Library:To kill a nation/Multiculturalism in Yugoslavia

US leaders have targeted various countries as “rogue nations” and then subjected them to economic isolation and military attack. Roughly the same propaganda process is applied in each instance. First, the leaders are demonized. Qaddafi of Libya was a “Hitlerite megalomaniac” and a “madman.” Noriega of Panama was a “swamp rat,” one of the world's worst “drug thieves and scums,” and “a Hitler admirer.” Saddam Hussein of Iraq was “the Butcher of Baghdad,” a “madman,” and “worse than Hitler.” And Milosevic was the “ruthless” and “brutal” dictator, branded “a new Hitler” by President Clinton. Each of these leaders are denounced for committing horrendous—if usually unspecified—crimes and for being a menace to the peace and security of their region. If not blatantly false, such charges are usually inflated.

This is not to say that such “rogue state” leaders have never committed acts of repression or other violations of democratic process and international law. But they have been no worse than—and, in the case of Milosevic, not nearly as bad as—leaders of the many repressive fascistic states that have benefited from generous helpings of US assistance. In fact, it is the cozy collusion between US leaders and murderous thugs like Batista of Cuba, Somoza of Nicaragua, Salazar of Portugal, Pinochet of Chile, the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Philippines, Suharto of Indonesia, and others too numerous to mention, that makes the sudden indignation expressed toward a Noriega, Qaddafi, Saddam, or Milosevic so suspect. What is really offensive about these four is that they were all guilty of charting a somewhat independent course of self-development. They were not in perfect compliance with the dictates of the global free market and the US national security state.¹

It should be remembered that Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was not always consigned to this rogue's gallery. At first, the West viewed the ex-banker as a Serbian nationalist who might be useful to them. As late as 1995, the Clinton administration accepted Milosevic as a negotiating partner and guarantor of the Dayton Accords in Bosnia, even praising him for the many concessions he made. Only later, when they saw him as an obstacle rather than a tool, did US policy makers begin to depict him as having been all along the demon who “started all four wars.” This was too much even for the managing editor of the US-establishment journal Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria, who noted that Milosevic—who rules “an impoverished country that has not attacked its neighbors—is no Adolf Hitler. He is not even Saddam Hussein.“²

Once certain leaders are demonized in the public eye, US forces feel free to attack their countries, kill substantial numbers of their citizens, and impose crippling economic sanctions on them. US and UK leaders have repeatedly described Yugoslavia as a dictatorship that brooks no opposition, where a controlled press keeps people from knowing what is really going on, and where citizens cower before what British Defense Secretary George Robertson called Milosevic's “murder machine.” But was the Yugoslav government a dictatorship of such diabolic magnitude that they would justify a war of aggression against its people? Consider some components of the FRY system:

Political Process

Under Communist rule, the various republics within the FRY were endowed with rights of equal constitutional status. The Communists exercised a near monopoly of public power (most weakly in Kosovo) and “enjoyed wide support within the population as the guarantors of all the positive elements in the system and as the people who had led a successful resistance against fascism.”³

As for elections in the post-cold war era, representatives of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group (BHHRG) monitored the parliamentary and presidential contests held in Serbia in the autumn of 1997. Their report, published on the group's Web page, “found many shortcomings in the Serbian election process” but “these were no more serious than those observed in other places—the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, for example—which was hailed as exemplary by other international monitoring groups.” No mystery here: an anti-socialist opposition won in Montenegro. That makes all the difference in how the election is perceived in Washington. If the results are what Washington wants, then the election is applauded for being fair and democratic. But if the wrong party is elected, then the election is denounced as unfair and rigged; the resulting government is branded “undemocratic” while the losers are championed as “the democratic opposition.”

This same ideological labeling was applied to Nicaragua and the Sandinistas, who conducted fair and open elections according to teams of foreign observers, but made the mistake of winning them and then pursuing social reforms that benefited the impoverished many rather than the privileged few. Their government was condemned as autocratic and Nicaragua was condemned to years of US-sponsored terrorist violence and destabilization. Only when the exhausted and battered Nicaraguans buckled under and voted for the US-financed free-market opponents—on Washington’s promise of peace if they did—were Nicaraguan elections hailed as free and democratic.⁴

Milosevic, even the New York Times acknowledged, “won elections that outside observers said were more or less fair.”⁵ At the end of 1999, he presided over a coalition government that included four parties, and faced several opposition parties in parliament. No matter. Since he still pursued economic policies that did not win the approval of the Western free-marketeers, he continued to be labeled a brutal dictator.

