Posted on 05/19/2002 7:12:29 PM PDT by ABrit
SERBIA -- FACING UP TO THE PAST
By Patrick Moore Sooner or later, Serbia will have to look into its recent past and the question of its responsibility for four Balkan wars. Some recent developments suggest that such introspection will not come easily.
On 28 April, U.S. Senator Joseph Biden, who is a Democrat from Delaware and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, addressed an Albanian-American civic group in New York. His speech covered many aspects of Balkan affairs and his recommendations for U.S. and international policies toward the region. He noted that the situation there remains "precarious" despite much progress in recent years.
Turning to Serbia, Biden noted that President Vojislav Kostunica is "a - Serbian nationalist, but he doesn't call all the shots. He's in a fierce political struggle with Prime Minister [Zoran] Djindjic, also a nationalist but not a fanatic -- and more importantly, an astute politician who recognizes that his country's future is with the West."
The senator noted that Serbia has made much progress since the overthrow of President Slobodan Milosevic on 5 October 2000, but stressed that Belgrade should meet four conditions before aid is restored.
The first is that it must cease "negative interference in Kosova's and Bosnia's political life." Second, Serbia "must fully comply with the international war crimes tribunal." Third, it must "end the de facto partition" of Mitrovica in northern Kosova. And fourth, "Kostunica and Djindjic must publicly own up to Serbia's behavior in the 1990s by apologizing for its genocidal campaign in Kosova, as well as in Croatia and Bosnia."
It was the senator's fourth point -- the apology -- that touched a raw nerve in Serbia and led to a public comment by Djindjic and a lively discussion in the press.
Briefly, many or most commentators from the mainstream press made the following points. Senator Biden is an important and influential figure, but it is Secretary of State Colin Powell who has set the conditions that Serbia must meet, and a public apology is not one of them. The United States has criticized many aspects of the policies of the governing Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition, but no one in Washington has any interest in destabilizing DOS.
Milosevic and his cronies, the commentaries continued, are responsible for taking Serbia into war, but the people ousted them on 5 October 2000. In his public remarks on 10 May this year, Djindjic argued that there is no one from the Milosevic regime in power in Belgrade now, and so there is no reason for the present government to apologize for what that regime did.
Some writers added -- as have many Serbs over the past decade -- that all sides were to blame in the violent breakup of former Yugoslavia and that it is unfair to single out the Serbs for war guilt. Other writers ask why an apology is necessary at all, even if apologies for slavery and other historical injustices have become part of American political ure in recent years.
Some commentators acknowledge that Serbs should reexamine their past but feel that it is too soon after the conflicts of the 1990s and the fall of Milosevic for Serbia to produce "a Willy Brandt" -- a leader who will apologize to the dictatorship's victims as the former West German chancellor apologized to those tormented by .
Indeed, some German Balkan experts have suggested in recent years that it is unlikely that the Serbs will be able to come to grips with their past and war guilt any quicker than the Germans did. These experts argue that Germany did not really face up to such issues until the West German student protests of 1968 and the soul-searching that accompanied and followed that period. One should not expect much more of the Serbs, the German Balkan experts add.
But at least many Germans recognized from 1945 on that their country had been defeated and that consequences had to be drawn. In today's Serbia, however, this does not always seem to be the case.
Nonetheless, some progressive Serbian intellectuals have said that Serbian society must now recognize that it is necessary to face up to the past, to come out of blame and denial, and to have a "catharsis." Only then can Serbia rebuild not only its relations with its neighbors, but also its educational system and other institutions that were carefully built up over the better part of two centuries but are now in shambles.
In short, Serbia will sooner or later find it necessary to remove what one intellectual has called the "mud" from its political ure and thinking. And while Germany may have needed a quarter of a century before it happened, Willy Brandt eventually did kneel in Warsaw.
Why do you keep quoting Serb pro da?
What exactly does that mean? How is the current Serbian government interfering negatively in either Bosnia or Kosovo?
"end the de facto partition" of Mitrovica in northern Kosova.
Please explain this one! I was under the impression that Serbia had no jurisdiction at all in Mitrovica. Am I wrong?
It's never too early to say sorry
You actually expect Serbs to admit all guilt for everything bad that has happened in the Balkans in the last decade? And not just Milosevic/Mladic/Arkan/etc, but ALL Serbs regardless of who they are?
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