TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/051192/05119930.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 9.0 KB | 179 lines

                                                                                THE BALKANS, Page 48

Why Do They Keep On Killing?


Exhaustion may be the only way to stop the hatreds that have rent
the old Yugoslavia

By JILL SMOLOWE -- Reported by Bonnie Angelo/New York, James L.
Graff/Belgrade and William Mader/London


    "I proclaim the Federal republic of Yugoslavia," intoned
Bogdana Levakov, leader of the parliament in Belgrade, as a new
flag was hoisted minus the red star of the old communist
Yugoslavia. The star was not all that was gone: this Yugoslavia
consists of just two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, with less
than half the territory and less than half the 23.9 million
people that constituted the nation of six republics a year ago.
Only a handful of other countries sent representatives to honor
the launch of the self-proclaimed new Yugoslavia.

    Even as the old Yugoslavia is cut apart, blood continues
to flow. For 10 months now, this has been no tranquil
subdivision but a vicious battle among ethnic and religious
groups in which principles of self-determination conflict with
respect for territorial integrity. And as the relentless loss
of lives and the destruction of old and lovely cities continue,
the U.S. and its European allies wonder who is to blame and what
it will take to stop the killing.

    The ill-attended ceremony in Belgrade symbolized the
diplomatic isolation that the U.S. and other powers are trying
to impose on Serbia. Their intent is to force the fiercely
nationalistic leader, Slobodan Milosevic, to stop what looks to
most of the world like aggression against the breakaway
republics of the old federation. But moral suasion, coupled with
the explicit threat of economic sanctions, has as yet achieved
nothing. Instead, the warfare among Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and
Slavic Muslims has given the world a lesson in the true -- and
terrible -- meaning of the often loosely used term
Balkanization. If the proprietors of the new world order regard
this as a test case of their ability to defuse ethnic warfare
anywhere, they have so far resoundingly failed.

    Any hopes that the proclamation of a shrunken Yugoslavia
might prove a key to peace died within days. In the name of
protecting the Serb minority in Bosnia, predominantly Serb army
troops and local militia poured artillery shells into towns and
fought pitched battles with Croats and Slavic Muslims in the
capital, Sarajevo. The recent fighting in Bosnia has added at
least 300 deaths to the 10,000 killed -- the bulk of them in
Croatia -- since Croatia and Slovenia declared their
independence last spring. The federal army has withdrawn from
Slovenia, and in Croatia the presence of a U.N. peacekeeping
force has helped reinforce the sense of a shaky peace. But
fighting still flares occasionally, and political talks have
failed to produce even a glimmer of a lasting peace. Throughout
the former republics, the warfare has driven a million refugees
from their homes, including 400,000 Bosnians who have fled in
the past month.

    Most Western observers put primary blame for the desperate
situation on Milosevic and his Serb followers. By this reading,
their incessant attempts to dominate the other ethnic groups in
Yugoslavia caused every erstwhile republic but tiny Montenegro
to secede. Then Milosevic sought to salvage a kind of Greater
Serbia from the wreckage by encouraging Serb-populated regions
of the breakaway republics to resist secession -- and providing
the crude military means to do so. Around U.N. headquarters in
New York City, some diplomats are reminded of the way Hitler
used the supposed need to protect German minorities in
Czechoslovakia as an excuse to subjugate those countries.

    Lord Carrington, the European Community's designated
mediator, is not alone, however, when he insists that Milosevic
bears most, but by no means all, of the blame. The Serb leader
may have summoned the nationalist genie, but it was a spirit
just waiting to be uncorked from its tightly capped bottle.
Throughout a 74-year existence, Yugoslavia has been a powder keg
of ethnic, national and religious hatreds that go back for
centuries. The country that is now vanishing was an artificial
creation of conflicting cultures, patched together in the wake
of two world wars. Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim
Slavs were held in check only by strongman Josip Broz Tito's
centralized communist system. By the time of his death in 1980,
the country was already unraveling. Political power had
decentralized, the relatively prosperous economy was faltering,
and old tensions began to rise. The richer republics of the
northwest, Slovenia and Croatia, felt their development was
hampered by the poorer republics of Montenegro, Macedonia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. Serbia was hated by the rest for
dominating the government and the army; in turn it saw
preserving unity at all costs as a mission, given weight by
fears that Serbs in other republics were threatened by emerging
nationalist regimes.

