Dead Yugoslavia's Revenge

The Serbian drama is reaching its culmination these days. The main protagonists have shown that they have nerves of steel, and have managed to hold out until the very end, but they still don't know if the final scene will resemble a great victory or a shameful defeat. Just as if a football player were to close his eyes while shooting the decisive goal of the game.

Milosevic, Karadzic, Cosic and all the others have had their say, and many times at that. The Serbs want to live in one state which they have won, fenced and cleansed. The world community watched this unlawful structure incredulously, discouraging the builders with various papers, regulations, bans, and threats, but they never gave up. Sanctions didn't deter them, nor did losing one's membership in various organizations. The construction continued in spite of various guarantees that it would never be legalized, that it was untenable and that it was bound to fall apart of its own accord. Now when the end is close, the world is telling the Serbian builders to demolish this monstrosity by themselves and return everything they have taken to their rightful owners, in order to be accepted among men again. Slobodan Milosevic, whose will and stubbornness are the foundation on which all this lies, says he won't, or rather that he can't, even if he wanted to. He would disappoint the disillusioned, hurt the unfortunate and deceive those who no longer believe in anything. It now remains to be seen what the keepers of the world order are prepared to do.

The last links are being severed, the holes are being bunged up, the ships are coming closer and the planes are starting to take off. For the time being all this is being done in the pitiful hope that Milosevic will give up and abandon his creation, which, he believes, will bring him lasting fame and lifelong power. Because it no longer serves just to keep him in power. He could now easily fall or consolidate himself irrevocably and forever, rather than just continue to keep afloat. The fate of the state of all Serbs has become synonymous with his personal fate, and that is why he is so fanatically stubborn and contemptuous of losers and victims.

This ruler does not have any serious rivals in the country, counting here those countries he aspires to. His only partner is the international community whose weaknesses he has studied carefully and is now using. Since the world has homogenized in its condemnation of Milosevic, he has passed this condemnation on to the Serbian people, and is asking "are you Serbs really as bad and as guilty as the world holds you to be?" He easily won this game against the people. Then he made a great effort at starting quarrels between other countries. It was discovered in Belgrade that Germany was out to get France, or that America wished to break up Europe via Yugoslavia; that Islam was spreading; that the Catholic conspiracy was spreading, and that all this was aimed against Russia. Depending on the occasion, various Serbian friends and enemies were invented and turned against each other, and not all in vain either. The Serbian issue became a Russian problem, and the European Community does not look as harmonious as it used to before the war in Bosnia.

When sanctions were introduced, the game was played for humanism and the pity of the West's public opinion. It was said that sanctions were affecting the people and not the authorities; the innocent and not the guilty. The guilty were the ones to say this. They appealed to the world to take care of their people, because, as far as they were concerned, the people could rot. Sanctions are now an explanation for everything: for crime, inflation, robbed savers. Very soon people will start divorcing or beating their children because of sanctions.

In search of friends Milosevic did not have much luck with Israel, i.e. with world Jewry, whose understanding he once sought. The fact that Jews have an even worse view of Tudjman did not improve his image in their eyes. Only Greece and Russia showed some understanding, each for its own reasons. But both joined the international sanctions and could only ask Serbia not to take it personally. Russia remained his main hope, and Milosevic can count on it most, as long as the power-sharing lasts. He is only another card in the game there, and if Yeltsin wins, he could take his revenge for Milosevic's blackmailing and undermining. If the opposition wins, they will not have the power nor the will to go to war for Milosevic, since they will have enough of it at home. And in that case, the West will no longer need to consider the delicate situation in Moscow.

While the world first tried to understand what was taking place, and reach an agreement on who was responsible for the Balkan sector, and then slowly link and close ranks, the army in Bosnia was creating a new reality with a speed that diplomacy has never managed to follow. All reactions and solutions were outdated before even being adopted. That is how it has come about that Milosevic, Karadzic and the Serbian Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina Assembly are pointing out to the great gap between Vance-Owen's plan and the situation in the field. The world is invited to come and see that where there is a Moslem majority on their map, there are in fact, no Moslems and no mosques, and that these places are not called the way the world thinks. Purely Orthodox law and order rule there.

Milosevic is appealing to the world to forget its norms and regulations, to face reality, and to mind its own business a little, and for this he praised Bill Clinton in advance. Finally, he has one more argument which does not need a great deal of explaining in the West, and that is expenses. International principles are all very nice, but their maintaining is very expensive, and that has always been the biggest chance of hard-working persons and innovators of Milosevic's type.

The world's policemen are on the draw. They have a choice: they will destroy Milosevic's structure, but without much hope that what has been destroyed can be put right again, or they will continue to torture Serbia in order that it might give up in the end, of its own accord. The only way the world can get at Karadzic and Mladic is with arms, while Serbia can be arrested and kept under lock and key, until somebody gets tired of the whole thing. Judging by all, the world is prepared for the second option. I believe that Milosevic will still urge Karadzic to sign various papers, but it will also be proved that they whole matter is unfeasible, and that the people disagree, which really means that he will never give up.

This is why isolation is our future. Is this a victory or a defeat? Serbs outside Serbia could declare a triumph, but only if they could refrain from celebrating wildly in order not to hit a foreign plane accidently. Serbia, however, would revert to the time of Tsar Dusan, which was the final goal. The Serbs would expand as a nation, but lose out as people. They would exchange borders for dugouts. I do not know who would celebrate such a victory except for Milosevic himself, who would then become Tsar Dusan. It is difficult to find someone in the world today who rules so absolutely and without any control, just as it is difficult to find a country as afflicted as Serbia. There seems to be a link between these two things, but if the people do not think so, then forget what I have said. The people must be in the right.

It would seem that Serbia and Serbs outside Serbia cannot win at the same time and in the same way, but they can be defeated in a similar manner. At any rate, a victory in Bosnia cannot be achieved without the collapse of Serbia. That is why it has become impossible in Belgrade to talk of anything else except the brethren across the Drina River.

This cannot end without a brawl. One need only watch Serbs accusing each other of betrayal and of responsibility for one another's mourning. I'm afraid that Milosevic's unlawful structure will inevitably lead Serbs to discover that they can live with everybody else except with Serbs. On one, or the other side, or on both sides at the same time, they will want to demolish all the bridges over the Drina River, forever. This will be dead Yugoslavia's and Bosnia's revenge.