Volume 8 Number 3

Summer 1999

Feature

Eastern Europe After Kosovo
     Epilogue to Kosovo, June 18, 1999
     Gyorgy Konrad

NATO-KLA! This is the battle cry of the Albanian kids who stand by the roadside, waving their triumphant victory signs. They got it right. NATO tanks are in, Yugoslav tanks are out, and the Yugoslav police, militiamen, and civilians (also armed) are leaving as well because they are afraid of the Albanian nationalist army that immediately transformed itself into a police force.

The television cameras show graves and execution sites; we learn about the massacres of thousands. The killing and looting by Serbian militiamen escalated, since the beginning of the war, and led to the expulsion of about half the Albanian population of Kosovo. The bombings took their toll in the thousands; among the dead there are Yugoslav civilians and soldiers, Serbs and non-Serbs, even Albanians. The question is this: How should we deal with these two sums-juxtapose them against each other or add them together? Are they opposites or the sum total of the war?

This war did not simply start by itself. It was started. Those who decided to wage this war could have decided to avoid it. The violent death of X number of people was, directly or indirectly, caused by philanthropic politicians. Without their intervention, there would have been fewer fatalities. Ethnic hatred and violence were bad enough before the war, but they became even worse once it was started. NATO could not get what it wanted: it had to negotiate with the existing Yugoslav government through Russian mediators, and it could not enter any region of Yugoslavia other than Kosovo.

Yugoslavia's leaders cannot be happy about what they pretend to be happy about, in other words, that Kosovo has remained part of Yugoslavia, for it, in fact, did not remain part of Yugoslavia. If it is not Serbian, then it is Albanian. NATO took Kosovo from the Serbs and gave it to the Albanians. Today, NATO's problem is called the KLA. NATO can choose to fight against them or to support them in organizing a KLA state. Not speaking the language and ignorant of the region, NATO will turn a blind eye to the KLA's abuses and criminal activities for want of any other local authority.

Armed Albanian nationalists have entered the scene. Their objective is the mirror image of Milosevic's Serbian nationalism. They want to unify the Albanian regions in one state, including areas of Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and Serbia. Kosovo can no longer be under Serbian authority: the Serb militias were far too brutal in attacking the civilian environment of the Albanian guerrillas. The peaceful coexistence of Serbs and Albanians and the ideal of a multiethnic democracy have become impossible. NATO took the KLA's side; and no one can curb the KLA's power or collect their arms. The guerrilla army has a solid underground network, its own high command, and this is where guerrilla fighters look for orders. NATO can only command through the KLA.

Albanian nationalists were clever enough. They provoked Serbian reaction and local expulsions through their partisan war. The bloody Serbian atrocities against the pro-KLA civilian population went too far and provided the ideological justification for the air strikes against Yugoslavia. The KLA managed to gain American sympathy and did not shy away from fatalities to get it. They surely must have counted on victims, for they knew the Serbian police. The distant goal of independence was worth the expulsion of half the population; every victim was a martyr.

The West's center-left elite, with its universalism and human-rights rhetoric, picked a more likable Balkan nationalism, and now they find the look of their chosen ally abhorrent. It was obvious that NATO intervention would be interpreted locally as an intervention on behalf of the Albanians and against the Serbs. If NATO gains supremacy in Kosovo, it will lead to the reorganization of the KLA as the local authority, followed by struggles for supreme power. We have just learned that the young KLA commander, Hashim Thaci, had his rivals killed, one by one, even though they agreed with his agenda: secession from Serbia and disregard for the pronouncements of NATO's leaders concerning inviolable borders.

If Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims insisted on having their own armed sovereignty, and if Serbs insisted on defending their own sovereignty with arms and are still ready for mindless bloodshed-if thinking becomes infected with an "either you or me"-then it is natural that Albanians should want the same: armed sovereignty.

