Dead Season

Judging by people’s conduct, by what they are doing, what they are talking about and what is worrying them, absolutely nothing is happening in Serbia. Apart from the fact that guns are being fired and people are being killed in Kosovo, that villages are burning and thousands of people are running in all directions. However, that seems to be the most tedious thing of all, at least when viewed from Belgrade. Those who would like to say another thing on that subject here would risk to be shunned by their friends as incredible bores. Villages are burning, so they’re burning. They have been burning for years, so what’s strange, new and worthy of comment in that? Why not let grandma comb her hair in peace? I have a feeling that that proverbial saying has from recently attained another meaning, and now no longer stands merely as reproach of indifference in the face of an amazing tragedy. The feeling of powerlessness to change and turn the deathly flow of events is so deeply ingrained and based on a number of colossal human defeats, that grandma’s combing could be comprehended as a brave and dignified accomplishment of little, everyday business, despite  it’s absurdness. We could even start admiring this grandma who, well, wishes to await the inevitable evil properly turned out.

However, grandma Serbia isn’t even combing her hair, but is rather playing with matches. What I want to say is that I feel, at least in this phase of the  Kosovo war, that the mood in Serbia is very different to the one which was evident while shots were being fired and villages were burning in Croatia and Bosnia. What we had then was huge delight and little opposition. However, there was internal tension, sharp debates, threats and accusations, and there was belief that in any case certain alternatives and outlets exist. Milosevic was far more popular then, yet he looked less invincible than today.

Now everything is so insensible, so devoid of hope, that the Kosovo fire does not cause even indifference but rather a suicidal malicious joy and secret wish for it to grow larger and to spread. I don’t know how I could otherwise understand, for example, how the growing threats of a NATO intervention are listened to with utter tranquillity. Milosevic probably knows why he isn’t taking it seriously. He believes it won’t happen, and even if it does - he expects that he personally won’t suffer any more than his model Sadam Hussein has. NATO surely won’t employ some sort of “double standard”.

However, ordinary citizens are neither panicking, nor feeling desperate, nor closing in around their leader, nor running away, nor digging up trenches, nor stocking up, nor writing letters of protest and proving that they are innocent. As though all is normal, that it couldn’t be any worse than it is. The regime against which, not so long ago and so persistently, nearly the entire citizenship of Serbia had protested, is now showing itself to be more stable than ever. It seems as though we were allowed only for a little while to live under the illusion that change is possible, and when we believed in it more than ever, the curtain went down and all those actors, all Milosevics, Seseljs and Draskovics unitedly appeared on the scene and bowed, embraced and smiling.

It could be that now even in relation to the war in Kosovo, and even with regards to NATO threats, people here retain a certain amount of doubt and are not utterly convinced what is reality and what is illusion. They wouldn’t like to be duped again. Because, what would happen if all the dead were to rise all of a sudden, and NATO planes were to start throwing candy? That miracle wouldn’t be any lesser than the self-annulment of the Serbian Renewal Movement. In any case, Serbia finds itself in a rather peculiar state at the moment when war operations started in Kosovo. A coalition was formed in which the most cynical demagogue of all, the chetnik duke, got an assignment to reestablish the people’s trust in the government, while Milosevic, as the last soldier of the cold war, took it upon himself to deal with the international community. Their coalition is the strongest guarantee that Serbia cannot and will not, for any price, become a normal country, while the citizens had best come to terms with that and accept Seselj as a standard of normality.

When Seselj says that Serbia is in no hurry over Kosovo, that means that he is utterly aware that for this local government any realistic outcome, i.e. any peace and solution, is less favorable than the current state. Because now he can answer any question with the same question. Would you rather have a university or Kosovo? Would you rather have your pensions or Kosovo?

Therefore, we should believe him when he says that he is in no hurry and that this government shall, before it agrees to any kind of solution, try to take all that it still hasn’t taken, destroy all that it still hasn’t destroyed and peacefully await defeat in Kosovo, which shall be proclaimed as a victory. Since, as a reminder, Serbia is now waging a war there without a single hope that Kosovo could retain the status it had prior to the war. In that sense, victory over the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) doesn’t mean much. Belgrade shall certainly make large concessions to the Albanians, even if KLA was totally shattered and destroyed.

Moreover, it seems as though the KLA is already seen as a scapegoat. The international community, which approximately consists of around 60 percent of the US, 30 percent of Europe and 10 percent of Russia, has clearly opted for Rugova, and has allowed Milosevic to fire on the terrain in great comfort, yet they shall hardly consult him at all over the final solution to the status of Kosovo. And the NATO threat serves, judging by all accounts, only to dissuade Milosevic from overly bargaining and holding things up.
However, I do not wish to say that the end of that crisis is already discernible. Milosevic has already demonstrated that he knows how to get NATO on his back, and in combination with Seselj he might prove to be even more successful than usual. On the other hand, Rugova and Demaci, i.e. the KLA, have clashed to such a serious extent - that it is a question whether they will be able to avoid a mutual war. If they don’t manage this, things in Kosovo could become so permanently tangled up and could blow up in the Liban manner, with the participation of all interested neighbors.

Even the best possible development of events, with the official signing of an agreement and a handshake between Milosevic and Rugova in front of the White House, is envisioned with difficulty without a continuation of violence and desperate terrorism. No such agreement exists which would now be able to satisfy all of Kosovo’s desperadoes, nor that government which would be capable of stopping and controlling them. Therefore, Serbia for now remains a war zone in which room for civil business, civic habits and nice behavior still doesn’t exist.
Anyway, even if everything was to stop in Kosovo, we have a government here which will gladly load up it’s guns again. In the Radical or YUL (Yugoslav United Left) way. There’s nothing easier nor better than that. And precisely at the moment when they notice that we have become too big for our boots, that we have started demanding our money or rights or freedom. Yet we shall have to demand those things, whatever the outcome.