And this is what Margaret Durham had to say in her celebrated ethnography of Albania, a long time ago ("Some Tribal Origins of Laws and Customs of the Balkans" – Allan and Unwin, 1928):"A certain family had long been notorious for evil-doing– robbing, shooting, and being a pest to the tribe. A gathering of all the heads condemned all the males of the family to death. Men were appointed to lay in wait for them on a certain day and pick them off; and on that day the whole seventeen of them were shot. One was but five and another but twelve years old. I protested against thus killing children who must be innocent and was told: 'It was bad blood and must not be further propagated.' Such was the belief in heredity that it was proposed to kill an unfortunate woman who was pregnant, lest she should bear a male and so renew the evil."In the second century BC, Kosovo was populated by people with picturesque names: the Iliyrians, Thracians, the Celts. The whole area was under Roman rule and was subjected to the industriousness and meticulousness of Empire. Roads were paved, cities built, populations moved and commerce flourished. This lasted two hundreds years. Slav tribes descended from the Carpathian Mountains and ended it in orgies of blood and fire. Until this very day, serious Greek politicians invoke this primordial invasion in their effort to convince an incredulous world that the (current) Macedonians are not the (True) Macedonians. "They are the off spring of invading Slavs" – they claim, passionately, as is the habit in the Balkans. It took another two centuries and a Byzantine brief occupation to force the reluctant Slavs to settle along the Sava River and to form the poor semblance of a civilization in the making. Roving "saints" of fervent disposition taught them a new alphabet. Cyril and Methodius were succeeded by disciples all over Central and Eastern Europe – from the period of Kliment Ohridski in today's territories of Macedonia and Bulgaria to Amos Comenius, the 17th century educator, considered in the Balkans to be their spiritual descendant in the Czech Lands.This ability to cast their myths in paper in the vernacular, to hand the national memory down the generations, the newfound Christian religion – all coagulated into an emergently distinct culture. Come the 12th century, Kosovo was entirely Slav.Or, to be more precise: entirely Serb. The Slavs fractured into three groups. The Croats and Slovenes, baptized by Rome, became ardent Roman Catholics. The Serbs – introduced to the faith by Byzantium – remained Eastern Orthodox. This division was to last a thousand years as the Croats and the Slovenes came under the influence and rule of the Catholic Habsburgs while the Serbs were subjected to the crumbling Ottoman chaos. Geography mirrored a tormented topography of mentalities, religious persuasions and political affiliations. The Serbs occupied today's Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia Herzegovina. The Croats and Slovenes occupied the rest of latter day Yugoslavia. The Tito generated unity of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was but a brief and false note. It could not have lasted – and, indeed, it hasn't.The Serbs established a principality in Kosovo – the nucleus of what later came to be known as the Serbian Golden Age. It was situated in the rustic but magnificent valley of Ibar and controlled most of the Sandzak. Gradually, the whole of hitherto empty Kosovo became theirs and they felt sufficiently at home to form a Serbian Orthodox Church with its seat in Raska, just north of Kosovo. It took 19 years (1200-1219) to complete this feat of independence and all this time Kosovo was fought over by Serbs, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romans and Byzantines. Hundreds of years of strife, veiled conspiracies, invasions and rotting corpses in sun drenched battlefields.To the Serbs it was a Golden Age. Under the Nemanje dynasty, luck struck thrice in the figures of kings Stephen (1169-89), Milutin (1281-1321) and Dusan (1331-55). Workers were brought in from Transylvania to mine the wealth of the land. Ever more prosperous, Kosovo became the throbbing heart of Serbland. The splendid royal court, ravishing in gold and red, radiated power north of Kosovo and unto today's Slovenia, up to the Adriatic Sea, making Pec the new seat of the Serbian Orthodox church. When Dusan died, history held its breath, the nation poised precariously on a precipice of internecine conflict. But the stability was fake. The question of inheritance, translated into the currency of power plays, tore the land apart. The Turks were there to pick up the pieces in the masochistically celebrated battle of Kosovo Polje in June 28th 1389. But not for another 70 years did they exert real control over this newly gained territory – so powerful and ferocious were their Serb adversaries even in their decline. Besieged by Mongols from the east, the Turks, already the sick man, retreated and left the Serbs to their own self-destructive devices.All this time, there are no Albanians in the historiography of this cursed land. It is, therefore, almost startling to find them there, sufficiently armed and organized t oppose the... Turks!Having dealt the Mongols some mortal blows, the Turkish beast shifted its attention to another bruise in its by now writhing body, to Kosovo. The Turkish armies conquered Prizren, driving before them the dilapidated and depleted Serb forces. It was an Albanian king, Skanderberg, who rebelled against them there. Albanians then were Catholics (as many of them are to this very day), their war against their future allies, a holy war. This was in 1459 and only 250 years later did the Turks embark upon a policy of actively encouraging the (by now Muslim) Albanians to emigrate to Kosovo – not before the Serbs were expelled following an unsuccessful rebellion in 1690.This Turkish propensity was nothing extraordinary. Empires throughout history settled "loyal" populations where they displaced restive ones. But in Kosovo a confluence of fault lines led to especially bitter sediments, which went on to poison the waters of co-existence for centuries to come. Converted Moslem Albanians versus Christian Serbs; Albanian collaborators and traitors (as perceived by the Serbs) versus Serb mythical heroes (again as perceived by the Serbs); a nation of the ascendance versus a nation dispersed and the last European defence line against Islam traitorously compromised by fellow Christians and Christian kingdoms. Serbs fleeing from Kosovo, from Serbia itself, from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia – moved due north, to refugee camps set up by the Habsburg empire. Serbs settled in Vojvodina and Krajina, thus sowing the seeds of 20th century conflicts with Croatia and Hungary. And all this time they carried with them a baggage of hatred and revenge, a lethal, bloodied promise to be back and to exact the price of betrayal from the Albanians. In 1737 they established a Serbian homeland in Vojvodina. In 1738 they rebelled, again to be defeated in the scene of their national trauma, in Kosovo Polje. Another wave of immigrants followed and another wave of Albanians took over their abandoned property in Metohia. The Turks abolished the seat of the Serb church in Pec in 1766. It seemed that the Serb nation has been all but eradicated.But this was not to be. In one of the more magnificent sleights of hand that history is so famous for – the Russians forced the beaten Ottoman Empire to grant the Serbs autonomy. It was nothing like the hallowed past sovereignty and glory of the Dusan court but it was a step that rekindled nationalistic sentiments in the most humble and humbled Serb throughout the land. This flame has since never been extinguished and it is at the blazing heart of the Milosevic Yugoslav Wars of Inheritance. That – and the belief that history is cyclical and that there is always hope.Kosovo was by now entirely "Alabanized". Pristina was the hub of transport and the seat of the administration. Names of places, which resounded both in the 14th century and at the close of the 20th, recur. In Prizren in 1878 the Albanians established their first national movement. There they came of age. The infancy of Serbhood and the adulthood of Albanianism clashed in the same region, the prelude to the tragedy of 1999.Under the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, Serbia became de jure an independent country. Its anguished delegation, eager and paranoid, gave up Kosovo in dealings behind the gilded scenes. It was a tactical move, which the Serbs reversed in the First Balkan War (1912) – when they regained Kosovo – and in the Second Balkan War (1913) when they regained Macedonia. In these bloody rehearsals of the World Wars, the Serbs succeeded to redefine the borders – but also to give birth to Albania. It is an irony of history that Serb bellicosity and nationalistic dreams gave rise to the modern Albanian state. But then this IS the nature of the Balkans – a hazy nightmare in which enemies give birth to one another. An intricate commerce of Christian death and resurrection, the gifts of death and life exchanged among Gregorian chants and the prayer cries of Muezzins. In 1926 the Serbs and the Albanians drew the borderline between their sovereign states. It was a bad invention, this line of demarcation. It separated close to 600,000 Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia from Albania proper. The disgruntled populace did not engage in acts of terror or in gestures of nationalistic indignation. Instead, they emigrated to Albania and to Turkey – tens of thousands of Albanians, perhaps as many as three hundred thousand, or half the population. And the Serbs came in their stead. The wheel has been reversed, or so it seemed.Nothing in the Balkans is what it seems to be. Every surface is teeming underneath with hidden meanings, obscure interpretations and exegetic excesses. They who are up go down, bringing in their wake, through the sheer force of their own fall – the rise of their adversaries. Delicate laws of conservation preserve all grudges balanced, all the accounts settled and all agony equally distributed. It is an entropy of history itself, slowly decaying into chaotic repetition.And thus when Italy conquered Kosovo (it, with Ethiopia being the only thing it ever conquered) – it gave it to Albania. Germany, which dominated Yugoslavia, consented. For a brief four years, the Albanian nation was completely united, territorially, at least.But this did not last long. After the war, Yugoslavia re-acquired Kosovo and the communist regime embarked on a Turkish-like brutal suppression of the Albanian population. For twenty-one years, secret units of the police hunted, executed and mutilated free spirited Albanians all over Kosovo. In more ways than one, Albanians were the first true dissidents in the entire communist bloc. How ironic, if one recalls the Albanian Enver Hoxa, the leader of next-door Albania and the fiercest of all communist leaders. In 1968 Albanian students joined their colleagues the world over and demonstrated against Serb repression. These particular outbursts were easily squashed but in 1974 Kosovo was made an autonomous province of Yugoslavia by constitutional reforms. School instruction in Albanian was legalized. During all this period, Serbs – especially battle hardened war veterans – were economically encouraged to migrate to Kosovo. Albanians were encouraged to go the other way and many did. About 200,000 Albanians left between the years 1954-7 alone!!!By now, these human waves and military trampling left Kosovo dilapidated to the core, a backwater both economically and culturally. People left Kosovo in this period because it offered no present work and no future prospects. One hundred thousand Serbs left between 1961-87. Much later many would claim that they were harassed by the Albanian majority but this sounds fake, a re-writing of history. Albanians left as well. Everyone who had a choice chose to leave impoverished Kosovo.Then Tito died and nothing was the same. The 1981 riots in Kosovo led to the imposition of martial law. As students from Pristina University rampaged in the streets, the government sealed Kosovo off, sent in the militia to restore order (which it did with vehement cruelty and bestiality) and closed down educational institutions. Pristina University was always a hotbed of nationalism – witness its Maoist-Marxist graduate, the head of the KLA and the self-appointed Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci. But that particular spring was exceptional. Public disorder was coupled with grave acts of economic sabotage. The students demanded an end to discrimination and certain freedoms but really they demanded jobs commensurate with their training, jobs, which they believed went to the Serbs.Five years later, a hitherto obscure communist leader (he was just elected Serbia's party secretary) visited Kosovo. In a chance encounter with angry Serb mobs in the streets of Pristina he accused the Albanians of genocide. "No one should do this to you" – he said, grim faced, visibly shaken, cunningly calculating.His name was Milosevic.(Article published August 16, 1999 in "Central Europe Review"volume 1, issue 8)ReturnThe Plight of the KosovarRumour has it that from now on, citizens of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will need a hard-to-obtain visa to enter the Czech Republic. This already is the case with Bosnians, for instance. Officials in Macedonia believe that this is intended to stem a flow of future Kosovar immigrants. If so, the Czech government holds a grim view of the prospects of peace there and rightly so. Discounting the Second World War and numerous other skirmishes, the developing war in Kosovo is the Fourth Balkan War. The Czech Republic already hosts a great number of "Former Yugoslavs" and of Albanians, for measure. Ordinary Czechs believe them to be responsible – together with Russians and Ukrainians – to the uncontrollable and intimidating wave of street crime. This intuition, it seems, is based less on statistics than on plain old xenophobia.The situation is shrouded in myths and misconceptions. The Albanians in Albania are not related to the Albanians in Macedonia (known as "Shiptars"). The former are mostly Christians – the latter Moslems (like their brethren in Kosovo). Even the Albanians in Albania are not a cohesive lot – they are divided to Northerners and Southerners with bitter mutual enmity the only thing connecting them. Witness the recent near disintegration of the Albanian state over regional politics (disguised as a financial scandal). The risk of a spillover of the conflict into Albanian territory is small. Not so with Macedonia. This is why NATO is flexing its muscles on Macedonian territory. The message is ostensibly intended for Yugoslav ears. Really, NATO hopes that it will echo far north, in the Kremlin. The Balkans is a strategic area – says NATO – and we will bomb to pieces anyone who wishes to meddle in it. Cold war rhetoric and not from Russian lips, this time.The Slav Macedonians loathe and fear the Albanians. The latter do not hide their desire to tear Macedonia apart and establish a Greater Albania, comprising Macedonia's Western parts. Radical new leaders – such as the now imprisoned Rufi Osmani, mayor of Gostivar – hoisted Albanian flags on municipal buildings. This led to bloody riots. Slav students counter-rioted when Albanians demanded bilingual education. Things are explosive even without Kosovo.But this is part of a larger picture. The Macedonian political elite never really wanted to separate itself from the Yugoslav Federation. In the first years of the embargo on Yugoslavia, Macedonia was the main route of smuggling into the beleaguered country (from Greece, through the Vardar river). Macedonia is torn between supporting Serbia and the Slav cause (championed by Russia) – and complying with Western pressures. The West finances the gigantic trade and current account deficits of Macedonia, without which the economy and the currency would have long crashed even beyond their incredibly depressed levels. Other factions still dream about a Greater Bulgaria. The opposition, IMRO-DPMNE is accused of being the creation of the Bulgarian secret service, or the Bulgarian mob, depending on the speaker. Persistent rumours have it that Milosevic signed a secret pact with the Macedonian ruling (former socialist) party, the SDSM, using the mediation of Arkan, a particularly ferocious militia commander in the good old days. Serbia undertook to heat the border with Macedonia just before the October elections and thus to allow the government either to postpone them or to declare a state of emergency. The SDSM stands to lose big in the elections following economic mismanagement and colossal corruption charges. The main beneficiary is a repatriated politician (whose vote, by the way, was crucial in dismantling the Yugoslav Federation), Vasil Tupurkovski. He is perceived as "Mr. Clean Hands", though backed, from the shadows, by Big Business. He is also pro-American (he lived in the States many