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Issue 10 - A Journal of Letters and Life
Broken News
Yugoslavia File: Breaking Baltic News
by Sam Vaknin

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The Victory is Montenegro


In 1995, Montenegro exempted its conscripts from serving in the Yugoslav Federal Army (the JNA). It opened its doors to a flood of Bosniaks (Moslems) during the Bosnian War and to Kosovar Albanians during Operation Allied Force. These independent policies stood in stark contrast to Belgrade's. As the latter engaged in shrill anti-Western campaigns throughout the 1990's - Montenegro persisted in its overwhelming wish to become a member of the EU. In March 1997, Djukanovic took over the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) and forced Momir Bulatovic, a Milosevic stalwart, to form the People's Socialist Party (PSP). Yet despite these telltale signs of disintegration, Milo Djukanovic and his reformist crew did very little over the years to prepare Montenegro for an inevitable secession. As late as last year, the currently radical nationalist Djukanovic, was calling for moderation and dialogue, paranoically eyeing his old nemesis, Bulatovic, who stuck to power even as his master was swept to prison on a popular wave of discontent. In a conspiracy-theories-prone area, this caused many to believe that Djukanovic was merely angling for more power in the new Yugoslav constitutional arrangements. Montenegro is tiny - both absolutely and in comparison to Serbia, its "equal partner" in the improbable rump federation of Yugoslavia. At 14,000 sq. km., it is half the size of Macedonia and one third its population (c. 700,000 citizens). Yet, these two have many things in common. In both, for instance, minorities hold the balance of power. The pro-independence vote this weekend was largely decided by the Albanian community, which constitutes c. 7% of the population. They regard Djukanovic as an ally in a largely Slav and hostile region. A sudden attack of Djukanovic pre-election generosity - roads built, food distributed and handouts showered throughout the Albanian coastal settlements - only sustained this perception. Ethnic Albanian parties are the big losers. They and their cantankerous leaders are cast as power-hungry, visionless and disunited. A similar situation (dispossessed Albanian parties fighting for their share of the spoils) in Macedonia led to the recent insurgency. Montenegro may be next. The Muslims in Montenegro (16% of the total) object to independence, fearful of being disconnected from their co-religionist kith and kin in the Sandjak region in a Serbia alienated by Montenegrin secession. Both minorities have been the continuous targets of thinly disguised racial slurs and barbs by the Bulatovic "Together for Yugoslavia" camp during the campaign.
      Minorities aside, the population is split right down the middle among the pro and anti-independence factions. In another part of Europe, Montenegro could have aspired to emulate Luxembourg. In the Balkan, it makes for an appetizing prey. Its economy consists of foreign aid, smuggling (cigarettes, immigrants, prostitutes, drugs, and weapons, in this order), and dubious off-shore offerings (a bank licence goes for less than $10,000). In the absence of either of these pillars of the economy, wages - already symbolic - are likely to spiral down and social unrest is likely to take the opposite course with a vengeance. Foreign aid may dwindle if Montenegro defies the West (read: the State Department). Both the USA and the EU are reluctant to see Yugoslavia further atomised. They fear the echoes of a Montenegrin independence, however democratic and peaceful - in less democratic and peaceful corners of the Balkan (mainly in Kosovo and Bosnia). Thus, Montenegro's share of American foreign aid is now firmly ensconced in Yugoslavia's appropriation. Congress, as usual, ignores Foggy Bottom and continued allocate funds to Montenegro with reflexive abandon (close to $90 million last year alone). But even old Balkan hands like Holbrooke are coming around to the idea of an independent Montenegro.
      The Montenegrin nationalist camp, in the meantime, is busy inventing a Montenegrin ancient history, demonising hegemonic Serbia and blaming Montenegro's backwardness on Milosevic and his stranglehold. Typical Kostunica gaffes - belittling Montenegro and its inhabitants - did nothing to ameliorate the tension.
      "The Victory is Montenegro" - Dukanovic's outfit - promised a referendum about independence in June. It may well be postponed if the old-new Montenegrin leadership is sufficiently pampered and flattered by Djindjic and Kostunica. Both have said that they will accept Montenegrin independence should its people really want it. This is a matter of internal Serbian politics. In September 2000, Djukanovic, very unwisely, boycotted the elections that toppled Milosevic. Montenegro is thus represented in the Yugoslav federal parliament by Bulatovic and his anti-reformist creed. Getting rid of this sabotaging, corrupt, and anachronistic lot - even at the price of losing Montenegro - may be an attractive proposition as far as the likes of Djindjic are concerned. Djukanovic may have been caught by surprise between the rock of his fervent nationalist propaganda and the hard place of Serb capitulation to his demands. Unable to fulfil most of his unrealistic campaign promises, he may yet find himself the president of an economically unviable and politically unstable statelet.


