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from: AMERICAN ATHEISTS
subject: AANEWS for March 28, 1999
A M E R I C A N A T H E I S T S
AANEWS
#5489 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3/28/99
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A Service of AMERICAN ATHEISTS
"For Reason and the First Amendment"
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An AANEWS Special Report:
THE BALKAN CRISIS: FAULT LINE OF CIVILIZATIONS
Ethnicity, Religion and Culture Reassert Themselves As Forces In
The Post - Cold War World
With NATO air strikes moving into their fifth day, there appears to be
little prospect of an immediate resolution to what is broadly labeled
"the Balkan crisis." Popular support in both the United States and
Europe is considered "soft, at least in comparison to the allied
incursions into Iraq. Battlefield objectives remain unclear, as NATO
commanders speak only of hitting Yugoslavia's military infrastructure
and "command-control apparatus." Even with stealth technology and a
barrage of cruise missiles, it is far from certain that an air war can
come anywhere close to bringing the government of Slobodan Milosevic
back to the bargaining table, let alone resolve one of the most
complex cultural struggles in recent history.
This is due to the fact that the Balkan crisis is rooted in centuries
of violent conflict and history. It is also located atop one of the
world's major civilizational fault lines -- a point of intersection
involving Islam, western Christianity and eastern Orthodoxy.
Conflicting religious, political, ethnic and cultural forces are at
work here. There are literally centuries of violent history overlaid
with a melange of mythic tales, songs, literature, poetry and
feelings. It is a phenomenon which Americans, very much the product
of modernity and a vastly different view of the world and history,
have difficulty apprehending.
* A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS...
The Balkan crisis represents a paradigm
case described by Samuel P. Huntington in his seminal work, "The
Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" (1996).
Coeditor of Foreign Policy magazine and a political scientist at
Harvard, Huntington described the disintegration of the old cold war,
bipolar alignment which pitted east against west, and its
reconfiguration by a multi-polar world in which "civilizations" would
become the major players. Secular ideologies would play less of a
role than in the past, being replaced by more traditional forces such
as language, ethnicity, religion, ancestral roots and familial ties.
Nowhere is this process more evidence than in the disintegration of
the former Yugoslavia, an amalgam of different ethnic and cultural
groups held in the thrall of the late dictator Josip Broz, known also
as Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980). A lifelong communist, Tito was
imprisoned in 1928 for attempting to overthrow the Yugoslav monarchy.
He later orchestrated the left resistance throughout Yugoslavia to the
Germans in World War II, and served as Minister when the Federal
Republic was declared in 1953. Tito's unique brand of communism,
"positive neutralism" drove him away from the Soviet block, and he
became a spokesman for the nonaligned nations.
Under Tito, the government suppressed the separatist ambitions of
numerous ethnic groups and political movements. Four republics -- a
residue of Tito's experiment in regionalism and limited local autonomy
-- broke away from Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yugoslavia was reduced to two of those republics, Montenegro and
Serbia. Out of the former Tito State arose Slovenia (June, 1991),
Croatia (June, 1991), Bosnia-Herzegovina (March, 1992) and Macedonia
(November, 1991).
This fragmentation was along the cultural fault-lines defined by
differing ethnic, cultural and religious groups. For instance,
Croatia is predominantly Roman Catholic. During the Second World War,
the Nazis established a Catholic rump-government presided over by
church officials and the notorious Ustashi movement. In addition to
supporting the geopolitical and military goals of the Third Reich, the
Ustashi regime engaged in a ruthless policy of exterminating Jews,
Orthodox-slav, nonbelievers, and anyone else who would not succumb to
the policy of forced religious conversions. Writer Avro Manhattan,
author of the "The Vatican's Holocaust," observed, "During the
existence of Croatia as an independent Catholic State, over 700,000
men, women and children perished. Many were executed, tortured, died
of starvation, buried alive, or were burned to death..."
