Software Vault: The Diamond Collection/The Diamond Collection (Software Vault)(Digital Impact).ISO/cdr16/yugo0395.zip/CLIP9505.TXT

Text File | 1995-03-30 | 44KB | 738 lines

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REASSEMBLING YUGOSLAVIA

By Flora Lewis
   Columnist, New York Times Syndicate

       (excerpt of portion pertaining to the Balkans)

   After all, the only solution to Yugoslavia is Yugoslavia. That is
certainly not everybody's view as the war in Bosnia rumbles on to the
end of a third year, the ceasefire in Croatia is being questioned, and
the Balkans remain generally unstable.  But some have been convinced
all along that it was a dreadful, avoidable mistake for the six
republics in the former Federation of Yugoslavia to cut all ties, and
more are coming to see the restoration of key links, including not
only trade and communications but also legal and political ties, as
the only basis for a durable peace.

   The American-brokered agreement between the predominantly Muslim
Bosnian government and the Bosnian Croat leaders is the pivotal point
for reversing direction and building a new confederal basis to end the
war.  The accord is not yet firmly founded and institutionalized
because continued hostilities with the Bosnian Serbs leave borders and
areas of responsibility unsettled.  But included in the negotiation
was the prospect of special, constitutional-type ties with the
Croatian state.  That can become part of a settlement only when the
Bosnian Serbs accept a plan for a Bosnian federation, and then they
surely will insist at the least on confederal provisions with Serbia
that are no weaker than those the Bosnian Croats have with Croatia.
Such ties would be a strong inducement to the Bosnian Serbs to accept
a settlement that would not separate them from the rest of Bosnia.  On
such a basis, Serbia and Croatia themselves would restore a loose
integration that could provide a satisfactory solution to the demands
of the Croatian Serbs in Krajina.  Montenegro would certainly follow
Serbia, and Macedonia, which never really wanted to be left all alone
and is having a desperate time facing Greek embargo and hostility,
would doubtless be delighted to sign back on with its former partners.
Then, mirabile dictu, Yugoslavia would be back on the map again, the
same old Yugoslavia -- minus Slovenia -- as be, fore the 1991 breakup,
but with rather different, much less constraining intemal relations
among the constituent republics.

   Such a loose confederation is exactly what the Slovenes and Croats
had been demanding for several years before they finally gave up in
frustration at Serbian intransigence and proclaimed independence in
June 1991.  It is what Europe and the United States should have
insisted upon, associating Russia with the mediation much earlier,
instead of the futile and hypocritical pledge to support whatever
settlement the Yugoslavs accepted among themselves.  It was obvious
to all that the Yugoslavs, without outside pressure and inducement,
were not going to agree on even a peaceable divorce.  Indeed, war
broke out immediately and conflict has been raging ever since.

   When the powers decided to recognize independent Slovenia and
Croatia in early 1992, the United Nations was able to gain acceptance
for a ceasefire on fighting there and dispatch peacekeepers to monitor
the lines established between ethnic Serbs in Croatia and the Zagreb-
led republic.  But that line will not now be accepted as a border by
Zagreb, which is growing impatient with the U.N. because its presence
consolidates the partition of the state.  Peace will require some kind
of agreement on the integrity of Croatia with significant
constitutional guarantees and autonomy for its ethnic Serbs.  Such
provisions will be far more feasible within the framework of a loose
new Yugoslav confederation than with the establishment of several
totally independent successor states.

   It was the recognition of an independent Croatia that left Bosnia
with the choice of remaining in a rump Yugoslavia with Serbia and
Montenegro, in effect accepting full Serbian hegemony, or of declaring
its own independence in turn.  The government of Sarajevo was well
aware of the risks, and urged the outside powers not to consecrate the
demise of Yugoslavia, to no avail.  Indeed, both Alija Izetbegovic of
Bosnia and Kiro Gligorov of Macedonia openly opposed the breakup of
Yugoslavia.  So, at foreign urging and with no acceptable visible
alternative, Bosnia held a referendum on independence.  The Serbs
boycotted the vote, the Muslims and Croats voted in favor,
independence was declared and recognized, and fighting began.

   This tragic scenario was foreseen and publicly discussed.  What had
not been foreseen was the extraordinary ferocity, the cruelty, the
wanton and deliberate massacre of civilians launched to redefine the
area's demography.  "Ethnic cleansing" was introduced to the modern
political vocabulary of horrors.  It could only be brutal because
populations were largely mixed and no amount of creative map-making
could have produced a mutually acceptable map of separation. Because
of mixed marriages over several generations, many people did not know
what allegiance to profess and had to be convinced to choose sides
with relentless force.