Milosevic's Treasure Island


Milosevic and his cronies stand accused of plundering Serbia's wealth - both pecuniary and natural. Yet, the media tends to confuse three modes of action with two diametrically opposed goals. There was state-sanctioned capital flight. Gold and foreign exchange were smuggled out of Yugoslavia and deposited in other countries. This was meant to provide a cushion against embargo and sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia by the West.
      The scale of these operations has been wildly over-estimated at 4 billion US dollars. A figure half as big is more reasonable. Most of the money was used legitimately, to finance the purchase of food, medicines, and energy products. Yugoslavia would have frozen to death had its leaders not have the foresight to act as they did.
      This had nothing to do with party officials, cronies, and their family members enriching themselves by "diverting" export proceeds and commodities into private accounts in foreign lands. The culprits often disguised these acts of plunder as sanctions-busting operations. Hence the confusion.
      Thirdly, members of the establishment and their relatives were allowed to run lucrative smuggling and black market operations fuelled by cheap credits coerced out of the dilapidated and politicised "banking" system. As early as 1987, a network of off-shore bank accounts and holding companies was established by Serbia's Communist party and, later, by Yugoslavia. This frantic groping for alternatives reached a peak during 1989 and 1991 and after 1992 when accounts were opened in Cyprus, Israel, Greece, and Switzerland and virtually all major Yugoslav firms opened Cypriot subsidisaries or holding structures. Starting in 1991, the Central Bank's gold (and a small part of the foreign exchange reserves) were deposited in Switzerland (mainly in Zurich). A company by the name of "Metalurski Kombinat Smederevo - MKS" (renamed "Sartid" after its bogus privatisation) was instrumental in this through its MKS Zurich subsidiary. MKS was a giant complex of metal processing factories, headed by a former Minister of Industry and a Milosevic loyalist, Dusko Matkovic. The latter also served as deputy chairman of Milosevic's party. The lines between party, state and personal fortunes blurred fast. Small banking institutions were established everywhere, even in London (the AY Bank) and conducted operations throughout the world. They were owned by bogus shareholders, out of the reach of the international sanctions regime.
      When UN sanctions were imposed in stages (1992-5), the state made sure its export proceeds were out of harm's way and never in sanctions-bound UK and USA banks. The main financial agent was "Beogradska Banka" and its branch in Novi Sad. In a series of complex transactions involving foreign exchange trades, smuggled privatisation proceeds, and inflated import invoices, it was able to stash away hundreds of millions of dollars. This money was used to finance imports and defray the exorbitant commissions, fees, and costs charged by numerous intermediaries. Yugoslavia (and the regime) had no choice - it was either that or starvation, freezing and explosive social discontent. Concurrently, a massive and deeply criminalized web of smuggling, illegal (customs-exempt) imports, bribe and corruption has stifled all legal manufacturing and commerce activities. Cigarettes through Montenegro, alcohol and oil through Romania, petrol, other goods (finished and semi-finished) and raw materials from Greece through the Vardar river (Macedonia), absolutely everything through Croatia, drugs from Turkey (and Afghanistan). UN personnel happily colluded and collaborated - for a fee, of course. The export of commodities - such as grain or precious metals (gold, even Uranium) - was granted in monopoly to Milosevic stalwarts. These were vast fiefdoms controlled by a few
prominent "families" and Milosevic favourites. It was also immensely lucrative. Even minor figures were able to deposit millions of US dollars in their Russian, Cypriot, Lebanese, Greek, Austrian, Swiss, and South African accounts. The regime leaned heavily on Yugoslav banks to finance these new rich with cheap, soft, and often non-returnable, credits. These were often used to speculate in the frenetic informal foreign exchange markets for immediate windfalls.
      The new Yugoslav authorities are likely to be deeply frustrated and disappointed. Most of the money was expended on essentials for the population. The personal fortunes made are tiny by comparison and well-shielded in off-shore banking havens. Milosevic himself has almost nothing to his name. His son and daughter may constitute richer pickings but not by much. The hunt for the Milosevic treasure is bound to be an expensive, futile undertaking.


The Third Balkan War

The contours of a Third Balkan War are emerging. In the western part of hitherto peaceful Macedonia, Albanian radicals - an oddball ragtag army of disgruntled KLA rejects and wild students - has pushed into Tetovo in a bid to force the Macedonian government to accept the federalization of the country. They have been repelled by Macedonian police and army units but they vow to be back and to open a wider front: Tetovo, Kumnovo, Debar, and urban guerilla in Skopje. Kosovo rumbled and seethed with demonstrations of popular support and statements the West succeeded to extract from reluctant Kosovar politicians in favour of a negotiated resolution of the conflict. The West, as usual, fumbled. Its representatives - ill trained conscripts, self important dim-witted diplomats and paper shuffling dead end bureaucrats - were long on rhetoric and short on everything else. Their formula seems to consist of the coercion of the weakened Macedonian state into a constitutional re-definition of the status of the Albanian minority. Everyone was again taken by complete surprise. Albanian violent extremism is likely to spread to Greece and Bulgaria where small but restive Albanian
minorities exist. Both countries offered military and political succor to Macedonia against the Albanian insurgents. The NATO-sponsored Presevo accords signed between Yugoslavia (really, Serbia) and the Albanian militias there, are not worth the fire, which will undoubtedly consume them. Already both parties are blaming each other for reneging on their contractual obligations.
      Yet, Macedonia and Presevo are a diversion, a first salvo, a side-show. The REAL Balkan War started elsewhere with the unravelling of the Dayton Accords.
      From "The Fifth Horseman", published December 5, 2000:
"The West's protectorate in Bosnia Herzegovina is shrivelling...While paying lip service to the defunct Dayton accords, the fusty puppets of Karadzic and his creed ascended in both the Croat bit of the improbable Croat-Muslim Federation and in its nightmarish sister, Republika Srpska. The West, enamoured of its own abstractions and confabulations, seems to be inured to the recurrent and thundering message that Bosnia is an untenable and tenuous proposition. An eruption is afoot."
      The new leaders of the new Croatia are adept at signing the tunes the West likes to hear. They keep their distance from their Bosnian-Croat brethren with the same unmitigated zeal that they applied to the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs with the murderous help of now shunned ones. Yet, should Bosnia be reduced to ethnic smithereens, Croatia, as well as Serbia, are not likely to sit idle and watch their compatriots slaughtered by Afghan and Saudi mujaheedin or harried by each other. A re-ignition of the war in campestral Bosnia - and all bets are off, including the Dayton wager. Another Serb-Croat encounter will rock the very foundations of the hallucinatory "New Order" in the Balkan. The imminent Serb-Croat war is a logical result of the infighting between Kostunica and Djindjic. The latter, having used the former to depose of Milosevic, is now backstabbing, a bit of a Balkan reflex.
      Fighting for his political life, Kostunica teamed up with the outcast elements in Republika Srpska, a nominal part of the fictitious American-sponsored state of Bosnia. On March 5th, he signed a declaratory accord between Yugoslavia and the Republika, similar to the Russia-Belarus document of confederation. Thus, the classic Serb beauty contest ("I am more nationalist than you are") has commenced. This event, thoroughly overlooked by the Kostunica-enamoured Western media, was preceded by the corrosive disintegration of Bosnia and the slow demise of the Dayton Accords. When the Croat National Assembly has declared self-rule in five cantons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Wolfgang Petritsch, the Western dictator in Bosnia fired Ante Jelavic (of the HDZ - the Croatian Democratic Union) from the tripartite presidency of the protectorate and banned him and others from future political activity. These sagacious acts will surely lead to the formation of a Croat underground government.
      In the meantime, more than 12,000 Croat soldiers deserted en masse from the VF (the Bosnian "army") and formed the First Guard Corps. The police is next. The country is being effectively partitioned.
      If the 22,000 troops of the West (which include the American contingent, likely to be pulled out of Bosnia gradually) will oppose these developments by force, another war is a certainty. In such a war, the West's inexperienced and casualty-shy soldiers are bound to be massacred. Moreover, both Serbia and Croatia are likely to join the war to defend their own. The current regime in Croatia maintains its distance from the thuggish Bosnian HDZ and from its destabilizing agenda - but it cannot afford to be seen to be abandoning Croats under a Moslem and Serb siege. The Croat parliament has already mooted an elaborate plan for the cantonalization or confederalization of Bosnia - an absolute abrogation of the Dayton Accords.
      Montenegro and Vojvodina are next.
      The tiny smuggling haven of Montenegro is the spurned mistress of the West, used during Operation Allied Force (Kosovo, 1999) and ignored thereafter. The Montenegrins face an impossible choice with a divided mind. They can either break decisively from Serbia - or succumb to its overweening embrace. It is a Hobson's choice. Should it choose the former route, a civil war is inexorable. Yet, the same result is guaranteed, should it choose the latter.
      And then there is Vojvodina. Populated by businesslike Serbs and civil Hungarians, it never really felt like part of Serbia the rustic and bombastic. Restless Magyars across the border seek to force Serbia to make amends for historical injustices real and imaginary. Though part of the ruling coalition, Vojvodina politicians have lately been demanding an autonomy as wide as the one they used to constitutionally enjoy before Milosevic abolished it. Vojvodina is boiling. Nationalist politicians agitate, secret services clash secretly, journalist remonstrate, the province does flourishing (though often illicit) business with Hungary and spawned a small but intellectually influential independence minded movement. It is a Kosovo in the making, saddled by historic animosities no less intense. It is seething, though in a cultured, Austro-Hungarian manner.
      The Balkan has never been more politically fragmented than now. It was never before ruled by a single superpower. Adjusting to these new geopolitical realities is tough. The prospects of another Balkan War depend on it.
      One by one the actors in this Greek tragedy enter. The old, worn scenery is set. The script is known, the motions automatic, the end result inevitable. Welcome to the Balkan's theatre of the absurd.

