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Date:15/03/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/03/15/stories/2003031500351000.htm Opinion - Editorials
THE BALKANS CONTINUES to live up to its reputation as the cauldron of Europe. The assassination of the Prime Minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic, comes almost a century after another killing in the streets of the capital, Belgrade, started World War I?! There is no danger that Wednesday's assassination will bring about another catastrophe in a world whose epicentre has moved away from Europe and whose colonial empires of the last century have long become part of history. But the experience of Serbia, which was till the 1980s the driving force of the Yugoslav republic, should strike a warning note: a state that allows criminals and the mafia to operate with impunity must be ready to pay a heavy price. The murder of the relatively unknown Djindjic and the boldness with which it was executed in the centre of the country's capital raise questions about who is running Serbia. Hardly a fortnight ago he had had a narrow escape when a gangster tried to drive a lorry into his convoy. That he should be killed in a second attempt so soon after the first shows extremely poor security — or conspiracy at the highest political level. In the Balkans cauldron, Djindjic apparently paid with his life for ignoring the Machiavellian dictum that no dictator can hope to flourish if he allows those he had vanquished to survive. He had made some powerful enemies during his rise to power and his mentor, the U.S., could not protect him from them. Djindjic had led the uprising on the streets of Belgrade that deposed the Serb dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, in October 2000, and took the risky decision to turn him over to The Hague tribunal to be tried for genocide and war crimes. He also utilised the help of some of the paramilitary leaders and ethnic cleansers, with records of atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, to rise to the premiership of Serbia. Despite urgings by the U.S., his main supporter, and the European Union, Djindjic did little to curb the activities of these men who had, after the bloody wars of the 1990s, turned to crime, making fortunes from the privatisation of state enterprises and forming links to elements in the security agencies. By handing over Milosevic, he had whetted the appetite of the U.S. for the extradition of war criminals. And by his failure to act firmly against the hardliners of the Milosevic camp he had provided havens for his enemies at home. With the international community's attention riveted elsewhere, there is every likelihood that Serbia will be left to its fate — and Serbians will continue to feel cursed as victims of history. Assassinations have forever shaped Serbia's political life. The most explosive of these took place on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a band of nationalists from Belgrade. That was the torch that set the world on fire and wrecked old, proud empires in Moscow, Istanbul, Vienna and Berlin. It also gave birth to new nations, one of which was Yugoslavia, then known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and renamed a decade later. Under Marshal Tito after World War II there was a respite from political assassinations. With his death in 1980, the region surged back to its old ways, the horrific ethnic cleansing proving extremely bloody even by Balkan standards. Six centuries of occupation by the Ottoman empire, loss of a third of the adult male population during World War I and the slaughter in concentration camps during World War II and then the ethnic killings: Serbia has paid an intolerable price for its geographic location.
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