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Author: Ivan
Angelov, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Social & Civilization Aspects of International Relations Sofia,
Bulgaria What Is Going
On in Yugoslavia? What Is Going
On in The World? People from far away may rightfully expect that we
in Bulgaria would know more on the situation in Yugoslavia at least in view of
the geographical proximity between the two countries. Sorry to disappoint
them.
It is true that in the months, weeks and days before October 1 the air
was thick with talk on Yugoslavia. The numerous, high-volume as a rule,
statements, messages and commentaries on this issue though were hardly telling
anything different from the already well-known maxim that “Milosevic is bad and
has to go.” The v o l u m e
has obviously decreased after October 6 when the “Evil of Humanity” has
disappeared from the political arena. Very illogically the interest of the
mainstream media towards the events in this country has disappeared together
with him. Hardly anything has been said about the way in which this has taken
place or about the events that accompanied Milosevic’s decision to quit.
Pictures of fires in downtown Belgrade appeared on the front pages of the
newspapers but people had to guess who and for what purpose have set up those
fires. E-mails and Internet communications have also become scarce or
practically disappeared. Under these
circumstances the question of “What’s going on” and “What has really taken place
in Yugoslavia” these days obviously remains without a satisfactory answer at
least to people who are genuinely interested in the course of events both in
this country and in the world as a whole. The usual
answers to such a question may be, of course, that what has taken place there
are early elections. Our first concern is dealing with the extent to which the word “election” may be rightfully attributed to what has been going on within and around this country in the period before, during and after October 1, 2000. We feel it essential that both Yugoslavian citizens and their immediate neighbors like us, as well as all the people around the world give at least to themselves, to begin with, an adequate answer to that question. It is necessary not so much for the purpose for accusing this or that personality, institution, country, government or political ideology and orientation, but as one of the possible ways of clarifying what kind of world we are really living in and what we can expect out of it in near or more remote future. One of the
things which is really annoying in this situation is that neither Yugoslavia
authorities nor the opposition – neither leaders nor ordinary citizens – neither
experts in law nor humanitarians – actually no one either in Yugoslavia, its
immediate neighbors or the world over has even for a single moment questioned or
speculated over the idea to what extent elections may be considered
normal, fair or if they should take place at all in a situation
when a country or a part of its territory is occupied by foreign
troops. Perhaps since
such practices have been commonplace in the world for decades they have already
become a norm of Law? If this is so, then certain corrections or amendments
should be made in all its Charters, documents and provisions, so that nowadays
and future generations the world over will know that there is nothing
wrong in the presence of foreign troops on a certain country’s territory and
that it is not only compatible but also desirable for the free-will expression
of its citizens. It is
interesting how the people in the divided Germany or the anti-Communist
protestors in countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia would have
accepted this some ten years ago. Or, who would be able to convey this message
to those Bulgarians who still question the legitimacy of the 1946
“Anti-Monarchy” Referendum carried out in the presence or ex-Soviet
troops? Nevertheless,
recently we see that elections in the presence of foreign troops still continue
to be carried out or are encouraged in a growing number of countries or regions
in the world. Bosnia and Herzegovina are just another fresh example of it.