years and his family is still there). Russian hands don't like this, probably.Gradually, anti-Western feelings are emerging in Macedonia. The USA is perceived as automatically anti-Serbian (read: anti-Slav) and pro-Albanian. Emotions run high against Germany and the United Kingdom, as well. Russia benefits from all this. If it plays its cards wisely, it could achieve two goals: (a) Destabilize the Southern flank of NATO and (b) transform Macedonia into its agent. If the conflict escalates, Greece and Turkey could be easily drawn in. Both are NATO members. They will not be fighting on the same side, though. And maybe they will carry the fighting into Cyprus. Though far fetched, this is the first opportunity in a decade to seriously dent the NATO facade. Russia is not likely to miss it. Milosevic, in many respects, is a pain. In other respects, though, he is a strategic gift from heaven.The Kosovo situation is a blessing, not in disguise, for Macedonia. It is through this – and other Serb-induced crises – that Macedonia attained geopolitical importance. The West pampers Macedonia and finances its fiscal and trade excesses precisely because of its strategic location and because of its Albanians. The potential for inter-ethnic tension is deemed to be sizeable by the West. To avert it, the West is willing to bribe all parties involved into tense calm and strained civility.The Kosovo crisis has just started. The Serbs are a resilient, cunning bunch. Their withdrawal following the US-mediated accord is tactical, not strategic. They will be back. They will do their best to present the Albanians as intransigent, irrational and belligerent during the process of negotiating autonomy for the province. This will not be difficult. The recent crisis radicalised even the moderate Albanians (like Rugova). Their demands ARE likely to be zany and unacceptable. This will be Milosevic's chance to convert the West to his side. He will act the peacemaker, the moderate, the conciliator – and let the Albanians do the dirty work of threats, walkouts and occasional terror.There will be war in Kosovo. It is only a matter of time and nerves. Milosevic has plenty of both – the Albanians and their Western supporters none. The incident has escalated into a mini cold war. Russia has mobilized select units of its army and moved its anti aircraft missiles to counter a possible NATO strike. The new rulers of the Kremlin are old cold war hands and habits die hard in Russia. Kosovo is a golden opportunity to destabilize NATO (by provoking Turkey against Greece, for instance). I have expounded upon this elsewhere.Once a real war breaks, the Albanians in Macedonia will be tempted to join in the fray. Though ethnically different – they are not nationalistically indifferent. Hitherto, KLA has failed to establish a presence on Macedonian soil and inter-ethnic clashes have been surprisingly limited and subdued. Still, the potential is there. The Albanians in Macedonia are concentrated in a well-defined geographical triangle. They could demand the same autonomy that their northern brothers are trying to extract from Milosevic. Moreover, they are better integrated into the political and economic life in Macedonia. Following the next elections (18/10) they are likely to hold the balance of power. And they are getting more and more adept at using it. They feel like second class Macedonians. They would like to become first class Albanians. So, there will be clashes and tension in Macedonia over Albanian demands for greater autonomy.Then there is the Serb-Macedonian tortured relationship. As I said, Macedonia was the last to (reluctantly) secede from the Yugoslav Federation. It escaped harm by aiding and abetting the Serbs during the siege. Macedonia was a vital (also corrupt and lucrative) bloodline, connecting Greece to Serbia (through the Vardar river). Politicians and businessmen (in Macedonia, these are linked vocations) made fortunes. Smugglers and other criminal elements flooded the country, never to go back. The two regimes are not friends but they maintain the Hillary-Bill marriage: power sharing, convenience, the occasional extramarital fling. Serbia will not attack Macedonia as long as it maintains express neutrality. NATO will not compromise this neutrality because it does not want additional trouble in its hinterland if it invades Serbia. As long as this (admittedly shaky) tacit understanding prevails – there is no "Serbian risk".To sum up: I do not see Macedonia flaring up. A guerrilla type war of attrition is conceivable but with limited targets (autonomy for the Albanians within a well defined swathe of territory). These demands will be finally met because the Macedonians are hedonists, peaceful and easygoing as opposed to the neurotically tense Albanians and Serbs. Blood may be spilled in the process – but sparsely and symbolically. No major disruption will occur. The economy will thrive on the conflict. It is a pathological, parasitic, short-term kind of prosperity – but it is prosperity, althesame.It is when the area clams down sufficiently for the West to lose interest – that Macedonia should begin to worry. Who will then finance the insane trade deficit? Who will support the eerily strong currency? Who will cater to the military needs of this nascent democracy? Who will save it from its own robber barons, crony capitalists, corrupt politicians and outright criminals?The only hope is foreign investments. It is worth repeating. Macedonia can achieve market discipline, functioning public institutions, a tolerable level of corruption and internal economic (and thereby political) stability only through the discipline imposed by foreigners. Perhaps the Yugoslav Federation was not such a bad idea after all.It is said that Tito drank only Czech beer. But Tito is dead and the list of preferred immigration targets among all these warring nationalities does not include Prague. They would rather go to Germany or Russia. There is no real risk of a wave of refugees knocking down Czech border defences. But with its depressed economy and surging crime, Prague regards every potential immigrant as a potential threat. If the gates are not opened to them willingly – the refugees might choose to knock them down.(Article published September 19-25, 1998 in "Middle East Times")ReturnThe Black Birds of KosovaThe Onset of Cultural ImperialismThe real war over Kosovo hasn't even started yet. When NATO coerces Yugoslavia into submission, when the smoke clears and the charred remains of corpses and houses cleared – then the REAL conflict will erupt. It will be a conflict between moderate Albanians (as represented by Ibrahim Rugova) and radical Albanians (the outlandish Maoist-Islamist admixture represented by the KLA). And it will be bloodier by far.This is because this new type of war can never be decided, not even by way of weapons. It is a clash of cultures, a battle enjoined by civilizations. And it cuts across the Kosovars as sharply as it separates the West from Yugoslavia. Thus the Kosovo war will be continued by the Kosovars themselves because they, too, are culturally split along the same inflamed lines (Liberal versus Non-liberal). "But, surely" – you would say – "there is nothing new about THIS". But there is.In the past, nations or clusters of nations or tribes went to war ONLY in order to protect national or tribal or group interests. More food, more space, control over important lines of transport and communications, access to markets, women (to ensure reproduction), the elimination of a foe or a potential foe, loot, weaponry – hard, cold interests underlied all armed conflicts.Culture and religion were used as fig leaves to disguise the true nature of wars. The colonial wars of the 18th and 19th century were ostensibly fought with the aim of educating the savages, converting them to the right religion and bestowing upon them the blessings of civilization. Mineral wealth, routes of transport, strategic vantage points – were all presented as secondary afterthoughts or side benefits. This is the way it was presented to the public. The truth, of course, was absolutely the opposite.The Kosovo conflict is the first war in history where WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Europe in general and NATO in particular have no interests in the godforsaken piece of land known as Kosovo and Metoxhia. It is not strategically located (it is all but inaccessible). It is poor (except some minerals of which there is a world glut). It is not strictly "European". It is partly Moslem and allied with the likes of Iran, Osama Bin Laden and Albania. It involves a small number of people (1.8 million). Operation Allied Force is NOT about the defence or furthering of self-interests. It is about conflicting cultures.The West is trying to impose its culture – liberal and capitalist – upon other societies. Whenever popular opinion (even if expressed democratically and peacefully) does not conform to Western values – the West does its best to undermine the choice as well as the chosen. The West's definition of a legitimate regime is very peculiar and not very rigorous logically. A legitimate regime is one chosen by the people providing its values are Western values or closely conform to them. All other regimes – no matter how strongly upheld by free public opinion – are not legitimate, even illegal and can be deposed and disposed of with moral impunity. Khomeini came to power on the crest of a wave of unprecedented popular support and he supplanted a cruel and corrupt dictator. Milosevic was freely elected by a majority wider than Clinton's. In Algeria and Turkey freely elected Islamists governments were toppled (or prevented from taking office, in the case of Algeria) by the army with the West's enthusiastic though mute consent. This "Allende Syndrome" is in play now in Kosovo.It is politically very incorrect, I am sure, to say that only a small minority of humans adhere to Western values (and most of the adherents only pay lip service to them). Human rights are an alien concept in Africa and the Balkans. Individualism is an alien – even repulsive – concept in China, Japan and most of South East Asia. Competition is a value derided in most parts of the world. Income disparity and the toleration of abject poverty as an inescapable consequence of capitalism (the "Anglo-Saxon Model") are rejected even in Continental Europe itself. Freedom of Speech is much more curtailed in France than in the USA. Privacy is less respected in the USA than in France. Western values are not universal even in the West.The nations and societies of the Balkans are used to solving their problems by employing ethnic cleansing, armed brutality, suppression of civilian population and decimation of the elites of the enemy. This is not a value judgement. It is a statement of historical fact. Bulgaria has done it to its Turkish citizens as late as 1995. It used to be the same (and much worse) in Western Europe until 1945. Nations – like human beings – have a growth trajectory. It cannot be hastened or imported. It must grow from within, by integrating experiences, including painful and traumatic ones. Peaceful co-existence often follows and is the result of a devastation so great that no other alternative but peaceful co-existence is left. Any foreign intervention serves only to exacerbate the situation by increasing the number and intensity of inter-ethnic grudges. The seeds of the current conflict in Kosovo were sown by the Ottoman Turks as early as 1912. Foreign interventions tend to boomerang in the Balkans. Actually, they boomerang everywhere. Ask Israelis how they fared in the Lebanese quagmire.The West should have respected the Balkanian way of conducting their affairs and resolving their differences. It should have left them to slaughter each other in peace. These are young nations (having been freed from all foreign occupation only as late as 1945 after centuries of subjugation). They need to learn from their OWN experiences. They need to reach the point of exhaustion beyond which there is only peaceful co-existence. Violence solves nothing, on the contrary, it just reinforces the Balkanian conviction that he who carries the big stick has justice on his side.But how did this apparent transition from interest-wars to culture-wars transpire?Indeed, the transition is only apparent. The key is the transformation of culture from something ethereal and transcendent – to a strong self-interest as any other. Once culture became an asset to protect, cultural wars were certain to erupt. Thus, it is still self-interest at the basis of it all but this time the self-interest protected and furthered is cultural dominance and hegemony.It started rather innocuously and inadvertently. The Americanisation of the world was perceived to be the historical equivalent of the Pox Romania. This was a false analogy. The Pox Romania was rampant pluralism. The Pox Americana is rampant homogeneity.Then the West (notably America) suddenly realized the economic dividends on cultural homogeneity (for instance as evident in various forms of intellectual property – movies, music, software, TV, internet). Culture – the oft-neglected stepsister of economics – became an INDUSTRY. A money-spinner. It was well worth the West's while not only to sell mass produces culture to homogenized markets – but also to make sure that these markets were peaceful, stable, accessible and free. If necessary, this was to be secured by force.Paradoxically, in this age of moral relativity and political correctness – the West is ASHAMED to admit that this is a cultural war where one of the parties is trying to impose its cultural values on the other for utterly utilitarian reasons. Instead, the war is presented as a matter of national interest of the OLD TYPE.But then what IS the OLD TYPE of the national interest of the USA, Europe, EU and NATO? Isn't it the preservation and immutability of existing borders? The suppression of irredentist and separatist movements? The abolition of terror? The prevention of large-scale dislocations of endemic populations? And if so, wasn't the best way to ensure all the above – to allow Milosevic to cruelly and ruthlessly eradicate the KLA and intimidate the local population into submission? Hasn't the West adopted these very tactics (of encouraging local bullies to suppress and even eliminate local restive populations) in Latin America in the 70's and 80's and in Africa in the 60's and 70's? Didn't the West (wisely) turn a blind eye on China, Russia, Israel, Iraq (prior to 1990) and others only recently when they did to their population what Milosevic did not dare to do to his?The Kosovo war – it is clear – is CONTRARY to any conceivable OLD TYPE self-interest of the West. It costs the West dearly and will cost it even more – and not only in monetary terms. The loss of prestige, moral standing, world support, economic resources, world trade (the blocking of the Danube) far outweighs any possible rendition of the old school "national interest". It is the protection and propagation of the West's culture that is at stake, replete with human rights, civil rights, capitalism, individualism and liberalism. It is a defining war – not only militarily (the future of NATO) but also culturally (the identity of the future global market). Poor Milosevic, look what he got himself into.