000."
(Google a sentence to see the source)
Even in 1996, 12 years ago, the number was 6-700,000 less than you claimed. Now it's only 100,000 so how do you know 95% of them are being denied a right to return?
So Bill, did you pull the number out the books you bragged about and why should we trust anything else you say ?
Posted by: nameless-fool at June 23, 2008 12:27 PM
Patrick: Sorry you had to clean out the trash again, Michael.
Eh, it happens.
Arguing with Serbian Nationalists on the Internet is about as useful as arguing with Hezbollah partisans -- the key difference being that Serbian Nationalists killed a hell of a lot more people and actually provoked a military confrontation with the United States.
I will say that the overwhelming majority of Serbs I met in the real world are a lot more pleasant and reasonable than those who troll blogs.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 23, 2008 12:31 PM
Nameless-fool: So Bill, did you pull the number out the books you bragged about and why should we trust anything else you say ?
Don't bother. Bill is banned. I'm not letting this thread be hijacked by some asshole who lies about who he is and pulls numbers out of thin air. I have better things to do than sit here all day debunking his crap.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 23, 2008 12:35 PM
Bashing Los Angeles, the city or county, is perfectly acceptable. As a resident of Orange County I'd like to remind that most of us escaped from LA and sometimes view it as an alien growth.
Posted by: Pat Patterson at June 23, 2008 1:28 PM
"I have to say, I like your idea of a “neo-centrist” alliance. Secular conservatives like me, the younger generation of neocons, who feel more at home with “South Park” politics and supported Rudy Giuliani in the primaries really do feel out of place in the GOP and with the doves in the Democratic party.
Best regards,
E.D. Kain"
This is a comment I just saw from the previous posting about Zohan. Given that I didn't have the chance to see it until this new article was posted, I would like to interject into whatever lengthy discussion seems to be ongoing for this article (I have not taken the time to read through that whole blog fury yet) and say that "E.D. Kain" hit it right on the head for me on this particular comment.
I'll take it one step farther and add that this feels more confusing because a good chunk of us (that Kain describes there) still remember our Conservative roots (namely, our parents), and so can't seem to understand why those of the Conservative movement are suddenly not so willing to be in a coalition party GOP (let's face it, both parties are essentially coalition parties with some factions more clearly marked than others). It seemed to be a fine union until our section of the party reached parity and began having as much a say in who the nominee would and should be, but it increasingly seems that there may be no home for us: certainly not in a DNC whose voice has become dominated by far Leftists and that does not even resemble the old DNC of moderate-left and Liberal voters; and increasingly not in a GOP whose Conservative movement is not willing to cede any ground whatsoever, even to us. I understand we're "just" an ideology and not a movement, but I hope it doesn't ever reach the point where we truly do not have a home (and the GOP should feel the same, since that party is doomed without our generation's and voting bloc's support).
As the 'ole song goes: Fools to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am: stuck in the middle with you.
at June 23, 2008 1:37 PM
I like Los Angeles a lot more than I used to. I hated it for most of my life, but my wife is from Southern California and I "get it" now after having visited the city with her for the past eight years.
You know what's the best treatment for a hatred of Los Angeles? A trip to Baghdad. Tijuana works, too, and it's a lot closer.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 23, 2008 1:38 PM
Good guess Michael. William Dorich and his wife own a self-publishing company. His parents or father was a Serb and the son is currently involved in a lawsuit against the Vatican claiming that the Holy See helped Croatian fascists escape from Yugoslavia in 1944-1945.
Posted by: Pat Patterson at June 23, 2008 1:45 PM
As a resident of Orange County I'd like to remind that most of us escaped from LA and sometimes view it as an alien growth.
That is an exceedingly (and seemingly unintentionally) ironic thing to say. Orange County's generically bad architecture has spread throughout the suburbs of this country like a real alien growth, one that isn't restricted to L.A. County. Now Orange County has plenty to recommend it, but so does Los Angeles; you just have to know where to look. There's a reason why L.A. is the location for so much of the television that's inspired envy of Americans by those living elsewhere. Orange County has The O.C. and Arrested Development, which represent the place pretty well.
