Will Yugoslavia disintegrate?
N WEDNESDAY January 24, some 30,000 was the first to give information about the demonstrators gathered in front of the Commitinsurrectional events in Albania.
tee building of the League of Com-
According to Tanjug, these clashes munists (LCY) in Kosovo's between the Albanian police and capital, Pristina. They demanded demonstrators were bloody and followed an end to the state of emergency, an amnesty for political prisoners, by persecution.
the introduction of a multiparty
To become the "media godfather" of the system, free elections and the reseventual liberation of the Albanian people ignation of Rahman Morina, the discredited leader of the League in is of great use to the Yugoslav regime as a the province. The police used tear means of refurbishing its image; it enables gas and truncheons and 16 demonthem to overlook recent events in the
The strators were arrested. The among them the ex-manager of the mine, face several years in prison.
Half a million Albanians have passed through the hands of the special police and accounts of torture in the prisons are a regular feature of the Amnesty International bulletin. Yugoslavia has not signed the International Convention against torture in prisons.
At the end of the war, the Albanians had no rights in Yugoslavia. It was only in 1974 that the new constitution gave them some rights in the sphere of the Albanianiza-
Yugoslav province of Kosovo, which
League's leadership denounced has tion of schools and universities.
But the demonstrations that broke the "counter-revolution" and a separatist "Slovene-Albanian plot" orchestrated from Albania, and reaffirmed that Kosovo was a part of the Serb republic.
The next day, a general strike broke out in more than 40 towns and villages in Kosovo Some 20 fortnic lages in Kosovo. Some 30 factories stopped work, and shops stayed closed. Students boycotted lessons and university canteens. The demonstrators shouted slogans considered "hostile" by the police; "liberty and equality"; "free Adam Demagi".
Many dead and wounded in
Kosovo
The demonstrations continued on Saturday and Sunday. The worst events took place in Pec and Orahovac where the police opened fire on the crowd - there were six dead and more than 100 wounded. The number of those arrested remains unknown. The following week, more than 200,000 Albanians came out in the streets and this will not be the end.
Local clashes between the police and the Albanians have been taking place almost daily. At a primary school in Pristina, the police handcuffed and maltreated children who had protested against the sacking of three Albanian teachers. At Pec the Ramiz Sadiku enterprise was shut on the pretext of bankruptcy and 6,000 Albanians found themselves jobless. The enterprise has for a long time been a thorn in the side of the Serbs, who considered it a "nest of separatists." The assembly of the workers in front of the enterprise to protest against the sackings coincided with the opening of the Congress of the Serbian League of Communists, and this led to the gathering being characterized as showing disapproval of Serb policy and, of course, led to numerous arrests.
According to the Slovene weekly, Mladina, 39 people have been killed since the an Albanian majority.
NINA JERKIC and JEAN ZINDEL about out in 1981 for reasons that remain obscure saw the birth of the famous thesis about "counterrevolution" , and the Albanians were reduced to second class citizenship. Little has been known this problem, due to lack of solid
INAR start of the state of emergency in February 1989, including children. According to an official report, all were counter-revolutionaries. On the other hand, the report says nothing about those kept in "isolation" . One would have liked to know more about the conditions in which the "isolated" cases are held, without formal charges, without a time limit and without any right to a defence. This method has been in use for a long time in Kosovo to silence intellectuals, journalists, students and so on. Mladina estimates their number at 300.
The trial of Azem Vlassi (the ex-head of the Kosovo LCY) continues, in the absence of journalists, because "the room is too small". Azem Vlassi and 14 others are accused of organizing demonstrations of miners in Trepca in February 1989. In the absence of any evidence, the charges hinge on the fact that he visited the miners on strike at the Trepca mine. Vlassi was a convinced Titoist, but he had a base of support amongst the Albanian population. He and the other 14 accused, information, while the LCY in the other republics feared a clash with Serbia if they protested.