   Foreign intervention -- the dispatch of humanitarian aid and the
establishment of protected areas -- has now produced a kind of status
quo but not peace.  Hostilities go on and on since the foreign
intervention prevents a military resolution of the conflict.  The
serial attempts at mediation have all failed, and there is no reason
to think that any new mediation rooted in the same assumptions -- that
territory must be apportioned to separate people so they can form
"self-governments" on distinct ethnic or religious lines -- will work
any better. Whatever the allocation of land, it will rest on injustice
and there will be resistance.  Whatever the rules of division, there
will be a search for support from kin and sympathizers on the other
side of the new lines.  There must be a new approach to the conflict.

THE NEW OPPORTUNITY

   There have been two major changes in circumstances since the war
began.  One is that Serbia, hurt by the international embargo despite
its many leaks, is no longer quite so bellicose and determined to show
the world its power.  Slobodan Milosevic is still its undisputed
leader, but he has had some trouble controlling the wild nationalists
and thugs he unleashed.  He has less room for maneuver than he had
anticipated.  While he makes the most of foreign denunciations to
mobilize resentful, insulated Serb opinion, his country's isolation
has proven a costly burden.  This relative moderation of Serbian
ambition and aggressiveness may be temporary, to gain a respite and
recoup strength; but it is a new factor in the situation and could be
reinforced in an attempt at an overall settlement.

   The second change is ttic fury, hatred, and thirst for revenge that
have inevitably built up as the atrocities have continued.  It is a
nasty little myth that Yugoslavia was an "artificial" state that could
not have been expected to hold together without sheer force.  The
South Slavs had a disparate, eventful history and never had a chance
to form a state together until the Austro-Hungarian empire was
demolished in the First World War.  But Yugoslavia's coming a bit late
on the European state scene did not make it a less authentic country
than, say, Germany or Italy, which had formed unified states only a
few decades earlier.

   People forget the Catholic and Protestant split in Germany or the
very different political characters of southern and northern Italy.
"These people have been fighting each other for centuries," a phrase
used by President Bill Clinton, is a formula consciously or
subconsciously devised by leaders who need an excuse to shrug off the
outbreak of a major war in the heart of modern Europe and avoid
intervention.  It is simply untrue.  There is no comparison in the
historical record of hostilities, however measured, with the amount of
fighting that once went on between French and Germans, or French and
English, who have now joined their political fate to the European
Union. The one real precedent of terrible bitterness among the South
Slavs was in World War II, when the Nazis formed a puppet state in
Croatia that rivaled the S.S. for cruelty.  Alongside national
resistance to the Germans, there was a very niean civil war, but the
divide was ideologicat -- communists versus monarchists -- and crossed
all religious, ethnic, and territorial lines.

   A new book by Robert Donia and John Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina: A
Tradition Betrayed, sets the record straight in great, scholarly
detail.  It recounts that a "centuries-long tradition of accommodation
and mutual coexistence of different religious communities and
nationalities" characterized Bosnia until only recently, along with
"historical patterns of coalition politics and compromise, coupled
with deeply-rooted traditions of cooperation and coexistence in
everyday life." The people are of the same stock, but because of
Turkish policies during the centuries of occupation, city-dwellers and
landowners tended to become Muslim while peasants remained Croat or
Serb.  There was no real consciousness of distinct ethnic identity
until the first provincial peasant rebellion in 1875, a phenomenon of
social position, not of nationality.

   Now it is undoubtedly going to be much harder to recreate a sense
of community.  How many people would want to return to the homes from
which they were "cleansed" by their neighbors is an unanswerable
question at this stage. What kind of judicial punishment and
retribution for crimes against humanity will be required to preclude
bloody waves of private vengeance is difficult to foresee, and it is
even more difficult to see how trials and reparations can be carried
out under the necessary conditions of compromise that are the only
hope for peace.  There is not going to be any unconditional surrender.
But the hardest part is finding the terms for ending the war.  If that
can be done, healing the wounds is another kind of enterprise that can
develop its own momentum, just as making war did.

EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE

   One of the people who has been arguing from the start for a
reconstituted Yugoslavia is Boris Vukobrat, a wealthy Serb businessman
who was bom in Croatia, married a Bosnian Muslim, and now lives in
Paris.  He has established the Peace and Crises Management Foundation,
and he works tirelessly to promote the cause among powerful statesmen,
intellectuals, and whoever offers support. He has published a small
book, based on the work of a committee of international experts,
entitled Proposals for a New Commonwealth of the Republics of
ex-Yugoslavia.  It contains draft declarations on fundamental rights
of all citizens and rights and freedoms of ethnic groups; a draft
constitution for the constituent regional republics, leaving open
whether the commonwealth tinking the republics would be based on a
constitution or a treaty; a plan for creating a number of regions
(like counties or shires) within the republics not based simply on
ethnic criteria; and a document on economic reconstruction
emphasizing the need for coordination of monetary and credit policies.

