"Where do I stand: very simply,
I am against the NATO bombing, I am against ethnic cleansing, whether by
Serbs or anybody else -- for instance by the immigrants to North America
who in the period 1600-1900 cleansed away about 10,000,000 American
Indians. I find nothing original in my position. The only original position would be to
be in favor of both, a view probably
only entertained by arms dealers.
There are those who try to
make us believe that you have to make a choice between NATO and Milosevic;
if you are against one for sure you are in favor of the other. Nonsense.
Early on in this horrible decade many of the same people tried to
make us believe that you had to make a choice between the Gulf war and
Saddam Hussein; again, perfectly possible to be against both.
Then, the second
example of this terrible dualism, the terror of the false dichotomy as we
academics say: there was no alternative, if you do not accept the NATO
bombing it means that you are co-responsible for ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo. Nonsense.
There was an alternative and even a very good
one: step up the number of
observers in the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) from 1,200
to, say, 6,000, 12,000. Handies and binoculars, living in the villages,
bringing in volunteers.
But at the same time there was a civil war going on from February 1998,
and one US ambassador had done what the US did in connection with the Gulf war: he
(Gelbard) told Beograd that the USA was of the view that KLA were terrorists -
certainly also the Beograd position. The alternative would have been to
close the border by extending the UN
mandate on the
Macedonian-Kosovo border, step up OSCE, and then call a major conference
on South East Europe.
Nothing like this happened; as we know the
war was decided early last fall; only a question of preparing the public
through the media, and presenting
Milosevic with an ultimatum he could not accept. The Rambouillet charade was about this. People
started getting suspicious when they discovered that the media did not bring the
text; it had to be dug out from obscure sites on the Internet. I
asked some journalists to make an inquiry in one of these 19 democracies,
my own, Norway: no parliamentarian had read the text.
Democracy is about
informed participation.
The Serbs knew: loss of sovereignty and territorial
integrity, unlimited NATO access to Serbia. No state signs itself into occupation
and dismemberment. The Kosovars also knew: this was not the independence
they wanted; it looked more like a protectorate under NATO. So they
voted no. In some way or another they were made to change their vote
well knowing that the combination No-Yes would release the bombing of the
Serbs. It did, on 24 March, also releasing more hatred than ever of
the Kosovars, among Serbs. Fresh in their memory was how the Croats
have driven them out; with the help of USA and Germany.
Anyone
could have told in advance; that the Kosovars would escape everybody knew. To claim the
opposite is only possible if you live an isolated existence in some boys'
club in a war room, capable of whipping the media into obedience so that dissenting
voices are not hear. There is a difference between now and last time
in the Gulf, however: on the Internet anybody can read some of the most
brilliant people of our time as a
counterweight to lobotomized media who bring important information,
like what Rambouillet was
about, two month later. Too late for democracy, good enough for democratic
totalitarianism (Zinoviev.)
Did NATO bombing bring about the ethnic
cleansing of the Kosovars in
addition to producing close to one million refugees, or would the
Serbs have engaged in ethnic
cleansing anyhow? Again, the alternative to NATO bombing was never to do nothing,
as pointed out above. There are fascist forces among the Serbs, the
chetniki, Arkan's tigers, Sesel's Eagles – it is almost unbelievable that
the media and the tribunal have not focused more on them. Why not -
because Milosevic is the symbol of the Serbian nation and the Republic of
Yugoslavia, he is the one they want to hit, not the key architects of the
cleansing. But leaving that aside: this is one more case of a false
dichotomy.
Of course the NATO bombing was stimulated, among other
factors, by Serbian ethnic cleansing in Croatia and
Bosnia - regardless of complex causes and others who did the same these were
facts and the West (calling itself
"the international
community") was frustrated, aggressive, "never again".
And of
course the NATO bombing led to ethnic cleansing as pointed out above: just imagine the
post-Rambouillet hatred and the comparison with August 1995. Three times
have the Serbs been maneuvered into a minority positions exposed to their
old enemies without the federal protection that was basic to Tito's Yugoslavia: in
Croatia, in Bosnia, in Kosovo. Three times have they overreacted,
inexcusably, but not unexplainably.
Ethnic cleansing brought about
the NATO bombing, the NATO bombing
brought about more ethnic cleansing in a vicious circle of mutual
causation. Murder, killing,
destruction, hatred. trauma; NATO torturing the Serbs, the Serbs torturing
the Kosovars, soon the time will come to the Kosovars.