Surviving the Uprising

Macedonia is a small (25,000 sq. km.) landlocked country in the Balkan. It serves as a natural bridge between Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. As an inevitable result, its economy consists mainly of trading, services, low-tech, low value added industries, such as textile and plastics, and agriculture. Countries such as Slovenia and Germany import wine from Macedonia, bottle it, label it and re-sell it at a much higher price. This pattern is repeated with tobacco and a host of other agricultural produce. Italian designers contract with family textile firms to seasonally manufacture for them. The banking sector is basic, though privately owned.
      In recent years and especially following the Kosovo crisis, the country
benefited from increasing foreign direct investment, unilateral transfers of multilateral aid and credits and local spending by the likes of NATO and KFOR. Its biggest bank - Stopanska Banka - was sold to a Greek bank (National Bank). Many of the loss makers (communist-era industrial dinosaurs) were either shut down or sold to foreigners. The Macedonian Telecom firm was sold to a consortium led by MATAV. A host of critical economic laws passed parliament and long postponed structural reforms were implemented. Value Added Tax was introduced, The re-payment of Macedonia's internal debt has accelerated and bank lending as well as money supply aggregates increased dramatically. With GDP growth in excess of 5% (2000), Macedonia was poised for an economic take-off. The current Albanian uprising (there has been a minor precedent in 1997 in Tetovo) is low intensity warfare. It is unlikely to adversely affect the main monetary parameters (stability of the Macedonian denar, low to medium inflation rate, declining interest rates). With its budget in a surplus of close to 4% of GDP, the government is in no need to raise taxes. Tax receipts from the western part of Macedonia - now virtually non-existent - were never sizable. Capital flight is bound to increase but this is predicted to be more than fully offset by increased transfers of Macedonian and Albanian expatriates. Foreign exchange reserves are sound and cover c. 4 months of imports. Moreover, past experience - of which, unfortunately Macedonia has plenty - shows that both a possible (though improbable) devaluation of the currency and capital flight are reversed once the crisis is over (or becomes a way of life). Following an initial panic during Operation Allied Force in Kosovo (1999), the Central Bank actually had to absorb excess foreign exchange in the markets as people sought to purchase denars. The same happened after the imposition of the Greek embargo and the sanctions on Yugoslavia (which used to be Macedonia's main trading partner). The danger lies in the fickleness of international investors.
      Cancellations of commitments to invest in the local economy have started. If FDI dries up, Macedonia will be hard pressed to cope with its current account deficit (c. 6.5% of GDP). This can be exacerbated if the international banking system were to wean Macedonian firms off trading and documentary credits. Foreign firms - especially American ones - tend in these circumstances to cancel orders for textile and light industrial products. Macedonia has diversified its trade considerably and now does most of its business with the European Union but its products - steel, textile, wine, tobacco, grain, lamb meat - are still subject to European protectionist measures. These were not relaxed even during the more parlous war in Kosovo. No special concessions are likely to be offered now.
      One cannot expect international donors to cover the difference. Patience with the region and its endless squabbles has worn thin and a potentially isolationist USA administration is not likely to provide the leadership needed to revive it. Macedonia can be left high on insurgency and dry on cash. But this is not a necessary scenario. It can be averted with goodwill and good planning. Foresight has often eluded the West's involvement in the Balkan. Here is an opportunity to make amends.