   Vukobrat is realistic enough to present his proposals as a staged
plan for gradual implementation, not as a blueprint.  But even
offering it for discussion is a step toward filling the vacuum that
prevents an end to the war.  It provides a vision of what might come
next, an incentive to move on from fighting to planning how life will
then go on. In June 1994, he attended a conference in Geneva of
distinguished intellectuals from all parts of the former Yugoslavia.
They issued a statement of the principles on which peace can be
established, including democracy, human rights, free communications,
and rejection of any border changes by force.  Vukobrat's continuing
efforts have brought no concrete results as yet, but they have created
a core group of people eager to look beyond the battlefield and
establish a basis for postwar coexistence and cooperation.  These
people are not just looking ahead; they are trying to break the
impasse that makes peace impossible for lack of a common view of what
it should bring. The list of participants was an impressive mixture of
some 30 artists, professors, business and community leaders,
journalists, and even a Catholic priest.  Their recommendations were
unanimous.  Each participant spoke on his or her own but with the
knowledge and encouragement of many others.

   That kind of thinking is not encouraged by the people who hold
power and are conducting the conflict, but it keeps surfacing when
the opportunity arises.  The New York Times's Roger Cohen reports
the "outrage" of Mimo Sahinpasic, a popular Sarajevo radio show
host, when the Bosnian minister of culture ordered him to stop playing
"aggressor music," that is, songs performed by Serbs.  "There are
Serbian singers -- like Djordje Balasevic -- whose antiwar songs have
done more for Bosnia than 80 percent of our leaders," the show host
said.  "So I ignored the letter.  I'm in Bosnia to fight for what's
left of the Yugoslav idea, not to live in a one-party state."

   Such attempts at attitude control by authorities and resistance to
that control are mounting, creating tensions even within the Bosnian
governing party.  Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic wrote a letter of
protest against growing authoritarianism, using as an example of its
effect the humiliation he felt as a child because his father wanted to
listen to Voice of America but had to make sure the neighbors could
not hear because it was forbidden by the communist authorities.  In
the atmosphere of inflamed emotion, which leaders need to keep their
people mobilized and which foes promote with renewed attacks, it is
difficult to measure how much support could be won for the idea of a
commonwealth.  It takes courage to speak out against prevailing storms
of passion inside what was Yugoslavia, but people do, in virtually all
the republics.  Those who do are coming under mounting official
pressure.  Recently, Milosevic took over Borba, the one remaining
independent Belgrade daily.  Its staff tried to defy the order, but
deprived of money, a distribution system, and regular printers, it was
reduced to little more than an underground publication that
nonetheless found eager readers when the journalists themselves took
to selling it on the streets at three times the usual price.

   The widely known dissident Mihajlo Mihajlov, who was persecuted in
communist days for his democratic views, has written against the
danger of accepting ethnic or religious partition as the basis for
solving the conflict.  "Acceptance of the nationalistic version of
self-determination, which in practice is the international community's
posture today, comes in the end to an acceptance of genocide," he
said.  He denounces as a myth the idea that it was the fall of the
dictatorship that unleashed ethnic conflict.  "In 1987 -- before
democratization began -- the press in each of the Yugoslav republics
was already becoming much more nationalistic.  In all of the republics,
the major media were monopolies of the republican authorities (as they
continue to be today).  As one Yugoslav writer said, 'Before anyone
was killed by bullets, they were killed ten times over by words."'
Mihajlov points out that what happened in Yugoslavia was not a
breakdown of normal relations among people after the communists lost
power, it was the replacement of a communist dictatorship by
nationalist dictatorships, necessarily rivals.  That is a most
important part of the development, which was ignored by the many
Western observers who scarcely noticed Yugoslavia until the killing
began.  Yugoslavia faced a dilemma of transformation not so different
from that in Russia and the East when communism could no longer serve
as the organizing principle of power.  And -- this is really the crux
of the matter -- to escape transformation to democratic principles and
the free market, key leaders shifted to nationalism as an alternative
base that would maintain the authoritarian state.  It was the refusal
to move toward real reform that made nationalism necessary, and that
continues to make it dominant.

