AFTER KOSTUNICA: IS THERE
DEMOCRACY IN THE BALKANS?
by Srdja
Trifkovic
With the enactment of the constitutional charter establishing the three-year confederal union between Serbia and Montenegro the present Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, will be out of his job within weeks. He will be just the leader of a political party and a law professor, while all power in Serbia will reside in the hands of its deeply unpopular Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and his DOS coalition.
They are still in, however, while Kostunica will soon be out, although he is still the most popular political figure in Serbia by far. It is ironic, and by no means incidental, that he keeps winning elections hands down--two for the Serbian presidency last fall alone--and losing power. If "democracy" had anything to do with the political system that reflects the collective will of the people, he would lead the nation while Dr. Djindjic would sit on the far back benches of Serbia's Parliament, and the rest of his coalition would look for work. But democracy, as it is currently propagated in the Balkans by the "international community," and as it is practiced by its local favorites, is defined not in terms of freely expressed political will of informed citizens, but through the looking glass of ideological preferences of political forces external to the region.
DEMOCRACY AS IDEOLOGY
"Ideology" is a bad word in the English-speaking world. It evokes Jacobin fanatics, inquisitors, goose-stepping storm troopers, commissars, and cultural revolutionaries. Adherents of an ideology are assumed to be brainwashed, imbued with mind-altering dogmas, and steeped in pseudo-reality--"a system of interested deceit"--so unlike the rest of us pragmatic empiricists, who are blessed to rely on our common sense to guide us through the world as it really is. We live culturally, most of us would say, and they live in ideology. To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, ideology is other people.
And yet to many denizens of the Balkans, notably in ex-Yugoslavia, the term democracy has become increasingly "ideological" in its connotations. It has acquired a distinctly undemocratic ring over the past decade, denoting the rule by the "international community" from without and by their kleptocratic collaborators from within. The term "democracy" is used as an ideological concept by various UN or EU bureaucrats who run some regions directly (Kosovo), hold the ultimate authority in others (Bosnia), or periodically visit various Yugoslav successor republics to check on their democratic progress. To put it briefly, in the parlance of those foreign emissaries "democracy" does not signify broad participation of informed citizens in the business of governance, but it denotes the desirable social and political content of ostensibly popular decisions. The outcomes are preordained; the process of reaching them is "democratic." The process likely to produce undesirable outcomes is, therefore, a priori "undemocratic."
Accordingly, if the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina vote for political parties that do not support the concept of a multi-ethnic, supra-national "Bosnia"--as they did last fall--or if the remaining few Serbian voters in Kosovo refuse to take part in UN-staged elections for as long as their most basic rights remain unprotected, or if both in Serbia and in Croatia most people do not want submission to what they perceive as an unjust and politically-motivated tribunal at The Hague--well, in all those cases such "wrong" outcomes are not deemed an exercise of democracy but a violation of democracy, and the reflection of the region's slow progress towards democracy.
Let's take a recent example. Last Tuesday (January 21) an American bureaucrat by the name of Prosper, who is something or another with "human rights" at the Department of State, while visiting Belgrade threatened his hosts with the cut-off of all U.S. financial assistance unless the elusive General Ratko Mladic was arrested and delivered to The Hague by January 31. (Whether the authorities in Belgrade have the physical capacity to do so was immaterial, whether Mladic was on their territory in the first place, did not matter.)
Mr. Prosper was just the latest in a series of international busybodies who openly equate total submission to Ms. Del Ponte with "democracy." Last November, to take a somewhat more notable example, a United Nations envoy for human rights declared in Belgrade that Yugoslav society is "approaching democracy" but it has to resolve some outstanding issues on war crimes and minority rights. The envoy, Jose Cutilliero, criticized the lagging cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague. At the end of his visit to Yugoslavia, he also raised concern over the "very fragile" situation regarding the Gypsy minority. According to a news agency report, "He praised the human rights and minorities regulations adopted since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic two years ago and welcomed the 'falling number' of reports on ethnically-motivated violence in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province under a U.N. administration."
DEMOCRACY AND KOSOVO
This short and seemingly bland report conceals much of what is wrong with the approach of the "international community." Let us start with the last item first: to most Serbs, Sr. Cutillero's "welcoming" the "falling number" of victims of ethnic violence in Kosovo has an air of insensitive mockery.
