The vanishing powder keg
EU enlargement could make for a very happy 100th anniversary of an assassination Misha Glenny >From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Oct. 09, 2009 7:58PM EDT >Last updated on Friday, Oct. 09, 2009 7:59PM EDT Houses that have been targeted by artillery and tank fire often open their interior to inspection like giant doll's houses. Whole roofs and façades are ripped to reveal peculiar incongruities: an immaculately made-up bedroom with fluffy animals lying on the pillow next to a living room where the bomb actually hit, fusing together the television set with the coffee table and fake marble mantelpiece into a perverse artwork – all this framed by blackened pock-marked walls with charred, twisted wood and metal poking out of the top. In a war zone like the former Yugoslavia, this vision soon becomes mundane. But when first witnessed, it is unforgettable. I remember entering Turanj in July, 1991, two days after its inhabitants had fled the village. It sat in the no man's land that separated Croatian-controlled territory south of the city of Karlovac (whose star-shaped fortifications were built centuries before as a bastion of Christendom against the threat posed by the Ottomans) from what was soon to be called the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), home of the Croatian Serbs. The RSK was one of 13 territories, dubbed “parastates,” that constituted themselves at different points in the Yugoslav Wars, promising eternal security for their putative citizens. This was followed by the collapse of the parastate, usually in bloodshed, before most were wound down as part of the peace negotiations. Turanj, once in flames, has long since been restored and reintegrated into Croatia. Today's visitors to wondrous cities such as Dubrovnik and Split have to make some effort to find evidence of the war. Given the stock of houses, hospitals, churches and offices that were trashed in the four years of conflict, this is pretty impressive. A DEGREE OF CO-OPERATION Yet beyond the excellent job of tidying up, there is something still more exceptional that has been happening in the entire region since the most recent conflict, a mini civil war in Macedonia, ended eight years ago. Unnoticed by most of the world, the entire Balkan region is steadily overcoming the trauma of full-scale warfare in an attempt to rid itself of its fearful reputation as Europe's powder keg once and for all. This process includes a growing degree of co-operation among Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians and other ethnic groups whose armies and paramilitaries engaged in hideous slaughter during the 1990s. The pain generated by that murderous period has by no means disappeared. Bosnian Muslims remain in a state of shock triggered by events such as the slaughter at Srebrenica of 7,000 Muslim men by Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladic's command. The damage to Croatia's economic infrastructure has been immense, while about one million refugees (many living in camps) are an enduring reminder to Serbia of how devastating a conflict this was. But the assumption that only bad news ever comes out of the Balkans has led politicians, editors and the public elsewhere in the world to overlook an extraordinary and positive transformation. Apart from a huge effort on the part of a new generation of politicians and civil servants inside the former Yugoslavia, this process has been driven by the remarkable influence the European Union can exert on neighbouring countries who resolve to apply for membership. At the end of the wars, the former Yugoslavia, with the exception of the northwestern republic of Slovenia, was in a dreadful state. Relations among people and politicians alike were marked by fear and resentment. The regional economies were in utter shambles. Criminal syndicates had used the war as a cover to transform the Balkans into a huge transit zone that exported illicit goods and services from all over the world to their final destination in the European Union. Drugs, untaxed cigarettes and women trafficked for sexual purposes all passed through, on their way to the brothels and crack houses of London, Berlin, Rome and Amsterdam. Indicted war criminals such as the notorious Serbian gang boss known as Arkan had established huge and growing commercial empires, while wartime leaders like Franjo Tudjman in Croatia and the notorious Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic created unstable alliances with oligarchs and criminals. The Kosovo Liberation Army, which had fought against Serbia during the Kosovo War of 1999, had mutated into a number of competing clans in part financed by the trade in heroin to Western Europe and money laundering. As a small minority lived their lives in a gangster paradise, ordinary people were faced with falling living standards and rising unemployment. There was every reason to believe that life in parts of the former Yugoslavia would deteriorate into years