overly-simplified regional historical and contemporary political context…in a nutshell

So for anyone who is not aware, let me give you just a really brief, version of the Kosovo situation…and some regional historical and contemporary cultural context. I am aware that this is somewhat glossing over a lot of stuff and oversimplifying and all of that, so if you are an expert on the region, please bear in mind that I put this together for people who don’t know very much about it, just so they can understand a little bit.

OK…In a nutshell…

So first of all I am assuming you know where Serbia is…But just in case…

First imagine Italy. Now cross the sea going east. Now you are in Croatia. Keep coming east, you go through Bosnia, now think of where Greece is. North of Greece (and of course North of Macedonia), South of Hungary, West of Romania and Bulgaria, East of Croatia and Bosnia. (You can also see where Albania touches the most Southwest tip as well). So, Essentially Serbia is in like the heart of Southeastern Europe.

So there is a region in southern Serbia known as Kosovo. It is a place where, historically, a lot of Serbian Orthodox monasteries are located, and given that the church has always kept Serbian history, language, and culture alive, even when the nation has been under domination, it has an importance to Serbian cultural identity in the present because it is a big part of the past.

Importantly, Kosovo in 1389 is the place that is thought of as having been the beginning of 500 years of Turkish domination. The details and their veracity are debated, as time and literature have clearly changed the story through the years, but in essence, the Turkish Sultan Murad, acting on a tip from a traitorous Serb villain, attacked the Serbs there, and defeated them. However, the night before the attack, the Serbian hero of the story was visited by an angel who told him that even though the Serbs would be dominated by the Turks and would suffer for a long time, this defeat was necessary and would if they held their faith, their suffering over this time would guarantee them a chosen place in heaven. Then, even though the Serbs would be vanquished anyhow, the Serbian hero of the story snuck into the tent of the Sultan Murad and assassinated him before being killed himself.

And so the Serbs would be dominated by the Turks for over 500 years. And this is also why there are Muslims in this region. The Serbs kept their Christian religion, even though it meant persecution. But people who were willing to convert were allowed special treatment by the Turks, and were generally left alone. In this way, a number of people, especially in the part of the region now known as Bosnia, took Islam as their faith. However, given that their culture was largely intertwined with Serbs (Orthodox), Croats (Catholic) and all three peoples in general lived in various stages of togetherness and apartness sharing language, traditions, culture, etc. through the ages, and especially given the largely secular nature of communism under Tito, the Muslims here were far from fanatical, and when the country was Yugoslavia, it was common for holidays of all faiths to be celebrated by everyone.

So, back to the Turkish times…Bosnia was divided between the Turkish dominated part (with Serbia) and a part that followed Croatia. While Croatia was under the “Turkish Yoke” for some of the time, they were dominated later and wriggled free sooner than did Serbia (though only to be dominated shortly thereafter by the Austro-Hungarians). When Kosovo was first conquered by the Turks, many of the Serbs living there fled to the part of the as yet unconquered Croatia, settling around 1389 in the part of Croatia known as Krajina. But the legacy of their exodus from Kosovo still remains a sort of national “wound” in Serbian history.

Now, over 600 years later, these Serbs have lived in Croatia for over 600 years are still considered Serbs – not Croats! This is hard for us to understand because you are “American” as soon as you are born in America, or as soon as you no longer have an accent and you assimilate into our culture. And we have a nation with so many races, and religions and ethnicities. But these two/three virtually indistinguishable groups consider themselves to have fundamentally different and distinct ethnicities. Just as race is a cultural determined phenomenon that creates markers of separation in our culture, it is religion that determines ethnicity in this culture – so that the Serbs who converted in Islam under the Turks are no longer “Serbs,” but the Serbs who have lived in Croatia for 600 years are still “Serbs” because they practice Orthodox Christianity while Croats practice Roman Catholicism.

What makes them retain the ethnic identity of “Serb” or “Croat” regardless of which of the three nations they now live in (Croatia, Bosnia or Serbia) is not the language, as the languages are nearly identical and were officially blended under Tito, nor their appearance, as it is impossible to tell a Serb from a Croat by looking. Neither is it their general cultural temperament, their values, nor their food, drink or hospitality customs. In some cases you may be able to guess based on their name, but this is not always a consistent marker between Croats and Serbs either, but is a little more clear with the Muslims.