    Slovenia departed first, and the federal government's
attempt to hold it by force was cut short by a feisty military
defense and the fact that Slovenia had no Serb minority to
justify Belgrade's interference. That successful bid for freedom
emboldened Croatia, where Serbs are a widely dispersed minority.
President Franjo Tudjman's inflammatory and nationalistic
rhetoric also stirred Serb fears of a reprise of the genocidal
campaign against them by Croat fascists during World War II. Now
Bosnia, largely Muslim and Croat but with a 1.4 million Serb
ethnic component, has seceded, and Serbia sees the pattern
repeating. Once again Serbs feel themselves victimized by an
uncaring world. Mihailo Markovic, vice president of the
Socialist Party of Serbia, asks, "How can the world accept the
reunification of Germany and want to disintegrate the unity of
Serbs?"

    The answer is that Yugoslavia's disintegration is
internally driven; international onlookers are merely going
along for the ride. Centuries of simmering ethnic hatreds are
now so fully aroused that each embattled group is convinced that
its opponents -- many of whom were friendly neighbors up until
a few months ago -- are guilty of unbounded perfidy. In Bosnia,
where Croats, Serbs and Muslims have lived peaceably side by
side for decades, the Serbs have already forced Muslim President
Alija Izetbegovic to agree to a tripartite division of the newly
independent country into ethnic regions. The absurdity of it all
is on display in Bosnia's schools, where children not old enough
to shave sport Serb, Croat or Muslim badges and tattoos.

    What has the West done in response? The kindest statement
might be that thus far, the Western allies have failed to get
their act together. The E.C., which seems best placed to handle
the problem, has been divided from the start over whether to
push confederation on the feuding republics or embrace
independence for each. Only a determined nudge from Germany
brought such recognition. Peacemaking efforts, while persistent
and well-intentioned, have proved largely ineffectual as all but
one of the 15 Community-orchestrated cease-fires have come and
gone over the past six months.

    The U.N. has taken a hand with its deployment of
peacekeeping troops to Croatia -- 8,000 of the authorized 14,000
are already in place. But now hand-wringing has begun over
whether, given the human and financial costs, to put such a
force in Bosnia. Some observers caution that Croatia is a poor
example: however unintended, the presence of the Blue Helmets
in that country has served to safeguard Serbian conquests.

    The Western allies' failure to concur on a policy is
partly a refraction of concerns that they might only inflame or,
worse, get bogged down in Yugoslavia's mess. Diplomatic
isolation and economic sanctions against Serbia have not yet
been pursued with any seriousness because no one knows if such
hardball tactics will scare Milosevic -- or merely strengthen
his territorial ambitions. At the moment, there is widespread
agreement that recognition of the new Yugoslavia is undesirable
until Serbia removes its army from Bosnia. It is a tactic that
might have some effect: without recognition, Yugoslavia stands
to lose its U.N. seat, as well as its membership in the IMF and
other international bodies.

    The West can prod, but only the leaders of former
Yugoslavia can decide on a course. For now,they seem bent on
further anarchy. "Too many people, too often and too fast, are
prepared to resort to the use of the gun and the bayonet," says
Lawrence Eagleburger, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State. As Lebanon
demonstrated through 16 years of misery and chaos, no outside
force can impose peace on a country -- or leaders -- bent on
war. Perhaps the West can only sit back and wait until the
ethnic groups feel they have no more blood to give. Then, when
they come for help, the West should be prepared to step in with
peacekeeping troops, negotiators and lots of encouragement.