The Independent Catholic State of Croatia was under the nominal
leadership of Ante Pavelic (1889-1959) who had been President of the
Yugoslav Senate, and later an outspoken supporter of the Nazi axis
powers. The Ustashi had ties to numerous clerical groups as well as
the Vatican-backed Croat Peasant Party, and the powerful Roman
Catholic prelate, Archbishop Stepinac. Stepinac served as Head
Military Chaplain for the Croatian Ustashi army, and even helped to
arrange for a private audience of over 200 Ustashi youth with Pope
Pius XII at the Vatican on February 6, 1942. In the midst of all the
carnage, Stepinac declared on March 28, 1941: "All in all, Croats and
Serbs are of two worlds, northpole (sic) and southpole (sic), never
will they be able to get together unless by a miracle of God. The
schism (Eastern Orthodoxy) is the greatest curse in Europe, almost
greater than Protestantism. Here there is no moral, no principles, no
truth, no justice, no honesty..."
Stepinac's place in history continues to be a focus of considerable
debate among historians who remain divided over his role in the
Croat-Ustashi- Catholic genocide against Slavs and others. There is
evidence that the gruesome atrocities became even too much for the
Archbishop, and in May, 1943, the Axis demanded that the Vatican
remove him from his post. By then, the whole course of the war was
beginning to shift in favor of the western allies. After the collapse
of the Third Reich, Archbishop Stepinac was arrested by the new
Yugoslav government, and he was transmogrified into a liberatory
figure in the battle "against godless communism." He died while under
house arrest in 1960.
Last year during a visit to Croatia, Pope John Paul II beatified
Stepinac (the step before canonization and sainthood) in a religious
service at the shrine in Marija Boistica. Many saw this as an
unpleasant reminder of the "ethnic cleansing" days of World War II,
and for Serbs it only underscored the continued confrontation between
Orthodoxy and western-Vatican Christianity.
Ironically, the inhabitants of the region are united in a common
language. Approximately 16 million denizens of Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia all speak Serbo-Croatian, but even
here, historical roots have an important role to play. The modern
literary language developed thanks to the 1850 "Vienna Agreement"
which found Croatian and Serbian linguists and writers helping to
establish a united literary language. There are still regional
difference though, in both vocabulary and dialect.
Religion and national identification thus emerge as two of the leading
civilizational fault-line indicators.
Whereas the Serbs identify with Orthodox Christianity, distinct from
their Roman Catholic Croat neighbors, another group is the Muslims,
found mostly in Albania. This is why the Kosovo region became an
important factor in the current Balkan crisis. Serb-Muslim tensions
date back to the 14th century where troops of the Ottoman empire
overwhelmed Serbian fighters. The commemoration of this disaster in
1389 is celebrated on June 28, and has become an icon in Serbian
history and mythology. The battle took place in Gazimestan, Kosovo.
Toward the end of the bloody conflict, a Serb killed Murad I, the
military commander and Sultan, and in retaliation the Ottomans slew
the Serbian prince, Lazar.
The Kosovo region is one of the poorest areas in the Balkans. Infant
mortality is shockingly high, and most of the 2 million inhabitants
remain rooted in agriculture as a way of life. Tribal feuds and
bloodletting have been common in rural areas. It is also
predominantly Muslims, and the ethnic Serbs have become an isolated
minority. Under the 1974 Tito Constitution, the region was granted
wide autonomy; fifteen years later, though, the government in Belgrade
withdrew that status, dissolving the Kosovo parliament, closing local
schools, and reorganizing the police and security forces. Serbs were
moved into the area, and the presence of the Yugoslav army increased
as tanks and special units took over the streets.
Demographics Collide With Mythic Visions
The Serbian attempt to reintegrate Kosovo into an ethnically and
religiously unified state confronts a start reality; most of the
Albanian are Muslim, although their ancestry dates back two millennia
to the Illyrian tribes who settled the region. In 1990, a region-wide
referendum showed to an overwhelming support for some kind of autonomy
for the Kosovo province, but the results were not recognized by
Serbian authorities. The Kosovo parliament which was elected was
dissolved by Belgrade as well, declared illegal and banned from
meeting.
But there is an intense mythic and sacred quality to this land which
Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic describes as "The heart of Serbia."
Along with the history of the battle at Gazimestan, five historic
monasteries dot the area, stark reminders of the close identification
linking Serb nationalist aspirations and the Orthodox faith.
"We have a deep spiritual feeling this place," one Serb administrator
told a reporter for the New York Times in 1992. "This is the first
Serbian state, and we will never surrender it."