Elections are encouraged also in Kosovo, though it is not even a formally
independent country but a part of another established
state. Developments of
this kind both in former decades and nowadays seem to provide enough basis to
suggest that perhaps in the realities of the world today elections as a process
of free will legitimate expression is getting more and more devoid of its
original contents and meaning. It is rather assuming the functions of
covert of intentions, activities and interests that may have little or
even nothing to do with all this. Perhaps nowadays elections are becoming
more of a ritual to pronounce blessing (or maybe blasphemy?) over
a certain state of things (established by o t h e r means) than a functionary way of
expressing the will of the respective electoral bodies. In the case
with our neighbors this Fall ahead-of-term-elections have turned out to
be just one of the whole series of conditions imposed on them by means of threat
for an immediate use of force by military, economically and politically
exceeding powers. Dayton and other
p e a c e agreements and
settlements have been reached in the same way, not to mention the “peace” in
Kosovo... The threat of
direct use of force, i.e., of starting another war, has remained hanging
permanently over Yugoslavia also after the idea of the early elections has been
accepted or, rather, imposed on it. Obviously this has been considered
normal. Also, as completely in the order of things have been considered,
practices as the official allotting of 5 millions for the head (alive or dead)
of the President of the country which evokes very sad comparisons with the times
of Chinghis Khan, the Osman Conquests or the days of Nazi occupation in the
World War II. Then there have come series of top-level declarations and
decisions, adopted by foreign supreme legislative and executive bodies, directly
concerning not only the course of the election campaigns but also their
immediate results and outcomes. Unprecedented parallel counting up of the votes
has been organized with direct financial support from abroad in places outside
the country. Military exercises with NATO participation have been carried out in
the immediate neighbouring countries. NATO’s Deputy Secretary General has
visited neighbouring countries in the very eve of the elections and the US Chief
of Staffs, Gen. Henry Balton – did the same immediately after them. Hours before
the vote top EU and NATO officials even forbade one of the electoral candidates
to declare a possible victory of his in the oncoming elections.
Here we would
not like either to comment or to take any of the sides of this both direct and
extramural debate. What we find especially annoying and appalling though
is that practically no institution and no individual in the world has found a
way of expressing any concern with the legitimacy of such activities towards a
sovereign country. And let us make it clear once again that all these
suggestions have been made in an atmosphere which directy presumed the
very real possibility of another use of force, perhaps even more massive and
destructive than in the days of the Kosovo crisis. The events of
1999 have clearly shown that neither the UN nor anybody else in the current
world is willing or capable of averting such course of
things. Sadly enough,
this has no other analogue in the recent History of International Relations but
in Munich Deal of 1938, the capture of Abyssinia and the rape of Manchuria in
the years before the World War II. (We do not know, but perhaps there have been
some sensible arguments in the German, Italian or Japanese writings of
those days in favour of smashing the non-democratic regimes in those parts of
the world which they considered as zones of special interests. This issue has
never been discussed and, as far as it is known, these operations of the
countries mentioned above are always referred to as examples of outright
aggression in all writings and documents on International Relations and Law.
Or perhaps, in the view of the recent developments in the world, these issues of
International Relations and Law will also have to be revised? Really, have there
ever been elections in Abyssinia or Manchuria prior to their occupation by Italy
and Japan in these days? Or perhaps, it is time to forget qualifications as
“aggressor countries”, referring to the activities of those great powers of the
near past? Or else, there should be a sound evidence to prove that the state of
affairs in nowadays Yugoslavia has been so much less democratic than,
say, the situation in Abyssinia and Manchuria in the 30-ties, as to provoke a
fully justified threat and use of force on the side of the predominant
big powers of today? Even if we
assume that anything and everything may be considered allowed with respect to
“an enemy of Humanity” as big as Milosevic, still it remains at least
questionable to what extent practices like these can and should be attributed to
the concept, the process and the procedure of
elections. Obviously once
accepted (or rather imposed or forced upon) the idea of this Fall’s early
elections from its very beginning has been nothing else but a way of
providing the necessary covert preconditions and atmosphere for carrying out the
next stage of what has actually turned out to be a very special war effort
against this country and its established institutions. (Here we would like to
make it clear that this paper is not indulged in any way in the debate of the
various “pro” and “con” of the sides directly engaged in the conflict or in the
debate around the reasons that have brought it about.) It cannot be
but annoying and troubling that much of what has happened and is possibly going
on in Yugoslavia (no matter what the possible reasons and motivations for it
could be) is fitting almost perfectly into the definition and descriptions of
what is known in the specialized literature on military issues as L.I.C.
(Low-Intensity Conflict). (See at least
Rod Pascal, LIC 2010. Special Operations and Unconventional Warfare in the Next
Century, Future Warfare Studies. Published with the Institute of Land Warfare
Association of the U.S. Army, 1990, Brassley’s Inc., US.) “Low-Intensity
Conflict” – according to its definition – “is armed conflict for political
purposes short of combat between regularly organized forces” (I bid., p. 7). “It
is not mid-intensity conflict, which is armed conflict between regularly
organized military forces” (though it “may also include terrorist incidents, or
even concurrent insurgent campaigns”), neither a high-intensity conflict
which is “armed combat involving the use of mass-destructive weapons” (I bid, p.