(Article published May 10, 1999 in "The New Presence")ReturnThe Defrosted WarRussia's Role in a Brave, New WorldA president (almost) impeached. An important politician sacked due to incompetence. Business tycoons under investigation. The USA? No, this is the new, post-communist, Russia. Many firsts, meagre experience, numerous blunders. Is it democracy in action? No, it is simply autocracy exposed. The same machinations went on in Ivan the Terrible's court, the same conspiracies enshrouded Peter the Great's cabin, the same conflicts besieged Stalin. Ask Khrushchev.The great mistake of the West is the deeply ingrained naive belief in progress. History is cyclical. Otherwise we could have learned nothing from it. The nations of the Balkans will still be dividing and re-dividing their blood stained enclaves and the Russians will still be under autocratic rule and the Americans will still be moralizing in the year 3000. History teaches us fatalism or, at least, determinism.Russian autocrats refined the art of divide et impera (divide and rule). They always had a keen eye for conflicting interests. They pitted one group against another dangling carrots aplenty in front of the drooling vassals. The recent shuffle was no different.There are three major camps in Russia today. There are the "Reformists" – young, well-educated, pro Western, with economic savvy, forward-looking, corrupt. There is the "Old Guard" – old, guarded, backward, centralist, anti Western (actually, anti American), corrupt. And there are the nationalists – ideologically eclectic, rigid, radical, dangerous, corrupt.Yeltsin is the ultimate puppet master. The Old Guard was good to stabilize a nose-diving economy and a disintegrating body politic. They new where the levers are and how to use them, they possessed all the right dossiers, they were chums with the Communist Duma. But they proved to be too independent and too dangerous. They aspired to the presidency (Primakov). They were too anti-Western and, thus, risked the only reliable source of financing in the absence of tax collection (the IMF funds). They espoused geopolitical brinkmanship. They were cold war in an era of defrosted war. There is no money in cold war mantras. In an age when money is the only ideology – they did not adhere to the party line. They posed a threat not only to Yeltsin's authority – but also to the economic well being of Russia.Having looked into the abyss in the early stages of the Kosovo crisis (remember the re-directed ballistic nuclear missiles) – Yeltsin engaged in a surprisingly elegant volte-face. He appointed Chernomyrdin, a pro-Western, quasi-Reformist, to contain the Kosovo damage. And he fired Primakov, the hawk. The IMF gave Russia 4.5 billion dollars that it swore blue in the face not to give Russia only a month before. A coincidence, needless to add.Yeltsin doesn't give a hoot about Kosovo. All he wanted was to re-establish his domestic authority and to quash especially insolent and increasingly dangerous investigations into his murky financial dealings. Kosovo was an added bonus. A joker in an already excellent hand. Yeltsin put it to deft use.By sending Chernomyrdin to sort out the Balkan mess, Yeltsin killed a flock of birds with nary a stone. He signalled to the West that a pro-Western, pro-Reformist team is in control again and that the bad guys have been consigned to oblivion. He signalled to the Duma and to politicians of every colour and denomination who is the boss. The Duma took the hint and promptly dropped the impeachment charges and confirmed the nondescript (but very ominous) Stepashin as the next scapegoat. He enhanced the geopolitical standing of Russia and already converted some of it into hard cash, averting an otherwise certain default of the Russian Federation. He allied himself with most of the "progressives" and "liberals" of the world from China to the Guardian in London. And, in his role as peacekeeper, he effectively extricated Russia from the war psychosis that Messrs. Primakov et al. were trying to plunge Russia into.But why did the West – especially the USA – collaborate with this St. Vitus dance?Because they wanted Yeltsin o achieve all the above goals. Because it served to neutralize Russia as a potential, backdoor combatant, a-la Vietnam. Because they really had no more effective channel of communication to Milosevic. Because it is better to have your dependent as mediator – then a real independent. Because they had o choice: many NATO members would have protested had Russia's help been rejected. And because Russia has to be part of any future settlement.Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Only this time it is a smoking cigar. There is more to the intricate USA-Russian choreography than meets the eye. The USA is in no hurry to finish this particular "air campaign". Meetings are scheduled a week apart. The same proposals and the same envoys keep shuttling back and forth.This is because Russia and the USA see eye to eye. They want Serbia weakened and Milosevic dead (if possible). They understand that "Great Serbia" is Milosevic's dream – but the world's nightmare. Everyone is holding out. Everyone – Russia included – want the Serbs to cease to be a viable fighting force. As time passes, Russia will become more and more confrontational but this time the culprit and the recipient of their vitriolic diatribes is likely to be Milosevic. It is good for the West and it is good for Russia because it is Russia that will fill in the vacuum left by the debris of the Milosevic regime. The USA couldn't be happier. It wants out of the Balkan – never to come back.At this stage, the poor nations of the Balkan are deluded into believing in a future, Western sponsored, "Balkan Marshal Plan". They are in for a rude awakening. The minute the war ends – the USA will vanish, leaving the resulting mess to the natives, to a fragmented Europe and to Russia, who asked for it by getting involved.The only money likely to be invested in the region by the USA is in the reconstruction of the Chinese embassy.(Article written on May 19, 1999 and published May 24, 1999in "The New Presence")ReturnThe Bones of the GrenadierEndgame in the BalkansThe (cyclical) victory of capitalism led westerners of all colours and stripes to believe in solving problems by throwing money at them. Prosperity, international trade, foreign investment, globalisation and joint ventures are the new magic formulas. Mathematically put this superstition is often presented thus: the propensity to fight decreases in direct proportion to the amount of economic common interests of the potential rivals. Thus, instead of tackling core issues – the West tries to drown them in a green deluge of US dollars. Where the west should have tackled a corrupt and autocratic mentality (Russia) – it commits funds through the IMF instead. Where it should have applied itself to interethnic tensions and rivalries (the politically correct phrase denoting racism) – it rebuilds infrastructure.If the "throw money at the problem" theorem were right – and it never was, not even once in human history – the Yugoslav wars of secession and succession would have never erupted. Former Yugoslavia was economically independent and prosperous. It constituted an effective and dynamic free trade zone between its six constituent republics. Resources were allocated within it with reasonable efficiency. Macedonia produced raw materials. Slovenia processed them. Croatia consumed them, added some industrial products of its own and all of them traded with Serbia, the seat of the administration. Yugoslavia was rather self sufficient and conducted much of its value added and trading activities in-house. The gap between its GDP and GNP only a decade ago, reflects what used to be this rather efficient and lucrative market, a mini-EU in the Balkans. The envy of all other socialist countries it was mooted to become member of the EU (then, the EEC) when the thought of the Czech Republic as a member would have elicited condescending smiles. Heavy industry, light manufacturing, construction and engineering all flourished. Yugoslavia's exports boomed. It had a proto-capitalistic system of ownership and a Japanese-style system of management. It introduced the IMF and its reforms in 1980, when Tito was still alive and years before any other socialist country. The reforms of Ante Markovic (the 1989-91 federal prime minister) are still a model of "free enterprise with a socialist bend". On purely economic grounds, the Yugoslav wars were and are a colossal insanity.The new Yugoslavia endured economic devastation to fight a losing war aimed at securing the interests and safety of Serb minorities in the newly formed Republics of former Yugoslavia (NOT to establish a "Greater Serbia" as Western propaganda has it). Macedonia withstood a multiple embargo by its neighbours Greece and Bulgaria because it wouldn't change its name or the historical status of its language. The economic price that Macedonia was forced to pay was mind boggling (the affair with Greece is dormant now but far from over) – and it was nothing compared to the Serb tally. The Jews, in contrast, were busy signing economic agreements with Germans less than 6 years after the holocaust. A different order of priorities, surely.Having lived in the Balkans and worked there for almost a decade, I am forced to conclude that economic arguments are absolutely meaningless when they clash with the proud and romantic nationalism of the likes of the Serbs. If offered in isolation, economic incentives will do nothing to reduce future conflicts or contain them. Marshal plans, future EU membership (or current EU "new" association), IMF soft loans, World Bank effective grants – will all fail to preclude future armed conflicts as they have always failed in the past.Take Bosnia-Herzegovina. By now, the West – through the various organs of its global financial architecture – has committed well over 5 billion USD to this godforsaken piece of land in the middle of nowhere. This is almost 3 times the official GDP of this country. It is the equivalent of 20 trillion US dollars invested in the USA in four years time. All this was in order to cement the cohesiveness of this artificial concoction of a state and to secure its future as a political (read: economic) unit. It failed, miserably so. The Republika Srpska is nowhere nearer to integrating with its Moslem and Croat neighbour. The common currency did nothing to foster a common identity. And the place represents an abysmal reversion to old colonial habits with a governor to regulate the unruly and unyielding natives, by the application of force if need be.Indeed, the ethnic wars of the modern era are a direct result of said colonial period. Borders, drawn at random and with a minimal and arbitrary knowledge of the terrain and its inhabitants – led to a hundred years of correctional warfare by the victims of this patronizing ignorance. The rule of thumb is simple: people cannot live together. Humans are misanthropes, they love to hate the different, the other. Therefore, it is best to encourage the formation of ethnically homogenous political units – where ethnic affiliation counts and of ideologically homogenous political units where ideology matters and of racially homogenous political bodies where race equals identity. A simple rule derived from the 5000 years of trials and errors called "human history".The USSR disintegrated peacefully because it disintegrated into ethnically homogenous entities (or entities with clear ethnic identities and majorities). In the process Russia gave up oil reserves, mineral riches, space launching sites, strategic locations and much of its nuclear and conventional weaponry. Despite all these incredible sacrifices, it was a peaceful process.The Czechs separated from the Slovaks in a bloodless break-up of their common state because the two resulting entities were ethnically homogenous. Well, almost – hence the persecution of the Roma in both countries.Slovenia and Macedonia seceded from the Yugoslav Federation without as much as a shot (except for the first few days of Slovenia's independence when confusion ruled supreme) – because there were very few Serbs in either. Slovenia and Macedonia are ethnically homogeneous (Macedonia with a sizeable Albanian minority, though). Hence their status as islands of peace and tranquillity in an impossible region. The war with Croatia and more so in Bosnia was a direct result of ethnic heterogeneity.The not-so-implicit deal in the case of the USSR and the Czech Republic was simple to grasp and very effective. "You will peacefully break up into ethnically homogeneous units – and we will support you financially and initiate you into our economic superstructures." It worked. It still is working. But it was not the deal offered to the former Yugoslav republics. To them the West's message was: "You will peacefully break up into ethnically HETEROGENEOUS units – and we will support you financially, subject to painful and sustained reforms."It is time to recognize the folly and the fallacy of this last message. Yugoslavia in particular and the Balkans in general must be "re-designed" into ethnically homogeneous political units. If this necessitates the re-drawing of now dangerously obsolete borders – let it be so. It would make a lot more sense to dismantle Bosnia and unite the Republika Srpska with Yugoslavia (Serbia) and the Croat bit with Croatia. The Muslims can have their political unit, if they wish. Parts of Kosovo must go to Albania. The borders have to be redrawn. The result should be a series of ethnically homogeneous states – viable, cohesive, peaceful and able to concentrate on economic warfare rather than on the economics of war.To achieve this goal, colonialism must be revived. Operation Allied Force is a colonial war without the mercantilist emphasis of days gone by. It is a coalition of rich countries, led by a superpower, attacking and subduing a regional bully. As in the good old days, borders are effectively redrawn (Kosovo's "extensive self government"), new political entities formed, alliances with one group of natives against another abound, military hardware coupled with economic prowess are pitted against local aspirations which do not conform with a moralistic "global view" of the world. The absurd is that – because colonialism is not politically correct and is condemned by all with great vehemence – the colonial powers of today are castrated. These eunuchs of geopolitics do not dare to carry their military and economic clout to its logical and beneficial conclusion. In other words: they do not dare to DICTATE a solution and impose it rather than engage in endless consultations with local parties and amongst themselves.We need a new Berlin Congress. We need a new Bismarck. He said that the whole Balkan is not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier – but this did not prevent the newly born (and recently victorious) Germany from engaging in the redesign of South Europe. Unfortunately, the Berlin Congress was a shoddy job, more influenced by the narrow self-interests of the participants than by any grand vision or integrity of intentions. To the reshapers of Europe of that time it was more important to adversely affect the interests of Russia and Turkey than to create a long lasting peace and the conditions for prosperity. It was bound to fail and it did and it still does.This is the second chance (not counting communism). This is the time to redefine South Europe and the Balkans. This is the time to draw logical borders, which reflect not whims and eccentricities, paranoias and ignorance, condescension and malice – but demography and history, national aspirations and disparate cultures and narratives. Let each ethnic group live within safe and internationally guaranteed borders. Let them work in harmony across borders – rather than engage in conflicts within them. Let the Albanian lands go to Albania, the Serbian lands to the Serbs – as the Czech lands are to the Czech and Russian lands are to the Russian. Only then will peace prevail as it does in Western Europe and in Scandinavia today – the scenes of centuries of battles and bloodshed.(Article published May 31, 1999 in "The New Presence")ReturnMillenarian Thoughts about Kosovo"English persons, therefore, of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer."("Black Lamb and Grey Falcon – A Journey through Yugoslavia" by Rebecca West – Penguin Books 1994 edition p.20)Rebecca West's book was first published in 1940. By that time, it was common wisdom that the Balkans is the place where the destiny of our world is determined or, at the very least, outlined. Had she lived today, she would have had no reason to revise this particular judgement of hers.The Kosovo "air campaign" exposed and brought to culmination a series of historical processes whose importance cannot be exaggerated.The Russian RevolutionForced to choose between nationalist delusions of imperial grandeur and modern capitalism and its attendant, individualism – Russia chose the latter. The ever-surprising Yeltsin completed the revolution he started in 1990 by deposing of the last vestiges of stagnation personified by Primakov. The remnants of the former nomenclature, the establishment figures, the fossils in the ideological swamp that communism has become – were given the penultimate slip. Russia was forced to peer into the abyss of its own corruption, nepotism, criminality, social and political disintegration and military impotence. It was forced to do so by the developments in the Kosovo crisis. It was made to elect between pan-Slavism and pan-capitalism. For a while, it seemed to have been choosing the former – leading to an inevitable and suicidal confrontation with the victorious civilization of the West. Then it recoiled and chose the IMF over the KGB, material goods over ideological fervour, the new myths of modernity over the old ones of blood-steeped patriotism.It is a momentous event, the consequences of which cannot yet be fully fathomed. Extrapolating Russian history, it would be reasonable to expect a backlash in the form of a counterrevolution. A communist counter-revolution being unlikely – we can expect a fascist-criminal counter-revolution. But it is as safe to assume that the revolution is irreversible, setbacks aside. It is irreversible because for the first time it generated vested interests not only for a select elite – but also for everyone. Prosperity tends to trickle down and, as it does (forming a middle class in its wake) – it knows no boundaries of class. The real revolution has just been completed in Russia, 70 years after Lenin's death. And all classes are about to win.The Second Cold WarThe outlines of the second cold war have emerged. It is to be fought between a prosperous, almighty, vainglorious, narcissistic, self-righteous, contemptuous and increasingly disintegrating USA and an equally disintegrating China on the economic