* THE MILOSEVIC FACTOR: FROM APPARATCHIK TO NATIONALIST
Understanding a key part of the Balkan requires asking the question: Who is
Slobodanb Milosevic? Elevated to the status of a near-demonic and despotic
figure in the West (which he may be), Milosevic is actually the
articulation of profound Serbian fears, traditions and aspirations
which resonate throughout Yugoslavia and, indeed, the wider community
of Slavs and Orthodox adherents.
In the early years of his political life, Milosevic was known as a
doctrinaire communist who could organize and negotiate the Byzantine
corridors of state power and party intrigue. He was leader of the
Belgrade City League of Communists and a prot g of Ivan Stambolic,
the Serb minister who emerged in the post-Tito shakeup. Fate smiled
on Milosevic, described in western media as a "colorless communist"
when he was sent to calm a popular uprising in the Kosovo
administrative capital of Pristina in April, 1987. The experience
transformed Milosevic as a person, and a symbol of a revitalized Serb
nationalism.
Milosevic spent that summer organizing and speaking to wildly
enthusiastic Serbian crowds; his name, "Slobo! Slobo!" became a
chant, and was soon included into a ditty playing on his first name
which incorporated the stem for the Slavic word for freedom...
"Slobodan, they call you freedom,
You are loved by big and small,
So long as Slobo walks the land,
People will not be enslaved..."
A cult of personality centered on Milosevic began to emerge in the
Serb community, and especially in the press he was quickly changed
from a party hack into a new nationalist hero. The process was not a
difficult one. His early family life included religious roots,
especially on the side of his father who had hoped to become a Serbian
Orthodox priest. He was raised by his mother, though, a dedicated
Communist party functionary.
While Misolevic may not be a strict Orthodox, he is certainly a Serb
nationalist, and exercises the ruthless politics of consolidating
power and tapping into the popular psyche. In March, 1989, he ordered
the arrest of ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo, and on June 28,
traveled again to the battlefield of Gazimestan. Milosevic told a
cheering crowd of Serbs, "Six centuries later, again we are in battles
and quarrels. They are not armed battles, though such things should
not be excluded yet..."
* THE RELIGION FACTOR
500 years of Ottoman Turkish occupation -- the
fruit of the Gazimestan battle -- fused the elements of Serbian ethnic
identity and Orthodox religion. It is this Orthodoxy which links the
Serb cause to a greater sense of Slavic identity, and accounts for the
support that Misolevic and his cause enjoy in the Russian Federation.
Here, too, the descendants of Rurik, the reputed founder of the
nascent Russian empire, see a common agenda in preserving ethnicity
and religious identity -- specifically Orthodoxy -- in its historical
stand against both the West and the periodic incursions of Islam.
Like the battlefield at Gazimestan, Serbia's monasteries also serve as
icons of this cultural resistance to the outside world. One aging
Orthodox monk, pointing to the shattered walls of an 800-year old
monastery building, told a western journalist in 1997 how, "I was
lined up against the wall by German troops who searched for documents
hidden here by the old royal Government. I returned here again when
the Croats took over our monastery in Osijec in 1991 and drove all us
Serbs out of the country..."
Writing in the November 10, 1997 New York Time, Christopher Hedges
observed, "The many attempts to eradicate the Serbian Orthodox Church
have produced a theology that glorifies warrior priests, makes a cult
of suffering and sees in nearly every outsider a heretic plotting to
destroy the Serbian people." This theology -- more precisely a
weltanshauung fusing history and mythos -- has also percolated over
the numerous attempts by outside interest to dismantle Serbia. "The
Serbs must accept that they will always be hounded by their enemies,"
declared the monk. "This is because Orthodox believers know the
truth, because God forces all believers to suffer for the faith..."
The monasteries date to Nemanjin Dynasty at the end of the 12th
century, and rule of a chieftain named Stefan Nemanja, also known as
Nemanya. The lineage reached its height under Stephen Dushan Nemanya
IX (1331-1355), and collapsed -- at the battle of Gazimestan -- during
the reign of Namanya X. The "golden age" of the first coherent
Serbian state vanished under the rule of the Ottomans, who carried
their territorial crusade through the Balkans and into the heart of
Europe before being stopped outside Vienna.