Posted by: calbear at June 23, 2008 2:39 PM
Pat Patterson and Michael,
I've dealt with Californians who attempted to metastasize in other parts of the country. The one who tried to promote his cultural superiority in Savannah, Georgia was the worst of a bad lot. The core of the problem is ignoring the value of what's been accomplished where you are in favor of what is fashionable in LA at the moment.
The last time I was in LA even briefly it was in LAX, which I flew to from the marvels of PDX. The juxtaposition was intense.
Prior to that, I attended a convention at the Burbank Airport Hilton. Because I didn't have a car, there was no place to go. I threw a small room party and had to travel for miles to find a decent liquor store. Friends walked for more than a half hour to find the nearest restaurant through miserably inhospitable terrain.
I've lived in LA. I remember school being canceled because the air was too toxic to allow children out of their houses. Nobody forces me to live there, and I take care to arrange my life to avoid the possibility. There are good reasons to live in LA, but quality of life or superiority of culture are not any of them.
Because people from LA are prone to imagine that their choice of compromises are the natural laws of the universe, I feel compelled to provide them with alternative perspectives. In my experience, the only way Californians amend their arrogance is through an experience that engenders future humility.
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at June 23, 2008 2:51 PM
Wow, what a nice fresh thread, one that will assuredly not end up with Limbic (or other Serbian nationalists) hijacking it and having the last word?? What a bright future lying ahead for this thread!
I had no idea that Dubrovnik was such hot shit. My family started traveling everywhere in Europe for work and pleasure only after I moved out of the house/country. What a shame!
They didn't report it to be so great, but then again, they are somewhat desensitized to European beauty--they mostly take it for granted. I want to visit Croatia someday soon, but as far as coastal scenery in the Balkans goes, the Ionian coast is just a level above that of the Adriatic.
Great article, Michael. It read like a nice novel, and I was pissed the narration ended so soon (especially since you were venturing into There-lie-dragons North-Albanian territory).
You know, that area you are just about to tell us next (well, not Shkoder, but the rest of the highlands) is almost just as mysterious and mythologized to us urban Albanians as it is to foreigners. Traveling up north is a taboo of sorts, one which I have vowed to break this year.
Everyone in Albania raves about the south, the valleys, the beaches; the Alps are the ghetto of Albania. The area is supposed to be breath-taking, and I plan to more than quadruple the amount of information and number of pictures available on the net on my next trip.
I am curious whether you drove inside the Rozafa castle while in Shkoder, but I guess I'll find out soon (probably not, since you only went for breakfast).
Posted by: medaura at June 23, 2008 3:31 PM
calbear-The OC, filmed in Manhattan, Redondo and Hermosa Beach. Arrested Development filmed in Culver City and Marina Del Rey. Both cancelled. We have Pablo Neutra and you have that carbuncle on Grand. Scratch a resident of OC and he'll regale you with smog stories, like Patrick's (and which I endured as well}, the total loss of blue collar jobs inside the city, monumental traffic jams and a tendency among the residents to riot and try to burn down the city every decade or so.
Most of us have been calling for a fortified zone using the San Gabriel River for years but reuniting families from those unfortunates still on the other side of the Orange Curtain is still popular with those who got out years ago.
Posted by: Pat Patterson at June 23, 2008 3:55 PM
I honestly am not familiar enough to speak authoritatively about parts of the country other than coastal California, and possibly Boston and Seattle. Los Angeles has a lot of culture; it’s just that – ignoring the media-driven one we’re all too familiar with – it’s mostly an immigrant culture. But that immigrant culture beats other places I’ve been hands-down. Orange County may have a wonderful Vietnamese community, but L.A. has far more communities in its borders than any place I know of (with London being a possible exception), not to mention the entertainment scene, which is one of the best in the world for contemporary entertainment (e.g., pop music).