What make these people in Krajina who immigrated hundreds of years ago from Serbia, who are so are racially, culturally and linguistically nearly identical to the Croats as to not be distinguishable even to one, another, by sight alone, is the tiny matter, seemingly little more than a “narcissism of minor difference” to an outsider, is religion. Both groups are Christians, and pre-protestant reformation Christians at that, but Serbs are part of the Orthodox tradition and Croats are part of the Catholic tradition. And while both have saints, and advent and Christmas, and Lent and Easter and priests, and icons in the church, and stained glass and stinky incense, and can even receive communion in one another’s church (for which, at least for Catholics, Orthodoxy is the only other faith that can receive Communion in the Catholic church without converting and going through the process of the classes and a ceremony relevant to the sacrament), the peoples of the region choose to obsess over the minute differences between these two faiths as the primary marker of ethnic difference between the two.

So if you are Catholic, you are Croat and vice versa and if you are Serb you are Orthodox and vice versa. It doesn’t matter if your family has lived in Croatia for longer than the US has ever been a country, and that your passport is a Croatian passport which claims that you are a citizen of Croatia. You are not Croatian unless you are Catholic, and no Catholic is a Serb.

So from the outside, when I first started coming to this region, having only had met Greek Orthodox people from this tradition, and in the US at that, when asked one day about my religion, having replied “Catholic, how about you?” To which the Serbian person responded “Orthodox.” And I then in turn responded “Same thing really.” I had quite a shock and a difficult time understanding what I had done to evoke the person’s wrath who proceeded to tell me how the two are WAY different. Not wanting to offend further I kept my mouth shut,, but was really thinking to myself, well to someone who is Muslim or Hindu or of some other non-Christian faith tradition, the two look pretty damn similar!

OK, so without getting into too much crazy historical details, suffice to say that for a thousand years these peoples lived in various stages of peace and harmony as well as stages of conflict. They sometimes worked together and sometimes worked against each other. Each was dominated, sometimes together, sometimes by different rulers.

If you remember your WWI history, you will remember that it was a Serb in Bosnia – in Sarajevo to be exact – Gavorillo Princip – who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and began WWI. After WWI, with Allied help, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established, with Serbia having a ruling interest because of their war efforts on the side of the Allies. But even though the Kingdom lasted from 1918 – 1941, it was always a somewhat unhappy marriage because the Croats did not like being ruled, and were not really happy in the Kingdom under a Serbian King. There were strains of Croat nationalism emerging, but not all of them were violent or fascist or extremist. However, the small group of Croatian nationalists that would win the day by allying with the Nazis in WWII were violent extremists and were happy to take it out on the Serbs.

So, in comes WWII, as the whole of Europe was attempting, and was one by one largely failing, to fend off the Nazi threat. The Croatian nationalist fascist movement as the Ustase rose up in Croatia, initially independently of the Nazis, but soon with their full support. The Ustase carried out systematic round-ups and executions of the region’s Roma (Gypsy) population at Nazi request, but it was the zeal and vigor with which the Ustase executed Serbs that would shock even the Nazis.

Support for the Ustase by no means permeated every aspect of Croatian society. Many Croats eventually joined the ranks of Tito’s Partisans, who would eventually put an end to Ustase rule and Nazi occupation of the region without direct Allied support and intervention. After forcing the Axis powers out of the region, Tito then established the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, which incorporated all 6 of the so called South Slavic nations and peoples into a single nation of 6 equally regarded and equally powerful states. Still, before the Partisan victory, the Ustase would execute a number of Serbs that ranges (according to the account) from 24,000 – 7 million.

Meanwhile, Serbia officially was on the side of the Allies in WWII, but there was still a violent extremist nationalist tendency in Serbia as well – the Chetniks. No less violent than the Ustashe, and no less dogmatic, the Chetniks committed crimes in WWII, there’s no doubt, but the extent and degree was much less, thought not for lack of desire.

After WWII, under the federated Yugoslavia, Tito quickly and quietly dealt harsh punishments to known Ustase criminals, after which the matter was severely downplayed and was erased from public memory. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, the religious leaders of the Serbian church, as self-appointed custodians of Serbian language, history and culture, kept the dual insult of the Ustase assault on Serbs and the forced Yugoslav national amnesia about the events of WWII alive and well and festering like an open wound.

Tito’s Yugoslavia – It would be disingenuous idealized nostalgia to claim that there was no ethnic consciousness from the mid-1940s until Tito’s death in 1980s. However, it is fair to say that in the light of the extreme ethnic violence that would come to pass in the 1990s - or even in relation to the exaggerated ethnic consciousness and division that still exists today - that ethnic tension in most of Yugoslavia - with the exception of Kosovo - was not a common feature of daily life for most people, who mixed socially, professionally and even romantically with people of other ethnic groups. People of all ethnic groups old enough to have spent the majority of their lives in Yugoslavia each speak to a time when all groups’ holidays were celebrated by all, and ethnicity largely made little difference – that is unless you happened to be a person who suffered, personally or through the loss of a loved one, at the hands of the Ustase, or at the hands of the Serbian nationalist Chetniks .