Muslim Extremism
While western media seems to focus on Serb atrocities, including the
latest "sweeps" made by Milosevic's elite security forces (one "Tiger"
unit is particularly notorious for its rapine sadism and brutality),
none of the major factions in the Balkan conflict are without guilt
and responsibilities. The rising Muslim tide in places such as
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo has brought with it not just cultural
diversity, but the presence of extremist Islamic groups which perceive
themselves as the ideological and religious descendants of the
Ottomans, charged with the divine mission of bringing the word of
Allah to the heathen west. One example is the controversy last
December over a statue in Savarjevo's Liberation Square. A gift from
Italy and sculptor Francesco Perilli, it is titled "Multiethnic Man."
Perilli hopes to have copies of the work placed on five continents --
Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia.
The sculpture consists of a nude figure looking skyward, surrounded by
an orbiting array of peace doves. But what was meant as a statement
on behalf of tolerance has been under attack by Islamic militants, who
according to the Los Angeles Times, see the sculpture as "pornography
at worst, idolatry at best for celebrating the human form over God."
Militants originally attempted relatively peaceful protests, such as
sneaking up in darkness and covering the enormous statue with black
cloth. "Someone always pulls the cover off, though, and 'Multiethnic
Man' stand naked again," noted one local observer.
In fact, the controversy over something as innocent as this sculpture
underscores the deep cultural cleavages of the area, not just about
matters such as sexuality or art in public places, but the role of
tolerance or religious doctrine in governing society.
* THE MODERN RELIGIOUS REACTION
Western and Orthodox religious groups
seems unified in their condemnations of the NATO bombing attacks,
although they speak from divided perspectives. Russian Orthodox
Church Patriarch Alexy II, a wily politicians who survived the
Communist apparatchik era in Russia, branded the NATO assaults as "a
sin before God." He did encourage both the Serbs and Kosovars to
return to the bargaining table, and live up to the recent treaty
agreements which Milosevic had broken. Similar sentiments came from
the Vatican's Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who warned "Resorting to the use
of force always signifies the failure of humanity."
But none of this addresses the long-standing historical roots that run
deep throughout the Balkans; nor do these tepid declarations
acknowledge the profound cultural fault lines where ethnicity,
religion and ancestry divides so many people.
* FURTHER READING...
Some of the best background available on the Balkan conflict can be
found in the New York Times and some of the in-depth specials running
on CNN-Live. For those interested in delving even deeper into the
roots of this latest "confrontation of civilizations," there are also
numerous books.
Samuel P. Huntington seminal opus, "The Clash of Civilizations and
the Remaking of World Order" (Simon and Schuster, 1996) is a
"must-read" for appreciating the new geopolitical reality of the
multi-polar, civilizational world. The Balkan region is discussed in
several chapters as an example of how cultural fault lines impact
contemporary political events. Robert Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts"
(St.Martin's Press, 1993) is a thoughtful meditation in his travels
from Vienna to Istanbul and through the Balkan region. Kaplan, a
contributing editor for Atlantic Monthly magazine, dissects the
ancient animosities and beliefs that propel the history of this part
of the world.
More specific in focus is "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation" (Penguin
Books, 1995) by Laura Silber and Allan Little. As war correspondents,
they devote considerable attention to the rise to power of Slobodan
Milosevic and the confrontations over Kosovo. Several books discuss
"ethnic cleansing" and the atrocities of the various factions. They
include "Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West," (Simon
and Schuster, 1995) by David Rieff, and Edward Vulliamy's "Season in
Hell: Understanding Bosnia's War," (Simon and Schuster, 1994). Also
pertinent is "A Witness to Genocide," (Macmillan, 1993) by Roy Gutman.
"The Vatican's Holocaust" (Ozark Books, 1986) by Avro Manhattan is
unfortunately not available at the present time through American
Atheists. Copies may be found for sale, though, in used book outlets,
or on line. While lacking an index, Manhattan's history of the
Ustashi movement is thoroughly researched and documented.
The 1930's travel memoir by the late Rebecca West, "Black Lamb and
Grey Falcon," (Penguin Books, 1982) is considered a classic in this
field of Balkan studies and accounts, despite some recent criticisms.
**
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