[ALBSA-Info] The Long Goodbye

[Iris Pilika]

But will it be that simple? Many of the people now cheering for Kostunica 
were throwing flowers on tanks rolling toward Vukovar in 1991. And the 
following year, they were firmly convinced that the citizens of Sarajevo 
were shooting and shelling their own children and blaming innocent Serbs. 
They explain in detail how the Srebrenica massacre was staged by Western 
intelligence agencies, and how cnn invented the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. 
If they blame Milosevic for anything, they blame him for losing wars for 
Greater Serbia. A surprising number of smart, educated people I know believe 
without a shadow of doubt that Milosevic is a U.S. agent recruited by the 
cia to drag Serbia into the abyss.





TIME EUROPE
Friday, September 29, 2000

Viewpoint

The Long Goodbye
Milosevic may be finished, but Serbia still has some questions to answer
By DEJAN ANASTASIJEVIC




Serbia is in a revolutionary mood. I am not saying this because there is a 
large crowd of people on the streets demanding Milosevic's resignation even 
as I'm writing these words. We have seen it all before, and it didn't change 
anything. I am saying this because my eight-year-old daughter comes back 
from school chanting anti-Milosevic slogans she learned from her friends. 
And because my 68-year-old aunt, who never cared much for politics, now goes 
out night after night, risking arrest and harassment, to put stickers with 
the words "He's Finished!" over Milosevic's campaign posters. Something deep 
has moved beneath the murky surface of Serbian politics, and despite all the 
cunning and brutality, there is nothing that Milosevic can do to stay 
afloat.

So this time he is really finished, whether he chooses to go in a nice way, 
perhaps settling down in some remote corner of the world, or meets a violent 
end in the manner of Mussolini or Ceausescu. In a matter of weeks, Serbia 
will be free of the man who, in the course of the past 13 years, has brought 
out the worst in his own country and in neighboring countries, perverting or 
destroying everything in his path. Like a Sleeping Beauty after the kiss of 
Prince Charming, Serbia will awake under Vojislav Kostunica's leadership, 
and everything will spring back to life again. Like an evil witch, Milosevic 
will disappear in a puff of smoke. We will be, as Kostunica once promised, 
"a dull, average European country, with an average economy, an average 
relationship with its neighbors, an average health care system and an 
average political life." Kostunica realized before anyone else that Serbian 
people are suffering from an overdose of history and historical ambition. He 
has promised them dull normalcy instead, and it worked.


But will it be that simple? Many of the people now cheering for Kostunica 
were throwing flowers on tanks rolling toward Vukovar in 1991. And the 
following year, they were firmly convinced that the citizens of Sarajevo 
were shooting and shelling their own children and blaming innocent Serbs. 
They explain in detail how the Srebrenica massacre was staged by Western 
intelligence agencies, and how cnn invented the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. 
If they blame Milosevic for anything, they blame him for losing wars for 
Greater Serbia. A surprising number of smart, educated people I know believe 
without a shadow of doubt that Milosevic is a U.S. agent recruited by the 
cia to drag Serbia into the abyss.


These are not the foundations upon which normalcy can be built. And when the 
revolutionary trance is over, Serbs will have to address the issue of war 
crimes and atrocities committed in their name. The chain of command that led 
to these crimes, from Milosevic to the last drunken paramilitary burning, 
raping and looting in a Bosnian village, will be easy to reconstruct. The 
war crimes tribunal at the Hague has already made great progress in this 
field. It will be far more difficult to explain the persistent silence and 
denial by so many "ordinary" people who refused to get interested in these 
issues before the hand of war touched their very households last year. And 
even then, many failed to make a connection between nato bombs and the 
ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.

These are complex and difficult issues. Unfortunately, they cannot be 
resolved in the Hague or before any other criminal court: although 
determining individual guilt helps, the question of collective 
responsibility can be resolved only by a thorough and painful public debate 
leading to some kind of national catharsis. So far, Kostunica has shown no 
ambition to initiate or encourage such a debate. He claims his primary goal 
is to restore democracy in Serbia, and that the opening of war wounds would 
interfere with that effort.

He may be right. After years of drunken rage, Serbia needs time to recover 
from a terrible national hangover. But not too much time, or Milosevic's 
legacy will outlive him — and maybe even create an environment for his 
future clone. Mass graves and normalcy are a bad mix.

It is midafternoon, and my daughter is about to come back from school. She 
was concieved during the siege of Vukovar, born in the year of the Bosnian 
war, and started school in the year Kosovo began to boil. Once she is old 
enough to ask how and why all these terrible things were possible, she will 
require a honest answer.

Dejan Anastasijevic, TIME's reporter in Yugoslavia, was forced to flee a 
year ago after his writings provoked death threats. He returned for last 
week's election


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