Balkan betrayal, again and again

BUDVA, Montenegro—How should big and powerful countries act toward small and weak ones? I’d suggest a starting point in the Christian understanding that all countries are made up of human beings made in God’s image: Therefore, the big should treat the small as subjects to respect rather than merely objects to manipulate. In 1813 Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice introduced to the world this memorable opening sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” For two centuries European powers in possession of great fortunes have wed little lands, only to divorce them when convenient.

Starting in this issue WORLD will run a series of articles on that question of big and little. We’ll start by focusing on the Balkans, an example of what happens when great powers repeatedly seduce and abandon smaller ones. This is a good year to do so because the modern history of the Balkans begins with a first betrayal in 1814, becomes world-changing in 1914 when a Balkan assassination pushed Europe into war, and continues in 2014 with a seventh betrayal, in which the United States is complicit.

I’ll start with the sixth betrayal, which came two decades ago, because after visiting a graveyard near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica it’s the one most vivid to me. The Srebrenica Genocide Memorial has row upon row of white gravestones and a wall with thousands of names. About 300 murdered men and boys had the last name Hasanovic. The dead include 260 Salihovics, 257 Omerovics, 235 Mehmedovics, 231 Alics, 197 Mustafics, 197 Musics, 186 Halilovics, 185 Osmanovics, 146 Ibrahimovics, 145 Avdics, and 141 Suljics.

One man buried there, 63-year-old Abdurahman Delic, a blacksmith, took his 4-year-old grandson in his arms and then was shot. Another, Huso Salihovic, 31, worked in a bauxite mine and was happiest playing with his three small daughters. Another, Sead Hotic, 56, loved reading science fiction and was trying to write a novel of his own. Among the Hasanovics buried there the youngest was Ahmo, murdered at age 17. The oldest was Zaim, murdered at 67. Genocide from A to Z. Among the first names of other murdered Hasanovics: Abdulkadir, Abdurahman, Abid, Adem, Adil, Ahmet, Abdullah, and Aziz. That’s just the “A”s.

Who killed them, and why? The dead were Bosnian Muslims. The killers were Serbs who claimed to be Christ-followers but disgraced the name. The United Nations Security Council sent a UN peacekeeping force with 429 soldiers that turned Srebrenica into an officially “safe” zone. The inhabitants agreed to turn in their weapons, and the UN commanders agreed to protect them. They did until July 1995, when the Serbs threatened to shoot the UN soldiers—and those soldiers promptly skedaddled.

The denouement was predictable. Serb troops raped women and girls but loaded most of them, along with small children, onto buses. They then massacred more than 8,000 men and boys.

Wild dogs fed off the corpses. What was left ended up in the cemetery. Hopes as well as bodies are buried there. As Bosnian columnist Zlatko Dizdarevic put it, UN troops came to symbolize “international hypocrisy and political dirty dealing.” He concluded, “We are insignificant pawns in the great game played by Europe and the United States. … All we can do at this time is to watch and remember.”

That was the sixth betrayal. The first came after the Ottoman Empire had ruled southeastern Europe for centuries, all the while harshly discriminating against Christians. (Example: Christian testimony in court concerning Muslim crimes was invalid, and a Muslim who murdered a Christian only had to pay a “blood tax” to the family of the deceased, one usually set at low levels by a local judge.) Serbs rebelled in 1804 and the Turks agreed to change, only to assault Belgrade brutally in 1814. The troops of Gov. Suleyman Pasha roasted some rebels alive, crushed others, and raped women and children.

Three decades later came the second betrayal, this time at the hands of the Austrian rulers of Croatia. In Europe’s revolutionary year, 1848, radicals took control of Vienna itself with the goal of overthrowing Emperor Ferdinand. He called on a Croatian military officer, Josip Jelacic, to become commander-in-chief of the imperial forces, and Jelacic helped to recapture Vienna. Jelacic had proclaimed that his goal was to “demand my people’s rights,” but as soon as the crisis ended crafty Austrians sidelined him, killed those who would not submit, and imposed even tighter control over Croatia.

The third betrayal came in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin, after another fight for freedom. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, suffering from shingles that he medicated by downing a jug of port before every session, offhandedly handed Bosnia to his ally, Austria-Hungary. Much as Americans play “fantasy baseball” today, trading shortstops for pitchers whenever the fancy hits them, so Bismarck and others played fantasy diplomacy for real, exchanging populations and redrawing national divisions without consideration for the lives they would damage. When Balkans residents protested, Bismarck said he didn’t care, for the Balkans were not worth risking the lives of even one German soldier.

That foolish agreement led eventually to the death of 2 million German soldiers, and at least 6 million from other countries, during World War I. The fourth betrayal began with the secret Treaty of London in 1915 that gave Italy much of Croatia as an inducement to enter the war on the British and French side. When the war ended with the British and French the victors, they quickly reneged on the deal. To forestall Italian invasion they folded Croatia into a new kingdom called Yugoslavia that united peoples—Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims, and others—who for centuries had been at their neighbors’ throats.