In reality the total number of reported incidents is indeed falling, but only because the number of available victims, i.e. non-Albanians--Serbs, Gypsies, and Slavic Muslims--has dwindled to under one-tenth of their number before the NATO war against Serbia in the spring of 1999. There's no need for further ethnic cleansing in a thoroughly cleansed land. NATO troops, operating under the acronym KFOR (Kosovo Force), have done little as over 300,000 non-Albanians were brutally from the region and thousands more killed. The remaining non-Albanians of Kosovo lives in ghettos. They can travel only if KFOR provides an armed escort, without which there is no trip to the hospital, the market, school, church, or the polling booth. But relying on poorly motivated KFOR troopers is still preferable to the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), a would-be local constabulary created by the UN Administration and comprised of terrorists of the supposedly disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
And yet none of these facts, well known to Serbia's citizens, are mentioned in Mr. Prosper's or Sr. Cutillero's statements. That the latter should make a reference to the "very fragile" situation of Gypsies instead is truly mystifying, and smacks of another ideological quest for an approved and designated victim-group.
"REFORMIST" DJINDJIC VS. "NATIONALIST" KOSTUNICA
Foreign officials' explicit equation of Serbia's submission to The Hague tribunal with democracy is even more problematic, since the tribunal itself has no democratic credentials. But before considering that demand in some detail let us go back to the summer of 2000, to the origins of the current problem. In July of that year the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Demokratska opozicija Srbije, DOS)--a loose coalition of 18 largely insignificant parties--selected Kostunica as its presidential candidate against Milosevic, who had called an election for September 24. This decision was a stroke of genius: unlike the rest of DOS Kostunica and his party (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS) were not tainted with previous dealings with the Milosevic regime. His blend of scrupulous legalism, understated patriotism, and rejection of compromise with the neo-communist establishment had struck a chord. Kostunica's victory--disputed by Milosevic at first, and sealed by the wave of street protests that swept over Serbia--also proved to be a meal ticket for the rest of DOS. Democracy seemed to have triumphed yet again.
The subsequent Western policy often sought to neutralize Kostunica by ensuring that the levers of real power went to the recipients of the Western largesse. The key player in this scheme was the present prime minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the small but influential Democratic Party. He embodied the Serb variety of a political type encountered all over Eastern Europe: sharply dressed, technocratic, nouveau-riche yuppie-wannabes, explicitly post-national and committed to "the international community"--U.N. tribunals, IMF-dictated fiscal policies, kleptocratic privatizations and all. The common goal of the Djindjic-led "pro-Westerners" and their foreign mentors was to use Kostunica as the battering ram and then to take over the castle, while retaining him as its nominal master during the transition. The preferences of the Western powers-that-be became obvious in the routine journalistic labeling of Djindjic as a "pro-Western, reformist democrat" and Kostunica as a "nationalist," a "moderate" one at best.
Kostunica's fundamental challenge was clear: how to be pragmatic and flexible in his dealings with the outside world, but uncompromising on the key issues of Serbia's dignity and sovereignty embodied in the demands of The Hague and its mentors and supporters. He faced a coalition of cynical manipulators (Djindjic) and lightweights (the rest of DOS) who had no credibility with the people and who therefore sought to outbid each other in currying favor of the Western world as the only guarantee of their continued hold on power.
Djindjic's task was also tricky. To bring down Milosevic he had to risk giving Kostunica a straight flush, but after the job was done he had to take those cards back one by one. He had to preempt him abroad by promising more than Kostunica would ever be willing to deliver. Clever and ruthless, Djindjic embarked on a short, sharp march through the institutions. His placed his trustees in charge of all key media outlets and Serbia's yet-to-be-privatized key public corporations. All the key federal posts--foreign affairs, finances, telecommunications, justice, police--went to the NGO-linked ex-Communists loyal to him, or outright Djindjic allies.
Kostunica's resistance to the drift was increasingly confined to rhetoric. He is an honest man, and therefore a very bad politician. Surrounded by an inept and on the whole worthless team, he lacked the sureness of touch and clarity of message. The rest of DOS, eager to be noticed in the right way by the Western powers-that-be, started clamoring for de facto capitulation and surrender not only of Serb national interests but also of the nation's dignity: "full compliance" with the Tribunal was the codeword. Responding to such pressure Djindjic strengthened the hand of those bureaucrats within the Department of State--notably the U.S. ambassador in Belgrade William Montgomery--who sought to ensure the continuity of Clinton's flawed Balkan policy.