Regarding the air, the 70s in Burbank cannot be compared with, say, 21st century Venice Beach. There are many L.A.s, and, although I purposely overlooked a lucrative career opportunity in Burbank precisely due to the smog and traffic, the fact is that much of L.A. is livable, and, if I’m going to be somewhere with that level of smog, better L.A. than Houston, Pittsburgh, or Detroit. (Although, in retrospect, living as near to the freeway as I did in any of these without air filtering is not a good idea.)
When I was young, all I knew of L.A. was the Valley and the Inland Empire, where my family lived. I hated it. But after actually living there, rather than merely visiting it, I’ll gladly defend it.
Back to the original point: With such diversity, of course L.A. is going to have people like Mr. Doric. But he’s no more representative of the city than he is of America in general.
Finally, for those who've read this far, here's the Croatian for "It is forbidden sex on the beach" (at a beach right outside of the Dubrovnik city walls).
Posted by: calbear at June 23, 2008 4:03 PM
There are some parts of Los Angeles that were built before my grandmother was an adult. But not many.
Dubrovnik was culturally secure in its identity before Vasco de Gama learned to sail. (That Vasco de Gama learned to sail was a bad thing for Dubrovnik, but they didn't find out about it until the Galleon entered serial production.)
Los Angeles absorbs and abstracts culture to a much greater extent than it produces. It is possible that they can overcome this limitation in their identity, but the chances are not looking good. Their burn rate is furious, and the supply of cultural fuel is getting limited. Exacerbating this problem is an addiction to fashion that rivals the destructive worst of their addictions to psychoactive substances. The need to be in the now and the inability to create the interesting reality they so desperately crave causes some ludicrous extremes.
All I do to abuse California Cultural Imperialists is show the silliness of their contentions. A decade ago CCI was showing off his latest pair of CDI (Chick's Dig It) shoes. They were military issue pattern black oxfords, with slightly better leather than what is passed out at boot camp. This guy was wearing as the latest thing a pair of shoes that would have been readily identified as geek shoes twenty years previously. This happens all the time in LA because they have the cultural anchoring of jetsam.
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at June 23, 2008 10:40 PM
What immigrant population? Wasn't California part of Mexico before it was part of the US? :)
Posted by: Lindsey at June 23, 2008 10:56 PM
> 86 hits on Google and zero on Amazon.com.
Here is a hit on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Kosovo-William-Dorich/dp/0317050745
Posted by: Onslo at June 23, 2008 11:02 PM
Ok, not to hijack a thread or anything... but what Michael missed out on telling you about the early pit stop in Serbia was interesting to me...
I left Michael with the keys to the car and permission to drive around the block if need be. Meanwhile, I used him as a distraction to march a couple hundred dollars in cash into the local bank.
Once I walked based the armed guard into the bank office I felt like I had walked into a Swiss travel agency. It was an otherworldly switch from the rather Midwest feeling farm town (with just a hint of Mexico) that was the street outside.
Within these (bullet proof) glass doors a pretty blonde girl completed the task of changing my money with out even a hint of ripping me off. And I WAS aware that neither the Dakotas nor Kansas could have offered me a better banking experience.
Then I got back to the car and saw Michael smoking a cigarette and looking pissed off. I had no idea what he had just been through with the old drunk and no idea that he had not heard my directions to drive off if he got in trouble when I bailed from the car.
At any rate it was a rather slim taste of Serbia, but an experience that one could well predict for travelers on the major highway from Serbia's capitol into Croatia. Meanwhile my experience with a sliver of very Western seeming office workers was also probably indicative of that class selection.
The thing about this part of the world is that you can find east and west, high and low, safe and dangerous all mixed together, all suggestive of the nation as a whole. It leaves the tourist or other visitor wondering if you ever have stumbled upon the REAL Balkans or only just one absurd niche.
Posted by: sean at June 24, 2008 12:05 AM
Sean: It leaves the tourist or other visitor wondering if you ever have stumbled upon the REAL Balkans or only just one absurd niche.
Yes, it's always like that when I blow through a place quickly. There is no getting around it.