After serving two consecutive terms as president of Serbia, Milosevic honored the Yugoslav constitution’s prohibition against a third term. He next stood for election as president of Yugoslavia itself. Such constitutional propriety has not been observed by everyone in the region. Slovenia’s president, Milan Kucan, served three terms in office, disregarding his country’s two-term limitation. Izetbegovic repeatedly violated the Bosnian Federation’s yearly rotating presidency by refusing to step down. In Albania, the Sali Berisha government lasted until 1996 as a corrupt dictatorship that rigged elections and imprisoned the opposition leader. In these and other post-Communist nations, such as Georgia, pro-capitalist incumbents continued to hold office in violation of constitutional term limits, without a word of disapproval from Western defenders of democratic constitutionalism.⁶

Media Access

US officials and press pundits repeatedly claimed that Yugoslavs did not have the benefit of an objective news source, by which they meant the Western corporate-owned monopoly media that faithfully propagates the US-NATO line on all matters of war and peace. In fact, Yugoslavs could read a variety of opposition newspapers or listen to opposition radio and television stations. They could get CNN, BBC, the Discovery Channel, and German television. If they had satellite dishes, as many did, they could receive all the US networks. Not surprisingly, the Yugoslav opposition television channel, Studio B, survived untouched by NATO bombs. It presented mostly opposition programming and entertainment—and still does.

The severest media censorship in Yugoslavia was exercised not by the government but by NATO itself, in a most bloody fashion. Its aerial assaults destroyed Yugoslavia's three government TV channels and dozens of local radio and television stations—killing sixteen people, mostly journalists, in the process. To get its own message out, the government took over portions of air time usually reserved for private broadcasting. In all, the Yugoslavs had access to more pro-Western media than to any that might represent a critical view of NATO policy. In this, they resembled most of the world. Yugoslavia's sin was not that it had a media monopoly but that the publicly owned portion of its media deviated from the Western media monopoly that blankets most of the world, including Yugoslavia itself.

AND IN THE USA? Where are the oppositon newspapers and TV stations in this country? Can you go to your local newsstand and buy an opposition newspaper or magazine that calls for the overthrow of the US government? Can you turn on the TV or radio in the evening and listen to socialist or communist politicians giving their views on world or local events? Why does the US demand such opposition media in socialist countries when it does not have it in its own country? Americans are so brainwashed, so housebroken that they don't even think of these questions. . 7

Opposition and Dissent

After visiting Yugoslavia during the NATO bombings in May 1999, a BHHRG delegation reported that they “failed to detect signs of the sort of behavior associated with a classic dictatorship.” People openly criticized Milosevic, but did not blame him for causing the war. Many said that they “never voted for his party, the SPS [Serbian Socialist Party], but while the country is under attack they must stand together whatever their political persuasion.”⁸ Both before and after the NATO aerial battering, numerous anti-Milosevic foreign-funded NGOs continued to operate freely in the country. Thousands demonstrated against the government without fear of being gunned down by death squads or incarcerated for long periods—which is the risk demonstrators run in any number of US-backed regimes. During a visit to Belgrade in 1999, I saw opposition posters denouncing the government along main thoroughfares, with the address of the sponsoring organization provided at the bottom of the poster—hardly an advisable way to operate when living under the heel of a ruthless dictator. In addition, Yugoslav citizens are free to travel anywhere in the world—which is not true of US citizens.

Writing from Belgrade, Washington Post reporter William Drozdiak called Milosevic “a man renowned for his ruthlessness in wielding power.” Yet satirical revues that mercilessly lampooned the leader continued to be performed before capacity crowds. “Milosevic,” says Drozdiak, “has allowed a remarkable degree of artistic expression at home, especially in film and theater, that would be unthinkable by many other authoritarian rulers. Even his enemies acknowledge that Milosevic isn't a tyrant in the classical sense of locking up those who criticize him.” He allows “controversial, even insulting, works to reach audiences.” The Post reporter goes on to quote a political comedian who says, “These days you can pretty much say and do what you want.” A theater director adds, “This has never been a police state like Iraq. So long as we are not too influential with the masses, we don't have to worry about censorship.”⁹

Milosevic allows criticism and insulting satire because, Drozdiak believes, such things “help let off steam and mitigate threats to his government.” As a dissident film director notes, “Here in Belgrade we are struggling against a very devious and cunning animal who knows just how to manipulate his opponents. You can criticize him, but he's too smart to make you into a martyr or a hero by putting you in prison.”¹⁰ Thus, Milosevic—whom we should not forget was elected president of Yugoslavia in a fair and open contest—was a dictator by media fiat, by a process of labeling that cannot be falsified. If he suppressed dissent, this would be proof of his ruthless tyranny. That he allowed dissent, however, did not negate the packaged image of a ruthless dictator but was all the more proof of his devious and cunning method of control. He is just not a dictator in the “classical” sense.

