Who is the Aggressor?

Nine years after Milosevic's historic speech at Gazimestan, Serbia still  doesn't have the strength to face the essence of the Kosovo problem. In order to conceal the essence of the Kosovo problem in a veil of darkness,  the regime has invented a kind of "trivial pursuit" to impede any sort of  intelligent debate on the subject. The regime and the opposition, as well as the media they control, play the game eagerly, as the only rule is the proper use of the word "terrorism".  Those who want to chip in must say whether the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) is a terrorist organization or  not, and the stakes rise once somebody is prepared to deplore "ethnic Albanian terrorism" and show pathetic and fake grief over "the innocent victims of repression". Some players even tried to qualify every dead ethnic Albanian as a terrorist, even if it was a pregnant woman or a child.

Terrorism has not yet been legally defined. When somebody is accused of terrorism, it is usually a person who is being held responsible for starting an armed uprising, murder, kidnapping and things like that. Croatian jails are full of Serbs charged with terrorism. It is therefore a political qualification regarded as obsolete by most of the world's leading media. When they have to use it, they do so with inverted commas. The reason is that someone you called a terrorist might become a head of state in the near future. Take Yasser Arafat and the PLO for example, or the founders of Israel who planted bombs in hotels to get rid of the British administration in Palestine. The British media were banned from broadcasting the Shinn Fein leader's statements so that they wouldn't be accused of promoting terrorism, but Gerry Adams is now a respectable politician and possibly a Nobel peace prize candidate. Insisting to use the word terrorism for the fighting in Kosovo is an attempt to dissolve the problem to single ingredient, although it has been boiling for years. The game is very convenient for Milosevic, who precipitated the present outcome of the problem, for it channels any serious discussion to unseen lengths and organizations such as the Black Panthers, the Tamil Tigers, The Red Brigades, the Kurds and the Irish, the Algerians and others as far away from us as possible. Over 300 people, whatever we decide to call them, have been killed in Kosovo in the first six months of the year. There is no doubt whatsoever that killing a mailman, a cashier or a clerk is an act of terrorism. The trouble is that people in Serbia believed that the UCK would tremble with fear and disperse at the mere sound of the word terrorism, or at least that the whole problem would be resolved by means frequently applied by our “legitimate state”. That usually means brutal police action , and it was police brutality and repression that led to a rise in the UCK's popularity and its transformation to a serious armed force.  The Serbs were also mistaken in their belief that labeling ethnic Albanian as terrorists would win them support unreserved from the great powers, as all of them have problems with their own “terrorists”. The opportunity to  win worldwide sympathy was blown when Robert Gelbard's condemnation of terrorism gave a green light for the Drenica massacre.

But all this is nothing new on Serbia's political scene. These games have been played since the beginning of the war in the former Yugoslavia, where - according to various patriotic-oriented media - “ustasha fighters”  and “jihad warriors” fought “Serb chetnik hordes”. Meanwhile, the “ressurrected Nazi-puppet state” and the “so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” restored diplomatic ties and those who refused to drink from green bottles and wear checkered shirts are now the champions of peace and good neighborly relations. A game called “Name the aggressor “ was popular in Croatia for a very long time. It was played at every major international convention, including OSCE conferences. The object was to deplore “the aggression of the so-called Yugoslav National Army (former JNA) against the sovereign and democratic Croatian state. In spite of all the efforts, Croatia never managed to acquire the status of an innocent victim, while Yugoslavia never won the succession battle by using the term “previous” instead of “former”. During all these turbulent years of the former Yugoslavia's disintegration and the energizing of new  countries, the weekly Vreme never took part in these game and never will. We will always call sides to the conflict the way they call themselves. Regular police will therefore remain what it is while the Kosovo Liberation Army will be called the UCK or the KLA, whatever one prefers. Of course, each individual deed and misdeed will be qualified as such, for crime can't be justified by any sort of national interest.