One Thousand Days Of Misfortune

After 1,100 days of shelling, massacres, persecution, forced migration and numerous other misfortunes, former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Presidency President Borisav Jovic said during a recent meeting with European parliamentarians, that the war in Yugoslavia hadn't been necessary. After additional explanations, it turns out that Jovic has not said anything new, except that: "that which the Serbian side demanded will happen--the people will decide by referendum if they wish to remain or leave Yugoslavia, so that if peace is made to the detriment of one nation, it won't be a lasting one.'' Jovic reiterated Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's words from April 1991 when he in fact, declared Serbia's war goals. (At a meeting with municipality presidents Milosevic said the following: "If we don't know how to work well, at least we'll know how to fight well.'')

"We were told here, that during our talks with Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and his delegation, we had pushed our demands too hard. The question of borders hasn't been resolved satisfactorily anywhere in Europe, where they are precise in the sense that all nations live within their ethnic borders, because in that case, there wouldn't be any national minorities. We had an answer to that, namely, that it is true, and that there are no perfect borders anywhere, and that what we were seeking was not a matter of perfection, since a problem can be expressed in a small measure, and is then bearable, but expressed in a large measure, this same problem becomes intolerable. So we told them: gentlemen, the implementation of your confederal formula would leave the Serbian people divided in such a measure, that the problem would then become intolerable, because three million Serbs would be left to live outside Serbia, and we are not a nation of 300 million so that three million can be a marginal majority. Even though we are the most numerous nation in Yugoslavia, we are a small people, so that three million is not a marginal majority for us, nor will we agree in any way, for these people to become part of some independent sovereign states and in those independent sovereign states become a national minority.''

"If the Croatian people decide by referendum that they wish to leave Yugoslavia, then the Serbian parts will remain in Yugoslavia, because the Serbs will not choose to leave Yugoslavia, at a referendum..."

In 1991, when these words were spoken, the so-called "log revolution" (barricades erected by Serbs in Knin, which marked the start of the conflict) had been going on for eight months, and separate incidents had launched the "`war against Fascism," and the "protection of the hearths," which Milosevic believed would be "short."

During that first year of war, he however, must have realized that the Serbs didn't have a surplus of units. Reservists rebelled in various towns throughout SerbiaAda, Senta, Kragujevac, Topola, Arandjelovac and Belgrade. Miroslav Milenkovic (b. 1951), the father of two, a construction worker and reservist from Gornji Milanovac shot himself in Sid in 1991, standing between two groups of reservistsone group was going home, the other had agreed to go to the front in Tovarnik. The international community did not consider these rebellions as mitigating circumstances when they introduced the perhaps necessary, but certainly unintelligent sanctions, which punished the conflicting sides in the war and rewarded war profiteers.

The authorities in Belgrade did not recognize conscientious objectors, and after the Slavonian campaign, the regime no longer relied on Serbia's male population to fill up its units, as much as on paramilitary troops and men from highlands and other depressed areas.

In April 1991 Milosevic said that he was battling against the "interests of the great powers and the new European order," against "Germany's mono-centric system in Europe," against "the lack of balance in equality among big European statesGermany, France, Great Britain, Spain and Italy,'' and against "significant appetites aimed at restoring the Austro-Hungarian monarchy." He said the following: "I can say quite openly, considering that this is not a public meeting, that our information, and this is serious information, speaks that they count on the whole of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vojvodina and a part of Sandzak; and that their strategy is to annex the whole of Kosovo to Albania, because according to their estimates there are only 8.4% Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, and that, with this demographic explosion, this area must be joined to Albania, and therefore, this is their plan. Serbia, will in fact, be reduced to the size of Belgrade at the time of the Turkish pasha's rule.''

In his book "Against Nazism," Branko Milanovic speaks of Borisav Jovic as a man whose policies have all failed: "He resisted a multi party system in 1989 and 1990, when parties were springing up everywhere. He signed the Charter on human rights and the rights of minorities in Paris in 1990, a charter which would be used to accuse his regime. His idea of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's continuity from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (in the manner: we will destroy Yugoslavia, and no one will notice), failed abysmally. All the breakaway republics were recognized by the world, while his and Milosevic's regime was not. Milanovic recalls that the "Communist party duo MilosevicJovic" put all their money on the Russian communists and fascistsfirst when the KGBsponsored August putsch failed, and the second time in October 1993.'' Milanovic then describes the unsuccessful "wooing" of China.

This formula has not changed to this very daythe ruling establishment and its ideological advisors are still applying the same rhetoric.

The protegees of this policy have fared badly. Yugoslavia never released data on its losses. The Bosnian side claims to have 200,000 dead, mostly civilians, and accused the Serbian side of ethnic cleansing, while in the besieged cities, they turned the citizens into hostages. Croatia complains that Serbia is preventing several hundred thousand of its refugees from returning home, while in the meantime it is carrying out the so-called "mild ethnic cleansing" or throwing people out of their apartments (mostly Serbs and Yugoslav People's Army officers and their families), thus decreasing the number of Serbs in Croatia. Croatia puts the number of dead at 5,000 citizens, 6,000 are reported missing, and over 20,000 wounded. Much evidence has been brought forward, and a part used for proregime propaganda exploiting the horrors of massacres, wanton violence against civilians and the absence of military ethic, concentration camps, persecution and the holding of hostages. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's authorities have not come up with a single convincing piece of evidence that they have not been carrying out ethnic cleansing in their territory.