ascendant.The second cold war (already in progress) is fought not between foes – but between partners. The extent of economic interests common to the two current combatants far exceeds anything achieved in the high moments of detente between the USA and its previous rival, Russia. This cold war is about markets and cultural dominance – not sheer, projected, military prowess. It is a throwback to earlier days of colonialism and mercantilism and it is laden with historical memories and sensitivities.The aims are different, as well. China wishes to force the USA to throw open the gates of the global marketplace, currently zealously guarded by the only superpower. The IMF, the World Bank, the WTO are all believed to be extensions of the American economic clout, put to the use of its geopolitical interests. Russia forced its way into the G8 but China has much loftier ambitions. It is not in pursuit of membership in gentlemen's clubs – it aspires to real, raw power. It wants to carve the world between itself and the West. In short, it wants to dominate and to export and it wants the West to help it do so. In return, it promises regional and internal stability and access to its markets. To convince the West of the quality of its wares, China demonstrates its capacity to destabilize in various corners of the world. It transfers weapons technology, support international terrorism and rogue states and, in general, places formidable obstacles in the path to Pax Americana, the New World Order.The Americans regard this as a reasonable deal but they wish to reverse the cause and the effect. First, they want to gain unhindered access to the potentially infinite Chinese market and to have the Chinese deliver the regional and international stability they claim to be able to deliver. Only then are they willing to contemplate the coveted prize of graduating to the co-ownership of the world financial and economic architecture.China is fighting for legitimacy, recognition, access to markets, capital and technology and the ability to reshape the world in its favour. The USA is fighting to check progress of the Chinese on all these fronts. Such fundamental differences are bound to lead to conflict – as, indeed, they have.In this sense, the bombing of the Chinese embassy has been an auspicious event because it allowed both parties to break through, to unlock and a deadlock and to make progress towards a fuller integration of China into the WTO, for instance. It also legitimised the airing of grievances against the style and conduct of the USA in world affairs. In short, it was cathartic and useful.The Demise of the Client StatesThe concept of the client states is so well entrenched in our historical consciousness that its demise has been denied and repressed. There are no longer alliances between powerful political units (such as the USA) and smaller, dependent, satellites. The kaleidoscopically shifting interests of the few remaining global powers dictate geopolitical transigence and ideological transparency. These adaptive processes lead to a myriad of alliances, forever changing to fit the needs and interests of the moment or to cater to future contingencies. Thus, Russia ignores Yugoslavia's pleas for help, China allows the USA, Japan and South Korea to conduct direct negotiations with North Korea, America bullies Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians (who support Iraq), the UK and the USA impose a peace plan on the IRA, Russia respects an embargo imposed on both Iraq and Yugoslavia and so on. These are the roots of a truly global order. It is also the death knell for rogue and "insane" states. Devoid of their patronage, these countries are gradually tamed by the awesome twin forces of the global market and international capital and information flows. Iran moderates, Libya surrenders, Yugoslavia succumbs, the only exception being Iraq.This is NOT to say that warfare is a thing of the past. On the very contrary. In the absence of the overwhelmingly restraining impulses and impositions of the superpowers – ethnic strife, border skirmishes, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – all are likely to increase. But these are already affairs of limited importance, confined to parts of the world of limited importance, and fought amongst people of ever more limited importance. War marginalizes the warriors because it takes them out of the circulation of capital, information and goods. Decoupled from these essential flows, warring parties wither and shrivel.The Convergence of Economic and Military AlliancesThe Kosovo crisis started as an exercise in self re-definition. NATO used it to successfully put its cohesiveness to test. It acted sanely and its hypercomplex set of checks and balances and more checks scored an impressive success. As a result, the limited aims and means of the campaign were maintained and NATO was not dragged into either British belligerence or Italian and Greek defeatism. It was the second time in recent history (the first being another multilateral military campaign in the Gulf in 1991) – that a military move did not degenerate into full-scale insanity of carnage and bloodshed.NATO emerged as a self-restrained, well-choreographed, well co-ordinated body of professionals who go through motions and off the shelf plans with lifeless automatism. While somewhat aesthetically repulsive, this image is a great deterrent. We fear cold-blooded, impartial machines of war more than we do any hot-blooded, sword-wielding fanatic. NATO acted with the famous German industrial efficiency that gave warfare a bad name. It was "surgically precise" and civilian casualties were alchemically converted into "collateral damage". The well-practised Jamie Shea is an exceptionally chilling sight.Thus, a policeman was born to police the emerging world of international commerce, true multinationals, boundary-less flows of data and chaotic reactions to changes in local variables. This policeman is NATO and it wields an awesome club. As it chooses which criminals to discipline, it transforms the nature of previously unruly neighbourhoods. For this, at least, we should be grateful.(Article published June 6, 1999 in "The New Presence")ReturnNATO's Next WarThe 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 aggressor" of yester month. 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 ("demilitarised" 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 worldwide. 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 ante-bellum. It is well equipped. It is well financed. Its ranks have swelled. It has been transformed from an agglomeration of desperadoes – to a military guerrilla force to be reckoned with. Even the Serbs found that out at a dear price.With the Serb pullout from Kosovo, Serbia is no longer the KLA'a enemy of choice. The KLA has seen the enemy and it is NATO. The pro-Rugova demonstrations in the camps (despite Rugova's Quisling show with Milosevic and his refusal to explain his motives and to adopt a stern position against the Serbs) – sounded loud and clear. Thaci picked up the signal.No Kosovar autonomy can do without Serbia. Kosovo is connected to Serbia by way of infrastructure. All its trade is with Yugoslavia. It is absolutely dependent on Serbia for its energy needs. Rugova knows this. Thaci knows this. And Milosevic knows this. Only NATO pretends that Kosova can survive as an independent, economically viable entity. It cannot. It is a part of Serbia, willy-nilly and it will continue to be so. Rugova and Thaci will be positioning themselves accordingly and will seek the favours of the only regional force that really matters: Serbia. Rumour has it that discussion have already commenced in Prague between Yugoslav low-level officials and Rugova and Thaci representatives of their competing administrations.In conducting these discussions, Milosevic's aim is two-fold. Divide et impera – he intends to do his best to inflame the nascent internecine civil war about to erupt in Kosovo. By offering goodies to both camps, Serbia pits them against one another. By being inconsistent and unpredictable (remember Serbia's refugees policy?) – the Serbs enhance a Kosovar personality disorder. Dazed by the arbitrariness and capriciousness of a vicious neighbour – the Kosovars will lash at each other in an effort to offload their frustration and aggression.Lucky Serbia. Its infrastructure all but eradicated – it will enjoy the best and latest replacements courtesy a multitude of international financial institutions and NGOs. Materially revamped, nationally revived, militarily vindicated, an invigorated power that withstood the mightiest alliance in history – Serbia is in an excellent position to emerge as an important, nay, indispensable, regional, pivotal player. It can have its choice. In Rugova it will find a genteel, compliant, respectable and submissive partner. In Thaci – a fellow bully. Serbia can conduct business with both. As it tramples over internal dissent, suppresses Montenegro and tightens its grip on its minorities – Serbia will strive to split Kosovo. It will be content with the mineral-rich, historical north. Thaci will be content with any kind of foothold, a stepping-stone on the way to a Greater Albania. There are grounds for doing business and business will be done, indeed.Poor Kosova. Lucky Serbia. With such opponents, one need not have friends. And, in the background, NATO stumbles on into its worst nightmare, into an apocalyptic tapestry of exploding mines, KLA sniper fire and mortar attacks, Serb revanchism, material devastation, mass starvation and geopolitical destabilization. It is this war: gradual, nerve wrecking, multi-annual, expensive, replete with body bags and horror scenes – that will do NATO in. It is the end of NATO, only it does not know it. It has contracted the humanitarian cancer and its days are numbered.Milosevic is smiling. He won the war. Completely. And the world has yet to learn it.Post ScriptumIt is ever so easy and rational to disregard the above scenario. It is abrupt, illogical, paradoxical. The Serbs and Milosevic are surely the KLA's worst enemies. No peace – even one mediated by a confluence of interests – can blossom among the ruins of coexistence and trust shredded. A KLA supported by the Serbs against NATO is as outlandish as an Iraq supported by the USA against Israel.But the Balkan is a region characterized by its fluid alliances and structures. Rebecca West, in her masterpiece, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" tells of an alliance no less unholy and no more improbable than a KLA-Milosevic one (pages 840-1 in the 1994 Penguin edition):"It happened that the Slavs who had become Janissaries, especially the Bosnian Serbs, who had been taken from their Christian mothers and trained to forswear Christ and live in the obedience and enforcement of the oppressive yet sluttish Ottoman law, had learned their lesson too well. When the Turks themselves became alarmed by the working of that law and attempted to reform it, the Janissaries rose against the reformation. But because they remembered they were Slavs in spite of all the efforts that had been made to force them to forget it, they felt that in resisting the Turks, even in defence of Turkish law, they were resisting those who had imposed that Turkish law on them in place of their Christian system. So when the rebellious Janissaries defeated the loyal Army of the Sultan in the fourth battle of Kosovo in 1831, and left countless Turkish dead on the field, they held that they had avenged the shame laid on the Christian Slavs in the first battle of Kosovo, although they themselves were Moslems. But their Christian fellow-Slavs gave them no support, for they regarded them simply as co-religionists of the Turkish oppressors and therefore as enemies. So the revolt of the Janissaries failed; and to add the last touch of confusion, they were finally defeated by a Turkish marshal who was neither Turk nor Moslem-born Slav, but a renegade Roman Catholic from Dalmatia. Here was illustrated what is often obscured by historians, that a people can be compelled by misfortune into an existence so confused that it is not life but sheer nonsense, the malignant nonsense of cancerous growth."This is reminiscent of the Gorani Moslems in 1999 Kosovo who collaborated with the Serbs against their co-religionists, the Albanians. They persecuted the Albanian population – looted, burned houses and worse – more tenaciously and more ferociously than any Serb.In hindsight, Milosevic would have done well to co-opt the KLA. By pitting it against Rugova and provoking Rugova's camp against a strengthened KLA – Milosevic could have incited a veritable, full fledged civil war among the Albanians. The West would have then begged him to intervene in his by now traditional role of peacemaker. But history took a different turn. The returning Albanians will not forgive or forget. Retaliation has many faces, some less bloodied than others. But retaliation will come. And while Milosevic may have won this battle – he may, indeed, have lost the war. Only history will tell.(Article published June 14, 1999 in "The New Presence")ReturnWhy did Milosevic Surrender?Not because of NATO. Ground damage assessment based on the number of withdrawing troops and their hardware and on a detailed inventory of charred remains in most of Kosovo – prove that this air campaign was no different to its predecessors. Only 10% of Serb artillery, tanks, APCs and so on were affected. The Yugoslav (read: Serb) army – ostensibly the side that lost the war – is vibrant and defiant. It does not look like it has been subjected to the equivalent of 12 Hiroshima size nuclear bombs in 11 weeks. It looks like it knows something that the rest of us don't.And it does.Milosevic did not surrender. He entrapped the West in his usual, wily style. He lured the west into a fatal hornets' nest, an unmanageable capsule of centuries-old conflicts, a terrorists' lair, replete with drug deals, gun smuggling and organized crime. Kosovo constitutes a major drugs route from the Golden Triangle, via Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran to Europe. It is an integral part of the path leading – via the polluted Vardar River – from Greece to Montenegro. It is swarming with weapons traders, drug dealers, "freedom fighters", Muslim fanatics, spies, con artists, smugglers and common criminals. Every self-respecting mob is heavily represented there – from the ruthless Bulgarian mafia to the murderous Russian one. The civilian population has long been intimidated into co-operation in all these loathsome (though lucrative) activities. Many are only too happy to collaborate.Milosevic withdrew his forces – this is an undeniable fact. He did so after he lost the backing of Russia. Russia sold him to the West and disposed of the Old Guard, which supported him in the Kremlin. It was handsomely rewarded by that long arm of the USA – the IMF. But Russia's betrayal is not sufficient to account for the Serbian volte-face. The turnaround in Milosevic's position was too sudden and Russia's support has always been more moral than military. Something else was at play.Notice the following hitherto unimaginable developments:Milosevic surrenders Kosovo to NATO occupation, including all its holy sites and lucrative mines. There is a conspicuous absence of domestic reaction by the likes of Seselji, the Serb ultra-nationalist. He quits the government – a response eerily civilized judging by his previous record.The stunning rapprochement between the Macedonian Prime Minister, an erstwhile nationalist and Albanian-buster, Ljubco Georgievski and the self-proclaimed KLA Kosovar "Prime Minister" Hashim Thaci. The two agree to open liaison offices in each others' capital cities and to collaborate with Albania in the forthcoming reconstruction of the Balkan region. All this is happening as the Macedonian Minister of the Interior is accusing both the Serbs and the KLA of conducting subversive activities on Macedonian soil with the aim of splitting Macedonia apart. All this happens as NATO begins to clash militarily with an ever more defiant and cocksure KLA.The Russians flex their 200-men muscles in an enclave in the Pristina airport. Yugoslavia looks upon the developing East-West choreography with a profound lack of interest. The Serb forces are withdrawing together with tens of thousands of Serb civilians, the new refugees in this never-ending saga. This, despite the FACT that Milosevic could have dragged the war on indefinitely without incurring too much damage either to his military or to his regime. Had he done so, NATO would have been the first to blink.Why did Milosevic surrender? Why so suddenly and so surprisingly? Why did he surrender when the West and NATO were on the verge of breaking apart (recall the acrimonious public exchanges between Blair, Clinton and Schroeder just prior to the auspicious Serb capitulation)? This is very reminiscent of the German surrender in 1918. The forces in the field felt victorious. The politicians wavered. The result was a sense of betrayal and backstabbing exploited by the corporal-Fuhrer Hitler.
