Boomerang Still Flies

Although the Party of Democratic Action's Memorandum calling for a special status for Sandzak has been banned, nothing has significantly changed in this part of Serbia and Montenegro. ``Dobro jutro'' and ``merhaba'' (good morning in Serbian and Turkish) can still be heard on the streets of Sandzak towns. Novi Pazar is still the best supplied city in Yugoslavia and hardly anyone here believes they might be pointing shotguns at each other in the near or distant future.

The Uzice District Court banned the circulation of the published ``Memorandum on the setting up of a special status for Sandzak'' adopted this June by the Moslem National Council of Sandzak ``because it gives rise to hatred and entices national and religious intolerance.''

Although the Memorandum is not available to the public, sources close to SDA (Part of Democratic Action) leaders say that the document calls for a special status for Sandzak within the remainder of Yugoslavia and turns all state competences over to ``Sandzak's authorities.'' These authorities would be spearheaded by an Assembly, as a legislative body, a Governor and government as administrators of executive power.

They would control the police, taxes, legislature, education, culture, the exploitation of all natural resources, power, banks and issue working permits to firms and shops. The state of Yugoslavia would be left only to care for environmental protection, roads, railways, the PTT and the electrical transmission system. It is no secret that a map of territories to which the called-for special status would apply according to SDA leader Sulejman Ugljanin comprises six Serbian municipalities (Priboj, Prijepolje, Nova Varos, Sjenica, Tutin and Novi Pazar) and five Montenegrin municipalities (Pljevlja, Bijelo Polje, Berane, Rozaje and Plav). At the beginning of his statement to VREME, SDA Secretary-General Rasim Ljajic said that if Bosnia split along ethnic lines, the following question would inevitably arise--why such a principle should not be applied to Serbia and Croatia, two states urging the ethnic division of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

``We were one of the rare political parties in the former Yugoslavia that opposed its disintegration, because that was the optimal interest of the Moslem people. The disintegration of Yugoslavia brought about new circumstances and influenced us to define our current political aims,'' Ljajic said.

To our remark that in six out of the eleven above-mentioned municipalities Serbs make up the majority and that the Moslems own only one-third of the land and that there was rumour of secession, Ljajic said:

``Politics is not an array of wishes, but of objectively possible solutions, particularly in conditions when the force of argument is pushed into the background. Bosnia's fate will determine future developments. Our most important commitment is that only political talks and dialogue can resolve Sandzak's status as a region. It is fully clear to us that, in these international circumstances, it would be unrealistic to expect of the current authorities to enable the Moslems to achieve all items contained in the Memorandum.''

Novi Pazar, the political and economic centre of Sandzak, is still the champion of shopping tourism in Yugoslavia. You can buy everything there at much lower prices than in other cities. The foodstuffs in short supply--flour, sugar and cooking oil--can be found in every store. The prices, of course, are set in German marks. A 3-kg box of detergent costs 8 DEM.

Raids of hard currency dealers are frequent here, too, but it is believed that the quantity of confiscated hard currency is minor in comparison to the total sum of money in circulation. One of the dealers says that they used to circulate several hundred thousand DEM a day.

It is not much different in other Sandzak towns. In Prijepolje, the largest shop-owner is Bahrija Beganovic, who owns the firm ``Vocar.'' When the war broke out in Croatia, 50 tons of his bananas remained in Koper (Slovenia), while a trailer truck with 22 tons of bananas was kidnapped at Djakovo.

``This lunacy will hopefully end one day, it is time we turned to work, business and a better life. The government has to restore order on our market, no-one should be allowed to withhold goods and set too high prices,'' Beganovic said and added his cooperation with Macedonia was excellent, since the former Yugoslav republic is interested in marketing its products in Serbia and Montenegro. He said a coup had been staged on smaller-scale businessmen and that if it weren't for them, the people would be unable to buy anything anywhere in these circumstances.

To counter the Memorandum and numerous problems burdening Sandzak, Sefko Alomerovic, Director of the private company ``Merso'' and vice-President of the European Movement in Serbia, mentions the School of Inter--confessional Understanding and Cooperation, which he initiated and organised.

Around 100 students of theology and other colleges in the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, France and other countries will listen to lectures of eminent theologians and other experts on religion in Novi Pazar in August. The school will rally the Christian Orthodox, Catholics, Moslems, Protestants and Jews and will last two weeks. ``I am opposed to all sorts of separatism, I urge new integrations, a whole and decentralised Serbia,'' Alomerovic told VREME in view of SDA's request for a special status. Every Moslem must respect Serbia's interests to retain its access to the sea via Montenegro and the historical affinity of the two peoples must not be forgotten, he said. Alomerovic is of the opinion that, should Sandzak win a kind of autonomy, Serbia would become its enemy, a powerful one, which would quell it in time.

Peace reigns in Priboj after a number of incidents in this region bordering with Bosnia-Herzegovina (abduction of Moslems from Sjeverin, setting fire to homes and murders in the village of Kukurovici, kidnapping of train passengers in Strpci).

Hardly anyone is in the mood to discuss the Memorandum, many have not even heard of it. A pensioner said the following about it: ``With my pension, I already have a special status, I don't need any other.'' An intellectual interviewed by VREME, who wished to remain anonymous, said the Moslem people did not have real political leaders. Only the request for a kind of cultural autonomy makes any sense, everything else has no chance, he believes.

Those well acquainted with the situation in Sandzak, particularly in the Raska district, claim that Moslems in the Nova Varos (where they make up merely 8% of the population), Pljevlja and Berane municipalities would oppose a special status for Sandzak. SDA's only strongholds are in Plav and Rozaje, but many say that Moslems in Montenegro are increasingly turning towards the Liberals and Social-Democrats. The Montenegrin Assembly has already decreed the Memorandum as an unconstitutional document aspiring to create a state within a state and therefore unacceptable.

A group of Moslems in Berane recently condemned the SDA request. Berane journalist Amer Rasumovic says: ``A not in the least naive game is being played in order to create pre-conditions for war, and nationalists in other parties identify their policy with the whole Moslem people. We in Berane have it good; the local radio recently employed three workers, two of them Moslems.''

Professor of history at the Niksic College of Philosophy Serbo Rastoder told Vreme:

``The Memorandum on Sandzak's special status represents an act of political will of the leadership of one party, based on its obsession with nation and state and in the spirit of the most iniquitous Balkan tradition. As such, it is headed for solutions containing problematic historical and ethnic argumentation absolutized into* nonsense. Experience shows that the victims of such a policy are no other than the ones in whose name their leaders act. This is a new contribution to the history of contemporary Yugoslav infamy and, as such, it ignores elementary political reality.

The levers of its possible implementation would naturally cause an inevitable conflict which renders the initiators' original intentions absurd. This is why the chief question that arises is: in whose interest is it? I am deeply convinced that such a solution is not in the least interest of the Moslems. It is another question how much support at all the Memorandum enjoys among those in whose name it was written,'' Rastoder underlined.

Besides the authors of the Memorandum and the judges who outlawed it, hardly anyone in Sandzak is interested in the document. Many believe that Sandzak has no chance of being included in the agenda of world politics with the problem of Kosovo looming. The SDA leadership expects that the ``Sandzak issue'' will nevertheless be internationalised, as had happened with the former Yugoslav republics. We shall soon see whether the thrown boomerang in the shape of the Memorandum will return to the one who had thrown it or hit someone else.