   Serbia's Milosevic was the first to grasp the idea of that
approach, stirring historic Serb sentiment about the rise of ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo.  Even moderate, well-educated people responded to
his appeal because they felt Serbs were being pushed out of their
venerated heartland and that it had to be stopped.  But, of course,
skewing the regime inherited from josip Broz Tito to make Serbian
nationalism do the job of the discredited Communist party made it
impossible to maintain the federation.  Milosevic knew that all along,
and maneuvered around it, just as Boris Yeltsin knew when he planned
to challenge Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership by becoming president of
Russia that his success would doom the Soviet Union.  If the largest,
strongest part of a multinational or multiethnic state is persuaded
to make its own specific traditions and ambitions the basis of power,
the other parts will also look inward and to their specific past to
protect their share of identity.  That is what happened to Croatia,
where Franjo Tudjman built himself up by more or tess mirroring the
Milosevic strategy. (Something similar happened in Slovenia, but its
circumstances are different.  It is more Alpine than South Slav, and
more homogeneous than much of Yugoslavia.) There were people in the
federal government who tried valiantly to head off the collision that
Milosevic and Tudjman were engineering, but they were neither strong
nor charismatic, got little outside support, and in the end were
undermined and swept away.  Today, after so much blood has flowed
with so few positive effects, their voices may carry further.  It is
nonsense to claim that weak gestures to sustain the federation by then
president George Bush and then secretary of state James Baker gave
Milosevic the green light to go to war, ostensibly to "save
Yugoslavia." On the contrary, Milosevic complained bitterly that the
State Department was "anti-Serb." He was out alt atong to blow up the
country, create a "greater Serbia," and damn the rest.

   Naturally, the war has done nothing to promote the shift to
democracy and market economy that was the alternative to Yugoslavia's
intensifying problems during the 1980s, the alternative that the
promotion of rival nationalisms was designed to avoid.  Tito teft an
intricate system of regional checks in order to prevent the rise of
another Yugoslav dictator in his own image.  In that sense, he
succeeded too well.  Since the central authority coutd not dominate,
the republics went off in their own directions.  White he was alive,
Tito could settle frictions and disagreements by the personal force of
his own position.  His successors could not.  Trains had to be stopped
at the republic borders to change locomotives because the local
officials demanded the right to provide their own.  Republics printed
the federal currency on their own, without reference to the central
bank, bringing hyperinflation and undermining the promising federat
currency reform at the end of the decade.  At one point, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), asked to help with a stabilization
program, found that nobody could answer its question about the total
of Yugoslavia's foreign exchange debt.  Various republic authorities
had borrowed abroad without bothering to tell each other or the
center. It took the IMF, on its own initiative, to collect and add up
the essential information.  The total debt was a staggering $20
billion.

   Officials in Belgrade, in Zagreb, and in Ljubljana complained in
the mid-1980s about the impossibility of making things work in this
uncoordinated way.  It seemed there were only two obvious ways of
dealing with the problem: Either restore a central dictatorship, which
would revive the discipline of central planning, or establish a
democracy and a free market as an approach to economic and political
coherence.  Neither one was acceptable to the people in power, and the
rest of the people were not allowed to voice their opinions.  A Croat
who had spent 40 years in exile because of the communist regime and
who had returned to serve as a Zagreb diplomat after independence said
that in the late 1980s there were more political prisoners in
Yugoslavia than in all the East European states of the Soviet bloc
combined.  Show trials of dissidents and outspoken writers ended in
heavy sentences.

   Even Bosnia, which looked toward democracy after the communists
were ousted and independence proclaimed, is turning back to the
authoritarianism that Serbia and Croatia never really left.  Slavko
Santic, a commentator for the struggling independent Sarajevo paper
Oslobodenje, told reporter Roger Cohen that the Party of Democratic
Action (headed by Izetbegovic) "is on its way to becoming a
totalitarian party, just like the Communists were.  We have no
political opposition to speak of here, police are everywhere, and
state jobs increasingly require party membership." Others have also
warned that Bosnia is turning into a one-party state.  Ethnic and
religious fury is needed to sustain cohesion in the absence of
democratic pluralism. "Demons must be created, and heroes, to justify
senseless suffering," Cohen writes.  "The alternative is to look the
enemy in the eye and recognize a brother, ethnically indistinguishable
and condemned to inhabit the same tand."