And this is what Margaret Durham had to say in her celebrated ethnography of Albania, a long time ago ("Some Tribal Origins of Laws and Customs of the Balkans" – Allan and Unwin, 1928):
"A certain family had long been notorious for evil-doing– robbing, shooting, and being a pest to the tribe. A gathering of all the heads condemned all the males of the family to death. Men were appointed to lay in wait for them on a certain day and pick them off; and on that day the whole seventeen of them were shot. One was but five and another but twelve years old. I protested against thus killing children who must be innocent and was told: 'It was bad blood and must not be further propagated.' Such was the belief in heredity that it was proposed to kill an unfortunate woman who was pregnant, lest she should bear a male and so renew the evil."
In the second century BC, Kosovo was populated by people with picturesque names: the Iliyrians, Thracians, the Celts. The whole area was under Roman rule and was subjected to the industriousness and meticulousness of Empire. Roads were paved, cities built, populations moved and commerce flourished. This lasted two hundreds years. Slav tribes descended from the Carpathian Mountains and ended it in orgies of blood and fire. Until this very day, serious Greek politicians invoke this primordial invasion in their effort to convince an incredulous world that the (current) Macedonians are not the (True) Macedonians. "They are the off spring of invading Slavs" – they claim, passionately, as is the habit in the Balkans. It took another two centuries and a Byzantine brief occupation to force the reluctant Slavs to settle along the Sava River and to form the poor semblance of a civilization in the making. Roving "saints" of fervent disposition taught them a new alphabet. Cyril and Methodius were succeeded by disciples all over Central and Eastern Europe – from the period of Kliment Ohridski in today's territories of Macedonia and Bulgaria to Amos Comenius, the 17th century educator, considered in the Balkans to be their spiritual descendant in the Czech Lands.
This ability to cast their myths in paper in the vernacular, to hand the national memory down the generations, the newfound Christian religion – all coagulated into an emergently distinct culture. Come the 12th century, Kosovo was entirely Slav.
Or, to be more precise: entirely Serb. The Slavs fractured into three groups. The Croats and Slovenes, baptized by Rome, became ardent Roman Catholics. The Serbs – introduced to the faith by Byzantium – remained Eastern Orthodox. This division was to last a thousand years as the Croats and the Slovenes came under the influence and rule of the Catholic Habsburgs while the Serbs were subjected to the crumbling Ottoman chaos. Geography mirrored a tormented topography of mentalities, religious persuasions and political affiliations. The Serbs occupied today's Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia Herzegovina. The Croats and Slovenes occupied the rest of latter day Yugoslavia. The Tito generated unity of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was but a brief and false note. It could not have lasted – and, indeed, it hasn't.
The Serbs established a principality in Kosovo – the nucleus of what later came to be known as the Serbian Golden Age. It was situated in the rustic but magnificent valley of Ibar and controlled most of the Sandzak. Gradually, the whole of hitherto empty Kosovo became theirs and they felt sufficiently at home to form a Serbian Orthodox Church with its seat in Raska, just north of Kosovo. It took 19 years (1200-1219) to complete this feat of independence and all this time Kosovo was fought over by Serbs, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romans and Byzantines. Hundreds of years of strife, veiled conspiracies, invasions and rotting corpses in sun drenched battlefields.
To the Serbs it was a Golden Age. Under the Nemanje dynasty, luck struck thrice in the figures of kings Stephen (1169-89), Milutin (1281-1321) and Dusan (1331-55). Workers were brought in from Transylvania to mine the wealth of the land. Ever more prosperous, Kosovo became the throbbing heart of Serbland. The splendid royal court, ravishing in gold and red, radiated power north of Kosovo and unto today's Slovenia, up to the Adriatic Sea, making Pec the new seat of the Serbian Orthodox church. When Dusan died, history held its breath, the nation poised precariously on a precipice of internecine conflict. But the stability was fake. The question of inheritance, translated into the currency of power plays, tore the land apart. The Turks were there to pick up the pieces in the masochistically celebrated battle of Kosovo Polje in June 28th 1389. But not for another 70 years did they exert real control over this newly gained territory – so powerful and ferocious were their Serb adversaries even in their decline. Besieged by Mongols from the east, the Turks, already the sick man, retreated and left the Serbs to their own self-destructive devices.
All this time, there are no Albanians in the historiography of this cursed land. It is, therefore, almost startling to find them there, sufficiently armed and organized t oppose the... Turks!
Having dealt the Mongols some mortal blows, the Turkish beast shifted its attention to another bruise in its by now writhing body, to Kosovo. The Turkish armies conquered Prizren, driving before them the dilapidated and depleted Serb forces. It was an Albanian king, Skanderberg, who rebelled against them there. Albanians then were Catholics (as many of them are to this very day), their war against their future allies, a holy war. This was in 1459 and only 250 years later did the Turks embark upon a policy of actively encouraging the (by now Muslim) Albanians to emigrate to Kosovo – not before the Serbs were expelled following an unsuccessful rebellion in 1690.
This Turkish propensity was nothing extraordinary. Empires throughout history settled "loyal" populations where they displaced restive ones. But in Kosovo a confluence of fault lines led to especially bitter sediments, which went on to poison the waters of co-existence for centuries to come. Converted Moslem Albanians versus Christian Serbs; Albanian collaborators and traitors (as perceived by the Serbs) versus Serb mythical heroes (again as perceived by the Serbs); a nation of the ascendance versus a nation dispersed and the last European defence line against Islam traitorously compromised by fellow Christians and Christian kingdoms. Serbs fleeing from Kosovo, from Serbia itself, from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia – moved due north, to refugee camps set up by the Habsburg empire. Serbs settled in Vojvodina and Krajina, thus sowing the seeds of 20th century conflicts with Croatia and Hungary. And all this time they carried with them a baggage of hatred and revenge, a lethal, bloodied promise to be back and to exact the price of betrayal from the Albanians. In 1737 they established a Serbian homeland in Vojvodina. In 1738 they rebelled, again to be defeated in the scene of their national trauma, in Kosovo Polje. Another wave of immigrants followed and another wave of Albanians took over their abandoned property in Metohia. The Turks abolished the seat of the Serb church in Pec in 1766. It seemed that the Serb nation has been all but eradicated.
But this was not to be. In one of the more magnificent sleights of hand that history is so famous for – the Russians forced the beaten Ottoman Empire to grant the Serbs autonomy. It was nothing like the hallowed past sovereignty and glory of the Dusan court but it was a step that rekindled nationalistic sentiments in the most humble and humbled Serb throughout the land. This flame has since never been extinguished and it is at the blazing heart of the Milosevic Yugoslav Wars of Inheritance. That – and the belief that history is cyclical and that there is always hope.
Kosovo was by now entirely "Alabanized". Pristina was the hub of transport and the seat of the administration. Names of places, which resounded both in the 14th century and at the close of the 20th, recur. In Prizren in 1878 the Albanians established their first national movement. There they came of age. The infancy of Serbhood and the adulthood of Albanianism clashed in the same region, the prelude to the tragedy of 1999.
Under the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, Serbia became de jure an independent country. Its anguished delegation, eager and paranoid, gave up Kosovo in dealings behind the gilded scenes. It was a tactical move, which the Serbs reversed in the First Balkan War (1912) – when they regained Kosovo – and in the Second Balkan War (1913) when they regained Macedonia. In these bloody rehearsals of the World Wars, the Serbs succeeded to redefine the borders – but also to give birth to Albania. It is an irony of history that Serb bellicosity and nationalistic dreams gave rise to the modern Albanian state. But then this IS the nature of the Balkans – a hazy nightmare in which enemies give birth to one another. An intricate commerce of Christian death and resurrection, the gifts of death and life exchanged among Gregorian chants and the prayer cries of Muezzins. In 1926 the Serbs and the Albanians drew the borderline between their sovereign states. It was a bad invention, this line of demarcation. It separated close to 600,000 Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia from Albania proper. The disgruntled populace did not engage in acts of terror or in gestures of nationalistic indignation. Instead, they emigrated to Albania and to Turkey – tens of thousands of Albanians, perhaps as many as three hundred thousand, or half the population. And the Serbs came in their stead. The wheel has been reversed, or so it seemed.
Nothing in the Balkans is what it seems to be. Every surface is teeming underneath with hidden meanings, obscure interpretations and exegetic excesses. They who are up go down, bringing in their wake, through the sheer force of their own fall – the rise of their adversaries. Delicate laws of conservation preserve all grudges balanced, all the accounts settled and all agony equally distributed. It is an entropy of history itself, slowly decaying into chaotic repetition.
And thus when Italy conquered Kosovo (it, with Ethiopia being the only thing it ever conquered) – it gave it to Albania. Germany, which dominated Yugoslavia, consented. For a brief four years, the Albanian nation was completely united, territorially, at least.
But this did not last long. After the war, Yugoslavia re-acquired Kosovo and the communist regime embarked on a Turkish-like brutal suppression of the Albanian population. For twenty-one years, secret units of the police hunted, executed and mutilated free spirited Albanians all over Kosovo. In more ways than one, Albanians were the first true dissidents in the entire communist bloc. How ironic, if one recalls the Albanian Enver Hoxa, the leader of next-door Albania and the fiercest of all communist leaders. In 1968 Albanian students joined their colleagues the world over and demonstrated against Serb repression. These particular outbursts were easily squashed but in 1974 Kosovo was made an autonomous province of Yugoslavia by constitutional reforms. School instruction in Albanian was legalized. During all this period, Serbs – especially battle hardened war veterans – were economically encouraged to migrate to Kosovo. Albanians were encouraged to go the other way and many did. About 200,000 Albanians left between the years 1954-7 alone!!!
By now, these human waves and military trampling left Kosovo dilapidated to the core, a backwater both economically and culturally. People left Kosovo in this period because it offered no present work and no future prospects. One hundred thousand Serbs left between 1961-87. Much later many would claim that they were harassed by the Albanian majority but this sounds fake, a re-writing of history. Albanians left as well. Everyone who had a choice chose to leave impoverished Kosovo.
Then Tito died and nothing was the same. The 1981 riots in Kosovo led to the imposition of martial law. As students from Pristina University rampaged in the streets, the government sealed Kosovo off, sent in the militia to restore order (which it did with vehement cruelty and bestiality) and closed down educational institutions. Pristina University was always a hotbed of nationalism – witness its Maoist-Marxist graduate, the head of the KLA and the self-appointed Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci. But that particular spring was exceptional. Public disorder was coupled with grave acts of economic sabotage. The students demanded an end to discrimination and certain freedoms but really they demanded jobs commensurate with their training, jobs, which they believed went to the Serbs.
Five years later, a hitherto obscure communist leader (he was just elected Serbia's party secretary) visited Kosovo. In a chance encounter with angry Serb mobs in the streets of Pristina he accused the Albanians of genocide. "No one should do this to you" – he said, grim faced, visibly shaken, cunningly calculating.
His name was Milosevic.
(Article published August 16, 1999 in "Central Europe Review"
volume 1, issue 8)
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The Plight of the Kosovar
Rumour has it that from now on, citizens of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will need a hard-to-obtain visa to enter the Czech Republic. This already is the case with Bosnians, for instance. Officials in Macedonia believe that this is intended to stem a flow of future Kosovar immigrants. If so, the Czech government holds a grim view of the prospects of peace there and rightly so. Discounting the Second World War and numerous other skirmishes, the developing war in Kosovo is the Fourth Balkan War. The Czech Republic already hosts a great number of "Former Yugoslavs" and of Albanians, for measure. Ordinary Czechs believe them to be responsible – together with Russians and Ukrainians – to the uncontrollable and intimidating wave of street crime. This intuition, it seems, is based less on statistics than on plain old xenophobia.
The situation is shrouded in myths and misconceptions. The Albanians in Albania are not related to the Albanians in Macedonia (known as "Shiptars"). The former are mostly Christians – the latter Moslems (like their brethren in Kosovo). Even the Albanians in Albania are not a cohesive lot – they are divided to Northerners and Southerners with bitter mutual enmity the only thing connecting them. Witness the recent near disintegration of the Albanian state over regional politics (disguised as a financial scandal). The risk of a spillover of the conflict into Albanian territory is small. Not so with Macedonia. This is why NATO is flexing its muscles on Macedonian territory. The message is ostensibly intended for Yugoslav ears. Really, NATO hopes that it will echo far north, in the Kremlin. The Balkans is a strategic area – says NATO – and we will bomb to pieces anyone who wishes to meddle in it. Cold war rhetoric and not from Russian lips, this time.
The Slav Macedonians loathe and fear the Albanians. The latter do not hide their desire to tear Macedonia apart and establish a Greater Albania, comprising Macedonia's Western parts. Radical new leaders – such as the now imprisoned Rufi Osmani, mayor of Gostivar – hoisted Albanian flags on municipal buildings. This led to bloody riots. Slav students counter-rioted when Albanians demanded bilingual education. Things are explosive even without Kosovo.
But this is part of a larger picture. The Macedonian political elite never really wanted to separate itself from the Yugoslav Federation. In the first years of the embargo on Yugoslavia, Macedonia was the main route of smuggling into the beleaguered country (from Greece, through the Vardar river). Macedonia is torn between supporting Serbia and the Slav cause (championed by Russia) – and complying with Western pressures. The West finances the gigantic trade and current account deficits of Macedonia, without which the economy and the currency would have long crashed even beyond their incredibly depressed levels. Other factions still dream about a Greater Bulgaria. The opposition, IMRO-DPMNE is accused of being the creation of the Bulgarian secret service, or the Bulgarian mob, depending on the speaker. Persistent rumours have it that Milosevic signed a secret pact with the Macedonian ruling (former socialist) party, the SDSM, using the mediation of Arkan, a particularly ferocious militia commander in the good old days. Serbia undertook to heat the border with Macedonia just before the October elections and thus to allow the government either to postpone them or to declare a state of emergency. The SDSM stands to lose big in the elections following economic mismanagement and colossal corruption charges. The main beneficiary is a repatriated politician (whose vote, by the way, was crucial in dismantling the Yugoslav Federation), Vasil Tupurkovski. He is perceived as "Mr. Clean Hands", though backed, from the shadows, by Big Business. He is also pro-American (he lived in the States many years and his family is still there). Russian hands don't like this, probably.