The demonized image is so firmly entrenched as to make evidence irrelevant. Both A and not-A bring us to the same conclusion. The image not only becomes impervious to contrary information, it is able to transmute contrary data into supportive data. Thus, forms of behavior that do not normally fit the autocratic model (open dissent, democratic elections, opposition parties, political satires and controversy) are facilely transformed into evidence supporting the autocratic model, indicative of the dictator's cunningly manipulative and devious ways.

For a police state, Yugoslavia appeared to have a notable scarcity of police on the streets. Not until my third evening in Belgrade did I see two cops strolling along (without the benefit of nightsticks)—in marked contrast to the omnipresent and heavily armed security police and military personnel one sees in any number of US client-state “democracies” in Latin America and elsewhere. Nor do I recall seeing a police or military presence on the rural roads. The BHHRG group found that the police who asked to examine their cameras (during their wartime visit) were courteous and unthreatening, in marked contrast to local police in Bulgaria and Romania who kept members of the group under a menacing surveillance.¹¹ Perhaps the low police profile in Yugoslavia was just a cunning ploy to cover the fact that the country was a brutally repressive police state.

War Crimes

The war crimes that the West has charged Milosevic with seem to be far less serious than the war crimes committed by Tudjman or Izetbekovic or, for that matter, Clinton, Blair, and NATO. Although Milosevic was branded throughout the late 1990s as a war criminal of Hitlerian magnitude, he was never charged with any actual crimes. Repeated requests from the International Criminal Tribunal for documentation of his putatively wicked ways went unanswered by the US government for more than two years. Finally in May 1999, as US public support for the bombings began to waver, an indictment against Milosevic was cobbled together. Strangely enough, all the charges after him, except one, refer to incidents that took place after the NATO bombing had commenced. Yet it supposedly was Milosevic's longstanding atrocity policies that had made the bombing so imperative.¹² Another oddity: the number of deaths for which Milosevic was held responsible totaled 391.¹³ But it was the repeatedly proclaimed genocidal magnitude of his crimes that supposedly made the extreme measures of bombing cities throughout Yugoslavia so morally imperative.

A "CAPITAL CRIME" Milosevic did one thing that certainly must have convinced Western leaders that he was the Balkan Beelzebub. The ICN pharmaceutical plant in Yugoslavia began as a joint venture with state and private capital, with much of the latter provided by Milan Panic, a rich Serbian businessman who had been living in the United States. Panic began paying a private staff to take over complete ownership of ICN. (He is also said to have tried to organize a strike against the Yugoslav government after losing his bid for the presidency in 1992.) In February 1999, in response to Panic's takeover maneuvers and his failure to meet financial obligations, Yugoslav troops were sent in to occupy ICN. Then Milosevic handed the entire firm over to workermanagement. US media called the takeover a violation of "human rights." The ICN was bombed by NATO in 1999.

In the face of such a relentless propaganda campaign against Milosevic and the Serbs, even prominent personages on the Left—who oppose NATO's policy against Yugoslavia—have felt compelled to genuflect before this orthodoxy. While establishment liberals said, “The Serbs are brutal and monstrous. Let's attack them,” some progressives argued, “The Serbs are brutal and monstrous. But let's not attack them, for that would be even worse.” Thus did they reveal themselves as having been influenced by the very media propaganda machine they criticized on so many other issues.¹⁴ And they left people with the impression that even those who opposed NATO's war accepted the truth of the war-makers' brief.

Again, it cannot be said too many times: to reject the demonized image of Milosevic and of the Serbian people is not to idealize either nor claim that Yugoslav forces have not committed crimes. It is merely to challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for the imperialist dismemberment of Yugoslavia and NATO's far greater criminal onslaught.

