Committee for Conflict Transformation Support |
CCTS
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Dealing with the Past in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia |
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| by Alan Pleydell, Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) Programme Manager for the Post-Yugoslav Countries Recent violence Compared with the worst phases of the wars in the 1990s, these days you almost never see any headlines from the post-Yugoslav countries, let alone TV pictures. The exception was two days in mid-March this year, when major rioting broke out in Kosovo and spread like wildfire, resulting in 19 deaths and the violent displacement of over 4,000 Serbs from their homes, many of which were burnt to the ground. The attacks were orchestrated and inflicted by members of the majority Albanian population. Once the Albanians were seen as the underdog, forced to flee the reality of Serbian government oppression in their tens of thousands, but the NATO bombing campaign and invasion of summer1999 dramatically restored their fortunes and the tables were turned. Now they decisively have the upper hand – except that the ‘international community’, for fear of wider regional repercussions, refuses to discuss with them their one unified political goal, total and internationally recognised independence from Serbia. On the other hand, the plight of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo provokes a once-more radicalised anti-western majority population and government in the rest of Serbia to react by demanding formal partition, or some equivalent, and the effective unification of the remaining Serb-controlled areas around Mitrovica with Serbia. The Serbian government of today has recently been described as ‘Milosevic without Milosevic’(1). Five years on from that bombing campaign, hailed to this day by our own government as the first efficacious case of Tony Blair’s newly proclaimed doctrine of humanitarian military intervention, the two sides are as implacably opposed as ever, with no sign of a way out. Most informed analysts judge that the social, economic and political prospects for Kosovo are bleak and that the UN administration, which was supposed to hold the balance and edge the opposed populations of the province closer to some sort of mutual accommodation, has now lost the plot, perhaps for good. There is the added fear, as yet mercifully unrealised, that the violence will spread anew to other parts of the Balkans. |
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Politics |
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| That is one kind of upset. Another is that recent elections in Croatia in November and Serbia in December have produced governments closely allied to the ultra-nationalist forces on each side that started the 1991-5 war in the first place. They have done so after a period during which many politicians in the west had persuaded themselves that the days of the hardliners were decisively over. Meanwhile in Bosnia, the continuing intransigence towards one another of hard-line parties representing the different ethnic factions – Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim), Serb and Croat – has pushed the UN High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, into tougher and tougher measures to try to force some sort of progress before he leaves. These measures include sacking those ministers suspected of obstructing the as yet unachieved arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and his delivery to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. The tragic paradox is that the harder and more sincerely Ashdown pushes to achieve necessary short-term progress, the more it appears to detract from the solid development of any serious, working inter-ethnic political cooperation towards a viable political future. Whilst the cat is there, the mice play. Ashdown is the last High Representative, and by the end of this year military responsibility for Bosnia – currently a 12,000 strong NATO force – will be handed over to a much smaller European Union presence. The great fear is that without any solid achievement before these changes, little reform or progress will be possible afterwards and the country will be condemned to poverty and uncontrolled crime, sliding downhill towards endemic violence. At least in Croatia there is a ray of hope, even if there continues to be concern for the human rights of the returning Serb population and other minorities. The new centre-right nationalist government has played a highly successful diplomatic hand in recently delivering a number of its own suspected war criminals to The Hague, whilst not finding or delivering the most wanted suspect, Ante Gotovina. Thus they have avoided antagonising the high proportion of their natural supporters within the population who regard him as a war hero – exactly as the Serbs in Bosnia regard Karadzic. The result is that Croatia has now gained permission to proceed to formal negotiations for entry to the European Union, the prize towards which all the post-Yugoslav governments are aiming. Slovenia, ‘the one that got away’ in 1991, is already there with the other accession states from 1st May. But Serbia and Bosnia, the other two protagonists of the wars of 1991-5 on which the QPSW programme has focused, remain mired in economic and political crisis and instability and apparently are as far as ever from achieving or indeed approaching such a status. In Serbia, the depth of resentment towards the west and its demands fuels a disbelief in many of the general population that they or their government ever had anything to do with the wars or atrocities, despite the appearance of more and more incontrovertible evidence of the deepest implication of the state apparatus and many of the people. That is roughly how things look now from the bird’s eye political and economic perspective. On the whole it is not at all a rosy picture. |
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The continuing work of Quaker Peace and Social Witness |