No Albanian Intifada!

A few of my colleagues in the international media compared the latest clashes between Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia to the two Palestinian intifadas ("uprisings" in 1987-93 and from September 2000) in Israel.In doing so, they demonstrated their ignorance of the two regions and the four peoples involved.
      The Macedonians are a small nation. Their very nationhood is doubted by their Bulgarian neighbours (who regard them as rustic Bulgarians speaking a funny Bulgarian dialect). The Greeks - another neighbour and the biggest investors in the Macedonian economy - consider them to be Slav invaders. The Serbs are convinced that they are Serbs who occupy "South Serbia". Who needs enemies in the Balkan if one has neighbours? The inevitable result is that Macedonians are very touchy when it comes to theterritorial integrity of their tiny (25,000 sq. km.) country, to the official version of their history and to their language. The current Albanian troubles are perceived by them to threaten all three.
      According to the last official census, Albanians constituted around 25% of the population. Add to this Albanian expatriates, a decade of fecundity, and census-dodgers and 33% of the population would seem a safe bet. Thereare Albanians everywhere in Macedonia - but mostly in its Western part which borders on Kosovo. The Albanians in Macedonia are economically better off than their brethren in Albania and in Kosovo. But they are a minority and, inevitably, suffer some discrimination (especially in the job market and in education). Albanian women prefer not to work (due to traditional values, the size of the average Albanian family and other, objective, constraints). But even accounting for this fact, unemployment among the Albanian populace is higher than it is among the Macedonians.
      At 25-30% country-wide, the unemployment rate is anyhow explosive. Unemployment and discrimination (mostly real, some of it imagined) - especially among the well-educated - breeds resentment.
      Resentment in the Balkan breeds virulent nationalism and guns, not necessarily in this order. That ostensibly Macedonian Albanians insist on waving the flag of a neighbouring country (Albania) rather than their own onofficial occasions does not add to the already shaky mutual trust among the communities. That some of them (admittedly a negligible minority) entertain the dream of a Great Albania (including Western Macedonia) does nothing to assuage Macedonian fears. Despite (or maybe because) centuries of peaceful co-existence and good neighbourly relations - Macedonians have a stereotype of Albanians as backward, steeped in crime and reflexively secessionist. Albanians, on the other hand, are very dramatic about what some of them insist on calling "state terror". Sporadic police brutality does not help the Macedonian case.
      Hence the multi-annual heated debate about whether Albanians should be allowed to use their language in their own higher education institutions. Macedonians regard these rather usual demands as the beginning of their end. They recall the tactics of the Albanians in Kosovo. First, prosaic and rather reasonable demands regarding human rights, health, jobs and education. Then, an armed uprising of para-military units, followed by Western pressure to "compromise" and grant the minority their "legitimate human and civil rights".
      Then NATO.
      The Macedonians fully believe - official protestations aside - that the Albanians aresimply trying to repeat their Kosovar success in other parts of Serbia (Presevo) and in Western Macedonia. Macedonians seem to believe in the reality of a Great Albania vision more than most Albanians do.
      But the uprising in Macedonia has little to do with a Great Albania and a lot to dowith greed and gripes. It is a confluence of frustrated idealism and hard cash. Those who do the fighting are an eclectic bunch of disgruntled former KLA toughs (under the itinerant name "National Liberation Army") and wide-eyed students. They are mostly Kosovars but with significant logistical support from the local population (underground hospitals, arms caches and such). Some of the fighters and many in the logistics are Albanian Macedonian citizens. The insurgency is as much about business as it is about rights. The Albaniansin Macedonia who do not belong to the Albanian party in power (the DPA) seem not to have shared the spoils and patronage it doled out so wholeheartedly to its coterie and cronies. Athird Albanian party has just been established, apparently to cater to their needs .Many members of the theoretically disbanded KLA found themselves shovelling snow for a pittance or altogether unemployed. Even crime does not pay - it was taken over by ruthless gangs from Albania proper. But it would be wrong to say that it's all about money. The Macedonian Albanian population is genuinely disenchanted with the rule of the Slav majority. And this uprising is about airing their grievances as well.
      There is no popular and widespread support for a full-scale armed rebellion among the Albanians anywhere. That would be too economically disruptive for both legal and illegal businesses. The leaders of Albania, Kosovo (with the notable exception of Rugova, who may be at great personal risk following the recent local elections he won) and of the Macedonian Albanians all denounced the violence.
      But a limited "message" to the Macedonian authorities ("give us our rights peacefully or else...") seems to enjoy a tacit - though unexpressed - consensus.
      The irony is that the current government of Macedonia has gone out of its way to accommodate the demands of the Albanian population. An Albanian party (the aforementioned DPA) is one of the most important and stable members of a fragile coalition. There are Albanian ministers, civil servants and functionaries in all levels and arms of government, both central and local. The issues of higher education in the Albanian language are on their way to an attractive resolution, as far as the Albanians are concerned. Perhaps this is why the Macedonian government was taken by complete surprise despite warnings and information aplenty.
      There remains the demand for the status of a "Constituent Nation" for the Albanians in Macedonia (within a federation or a confederation). This demand is not as innocuous as it sounds. The terminology is borrowed from the 1946 and 1974 constitutions of the former Yugoslavia. In these constitutions, the right of every "constituent nation" to self-determination was recognized - including "the right to secession".


