Militarily in the Balkans during the Kosovo Crisis
The First World War pitted the most unlikely enemies against one
another. Austria, Turkey's most avowed enemy, attacked Turkey's
other mortal foe, Serbia. Bulgaria, which collaborated with Serbia,
Russian and Greece against the Ottomans in the First Balkan War -
joined the Turks against its former allies. The Albanians
collaborated enthusiastically with Turkey's adversary, Austria,
against the Serbs. They were rewarded handsomely. The Austrians made
Albanian an official language and integrated Albanian nationals in
their administration. The United Kingdom and France supported Russia
against the Ottoman Empire which, hitherto, they did everything they
could to heal and stabilize. The Croats and the Slovenes fought
their Slav brethren, the Serbs, as conscripts in an Austrian army
they regarded as occupier.
Actually, American forces joined Britain and France and landed in
Greece to aid the Serb army against the Axis Germany-Austria- Bulgaria-Turkey. The seeds of the second world war were sown and the
USA was inextricably intertwined in this intractable region.
American intervened a second time in the Balkans when it sent troops
to back up an Italian claim for the small enclave of Zara on the
Dalmatian coast in Croatia in 1919.
7. Vojvodina is an Hungarian Province Given to Serbia as Spoils of
War
The rich and fertile region of Vojvodina did, indeed form an
administrative unit with Hungary. Yet, it always maintained a unique
status. It was a duchy. It was always Serb. And it was granted
autonomy by the Habsburg emperor himself (or herself). Thus, it
answered directly to Vienna.
8. Yugoslavia has been in Existence between 1918 and 1990
There is a very tenuous connection between the blatantly pro-Serb
and anti-everyone-else dictatorship of King Alexandar and the Tito
Federation. The first federation was a toned down version of the
Serb Empire of yore. The national entities within Yugoslavia were
abolished a decade after it was established and the internal borders
were re-drawn to shatter the contiguity of other nationalities and
to cohere Serb domination. The "First Yugoslavia" existed on paper
until 1941. In reality, it ceased to function at least a decade
before. The King was murdered by an Ustash (member of the Croatian
nationalist organization, the Ustashe) in 1934. Mussolini's Italy
was in cahoots with the Ustashe. It had more influence in Croatia
than Belgrade itself. The Regency council that replaced the
assassinated monarch merely formalized reality by granting Croatia
an extensive autonomy. When they signed a Stalinesque pact with
Hitler, all hell brooke loose in the form of a British sponsored
coup. The Nazis invaded, bombed Belgrade and pacified the country.
It was the death certificate of a long festering corpse.
9. The Yugoslavs of all Nationalities Fought the Nazis Tooth and Nail
The truth, alas, is much less heroic. Pro-Nazi governments were
installed in Serbia and Croatia. The Serb government was supported
by the ancien regime and by a sizeable part of the population. Fond
stories of the Nazi occupation still abound in many of the republic
of former Yugoslavia. The Nazis were Germans, the living emblems of
civilization, the blond, Aryan chocolate and gum-dispensing gods. In
Croatia they were positively adored. Macedonians were patiently
amused with them and with their Bulgarian proxies (though growing
impatient with their Albanian collaborators). Serbs collaborated,
ever the pragmatic. Vojvodina was happily re-united with Hungary.
Kosovars acted cruelly against their own in a Great Albania in the
framework of an Italian installed government with the ever menacing
Deva, the Minister of the Interior. The Albanians were sufficiently
grateful, though, to form militias and to join the military effort -
on behalf of the Axis, of course. So did the Bosnians who even
yielded an SS division of their own. Death camps operated in Croatia
in which Serbs, Jews and Roma were indiscriminately maltreated.
Serbs, Bulgarians and Croats deported Jews, mostly to Auschwitz.
Serb military of independent views, were sent, by their own
government to German lagers.