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| Meanwhile, however, Quaker Peace and Social Witness continues its small-scale work to assist in creating a climate in which facing up to ‘dealing with’ the complexities of the varying roles played in the wars of 1991-5 will be more possible. We persist with our long-term efforts to draw together and enhance the work of a scattering of brave and visionary local groups and individuals in each of the three countries. Between them they are seeking to turn the tide by insisting on the importance of realistically revisiting the experience of violence of the 1990s. That will involve examining the parts that all communities played, to a greater or lesser degree, in the descent into chaos and bloodshed – together also with the little-acknowledged presence of pockets of innocence, bravery and common humanity on all sides. Part of what needs to be brought out is that a few people did their utmost to maintain human decency and refused to be drawn into the mounting hatred, insisting on finding ways to protest and, where possible, to assist their threatened neighbours, sometimes by tipping them off about coming dangers. Fostering a climate of common recognition that those on the other side suffered too is long-term, delicate, behind the scenes work. The aim is to empower the local populations most marginalized by their particular suffering and denied any significance in social or public agendas, assisting them to achieve greater influence and recognition. These include the relatives of missing war victims in isolated localities; refugees and internally displaced people and former soldiers whose real experience of the cruelties of war has led them to reject the simple slogans of heroism which still sustain many of their former comrades and the wider population. The alienation of these different groups leads to the denial and blanking out of what needs to be addressed. Facing up to the messy, true complexity of things is a much rockier road but, ultimately, dealing with the past and bringing it into the public arena is part of the liberation of mind that some local people believe is necessary if they are to live more openly and creatively with their neighbours in the present and future. Public processes towards truth and reconciliation are certainly desirable, but also controversial. And there is a big difference between this case and, for instance, that of South Africa, where a total change in the regime made possible the famous offer of immunity in exchange for truthful testimony. It enabled people to see this as a politically necessary compromise – part of the price of securing a negotiated, peaceful and complete handover of power. But in the post-Yugoslav situation there has been no real regime change. Mostly the same people as before, or their close allies, are still or newly again in power. For instance in Bosnia not only do each of the parties currently in power represent an uninterrupted continuation of the same intransigent forces which prosecuted the war against one another but they are more or less secured in that position as the long-term consequence of the diplomatic settlement at Dayton, Ohio, in 1995. This accepted and reinforced the partition and mutually offensive and defensive positions of the leaderships of the respective ethnic communities. It disposes still fearful populations, reacting against the feeling of being blamed and humiliated by foreigners, to continue to look to often-bombastic models of physical strength for their protection at local level and to avoid supporting minority parties attempting to reach towards newer, more cooperative dialogue at state level. But the effect of leaving these parties untouched and also substantially in power is to deepen the humiliation and isolation of their remaining victims and to entrench the fragmentation of society in the longer term. Given that the post-war settlements have so far cemented most of these realities in place, the job of those working to let in some light to an often threatening and rumour-ridden public arena requires courage, persistence, ingenuity, subtlety and a commitment to solidarity over the long term. We have four highly experienced representatives in the field, long-term workers for decency, peace and human rights with a deep and intimate knowledge of local realities – Goran Bubalo and Sladjana Rakonjac in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Goran Bozicevic in Croatia and Zorica Trifunovic in Serbia, who has joined the team since February. Last year the staff in all three countries engaged in a thorough process of researching the perceptions of need relating to Dealing with the Past amongst different groups with a professed commitment to opening up the subject. Equipped with this knowledge, the staffs are now proactively engaged in working out the details of the educational and networking support that they can undertake with specific groups over the next three years and more. In Croatia last December and in Bosnia in March, they held major consultation meetings with some key respondents and others to develop their ideas and activities further. In Serbia QPSW will co-organise a meeting in early summer with a group of young people aged 18-30 called Youth Initiative who are already committed to working on Dealing with the Past among the young, not only within Serbia, but within the wider region. One of the least known difficulties of the situation is that whereas you might expect most young people to be more accepting of a commitment to peace and reconciliation than their elders who were implicated in the violence, in fact the reverse is true. Recent experience has shown that it is often young people who are the most indoctrinated and the most active and vocal in violence and intimidation against minorities. Reaching them is a challenge which is more likely to be met by their contemporaries. Enhancing the effectiveness of those committed to this work involves both working alongside them individually to help them develop their confidence, ideas and approaches, and bringing them together in local, country and regional meetings to exchange and develop their ideas, experience and expertise. In July, QPSW will organise a regional meeting with young people from all three countries, to help to spread and strengthen the network. What we are learning is that these processes cannot be led from the centre. Though part of the overall aim is to foster regional reconciliation and cooperation, this is dependent on the central inclusion and leadership of those closest to the deepest personal loss and suffering, scattered and isolated in many different localities of each country – away from the capitals. We need, throughout, to help to keep the process of dealing with the past authentic by avoiding elite domination by well-heeled metropolitan intellectuals. Though the efforts of the latter have sometimes been well-intentioned, they are often the subject of deep mistrust from victims’ groups and other small players. Part of our developing role is to work on trust-building between groups from different social strata who purport to be advancing the cause of dealing with the past but are too alienated from one another to be politically effective. By doing this work we hope step-by-step to improve cooperation and collaboration towards more effective and united action at country and regional levels. |
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| (1)International Crisis Croup Report – Serbia’s U-turn, 26th March 2004, Executive Summary – ‘ In politics and policies, Serbia increasingly resembles the Milosevic-era without Milosevic’. | ||
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