How do
we get out of this? Here is one set of ideas:
Peace, if
wanted, could be near; guided by former UN General Secretary Perez de Cuellar's advice to
Genscher December 1991: be sure that any recognition is acceptable to
minorities, that parts of Yugoslavia are dealt with symmetrically, and that there
is a policy for Yugoslavia as a
whole. But first a
basic assumption that holds the key to a peace beyond
ceasefire:
[0] Equal recognition of the suffering and rights
of all: They are all victims,
most of them more innocent than others, of a situation most nations would have found
impossible. They need compassion, help; not guns and bombs.
Divide them into "worthy" and "unworthy" victims, and peace becomes unattainable. They have
all the same right to recognition and self-determination.
[1]
Build on the symmetry Croatia-Bosnia/1995 and Serbia/1999: The 650,000
Serbian refugees in Serbia were in part driven out by the Croats/USA from Krajina/Slavonia August
1995. Serbian ultra-reactions included total condemnation of the
international community, and "we can do the same". The Western media found little or no
space for their suffering. Hence, both must be recognized as basic
problems, they must all be guaranteed their safe return. And then
upgrade the status of Krajina/Slavonia in Croatia,
and Kosovo/a in
Serbia, possibly to republic status.
[2] A possible
quadrilateral deal: A (Croats) gives return and status to B (Serbs), B
gives return/status to C (Kosovars), C gives access to mineral
resources/harbors to D (Slavic Muslims) and D inclusion of the
Croat
part of Bosnia/Herzegovina to A.
[3] A Yugoslav
confederation: If some autonomy is given to all minorities in Yugoslavia we end up with close
to 15 parts. "Jedinstvo", a unitary or federal state, is out. But
"bratstvo" as confederation of human rights respecting countries, is
not.
So much for a peace outcome. For that to happen there
has to be a peace
process. Here are elements of a peace
process:
[4] The killing on all sides stops, NATO/Serbia/KLA
forces are withdrawn, NATO from the Balkans; Serbian and Kosovar forces
from Kosova, UN forces with OSCE observers, with a composition acceptable
to all parties, and in big
numbers, take over.
[5] The UN Secretary General appoints a
board of mediators known for
wisdom and autonomy, like Jimmy Carter, Perez de Cuellar, Mikhail
Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Mary Robinson, Richard von
Weizsaecker for one-on-one dialogues with all parties to identify
acceptable and sustainable outcome.
[6] The UN Secretary
General convenes a Conference for the Security and Cooperation in South East Europe
(CSCSEE), with all parts of Yugoslavia, and all SE European countries as
members, with points like [1]-[3] on the agenda, pending the report from
the team mentioned in [5] above.
[7] The Presidents of
Slovenia and Macedonia convene a civil society conference, using expertise in all
parts of Yugoslavia, to project images of future relations within
ex-Yugoslavia, and does the same for future relations within South East Europe
(in cooperation with, say, Hungary
and Greece).
[8] The peoples of Yugoslavia are invited
to participate in the peace process, forming multi-national dialogue
groups all over, coming forward with concrete ideas based on local
dialogues.
[9] Reconstruction is systematically used for
reconciliation by having
belligerent groups cooperating, doing the task together, not giving
that enormous task away to
outside entrepreneurs.
[10] If any border has to be drawn or
redrawn the principles of the
Danish-German 1920 Schleswig-Holstein partition are
used.
However, however. I started by saying that I am against
both NATO bombing and ethnic
cleansing. Like most people in the world, I assume, perhaps not in
belligerent Western Europe, filled with the self-righteousness of
their interpretation of
how society should be governed. Nine hundred years ago, when they launched the
Crusades, it used to be their special interpretation of God and Jesus Christ, not
Jewish, not Orthodox, not Muslim. They killed as many as they could lay hands
on, limited only by their more artisanal killing technology those
days.
As indicated above, I feel the problems of Yugoslavia can be
solved, with more good will,
more creativity, a little time and less dualism, less demonization. Milosevic is
very far from a new Hitler. He does not have a new concept of world order, run
from above. He is essentially an administrator of very unfortunate
traits in the Serbian psyche, a
megalomania and paranoia almost as high as that of the USA, about
at the same level as can
be found in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In addition there are elements of the mafia boss, but
they are ubiquitous in these globalizing days.
The other problem,
NATO bombing, is more problematic. But the bombers have one good question to which they
have the wrong answer. The question is: what do we do when the doctrine of
national sovereignty protects the
state that insults the
human rights of its own population? The answer cannot possibly to
insult these human rights even more. Rather, we could learn from the USA: there are federal
crimes, and there is federal police pre-stationed all over. How about
pre-stationing UN observers and UN troops all over as a preventive
measure?