The constitutional trick that made Kosovo part of Serbia-endowed with regional autonomy-instead of an independent republic of Yugoslavia is not appealing for Albanian nationalist guerrillas. They can accept it only reluctantly, as an unpleasant fiction to gain time until they can establish their own national dictatorship. NATO, willy-nilly, will assist with this and the expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo. The intervention created resentment, revenge, and rancor.

In the last few years, one could have expected the Serbs to be able to drive the KLA out of Kosovo and continue with the colonial oppression of the Albanian population-a minority in Serbia and the majority in Kosovo. Milosevic sent NATO a flood of Albanian refugees, confronted it with a humanitarian catastrophe, and severed the cord between the KLA fighters and their civilian backers. If NATO indeed wants to return the hundreds of thousands of refugees to their homes, they must negotiate with Milosevic.

In exchange for a withdrawal from Kosovo, NATO has to stop bombing and give up the idea of occupying Serbia. NATO could have gone further but they realized how burdensome their task was and were happy to to be able to close the refugee camps before winter arrives.

Milosevic gave up Kosovo and chased Serbian refugees back to the province-let NATO face the trouble. He reinforced his power, got rid of Kosovo and his internal opponents, and can invoke, as a unifying phraseology, the unjust persecution of the Serbian people. Serb national pride is offended, and Serbs are humiliated by having to pull out of Kosovo and give up part of their country. But this is simply the end point of a long process. Most Serbs had been harassed out of Kosovo before 1989.

Now they are fleeing, soldiers and civilians alike, top brass and underdogs, because NATO cannot defend them and because they have reason to fear revenge, general or personal, whether from Albanian civilians or the KLA. These Serbian refugees, like the ones from Krajina, will pour into the cities of Yugoslavia and make life even more difficult there. Vojvodina will surely not be an exception.

There must be many runaways and drifters among them whose lives have been an endless series of flights. The people of Yugoslavia got bombs, but, as long as Milosevic is there, they are not going to receive any aid for reconstruction. If "the face of evil" could not be eliminated by air strikes, perhaps a slogan like this will help: "We get money if we don't vote for him." A country of ten million was successfully adulterated. A new, fledgling nationalism has won, and it will go on pestering its neighbors.

It could have been realized that what was at stake was not human rights but a war between two nations, a fight for armed supremacy in a contested region of the Balkans. NATO leaders must have known that the air strikes would provoke irrational reactions. Apparently, they did not mind-and this makes one wonder whether they had some further political goal other than the protection of those directly involved.

How are stable states created in such an unstable region? Do we want a nation-state confined to its ethnically defined borders? This could make sense as it reflects the status quo. With the exception of Vojvodina, minorities were pushed out of the successor states, and the states were reorganized around solid ethnic majorities. But this would elicit a chain reaction of bloody separatism all over the world. The new heroes are guerrillas, and the new nation-states are born with their military legends.I read somewhere that America's geopolitical objective was to roll back Russian influence. They did not succeed. And even if they had, it is highly questionable whether it was wise to humiliate Russian national consciousness, or, for that matter, whether it is wise to embitter a Balkan nation. I read somewhere that during the era of World War Two, Albanian nationalism was intertwined with the fascist Croatian state. Albania's other political heritage is the national communism of Enver Hoxha.

Why couldn't the parties be prompted (as Israel and the Palestinians were) to negotiate with each other? Why couldn't they be pushed to the table without fanning the flame or inciting violence? Why didn't NATO propose that Serbian and Albanian nationalists talk to each other directly? Why did NATO make this impossible in the castle at Rambouillet? Was the war initiated to control, through armed supremacy, Albanians in Kosovo?

Watching the abuses, random violence, looting, arson, torture, and executions by the new power, NATO soldiers will ask themselves why they were sent to Kosovo. There are NATO troops in the neighboring states. Was Kosovo needed as part of a defense system against Russian or Muslim expansion in the Balkans-or against the corridor leading from the Near East? Was the real enemy Muslim expansion rather than Serb nationalism?

