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Editorial
May 2001
Milosevic's arrest, tensions in Macedonia
It is no small thing that Slobodan Milosevic-whose wars from 1991 to 1999
caused 200,000 deaths, almost all of them non-Serb civilians, whose
paramilitaries gave the world a horrific new term, "ethnic cleansing," and
whose forces also set up rape camps on a large scale-now sits in a prison
cell. He remains there rather than the luxurious presidential palace where
he had been allowed to remain since October by Serbia's not so different
new leaders.
SERBIA BEGINS FACING MILOSEVIC LEGACY
Milosevic's arrest had a comic opera feel to it, as the butcher of the
Balkans opined that he would never allow himself to be taken alive. That,
however, was while the Yugoslav Army men guarding him were still refusing
to give way to the police, in what may have been a last-ditch effort to
shield him by President Vojislav Kostunica.
What kind of deal was struck prior to his surrender is not known. But its
outlines seem obvious enough: trial for crimes committed inside Serbia
only, before Serbian nationalist courts, many of whose personnel still view
Serbia, not the nations its forces pillaged and raped, as the true victim
of the Balkan Wars.
Kostunica exemplifies such an attitude: "Each week evoking the thousand
Serbs killed during the Western bombings, he in this way forgets the
200,000 deaths from the wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
Kosova....He defends the Yugoslav Army, an institution that is among those
most culpable for the terror and carnage in the Balkans, continuing to
support its commanders from the 1990s" (LE MONDE April 6, 2001).
On the one hand, major war criminals like Ratko Mladic, the commander
during the massacre of 7,000 Bosnians at Srebrenica in 1995, walk around
freely because they are not guilty of crimes inside Serbia. Yet some
Albanian political prisoners still rot in prison while Kostunica "considers
their fate."
Seska Stanojlovic of Serbia's Helsinki Committee on Human Rights notes
acidly: "It is hypocritical to investigate whether Milosevic cheated in his
construction contracts or bank accounts. This man is indicted for 'crimes
against humanity.' We need to say that Serbia is first of all responsible
for crimes against Croats, Bosnians, and Albanians, even if the Serbs also
suffered" (LE MONDE March 16, 2001). While such views are those of a tiny
minority inside Serbia, there is evidence that the majority of Serbs would
now accept Milosevic's extradition to the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.
At an international level, the unfortunate truth is that today as in the
1990s, the U.S. and its NATO allies regard a strong and dominant Serbia as
the key to "stability" in the Balkans. That is why they offered only token
opposition to Milosevic in Bosnia, forcing it to accept the humiliating and
oppressive 1995 Dayton Accords. That is why they didn't even discuss Kosova
at Dayton and intervened there only in 1999 after Milosevic had openly
defied NATO, on the eve of its official expansion into Eastern Europe, by
deporting under the eyes of the world media hundreds of thousands of
Kosovar Albanians whom NATO had vowed to protect. That is why it was not
NATO, but the dogged and heroic resistance of the Bosnians and the Kosovars
that was the most decisive element in defeating Milosevic and in setting
the ground for his overthrow last October. And that is why NATO has
strongly opposed the small-scale rebellion among the Albanian minority in
neighboring Macedonia.
MACEDONIA CHALLENGED FROM BELOW
The case of Macedonia is quite different from that of Serbia, Kosova,
Croatia, or Bosnia. "Ethnic cleansing" was not carried out here in the
1990s, nor was a neo-fascist regime set up. Instead, a bourgeois democracy
has begun to form, one that, like so many others, unfortunately oppresses
an ethnic minority, the Albanian Macedonians.
In March, after a decade of demands for greater civil and human rights,
young Albanians, some of whom had crossed the border to join the fight to
liberate Kosova from Milosevic in 1998-99, staged a brief uprising.
It centered on Tetovo, the country's second largest city, located in a region that ha
s a strong Albanian majority. The insurgents, who called themselves the
National Liberation Army, the acronym of which in Albanian (UCK) is the
same as the Kosova Liberation Army, made demands that were essentially the
same as those of more established Albanian political parties since 1991.
They pointed to the fact that Albanians are vastly underrepresented in the
government and the police, although they are at least 35% of the
population. They noted that the government still refuses to recognize the
University of Tetovo, where courses are given in Albanian, while the two
other universities offer courses only in Macedonian, a Slavic language.
They also pointed to police repression, especially of Albanian youth, and
to the fact that the constitution refers to Macedonians and "others," that
is, Albanians.
There have been hysterical reports in the Western press about Macedonia.
Top Dayton negotiator Richard Holbrooke pontificated that "a fifth Balkan
war has begun in Macedonia" (THE NEW YORK TIMES April 8, 2001). The British
journalist Jonathan Steele ridiculed such attitudes as rooted in
stereotypes exemplified by the "gloomy determination that every Balkan
conflict is about ethnicity... [that] the ethnic genie will always race off
to mass murder" (THE GUARDIAN March 19, 2001).
In fact, with the defeat, overthrow, and arrest of Milosevic, there has
been a move throughout the region away from narrow nationalism, as can be
seen in the latest elections in Bosnia and Croatia. Even in Serbia, serious
questions are being raised about Milosevic and his legacy, despite efforts
by the new leadership to evade them.
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