Micromanaging Malignant Optimism

Never before has the Balkan been more of a powder keg, ready to detonate thunderously. Never before has it been so fractured among political entities, some viable - many not. Never before has it been dominated by a single superpower, not counter-balanced by its allies nor shackled by its foes. This is a disastrous state of things, about to get worse. Driven by America - this amalgam of violent frontiersmen, semi-literate go-getters and malignant optimists ("with some goodwill there is always a solution and a happy ending") - the West has committed the sins of ignorant intervention and colonial perpetuation. Peace among nations is the result of attrition and exhaustion, of mutual terror and actual bloodletting - not of amicable agreement and visionary stratagems. It took two world wars to make peace between France and Germany. By forcing an unwanted peace upon an unwilling populace in the early stages of every skirmish - the West has ascertained the perpetuation of these conflicts. Witness Bosnia and its vociferous nationalist Croats. Witness Macedonia's and Kosovo's Albanians and their chimerical armies of liberation. These are all cinders of hostilities artificially suppressed by Western procurators and Western cluster bombs.
      The West should have dangled the carrots of NATO and EU memberships in front of the bloodied pugilists - not ram them down their reluctant throats in shows of air superiority. Humanitarian aid should have been provided and grants and credits for development to the deserving. But the succour afforded by the likes of Germany to the likes of Croatia and by the benighted Americans to the most extreme elements in Kosovo - served only to amplify and prolong the suffering and the warfare. The West obstinately refused - and still does - to contemplate the only feasible solution to the spectrum of Balkan questions. Instead of convening a new Berlin Congress and redrawing the borders of the host of entities, quasi-entities and fraction entities that emerged with the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation - the West foolishly and blindly adheres to unsustainable borders which reflect colonial decision making and ceasefire lines. In the absence of a colonizing power, only ethnically-homogeneous states can survive peacefully in the Balkan. The West should strive to effect ethnic homogenization throughout the region by altering borders, encouraging population swaps and transfers and
discouraging ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation ("ethnic denial"). But the West's blunders are not confined to the political and geopolitical realms.
      The West (actually, America) has many long arms, the IMF and World Bank being the most prominent. These ostensible multilaterals have committed yet another strategic blunder. Instead of weaning their clientele - the post-Communist countries in transition - off central planning and command economics, they engaged in Washington-based micromanagement of their economies. The Bretton-Woods institutions have become all-pervasive, multi-tentacled approximations of the Communist party. They dictate policy, involve themselves in the minutest details of daily management, veto decisions (economic and non-economic), cajole and
threaten governments, block private sector lending and compete in the international credit and investment markets.
      The post-Communist countries in transition are like infants taking their first steps in the demanding world of free markets and capitalism. The multilateral financial institutions are the mother figures. Good mothers let go, encourage in the child a sense of independence, self-reliance, learning by mistakes and the predictability of just rewards and punishments. Bad mothers refuse to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of their offspring. They reward clinging behaviour and punish every act of separation and individuation. They are overweening, doting, crushing figures. In short: they micromanage.
      From my book Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited:
      "The separation from the mother, the formation of an individual, the separation from the world (the 'spewing out' of the outside world) - are all tremendously traumatic. The infant is afraid to lose his mother physically (no 'mother permanence') as well as emotionally (will she be angry at this new found autonomy?). He goes away a step or two and runs back to receive the mother's reassurance that she still loves him and that she is still there. The tearing up of one's self into my SELF and the OUTSIDE WORLD is an unimaginable feat...The child's mind is shredded to pieces: some pieces are still HE and others are NOT HE (=the outside world). This is an absolutely psychedelic experience (and the root of all psychoses, probably). If not managed properly, if disturbed in some way (mainly emotionally), if the separation - individuation process goes awry, it could result in serious psychopathologies. There are grounds to believe that several personality disorders (Narcissistic and Borderline) can be traced to a disturbance in this process in early childhood. Then, of course, there is the on-going traumatic process that we call 'life'".


