Confederation or explosion

The upsurge of nationalism is threatening to reshape the whole Balkan peninsula. As the drive towards the establishment of ethnically homogeneous states gathers force, so does the risk of a chain reaction and the spread of conflict throughout the region. Is maintaining existing frontiers compatible with the right to self-determination?
by Catherine Samary

At the Rambouillet conference Jiri Dienstbier, the United Nations special rapporteur for former Yugoslavia, reaffirmed that the UN solution to the Yugoslav crisis since 1991 was based on the principle of the inviolability of frontiers (1). If that principle were abandoned in the case of Kosovo, he argued, the whole solution would be called into question. Independence for Kosovo would open the way to the partition of Bosnia and no one would be able to stop it.

Despite fears that independence for Kosovo would destabilise Albania, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, no attempt has been made to involve any of these states in overall management of the explosive conflict. The Albanian question was buried at Dayton, as was the question of the Serbs in the Croatian region of Krajina. For reasons of political realism the situation in Kosovo, where the Albanian community had been resisting oppression by Belgrade by non-violent means for ten years, was passed over in silence - just like the ethnic cleansing of over 300,000 Croatian Serbs in the summer of 1995.

So how was this “principle”, postulated as the solution to the Yugoslav crisis, actually applied? In point of fact the question of which frontiers were “inviolable” was decided according to shifting criteria that were never made explicit. The key date of 1991, referred to by Dienstbier, was when the Slovene and Croatian republics seceded. From that point on it was the frontiers of the republics, not those of former Yugoslavia, that were deemed inviolable. So it is quite reasonable for the Kosovar Albanians to ask why the principle should not apply to the frontiers of the autonomous provinces too, especially Kosovo.

The inviolability of frontiers, as a principle, necessarily conflicted with the right to self-determination. And oppression is the most radical means of turning a minority into a “nation” claiming that right - which is why the Yugoslav and Albanian national questions lent themselves to different answers at different times, according to the circumstances.

The break between Stalin and Tito in 1948 put paid to the plans for a Balkan confederation. Yet such a confederation would have provided a totally different framework for settling the Kosovo question, enabling the province to maintain its links with both Serbia and Albania. Albanian-speakers were subjected to domination by Belgrade until the mid-1960s; then the reins were loosened, but only slightly. The Serbian constitution of 1974 failed to grant the Kosovar Albanians the status of a “nation” (narod) that would have entitled them to self-determination and the establishment of a republic (2).

Granting Kosovo the status of a republic (which it had been claiming since 1968) would have meant a symbolic recognition of equal rights and dignity for all inhabitants of the province. It would also have strengthened rather than weakened Kosovo’s ties with Yugoslavia (3), given the unattractiveness of Albania under Enver Hodja. The failure of Tito’s Yugoslav federation (4), coupled with the social, economic, political and moral crisis of multinationalism, altered the situation radically. The bureaucratic confederalism of Yugoslavia prepared the ground for the transformation of ethno-cultural “nations” into economic and political entities (5).

The crisis fuelled the resurgence of old and new nationalisms of the right and the so-called left, and gave new impetus to plans for states based on exclusive ethno-national principles. The people at the top set about appropriating territory and wealth in the name of the “nation”. All sorts of criteria were invoked - history, prior settlement, numerical majority or quite simply “viability” - and all of them were of course rejected when used by others. Finally, none of the parties seeking to achieve ethnic homogeneity for populations demoralised by the crisis stopped short of physical and legal terrorism (6). National identity was suddenly imposed, whereas under the Tito regime each citizen had been entitled to choose it freely.

It was ultimately fear rather than hatred that gave nationalism its mass support. In such uncertainty ordinary people came to fear that unless they ended up inside the right borders, with the right state authorities, they could lose jobs, home, land, rights, identity, and even their lives.

War became an instrument for displacing people in order to change the ethnic composition of territories (7). In this process a decisive role was played by the backstage understanding between the Serb and Croat leaders, who embodied the dominant nationalisms in conflict (8). The bloody dismemberment of Bosnia, according to a plan reminiscent of the maps of the Serbo-Croat entente of 1939, was planned jointly by Zagreb and Belgrade.

Even the Dayton accords in 1995 were partly based on a compromise between Slobodan Milosevic and his Croatian counterpart, Franjo Tudjman. Overshadowed by Vukovar and Srebrenica, the Serbs of Krajina were sacrificed to Zagreb’s dream of a Croatia in which the Serbian population (12% in 1991) had been reduced to less than 5%. A similar sacrifice was imposed on the Albanian-speaking population of Kosovo: the status of an autonomous province was revoked, the administration and public services were purged on ethnic lines, and the prerogatives of the Albanian bureaucracy were taken over by the Serbian authorities. And now, a third of the province’s population has been deported.

Blaming all these ethnic cleansing policies and the deaths in all these wars on the Serbian authorities in order to justify the bombing of Belgrade - after the event - is to take a one-sided view of history and select the facts to suit the argument. It rules out any chance of being listened to by at least part of the Serbian population, which is vital for the future. And it also strengthens the Croatian authorities and army, which are not only deeply destabilising factors in the Croatian-Muslim federation, but also a fundamental obstacle to the establishment of any new Balkan regional arrangement for cooperation among the new states (9).