As a result, 1.5 million people have been forced to leave their hearths through direct or indirect pressure. They will not be returning home this spring, even though there is talk of peace, and Karadzic's forces have stopped their 22 months-long shelling of Sarajevo after US and Russian threats to turn their military might against the Bosnian Serbs. Karadzic's men shelled Sarajevo where some 50,000 Bosnian Serbs lived (in 1991, Sarajevo had a population of 525,980, of which 259,000 Muslims, 157,000 Serbs, 35,000 Croats and 56,000 Yugoslavs.) There are 495,000600,000 refugees in Serbia. (At least 265,000 come from BH, 19,000 are from Croatia, 37,000 from Slovenia and 3,000 from Macedonia). Among the refugees there are 1,200 children without parents, around 10,000 children have been born as refugees, and there are over 50,000 old and disabled people. There are no precise estimates on how many refugees can return to their devastated homelands, where hatred, fear, insecurity and local strongmen call the rules. Their property has been looted, cattle butchered and the woods have been cut down. The area between the Krka and Drina rivers is one from which people have often emigrated in the past. It has been seriously depopulated by the latest clashes, probably more so than during World War Two. This brings up the following question with regard to Milosevic's war propaganda: who is protected by this policy? How?

The authorities in Belgrade are preventing the public from learning the extent of the United Nations' contribution in aiding refugees in Serbia, and claim that the ruling party (Socialist Party of SerbiaSPS) is feeding them. UNHCR spokeswoman Lyndall Sachs said that 520,000 persons in Yugoslavia received flour, tinned meat, cheese, fish, salt, cooking oil, milk, sugar and some detergent from the United Nations. UN aid and that of international organizations which are described as hostile by the local press, covers 74 hospitals, institutions for the handicapped, orphanages and institutions for the blind.

For three years armed Serbs and Croats have faced each other along a 1,600 kilometers-long border in BH, the line of fire is 2,500 kilometers, making a total of 4,000 kilometers. The Croatian authorities claim that the war is responsible for the following: 37% of the economic potential has been destroyed (mostly in cities with a mixed population, such as Osijek, Zadar, Sisak and Karlovac). Economic losses are estimated at a total of 21 billion dollars, or 5,000 dollars per capita.

It is highly unlikely that Vukovar will ever be rebuilt. Eye witnesses claim that Mostar looks like Vukovar. After 22 months of shelling, Sarajevo's vital structures have suffered considerable destruction. According to UNHCR reports, electrical supply lines in Sarajevo have been destroyed in the suburbs of Reljevo, Kosevo, Vogosca, Famos, Lukavica and Blazuj. Over 95% of Sarajevo's industry is not working. The Belgrade-Zagreb highway is not operating, including all roads leading to the coast. Yugoslavia's oil pipeline is not in use and it is uncertain when it will become operational again. Telephone communications are interrupted as are monetary transactions.

Vital bridges have been destroyed in Bosanski Brod (estimated time of repair 68 months), Brcko (46 months), Bosanski Samac (46 months), Visoko (one month), Mostar (812 months), Podlugovi... These technical details make it clear that life in the area of the Krka, Kupa, Una, Bosna, Sava and Drina rivers is unbearable and will not soon become normal.

Slobodan Milosevic did not send observers to Pale (Bosnian Serb political center just above Sarajevo), but condemned the crime which preceded the ultimatum: "The dead and wounded people in Sarajevo are not victims of war but of war criminals." At a meeting with Serb Krajina President Milan Martic, Serbian PM Mirko Marjanovic and Krajina PM Borislav Mikelic, Milosevic announced a showdown with some Serbian Radical Party (SRS) representatives, and demanded that they be placed under control. After the violence in Prijedor, Karadzic ordered an investigation. Information coming from the 1,600 kilometers-long border, says that the cease fire is being observed. US President Bill Clinton's Envoy Charles Redman is in Belgrade and Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanovic in Moscow...

Is peace really coming? What will it be like?

If peace ever arrives, it will be difficult to differentiate it from war, judging by the number of hot spots and the mutual demands of the participants in this sad story. It will take decades before the wounds are healed.

The standard of living in Serbia has dropped, and the population has been greatly impoverished. A large segment of the people live under subsistence level. There is a chronic shortage of medicine. Health centers work at a fourth of their capacity. The treatment of psychiatric patients is endangered. Death due to tuberculosis has increased four times in the 19861993 period. The death rate of the elderly increased in 1992 by 501% compared to 1986, the death rate of children, too. The number of healthy newborn babies has dropped from 16 to 13 per 1,000 inhabitants. The Belgrade Social Center has data that 2,000 children in the city are begging, living like vagrants, running away from home and prostituting themselves...

