Neither Here Nor There

"We want to say that we exist, that we are in danger and that violence against us should be stopped immediately," said Miodrag Miletic from Lipljan, a member of the Bozur association which organized the gathering. Bozur president Bogdan Kecman spoke of "gangs which intimidate the Serbian population and force them to move out", while the crowd shouted Arrest the Terrorists and Let’s Go to Drenica. Finally, they announced new rallies across Kosovo and said they would use "other means" if need be.

A happening of the people? Not really. First, the turnout was very small, just a few hundred people instead of the thousands that were expected. the gathering was supposed to start at five minutes to noon but the PA system was brought in after 3:00 that afternoon when over half the people went home.

Even more embarrassing was the fact that members of Bozur boarded buses after the rally to go to Podgorica and lend support to Momir Bulatovic’s rally. They were stopped by Montenegrin police near Rozaje who told them to return to Kosovo because their bus was technically faulty. "They took our ID cards and one of them in plain clothes said angrily: "I know who and what you all are", one of the people on the bus said later.

The latest in a series of unsuccessful attempts by the Kosovo Serbs to draw the attention of both the public and state to their plight would not really merit attention if it weren’t for a certain symbolic value. The Kosovo Polje elementary school is the place where Slobodan Milosevic started his rise to political power over 10 years ago. What ensued, the abolishment of autonomy for Serbia’s southern province, the establishment of a Serbian local administration under Belgrade’s control and finally the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia brought Milosevic in as a key player in the Balkans but it also drastically raised tensions in Kosovo. Now that relations with Croatia have been normalized and the effects of the war in Bosnia are being overcome, the ball is back in Kosovo. This time there’s no one to pass it to.

That is illustrated by the controversies following Bozur, an organization which was once the core of the "anti-bureaucracy revolution".

Kecman’s current attempt to restore a happening of the people is seen as Milosevic’s cynical game with the aim of preventing the Kosovo Serbs from taking part in decisions on their own future. "Kecman worked for Milosevic from the first moment in breaking up the Serb movement in Kosovo," B 92 Radio was told by Miroslav Solevic, Kecman’s former comrade, in a comment on the resurrection of Bozur. Solevic, who lives in Nis now, is close to the Serbian Resistance Movement headed by Momilo Trajkovic who was once a high-ranking Milosevic official in the province but left the regime in 1992. Trajkovic has worked with Raska-Prizren Bishop Artemije for years, trying to present his organization as the independent voice of the Kosovo Serbs outside Milosevic’s control. The problem is that most of the Serbs left in Kosovo are so dependent on the regime that Trajkovic’s efforts were doomed to fail from the start. At last year’s parliamentary elections it failed to win even a single seat.

Solevic and Trajkovic are saying that Kecman is resurrecting Bozur to sow discord among the Kosovo Serbs and steal away the political initiative. For his part Kecman says: "We aren’t hiding anything. Bozur has President Milosevic’s support". He said Milosevic voiced that support in talks with a 10 member Bozur delegation on January 12. The problem is that the state media didn’t confirm that the meeting took place at all but Vecernje Novosti said Milosevic was busy that day with Biljana Plavsic and Momcilo Krajisnik and couldn’t find time to see the Bozur delegation. Instead he left them to Milomir Minic.

Perhaps the most objective interpretation of the upsets on the Kosovo Serb political scene came from Jorgovanka Trajkovic who said this is the start of a purge in the SPS in Kosovo. She said the main goal of Kecman’s movement is to remove Vojislav Zivkovic and Miodrag Samardzic, the head and deputy head of the Kosovo Socialists. "Also the regime fears that the dissatisfaction among the Kosovo Serbs could take an undesirable course and are using Bozur to channel it and control it." That theory makes sense, especially in the light of the corruption scandal that broke out just before the new year.

I have a sad impression that the fate of the Kosovo Serbs is being manipulated in a similar way to 1987 but with the stakes now being dramatically lower.

In Belgrade, there are increasingly frequent initiatives on dividing up and regionalizing Kosovo which would allegedly provide a quick and easy solution. One of the things all those initiatives have in common is that Serbia will hang onto all parts of Kosovo that are home to natural resources or monuments of history and culture; another is the belief that the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo would take whatever is on offer.

Those initiatives are just a small step forward in Serbian public opinion which believed until recently that the ethnic Albanians should get nothing and they have little chance of success. The extent to which the Serbian political elite has lost its grip on reality in regard to Kosovo was expressed recently by Aleksa Djilas, a man with an indisputable intellectual pedigree. He believes that certain parts of Kosovo should get autonomy with Serb cultural and historical monuments getting exterritorial status like embassies. Where that can’t be achieved, modern technology provides the answer: things can be moved, Djilas said.

In the meantime, the only man who can decide to start resolving the Kosovo problem is keeping quiet and refusing to publicly admit there is a problem. However, the recent agreement by the FRY authorities to allow US special envoy Robert Gelbard to visit Pristina is a step forward compared to the previous stand that the international community has nothing to do with Kosovo. Is this part of preparations for future serious negotiations under US auspices?