   That is particularly true of Bosnia, where people are so mixed, but
it has been true of Yugoslavia in general and it could be true again.
The overall issue is a free society, and in that circumstance there is
so much that people have in common, so much they need from each other,
that there is a real incentive to reconstitute something that could be
called Yugoslavia.  All of the breakaway republics desperately want to
join the European Union because they know they have little chance to
develop and prosper on their own, closed to their neighbors.  For now,
they ignore the obvious reality that they will have to trade,
communicate, and let people come and go once the fighting stops.  They
behave as though they expect to be part of the big European community
while denying community with neighbors who once again will be
indispensable partners.  But pushed, most ardent defenders of separate
and complete sovereignty say they will of course have to have economic
ties, some kind of common market at the least, and probably more.  The
basic issue remains borders and the protection of minorities, just as
it was when the war began.  And the solution has to be Yugoslav-wide,
rejecting all border changes imposed by force and guaranteeing the
rights of minorities.  That is the one way to find a peace that can
last and to satisfy moral imperatives that would be mocked by drawing
up new lines of partition.  As people from several republics point
out, all the plans proposed so far by one or another set of
representatives of the "international community" boil down to dividing
up Bosnia, and they fail because the combatants are not persuaded that
accepting a divided peace is better than continuing to fight for their
aims.

   The Vukobrat plan undoubtedly has flaws and is not meant to serve
as a definitive solution, but the underlying idea comes closer to a
constructive direction than anything in Vance-Owen, Owen-Stoltenberg,
Contact Group, or other proposals.  There are aspects of the plan that
enjoy support from one side or another, though the idea of a new
Yugoslavia does not yet resonate on the world scene.  For example, a
senior Croat official points out that Zagreb would favor the idea of
linking Bosnian Serbs in a Bosnian federation that would have special
ties with both Croatia and Serbia because it would give a kind of
insurance against the possibility of Bosnian Croats being overwhelmed
by Muslims who might tend toward fundamentalism in a smaller republic.
Already, on occasion, Croats and Serbs in Bosnia have joined in
fighting the Muslim-dominated forces, despite the federal agreement.

      As to the place of the minority Serbs in Croatia, they were at
one point offered dual citizenship in Croatia and Serbia if they
chose, providing they gave up the demand to change Croatian borders
made at the outset of the war when the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army
thought it was an irresistible powerhouse that could take what it
wanted.  Dual citizenship is not the same as being part of a confederal
Yugoslavia, but it is a step in that direction.

   The main argument against looking to Yugoslavia again is the trauma
of the war and its atrocities.  Branko Salaj, Croatia's ambassador to
France, points out that his country would have been quite satisfied
with some kind of confederal settlement in the first place. He is an
unusually reasonable man who spent 40 years in exile, mostly in
Sweden, because he was anticommunist all along.  He notes in half-
joking irony that Milosevic's nationalist extremism helped democrats
in the other republics because their communist leaders realized they
had to offer reforms to win public support.  But now, proclamations of
sovereignty have aroused their own enthusiasm and, perhaps more to the
point, have established political leaders who want no limits on the
power they have gained.

   Obviously, it will not be easy to reverse gears and persuade people
to try to live alongside each other again.  But the prospect would
provide hope for the many who are disgusted with war but feel they are
offered no honorable or tolerable alternative.  A battlefield solution
is conceivable if everybody else decides to get out of the way and let
the fighters slaughter each other until one side or the other cries
uncle.  That is what the French accuse the Americans of doing with the
proposal to end the embargo on arms for Bosnia, and they are almost
certainly right that it would lead to reinforcement with more arms and
fighters -- if necessary, from Serbia, and probably from Russia -- and
widen the war.  In any case, it is a way to make sure that only might
matters, that world order comes only out of the barrel of the gun, and
that the twentieth century ends with no more sense of humanity and
decency than it knew at its worst.  Furthermore, it is a way to make
sure that the vanquished will seek to turn the tables another day.

   It is not possible to say at this point whether a confederal
Yugoslavia or a Yugoslav Commonweatth will work.  Nothing else has so
far, and there is not the slightest sign that what has been proposed
as yet by outside powers can bring a settlement.  One thing that
practically all the people directly invotved agree on is that a
settlement is not to be found in smatter and smatter fragments,
focusing in turn on what to do about Bihac, what to do about Gorazde,
what to do about Sarajevo, and so on.  It is to be found in moving up
the scale, not down, trying to unite interests rather than dividing
them into ever more limited pieces.  It is true that the United
Nations, NATO, Europe, the United States, and the "international
community" look terrible in their impotence and indecision in the
face of this war.  They, too, would have much to gain by helping the
people of Yugoslavia find themselves Yugoslav again.