The peril in writing about experiences like these is that perpetually outraged ethnic chauvenists like William above deliberately misinterpret everything on the page. (If this happened in Bosnia or Kosovo or Montenegro or Albania or Croatia I still would have written about it.) Oh well. It comes with the territory, and I can ban trolls with a single click of the mouse.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 24, 2008 12:15 AM
Michael:Oh well. It comes with the territory, and I can ban trolls with a single click of the mouse.
Amen.
Below are just some snippets from the customer reviews of Mr.Dorich's book (keep a gag-bag handy):
1)
I thank you William Dorich for bringing your personal eye-witness testimony on the truth behind the conflict in Kosovo to the world. It IS a matter of attempted subjugation of the Serbian Orthodox by the Albanian Muslims.
2)
I don't recall when I purchased this magnificent 1992, William Dorich volume, published by the Kosovo Charity Fund and Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Alhambra, Ca. (interesting)
This book is an important reminder to would-be ambassadors of "good will"--like the misguided International Crisis Group--that recognizing an "independent" Kosovo will bring no "peace" to the Balkans, but only encouragement for a vastly expanded international jihad.
The only reason that the Balkans were ever a "powder keg" was their repression for hundreds of years by Ottoman Muslim invaders.
3)
Thank you kind sir for helping to educate us and show the the truth behind the new Jihad being waged in eastern europe.
...It is worse then the holocaust because the media now knows the truth about the cleansing of serbs but ignores it because the media is pro Muslim and hates christians, expecially christians who stand up for themselves
...and this book tells the truth, that one day we shall reclaim our ethnic land and force the foreign monster back to from whence he came.
4)
Everybody who still argues about such chauvinistic thesis as "illyrian descent of albanians","late settling of Slavs" and other hypothesis set by german nazional-socialistic historians(Gustaff Kossina),should contemplate the facts in this book
The theory that Slavs were indigenious to Balkan peninsula,is gaining more and more suport amoung certain scientist.The fact is that Serbians are idigenious people for at least several millenia-anthropologicaly-and language is second class category when ethnicity is in question-and it is more and more plausible that illyrians were actualy Slavs
Fact is that Illyrians inhabited entire Balkan,but there is not a single enclave of Albanians outside the south-western part of it.The truth is that Albanians have no ties with Illyrians-they call themselves Shiptars and are actually two peoples-Tosks and Ghegs.
That they are recent settlers in kosovo is proven by fact that in albania there is ratio Christian vs. Muslims 60:40,while in kosovo ratio is 2:98-because Turks collonised only Muslims.By reading this book,reader will get first-class knowledge about authochtonity of Serbs in kosovo and how this teritory was settled by Albanians only in last 300 years-and how their numerical predominance is for only last few decades.
This book proves that Kosovo was,is,and will be Serbian-by the virtue of historical logic-regardless of the fact that world is turned upside-down since march 24,1999-simply because of Serbs ancient mentality-not to put themselves volontarily to slavery-as many Eastern Europians gladly did.
errrr, so you get the drift. So Serbian ultra-nationalists troll blogs, and some of the more enlightened ones also write books.
How nice!
What makes me sick is that this little fascist was seemingly raised in California. You would think that not having to breathe in poison everyday in your isolated country whose media is controlled by its semi-fascist regime, would make one a happy lad.
I have noticed this of second-generation conservative Muslims in Canada, and I guess it goes for others as well: Distance from the old country can further radicalize people. Talk about poor integration.
at June 24, 2008 7:28 AM
I support allowing the Republic of Srpska to join Servia for the same reason I support allowing Kosovo (excepting its Serb-majority provinces) to join Albania: Monoethnic states, or states with an overwhelming majority of one ethnic group, are more stable, unified and pleasant places to live. Why do you recommend forcing Bosniaks and Croats to live in the same country with their previous Serb tormentors? It is just a recipe for further strife and civil unrest.
Posted by: markus at June 24, 2008 8:45 AM
==Why do you recommend forcing Bosniaks and Croats to live in the same country with their previous Serb tormentors? It is just a recipe for further strife and civil unrest.