The Common Enemy

They are here, the future common enemy, helmeted and uniformed, shielded in their APCs and brandishing rifles and machine guns. The common enemy to be is KFOR and, by implication, NATO. It is flanked by Serbs triumphantly invited to repossess the now defunct security zone (one is tempted to ask "so, what was this idiotic war all about"?). Besieged by the radicalized remnants of the KLA and by a disdainful Macedonian populace - these less than elite units constitute prime targets. In "NATO's Next War" - an article published June 14, 1999 - I wrote this:
      "The real, protracted, war is about to start. NATO and the international peacekeeping force against an unholy - and, until recently, improbable - alliance. Milosevic (or post-Milosevic Serbia) and the KLA against the occupying forces. It is going to be ferocious. It is going to be bloody. And it is going to be a Somali nightmare.
      "Why should the KLA and Serbia collaborate against NATO (I use NATO here as shorthand for 'The International Peacekeeping Force - KFOR')? Serbia - because it wants to regain its lost sovereignty over at least the northern part of Kosovo. Because it virulently hates, wholeheartedly detests, voluptuously despises NATO, the 'Nazi aggresso'" of yestermonth. Serbia has no natural allies left, not even Russia which prostituted its geopolitical favours for substantial IMF funding. Its only remaining natural ally is the KLA.
      "The KLA stands to lose everything as a result of the latest bout of peacemaking. It is supposed to be 'decommissioned' IRA-style, disarmed ('demilitarized' in the diplomatic argot) and effectively disbanded. The KLA's political clout rested on its ever-growing arsenal and body of volunteers. Yet volunteers have a strange habit of going back whence they came once a conflict is over. And the weapons are to be surrendered. Devoid of these two pillars of political might - Thaci may find himself unemployed, a former self-declared Prime Minister of a shadow government in Albanian exile. Rugova has the coffers, filled to the brim with tens of millions of US dollars and DM raised from the Albanian diaspora world-wide. Money talks, KLA walks. Bad for the KLA. Having tasted power, having met cher Albright on a regular basis, having conversed with Tony Blair and Robertson and even Clinton via expensive high tech gadgets - Thaci is not likely to compromise on a second rate appointment in a Rugova led administration.
      "And the bad news is that he doesn't have to. Bolstered by a short-sighted and panicky NATO, the KLA post-bellum is not what it used to be antebellum. It is well equipped. It is well-financed. Its ranks have swelled. It has been transformed from an agglomeration of desperadoes - to a military guerilla force to be reckoned with. Even the Serbs found that out at a dear price."
      Hence, the mysteriously emergent Albanian "National Army of Liberation" on Macedonia's border with Kosovo. In another article, "The Army of Liberation", published on June 5, 2000 , I described the dynamics that fostered the current anti-Macedonian insurgency. The KLA is trying to revive its sagging fortunes by provoking a new regional crisis - this time in the western part of pliable Macedonia and in collaboration with Albanians inside Macedonia. It is all about power, smuggling routes, the drug trade and the huge infusions of Western aid - a gang warfare compounded by years of mistreatment and mutual animosity. I wrote:
      "Albanians and Serbs have more in common than they care to admit. Scattered among various political entities, both nations came up with a grandiose game plan - Milosevic's 'Great Serbia' and the KLA's 'Great Albania'. The idea, in both cases, was to create an ethnically homogeneous state by shifting existing borders, ncorporating hitherto excluded parts of the nation and excluding hitherto included minorities. Whereas Milosevic had at his disposal the might of the Yugoslav army (or, so he thought) - the Albanians had only impoverished and decomposing Albania to back them. Still, the emotional bond that formed, fostered by a common vision and shared hope - is intact. Albanian flags fly over Albanian municipalities in Kosovo and in Macedonia.
      "The possession of weapons and self-government have always been emblematic of the anticipated statehood of Kosovo. Being disarmed and deprived of self-governance was, to the Albanians, a humiliating and enraging experience, evocative of earlier, Serb-inflicted, injuries. Moreover, it was indicative of the perplexed muddle the West is mired in - officially, Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia. But it is also occupied by foreign forces and has its own customs, currency, bank licensing, entry visas and other insignia of sovereignty (shortly, even an internet domain, KO).
      "This quandary is a typically anodyne European compromise which is bound to ferment into atrabilious discourse and worse. The Kosovars - understandably - will never accept Serb sovereignty or even Serb propinquity willingly. Ignoring the inevitable, tergiversating and equivocating have too often characterized the policies of the Big Powers - the kind of behaviour that turned the Balkan into the morass that it is today.
      "It is, therefore, inconceivable that the KLA has disbanded and disarmed
or transformed itself into the ill-conceived and ill-defined "Kosovo Protection Corps" (headed by former KLA commander and decorated Croat Lieutenant General, Agim Ceku and charged with fire fighting, rescue missions and the like). Thousands of KLA members found jobs (or scholarships, or seed money) through the International Organization for Migration (IOM). But, in all likelihood, the KLA still maintains clandestine arms depots (intermittently raided by KFOR), strewn throughout Kosovo and beyond. Its chain of command, organizational structure, directorates, operational and assembly zones and general staff are all viable. I have no doubt - though little proof - that it still trains and prepares for war. It would be mad not to in this state
of utter mayhem. The emergence of the 'Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac' (all towns beyond Kosovo's borders, in Serbia, but with an Albanian majority) is a harbinger. Its soldiers even wear badges in the red, black and yellow KLA colours. The enemies are numerous: the Serbs (should Kosovo ever be returned to them), NATO and KFOR (should they be charged with the task of reintegrating Serbia), perhaps more moderate Albanians with lesser national zeal or Serb-collaborators (like Zemail Mustafi, the Albanian Vice-President of the Bujanovac branch of President Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party, who was assassinated three months ago). Moreover, the very borders of Kosovo are in dispute. The territory known to its inhabitants as 'Eastern Kosovo' now comprises 70,000 Albanians, captives in a hostile Serbia. Yet, 'Eastern Kosovo' was never part of the administrative province of Kosovo. The war is far from over.
      "In the meantime, life is gradually returning to normal in Kosovo itself. Former KLA fighters engage in all manner of odd jobs - from shovelling snow in winter to burning bushes in summer. Even the impossible Joint Administrative Council (Serbs, Albanians and peacekeepers) with its 19 departments, convenes from time to time. The periodic resignation of the overweening Bernard Kouchner aside, things are going well. A bank has been established, another one is on its way. Electricity is being gradually restored and so are medical services and internet connections. Downtown Pristina is reconstructed by Albanians from Switzerland. Such normalization can prove lethal to an organization like the KLA, founded on strife and crisis as it is. If it does not transform itself into a political organization in a convincing manner - it might lose its members to the more alluring pastures of statecraft. The local and general elections so laboriously (and expensively) organized in Kosovo are the KLA's first real chance at transformation. It failed at its initial effort to establish a government (together with Qosaj's
Democratic Union Movement, an umbrella organization of parties in pposition to Rugova and with Hashim Thaci as its Prime Minister). Overruled by UNMIK (United Nations Mission In Kosovo), opposed by Berisha's Democratic Party, recognized only by Albania and the main Albanian party in Macedonia and bereft of finances, it was unable to imbue structure with content and provide the public goods a government is all about. The KLA was so starved for cash that it was unable even to pay the salaries of its own personnel. Many criminals caught in the act claimed to be KLA members in dire financial straits. Ineptitude and insolvency led to a dramatic resurgence in the popularity of the hitherto discarded Rugova. The KLA then failed to infiltrate existing structures of governance erected by the West (like the Executive Council) - or to duplicate them. Thaci's quest to become deputy-Kouchner was brusquely rebuffed. The ballot box seems now to be the KLA's only exit strategy. The risk is that electoral loss will lead to alienation and thuggery if not to outright criminality. It is a fine balancing act between the virtuous ideals of democracy and the harsh constraints of realpolitik".
      NATO and KFOR face the unenviable dilemma of clashing with Albanian nationalists in Kosovo - or, through abstention, aiding and abetting in the disintegration of Macedonia. KFOR cannot be seen to be suppressing the very population whose well-being it ostensibly was hastily assembled to secure. Moreover, KFOR is no match to a genuine and well equipped Albanian guerilla movement. Its soldiers will be slaughtered as were the far more superior and knowledgeable Serb fighters. Taking this inferiority and reluctance into account, KFOR's best policy is to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to exploding mines and the occasional casualty. The Macedonians are not likely to sit idle while their country is being torn apart. Hot pursuits into Kosovar territory are not an outlandish proposition. Sooner or later, NATO/KFOR and the Macedonian ARM will cross machine gun fire. The Americans are likely to fold with the first body bag - which would leave militarily-strapped Europe in a deep lurch indeed.
      One should also not ignore the rumblings from Bosnia. The Dayton Accord is falling apart, as well it deserves. The HDZ Croats all but declared
independence. The West fires elected politicians in a ferocious pace. Croatia is unlikely to intervene unless something real bad happens. But a civil war in Bosnia is not out of the question. Add this to the growing American isolationism and you can begin to understand why I wrote this immediately after the Serb October Revolution and Kostunica's ascent to power in my article "The Fifth Horseman", published on December 4, 2001:
      "The plot thickens by the day. The inevitable is unfolding in Kosovo. Raffish Albanian extremists enjoin the Serb police forces and military at the southern fringes of Serbia. The latter's Pavlovian violent response is sure to escalate the conflict. The West helplessly reprimands the very armed and rambunctious demons it has unleashed, mortified at their audacity - to no avail. A spate of murders of Albanian moderates inside the nascent Kosovar state is likely to effectively annul the results of the mock local elections in October. The region - and Western Macedonia with it - is down a slippery path. With its hordes of bloated bureaucrats, mountebank bankers and coxcomb politicians, the West copes with the self-inflicted Augean task of sorting out the Balkan by making extempore vacuous promises combined with empty harrumphs. Neither its carrot of wheedling persiflage nor its stick of turgid impotence are credible. When fighting breaks, the eroded and inept forces that pass for sedentary NATO will find themselves the targets of villain and rescued alike, the common enemy of the wily and indomitable denizens of these blood drenched plains."