======================================================================

From news.alpha.net!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!
     news.starnet.net!wupost!ukma!usenet Wed Mar 15 19:15:45 1995
Path: news.alpha.net!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!
      news.starnet.net!wupost!ukma!usenet
From: [e-mail] (scott david orr)
Newsgroups: alt.war
Subject: Re: Greece/Turkey conflict
Date: 13 Mar 1995 00:31:16 GMT
Organization: University of Kentucky
Lines: 134
Message-ID: <3k03ok$[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
            <3jikh3$[e-mail]>
            <3jptpe$[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: nx49.mik.uky.edu

>Damir Matanic ([e-mail]) wrote:
>
>Bulgaria helping Macedonia? I think not, there is Bulgars living in
>eastern Macedonia, they are more likly going to thank the Serbs for
>the opertunity to annex that chunk of Macedonia as well as the
>Albanians doing the same with the Albania minority in Macedonia.
>Macedonia isnt its own nation, its a nation of Albanians, Serbs,
>Bulgars and greeks, all who want to be back with their own mother
>countries. I bet if Macedonia was invaded with it 5,000 man strong
>Army and they called for a Mobalization, do you think any one will
>respond ? NO!

A gross and somewhat inaccurate simplicification.  As far I know the
primary ethnic groups in Macedonia (in rough order of size) are
Macedonians, Albanians, and Bulgarians (I'm sure there are some
Serbians too but so far they aren't much of a political force)--the
main conflict now is between Macedonians and Albanians.

First off, the Macedonians are _not_ Greeks.  At least they don't think
of themselves as Greek (and in ethnicity perception is everything).
They speak a language called Macedonian.  They share elements of their
heritage (including the language) with the Macedonians in northern
Greece, most of whom inhabit a province called Macedonia.  Herein lies
our first problem: Serbia and Greece split Macedonia (and the
Macedonians) when the western part of the Ottoman Empire was
dismembered in the Balkan Wars just prior to World War I.  Both states
had territories called "Macedonia" inhabited by large percentages of
Macedonians.  Hence, Greece feels threatened by the independence of
the Yugoslav half of Macedonia, which it feels might have irredentist
claims on the Greek Macedonia.  This is normal, and not unusual in this
part of the world, but Greece has a tendency to go overboard at times
in its international relations.  Hence, it has not only refused to
recognize Macedonia (insisting it should be called Skopje, after the
capital city), but blockaded it (most shipments to Macedonia would have
to come through Yugoslavia--which is itself embargoed--or through the
Greek port of Thessaloniki.  Greece has also prevented the EU from
aiding Macedonia in any way.  Ok, so the Greeks and Macedonians (the
ones in Macedonia anyway) hate each other.

Next stop, Turkey.  Greece was ruled by Turkey for hundreds of years as
part of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.  Which is to say, turnabout's'
fair play, since Greece colonized the western coast of Turkey in an
earlier era (remember Troy?  It was in Turkey), and let's not forget
the Macedonian empire (remember Macedonia?), which controlled both of
them but had strong Greek influences.  As it now stands Greece, though
smaller and less powerful militaryily than Turkey, posesses most of
the islands of the Aegean Sea, including some distressingly close to
the Turkish coast.  Greece and Turkey _also_ hate each other.  In fact,
this is one the main reasons they're both in NATO--had one been
admitted without the other, the unadmitted state likely would have
immediately join the Soviet camp; had neither been admitted, there's a
decent chance the Soviets would have been able to exploit the conflict
to gain control of the Turkish straits.  In recent months, in addition
to its antics in Macedonia, Greece has blocked a trade agreement
between Turkey and the EU, relenting only recently after an EU promise
to consider Cyprus for EU membership (oh, didn't we mention Cyprus?
The island is split--though it wasn't always--down the middle, with
Greeks at once end and Turks at the other.  The current government is
controlled by Greeks, Turkey doesn't recognize that government as
representing the Turkish population, and the peace is kept--rather
effectively--by a pretty much permanent U.N. peace-keeping force.).

Next stop, Albania.  Albanian immigrants have been crossing the border
with Greece illegally in large numbers--estimates are there are some
300,000 Albanians living and working illegally in Greece.  A couple of
weeks ago two Alabanians crossing the border were shot by Greek
police.  Still, relations between the two countries are pretty decent.

However, Albania and Macedonia aren't nearly as happy with each other.
Remember the poor oppressed Macedonions?  They've outlawed higher
education in the Albanian language.  To make up for the lack of
Albanian-language instrucution, the Albanians formed their own
university.  The Macedonian authorities shut it down on both occasions
that it's attempted to open.  The last time this happenned one Albanian
demonstrator was killed.