The continuing preference of the Bush Administration for Djindjic's camp was truly puzzling. However justified Washington's preferences might have been with Milosevic still in power, they have long since become anachronistic in the post-9/11 era. Today American priorities must mean weeding out radical Islamic and organized crime elements in the Balkans with al-Qaeda links, and protecting the security of U.S. and allied forces. As pragmatic analysts in Washington point out, here Serbia is not part of the problem but can become a significant part of the solution. Far more important to U.S. interests than hauling the next indictee to the Hague would be Belgrade's agreeing to exempt American personnel on Serbian soil from the International Criminal Court. Working with Serbian enlightened patriotism, rather than crushing it, is a far more promising path to solid security and economic integration into the Western community. The same factors of moral stature and personal integrity--including strong support in the Church and the Army--that made Kostunica the only candidate in 2000 with a possibility of unseating Milosevic should today make him Washington's preferable prospective president of Serbia.
No such policy shift is on the horizon, however. The net result, for now, is that what passes for "democracy" in the discourse of international bureaucrats has been discredited in Serbia. Enthusiasm and idealism of the popular uprising of October 2000 are being replaced by an all-pervasive cynicism. The preferences of "the international community" are embodied in Zoran Djindjic. He is using that opportunity to "privatize" the remnants of the impoverished country's economy, that is, to divide the spoils between himself and his cronies.
DEMOCRACY AND THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL
But back to The Hague, the great litmus test of "democracy." In reality the Tribunal is a political institution, conceived by the Clinton Administration, created by the Security Council, and devoid of legality. It was inserted into the city of Hague to abduct the respectable aura of the International Court of Justice, an institution distinguished by the attempt to apply law to relations and disputes between nations and states. ICTY, by contrast, is a misnomer: neither is it a "tribunal"--a forum of impartial justice--nor is it concerned with "war crimes"--understood as gross violations of certain norms of war, regardless of the identity of culprits and victims. The successor-republics' courts, though far from perfect, stand as paragons of legality compared to the procedure and administration of indictments at The Hague. The rules of evidence remain unclear. The accused has no right to confront his accuser, making him immune from cross-examination. He is held de facto guilty until proven innocent. The tribunal investigates, indicts, prosecutes and renders sentence as a single body. It demands that arbitrarily named war criminals be physically delivered to The Hague.
Such objections notwithstanding, Serbia is told, week after week, that the fulfillment of Ms. Del Ponte's demands is a key precondition for its certification as a democracy. Yes, it needs the truth about war crimes. It needs to be brutally frank about its own ghosts of the recent past, but in doing so it must not provide justification for the lie of primary Serbian culpability that remains the basic assumption on which The Hague Tribunal is built. It is not a vehicle of judicial reconciliation in the Balkans, but an instrument of quasi-legal retaliation against the designated culprits. Its definition of reconciliation is based on the propagandistic concept of aggression and genocide.
An acceptance of the assumptions that The Hague seeks to impose on the Serbs all along, and on the Croats in recent months, would not contribute either to reconciliation or to the former Yugoslavs' reintegration into "Europe." A settlement that is based on a lie and on an arbitrary apportioning of war guilt can only guarantee new, even worse conflicts, five, ten or twenty years from now--as we have witnessed in the decades after Versailles. Saying "no" to Del Ponte, coupled with determination to prosecute accused war criminals in domestic courts, are far more conducive to the development of real democracy in the successor states than "full cooperation" (read: compliance) would entail.
DEMOCRACY AND BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
As for Bosnia, "democracy" as defined by the "International Community" is in an even deeper trouble. Three political parties more or less accurately described as "nationalist"--one Serb, one Croat, and one Bosniak-Muslim--won a resounding victory at the parliamentary election there last October 5. Seven years after the Diktat of Dayton, the international nation-builders' goal of a "multiethnic" Bosnia remains as elusive, and informed analysts privately admit, as impossible as ever. Turnout was low--55 percent, down 10 percentage points from the last elections two years ago; it is evident that many denizens of the former Yugoslavia are too cynical or too resigned to bother. In Bosnia their reluctance is additionally explained by the fact that the "High Representative of the International Community" may dismiss any elected official at his discretion at any time. Nikola Poplasen, democratically elected President of the Bosnian-Serb Republic, was thus summarily removed from his post in March 1999, on the grounds that he was not committed to "the spirit of Dayton." Elections are subsequently seen by many as a device to fool them into believing that their opinions matter.
Bosnia is in shambles: Since the end of the war in 1995, the hybrid republic has received more than $5 billion in reconstruction aid, but the beneficiaries were local crooks, international bureaucrats, and foreign contractors. It is now ranked economically behind Albania--in South Eastern Europe, only Moldova is poorer. The current High Representative, a failed British politician by the name of Paddy Ashdown, declared before last fall's elections that the thought of the nationalists returning to power kept him awake at night. He tried to dismiss the election result as a protest vote against the outgoing government's inefficiency. Ashdown was being disingenuous, and he knows it: the electoral result reflects the refusal of "Bosnia" to come into being as a viable project, because there is no "Bosnian" nation--only three distinct ethno-religious communities that, sadly, still dislike and distrust each other just as badly as when the war started a decade ago.