Marcus,
the idea is that as economy picks up and the new generation gets educated people will start living with each. And that EU /US will keep an eye for future Slobodans. But I agree. Letting people live with their own might be best in these times, at least it solves that problem, but then:
--Bosniaks deserve a better split of what's left since Croatia has Croats living in the Bosniak half (Now Serbs alone, thanks to Mladic and Karadzic tactics has half).
--A chunk of Vojvodina would have to go with the Hungarians inside.
--Montenegro would get Decani (and some near the border monasteries in Kosovo) in return for Ulcinj (100% Albanian), Plave, Guci that were given to Montengro in 1912-18. Montengro would gain one more tourism spots and the Serbs anyway.
--Kosova would get Presheva and 100% Alb cities near the Serb border in return for Serbs getting the north, free and clear.
--FYROM seems like a loser since it would have to be split, but they are already split. Albanians don't care about "Alexander the Great" or the Macedonian name. In return, they will have a more or less homogenous nation, avoid a potential uprising like in 2001 if things (rights as well as $$) do not improve, and some EU help.
Put Kosova and Fyrom Albanians in one confederate which will join Albania in 10-15 year anyway and there you have it. Peace. Of course every nation will start to grumble and want more, but it can be done if the powers just stay firm. They can even mention it un-offically and guage its interest. Serbia's Kosovo is replaced with what will be left of Republika Sprska and Northern Mitrovica.
Lastly, arm everyone equally with old US /EU weapons (they are still very good for the Balkans;-)) and peace is guaranteed. Serbia's kryptonite is well armed men, and they started the 4 wars only because they had full control of the Yugoslav army, while the rest were stuck with looted chinese AK-47s. Despite the bravado, they don't well without partners doing their bidding if the other side is armed, plus they will have Croatia and Albania right there.
Posted by: nameless-fool at June 24, 2008 9:27 AM
Medaura,
Good Lord. Thanks for posting that.
You know, I've thought Serbian Nationalist propaganda was as bad as that of Hamas and Hezbollah, but actually I think it is worse. Serbian writer Filip David was absolutely right when he said it is a totalitarian ideology. It amazes me that anyone in the United States would believe that crap.
If it were true I'd be writing the same thing. I'm pretty sure that just about everyone who has followed my work over the years can see that.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 24, 2008 9:40 AM
Markus: Why do you recommend forcing Bosniaks and Croats to live in the same country with their previous Serb tormentors? It is just a recipe for further strife and civil unrest.
Well, I almost agree with you. The only trouble is that most of the Republica Srpska is territory won by war and ethnic cleansing only. Kosovo isn't like that. Kosovo had a 90 percent ethnic majority without war and ethnic cleansing and genocide, so it's a much cleaner break. See the maps I published here.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 24, 2008 9:44 AM
Monoethnic states, or states with an overwhelming majority of one ethnic group, are more stable, unified and pleasant places to live
Are Canada, the USA, Australia, Brazil and most of the western hemisphere unpleasant places to live? I didn't know that.
Many people from the old world believe that monoethnic states are more stable and pleasant, and they've waged many wars and killed millions of people to prove it, but in the west, we've proved that this theory is wrong.
Still, people in the old world judge other people for what they are (or what they were born as) not what they do, and they're still alarmingly willing to kill and maim in the name of ethnic 'purity'. It's not clear if anything will change that.
Posted by: maryatexitzero
at June 24, 2008 11:04 AM
"Many people from the old world believe that monoethnic states are more stable and pleasant, and they've waged many wars and killed millions of people to prove it, but in the west, we've proved that this theory is wrong."
Like in Paris now?
I think Steyn is onto something when he distinguishes between multicultural and bicultural. A situation approaching the latter encourages bad rivalrous instincts.
Posted by: someone at June 24, 2008 11:56 AM
Michael: You know, I've thought Serbian Nationalist propaganda was as bad as that of Hamas and Hezbollah, but actually I think it is worse. Serbian writer Filip David was absolutely right when he said it is a totalitarian ideology. It amazes me that anyone in the United States would believe that crap.