of dictatorship, injustice and penury. Two tumultuous events that followed the Kosovo War changed this, leading to a dramatic improvement in the region's prospects. JETTISONING NATIONALISM On Oct. 5, 2000, hundreds of thousands of Serbs massed in their capital, Belgrade, to bring to a close the inglorious rule of Mr. Milosevic. Having seen the damage this man and his coterie had wrought on the peoples of Yugoslavia, I felt a particular satisfaction when witnessing the extraordinary events, whose symbol was a bulldozer flailing its huge plate at policemen who threatened to attack a sea of peaceful demonstrators. In subsequent elections, Serbs made plain that they wanted to jettison the nationalist option in favour of a democratic system that sought close links with the EU. Equally important a few months later was the small civil war in Macedonia, where relations between the country's large Albanian minority and the Slav Macedonian majority threatened to collapse into a bloodbath. Brussels acted with uncharacteristic speed, offering the country a fast track to European Union membership as part of a proposed peace deal. The prospect of EU membership has performed miracles in the former communist bloc (except in Russia). This is because the warm embrace of the EU includes large-scale, targeted investment that had an astonishing track record in Portugal, Spain and Greece – societies that had come fresh from the trauma of clerical-fascist dictatorships. But if you want to become a member of the EU, the deal means cleaning up your act. You have to allow competition; you have to introduce environmentally friendly policies; you have to pass extensive human-rights legislation; and, especially important for the Balkans, you have to implement tough programs to combat corruption and organized crime. Not only does the so-called accession process assist the modernization of the former Yugoslavia, it also reduces the threat to existing member states from organized crime that derives its influence and power from instability in the Balkans. One politician who had deeply understood this dynamic by 2003 was George Papandreou, then the Greek foreign minister, who last week was returned to office, this time as the Prime Minister. In the teeth of both indolence and opposition from some European countries, he mounted a successful campaign to persuade European Union leaders to make a commitment that all Southeast European countries would eventually be able to join, if they wanted. It has been a slow and laborious process since then, but it is working. Crime and corruption still plague all Balkan countries (though they have an equally firm grip over half of Italy and nobody in Brussels ever seems to voice a peep about that). And yet police forces and the courts have for the first time succeeded in bringing some of the biggest regional gang bosses to book. Recently, the Serbian police arrested and charged a convicted murderer with the assassination of a prominent journalist in Croatia, with assistance not just from the Croatian police but from Bulgarian law enforcement as well. The economies are growing fast but still suffer from structural problems. But when the goal of EU membership is kept in mind, these difficulties also highlight an unexpected discipline. Youth unemployment in Kosovo, for example, stands at some 70 per cent and has done for several years. If almost three-quarters of young people were persistently unemployed in a Western city, there would surely be a lot of violence. Time and again in elections since the turn of the millennium, voters have turned their back on extreme nationalist options, in Croatia, Serbia and elsewhere. This is despite serious political problems, especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, which nationalists and extremists have attempted but failed to exploit. RENEWED IMPETUS The EU is notoriously bad at trumpeting its successes and even more hopeless at seizing an opportunity for fantastic PR. But in less than five years time, Europe will commemorate the outbreak of the First World War, triggered, of course, by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which resulting in the Balkans' reputation as the powder keg of Europe. There are still major hurdles to overcome: Serbia must deliver Gen. Mladic to the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague; and a way around the constitutional knot in Kosovo must be devised. But now that Mr. Papandreou, the Balkans' greatest supporter within the EU, is back in power, there will be renewed impetus to think the unthinkable. Just imagine if Europeans were to welcome all the countries in the former Yugoslavia on June 28, 2014, 100 years to the day of the Sarajevo assassination. Europe can boast that it has finally defused the powder keg. That would be a peace project to boast about. Misha Glenny is a former BBC correspondent in Central Europe and the author of The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-vanishing-powder-keg/article1319452/