8). Further on, the
Low-Intensity Conflict “definition surely includes a terrorist act but excludes,
for example, the usual hostage-taking by a bank robber. It includes a
counter-insurgency campaign in which a regular-armed force is pitted against
guerillas or irregulars. It describes the activities of insurgents engaged in an
armed attempt to overthrow a government. The definition also encompasses the
efforts of a “peace-keeping force” (p. 7). Though it is
noted that “these definitions differ somewhat from the basically blessed
terminology of the US Army” there is a little doubt left that “however they
accurately reflect the intent of the U.S. Army definitions” (I bid. p.
8). Ten years ago,
when Mankind sincerely believed that not a “New World Order” but a New Epoch of
Peace, International Confidence and Cooperation was ahead, some specialists in
military theory were foreseeing that “insurgency, perhaps one of the oldest
forms of warfare, should be much in evidence in 2010.” (6). In the days when the
former “Socialist Community” was giving up its Marxist ideology and destroying
its military potential, organizational networks and arsenals, concepts have been
elaborated, and obviously, plans made to “transform the guerilla fighter from a
20th Century tool of Marxist states into a major, 21st
Century asset in the arsenal of Western powers. Western supported and sponsored
insurgents will be used for the purposes of protecting and securing Western
interests, and Western organizations, possessing skills in supporting guerrilla
forces will be held in readiness for purposes of deterrence.” (I bid. p.
6). And further,
“special operational forces are those military or naval elements
specifically organized, trained and equipped to conduct or support insurgency,
sabotage, psychological deception, counter-terrorist, foreign assistance or
commando-type operations. These units are normally capable of performing rescue,
reconnaissance, and intelligent-gathering tasks.” (I bid. p.
8) Every country
and government has, of course, all rights and even obligations to foresee the
most adequate concepts, skills and technologies, which they find necessary in
the military field as well, so that, as the front-page of the Brassey’s Future
Warfare Series says, ”our children must learn to defend themselves and so must
their children”. The fact that a
country or even a group of countries (like the former Eastern block) have, for
one reason or another, unilaterally decided to give up this duty of theirs, by
no means entails any obligations on the side of others. Still, since these
countries have really left “doors open” and practically no one there has been
and is “against the West” at least since 1989, the question remains what makes
necessary that their inclusion into the “New World Order” should be accompanied
not only by economic ruin but also by cases of outright sabotage, deliberate
fires or variety of both mid- and low-intensity conflicts. There can be,
of course, many meaningful answers to that question. A great deal of them should
be rightfully related to the inner situation of these countries. Direct
interference from abroad, on the other hand, is by no means always easy to be
found or proved. Neither its role nor its importance should be too much
exaggerated. At the same
time, what remains beyond any doubt is a certain very dangerous lack of
equilibrium as well as of discrepancy that has become appallingly apparent in
the world during the last decade of the 20th Century. It is bigger
and not less important even than the technological and economic gap between the
various groups of unevenly developed countries. The lack of
equilibrium and the discrepancy are related to the fact that while one of the
two previously main configurations on the Globe, i.e., the Eastern block, has
for one reason or another given up its combat ideology and destroyed most of its
military establishments and arsenals, their counterparts from the Western
Alliance have decided to maintain and further perfect
them. Especially
foreign citizens can hardly question autonomous decisions, taken by governments
of autonomous countries, However, by getting that way Mankind seems to have lost
one of its real chances to abolish war as a means of politics and a way of
settling disputes, both domestic and international. So we come to the very
important question of the moral responsibility of the v i c t o r s
in the Cold War, if somebody will be willing to claim a victory in it, of
course. Surprisingly enough this issue has not been touched upon until now
either by Bush or Gorbachov, or by anybody else in a world, obviously suffering
from an increased number of trouble, especially throughout a decade that has
been promised to start an era of peace, brotherhood and prosperity for
all. People in
Western countries may really find it difficult to believe it, but the very
existence of this lack of equilibrium in the world reflects also on an increased
potential and inclination towards violence within the former Eastern powers.
