Only Malice Remains

The Pope will not visit Sarajevo. The project has been abandoned because of Principles, of which there seem to have been many. I wonder what a soldier stationed somewhere above Sarajevo would have made of Bosnian Serb Commander General Ratko Mladic's order: "Don't shoot tomorrow. The Pope is coming and we're indebted to him!" Or, on the Muslim side: "See that something doesn't happen to the Pope; the Serbs could take the rap for it!" The Pope's security would depend primarily on the Bosnian soldiers' sense of humor. The Vatican has decided that it can't rely on this for the time being.

The peoples' desire to see Slobodan Milosevic was satisfied only for those living in the South. It strikes me that the most important thing that Milosevic said on Wednesday in Vranje was of the need to mark the date of liberation "from fascist occupiers and their domestic supporters". In the last few years these dates have been hesitantly mentioned, the names of many streets and cities have been changed, and it looked as if the "Partisans" were definitely withdrawing before the "Chetniks".

Milosevic has realized that this tendency has peaked and is now dropping off. Perhaps he has been encouraged by the Communists recapturing power in Poland and Hungary and thinks that the same could happen in Serbia, which has an advantage in that it doesn't have to change its regime or the people. Former Communists behaved like fascists for a while but are now anti-fascists once again. If he has to choose between a continuity of power and a continuity of policy, Milosevic will always choose the first. That is why he has been described as a great tactician and a lousy strategist. And in his case, in these murky times, the two just don't go together. The tactics of remaining in power must devour all political strategy.

In the latest episode we are watching, the place of the fascists and their domestic supporters will be taken by Karadzic and the domestic unificationists (Great Serbs). Milosevic is offering an ideological confrontation and I believe that those in the opposition who try to enter this particular fray will end up holding the shitty end of the stick. Milosevic believes that the time has come for "renewal and construction", he speaks of a reintegration into the world community, which is once again announcing an easing of sanctions, and if anyone wishes to continue with the war and unification, they will do so to their detriment. Those who stick to Milosevic and who spent years proving that they weren't Communists won't find it difficult to change their minds and say they were just joking. As if what a man was in the past was ever important here.

I think that my effort at saying some words of comfort should be taken into account, because we have only been left with malice and the hope that everything is going downhill anyway. If the world were any good, if it weren't bogged down in cynicism, if it had been capable of recognizing evil, we wouldn't have been able to commit all of those horrors.

Anyone could have done what we did. Unfortunately, we are alone for the time being. The world is banal, indifferent, powerless, petty, selfish, but to all purposes it is not malicious. Sometimes this difference strikes me as enormous; sometimes as negligible. People leave this country and they return. My friend, film director Lazar Stojanovic, is leaving. So far he would leave for two weeks and return after two years. This time he has promised not to come back.