Human rights are universal. They are also
indivisible, a country cannot
detach the economic and social rights, accepting only the civil
and political. Many
criminals would like to do the same to the criminal code in their country as the USA does
to the International Bill of Rights,
ratifying one of the 16 December 1966 covenants, not the economic
and social rights.
We are heading for a major world confrontation
between the 19 NATO countries
and, probably, much of the rest of the world, particularly the part caught
in the US pincer move of expanding NATO eastward at the same time as they expand AMPO
westward. Eurasia, the home of more than half of humanity is watching what happens
with great anxiety. Who is next in line to be bombed? Or, could
it be in Latin America, like Colombia, the USA not using NATO but using TIAP, the
Latin American military system?
The world today has a major
problem. That problem has a name. The name is not Milosevic, he is the small
town villain.
The name of the problem is
United States of
America.
Their sense of exceptionalism, being above ordinary states
and nations, is attractive. To break that many
international law paragraphs can only be justified if you are above the
law, in a direct relation to a God of the universe who "created America to
bring order to the world" (Colin
Powell) or, in more secular terms, "a global nation with global
interests" (Shalikashvili). Smaller states flock to the Exceptional
one to reflect, like the cold moon, some of the light, not to mention
the heat, burning the
non-believers. An old Western tradition.
Let us hope
that this intoxicating frenzy of violence to torture the Serbs into capitulation will be followed
by some soberness. Preferably in time to prevent a Third world war.
Johan Galtung is a Professor of Peace Studies
and the director of TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development
Network.
© TRANSCEND, Johan Galtung & TFF 1999
You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this
item, but please retain
the source.
Dr. Jan Oberg
Director, head of the TFF
Conflict-Mitigation team
to the Balkans and Georgia
T F
F
Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
Vegagatan
25, S - 224 57 Lund, Sweden
Phone +46-46-145909 (0900-1100)
Fax
+46-46-144512
Email
tff@transnational.org
http://www.transnational.org/
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Prof. Galtung's article
presents the reader with two levels of analysis and argument. In
simplified terms, one level deals with the NATO onslaught on Serbia
and the other with "what next?".
The former has been somewhat
dated by events. Nonetheless, portions of it require comment,
especially passages which liberally mix Prof. Galtung's personal
preferences with his analysis.
The article's title "The NATO
War..." sets the stage, the implication being that the war began
with the NATO bombing and not nearly a decade ago. Galtung's
readiness to assign blame to, and his distaste for, the NATO
intervention is not a simple reaction against violence, but runs deeper
and reveals his anxiety about the role of the Americans in the new
global order. It would be fair to say that this anxiety is
shared widely and is certainly a concern of this author. The
unfortunate aspect of Galtung's anxiety is that in order to condemn
the Americans, he finds it necessary to diminish the magnitude of crimes
committed by the Serbian war machine, as when he writes, "Milosevic
is ... essentially an administrator of very unfortunate traits in
the Serbian psyche". Not so according to the
independent
International War Crimes Tribunal. Or, "(T)here are elements
of the mafia boss, but they are ubiquitous in these globalizing days".
Does that mean that they are justifiable and should not be
punished?
The most outrageous statement comes later in the
article when Galtung advises "Equal recognition of the suffering and
rights of all: They are all victims, most of them more innocent than
others, of a situation most nations would have found impossible." I
fail to understand who are those "others" in "more innocent than
others". More importantly, the statement hinges on the ambiguity of
the word "victims". The Germans might have been victimised by the
Nazi propaganda, but their divisions were the executioners, not the
victims. Similarly, many Croatian and Bosnian Serbs
participated willingly in heinous executions and torture of their
neighbours. Is it any surprise that they left in a hurry when their
side lost, or that they are leaving Kosovo in large numbers now that
the fortunes of war have turned against them? Many, perhaps the
majority, are indeed "innocent victims" who merely stood by in
silence watching their neighbours being disinherited or massacred.
But no small number actively participated in the aggression, as
information collected by the War Crimes Tribunal readily shows.
Indeed, the depth of indifference, if not hatred and intolerance, shown by
their acts suggests beyond a doubt that a negotiated settlement was not in
the cards.
The gap between the opposing Serb and Kosovar interests
was far too wide, and the Serbs far too superior in their ability
(and readiness) to impose a solution. As George Simmel pointed out,
it's hard to negotiate with a lion.
My comments on the "what next?"
portion will be brief and selective in view of the limitation of
space.
The key to Galtung's argument about steps to be taken to
find a more permanent solution is found in the following passage,
attributed to Perez de Cuellar: "be sure that any recognition is
acceptable to minorities, that parts of Yugoslavia are dealt
with symmetrically, and that there is a policy for Yugoslavia as a
whole".