Serbian Ethnic Policy

In February 2000, on national television, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described Slobodan Milosevic as a man “who decides that if you are not of his ethnic group you don't have a right to exist,” a remark that went unchallenged by the interviewer.¹⁵ If we are to believe Albright, Milosevic is a sociopathic Serbian chauvinist who wants to exterminate all other peoples. In truth, while the Serbs were repeatedly accused of ethnic cleansing, Serbia itself—unlike ethnically cleansed Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo—is now the most multi-ethnic society left in the former Yugoslavia, containing some twenty-six nationality groups including tens of thousands of Albanians who live in and around Belgrade, and hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, Croats, Romanians, Czechs, Roma, Jews, Turks, and Slovaks. Yugoslavia was the only country in the Balkans not to have expelled its Turkish minority. It was the only country in the world to give official standing to 19,000 Ruthenians, a national group of western Ukrainian origin situated in Vojvodina, Serbia's other autonomous province (besides Kosovo). Vojvodina officials claim that all these various nationalities have education in their own languages from nursery school to high school. Hungarians in Vojvodina can go through medical school studying in Hungarian.

An estimated 200,000 Muslims live in Belgrade, and many of them have for decades. About 50,000 of these are from Kosovo. The Albanian and Muslim populations in Belgrade are not ghettoized but live scattered about the city. Most are employed in blue-collar jobs. As the London Daily Telegraph reported, Belgrade has been “renowned for its tolerance ... a cosmopolitan city where cafe society flourished; and the tradition has continued.”¹⁷ Federal Minister for Refugees Bratislava Morina, who met with the delegation I traveled with in Belgrade in August 1999, claimed that before the NATO war there had been some fifty Albanian-language publications in Yugoslavia, mostly in Kosovo. She said that in earlier times Albanians had occupied such prominent offices as the presidency of Yugoslavia, the presidencies of the national youth organization and of the trade union association. Albanians would still have prominent political positions in the society, she maintained, had they not chosen to withdraw from the political process. Morina's own husband was director of security and an Albanian, and her children identified themselves as Albanian.

THE DEMONIC ETHNIC CLEANSER? Milosevic reportedly launched his "ethnic cleansing" campaign against Kosovo in a speech delivered at Kosovo PoIje in 1989. Here is an excerpt from that speech: Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is to its advantage. National composition of almost all countries in the world today, particularly developed ones, has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully. Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect. The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hardworking people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people. Therefore, all people in Serbia who live from their own work, honestly, respecting other people and other nations, are in their own republic. After all, our entire country should be set up on the basis of such principles. Yugoslavia is a multinational community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it. 16

The proceedings of Vojvodina's provincial parliament are simultaneously translated into six languages, according to its president Zivorad Smiljanic, who met with our delegation in Novi Sad. Hungarian separatist elements in Vojvodina, he said, were attempting to put the province under Hungary's suzerainty. Smiljanic maintained that two million Hungarians in Romania and 600,000 in Slovakia enjoyed few of the national rights extended to the 300,000 Hungarian ethnics in Vojvodina, yet the United States and even Hungary seemed not too concerned about them. In 1991, some of the Hungarians living in Vojvodina went to Hungary but did not fare too well, he said. During the NATO war almost no Hungarians departed and 90 per cent responded to the military call. Indeed, all national minorities remain loyal to their country, Yugoslavia, he claimed.

Smiljanic held forth on a number of subjects. He referred to the eleven children killed in Surdulica by the aerial attack.

“Your leaders talk about human rights,” he noted bitterly, “but the right of children to live is among the highest of human rights. Was it democracy in action when NATO bombs destroyed schools, daycare centers, and hospitals with patients in their beds? Your leaders talk of freedom of information, yet they kill journalists.” They talk of responsible government and accountable rule, yet NATO members engaged in hostilities against Yugoslavia “without consent of any of their own parliaments and against mass protests in their countries.”

When asked what his country's most urgent needs, were Smiljanic boomed, “We wish most of all that the international community would leave us alone, lift the sanctions, and stop giving us the benefit of their ‘guidance' and ‘aid.”' Despite ten years of sanctions, he said, his compatriots live better than most people in free-market Hungary, Romania, Poland, or Bulgaria. And now that those nations are joining NATO they will plunge still deeper into debt, each borrowing tens of billions of dollars to upgrade their military forces to NATO standards. “Clinton and Albright have destroyed us and now we will have to rebuild—on their terms,” he concluded. “The only god worshiped in the New World Order is the dollar. The war was good only for business and arms dealers.”¹⁸