On the other hand, the Macedonians have been much friendlier to the
Albanian minority in Serb-controlled Kosovo.  In fact, for a couple of
years Macedonia harbored the members of the Kosovo territorial
government and parlaiment that were driven from Kosovo by the rump
Yugoslav (i.e., Serb) authorities.  Macedonia recently expelled this
group, exacerbating relations Albania, but improving relations with
Serbia.

Did I hear someone mention Serbia?  Make that Serbia and Montenegro,
or "rump Yugoslavia"--just don't call it Yugoslavia, that gets
terribly confusing; naturally, that's what it calls it itself,
however.  Pretty much everyone hates the Serbs, except for the
Russians (they're both Eastern Orthodox--the old Russian Slavic
Messianism) and the Greeks (who've done a pretty good job of pissing
off everyone else in the Balkans).   The Bulgarians, who are still
close to the Russians (esp. under their new Socialist [ex-Communist])
government don't seem to dislike the Serbs particularly either, and
most of the supplies that have gotten through to Serbia during the
embargo have come through Bulgaria (and maybe Romania), though the
profit motive (and a generous measure of accompanying government
corruption) probably has as much to do with this as ideological
conventions (after all, Serbia isn't going to invade Bulgaria, so
what do the Bulgarians care?).  Ok, the Bulgarians and Serbs don't
particularly like each other (I'm reasonaly sure they were on opposite
sides in at least one of the Balkan Wars) but they don't particularly
hate each other, but the Serbs and the Macedonians DO dislike one
another, and there's another (small) U.N. peacekeeping force in
Macedonia as a tripwire to prevent a Serbian (or Greek) invasion.

Ok, who does that leave?  Oh, the Bulgarians.  Well, like the Greeks,
the Bulgarians were once ruled by the Turks.  The Bulgarians have
given special attention to harassing their Turksih minority, and
post-war history has been punctuated by periodic large-scale
migrations of ethnic Turkish refugees from Bulgaria to Turkey
(alternately encourage or discouraged by one or the other of the two
states), as well as a rather nasty campaign in the 1980's to
"Bulgarize" the Turks in Bulgaria by _forcing_ them to adopt
Slavicized surnames.  Needless to say, Bulgarian-Turkish relations are
rocky, and for that reason if no other Greek-Bulgarian relations are
fairly good.  Bulgaria has, however, recently made some noises about
the Bulgrian miniorty in eastern Macedonia (all of which, again, goes
back to the division of territory in the Balkan Wars).

What does all this mean?  It mean that, with the exception of Bulgaria,
every state in the region has strained (at the very least) with most
or all of its neighbors, and tends to find its friends either outside
the region or a couple of states away (e.g., Greece and Serbia).  The
upshot is that would be very difficult how a conflict here would fall
out, and the NATO connection and U.N peace-keeping forces make thing
even more complex.  My guess is that the complicated web of mutual
hatreds, combined with the international ties, will keep any single
state from feeling confident enough to set off the bonfire.  However,
should the bonfire go up (the most probable scenario, though not IMHO
very credible, is that an expaned war in the former Yugoslavia could
somehow spread), it could conceivably suck in several of the states
in the region.  Still, even Greece, the most belligerent state in the
region (excluding, for the moment, Serbia), is rapidly burning its
political capital, both inside and outside (with the U.N., NATO, and
the EU) the region.  At present, the economic and political situation
of all of these states is rather precarious, while at the same time
none of them is sufficiently desperate and/or ostracized to do
something stupid (with the exception of Serbia--but Serbia is occupied
elsewhere).

Scott Orr

======================================================================

======================================================================
The Economist
March 18th, 1995

   A CROAT BLINKS

   The good news is that the new Croatian war due to begin on April
1st has been cancelled.  The bad news is that the new Bosnian war
scheduled to start one month later is still on. On March 12th Franjo
Tudjman, Croatia's president, announced that some of the United
Nations peacekeepers in his country could stay; he had been insisting
that they leave when their mandate ends on March 31st.  But in
neighbouring Bosnia, where a four-month truce expires on April 30th,
the prospect is bleak.

   Mr Tudjman had been under intense pressure to change his mind,
particularly from his allies in the United States and Germany.  Mr
Tudjman gave in, perhaps because he was persuaded that, if the
departure Of UN troops led to a new war against the Serbs, and it
went wrong, no one would help him.  So he has agreed that about half
the current 12,000 peacekeepers can stay.