The hatred will abate only if and when DEMOCRACY is reactivated in Bosnia, that is, only when the three constituent nations are finally allowed to develop their polties side by side, as neighbors, and not as unwilling joint participants in an ideologically motivated experiment in "multi-ethnicity." Enforced cohabitation will only perpetrate further resentment that may result in another bout of blood-letting.
The lessons of the war of 1992-95, however, remain unlearned by the International Community. From more than a decade's distance we may finally revisit it, for clarity's sake. Of the three constituent peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as defined by Yugoslav constitutions, the Muslims were the most numerous (43%). Most were prepared to accept a compromise that would fall short of full independence--especially if full independence risked war. They nevertheless nervously followed their Islamic fundamentalist leader in the Party of Democratic Action who demanded a leap in the dark by insisting on an independent yet unitary state.
Back in 1992 the Croats (17 percent) were the least numerous, but--especially in their stronghold of western Herzegovina--they were the most determined to get Bosnia out of Yugoslavia, and then to break away from Bosnia with the support of Croatia. Their party (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ BH) was prepared to enter a tactical alliance with the Muslims to get the independence vote a decade ago, but most Bosnian Croats were not prepared to see their long-term future in a sovereign Bosnia. The HDZ is still the leading Bosnian-Croat party by far, and its supporters are still determined to unite with Croatia, sooner or later.
The Serbs of Bosnia, overwhelmingly, refused to be ejected from Yugoslavia, especially as the Bosnian referendum on "sovereignty" (February 1992) was held in violation of the constitutional right of each of Bosnia's three peoples to veto any decision unacceptable to its vital interests. At that time the Serbian Democratic Party (Srpska demokratska stranka, SDS) was willing to settle for a regional autonomy far less substantial than what the Serbs were subsequently offered in Geneva in 1993 and at Dayton in 1995. Today, the SDS Leader Mirko Sarovic is triumphant, and determined to reject any centralizing tendencies that would go beyond the strict letter of Dayton.
In the aftermath of the first post-communist election in Bosnia (fall 1990) those three main ethnic political parties were clear winners. Twelve years, and some tens of thousands of human lives later, we've seen that they are still firmly in command of their peoples' loyalties. Now we know that Bosnia was not much affected by international intervention. This indicates the limits of internationalists' ability to dictate outcomes.
If the old Yugoslavia was untenable and eventually collapsed under the weight of the supposedly insurmountable differences among its constituent nations, it is unclear how Bosnia--the Yugoslav microcosm par excellence--can deemocratically develop and sustain the dynamics of a viable polity. We now know the answer: it cannot be done, unless the project is accompanied by a deeply undemocratic denial of the desire of most "Bosnians"--that is, Serbs and Croats--not to see "Bosnia" as the permanent solution to their aspirations. The full implications of this simple fact will become known only when the outside powers lose their present interest in upholding the constitutional edifice made in Dayton.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, let me state that democracy is both possible and desirable in the Balkans, but its exercise must be de-coupled from pre-conceived ideological preferences of the "International Community" that seeks to impose preordained end-results.
The "International Community's" discourse seeks to cripple meaningful post-Yugoslav debate with ideological rigidity, with dogmatism. This is something that many ex-Yugoslavs will vaguely remember as one of the characteristic vices of Tito's communism. More importantly, not allowing the realities of history, collective memory, and cultural legacy to get in the way of post-Yugoslav solutions may plant the seeds of a new round of blood-letting, no less assuredly than Tito's lie about "brotherhood and unity" and "people's liberation struggle" had done in the run-up to the tragedy of the 1990s.
Real democracy may well mean the end of Dayton-Bosnia, the partition of Kosovo, and the abolition of The Hague tribunal. It would most assuredly mean the end of Djindjic, and the end of meddling by the likes of Del Ponte, Ashdown, Prosper, or Cutillero. Such outcomes, uncomfortable as they are for those otherwise unemployable individuals, are vastly preferable to enforced fictions that ensure new wars, and will require new interventions and new courts--and, God help us, new fictions--once they are over. The choice, not for the first time, is not with the long-suffering denizens of the Balkan Peninsula, reflecting the sad state of ex-Yugoslavia's democratic revival. Two and a half years after Milosevic's fall it is tempting to conclude that the more things change in that unhappy part of Europe, the more they remain the same.
Delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, January 23, 2003 http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST012503.html