So, back to Kosovo for a second - As borders and peoples do, things shifted around a lot between 1389 the end of WWII, and people who were “ethnically” Albanian came to settle in Kosovo through the years (with a large number coming from Albania to Tito’s Yugoslavia as Albanian Communism was much more closed and oppressive). In the more modern age – the 20th century let’s say - some Serbs returned to Kosovo, and some had remained from earlier times, but by the time Tito united the region after WWII as one nation – Yugoslavia – made up of 6 “states” (Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia) there was a significant enough number of Albanians living in Kosovo so as to constitute a “national minority.”

Given that Serbia had such a large land mass, and that there was both a faction of nationalist Serbs (Chetniks) who wanted Serbia to reign over the others as its own larger nation, and given that Serbs were major victims of the Croatian Ustashe (a wound that could easily have been stoked to induce retributive violence) Tito worried that Serbia would be hard to control and might dominate. So, while he put the seat of government in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, he also divided Serbia’s influence by deeming there to be 2 autonomous provinces in Serbia where the national minorities made up a significant segment of the population – Vojvodina in the north (with a large Hungarian minority) and Kosovo in the south.

So under Tito, Yugoslavia was a pretty prosperous system, far from perfect, but pretty good all-and-all. In refusing to align himself with either the Soviet communists or the West, Tito carved out a niche for the nation as a non-aligned nation, whose location and somewhat more open, more benevolent socialist system made it both a place of great strategic importance to both sides as well as more approachable and acceptable to the West. Because of this, the nation flourished economically, and the people enjoyed freedom of travel more broad and open than anyone else in the world at the time.

Still, even with the general peace among the regions groups that Tito strictly enforced by downplaying a lot of historical issues and stressing that, above all else, the peoples of the region are united as Yugoslavs first, and only then as ethnic groups, and the prosperity the nation enjoyed during the Tito years, there was still sporadic trouble in Kosovo as Albanians often agitated for greater rights and privileges. Meanwhile, this area was the most economically destitute in the whole Yugoslavia (the UN guys I’ve talked with who have been stationed there throughout the last 10 years actually have used the word “shithole”) and with no opportunities and increasing tensions between the Serbs and Albanians there, Serbian people who could afford to leave often did so, moving instead to places in Serbia and Yugoslavia at large where there was more opportunity for them.

Now…fast forward a bit to 1980 – Tito dies with no successor. The system of government he left as his legacy (a rotational presidency that would move among each of the republics) was weak at best and as the Soviet Union weakened and the Berlin wall came down, Yugoslavia was no longer of strategic importance and a lot of the wealth it had enjoyed dried up. In this environment, when political and economic instability met with political greed, ambition and opportunism it was a recipe for disaster.

The Albanians in Kosovo were growing more numerous and more vocal. The Serbs there were feeling threatened, and given Kosovo’s national historical significance to Serbs, it became a convenient and useful political cause to the aspirations of Slobodan Milosevic. Tensions between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo had escalated to the point of occasional violence against one another, but these were exaggerated and sensationalized in the press of both sides. Milosevic seized on this atmosphere to rally Serb nationalism and present himself as the answer to this impending Albanian “threat” to the Serb nation. By 1989 Milosevic became Serbia’s leader, giving his most famous national address on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. It appeared inevitable that there would be a war for Kosovo.

However, as Serbian nationalism grew, and feeding one another, Croatian nationalism grew alongside it, the other republics started to fear for their borders and their people with the large shadow Milosevic’s Serbia was casting. In 1990, Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia. Encouraged by the war for Slovenia, which lasted just a few weeks, Croatia then declared its independence in 1991, but with a significant number of Serbs living in Croatia’s Krajina region, and reports of atrocities being committed against them, Milosevic was not so quick to let Croatia go, and so the stage was set for the first major theatre of war.

When Bosnia declared its independence in 1992, it became clear that Kosovo would have to wait. The three sides fought, with Croatia and Serbia each trying to take large bites of Bosnia while also fighting each other. By the time the wars officially ended in 1995, each side had committed war crimes, with the Serbs and Croats having committed the lion’s share. Hundreds of thousands of civilians on all sides were brutally tortured, raped, driven from their homes and executed.

