Directing Serbian Unity

If you are intending to congratulate yourself on surviving this referendum, wait until you see what follows.  Maybe all this noise and anger is a mere overture.  But, what is at issue is certainly one of the most senseless campaigns upon which the Serbian Government has embarked.  Probably the campaign for settling a hundred thousand Serbs in Kosovo, in the late eighties, looked equally destined for failure.  But at least at that time there was talk of doing something about a real problem.

This time all touch with reality has been lost, and intentionally.  It can’t be said that the solution is being sought in the wrong place, nor that a solution is at all being sought for any problem whatsoever.  I can only claim that at one point Milosevic wished for a scene of Serbian unity to organize itself before him, and from this the idea of a referendum arose, because of which he perhaps already has regrets, but it’s too late now.

All enthusiasm over the referendum is as false as the counter meeting from December 1996.  There is little else besides this false enthusiasm.  Thus the whole thing has turned out poorly even as propaganda, and that appeared to be the only rational intention.  The problem of Kosovo is becoming an ever harsher, more cruel reality on which a Serbian plebiscitized NO cannot possibly have any effect.  Not even the outside world will pay any attention to the will of the people expressed in this way, especially given the nature of our regime.  Finally, even the regime itself, should the need arise, can always decide to pretend that it never asked anything, and that the people never said anything.
This means that the referendum is an episode without any great meaning, which can only worsen the situation slightly, because it can hardly be worse.  Kosovo is sinking into chaotic violence not only without a real war, without real armies and without real lines of conflict, but also without real peace, without real civilians and a background of security.  It is very likely that all discussions on the status of this region could soon become meaningless, regardless of the presence or absence of mediators, while possible negotiators are losing influence on events on the ground even though they have yet to sit down at the negotiating table.

If anyone of those people who are busying themselves these days with the prevention of foreign involvement wanted to think a bit, they could observe the paradox in the problem.  Namely, even foreign intervention itself is a domestic question, that is to say a clear sign that the country in question has a surplus of insurmountable problems.  No one meddles in the affairs of someone who evidently knows what they are doing.  No single country which is normal can possibly come in total confrontation with the rest of the world.  Therefore, the willingness of the world to intervene is a clear sign of derangement.  Unless someone thinks that what is at issue is the envy of the world because there is such freedom and independence in Serbia.

At the same time, there is nothing strange or exceptionally two-sided in the fact that world powers do not intervene everywhere and in the same way.  For instance, America certainly has its own interests beside the ambition to maintain some kind of global order, and it decides more easily to intervene in the defense of human rights and democracy if at the same time its interests are also threatened.  In the same way, America can maintain good relations with countries that do not excel as guardians of democracy, but have an abundance of oil, for instance.  However, all this does not mean that someone is simply capable of inventing Sadam, Quadafi, or Milosevic, and to punish and isolate, in the name of God, one innocent, good country.  Those who complain and clamor here that the world is too busy with our problems and who are always accusing someone else, would do better to try to help establish some kind of order here.  Not because of the rest of the world, but ultimately for reasons that are strictly patriotic.

That is why it seems to me that those who refuse to acknowledge this referendum, this test of patriotism, do so with good reason and out of the same patriotic motives.  Still, it is a pity that despite all that money being spent by the state on a referendum, we will still come out not knowing which patriots are in the majority.  The fact that Vuk Draskovic joined Milosevic’s and Seselj’s interpretation of patriotism is not sufficient reason to convince me that that side is in the majority.  The socialists and the radicals did not manage to gather even half the votes in the last elections, while Draskovic made a sudden turn on the referendum question, which his sympathizers will not be able to follow.  That is why I believe that there is more harm in this for him, than benefit for the ruling coalition.

However, with many additional explanations and marketing ploys used in this referendum, the point that with it citizens will confirm the sovereignty of the Serbian state seems to me especially characteristic.  Has anyone ever heard of a state asking its citizens to express themselves on this point?  It is completely the same as asking: do you agree that your state exists?  And what is worse, the problem here is not whether the question is superfluous.  On the contrary, I think that one of the hidden purposes of the referendum is in asserting the very existence of our state.

Namely, it is not quite so simple to characterize Milosevic’s Serbia.  Is it a state, or is it simply some kind of loose, transitional, temporary conglomeration-- an accidental leftover, a disorderly territory with unstable borders, an area in which a kind of life is being lived, with an uncertain past, and a still less certain future... Some principles are at work here, but they are very haphazard and provisional.  Of course, that place won’t become more of a state regardless of how its citizens vote in the referendum, but those in power are still glad to hear that the majority thinks that they live in a sovereign state, even if that majority is not real.

Therefore, I would be prone to say that the questions of foreign mediation, of negotiation, and even of where Kosovo is and what is to be done with it, are slightly premature, even though they are slowly imposing themselves.  Those who say that Kosovo is in Serbia, might also be asked to say in which Serbia, whether it exists and where is it? And as far as FR Yugoslavia is concerned, it is hardly worth mentioning.  But of course, whatever that is and wherever it might be located, even if it does not exist, the most important thing is for no one to intervene.