National aspirations in the Balkans are imbued with religion. The result is a military-religious ideology that creates one-party states. Kosovo will not be a stage for multiparty democracy. Long ago, the Habsburgs held the Balkans in check, then it was Tito. Will it now be NATO?

NATO had no social-political strategy; therefore, it had to rely on its military. Eventually, perhaps as an unintended consequence, a new military state was created. By the time disillusionment comes, the KLA will have consolidated its position. Who will be victorious among the new leaders and factions?

These are important questions. But whoever wins, it won't be morality. If Kosovo is turned into an independent state, it will involve the violation of existing international borders. Who cares? If it could be embraced as a principle that the UN Charter could be violated on the basis of human rights, in other words, that intervention is justified even in cases of intrastate conflicts or violence, then such a violation is probably unimportant.

But what cases require a humanitarian intervention with bombs? This is the great, obscure question that gives free rein to arbitrariness.

Perhaps the geopolitical objective was to prevent a more extensive war in the Balkans because of the Albanian nationalism that threatens neighboring states. Perhaps Albanians are protected by being controlled and disarmed. The Albanian population was undefended against the Serbs, and NATO sent troops. Therefore, they do not need their own armed forces. Can it be that Western democracies delude themselves and think in earnest that this is the way to establish democracy in Kosovo? I think the kind of democracy that Kosovo can expect will be the same as the democracy in the Palestinian protostate: none. There will be a parallel state that will not tolerate alternative loyalties and will be tough on any political opposition.

"Take from the Serbs whatever you can"-this will be the rallying cry within Kosovo because resources are scarce. Some of the property seized will end up in the hands of a corrupt leadership and a new KLA bourgeoisie will be formed. A thick KLA party-state will evolve, and new leaders will treat their own opponents the same way the Palestinian authorities deal with theirs. Amnesty International will issue long reports about physical torture. The KLA might be America's darling today, but it is the scoundrel of tomorrow.

NATO created the impression of wanting to give Kosovo over to the Albanians by air strikes and demanding the departure of Serbian forces. It was the right impression. On exiting, the Serbian militiamen took desperate revenge on the Albanians. They ransacked and persecuted them. They destroyed their homes in return for having lost their own homes. Bombing was a symbol of abuse in itself. If the lords of the sky are ruthless five thousand meters above ground, then the devastation below will be ruthless, too. The violence of one party justifies violence on the other side. This was quite predictable. Whoever foresaw this and nevertheless chose this path, must have expected victims as well and must have regarded the sacrifice of human lives as justified by morality.

The misdeeds of Serbs justify the misdeeds of Albanians, two-month-old graves justify two-day-old graves. The ideological clichŽ, according to which a long-term objective entitles us to cause suffering and death in the present, is back. We can come forward with this or that political consideration, stressing the beneficial consequences of such action, or the prevention of distant troubles by troubles in the present.

First we kill a little bit, so that we do not have to kill in the future. We cause a little bit of suffering now, but in the end we get a free and happy life. What else has my life taught me but to hear the falsity of such talk? The world will only see filtered, one-sided news, lest people learn about the reality of this Balkan adventure and recognize it for what it was: a thoughtless misstep that resulted, and will result, in thousands of deaths, the economic destruction of a country, new passionate conflicts, and blurred international borders.

The authorities had neglected the Balkans for a long time. For now at least, the name is in the headlines. There is talk about aid, the amount of which does not even come close to the scale of the damage done. The rosy clouds of humanitarian benevolence are about to dissipate, and we can already see the misery. Some of this destruction cannot be made good, and, although some of it could be, it is highly questionable who will pay for it. It will be paid, in all probability, by the people of the Balkans, as they gradually fade from international consciousness.
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This essay will appear in A Jugoszlaviai Haboru (The Yugoslav War) (Palatinus Kiado, forthcoming).

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