Representative front of Yugoslav Albanians
The opposition in Kosovo has now begun to organize itself. Some 500,000 Albanians belong to the Democratic Union of Kosovo, led by Ibrahim Rugova, founded last December. This organization and its many factions are the first representative platform of Yugoslav Albanians, and may be able to control the desire for vengeance on the part of individuals and isolated groups. Albanians have never been scared of weapons and local traditions of vengeance make the Corsican vendetta look like a tea party. It is against this background that the mass departure of Serbs from Kosovo should be understood.
How did things get to this state? In the case of the Serb-Albanian dispute there is a symbolic conflict: in 1389, the Serbs were defeated on the Fields of Kosovo by the Turkish army. This was the end of the independent Serb kingdom, while Kosovo remained the heart of the Serb nation. Currently, the Albanian birth-rate is far higher than that of the Serbs and these latter have the feeling that their historic symbol is being taken over by strangers, these second-class citizens. The Albanians, in fact, have been living in the region for thousands of years. The Slavs arrived in the 1. Adem Demagi is an Albanian Yugoslav writer, who has never supported armed struggle. Nonetheless he 23 seems to hold the European record for political imprisonment: 28 years.
YUGOSLAVIA
Balkans at the time of the great invasions around the 6th century. Both sides refer to their own legitimacy without listening to the other.
It is no accident that this conflict has erupted now. These exacerbated nationalisms have their origins in a severe economic crisis, itself due to the system of cavalry charges practised on a national scale. When Fikret Abdic? fell, this Bosnian business man, who was very close to Tito, dragged down in his wake every illusion of a country that had wanted to play in the big league. The era of the pseudo-capitalists was over, and that of Slobodan Milosevic arrived.
"Slobo", as he is called both by his supporters and his enemies, wants to be more than merely the representative of the Serb republic. He sees himself as the guarantor of Yugoslav unity, the man arisen to replace Tito. The latter had in any case, a serious defect: he was Croat, not Serb. And it
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Italy was Tito who granted Kosovo a cer- was Tito who granted Kosovo a certain measure of autonomy, and who had made sure not to designate a successor, putting in its place the "revolving presidency" system (each republic taking the office in turn for a year) and then going off leaving the situation to degenerate.
Milosevic - the man of destiny? •Milosevic wants to reunify the country and rescue it from the crisis provoked by separatists from all nationalities and greedy business men. Even so, it would be a mistake to see in him a simple Poujadist. Milosevic is an experienced politician, a fluent demagogue advocating freedoms - within specific limits, of course. Enjoying certain talents as a tribune, his intervention on the Kosovo Fields on the 600th anniversary of the battle was his moment of glory. Behind him came hundreds of vehicles decorated for the occasion, along with a broad crosssection of the Serb Orthodox clergy.
His meetings are a weapon against the LCY leaderships in the other republics, who might dare to show their defiance of the Serbs. In this way he has brought down the leaderships of the LCY in Vojvodina, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, dissociating the people, who supposedly love the Serbs and Yugoslavia, from their separatist leaderships. This system worked until the Slovenes, seeing the trap, prohibited one of these meetings in Ljubljana. In reply, Serbia decided on the immediate cessation of economic relations between the two republics, without thinking that this measure would cause Serbia a lot more trouble than Slovenia. In fact the pro-Milosevic paper, Politika soon decided that the blockade did not 24 include paper....
