We Will Flee to Banjaluka!

On the eve of the new Contact Group meeting (April 29, in Rome), even those in the socialist movement, who out of habit call Slobodan Milosevic “daddy” and usually state that “only ‘daddy’ knows what will happen, shrug their shoulders and say, “not even ‘daddy’ knows whether or not there will be sanctions.”  “Mommy” (Mira Markovic) is in China where she went not only to promote a book, but also to obtain reassurance that our Chinese allies won’t “give in”.  The Russians earlier promised that they will do everything they can even though they have already begun to state, as those in the West,  that the solution to the Kosovo crisis must be reached on the level of Yugoslavia, not Serbia. With regard to sanctions, the first bad hints have begun to arrive.

Ostensibly accidental, these days Hungarian soccer players, who were a few months ago in the play offs for the World championship creamed by our players with scores of 7 to 1 and 5 to 0, have allegedly began some sort of preparations for the next cycle of the European competition.  French and Italian newspapers speculate  that someone gave the Hungarians a secret wink to covertly prepare to exchange the Yugoslavs (as competition).  The cultural elite began thinking about sanctions to such a degree that these days some members of the World Festival announced that soon they would have to prepare a strategy to ensure films for Fest ’99 with the help of personal friends.  Contrary to the possible sanctions.

Because it looks as if “daddy” doesn’t know exactly what to prepare for, JAT airplanes will in every case be in the hangars at the Belgrade airport a few days before April 29.  For several days now, those rare trucks that carried goods from here to the rest of the world rarely go toward the borders.  Trucks loaded with groceries, meats, and artificial fertilizer no longer go near the Drina or Republica Srpska.  In Banjaluka, they say a little angrily that Milosevic himself dropped the barrier on Friday, April 17.  And that only half an hour after Biljana Plavsic, Milorad Dodik, and Momcilo Krajisnik left the Beli Dvor where they spoke with the president of FRY about future collaboration.  In Banjaluka, otherwise, they understand that they will have to keep food and fertilizer for eventual “black days” if sanctions are once again imposed, but they don’t understand why goods they neatly paid for won’t arrive.  Otherwise, whatever Slobodan Milosevic (sometimes “daddy” to all Serbs, not just his socialists) spoke about to Bosnian Serb leaders on Good Friday is for now only a guess.  One newspapers states that the president of the FRY demanded from the RS leaders more solidarity concerning Kosovo and that he especially called upon politicians from the RS to refrain from enforcing the blockade of the Drina should international sanctions be introduced.

Promises: Evidently, in RS they are intensively thinking (without Milosevic’s warnings) about what will happen if FRY once again receives sanctions.  For example, some economists from across the Drina state that in every case it could very easily come to a massive transfer of capital from Serbia, in the direction of Banjaluka where many companies from Serbia would quickly open their offices.  Additionally, some economists state that sanctions would most likely launch hyperinflation in FRY once again. From which RS can efficiently defend itself simply by introductions its own currency.  Hence. The printing of  convertible Bosnian marks will soon take place somewhere in France.
RS president Biljana Plavsic has openly pondered sanctions.  After last week’s meeting in Banjaluka with the Noreweigan Foreign Minister Jane Haland Matlari, RS’s president warned that there exists a threat of a new “wave of refugees” should the international community impose sanctions upon FRY.  According to Plavsic, many of the 550,000 refugees from Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia who currently live in FRY might return because of difficult living conditions.  Especially in RS, which is still highly unprepared to accept such a wave, with regard to the thousands of local refugees who still aren’t taken care of and living in various miserable refugee enters.