The Fifth Horseman

"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and hell followed with him. And Power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth"
      -"Revelation," Chapter 6, Verse 8.

Four apocalyptic riders threaten the illusory neoteric respite in bloody Balkan affairs speciously achieved lately. With Tudjman gone and Milosevic at bay, the jejune West celebrates among the smoking ruins of the quondam prosperous Yugoslavia. But not for long. The conflagration is at abeyance and its next cycle will dwarf all that has preceded it.
      And then there is the fifth horseman.
      The "second October Revolution" brought Kostunica - a virtual unknown - to power. He was backed by what passes in Serbia for opposition (read, the disenfranchised crime gangs). But this unholy alliance will not last beyond the December elections (should it last that long and should the elections not be postponed due to convenient "national emergencies"). A rift is opening and a conflict brewing between Kostunica and his alleged puppet masters, chief among the Djindjich.
      Habitually, the West keeps asking the wrong questions. Why Milosevic is not brought to international justice is less perplexing. Why he is not barred from political activity is the real enigma. Vicious Balkan tongues begin to cast Kostunica in the role of an interim Milosevic puppet. Wasn't Kostunica a virtual nobody from nowhere prior to his incredible ascent to supreme power? Didn't Milosevic astound the world by succumbing to him without a as much as a show of despondence? Wasn't it all pre-orchestrated, kind of another "Gorbachev coup"? - they whisper. They even go as far as predicting a unity government (Kostunica and Milosevic) should the Albanians plunge Serbia into another civil war.
      The plot thickens by the day. The inevitable is unfolding in Kosovo. Raffish Albanian extremists enjoin the Serb police forces and military at the southern fringes of Serbia. The latter's Pavlovian violent response is sure to escalate the conflict. The West helplessly reprimands the very armed and rambunctious demons it has unleashed, mortified at their audacity - to no avail. A spate of murders of Albanian moderates inside the nascent Kosovar state is likely to effectively annul the results of the mock local elections in October. The region - and Western Macedonia with it - is down a slippery path. With its hordes of bloated bureaucrats, mountebank bankers and coxcomb politicians, the West copes with the self-inflicted Augean task of sorting out the Balkan by making extempore vacuous promises combined with empty harrumphs. Neither its carrot of wheedling persiflage nor its stick of turgid impotence are credible. When fighting breaks, the eroded and inept forces that pass for sedentary NATO will find themselves the targets of villain and rescued alike, the common enemy of the wily and indomitable denizens of these blood-drenched plains.
      This is the first horseman.
      Bordering this flashpoint is the tiny smuggling haven of Montenegro. The spurned mistress of the West, the Montenegrins face an impossible choice with a divided mind. To be a cosseted asset one day and a bumptious liability the next, is not an easy transition in the best of times and both Montenegrins and Kosovars are not likely to accept it graciously. The West is bound to discover the long memory and even longer knives of the allies it deserts so peremptorily. Denuded of financial aid and the media fig leaf that covered their cupidinous delinquency and skulduggery, the Montenegrins can either break decisively from Serbia - or succumb to its overweening embrace. It is a Hobson's choice. Should it choose the former route, a civil war is inexorable. Yet, the same result is guaranteed, should it choose the latter.
      This is the second horseman.
      The West's protectorate in Bosnia Herzegovina is shrivelling. There, its beleaguered officials applied a unique brand of enlightened absolutism - arbitrary sackings of democratically elected nationalist politicians, overruling of democratically adopted laws by ukase, Rambo-style shoot-outs in the random hunt for war criminals and all. Not surprisingly, this has succeeded only to alienate the people and cast all moderates as quislings. The backlash was evident in the abysmal failure of the ideals of clement reason and ethnic co-existence in the last elections. While paying lip service to the defunct Dayton accords, the fusty puppets of Karadzic and his creed ascended in both the Croat bit of the improbable Croat-Muslim Federation and in its nightmarish sister, Republika Srpska. The West, enamoured of its own abstractions and confabulations, seems to be inured to the recurrent and thundering message that Bosnia is an untenable and tenuous roposition. An eruption is afoot.
      This is the third horseman.
      The new leaders of the new Croatia are adept at signing the tunes the West likes to hear. They keep their distance from their Bosnian-Croat brethren with the same unmitigated zeal that they applied to the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs with the murderous help of now shunned ones. Yet, should Bosnia be reduced to ethnic smithereens, Croatia, as well as Serbia, are not likely to sit idle and watch their compatriots slaughtered by Afghan and Saudi mujaheedin or harried by each other. A re-ignition of the war in campestral Bosnia - and all bets are off, including the Dayton wager. Another Serb-Croat encounter will rock the very foundations of the hallucinatory "New Order" in the Balkan.
      This is the fourth horseman.
      And then there is Vojvodina. Populated by businesslike Serbs and civil Hungarians, it never really felt like part of Serbia the rustic and bombastic. Restless Magyars across the border seek to force Serbia to make amends for dolorous injustices real and imaginary.
      Nationalist politicians agitate, secret services clash secretly, journalist remonstrate, the province does flourishing (though often illicit) business with Hungary and spawned a small but intellectually influential independence minded movement. It is a Kosovo in the making, saddled by historic animosities no less intense. It is seething, though in a cultured, Austro-Hungarian manner.
      This is the fifth, dark, horseman.
      The protean Balkan nations have perfected the art of backstabbing. They now consider Serbia to be a vanquished, effete and submissive nation, kow-towing to the West's demands and attuned to its every whim. In other words: in an ideal condition to be pulled asunder.
      How wrong they are. And what a dear price they - and the West - are going to pay for this fateful misreading of the Serbs.