Things like the unnecessary fires in downtown Bucharest and Sofia during the
so-called “velvet revolutions” in the early 90s, the artillery shooting against
the Russian Parliament in 1993, etc., could hardly happen without the belief
(perhaps erroneous?) that such acts would be correctly understood
and probably supported by the previous open adversaries in the West. Similar
attitudes in Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia have also been one of the
decisive factors to bring about extremities there. Very much in
the same way, once started, the idea of the-early elections in Yugoslavia has
followed practically all the main points and items of, say, the Nicaraguan
scenario of f r e e and f a i r elections in 1990. While the atmosphere
around the country was thick with threats of another war, a series of
demonstrative murders of well-known personalities took place in Belgrade and in
other main cities. In Nicaragua it meant:
“This will continue if you do not vote for the r i g h t candidate!” Warnings of this kind have
obviously worked there. No doubt they could not pass completely unnoticed also
in Yugoslavia whose population has survived during a decade of numerous
conflicts and a war, carried out by superior military powers. Even more
discouraging than that has been the fact that, with very few exceptions, there
has been no meaningful understanding and support from any institution or power
in the world for the efforts to maintain its independence and self-designed way
of development. Activities and
developments of this kind may be explained and interpreted, of course, in
various and even very contradictory ways by the different sides that are
actively engaged in them. By no means,
however, can and should any of them be rightfully attributed to what is called
and is known by legitimate political process and procedures of which elections
make an essential part. An when, irrespective of all, this happens, there are
all reasons to go back once again to the same old question of all times: “Quo
vadis? Where are you going to, Humanity?” This is
necessary not only for the sake of the good expression but because of what has
been and is still at stake in today’s Yugoslavia is not only and not so much the
fate of Milosevic, his wife, their associates and parties. It is not only the
life and destiny of the people of Serbia, or the lives and destinies of its
neighbouroing and other adjoining countries, whose very existence is closely
dependent on the dilemma whether the Balkans will stay independent or
not. What is
determined these days in Yugoslavia is also the course and the quality of life
of many generations in many other countries all over the world, including those
in the states that have been and are actively engaged in the war against this
country. Ten years ago, watching the fall of the Berlin wall, Humanity has
started dreaming of a coming Era of Brotherhood, Peace and Prosperity. Obviously
while it has been dreaming, “ the War keeps going on and on” as popular singers
like Joan Baize, Dean Reed and others used to sing for Civil Rights and Anti-War
activists in the 60s and 70s. It is only a temporary and a partial consolation
if wars and abuses of the International Law and the rights of independent and
dignified human life take place at seemingly great geographic distances. Once
they exist they have a marvelous capacity to spread and even come back home in a
boomerang way. This has already been experienced by various nations in various
epochs and parts of the world. Like any system
in the world, the political system of Yugoslavia has also manifested a certain
number of deficiencies, faults and even crimes in the course of its existence.