In Croatia, a strongly Catholic country, where there have long been many European tourists who feel connected to the beauty of the region, and who has had a more well defined tradition of relations with western Europe (having been under Austro-Hungarian instead of Turkish rule, and as such having grown-up a bit more “European” in the appearance of the cities and the sympathies of the people) there has been a lot of foreign investment and aid designed to repair the physical damage from the war, which not waged nearly as long there as in Bosnia besides. As a result, where there are certainly still visible wounds of war on the landscape, particularly in areas less widely visited by tourists as well as in areas that are inhabited by Croatian Serbs. Still, with some exceptions, and the lingering problem of potential landmines littering some of the most beautiful nature cites in the country, Croatia seems to have fared relatively well in the sense of physical repair. The condition of repair of the Croatian social fabric is somewhat more dubious.

Bosnia, however was not as lucky. Still in a somewhat uneasy peace and existing as two separate states within one nation, the physical, emotional, and social scars of war still mar the landscape.

As the dust settled, it was not too long before the Kosovo crisis would come up in Serbia again. Serbian nationalist politicians needed a cause to stay relevant, and the intervening years had allowed the Kosovar Albanians to form become much better organized militia units. The two sides agitated and occasionally attacked each other between 1996 – 1998, and the media on both sides picked up the same sensational reporting as it had employed previously.

Things intensified in 1998 & 1999, and the international media started reporting (perhaps somewhat one-sidedly) that the Serbs were using the same “ethnic cleansing” strategies as they had used in Bosnia. By this time the worst atrocities of the Bosnian and Croatian wars were coming to light and Western nations (and specifically President Clinton and the US) were dealing with enormous guilt over not having intervened more forcefully and effectively in Bosnia. As images of fleeing civilians streamed into Western living rooms, with Bosnian atrocities fresh in the minds of people and politicians, Clinton convinced NATO to support and engage in airstrikes on Serbia.

From March – June 1999, NATO waged a well intentioned, but sloppily carried out air war against the Serbs, resulting in many mistakes, and more Serbian civilian causalities than had been foreseen or intended. The air strikes did result in Serbia pulling out of Kosovo and the UN being granted transitional authority. Kosovo would remain part of Serbia, though contested and still somewhat autonomous. Still, most remaining Serbs now left their Kosovo homes.

The impression held by many Serbian people after this, even those who had been opposed to Milosevic and the wars to begin with, was that the world was unfairly singling out Serbs for blame and punishment. Animosity over the mistakes and causalities from the NATO bombings were an intense national wound – one that still festers today. For some, the idea that a foreign power would come in and try to force Serbia to give up this part of their nation that had been a part of their national heritage and history for centuries seemed ludicrous. “By what right?” they wondered, as they felt that the Albanians had run them out of their own national historical birthright and that this was then supported and enforced by NATO.

Other, more moderate Serbian voices did not agree with Milosevic nor with his strategies, but agreed even less with NATO’s bombing of Serbian civilians, and hence were still filled with animosity toward NATO, the UN and specifically toward the US and President Clinton.

When all was said and done, war profiteers (mafia) made huge business in all the countries during the war, and these gangsters are still a huge problem in Serbia (as well as a residual problem in the other nations). Additionally, both Tudjman in Croatia and Milosevic in Serbia actually appropriated millions of dollars of the people’s money from the banks. In Serbia this has led to many people living in utter destitution.

When the human, material and financial cost of the war, came into the people’s consciousness, coupled with Serbia’s international pariah status that continued under Milosevic’s continued rule and his obvious criminal activity at the expense of the people, Milosevic had lost most of his support. In 2000 he lost the election, but refused at first to cede power, leading to a popular revolt which eventually resulted in reform leader Zoran Dzindzic being elected as the Serbian president. Dzindzic would turn Milosevic over the The Hague for trial in 2001. But in 2003, Dzindzic was assassinated by Serbian Radical Nationalists, and Milosevic died during the last stages of his trial in 2006, before he could actually be convicted.

Kosovo remained under clumsy and somewhat unstable UN control until February 17th, 2008, when Kosovo declared its independence as a sovereign and democratic nation. By this time, just 10% of the remaining population was Serbian. The EU, UN and USA all recognized Kosovo’s independence, and while many Serbian people have grown tired of conflict and are just as happy to see the Kosovo issue over and done with, there are still many who were violently angry, and the protests ensued that day that then turned into riots throughout Belgrade. The US embassy was set on fire, and one protester died. Even many of those Serbs who have grown weary of conflict and are just ready to put an end to strife in the region are still resentful of the ways in which the EU, UN & USA have muscled the people and nation of Serbia.