   Another 500 troops will monitor the Serb-held parts of Croatia's
borders with Bosnia and Serbia.  Tricky details have yet to be worked
out, but, since there is no longer a deadline for the UN to leave, the
immediate threat of war has faded.  Croats, who hoped that the
expulsion of the blue helmets would allow their army to reconquer
Krajina, the area of Croatia controlled by Serbs, have been
disappointed.

   But Mr Tudjman, who is eager to hobnob with international
politicians, will be rewarded for his flexibility.  On March 23rd,
on a state visit to Washington to mark the anniversary of an accord
between Croatia and the Bosnian government, he will get his photo-call
with President Clinton.  And the European Union will soon consider
sending financial aid to his country.

   Most of the UN troops now in Croatia are stationed in the self-
proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina, the third of Croatia held by
Serbs.  Now the UN will have to patrol the same ceasefire lines with
fewer men. To boost Mr Tudjman's standing with his own people, the
Americans say the UN force on the Croatian border will "deter" arms
from being tunnelled into Krajina. In fact, the UN'S soldiers are
already there and will be far too few to stand in the way of Krajina
Serbs bringing in arms from cousins across the border.  These Serbs
say they will not object to UN policemen at border checkpoints -- so
long as they do nothing.

   Though relieved that a new war has been avoided, the Krajina Serbs
are enfeebled by internal rows.  Some have begun to contemplate Krajina
becoming an autonomous province of Croatia-as the latest international
peace plan proposes.  Others demand a full union with the Bosnian Serbs
in a "Western Serb" state that would fight Muslims and Croats and defy
the Serbian government in Belgrade.

   Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's president, continues to rebuff EU and
American demands that he recognise the legal borders of Croatia and
Bosnia, in return for a two-month suspension of international
sanctions.  Many would see such recognition as treachery.  Russia
supports Mr Milosevic when he insists that he will not make
concessions until all sanctions are lifted permanently.

   Meanwhile the Bosnian government and the Bosnian Serbs are rearming
to prepare for a new war.  The Bosnian Serbs continue to reject the
current international peace plan, which would require them to cut
their share of Bosnia from 70% to 49%. No one has any fresh diplomatic
ideas. In Sarajevo, besieging Serbs have stepped up attacks on
civilians after a Bosnian sniper killed two Serb girls.

   The Bosnian and Croatian governments have agreed on a military
cooperation pact, while the Krajina Serbs have tightened ties with the
Bosnian Serb army.  So a new Bosnian war could well spread to Croatia.
The best that can be said is that, if Mr Tudjman had not changed his
mind, former Yugoslavia would be in an even worse state.

======================================================================
World Press Review
April, 1995

   MILOSEVIC'S MUSCLE

   Now that the West is praising him for dumping his Bosnian-Serb
proteges, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic "is quietly getting on
with crushing the last remnants of opposition at home," reports Laura
Silber in the Financial Times.  "He has turned his attention to the
independent media, [the] political opposition, and national
minorities in Serbia, convinced that Western approval entitles him to
a free hand ... Almost unnoticed, the Serbian regime has unleashed a
wave of terror in its southem province of Kosovo, killing, arresting,
or harassing" ethnic Albanians.

   Meanwhile, Serbia's embargoed economy has improved -- at least on
paper. But Mariana Boyadjieva and Georgi Sharabov say in the labor-
affiliated Troud of Sofia, Bulgaria, that it may be a "propaganda
ploy." The Serbs boast they have beaten hyper-inflation, but their
products cannot be exported, limiting growth.  "Once the local
market is surfeited," they say, "the remaining ... goods will have to
be destroyed, and jobs will be curtailed."


======================================================================
World Press Review
April, 1995

   MILOSEVIC'S MUSCLE

   Now that the West is praising him for dumping his Bosnian-Serb
proteges, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic "is quietly getting on
with crushing the last remnants of opposition at home," reports Laura
Silber in the Financial Times.  "He has turned his attention to the
independent media, [the] political opposition, and national
minorities in Serbia, convinced that Western approval entitles him to
a free hand ... Almost unnoticed, the Serbian regime has unleashed a
wave of terror in its southem province of Kosovo, killing, arresting,
or harassing" ethnic Albanians.

   Meanwhile, Serbia's embargoed economy has improved -- at least on
paper. But Mariana Boyadjieva and Georgi Sharabov say in the labor-
affiliated Troud of Sofia, Bulgaria, that it may be a "propaganda
ploy." The Serbs boast they have beaten hyper-inflation, but their
products cannot be exported, limiting growth.  "Once the local
market is surfeited," they say, "the remaining ... goods will have to
be destroyed, and jobs will be curtailed."