Recognition and Destruction

A drunken scenarioist lost the flow of thoughts, mixed up the sequence of events and forgot about the features of the characters and their mutual relations. This would be a logical description of what has been happening here over the past two weeks.

First, Karadzic came to Belgrade and handed to Milosevic the sovereignty over his improvised state when NATO planes were already heading for it. General Mladic had already become an outlaw and dangerously independent, so Karadzic had nothing big to hand over. As Mladic was pronounced loyal to Belgrade, the exchange seemed as if the general had brought the Pale civilians and Milosevic the Patriarch.

A week later, an agreement was reached in Geneva and the Americans and all the others agreed to take quotation marks off the Bosnian Serb Republic. Just as Karadzic had given up, his long-lasting dream came true. If he had known what he would get, he would not have given his state to Milosevic. Or is it the other way around: if he had not given it, it would not have been recognized? Namely, the republic without the quotes was given to the one who needed it least and who was willing to exchange 20 percent of the territory for the lifting of the quotation marks. The paradox is that the international recognition of the Bosnian Serb Republic entitled it not to more sovereignty, but to less than it had while it was in the quotation marks.

This is not the end of bizarre plots and exchanges of one fiction for another with the wish to achieve something real. So, the internationally-recognized and actually-torn Bosnia agreed to recognize the Bosnian Serb Republic which agreed to be part of Bosnia. Devil only knows what will come out of all this in the end. It looked as though the Sarajevo government was taking a greater risk because it recognized something that had already existed and was more real than Bosnia itself. Now, it is for the Serbs to hope that Bosnia will not be renewed, despite their recognition. The Bosnian Serb Republic was recognized so that it would plunge into Bosnia and then, perhaps, come to the surface again, reduced to a more reasonable size of 49 percent.

This was the situation a week ago when Milosevic received endless gratitude and congratulations for his ingenuity. When the Geneva agreement was being reached, many well-informed observers maintained that Bosnia was more divided than complete and that the Serbs gained the most. This was true on paper, and this was the first time that the Serbs won something at the negotiating table where they had always been beaten. On the field, however, everything had changed and hardly anyone took into account the new direction and speed of events. The ratio of forces was fixed only for a moment in Geneva and was altered shortly after that.

The NATO intervention resumed and became stronger. Gen. Mladic, who had been expected to halt the belligerent Karadzic, suddenly seemed to have become involved in a private war with NATO. It is unknown whether it was his self-willed decision to suffer or he was letting his army be crushed for the benefit of someone else. At any rate, he did not make a large enough, symbolic and real gesture of yielding which would halt the intervention.

Mladic did get into the position of serious extortion but the Serbian side had hardly any objections to what he did. The Serbs have become such fatalists that they believe nothing depends on what they do. They are madly convinced that mankind had long ago decided to destroy them forever as a hopelessly harmful subgroup and a stupid error of ethnic evolution. And when you know that your fate is predetermined in such a way, you free yourself of all considerations, do what you like, destroy and set on fire everything around you, to get at least some vengeance in advance. And when the punishment finally reaches you, you may be convinced that this is the fate which would have reached you anyway.

As soon as it was internationally recognized, the Bosnian Serb Republic started crumbling and breaking to pieces the way Bosnia did after it had been internationally recognized. As if a rule had been established there according to which legality and reality are always out of step and you cannot have both, which is a result of the logic of force. The NATO intervention, apart from punishing the Serbs, was meant to help establish the ratio of forces, which would promise the implementation of the peace solution, i.e. have the Serbs withdraw to the designated area.

The problem is that it is practically impossible to prescribe the correct dose for such an action, to have enough but not too much of it. One did not need to be Nostradamus to guess that Croats and Muslims would try to take the advantage and attack lines of Serb refugees. While Gen. Mladic was quarrelling about Sarajevo, his positions were being destroyed and central Bosnian towns were falling.

This is beginning to look like a terrible avalanche that can not be halted. Who will then give the Serbs the promised 49 percent; who will have the understanding for their additional cries for justice if they lose on the field more than they had gained and they gather on the strip by the Drina? During the long four years they had been building a dreadful image of themselves; Karadzic and Mladic had become personifications of brutal murderers, terrorists and arsonists, and the whole world watched the pictures of war crimes and listened to their cynical justifications. It takes much longer than a single day to change that image and before the world becomes aware that it should feel sorry for the Serbs, Croats and Muslims might do a lot of dirty business.

The last thing Serbs needed at this moment was a visit by the Russian Duma delegation and a pile of empty promises and brotherly encouragement intended for the Russian internal scene. The Serbs' reliance on Russia and the attempts to have it clash with the West about the Balkans have resulted in nothing but the West's strengthened support of Croatia. In relation to the Serbs, the role of Russian nationalists may only be such as was the role of Belgrade nationalists - Milosevic's and Seselj's - in relation to the Serbs in Krajina. So much about Moscow's defence of Belgrade or Banjaluka.

The size of Bosnian Serbs' defeat now depends largely on America, not only because it is capable of stopping NATO, but because it is perhaps also capable of controlling Croatian and Muslim ambitions and appetites. There is hope that America, in the interest of permanent stabilization in the Balkans, does not want to allow the Serbs' complete breakdown which would bring masses of new refugees to Serbia and lead to unrest and chaos in the center and perhaps a series of clashes on the borders. The question is whether any force can slow down the demoralization and deterioration of Karadzic's state and halt the unpredictable chain reaction. There is no hope, however, that the people here will ever completely sober up, learn to understand and accept the reasons for the defeat and find a vaccine against any future madness. Not many people here are ready to tell the real, self-accusing story and there is little hope that such a story may become official history. But whatever the official history may be, it must be better and healthier than the one which would be written about the Serbian victory in a war such as this one fought by Karadzic and Mladic in Bosnia. This is the only comforting thought this week.