In fact the Yugoslav problem dates from the creation of the country in 1918. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered and disparate peoples were reunited in the same state. The vision of a "country of South Slavs" originated with certain late 19c intellectuals (Pribicevic, Supilo) as an alternative to the centuries of Austrian, Hungarian and Turkish domination. The scheme glided lightly over the myriad of other peoples who lived in the region — Bulgarians, Turks, Hungarians, Albanians, Romanians, Gypsies, Italians, Germans and others, who did not have a strong cultural identity. It also neglected the different experiences of colonial domination of the various Slav peoples: to simplify, Austrian domination of the Slovenes; Hungarian control of Croatia and Ottoman rule in Serbia. Despite permanent cultural resistance, the various occupiers left markedly different heritages, making dialogue between the South Slav peoples difficult and opening the way to a simmering racism. Lack of interest in everything beyond Zagreb
This generalized incomprehension leads Slovenes to consider everything that goes on beyond Zagreb as of no interest, the Croats to consider the Slovenes as pretentious snobs and to choke when they hear the term "Serbo-Croat" (there are two very different languages) and the Serbs to distrust the bourgeois separatists to their North. As for the rest....a single label, "Muslim nationality",
, serves as a holdall for the various non-Slav peoples of Islamic tradition. The classification allows the peculiarities of each community to be passed over and the whole lot to
(Albania Albania Greece be cast into the limbo of tranquil ignorance. Exception that proves the rule: the unity between Slovenes and Albanians, unimaginable five years ago, which stems from facing a common enemy - Serbia. The Kosovo events are only known about outside the province through the Slovene paper Mladina.
Slovenia's defiance of its powerful Serb neighbour is justified by the methods being employed both on the political and military plane. The Slovenes cannot be indifferent: if they do not condemn this intervention, what will they do in the case - hypothetical, but imagined by everybody - of an intervention directed not against Pristina, but at Ljubljana? Many young Slovenes are stating their determination to fight an eventual armed occupation, and it is doubtful that tanks could restore order if the situation deteriorated.
### Danger of Slovenian secession
The greatest danger that Serbia is watching out for is a Slovene secession. This republic of 2 million people provides 30% of the Yugoslav GNP. The rate of unemployment is only 2% despite the crisis, as opposed to 20% in the rest of the country. A break with the Federation, recently adopted in principle by the Slovene parliament, would not only lead to the Federation flying apart, but would also mean an economic cataclysm, leaving those republics and their populations who have lost out economically on the touch-line. Furthermore, the Serbian LC remains one of 2. The reference is to a major corruption scandal that led to the resignation of Bosnia-Herzegovnia's vice-president in September 1987.
International Viewpoint #180 • March 12, 1990
the last European Communist parties to adhere to traditional Communism with "democratic centralism", the single party and the nationalization of the economy. It is thus opposed by nature to Slovenia's economic liberalization and competitive spirit.
Serbia thus steps forward - and with justification — as the defender of a just distribution of production. But this leaves Slovenia feeling like the cow that produces the milk for the rest of the Federation, thanks to a logic of industrialization that the "brothers in the South" do not have. This shows the profound cultural imprint left by the past occupiers, Europeans in the North and Ottomans in the South. Furthermore, exchanges between Slovenia and the EEC and Austria are intensifying. It would not be surprising if Slovenia were to ask for official membership of the EEC. Perhaps the Croats would follow. They have always been the referees between Serbia, to which they feel close, at least in language, but which causes them a certain apprehension, and progressive but rather too capitalist Slovenia. But their culture pushes them more towards the North and West than towards the South and East. Even so, their attitude at the last extraordinary LCY Congress allowed Serbia to reject every proposition from Slovenia concerning the introduction of a more fashionable politico-economic system. The Slovene delegates walked out slamming the door. Yugoslavia, not so long ago the pioneer of a self-managing Socialism independent from Moscow, now finds itself at the back of the pack of the Central European countries for nearly everything.
Central government hopes storm will pass
It is probable that the worst is yet to come. The alternative facing the federal power is between leaving each republic to take its distance (at the risk of letting the separatist movements get out of control) or to freeze the situation, hoping that the storm will pass. It is the latter option that is currently being followed, and which could arouse the two most activated peoples to take radical measures. A chain reaction throughout Yugoslavia could then be expected, preceding a disintegration with tragic consequences for some populations. Furthermore, neighbouring countries will take an interest in the territories concerned: a Bulgarian can say, half-jokingly: "there is only one real problem in Yugoslavia: Macedonia." Italy has already annexed Trieste. And if Tirana is supporting the Albanian nationalists, it is certainly not for reasons of altruism. But what alternative solution has the central government, that was more or less absent at the start of the events in Kosovo and has left Serbia to settle its own accounts with the Albanians? *