Gradually, anti-Western feelings are emerging in Macedonia. The USA is perceived as automatically anti-Serbian (read: anti-Slav) and pro-Albanian. Emotions run high against Germany and the United Kingdom, as well. Russia benefits from all this. If it plays its cards wisely, it could achieve two goals: (a) Destabilize the Southern flank of NATO and (b) transform Macedonia into its agent. If the conflict escalates, Greece and Turkey could be easily drawn in. Both are NATO members. They will not be fighting on the same side, though. And maybe they will carry the fighting into Cyprus. Though far fetched, this is the first opportunity in a decade to seriously dent the NATO facade. Russia is not likely to miss it. Milosevic, in many respects, is a pain. In other respects, though, he is a strategic gift from heaven.
The Kosovo situation is a blessing, not in disguise, for Macedonia. It is through this – and other Serb-induced crises – that Macedonia attained geopolitical importance. The West pampers Macedonia and finances its fiscal and trade excesses precisely because of its strategic location and because of its Albanians. The potential for inter-ethnic tension is deemed to be sizeable by the West. To avert it, the West is willing to bribe all parties involved into tense calm and strained civility.
The Kosovo crisis has just started. The Serbs are a resilient, cunning bunch. Their withdrawal following the US-mediated accord is tactical, not strategic. They will be back. They will do their best to present the Albanians as intransigent, irrational and belligerent during the process of negotiating autonomy for the province. This will not be difficult. The recent crisis radicalised even the moderate Albanians (like Rugova). Their demands ARE likely to be zany and unacceptable. This will be Milosevic's chance to convert the West to his side. He will act the peacemaker, the moderate, the conciliator – and let the Albanians do the dirty work of threats, walkouts and occasional terror.
There will be war in Kosovo. It is only a matter of time and nerves. Milosevic has plenty of both – the Albanians and their Western supporters none. The incident has escalated into a mini cold war. Russia has mobilized select units of its army and moved its anti aircraft missiles to counter a possible NATO strike. The new rulers of the Kremlin are old cold war hands and habits die hard in Russia. Kosovo is a golden opportunity to destabilize NATO (by provoking Turkey against Greece, for instance). I have expounded upon this elsewhere.
Once a real war breaks, the Albanians in Macedonia will be tempted to join in the fray. Though ethnically different – they are not nationalistically indifferent. Hitherto, KLA has failed to establish a presence on Macedonian soil and inter-ethnic clashes have been surprisingly limited and subdued. Still, the potential is there. The Albanians in Macedonia are concentrated in a well-defined geographical triangle. They could demand the same autonomy that their northern brothers are trying to extract from Milosevic. Moreover, they are better integrated into the political and economic life in Macedonia. Following the next elections (18/10) they are likely to hold the balance of power. And they are getting more and more adept at using it. They feel like second class Macedonians. They would like to become first class Albanians. So, there will be clashes and tension in Macedonia over Albanian demands for greater autonomy.
Then there is the Serb-Macedonian tortured relationship. As I said, Macedonia was the last to (reluctantly) secede from the Yugoslav Federation. It escaped harm by aiding and abetting the Serbs during the siege. Macedonia was a vital (also corrupt and lucrative) bloodline, connecting Greece to Serbia (through the Vardar river). Politicians and businessmen (in Macedonia, these are linked vocations) made fortunes. Smugglers and other criminal elements flooded the country, never to go back. The two regimes are not friends but they maintain the Hillary-Bill marriage: power sharing, convenience, the occasional extramarital fling. Serbia will not attack Macedonia as long as it maintains express neutrality. NATO will not compromise this neutrality because it does not want additional trouble in its hinterland if it invades Serbia. As long as this (admittedly shaky) tacit understanding prevails – there is no "Serbian risk".
To sum up: I do not see Macedonia flaring up. A guerrilla type war of attrition is conceivable but with limited targets (autonomy for the Albanians within a well defined swathe of territory). These demands will be finally met because the Macedonians are hedonists, peaceful and easygoing as opposed to the neurotically tense Albanians and Serbs. Blood may be spilled in the process – but sparsely and symbolically. No major disruption will occur. The economy will thrive on the conflict. It is a pathological, parasitic, short-term kind of prosperity – but it is prosperity, althesame.
It is when the area clams down sufficiently for the West to lose interest – that Macedonia should begin to worry. Who will then finance the insane trade deficit? Who will support the eerily strong currency? Who will cater to the military needs of this nascent democracy? Who will save it from its own robber barons, crony capitalists, corrupt politicians and outright criminals?
The only hope is foreign investments. It is worth repeating. Macedonia can achieve market discipline, functioning public institutions, a tolerable level of corruption and internal economic (and thereby political) stability only through the discipline imposed by foreigners. Perhaps the Yugoslav Federation was not such a bad idea after all.
It is said that Tito drank only Czech beer. But Tito is dead and the list of preferred immigration targets among all these warring nationalities does not include Prague. They would rather go to Germany or Russia. There is no real risk of a wave of refugees knocking down Czech border defences. But with its depressed economy and surging crime, Prague regards every potential immigrant as a potential threat. If the gates are not opened to them willingly – the refugees might choose to knock them down.
(Article published September 19-25, 1998 in "Middle East Times")
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The Black Birds of Kosova
The Onset of Cultural Imperialism
The real war over Kosovo hasn't even started yet. When NATO coerces Yugoslavia into submission, when the smoke clears and the charred remains of corpses and houses cleared – then the REAL conflict will erupt. It will be a conflict between moderate Albanians (as represented by Ibrahim Rugova) and radical Albanians (the outlandish Maoist-Islamist admixture represented by the KLA). And it will be bloodier by far.
This is because this new type of war can never be decided, not even by way of weapons. It is a clash of cultures, a battle enjoined by civilizations. And it cuts across the Kosovars as sharply as it separates the West from Yugoslavia. Thus the Kosovo war will be continued by the Kosovars themselves because they, too, are culturally split along the same inflamed lines (Liberal versus Non-liberal). "But, surely" – you would say – "there is nothing new about THIS". But there is.
In the past, nations or clusters of nations or tribes went to war ONLY in order to protect national or tribal or group interests. More food, more space, control over important lines of transport and communications, access to markets, women (to ensure reproduction), the elimination of a foe or a potential foe, loot, weaponry – hard, cold interests underlied all armed conflicts.
Culture and religion were used as fig leaves to disguise the true nature of wars. The colonial wars of the 18th and 19th century were ostensibly fought with the aim of educating the savages, converting them to the right religion and bestowing upon them the blessings of civilization. Mineral wealth, routes of transport, strategic vantage points – were all presented as secondary afterthoughts or side benefits. This is the way it was presented to the public. The truth, of course, was absolutely the opposite.
The Kosovo conflict is the first war in history where WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Europe in general and NATO in particular have no interests in the godforsaken piece of land known as Kosovo and Metoxhia. It is not strategically located (it is all but inaccessible). It is poor (except some minerals of which there is a world glut). It is not strictly "European". It is partly Moslem and allied with the likes of Iran, Osama Bin Laden and Albania. It involves a small number of people (1.8 million). Operation Allied Force is NOT about the defence or furthering of self-interests. It is about conflicting cultures.
The West is trying to impose its culture – liberal and capitalist – upon other societies. Whenever popular opinion (even if expressed democratically and peacefully) does not conform to Western values – the West does its best to undermine the choice as well as the chosen. The West's definition of a legitimate regime is very peculiar and not very rigorous logically. A legitimate regime is one chosen by the people providing its values are Western values or closely conform to them. All other regimes – no matter how strongly upheld by free public opinion – are not legitimate, even illegal and can be deposed and disposed of with moral impunity. Khomeini came to power on the crest of a wave of unprecedented popular support and he supplanted a cruel and corrupt dictator. Milosevic was freely elected by a majority wider than Clinton's. In Algeria and Turkey freely elected Islamists governments were toppled (or prevented from taking office, in the case of Algeria) by the army with the West's enthusiastic though mute consent. This "Allende Syndrome" is in play now in Kosovo.
It is politically very incorrect, I am sure, to say that only a small minority of humans adhere to Western values (and most of the adherents only pay lip service to them). Human rights are an alien concept in Africa and the Balkans. Individualism is an alien – even repulsive – concept in China, Japan and most of South East Asia. Competition is a value derided in most parts of the world. Income disparity and the toleration of abject poverty as an inescapable consequence of capitalism (the "Anglo-Saxon Model") are rejected even in Continental Europe itself. Freedom of Speech is much more curtailed in France than in the USA. Privacy is less respected in the USA than in France. Western values are not universal even in the West.
The nations and societies of the Balkans are used to solving their problems by employing ethnic cleansing, armed brutality, suppression of civilian population and decimation of the elites of the enemy. This is not a value judgement. It is a statement of historical fact. Bulgaria has done it to its Turkish citizens as late as 1995. It used to be the same (and much worse) in Western Europe until 1945. Nations – like human beings – have a growth trajectory. It cannot be hastened or imported. It must grow from within, by integrating experiences, including painful and traumatic ones. Peaceful co-existence often follows and is the result of a devastation so great that no other alternative but peaceful co-existence is left. Any foreign intervention serves only to exacerbate the situation by increasing the number and intensity of inter-ethnic grudges. The seeds of the current conflict in Kosovo were sown by the Ottoman Turks as early as 1912. Foreign interventions tend to boomerang in the Balkans. Actually, they boomerang everywhere. Ask Israelis how they fared in the Lebanese quagmire.
The West should have respected the Balkanian way of conducting their affairs and resolving their differences. It should have left them to slaughter each other in peace. These are young nations (having been freed from all foreign occupation only as late as 1945 after centuries of subjugation). They need to learn from their OWN experiences. They need to reach the point of exhaustion beyond which there is only peaceful co-existence. Violence solves nothing, on the contrary, it just reinforces the Balkanian conviction that he who carries the big stick has justice on his side.
But how did this apparent transition from interest-wars to culture-wars transpire?
Indeed, the transition is only apparent. The key is the transformation of culture from something ethereal and transcendent – to a strong self-interest as any other. Once culture became an asset to protect, cultural wars were certain to erupt. Thus, it is still self-interest at the basis of it all but this time the self-interest protected and furthered is cultural dominance and hegemony.
It started rather innocuously and inadvertently. The Americanisation of the world was perceived to be the historical equivalent of the Pox Romania. This was a false analogy. The Pox Romania was rampant pluralism. The Pox Americana is rampant homogeneity.
Then the West (notably America) suddenly realized the economic dividends on cultural homogeneity (for instance as evident in various forms of intellectual property – movies, music, software, TV, internet). Culture – the oft-neglected stepsister of economics – became an INDUSTRY. A money-spinner. It was well worth the West's while not only to sell mass produces culture to homogenized markets – but also to make sure that these markets were peaceful, stable, accessible and free. If necessary, this was to be secured by force.
Paradoxically, in this age of moral relativity and political correctness – the West is ASHAMED to admit that this is a cultural war where one of the parties is trying to impose its cultural values on the other for utterly utilitarian reasons. Instead, the war is presented as a matter of national interest of the OLD TYPE.
But then what IS the OLD TYPE of the national interest of the USA, Europe, EU and NATO? Isn't it the preservation and immutability of existing borders? The suppression of irredentist and separatist movements? The abolition of terror? The prevention of large-scale dislocations of endemic populations? And if so, wasn't the best way to ensure all the above – to allow Milosevic to cruelly and ruthlessly eradicate the KLA and intimidate the local population into submission? Hasn't the West adopted these very tactics (of encouraging local bullies to suppress and even eliminate local restive populations) in Latin America in the 70's and 80's and in Africa in the 60's and 70's? Didn't the West (wisely) turn a blind eye on China, Russia, Israel, Iraq (prior to 1990) and others only recently when they did to their population what Milosevic did not dare to do to his?
The Kosovo war – it is clear – is CONTRARY to any conceivable OLD TYPE self-interest of the West. It costs the West dearly and will cost it even more – and not only in monetary terms. The loss of prestige, moral standing, world support, economic resources, world trade (the blocking of the Danube) far outweighs any possible rendition of the old school "national interest". It is the protection and propagation of the West's culture that is at stake, replete with human rights, civil rights, capitalism, individualism and liberalism. It is a defining war – not only militarily (the future of NATO) but also culturally (the identity of the future global market). Poor Milosevic, look what he got himself into.
(Article published May 10, 1999 in "The New Presence")
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The Defrosted War
Russia's Role in a Brave, New World
A president (almost) impeached. An important politician sacked due to incompetence. Business tycoons under investigation. The USA? No, this is the new, post-communist, Russia. Many firsts, meagre experience, numerous blunders. Is it democracy in action? No, it is simply autocracy exposed. The same machinations went on in Ivan the Terrible's court, the same conspiracies enshrouded Peter the Great's cabin, the same conflicts besieged Stalin. Ask Khrushchev.
The great mistake of the West is the deeply ingrained naive belief in progress. History is cyclical. Otherwise we could have learned nothing from it. The nations of the Balkans will still be dividing and re-dividing their blood stained enclaves and the Russians will still be under autocratic rule and the Americans will still be moralizing in the year 3000. History teaches us fatalism or, at least, determinism.
Russian autocrats refined the art of divide et impera (divide and rule). They always had a keen eye for conflicting interests. They pitted one group against another dangling carrots aplenty in front of the drooling vassals. The recent shuffle was no different.
There are three major camps in Russia today. There are the "Reformists" – young, well-educated, pro Western, with economic savvy, forward-looking, corrupt. There is the "Old Guard" – old, guarded, backward, centralist, anti Western (actually, anti American), corrupt. And there are the nationalists – ideologically eclectic, rigid, radical, dangerous, corrupt.