Hamas and Hezbollah cannot weave a thick web of bullshit around their 'cause' before the laser-bright spotlight of scrutiny pierces through it. They operate in a region of the world on which all eyes have been turned for a while now. Even with (I find) a largely crypto-sympathetic media on their side, they can't get away with their crap.
Serbian propaganda is more outrageous because it runs largely unchecked and unchallenged, therefore it 'sticks' better.
It is a totalitarian ideology that fills the void in many people's lives, curiously now, the lives of many second-generation poorly-assimilated immigrants in Western countries. When you can't grasp or relate to the new, you hold on to the old for dear life, and regress to a scary state of 'hard-coreness'.
I met a Serbian guy at university in Canada, who seemed to have just recently overcome (perhaps not even entirely) that mindset. When he told me of the many Serbian nationalist centers for the youth in an area as boring and docile as Kitchener, Ontario,... I knew the whole thing was screwed up.
Anyway, I have personally noticed that aside from the paleocon fascist variety in the US (an understandable allegiance), Serbian nationalists have managed to garner a lot of sympathy from flaming Jews (like Goran). I find it interesting and I don't know exactly why it is the case.
Part of it must be the culturally narcissistic and myopic tendency to see Palestinian terrorists in any remotely Muslim side of any conflict (they relate to what they don't know through what is familiar to them).
But part of it, I think is the offshoot of a tentative ideological coalition among fundamentalist Jews and Christians. These are the people who equate Western Civilization with Judeo-Christianity and who feel like they are on a holy war (counter-jihad) against Muslims everywhere. One of the Amazon customers of that sick book who was raving about it was (apparently) a Jew from Israel.
It takes all kinds...
If it weren't for people like you who are genuinely interested in the Balkans, travel there, and report what they see without any compulsive need to re-write history from any perspective, I think the Serbian propaganda machine would have succeeded in painting the entire conflict in Yugoslavia (especially against Bosniacs and Albanians) as a religious war.
Don't let the haters get you down Michael. It's not the first time some idiot comes around here to vent his irrational frustration at the fact that you didn't merely write another appendix in their make-belief history-cookbooks.
Cognitive dissonance is a bitch!
Posted by: medaura
at June 24, 2008 12:23 PM
> Kosovo isn't like that. Kosovo had a 90 percent
> ethnic majority without war and ethnic cleansing
> and genocide
First Kosovo is a 100% christian country and next its a 90% muslim country. I call that conquest and genocide.
Posted by: Onslo at June 24, 2008 12:34 PM
> Serbian propaganda is more outrageous because
> it runs largely unchecked and unchallenged,
> therefore it 'sticks' better.
Banning people is not a way to check their ideas.
Yet you applaud banning.
at June 24, 2008 12:41 PM
> Part of it must be the culturally narcissistic
> and myopic tendency to see Palestinian terrorists
> in any remotely Muslim side of any conflict
Notice that 1,500 al-Qaida fought against the Serbs.
(The Taliban spring offensive of 2006 was maybe 800 Taliban).
http://www.southeasteurope.org/subpage.php?sub_site=2&id=17400&head=if&site=2
Posted by: Onslo at June 24, 2008 12:51 PM
First Kosovo is a 100% christian country and next its a 90% muslim country. I call that conquest and genocide.
I'm not an expert, so please educate me on when Kosovo was 100% Christian. If the answer is what I think, why should something that happened centuries ago be reason to have two wrongs "making a right"? 2000 years ago, there were no Christians there and, if I'm not mistaken, no Turks or Slavs. Everyone living there is a "recent migrant," so we'd better get used to it.
Posted by: calbear at June 24, 2008 12:52 PM
Onslo: Banning people is not a way to check their ideas. Yet you applaud banning.
First of all, I did not applaud anything.
Banning is not a way to 'check' anyone's ideas. "Their" ideas can be checked independently. Banning is one (out of a few) sensible way to react to "their" insane ideas, which have a tendency to degenerate threads into bullshitfests.
I don't understand why people like you come and take a dump on other bloggers' websites. Start your own, where you can write all the make-belief reports of 'genocide' that you wish, to your heart's content!
No one's stopping you.