Unlike Tudjman, Milosevic has pressed different buttons in order to stay in power. In the rump of a federation in which 40% of the population are not Serbs, he has appealed both to Serb nationalism and to Yugoslav patriotism. Obviously, his version of Yugoslav patriotism is a domineering Serbo-Slavism destructive of the former Yugoslavia. But it is pragmatic and capable of change. Before the Nato bombing started, Yugoslav society in its Serbo-Montenegrin variant was far from a homogeneous mass dominated by fascist ideology (10). Then, as now, it is simply not true that all avenues were explored. Even on the Kosovo issue there was considerable margin for avoiding the ethnic dismemberment that is now taking place.

“Serbification” of the province since the abolition of autonomy by Belgrade had ended in failure. It was that failure that opened the way for initial negotiations with Ibrahim Rugova in recent months. The lack of progress in those talks was scarcely worse than in the current negotiations on the Irish, Cypriot, Palestinian, Kurdish or Basque issues. The size of the Serbian minority, that was supposed to grow and consolidate its position, was falling steadily. Apart from a few families, the great mass of the 200,000 Serbian refugees from Croatia, on whom Belgrade was counting to overturn the ethnic composition of the province, refused to settle in Kosovo. They preferred Vojvodina, a richer province with a Serb majority. Generally speaking, there was no reason to believe that young Serbs were prepared to die for Kosovo.

In fact two plans were being drawn up on the Serbian side, not one. The official plan, which was endorsed almost unanimously by the Serbian National Assembly late last year, was based on autonomy for the province of Kosovo and restoration of the prerogatives of the Albanian-speakers, with Kosovo remaining part of Serbia. The other plan, which was kept under wraps, was the ethnic partition of Kosovo. The task of international diplomacy was to ensure that the latter plan never saw the light of day. The choice for the population of Kosovo was armed struggle for independence or acceptance of a (temporary) compromise.

No one can say for certain that the ethnic cleansing now taking place would not have happened anyway. But would it have enjoyed the support of the Yugoslav population, from which any challenge to the Serbian regime must necessarily come? If so, why does Belgrade television now feel obliged to claim that the Albanians are fleeing Nato bombs?

Logic of Rambouillet

From the start of the Yugoslav crisis another approach was possible. It was still possible at Rambouillet, provided the Western powers gave up the idea of imposing their own “take-it-or-leave-it” plan in the direct negotiations between the Serbian authorities and the Kosovo Albanians. And it must still be tried. But now, as in the past, the scope of conflict management must be expanded to encompass all the Balkan states made vulnerable by the crisis. The fear that recognition of the right to self-determination will chop former Yugoslavia into smaller and smaller pieces is understandable. But failure to recognise that right was bound to lead to dismemberment determined solely by power relations, by the scramble for private appropriation of wealth and territory, and by the political choices of the great powers.

Moreover, the right to self-determination does not imply a single solution, especially not the solution of “to each his own ethnic state”. What it does mean is that each community must be able to choose the political framework which best safeguards its rights. Its recognition is therefore a prerequisite for remodelling the Balkans on progressive lines, something that is itself conceivable only as part of the construction of a democratic Europe. Aspirations for economic development, a higher standard of living and culture, and equal treatment are shared by all the peoples of the Balkans - and by the rest of the world.

There is nothing to prove that the institutional structure that can best meet these aspirations is a state based on exclusive ethno-national principles, in the context of small territories fragmented by war profiteers and traffickers growing fat on political and economic blockades (11). It is even less obvious that current policies of rampant privatisation are having any beneficial effect on the peoples of the region or promoting stability. Nepotism, corruption and the rapid growth of social inequality on all sides show who is benefiting from the new regimes that are claiming to defend the interests of “their” peoples.

In short, ethnic unity is a fiction starkly contradicted by the cultural gulf between the masses of refugees from poor rural areas and city dwellers of whatever nationality. It is all the more tragic that those most vulnerable should be listening to rabble-rousers precisely because democrat politicians are propounding liberal economic policies that foster unemployment and insecurity.

Popular aspirations have been the same for the underdogs in all Balkan communities that, split over various territories, refuse to be treated as “minorities”. Tibor Varady, a Hungarian lawyer from Vojvodina, has pointed out that the minorities issue is both the source of fragility throughout the Balkans and the key to peace in the whole region. A just, and therefore lasting, solution to the region’s tangled national and social questions can be found only if the issue is approached at the level of the Balkans as a whole. It must be based on mutual recognition of equal social and cultural rights and the establishment of new confederal links between states that diminish the importance of the frontiers which divide their peoples. The time has surely come to convene a Balkan conference that can at least identify the conditions for a European aid-based security policy that will encourage the Balkan states to stabilise their relations with each other and with the European Union. The right of the displaced populations to return to their homes can only be secured through a programme of aid for the whole Balkan region.

A single B-2 bomber costs more than Albania’s gross domestic product over a year. Billions are going up in smoke. Meanwhile, the chances of a progressive solution to the conflicts in the region, that ultimately depend on the ability of its peoples to get rid of the leaders who are the cause of their suffering, are being destroyed. Rather than boosting those chances, Nato bombs have the opposite effect. Not only do they kill, they also blind.

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