January's rate of inflation of 2% by the hour, scared a lot of people, so that there are practically no reactions to the real deterioration in the standard of living which followed the curbing of hyperinflation and the introduction of the new dinar. One study shows that 30% of the population live at subsistence level leaving only 800,000 outside the poverty range; this number includes 700,000 war profiteers.

Ministry of Science and Development estimates published in late March 1994, show that Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) have suffered losses of 45.117 billion dollars because of the disintegration of the former federation and sanctions. The loss of national revenue is estimated at 38 billion, the loss of income from abroad at 1.4 billion, unemployment compensation devours 436 million, and aid for refugees and the Serb krajinas add up to 5.1 billion. This sum does not include losses incurred because of interrupted scientific and technological development and the brain drain. Incalculable loss has occurred because of a loss of face and reputation worldwide and the lagging behind of health, education and cultural sectors.

According to these estimates, if sanctions continue, Yugoslavia's losses by 2011 could add up to 147.3 billion dollars. This country will not be able to reach the standard of living it enjoyed prior to 1990, before the year 2012.

In early February 1994, there was talk that Europe was planning a traffic route which would bypass Yugoslavia, and that 100 million ecus had been earmarked for the project. The number of air passengers in Yugoslavia has dropped to one-tenth of the figure in 1989.

Anticultural barbarianism has spread throughout entire regions. The Serbian Patriarchate's office announced a year after the start of the war, that 100 of the remaining 156 Orthodox churches in Croatia had been destroyed, and later cautioned of the Orthodox churches destroyed in BH, of which the destruction of the Monastery of Zitomislic was the greatest loss.

In its overall report, the Croatian side claims that around 300 churches on its territory have been destroyed during the war, 200 top category cultural monuments in Konavla and the center of the old part of Dubrovnik and other places... The Old Bridge in Mostar, a top category monument has been destroyed. Numerous mosques in Banja Luka, Foca and elsewhere have been blown up, some of the monuments of the greatest importance. The Town Hall in Sarajevo burned down and with it the national library and numerous other cultural institutions.

What can sprout out of this rubble?

Belgrade Law School professor Jovica Trkulja writes in his book "The Conquest of Democracy--An experiment in Communism,'' that the most probable scenario concerning the future, leads to the final end of Yugoslavia, a "bloody nation-building purgatory" which could result in the creation of six (the European Union's proposal) to seventeen states, and that even this last number would not guarantee the creation of ethnically pure units. Even more liberal Serbian nationalists (Milan Protic, DEPOS) are starting to claim that a state with the greatest number of Serbs, the leitmotif of the regime and the greatest part of the opposition, would include only half the Serbian population and a drop in the birthrate.

Trkulja cites Ralph Darendorf who noticed that post-Communist societies need six months to adopt a democratic Constitution and six years for the setting up of democratic institutions (a state governed by law, political pluralism, parliamentary traditions and an adequate type of democracy), while the creation of a free democratic society required sixty years.

This type of post-Communist society requires more than six months to draw up a Constitution. Michael Wlazer, a professor of political sciences at Princeton University concludes pessimistically in an article on new tribalism that it is perhaps not possible to treat these nations (in Eastern Europe) justly. Good fences allow good relations between neighbors only if there is a minimum of agreement on where they should be placed. He is even more pessimistic when he says that there does not seem to be a humane and decent way of separating the tribes.

Trkulja says bitterly in his book that Yugoslavia is "now relevant only as the subject of unrelenting criticism and destruction by all means.'' In the introduction of the article "The Agony and Disintegration of Yugoslavia,'' he cites Nobel Literature Award recipient Ivo Andric: "One sometimes wonders if the spirit of the majority of the people in the Balkans isn't poisoned for all times, and that they will never be able to do other than endure violence and commit it."

There is talk once more of some new Yugoslav option...

In his book Trkulja says that the most optimal solution is the creation of a "fourth Yugoslavia," a flexible association of states and regions, and adds that there won't be any conditions for its creation in the near future: "Under present conditions and chauvinistic clashes, which, for the third time in the 20th. century have pushed the Yugoslav nations into a fratricidal war, there are no prerequisite conditions for the setting up of a civilized political system and stable democratic state. At present, and in the near future, there are no real social legal subjects or roads at domestic and international levels, for its creation. At the end of the 20th. century, just like at the end of the 19th. century, Yugoslavia exists only in the minds of visionaries, and not in reality.'' Milan Milosevic and Dragoslav Grujic

The national structure (in percentages), in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1981 and in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991

SFRY1981 FRY1991

Serbs 36.3 62.3 Croats 19.7 1.1 Muslims 8.9 3.2 Slovenes 7.8 0.1 Albanians 7.7 16.6 Yugoslavs 5.4 3.3 Macedonians 5.9 0.5 Montenegrins 2.5 5.0 Hungarians 1.9 3.3