federalidea.com

by Rajan Philips

Kosovo’s declaration of independence on 17 February provoked a range of worldwide reactions, some recognizing Kosovo, others rebuking it, and a few remaining silent. Although the opposing responses were seen as illustrating the clash of the principles of sovereignty and self-determination, they were not based on any principle but mainly on expediency and/or self-interest. The declaration of independence also brought into question the role of the international community in situations such as Kosovo, and now controversially formulated as the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) approach. In my view, the Kosovo crisis brought into relief two issues. The first relates to the internal failure, namely, the failure of the Serbian State to integrate the Kosovo Muslims as equal partners in the State, and the lessons of this failure for countries like Sri Lanka with similar internal problems. The second matter is the implication of external intervention that in Kosovo began with the military action in 1999 by NATO countries against Serbia and is now formally ending with the declaration of independence by Kosovo under the auspices of the same NATO countries.

[Protesters march on the US Consulate in Toronto on Saturday Feb. 23, 2008: pic courtesy AP/CP Jim Ross-via Yahoo! News]

Lost in all of this is the disintegration of Yugoslavia that for fifty years after the Second World War stood as a beacon of socialism, multi-ethnic federalism and nonalignment to newly independent countries throughout the world. The nation of six republics and an autonomous Province, founded by Marshall Josip Broz Tito, was a source of inspiration to third world political leaders, activists and intellectuals. I recall the beginning of my own fascination with Yugoslavia after reading in my school days a long essay on the fledgling socialist federation by K.P.S. Menon, the erudite Indian diplomat and one of India’s early ambassadors in Belgrade. Quite a few Sri Lankans of my generation went to Belgrade and Zagreb in Yugoslavia for their higher studies. As a young engineer, I worked with many ‘Yugoslavians’ in the first phase of the Mahaweli project comprising the Polgolla dam, the Ukuwella power house and the five mile long tunnel in between. The main contractor on that project was Ingra-Zagreb, a conglomerate of companies from the six Yugoslavian republics operating out of the Croatian capital (Zagreb) on international engineering contracts. There were Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians and Albanians, working on the Mahaweli project and the names and faces of those with whom I worked are still etched in memory.

[A Powerhouse along Mahaweli pic:leelwicks]

Years later, living overseas, I have come across people of ‘Yugoslavian’ origin, in social circumstances, as professional colleagues and as friendly neighbours. Politically, many of them embody old reactionary and ethnic enmities that first generation immigrants usually cling to as the last link to their old societies. Tito is now hated by both Serbians-for allegedly helping the Croatians; and by Croatians-for suppressing his own people. Tito was a Croatian by birth but a Yugoslav by conviction, and he famously told Croatian nationalists that ‘the river (Danube) would flow backwards before Croatia could secede from Yugoslavia.’ Tito also presided over a more open alternative to Stalin’s straitjacket socialism and national integration in the Soviet Union.

Along with other Sri Lankans, whom I know have followed the post-Tito dismemberment of Yugoslavia with nostalgia and sadness, I lament the collapse of the grand Yugoslavian project rather than the final break up of the Serbian ethnic state. The old slogans of socialist internationalism and national self-determination seem so distant and surreal. It is an indication of the extent of this failure that Russia is now supporting Serbia for reasons of Slavic solidarity, the union of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and the new Russian-Balkan alliance of Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. There is also the profitable business of petroleum comprising the proposed pipelines from Russia to Greece and involving the Russian monopoly of the petroleum industry in Serbia and Bulgaria.

The latest parting in Kosovo and the violent path to it are also a tragic return to Rebecca West’s forebodings about inter-war Balkan societies, their past feuds and potential for future conflagrations. Her 1941 magnum opus, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, is titled on a Macedonian fertility ritual involving the sacrifice of a black lamb and the Serbian legend of Prince Lazar, who, faced with two options presented to him by a saintly falcon (Prophet Elijah), chose to forgo earthly conquest and opted to sacrifice his whole army and himself against Turkish invaders in the 1389 battle of Kosovo in return for heaven and life everlasting. The celebrated British author was troubled by the cults and culture of blood, sacrifice and martyrdom for conflicting causes that have been the stuff of Balkanization, then and now, and of ethno-nationalist wars of every kind, everywhere. Rebecca West was also troubled by the lack of international will and institutional instruments during the interwar years to confront the rising threat of violence, and her insights into the Balkan situation at that time inspire some of those who support greater international intervention in support of defenseless people in our time.