As write the newspapers, Plavsic and Dodik promised Milosevic in Belgrade that they will, “delay the blockade of the Drina as much as possible should sanctions be imposed” but at the same time warned the president of FRY that “he alone must be conscious of the current moment.”  Before this meeting, while still guessing as to why Milosevic wants to destroy Dodik’s government, one of the alleged sins of RS’s prime minister’s was his announcement (promise) to the international community, “that he will respect the sanctions and impose a blockade of the Drina,” if the world asks for it.  All these announcements and guesses concerning sanctions, especially those that reflect on the eventual behavior of RS in this situation, only prove the old theory that history continuously repeats itself—one moment as comedy, the next as tragedy.  Most often as tragedy.  Those upon whom “daddy” imposed a blockade of the Drina in the spring of 1994 became observers on the border crossings now consider how to hesitate from respecting those sanctions and to counter the blockade toward their brothers across the Drina should sanctions be imposed against FRY. But, they also call upon the president of FRY to be conscious of the actual moment.  Those (Serbian Radicals) who in 1994 claimed that because of the blockade on the Drina, “Milosevic and his wife will end up like the Ceaucescus” today are his coalition partners.  Milosevic, who a few months earlier explained to Dodik not to accept SDS and the Radicals in the government, is now trying to put them in because in the meantime he himself made a new alliance with Seselj.  Those who in their own time attacked the government on the steps of the federal parliament in order to destroy it (for example Milan Komnenic of SPO) now travel through Europe as couriers of that same government and in the name of the Parliament’s president share letters in which they explain what is in fact going on here.   Some SPO members, like Milan Bozic, who once spoke that this government is stupid, now write columns with the headline, “Slobo, master?”  Finally, only the “master” in the summer of 1994 in regard to the referendum announced Pale’s then leadership (with Karadzic and Biljana Plavsic) said, “They announced a referendum that would hide their responsibility behind the backs of the citizens and the nation who bleed daily. They informed the people as much as they wanted to about the true state of affairs.  They announced the referendum so that the people would accept responsibility for a state policy, about which citizens weren’t consulted about.”  Today, Milosevic, who never asked the people about anything, now summons them to a similar referendum in order to obtain validation for his Kosovo policy.
Coverage of this tragic and comical repetition has become muddled and doesn’t concern those that in this last year, in a political sense, traveled the corridors between Belgrade and Banjaluka, or Belgrade and Pale.  Such that, for example, those who survived Tudjman’s democracy in Croatia and “daddy’s” help and who still live there today can jump over to Italy on their identification card, but for them a visit to their relatives in FRY is impossible without a visa and that doesn’t come easy.  The majority of citizens of this country, consider that new sanctions against FRY (with or without Montenegro) would be equal to a crime, still only one of the unbelievable stupidities that the international community committed trying, allegedly, to impose some kind of order to the region.  Additionally, they consider, if in place of Mijatovic and his players the Hungarians go  to the World Championships in France,  that a black and red coalition will rule this country for years.  Together with universal poverty, xenophobia, primitivism, taking place on the Balkan list of most corrupt states with whom, of course, obligatorily goes the slogan “Serbia won’t bend.”

But, if sanctions are imposed, and if once again we have to go somewhere to buy children hot dogs, diapers, or pieces of chocolate, perhaps it will be better in the future to do it in Bijeljina or Banjaluka rather that in Segendin.   The choice is, indeed, something smaller, but probably the Bosnian mark will be something “less convertible” than the German one who was the only one of worth a few years ago in Hungary.  Dodik’s custom’s agents might be able to be a little less compliant than Hungarian ones.  In Banjaluka, there would be a place to stay.  This journalist doesn’t have family there, but there is that old friend Perica Vucinica.  The man is in origin from this side of the Drina and is one of the best local newspaper reporters.  In September 1995, after the fall of Knin, then when it looked every minute as if Banjaluka would fall, when this city resembled Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, he composed one of the most touching reports for Vreme.   Two years later, professional curiosity once gain took him to Banjaluka where today guestworkers edit a good newspaper.  Many at Vreme today say that he is the most clairvoyant member of the news office and that he always had a true “reporter’s nose,” and that he was the only one who understood in time what Serb-Serbian ties would look like.