Two isolated resistance movements operated in the areas of the First
Yugoslavia. The Croat-led Partisans (a communist guerilla force made
mostly of Serbs and other nationalities) wanted to restore
Yugoslavia to its former glory. The Serb Chetniks wanted nothing to
do with other yugo-slavs. With the exception of a few months during
1941-2, everyone supported the communists. The Chetniks, therefore,
joined forces with the Nazi and Fascist occupation forces against
their "comrades", the partisans. Thus, the end result was that Croat
Ustashe and Serb Chetniks fought - in the name of post war
separatism and self-definition - against communist partisans.
History records that the latter emerged from the war so strengthened
and victorious that they tried to annex Trieste from Italy. Only an
intervention by the West prevented it.
But it didn't take long before Tito turned on his Soviet
benefactors. Yugoslavia was the first country in the Soviet bloc
which encouraged foreign knowledge and foreign investment in some of
its industries, including its strategic defence industries. It was
the first to implement an IMF austerity plan following years of IMF
lending in the 60s. It was the only one to keep its borders open,
its people free to come and go and a functioning market mechanism
through the hybrid known as "social ownership" and "self
management". No wonder Stalin issued a hit contract on Tito's head.
Albania also went its own way with the reclusive and paranoid Hoxha - but Tito's strategy was not the result of a clear mental disorder.
10. The Serbs were Discriminated against in the Croat Tito's
Federation
A pillar of Tito's strategy was to dismantle project nationalism
ruthlessly and to replace it with viable multi-ethnic alternatives.
Bosnia was the laboratory in which inter-ethnic marriage and
economic collaboration were tested. In Kosovo, Tito encouraged the
Albanian population to stay put or to move in. In Croatia he
devolved power to Serb municipalities.
Statistically, Serbs dominated the two most important power
structures in Yugoslavia: the Communist Party and the JNA (Yugoslav
National Army). The latter was Tito's only guarantee against Russian
(and perhaps Western) invasion as well as against the kind of
disintegration that took place a decade after his death.
Bosnia became the largest defence industry centre in former
Yugoslavia (quite contrary to its rustic image).
Slovenia and Croatia were transformed into civil industrial centres
and concentrations of heavy industry.
11. Yugoslavia was an Open Society and Tito Succeeded in Holding it
Together by the Sheer Power of His Personality
Yugoslavs were the only one in the East Bloc to carry their own
passports and to travel abroad freely. Yet, freedom of expression
(especially concerning nationalistic matters) was very restricted.
Social unrest and nationalistic stirrings were very prevalent. The
decade of the 60s saw brutally suppressed demonstrations in both
Belgrade and Pristina. The early 70s witnessed the "Croat Spring"
which led to mass detentions and the opening up of Stalinist gulag
camps throughout the country.
The pressure was so intense, that, in 1974 - clearly fearing
disintegration - Tito purged the old guard, his comrades in arms and
unveiled a new constitution. It granted limited autonomy to the
republics and to Vojvodina and Kosovo. A posthumous rotating federal
presidency was supposed to assuage any feelings of bias and
discrimination at the top.
This evidently was too little and too late. Kosovo continued to
erupt periodically. In 1981, the police killed 11 students and
arrested thousands in one day of demonstrations.
But the truth is that Yugoslavia was held together by the oldest
glue of all - money. It borrowed 20 billion US dollars to finance
its improbable transition from an agrarian society to an industrial
one. It was among the IMF's heaviest borrowers during the 1960s.
When the IMF called its loans - Yugoslavia was exposed for what it
was: a basket-case.
As long as all the republics shared the loot, there was little
incentive for them to disengage. But the structural imbalances of
contributions versus rewards pitted affluent Croatia and positively
rich Slovenia against dirt poor Macedonia and relatively poor Serbia
and Montenegro. They simply refused to cough up the money anymore.
At its beginning, protest was channelled to "safer" venues: an anti- nuclear movement in Slovenia and a pacifist movement in Croatia, for
instance. But not much later on, the masks fell and the true
nationalist faces underneath were exposed. The JNA was there to
tackle precisely such a situation. Composed of all nationalities,
but commanded by Serbs, it intervened...