The Kosovo crisis

The six republics of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, and the autonomous province of Kosovo (within Serbia) constituted Yugoslavia that came into being at the end of the Second World War. Its disintegration began a decade after Tito’s death in 1980. The country broke up along primordial ethnic and religious lines which coincided with the federal jurisdictional boundaries, but it would be wrong to conclude that the breakup of Yugoslavia was the result of ethno-federalism. Without ethno-federalism there would have been no Yugoslavia, and the arrangement worked quite successfully for nearly fifty years. It was the undermining of the spirit and the pre-suppositions of the ethno-federalist framework that caused the breakup and not the framework itself.

The disintegration took place in several stages. The early separation of Slovenia and Macedonia went off smoothly, demonstrating that state units can secede peacefully and voluntarily. Other peaceful examples include the separation of Czech and Slovakia, the separation of the Baltic states and much of the rest of the former Soviet Union. After the first stage of peaceful separation in Yugoslavia, bitter wars broke out over Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, but mostly because of the status of the Serbian populations living in the seceding territories. Overall, the Serbs appeared to have been less emotional with these breakups but have been rather fanatical about holding onto Kosovo. The Serbian claims and ties to Kosovo territory are almost entirely atavistic and religious, and they are linked to the legend of the Battle of Kosovo of 1389, and the location in Kosovo of Greek Orthodox Christian monasteries that were the mainstay of the medieval Serbian kingdoms. Complicating the matter are the counter claims of the Kosovo Albanians with their own competing memories and tombs from the same Battle of Kosovo.

“No one shall dare beat you again,” said Slobodan Milosevic, the former mediocre Communist apparatchik turned Serbian strongman, to a small crowd of Serbs living among Kosovo Albanians. That was in 1987, and with those words Milosevic galvanized Serbian nationalism in Kosovo. He went further and abolished Kosovo’s autonomy, expelling tens of thousands of Albanian workers from government jobs, and suppressing their language and educational rights. In retaliation arose the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the back and forth violence between Serbs and Albanians left tens of thousands dead, most of them Albanians. It was the extent of the carnage and the obduracy of Milosevic that invited the NATO forces to bomb Belgrade for three months in 1999 and force Milosevic to surrender. Kosovo became a UN protectorate with NATO forces maintaining law and order, until its declaration of independence two weeks ago.

The curse of ethno-nationalism

There are many aspects to the failure of State of Serbia. First, it lost its moral right to rule over Kosovo territory after the way the Serbian army and militias massacred and brutalized the Kosovo Albanians. Second, it misread the intention of the NATO forces and overestimated its own strength to resist the NATO bombardment. Third, Milosevic miscalculated that the majority of the Serbian people would be with him in taking on NATO and the West. On the contrary, the opinion was divided in that many Serbs wanted a friendly relationship with Europe and this has since been borne out by the manner in which Milosevic was overthrown and the continuing desire among Serbs to join the European Union. Last, the atavistic reasons and the emotional attachment the Serbians have for Kosovo blinded them to the plight of the Kosovo Albanians and led them to take inconsistent and therefore indefensible positions about the status of Kosovo.

Specifically, after agreeing to the peaceful parting of Slovenia and Macedonia, and accepting the more violent separation of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Milosevic pigheadedly abolished the provincial autonomy of Kosovo. Further, as recently as May 2006, the Serbian parliament accepted and endorsed the voluntary separation of the republic of Montenegro of just over half a million people. But the Serbs took an intransigent position in regard to Kosovo with nearly 2 million Albanians only to lose it totally in the end.

As with all separations whether involving married couples or multi-ethnic societies, Kosovo and Serbia may have lost more than they would gain – Serbia by failing to accommodate the people of Kosovo and Kosovo as it faces a future full of uncertainty after the initial euphoria over independence. The people who live in Kosovo, not the expatriates who flew in to cut the independence cake, will face the reality of 65% unemployment, low monthly wage of $250.00 by European standards, and the need to depend on donor countries led by the US and a promise of $330 m aid in 2008. The EU countries are expected to provide personnel and resources to help with law and order and administration after the UN ends its protectorate role. The effect on Serbia, itself suffering 25% unemployment and rated as the poorest European country, would be no less severe, emotionally as well as economically. The membership in the EU for both Serbia and Kosovo may be a step towards reconciliation between the two states.

Among the positive aspects of the declaration of independence is the official rejection of violence by both the governments of Serbia and Kosovo as a means to resolve the crisis. A second positive aspect is Kosovo’s commitment to secularism and multi-ethnicity as founding principles of the new state. Although made at the prompting of the Western benefactors of Kosovo, a formal commitment is better than none at all. The emotional realities on the ground are quite different, however. Kosovo, along with the former republics of Bosnia and Macedonia, remains vulnerable to further disintegration. The logic and curse of ethno-nationalism is just that-the acting out of the vicious cycle of sovereignty assertion, self-determination claim, and never ending disintegration.