Yeltsin is the ultimate puppet master. The Old Guard was good to stabilize a nose-diving economy and a disintegrating body politic. They new where the levers are and how to use them, they possessed all the right dossiers, they were chums with the Communist Duma. But they proved to be too independent and too dangerous. They aspired to the presidency (Primakov). They were too anti-Western and, thus, risked the only reliable source of financing in the absence of tax collection (the IMF funds). They espoused geopolitical brinkmanship. They were cold war in an era of defrosted war. There is no money in cold war mantras. In an age when money is the only ideology – they did not adhere to the party line. They posed a threat not only to Yeltsin's authority – but also to the economic well being of Russia.
Having looked into the abyss in the early stages of the Kosovo crisis (remember the re-directed ballistic nuclear missiles) – Yeltsin engaged in a surprisingly elegant volte-face. He appointed Chernomyrdin, a pro-Western, quasi-Reformist, to contain the Kosovo damage. And he fired Primakov, the hawk. The IMF gave Russia 4.5 billion dollars that it swore blue in the face not to give Russia only a month before. A coincidence, needless to add.
Yeltsin doesn't give a hoot about Kosovo. All he wanted was to re-establish his domestic authority and to quash especially insolent and increasingly dangerous investigations into his murky financial dealings. Kosovo was an added bonus. A joker in an already excellent hand. Yeltsin put it to deft use.
By sending Chernomyrdin to sort out the Balkan mess, Yeltsin killed a flock of birds with nary a stone. He signalled to the West that a pro-Western, pro-Reformist team is in control again and that the bad guys have been consigned to oblivion. He signalled to the Duma and to politicians of every colour and denomination who is the boss. The Duma took the hint and promptly dropped the impeachment charges and confirmed the nondescript (but very ominous) Stepashin as the next scapegoat. He enhanced the geopolitical standing of Russia and already converted some of it into hard cash, averting an otherwise certain default of the Russian Federation. He allied himself with most of the "progressives" and "liberals" of the world from China to the Guardian in London. And, in his role as peacekeeper, he effectively extricated Russia from the war psychosis that Messrs. Primakov et al. were trying to plunge Russia into.
But why did the West – especially the USA – collaborate with this St. Vitus dance?
Because they wanted Yeltsin o achieve all the above goals. Because it served to neutralize Russia as a potential, backdoor combatant, a-la Vietnam. Because they really had no more effective channel of communication to Milosevic. Because it is better to have your dependent as mediator – then a real independent. Because they had o choice: many NATO members would have protested had Russia's help been rejected. And because Russia has to be part of any future settlement.
Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Only this time it is a smoking cigar. There is more to the intricate USA-Russian choreography than meets the eye. The USA is in no hurry to finish this particular "air campaign". Meetings are scheduled a week apart. The same proposals and the same envoys keep shuttling back and forth.
This is because Russia and the USA see eye to eye. They want Serbia weakened and Milosevic dead (if possible). They understand that "Great Serbia" is Milosevic's dream – but the world's nightmare. Everyone is holding out. Everyone – Russia included – want the Serbs to cease to be a viable fighting force. As time passes, Russia will become more and more confrontational but this time the culprit and the recipient of their vitriolic diatribes is likely to be Milosevic. It is good for the West and it is good for Russia because it is Russia that will fill in the vacuum left by the debris of the Milosevic regime. The USA couldn't be happier. It wants out of the Balkan – never to come back.
At this stage, the poor nations of the Balkan are deluded into believing in a future, Western sponsored, "Balkan Marshal Plan". They are in for a rude awakening. The minute the war ends – the USA will vanish, leaving the resulting mess to the natives, to a fragmented Europe and to Russia, who asked for it by getting involved.
The only money likely to be invested in the region by the USA is in the reconstruction of the Chinese embassy.
(Article written on May 19, 1999 and published May 24, 1999
in "The New Presence")
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The Bones of the Grenadier
Endgame in the Balkans
The (cyclical) victory of capitalism led westerners of all colours and stripes to believe in solving problems by throwing money at them. Prosperity, international trade, foreign investment, globalisation and joint ventures are the new magic formulas. Mathematically put this superstition is often presented thus: the propensity to fight decreases in direct proportion to the amount of economic common interests of the potential rivals. Thus, instead of tackling core issues – the West tries to drown them in a green deluge of US dollars. Where the west should have tackled a corrupt and autocratic mentality (Russia) – it commits funds through the IMF instead. Where it should have applied itself to interethnic tensions and rivalries (the politically correct phrase denoting racism) – it rebuilds infrastructure.
If the "throw money at the problem" theorem were right – and it never was, not even once in human history – the Yugoslav wars of secession and succession would have never erupted. Former Yugoslavia was economically independent and prosperous. It constituted an effective and dynamic free trade zone between its six constituent republics. Resources were allocated within it with reasonable efficiency. Macedonia produced raw materials. Slovenia processed them. Croatia consumed them, added some industrial products of its own and all of them traded with Serbia, the seat of the administration. Yugoslavia was rather self sufficient and conducted much of its value added and trading activities in-house. The gap between its GDP and GNP only a decade ago, reflects what used to be this rather efficient and lucrative market, a mini-EU in the Balkans. The envy of all other socialist countries it was mooted to become member of the EU (then, the EEC) when the thought of the Czech Republic as a member would have elicited condescending smiles. Heavy industry, light manufacturing, construction and engineering all flourished. Yugoslavia's exports boomed. It had a proto-capitalistic system of ownership and a Japanese-style system of management. It introduced the IMF and its reforms in 1980, when Tito was still alive and years before any other socialist country. The reforms of Ante Markovic (the 1989-91 federal prime minister) are still a model of "free enterprise with a socialist bend". On purely economic grounds, the Yugoslav wars were and are a colossal insanity.
The new Yugoslavia endured economic devastation to fight a losing war aimed at securing the interests and safety of Serb minorities in the newly formed Republics of former Yugoslavia (NOT to establish a "Greater Serbia" as Western propaganda has it). Macedonia withstood a multiple embargo by its neighbours Greece and Bulgaria because it wouldn't change its name or the historical status of its language. The economic price that Macedonia was forced to pay was mind boggling (the affair with Greece is dormant now but far from over) – and it was nothing compared to the Serb tally. The Jews, in contrast, were busy signing economic agreements with Germans less than 6 years after the holocaust. A different order of priorities, surely.
Having lived in the Balkans and worked there for almost a decade, I am forced to conclude that economic arguments are absolutely meaningless when they clash with the proud and romantic nationalism of the likes of the Serbs. If offered in isolation, economic incentives will do nothing to reduce future conflicts or contain them. Marshal plans, future EU membership (or current EU "new" association), IMF soft loans, World Bank effective grants – will all fail to preclude future armed conflicts as they have always failed in the past.
Take Bosnia-Herzegovina. By now, the West – through the various organs of its global financial architecture – has committed well over 5 billion USD to this godforsaken piece of land in the middle of nowhere. This is almost 3 times the official GDP of this country. It is the equivalent of 20 trillion US dollars invested in the USA in four years time. All this was in order to cement the cohesiveness of this artificial concoction of a state and to secure its future as a political (read: economic) unit. It failed, miserably so. The Republika Srpska is nowhere nearer to integrating with its Moslem and Croat neighbour. The common currency did nothing to foster a common identity. And the place represents an abysmal reversion to old colonial habits with a governor to regulate the unruly and unyielding natives, by the application of force if need be.
Indeed, the ethnic wars of the modern era are a direct result of said colonial period. Borders, drawn at random and with a minimal and arbitrary knowledge of the terrain and its inhabitants – led to a hundred years of correctional warfare by the victims of this patronizing ignorance. The rule of thumb is simple: people cannot live together. Humans are misanthropes, they love to hate the different, the other. Therefore, it is best to encourage the formation of ethnically homogenous political units – where ethnic affiliation counts and of ideologically homogenous political units where ideology matters and of racially homogenous political bodies where race equals identity. A simple rule derived from the 5000 years of trials and errors called "human history".
The USSR disintegrated peacefully because it disintegrated into ethnically homogenous entities (or entities with clear ethnic identities and majorities). In the process Russia gave up oil reserves, mineral riches, space launching sites, strategic locations and much of its nuclear and conventional weaponry. Despite all these incredible sacrifices, it was a peaceful process.
The Czechs separated from the Slovaks in a bloodless break-up of their common state because the two resulting entities were ethnically homogenous. Well, almost – hence the persecution of the Roma in both countries.
Slovenia and Macedonia seceded from the Yugoslav Federation without as much as a shot (except for the first few days of Slovenia's independence when confusion ruled supreme) – because there were very few Serbs in either. Slovenia and Macedonia are ethnically homogeneous (Macedonia with a sizeable Albanian minority, though). Hence their status as islands of peace and tranquillity in an impossible region. The war with Croatia and more so in Bosnia was a direct result of ethnic heterogeneity.
The not-so-implicit deal in the case of the USSR and the Czech Republic was simple to grasp and very effective. "You will peacefully break up into ethnically homogeneous units – and we will support you financially and initiate you into our economic superstructures." It worked. It still is working. But it was not the deal offered to the former Yugoslav republics. To them the West's message was: "You will peacefully break up into ethnically HETEROGENEOUS units – and we will support you financially, subject to painful and sustained reforms."
It is time to recognize the folly and the fallacy of this last message. Yugoslavia in particular and the Balkans in general must be "re-designed" into ethnically homogeneous political units. If this necessitates the re-drawing of now dangerously obsolete borders – let it be so. It would make a lot more sense to dismantle Bosnia and unite the Republika Srpska with Yugoslavia (Serbia) and the Croat bit with Croatia. The Muslims can have their political unit, if they wish. Parts of Kosovo must go to Albania. The borders have to be redrawn. The result should be a series of ethnically homogeneous states – viable, cohesive, peaceful and able to concentrate on economic warfare rather than on the economics of war.
To achieve this goal, colonialism must be revived. Operation Allied Force is a colonial war without the mercantilist emphasis of days gone by. It is a coalition of rich countries, led by a superpower, attacking and subduing a regional bully. As in the good old days, borders are effectively redrawn (Kosovo's "extensive self government"), new political entities formed, alliances with one group of natives against another abound, military hardware coupled with economic prowess are pitted against local aspirations which do not conform with a moralistic "global view" of the world. The absurd is that – because colonialism is not politically correct and is condemned by all with great vehemence – the colonial powers of today are castrated. These eunuchs of geopolitics do not dare to carry their military and economic clout to its logical and beneficial conclusion. In other words: they do not dare to DICTATE a solution and impose it rather than engage in endless consultations with local parties and amongst themselves.
We need a new Berlin Congress. We need a new Bismarck. He said that the whole Balkan is not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier – but this did not prevent the newly born (and recently victorious) Germany from engaging in the redesign of South Europe. Unfortunately, the Berlin Congress was a shoddy job, more influenced by the narrow self-interests of the participants than by any grand vision or integrity of intentions. To the reshapers of Europe of that time it was more important to adversely affect the interests of Russia and Turkey than to create a long lasting peace and the conditions for prosperity. It was bound to fail and it did and it still does.
This is the second chance (not counting communism). This is the time to redefine South Europe and the Balkans. This is the time to draw logical borders, which reflect not whims and eccentricities, paranoias and ignorance, condescension and malice – but demography and history, national aspirations and disparate cultures and narratives. Let each ethnic group live within safe and internationally guaranteed borders. Let them work in harmony across borders – rather than engage in conflicts within them. Let the Albanian lands go to Albania, the Serbian lands to the Serbs – as the Czech lands are to the Czech and Russian lands are to the Russian. Only then will peace prevail as it does in Western Europe and in Scandinavia today – the scenes of centuries of battles and bloodshed.
(Article published May 31, 1999 in "The New Presence")
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Millenarian Thoughts about Kosovo
"English persons, therefore, of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer."
("Black Lamb and Grey Falcon – A Journey through Yugoslavia" by Rebecca West – Penguin Books 1994 edition p.20)
Rebecca West's book was first published in 1940. By that time, it was common wisdom that the Balkans is the place where the destiny of our world is determined or, at the very least, outlined. Had she lived today, she would have had no reason to revise this particular judgement of hers.
The Kosovo "air campaign" exposed and brought to culmination a series of historical processes whose importance cannot be exaggerated.
The Russian Revolution
Forced to choose between nationalist delusions of imperial grandeur and modern capitalism and its attendant, individualism – Russia chose the latter. The ever-surprising Yeltsin completed the revolution he started in 1990 by deposing of the last vestiges of stagnation personified by Primakov. The remnants of the former nomenclature, the establishment figures, the fossils in the ideological swamp that communism has become – were given the penultimate slip. Russia was forced to peer into the abyss of its own corruption, nepotism, criminality, social and political disintegration and military impotence. It was forced to do so by the developments in the Kosovo crisis. It was made to elect between pan-Slavism and pan-capitalism. For a while, it seemed to have been choosing the former – leading to an inevitable and suicidal confrontation with the victorious civilization of the West. Then it recoiled and chose the IMF over the KGB, material goods over ideological fervour, the new myths of modernity over the old ones of blood-steeped patriotism.
It is a momentous event, the consequences of which cannot yet be fully fathomed. Extrapolating Russian history, it would be reasonable to expect a backlash in the form of a counterrevolution. A communist counter-revolution being unlikely – we can expect a fascist-criminal counter-revolution. But it is as safe to assume that the revolution is irreversible, setbacks aside. It is irreversible because for the first time it generated vested interests not only for a select elite – but also for everyone. Prosperity tends to trickle down and, as it does (forming a middle class in its wake) – it knows no boundaries of class. The real revolution has just been completed in Russia, 70 years after Lenin's death. And all classes are about to win.
The Second Cold War
The outlines of the second cold war have emerged. It is to be fought between a prosperous, almighty, vainglorious, narcissistic, self-righteous, contemptuous and increasingly disintegrating USA and an equally disintegrating China on the economic ascendant.