Posted by: medaura at June 24, 2008 12:54 PM
Notice that 1,500 al-Qaida fought against the Serbs.
You know whom bin Laden originally fought against? The Soviets. Next he wanted to fight Saddam Hussein. The enemy of one's enemy is not necessarily one's friend, whether it's al-Qaida and us, al-Qaida and Balkan Muslims, or Serbia and us.
By the way, the link you give does not back up your claim. The "1,500 people" are foreigners who fought on Bosnia's side in the early 90s, not necessarily al-Qaida, which likely didn't have that many members back then. There are several circumstantial links to al-Qaida from individuals and organizations mentioned, but even these unproven links total in the single digits, not 1,500.
Nice try though. I can see why 24 likes Serbians to play bad guys when they need to give Islamists a break.
Posted by: calbear at June 24, 2008 1:01 PM
Onslo: First Kosovo is a 100% christian country and next its a 90% muslim country. I call that conquest and genocide.
Kosovo was Christian before the Ottoman Empire expanded into Europe. The conquest there was done by Turks, not by Albanians. The Albanians are those who were conquered.
The Albanian and Kosovo flag today is the symbol of Skanderberg's Catholic anti-Turkish resistance.
I don't mind explaining these things to readers who know little about the history of the region, but you need to tone down the attitude or I'm throwing you out.
Banning people is not a way to check their ideas.
My Web site will not be used as a platform to promote racism, fascism, or terrorism. Engaging in any of these behaviors is a banning offense. I will also throw someone out for being an asshole, and I don't give a damn whether you approve of this policy or not. There is only so much crap I'm willing to put up with on my own Web site. Complain one more time and you're done here.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 24, 2008 1:15 PM
calbear: I can see why 24 likes Serbians to play bad guys when they need to give Islamists a break.
That is hilarious.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 24, 2008 1:17 PM
Damn, Michael.
Limbic wouldn't have lasted beyond the first few comments under your new zero-tolerance-for-bullshit attitude. Seriously, you know you must be doing something right when you attract the rage of so many crazies.
The propagandists are evangelizers of their doctrine. When/if engaged, they have a compulsive need to have the last word, which is why it's smart to keep their comments under control to begin with, before the thread turns batshit crazy.
Posted by: medaura at June 24, 2008 1:31 PM
Michael,
you probably know better than me when and how Kosovo came to have so many Albanians and so few Serbians. My understanding is that there was hatred and injustice between the two peoples -- you might even call it low-level civil war -- for years upon years, prior to 1999. No matter how things got that way, once both sides were big and powerful enough to really cause intractable problems with one another, they should have been separated, which is finally what is happening now. I don't understand why foreign policy elites in particular cling to the idea that ethnic groups in a conflict-ridden region or country, utterly incompatible with each other and killing each other, must be made to live together, particular if one of the conflicting sides can be shown to have been the bigger aggressor. Who wants to live with a bully?
Mary -- yes, by and large the less ethnically and racially diverse a place is, the more pleasant of place it is to live in. Not all of Canada, United States, and Brazil are diverse, but the parts that ARE, tend to be the unsafe and unpleasant places to live. This is perhaps not so much the case if one is rich, and can enjoy the benefits of diversity (interesting restaurants, cheap menial labor, etc.), while being relatively free to ignore the downsides (high taxes, unsafe neighborhoods, public schools where no one can learn).
There has recently been a lot of literature on this. The sociologist Robert Putnam (author of "Bowling Alone") did an intensive study and found that the more ethnically and racially diverse a metro area is, the lower the quality of life is, as are the levels of other positive factors such as social trust, community and civic involvement, being pleased with local services, etc. There was a good article on his findings (which upset him so much that he refused to release the data for several years) in the City Journal.
And there is another very interesting article by Hanna Rosin in the current issue of the Atlantic, entitled "The Murder Mystery", showing how the great liberal plan to eliminate poverty in the 1990's by tearing down the huge inner city public housing complexes and giving the residents Section 8 vouchers, with which they largely moved into older suburbs succeeded in diversifying those suburbs and bringing in the whole host of social ills associated with ghetto life.