These are admirable principles. But can they be
implemented? The first problem is that demographic shifts and
waves of migration tend to produce pockets of minorities within
minorities. Any break-up of the larger entity therefore
inspires regional and sub-regional "separatist" strivings. For
example, Canada's Quebec is predominantly French. Nonetheless, it
has significant pockets of English speakers in distinct geographic regions
and it also has a number of native groups who do not wish to live in a
Quebec separate from Canada. Quebec's right to separate is
recognised by the rest of Canada. Does that right to separate extend
to sub-regions which have expressed a desire to separate from an
independent Quebec and remain in Canada?
Early in the Yugoslav
conflict the legal position that was taken was that the 1944
internal borders, confirmed by the Helsinki agreement, must not be
changed. The result of keeping the borders intact was that
pockets of relatively compact ethnic minorities remained in "wrong
places": Serbs in Croatia, Croats in Vojvodina, Muslims in Serbia, and so
forth. Well reasoned arguments were put forward in the early 1990s
to "swap" these people so as to minimise social tensions created by the
wars. Indeed, a significant number of exchanges of property
(and therefore people) have been recorded and might still be
occurring. But in certain cases the sudden changes in the
frontlines came too quickly for people to adjust other than by running
away from homes they occupied for centuries. These are the
Serbian refugees in Serbia, referred to by Galtung, who "were in
part driven out by the Croats/USA from Krajina/Slavonia August 1995".
Galtung seems to believe that their plight somehow gave legitimacy to the
Serb aggression in Kosovo: since the West had done nothing about their
problem the Serbs felt that they could "do the same".
But the
"symmetry" which he sees in the expulsion of the Kosovars and of the
Croatian/Bosnian Serbs is an optical illusion at best. While it is
true that the wartime Croatian pro-Nazi state massacred thousands of
Serbs, Jews, and Roma, no mass graves of Serbs have been found
since, no organised mass atrocities recorded, no known army dictates that
the Serbs must leave. All of these have been found and
recorded with the Serbs as perpetrators, from Vukovar to Srebrenica,
and from Omarska to Kosovo. As argued above, the Serbs left
because of (well grounded) fear that they will be held responsible for
their wartime actions.
But the real problem lies in the fact that
although the Serb refugees can legally return to their homes in
Krajina or Slavonia, not surprisingly very few have shown the
inclination. The international conferences and committees
cannot resolve the problem. You can legislate the refugees' right of
return, but you can't legislate their neighbors' tolerance of their
presence. This, I believe, is the "bottom line" truth in
Yugoslavia.
Any reconciliation will be a matter of small
steps. It will be organic and natural, and cannot be imposed
from outside. It is already in progress. The Croats have been
piping oil to the Serbs even during the war! The Slovenes are eager
to re-establish their eastern markets. Macedonia, Montenegro
and Bosnia very much depend on the economies, transportation systems, and
other amenities of their neighbors and ex-partners in the
federation. Most importantly, all aspire to become part of
Europe. In the words of a Belgrade journalist of Vreme,
Roksanda Nincic:
I think the only possibility of turning Serbia
into a normal country with a normal democratic system and normal
economic system will be to incorporate Serbia into the European family and
bringing European standards into Serbia.
The idea of having "peace
conferences" which would impose swapping of territories and
redrawing of borders (Galtung's points 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10) is
paternalistic, pedantic, and doomed to failure. If Galtung is
sincere in his desire to open the process to the peoples of ex-Yugoslavia,
then he must accept their judgment as to the right pace, timing,
method, and outcome.
The most important obstacle to the
region's stability - the overwhelming military power of Serbia and
the Serb state's willingness to use it to arbitrate disputes - has
been largely removed. I believe that if a poll was taken among
most of the peoples of ex-Yugoslavia: the Croatians, the Bosniacs
and the Herzegovinians, the Muslims of Sandjak, Kosovo and
Macedonia, and even the Montenegrins - they would fault NATO in one
respect, and one respect only: that its intervention didn't come
sooner.
Anton Ljutic first read Johan Galtung's works as a
student of political science at Sir George Williams University in
Montreal. Alas, the Sir
George Williams is no more, and Anton
ended as a college instructor of economics, not politics. But
he is glad to see that Prof. Galtung is still active and was thrilled when
asked to write a response to the piece on NATO and the Kosovo crisis, not
least because his roots are in what used to be Tito's
Yugoslavia.
The above photos are from Kosovo are from the multi-media presentation "The Art of War"
featured on http://www.rawa.ru.org
© AMURT
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