The second cold war (already in progress) is fought not between foes – but between partners. The extent of economic interests common to the two current combatants far exceeds anything achieved in the high moments of detente between the USA and its previous rival, Russia. This cold war is about markets and cultural dominance – not sheer, projected, military prowess. It is a throwback to earlier days of colonialism and mercantilism and it is laden with historical memories and sensitivities.
The aims are different, as well. China wishes to force the USA to throw open the gates of the global marketplace, currently zealously guarded by the only superpower. The IMF, the World Bank, the WTO are all believed to be extensions of the American economic clout, put to the use of its geopolitical interests. Russia forced its way into the G8 but China has much loftier ambitions. It is not in pursuit of membership in gentlemen's clubs – it aspires to real, raw power. It wants to carve the world between itself and the West. In short, it wants to dominate and to export and it wants the West to help it do so. In return, it promises regional and internal stability and access to its markets. To convince the West of the quality of its wares, China demonstrates its capacity to destabilize in various corners of the world. It transfers weapons technology, support international terrorism and rogue states and, in general, places formidable obstacles in the path to Pax Americana, the New World Order.
The Americans regard this as a reasonable deal but they wish to reverse the cause and the effect. First, they want to gain unhindered access to the potentially infinite Chinese market and to have the Chinese deliver the regional and international stability they claim to be able to deliver. Only then are they willing to contemplate the coveted prize of graduating to the co-ownership of the world financial and economic architecture.
China is fighting for legitimacy, recognition, access to markets, capital and technology and the ability to reshape the world in its favour. The USA is fighting to check progress of the Chinese on all these fronts. Such fundamental differences are bound to lead to conflict – as, indeed, they have.
In this sense, the bombing of the Chinese embassy has been an auspicious event because it allowed both parties to break through, to unlock and a deadlock and to make progress towards a fuller integration of China into the WTO, for instance. It also legitimised the airing of grievances against the style and conduct of the USA in world affairs. In short, it was cathartic and useful.
The Demise of the Client States
The concept of the client states is so well entrenched in our historical consciousness that its demise has been denied and repressed. There are no longer alliances between powerful political units (such as the USA) and smaller, dependent, satellites. The kaleidoscopically shifting interests of the few remaining global powers dictate geopolitical transigence and ideological transparency. These adaptive processes lead to a myriad of alliances, forever changing to fit the needs and interests of the moment or to cater to future contingencies. Thus, Russia ignores Yugoslavia's pleas for help, China allows the USA, Japan and South Korea to conduct direct negotiations with North Korea, America bullies Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians (who support Iraq), the UK and the USA impose a peace plan on the IRA, Russia respects an embargo imposed on both Iraq and Yugoslavia and so on. These are the roots of a truly global order. It is also the death knell for rogue and "insane" states. Devoid of their patronage, these countries are gradually tamed by the awesome twin forces of the global market and international capital and information flows. Iran moderates, Libya surrenders, Yugoslavia succumbs, the only exception being Iraq.
This is NOT to say that warfare is a thing of the past. On the very contrary. In the absence of the overwhelmingly restraining impulses and impositions of the superpowers – ethnic strife, border skirmishes, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – all are likely to increase. But these are already affairs of limited importance, confined to parts of the world of limited importance, and fought amongst people of ever more limited importance. War marginalizes the warriors because it takes them out of the circulation of capital, information and goods. Decoupled from these essential flows, warring parties wither and shrivel.
The Convergence of Economic and Military Alliances
The Kosovo crisis started as an exercise in self re-definition. NATO used it to successfully put its cohesiveness to test. It acted sanely and its hypercomplex set of checks and balances and more checks scored an impressive success. As a result, the limited aims and means of the campaign were maintained and NATO was not dragged into either British belligerence or Italian and Greek defeatism. It was the second time in recent history (the first being another multilateral military campaign in the Gulf in 1991) – that a military move did not degenerate into full-scale insanity of carnage and bloodshed.
NATO emerged as a self-restrained, well-choreographed, well co-ordinated body of professionals who go through motions and off the shelf plans with lifeless automatism. While somewhat aesthetically repulsive, this image is a great deterrent. We fear cold-blooded, impartial machines of war more than we do any hot-blooded, sword-wielding fanatic. NATO acted with the famous German industrial efficiency that gave warfare a bad name. It was "surgically precise" and civilian casualties were alchemically converted into "collateral damage". The well-practised Jamie Shea is an exceptionally chilling sight.
Thus, a policeman was born to police the emerging world of international commerce, true multinationals, boundary-less flows of data and chaotic reactions to changes in local variables. This policeman is NATO and it wields an awesome club. As it chooses which criminals to discipline, it transforms the nature of previously unruly neighbourhoods. For this, at least, we should be grateful.
(Article published June 6, 1999 in "The New Presence")
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NATO's Next War
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 aggressor" of yester month. 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 ("demilitarised" 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 worldwide. 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 ante-bellum. It is well equipped. It is well financed. Its ranks have swelled. It has been transformed from an agglomeration of desperadoes – to a military guerrilla force to be reckoned with. Even the Serbs found that out at a dear price.
With the Serb pullout from Kosovo, Serbia is no longer the KLA'a enemy of choice. The KLA has seen the enemy and it is NATO. The pro-Rugova demonstrations in the camps (despite Rugova's Quisling show with Milosevic and his refusal to explain his motives and to adopt a stern position against the Serbs) – sounded loud and clear. Thaci picked up the signal.
No Kosovar autonomy can do without Serbia. Kosovo is connected to Serbia by way of infrastructure. All its trade is with Yugoslavia. It is absolutely dependent on Serbia for its energy needs. Rugova knows this. Thaci knows this. And Milosevic knows this. Only NATO pretends that Kosova can survive as an independent, economically viable entity. It cannot. It is a part of Serbia, willy-nilly and it will continue to be so. Rugova and Thaci will be positioning themselves accordingly and will seek the favours of the only regional force that really matters: Serbia. Rumour has it that discussion have already commenced in Prague between Yugoslav low-level officials and Rugova and Thaci representatives of their competing administrations.
In conducting these discussions, Milosevic's aim is two-fold. Divide et impera – he intends to do his best to inflame the nascent internecine civil war about to erupt in Kosovo. By offering goodies to both camps, Serbia pits them against one another. By being inconsistent and unpredictable (remember Serbia's refugees policy?) – the Serbs enhance a Kosovar personality disorder. Dazed by the arbitrariness and capriciousness of a vicious neighbour – the Kosovars will lash at each other in an effort to offload their frustration and aggression.
Lucky Serbia. Its infrastructure all but eradicated – it will enjoy the best and latest replacements courtesy a multitude of international financial institutions and NGOs. Materially revamped, nationally revived, militarily vindicated, an invigorated power that withstood the mightiest alliance in history – Serbia is in an excellent position to emerge as an important, nay, indispensable, regional, pivotal player. It can have its choice. In Rugova it will find a genteel, compliant, respectable and submissive partner. In Thaci – a fellow bully. Serbia can conduct business with both. As it tramples over internal dissent, suppresses Montenegro and tightens its grip on its minorities – Serbia will strive to split Kosovo. It will be content with the mineral-rich, historical north. Thaci will be content with any kind of foothold, a stepping-stone on the way to a Greater Albania. There are grounds for doing business and business will be done, indeed.
Poor Kosova. Lucky Serbia. With such opponents, one need not have friends. And, in the background, NATO stumbles on into its worst nightmare, into an apocalyptic tapestry of exploding mines, KLA sniper fire and mortar attacks, Serb revanchism, material devastation, mass starvation and geopolitical destabilization. It is this war: gradual, nerve wrecking, multi-annual, expensive, replete with body bags and horror scenes – that will do NATO in. It is the end of NATO, only it does not know it. It has contracted the humanitarian cancer and its days are numbered.
Milosevic is smiling. He won the war. Completely. And the world has yet to learn it.
Post Scriptum
It is ever so easy and rational to disregard the above scenario. It is abrupt, illogical, paradoxical. The Serbs and Milosevic are surely the KLA's worst enemies. No peace – even one mediated by a confluence of interests – can blossom among the ruins of coexistence and trust shredded. A KLA supported by the Serbs against NATO is as outlandish as an Iraq supported by the USA against Israel.
But the Balkan is a region characterized by its fluid alliances and structures. Rebecca West, in her masterpiece, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" tells of an alliance no less unholy and no more improbable than a KLA-Milosevic one (pages 840-1 in the 1994 Penguin edition):
"It happened that the Slavs who had become Janissaries, especially the Bosnian Serbs, who had been taken from their Christian mothers and trained to forswear Christ and live in the obedience and enforcement of the oppressive yet sluttish Ottoman law, had learned their lesson too well. When the Turks themselves became alarmed by the working of that law and attempted to reform it, the Janissaries rose against the reformation. But because they remembered they were Slavs in spite of all the efforts that had been made to force them to forget it, they felt that in resisting the Turks, even in defence of Turkish law, they were resisting those who had imposed that Turkish law on them in place of their Christian system. So when the rebellious Janissaries defeated the loyal Army of the Sultan in the fourth battle of Kosovo in 1831, and left countless Turkish dead on the field, they held that they had avenged the shame laid on the Christian Slavs in the first battle of Kosovo, although they themselves were Moslems. But their Christian fellow-Slavs gave them no support, for they regarded them simply as co-religionists of the Turkish oppressors and therefore as enemies. So the revolt of the Janissaries failed; and to add the last touch of confusion, they were finally defeated by a Turkish marshal who was neither Turk nor Moslem-born Slav, but a renegade Roman Catholic from Dalmatia. Here was illustrated what is often obscured by historians, that a people can be compelled by misfortune into an existence so confused that it is not life but sheer nonsense, the malignant nonsense of cancerous growth."
This is reminiscent of the Gorani Moslems in 1999 Kosovo who collaborated with the Serbs against their co-religionists, the Albanians. They persecuted the Albanian population – looted, burned houses and worse – more tenaciously and more ferociously than any Serb.
In hindsight, Milosevic would have done well to co-opt the KLA. By pitting it against Rugova and provoking Rugova's camp against a strengthened KLA – Milosevic could have incited a veritable, full fledged civil war among the Albanians. The West would have then begged him to intervene in his by now traditional role of peacemaker. But history took a different turn. The returning Albanians will not forgive or forget. Retaliation has many faces, some less bloodied than others. But retaliation will come. And while Milosevic may have won this battle – he may, indeed, have lost the war. Only history will tell.
(Article published June 14, 1999 in "The New Presence")
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Why did Milosevic Surrender?
Not because of NATO. Ground damage assessment based on the number of withdrawing troops and their hardware and on a detailed inventory of charred remains in most of Kosovo – prove that this air campaign was no different to its predecessors. Only 10% of Serb artillery, tanks, APCs and so on were affected. The Yugoslav (read: Serb) army – ostensibly the side that lost the war – is vibrant and defiant. It does not look like it has been subjected to the equivalent of 12 Hiroshima size nuclear bombs in 11 weeks. It looks like it knows something that the rest of us don't.
And it does.
Milosevic did not surrender. He entrapped the West in his usual, wily style. He lured the west into a fatal hornets' nest, an unmanageable capsule of centuries-old conflicts, a terrorists' lair, replete with drug deals, gun smuggling and organized crime. Kosovo constitutes a major drugs route from the Golden Triangle, via Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran to Europe. It is an integral part of the path leading – via the polluted Vardar River – from Greece to Montenegro. It is swarming with weapons traders, drug dealers, "freedom fighters", Muslim fanatics, spies, con artists, smugglers and common criminals. Every self-respecting mob is heavily represented there – from the ruthless Bulgarian mafia to the murderous Russian one. The civilian population has long been intimidated into co-operation in all these loathsome (though lucrative) activities. Many are only too happy to collaborate.
Milosevic withdrew his forces – this is an undeniable fact. He did so after he lost the backing of Russia. Russia sold him to the West and disposed of the Old Guard, which supported him in the Kremlin. It was handsomely rewarded by that long arm of the USA – the IMF. But Russia's betrayal is not sufficient to account for the Serbian volte-face. The turnaround in Milosevic's position was too sudden and Russia's support has always been more moral than military. Something else was at play.
Notice the following hitherto unimaginable developments:
Milosevic surrenders Kosovo to NATO occupation, including all its holy sites and lucrative mines. There is a conspicuous absence of domestic reaction by the likes of Seselji, the Serb ultra-nationalist. He quits the government – a response eerily civilized judging by his previous record.
The stunning rapprochement between the Macedonian Prime Minister, an erstwhile nationalist and Albanian-buster, Ljubco Georgievski and the self-proclaimed KLA Kosovar "Prime Minister" Hashim Thaci. The two agree to open liaison offices in each others' capital cities and to collaborate with Albania in the forthcoming reconstruction of the Balkan region. All this is happening as the Macedonian Minister of the Interior is accusing both the Serbs and the KLA of conducting subversive activities on Macedonian soil with the aim of splitting Macedonia apart. All this happens as NATO begins to clash militarily with an ever more defiant and cocksure KLA.
The Russians flex their 200-men muscles in an enclave in the Pristina airport. Yugoslavia looks upon the developing East-West choreography with a profound lack of interest. The Serb forces are withdrawing together with tens of thousands of Serb civilians, the new refugees in this never-ending saga. This, despite the FACT that Milosevic could have dragged the war on indefinitely without incurring too much damage either to his military or to his regime. Had he done so, NATO would have been the first to blink.
Why did Milosevic surrender? Why so suddenly and so surprisingly? Why did he surrender when the West and NATO were on the verge of breaking apart (recall the acrimonious public exchanges between Blair, Clinton and Schroeder just prior to the auspicious Serb capitulation)? This is very reminiscent of the German surrender in 1918. The forces in the field felt victorious. The politicians wavered. The result was a sense of betrayal and backstabbing exploited by the corporal-Fuhrer Hitler.