A Little Fear, A Little Hope

If you are having any doubts over whether to support Slobodan Milosevic, at least within your family circle, give a thought to all the injustices of the peace plan proposed by the Contact Group for Bosnia.

Even though he personally is not complaining, the first and biggest injustice has been done to Milosevic himself. If the plan passes, Milosevic's chances of going down in history as the man who set the Third World War into motion will be nil. Public opinion could be changed to such a degree that there will be serious attempts at proving that his merit in the disintegration of Socialist Yugoslavia and all the wars so far, isn't as great as was thought; and that some other people took part in it all, while he tried to prevent the whole thing. Some will remember that the idea of a Greater Serbia wasn't his at all, but that it is a very old idea, and that some intellectuals from the Academy of Arts and Sciences told him about it. AntiSerb conspirators will burden him with special merits for peace which will annul half of his old credits, take him off the front pages and perhaps push him into oblivion... I don't know if he could survive so much selfabnegation and humiliation.

Think then, of the injustice inflicted by the peace plan on the citizens of Serbia and Montenegro who haven't managed to understand why they will no longer have to live under sanctions, while they know very well that they haven't changed at all. They had just mastered the laws of a market economy, got to know neighboring countries and established special relations with customs officers, and then suddenly someone decides to destroy it all with the flourish of a pen.

The way things have started, we might even get tourists coming back, the ones we couldn't get rid of until we started shooting around. And this plan says no more shooting, and that we have to be nice to everybody. How does the Contact Group imagine that this inhuman regime will be implemented in Bosnia? And they demand that Karadzic give back everything that isn't his!

In the good old days at the beginning of the war, Serbs on both sides of the Drina River, i.e. Milosevic and Karadzic, Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leader Vojislav Seselj and Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, former Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and Bosnian Serb Vice President Biljana Plavsic, the church and the choir of liars and war mongers held hands and swore eternal loyalty to Greater Serbia. As the goal came closer, the chain slackened. Not so much because of the sanctions which don't affect Milosevic personally, nor because of the percentage of territory, nor the shelling of Sarajevo, nor the looting or the crimes. The fact is that Milosevic realized that the expansion of Serbia would open up a deep power crisis. Karadzic is offering to recognize him as the head of a joint state, but in matters of power, Milosevic can't be shortchanged. He has already seen that the Bosnian Serbs like to do things their way. All they want from him is aid, they don't need advice. Apart from this, he hasn't failed to notice that Karadzic feels much better, is more relaxed, in the company of Seselj, Prince Tomislav Karadjordjevic or one of those necrophilic priests. That is why Milosevic grabbed the chance of bowing down to international pressure. What he probably likes best about this peace plan is the bit which says: ``An entity does not have the right to secede from the Union.'' He wouldn't accept Karadzic's entity even if the Muslims and the Croats agreed that they didn't need it either.

The project of Serb unification required a war with the Croats and the Muslims, but it has turned out that this has been only half the job, and that the whole thing cannot be brought to an end without a war between Serbs on both sides of the Drina, which would entail a civil war in Serbia. This is no longer just Milosevic's personal problem, or that of his party, as has been realized by Vuk Draskovic and the Civic Alliance.

Even if a unification did not threaten to drag Serbia into war, and there was no danger that Karadzic and Mladic might liberate and purge Belgrade, Serbia must not agree to territorial gains from a war whose consequences it will have to live with for the next one hundred years. Everything to do with the quality of life in this ``land of peasants'' would be sacrificed because of this additional territory. And Serbia has remained a land of peasants precisely because quality was always sacrificed so readily.

If Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's peace plan is just a good alibi for breaking off with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, if power is the most important thing to him, this time, this motive is leading him in the right direction. I believe that he is no longer far from the idea of allowing international observers on the Drina River, as soon as he gets a good price and after all that nuisance in the Assembly is over.

Finally, a SerbSerbian clash is highly unlikely because Karadzic is more interested in having his own independent state than in unification. If this were not the case he wouldn't have risked a clash with Milosevic over maps and percentages. If he had wished to make a present of his territory to Serbia, he would have asked Milosevic how much he wanted and then complied. Karadzic might consider unification only if someone in Belgrade offers him Serbia.

When the big players are considered, the logic and dynamics behind this Serbian hotchpotch don't seem all that incomprehensible. It is obvious what Milosevic and Karadzic and Seselj want. It is also obvious that Vuk Draskovic, aware of the gravity of the choice, is more inclined to allow Milosevic to get rid of Karadzic. What I find more difficult to understand is Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) leader Vojislav Kostunica's and Democratic Party (DS) leader Zoran Djindjic's stand, regardless of what motives I might attribute to them. In this important clash both seem to be playing the role of a washed and polite Seselj, which will not bring them any kudos even in the event that Seselj and Karadzic manage to topple Milosevic, because they don't need anybody who is squeaky clean. And if Milosevic succeeds, then what are they going to say to their voters on this side of the Drina River? That they wanted to drag them into war and leave them choking under sanctions? Who do they in fact wish to represent? Cleanliness in itself is not enough for a political platform.

It should be clear that there is no good, dignified and proud way out of all this. Those in the Serbian Assembly know this, but will not admit to it. I don't see why they shouldn't see to it that we get out of everything as cheaply as possible. To all intents and purposes this peace plan is the best that Serbs on both sides of the Drina River can expect to get, but there is a belief that they shouldn't be told this, and that it is still not easy to explain to them that this is not the international community's dirtiest trick.

But in Serbia, and in Montenegro even more so, an increasing number of people are trying to mind their own business and it looks like they are prepared to get out, each man for himself, regardless of the national formations. If one were to judge by Assembly debates, the parties, politicians and leaders are lagging behind the membership which they should be leading. And perhaps there are many in Bosnia who believe that an entity, whatever that might mean, is better than what they have now. Of course at the referendum they will all vote as Karadzic says.