At the same time the people of this country have turned out to be capable of
maintaining a dignified and independent position in the years both during the
World War II and the Cold War. Perhaps for this reason many people the world
over expected that the Serbs would be able to resist alone and even win once
again a victory over the overwhelming military powers challenging once again
their independence. Perhaps many of them these days are even disappointed with
the lack of sufficient resistance and even massive sacrifice for the sake of
that cause. Obviously
Humanity (or at least a substantial part of it) needs a n o t h e r C h r i s t to suffer and die for it and – to be
more exact – for things and causes that it has not been able to keep and defend
itself. But does it has
the right to expect suffering and sacrifice on the side of others while it
itself, with all its might, potentials and capacities has proved practically
incapable of doing anything to prevent practices of abuses of the International
Law, Freedom, Justice and Independence? Why didn’t any of the powerful members
of the UN Security Council use its “veto right” against the idea of an
International Tribunal in Hague, that has been set in discord with the UN legal
procedures and practices? On which basis then may any of these countries expect
understanding or support for its positions on the side of the world public in
days when it will need them? Or what did the
people of Yugoslavia’s immediate neighbouring countries do when military
exercises with NATO’s participation were taking place on their territories in
the eve and even on the very days of the
f r e e elections? Official
declarations were made, of course, that “the exercises have been planned long
before the elections”, and “can in no way be interpreted as acts of interference
into the internal affairs of a sovereign country”. Still the question remains
open why these exercises have not been put off when it has turned our they
coincide with so important political events in neighboring Yugoslavia? Or why
did no political party or a lawyer had expressed any doubt, concern or protest,
related to any of these numerous “accidental coincidences”? Or why did the
experienced NATO leaders not restrain from a participation in these exercises in
that period? What is the
value of all the talks of F r e e
and F a i r Elections in a country, a substantial part of which (Kosovo) is
under occupation of foreign troops? International Law still has to give adequate
answers to this and other questions of the same kind. What could be the legal
foundations of claims for early elections under such conditions? Could even the
decision of the Government of this country set a date for such elections be
considered legitimate under such circumstances? Very
surprisingly, so far questions like these have hardly been put. It does not
mean, however, that the answers to them have been given or that there is no need
to be given. Obviously it
will take quite some time until we ever learn the truth about what has really
happened recently in Yugoslavia or what is taking place there now. Like
elsewhere in Eastern Europe in similar cases we will hardly ever learn why it
was necessary to start fires in downtown Belgrade or maltreat people who
obviously could offer no resistance. The joy
and feasts in the streets of Belgrade over the “v i c t o r y” apparently
has not lasted long. Perhaps because the groups and u n i t s (no difference how
they are called) whose purpose has been to ensure the t r a n s f e r of power,
have just w i t h d r a w n or have been assigned other specific tasks, like
getting hold of banks, customs and other important institutions. It seems as if
the very name of the new President, no matter if he knows or does not know about
that, tends to be repeatedly used as a kind of a substitute for all laws and all
other existing institutions and levels of state power in the country. When
observing all this from the proximity as close as a 100 miles away, things
remind us very much of a m o v i e that we, both in Sofia and elsewhere in
Eastern Europe, have already seen. Or, else, everything looks as absurd as in
the days and weeks when no doubt the most Westernized country in Eastern Europe
had to be destroyed for the purpose of accepting and acknowledging... the Western
values! And what we
already know very well out of personal experiences is that hardly anything of
what has been promised or expected before the crisis and the v i c t o r y, will
ever come true after them. The people of Yugoslavia will still have to learn
that. Historic
parallels are always somewhat risky. Still, what may be called the “Fall of
Belgrade” these days may be compared to a certain extent to the Fall of Paris at
the “Strange War”’s end in 1940. In both cases there have been expectations of
greater resistance and clearer explanation of what has
happened. It has taken
quite a time, great efforts and sacrifice until Humanity has proved capable of
stopping the spread of War and Evil across the world in the first half of the
20th Century. Will there be a
need of another Stalingrad or El Alameyn, or ... Armageddon to do this once
again sometimes in the new Century? When and where may this possibly take place?
And who on which side is going to be? It is hard to
say now if developments of a similar scale and importance may possibly take
place once again, and what they may look like in the times to come. Events in
Kosovo and Yugoslavia have clearly manifested that obviously so far Mankind is
not capable of offering a mobilization against war and abuses of Law, similar to
say, a mobilization of such a kind during the Civil War in Spain in the 30s. We
can only guess what may possibly happen in the future. What seems likely
however, is that national, ethnic or religious differences may at a certain time
turn out to be of minor importance in comparison with the moral ones. And the
choice will be as simple as that: “On the moral, the Human side or – against
it!” And there will
be no room for abstentions… Ivan Angelov,
Ph.D. Associate
Professor of Social & Civilization Aspects of International
Relations Sofia,
Bulgaria October 10,
2000 |