President Woodrow Wilson signed off on that arrangement at the Paris Peace Conference, and over the next two decades “Yugoslavians” learned that artificial arrangements (whether stitched-together nations or imposed wage and price controls) merely postpone conflict and usually lead to explosions. Serbs largely ruled the country and others nourished resentments until World War II gave Croatia’s “Ustashe” fascists the German- and Italian-backed opportunity to strike back and kill hundreds of thousands of non-Croats. Communists, many of them Serbs, reciprocated late in the war and afterward, killing more hundreds of thousands.

Wrapped up in all this death was a fifth betrayal. When Yugoslavia early in the war sided with Hitler, British intelligence officers in Belgrade persuaded Yugo air force officers to carry out an anti-Nazi coup. Winston Churchill exulted in the House of Commons, “Yugoslavia has found its soul.” But three years later, when Fitzroy Maclean, commander of the British military mission in Yugoslavia, complained to Churchill that Josip Broz Tito, supported by Britain, would create a Communist dictatorship, the prime minister replied, “Do you intend to make Yugoslavia your home after the war?” Maclean said no, and Churchill responded, “Neither do I. … The less you and I worry about the form of government they set up, the better.”

Churchill soon announced in Parliament that he didn’t care about “the political regime which prevails in Yugoslavia. Few people in Britain, I imagine, are going to be more cheerful or more downcast because of the future constitution of Yugoslavia.” Years later such an attitude underlay the sixth betrayal, which came as Yugoslavia, long held together by Tito’s secret police, finally broke apart in 1991—and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker turned Churchill’s elegant English into Texas parlance by saying, “We got no dog in this fight.”

No dog, and few weapons for those who wanted to defend themselves. In the book of Esther, Persian Jews responded to aggression by arming themselves, but the U.S. and Western Europe offhandedly created an arms embargo in the Balkans: Croats and Bosnian Muslims were unable to acquire weapons to defend themselves against the Serbs, who had plenty. Soon, as historian Marcus Tanner writes, “the interior of Croatia was a charred wasteland—mile upon mile of burned-out houses and ruined churches.” Later, Croats found ways to break the embargo and counterattacked, with results Tanner wryly reports: “What had not been burned down by the Serbs in 1991 because it was Croatian had been burned down in 1995 because it was Serbian.”

The burning of houses and churches, though, turned out to be not as savage as what happened in Srebrenica. All of it contributed to Balkan distrust of “the cynical power brokers of Western Europe,” as Steve Connors, an American who photographed the disasters two decades ago, called them. Connors added, “Worst of all was the creation and deepening of a hatred and distrust that will permeate the resulting societies for generations to come.” Think about it: We call Americans who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s “the greatest generation” because, fighting a war after enduring a decade of depression, they saved the world from Nazi oppression. But what would you call generations that suffered oppression early in the 20th century and then for 70 years voyaged from depression to total war to Marxist dictatorship to murderous civil war?

This summer I traveled for three weeks in the Balkans and, along with seeing the region’s beauty, did 30 full interviews with leaders from many walks of life: one mayor, one banker, one retired colonel, one whistle-blowing secretary, two think-tank leaders, three homeless men, three pastors, three nonprofit managers, five business leaders, five journalists, and five legislators. Most hoped that the death of Balkans Communism, and the end of the 1990s fighting that followed its demise, would lead to freedom and prosperity, with help from Western Europe and the United States. That hope has disappeared.

Many among the young feel betrayed. One example: Marko Vesovic, 29, gained early honor within his chosen career, as the European Commission gave him its Young Journalist of Europe award in 2008. He also gained enemies, so when we met recently at a hotel in Montenegro by the Adriatic Sea, Vesovic sat with his back to the wall so he could view the entire lounge.

Vesovic has also received an award named after his newspaper’s crusading, assassinated editor, Dusko Jovanovic: Police counted 17 bullet holes in the corpse. Early this year thugs beat up a senior reporter who had taught Vesovic how to investigate corruption, and he has learned to avoid dark alleys. The Avala Resort, our upscale meeting place, which he had chosen, has a glass floor with pebbles underneath. A huge wall of windows displays waves crashing against the wall of an outdoor swimming pool that juts into the sea.

Vesovic and I exchanged business cards. He twisted mine, his hands constantly moving and his eyes darting around the room. He said, “I consider myself to be a patriot. I like the feeling of doing something good for the country. But should I risk my life for 400-500 Euros [$530-$660] a month?” Montenegro’s 600,000 residents no longer suffer under Communism, as they or their parents did for 45 years after World War II, but a Communist-style police force still dominates the land. A dictator, Milo Djukanovic, has been president or prime minister for nearly a quarter-century: “My whole life,” Vesovic muttered.

Montenegro is a poor country but the Djukanovic family is one of Europe’s richest—and the corruption that underlies that wealth has not bothered numerous American politicians. The list of influential U.S. visitors to what many call “a Mafia state” includes John McCain, who had a 70th birthday party there, and Madonna and Bill Clinton, who received gargantuan payments for flattering elite Montenegrins with a concert and a speech, respectively. (Clinton in his remarks mistakenly called Montenegro “Macedonia.”)

In April Djukanovic flew to Washington, where photographers snapped away as he shook hands with McCain and with Joe Biden. Those photos, prominently displayed in Montenegro, suggest to Vesovic and others that their cause is hopeless. The seventh betrayal.

In part two of this series we’ll examine current Balkans corruption and show how Western European countries and the United States facilitate it.