Also, see: Turks in Germany, Algerians in France, Pakistanis in England, Somalis in Finland, Syrians in Lebanon, etc. Good fences make good neighbors.
Posted by: markus at June 24, 2008 1:34 PM
yes, by and large the less ethnically and racially diverse a place is, the more pleasant of place it is to live in. Not all of Canada, United States, and Brazil are diverse, but the parts that ARE, tend to be the unsafe and unpleasant places to live.
So, we should try to live only among people who look like us, and avoid funny looking foreigners with their weird customs and smelly food? Because life is just so much more pleasant that way? This really doesn't sound like progress.
It's also not true. Yes, there are a few new studies 'proving' that people are happier when they avoid anyone who is different from themselves, but there are many studies proving that the mingling of culture and races is good for a society. There are millions of people living in the west who prove that it's true every day. I live in an ethnically diverse city, and I love it.
I've lived in Europe, and I was shocked by the racism there. Germans in Germany are biased against Italians - they're definitely not tolerant of blacks, Hindus, Muslims, Hispanics or the French. German Americans, though, behave pretty much the same way other Americans do.
In America, we integrate newcomers into the general society. Everyone has a chance to be an American. In Europe, newcomers are isolated. Muslims, Italians, Germans, Americans and Hindus are allowed to move to France, but they can never really be 'French'. You don't need a study to see whether immigrant groups in Europe are more alienated, violent and angry than immigrants in America.
You also don't need a sociological study to see the effect that ethnic-based hatreds have had on world history.
We should also acknowledge that social science studies are not, in any way, scientific. Our knowledge about human behavior is still in the dark ages stage. We can't even figure out why one person reacts differently to depression medication than another. If we can't figure out why individuals behave the way they do, forget about trying to scientifically understand the interworkings of millions of individuals in a society through sociological polls and 'research'.
Posted by: maryatexitzero at June 24, 2008 2:29 PM
Nice travel post, like always. I believe in traveling with my kids so my 14-year-old daughter saw Dubrovnik with us. The concerts in the square in front of the church are nice. A tour guide showed us where newborns could be deposited by the mother so the church would rear them. It was a revolving panel so the person inside would not see who was leaving the infant. Beautiful place but they haven't forgiven the Serbs. I also took a picture of that map of the damage just inside the gate.
About the Albanians, they were the original residents who were pushed west and south by the Slavs as they invaded around 500 AD. I have a nice history of the Byzantine Empire with the story. Also Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is indispensable to understand the place. A surgeon friend of mine was asked by a Serb doctor to help him find a job. This was about 1970. He asked around and found the VA hospital in West LA was hiring. He told the Serb doc (I think American citizen by then) about it and suggested he go over for an interview. A few weeks later, he saw the fellow and asked him how it went. The guy replied. "I didn't even talk to him !"
"Why", he asked. The Serb-American replied "He was a Grick !" Meaning of course, Greek.
Serbs are haters; even after they've been here for 20 years.
Posted by: Mike K at June 24, 2008 3:11 PM
Mary,
I'm against ethnic based hatred too. And I think the best way to minimize such conflict is to give each group of people there own little (or big) slice of territory, where they can live and develop without being lorded over by a bigger group, and where they lack the opportunity to lord over others. Even in our great cosmopolitan cities, you generally have neighborhoods that are ethnic or minority enclaves, black or gay or Italian or Irish or whatnot. Yes, people feel safer amongst their own kind.
BTW, I hope you can admit that Israel is an aggressively ethnonationalist state, down to and including separate schools for Israeli Arabs, limitations on where they can live, and whom they can marry. I also think that if the Israeli Arab demographic continues to increase, up to a point at which they can politically dominate Israeli politics, perhaps in coalition with leftist parties, there would be serious talk across the Israeli political spectrum about redrawing boundaries to exclude some Arab citizens. I would support consideration of such changes, in the interest of civil peace and stability. Would you?
Posted by: markus at June 24, 2008 3:28 PM
Markus and Mary, I think you're talking past each other.
Of course I agree with Mary that