Slobodan Milosevic is Dead

After a tense and bullet-filled standoff, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was finally arrested ostentatiously one Sunday morning, probably to placate the Americans and secure Western aid. The previous night, a policeman claimed to have heard him muttering that he will not "go to jail (or be taken) alive."
      This troubling comment attributed to Milosevic emphasizes an unpleasant truth. Everyone would be better off if Milosevic were to die. Mysteriously, of course, in a serendipitous car accident, or a suicide in his jail cell.
      Or, mercifully and less obtrusively, in a sudden onslaught of lethal pneumonia, in line with his advanced age. To his own dwindling camp, he has become a political albatross and a nagging embarrassment. His bills are mercifully paid by the state (with the exception of his armed and often drunk bodyguards) but his retinue was reduced by law to one aging personal secretary and one, potentially traitorous, bodyguard.
      Milosevic is known to frequent the offices of the Socialist Party of Serbia and complain about his current position for hours, in long and convoluted prose.
      He is now nothing more than a reminder of an age best forgotten, the repressed guilt of millions, and a threat to the high and mighty. He knows too much about too many. His continued life may be a luxury few can afford, including members of Serbia's "new" political elite. Yugoslavia's political scene is best understood in terms of primitive crime gangs fighting it out, Chicago-style, for control of the territory and its attendant smuggling rackets and monopolies. The Milosevic clan has lost.
      The winners are now at each other's jugular for turf and pelf - as evidenced by the recent clashes between the narcissistic Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's prime minister, and the closet-nationalist Vojislav Kostunica. They cannot extradite Milosevic to The Hague, not due to a misguided sense of nationalistic pride, but because omerta and vendetta - the twin deterrents to snitching - are powerless there. Free to talk, he might, and if he does, there is no counting how many heads will roll - "reformist", and "democratic", and "law-abiding" heads as well as "genocidal" and "criminal" ones.
      The distinctions that the West draws between the orthobiotic current lot and their fungible predecessors are mere delusions. "Democracy" and "structural reform" are useful buzzwords, which serve to tranquillize those pugnacious Serbs who authentically strive to modernity and meritocracy. And they are great at securing a larger share of the dwindling generosity of the West.
      President Kostunica, for instance, kept the murderous head of the Serb secret police, Rade Markovic, in power until January 2001, giving him enough time to shred evidence and intimidate witnesses. Milosevic threatens all this.
      In a land of overpowering fatalism - bred by centuries of maleficent oppression, refractory mismanagement and romanticized recklessness - untimely death is perceived as both inevitable and a legitimate tool of policy (as is backstabbing).
      Political assassinations serve to resolve long standing conflicts, to remove the obstinately undesirable, to rectify perceived injustice, to further a political goal, to redistribute rights and wealth and to turn a new, blood-stained page. Politicians, businessmen, journalists and vociferous intellectuals assume this risk as a matter of course.
      Vuk Draskovic, the mercurial opposition leader, and his family were the victims of a botched hit and run "accident" 18 months ago. Four people died, including his brother-in-law. He survived. Peter Rajic, a state security clerk, who leaked documents implicating the state security services in the mysterious accident - died in a car accident himself.
      The aforementioned Rade Markovic, the former chief of the much feared Secret Police will likely be charged with murder in the Draskovic attempt.
      Slavko Curuvija, an editor of an opposition newspaper, was shot dead in April 1999. A former President of Serbia, Ivan Stambolic, an erstwhile friend turned fierce critic of Milosevic, vanished in August 2000, never to be seen again.
      The paramilitary and crime lord Arkan (Zeljko Raznjatovic) was executed in the Inter-Continental Hotel in Belgrade about a year ago. JAT's general director - privy to the smuggling on his airplanes of suitcases of cash, jewelry and gold by party functionaries and mobsters - was gunned down outside his home in May 1999. This is a very partial list. Milosevic knows all this. What is he doing to protect himself?
      It would be wrong to write him off. He still maintains an iron grip (though weakening by the day) on the shredded Socialist Party of Serbia and, though uxorious, on his wife's political organization, as well. His philistine confidants and collaborators have metastasized and penetrated every social cell, political and economic.
      The police, the secret service and, to a lesser extent, the army, are flooded with his loyalists and cronies - as are recently privatized state firms. After a spastic bout of revanchism in which some Milosevic-era managers were removed from their lucrative posts and the boards of some media outlets replaced, the "new" politicians assimilated the old, infected structures and position-holders (with the exception of a few, rather symbolic and hitherto futile, arrests).
      The New Serbia is very old and disturbingly familiar. Milosevic - through extortion or promotion - can still make trouble. The more the reason for his opponents to get rid of him.


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