That Corner Of Europe Again.

Instead of the first-person rant of whinging that I exhibited yesterday, I had originally planned to react to Andrew Rawnsley’s column in the Guardian about the shaky future of the Balkans. I’m glad I delayed it. With Simon Jenkins today also wading into the debate, (see here) it seems that finally this issue, in the media at least, is rearing its head and making its presence known in a way that is now necessary.

December the 10th is when it could all go horrifically wrong. That’s three weeks on Monday. But first, a momentary pause. Possibly more than any other contemporary conflict, this is one that cannot simply be waded into with wild gesticulations and emotive language. Of course none should, but this conflict is more prone to mouthing-off without understanding than any other, in my opinion. This is not an ‘A’ versus ‘B' conflict like with Israel and Palestine (simplistically put), or the thankfully stalled civil war in Cote d’Ivoire. It is not a geopolitical storm that is coloured mainly by territorial ambitions, such as the plethora of rumbling conflicts in the Caucasus. It is not a straight oil-grab like Iraq. It is not even a chaotic mess of shifting allegiances as much of the conflict in DR Congo appears. The Balkans is a mess where all sides have concrete convictions and where no-one’s interests match anyone else’s. It is more like some corrupted Venn diagram with hopeless overlaps containing thousands of people and with new bubbles being spawned with every convulsion of the whole ugly nightmare.

So leave the keys in the bulldozer unturned for now. I will attempt to avoid the same mistake, I have spent enough time trying to twist my mind around this terrible conflict for long enough to know that nothing short of a specialist Master’s in the subject, or perhaps prolonged exposure to it from all angles as a politician can prepare you for the complexities that it heralds. Instead I am going to try and highlight the problem and a very abridged version of why it has come to be, and what there is to lose.

The problem is essentially this. The Balkans have acted like a motorway intersection for the politics, cultures and religions that have breezed through Eastern Europe and Western Asia to pass through. Each has left its indelible mark, from Islam to Christianity to the Greek Orthodox faith. From the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires through to Soviet occupation. It is all desperately complicated.

I can safely claim to have tried to read three and a half books on this subject and yet this, I admit, is not nearly good enough to enter my two cents worth. But I’m still going to. Lambast me if necessary. The ‘half book’, by the way, will possibly prove to be the most useful, in terms of knowledge-building, of the lot. That is if I could get my muddled brain into it. I bought it five years ago and have been intermittently reading it ever since. Have a go yourself, it is great, possibly the authoritative book on the subject: Misha Glenny’s “The Balkans”, but the situation it tries to describe is confounding at best and stomach-churning at worst. Though, like all good political books, it has been read (and commented on favourably, in this case) by Jeremy Paxman. I really don’t know how he finds the time to do all this reading. I am in awe.

The result of all this complexity is that we now have a confederation of independent and aspiring-to-be-independent states that all have different relationships to each other. Ever so often the map of this area changes. The last change happened only a short time ago, when Montenegro declared independence from Serbia to become (as it still is), the world’s newest country, as well as a new Eurovision team, unfortunately. Thankfully this breakaway passed largely without incident. Other times, the lines on the map of this precarious region twist and writhe and subsume into the grasp of death many thousands with every contortion. I almost believe that through the crimson fogs of hell there is a demon with a blackboard and a piece of chalk messing around with the boundaries when he has a spare moment. When the world looks a little too rosy perhaps.

So why the Tenth of December? That will be the final of many deadlines to impose some kind of agreement on the outcome of the Kosovo situation. Ever since Serb armies were kicked out and that country convulsed into its own downfall, causing the welcome incarceration of Milosevic (who that same demon spared the just fate of, dying as he did in prison) but also suffering a rocky journey, including the assassination of a following leader, Kosovo has been on shaky ground. Neither gaining statehood nor being subsumed into Serbia, it was effectively put under the administration of Western powers. The idea was presumably to come to a permanent resolution on it when all the tensions had died down a little, and ever since it has teetered like an ornament on the edge of a mantelpiece. The price for letting it drop is high.

The danger now is that Kosovo will simply declare itself independent, to the anger of Serbia, and Kosovo’s Serb-minority population, sparking off a spiralling collapse in the shaky peace that has held since the end of the last century. Some Serbs see a spiritual reason to keep Kosovo Serb. It has been seen as a holy grail, a land which is rightfully theirs in folklore, for religious reasons, their Jerusalem. It would take a firm hand unafraid of bloodshed to slap away those ambitions in one fell swoop, whether justified or not. Then there is Albanian intentions with the region. Kosovo is 90% Albanian, and independence for the country could see it slip into some Greater Albanian region that would then itch to include parts of Greece in its newfound borders. There is the problem of whether Kosovo even presents a viable option as an independent state without Western intervention. Simon Jenkins states today that the country claims more aid than any country in Asia or Africa which may seem suddenly unsustainable if it gains nationhood. Though this conclusion could be challenged when one considers the ample aid received by Israel in much the same vein. Then there is the question of where Croatia, Bosnia, Vojvodina and a whole host of other regions lie, each with more or less vested interests in the former Yugoslav region as a whole (thankfully, another potential complication can be avoided if we treat Slovenia as a homogenous region, making steps to move away from this mess). Then we have the eagerness to save face by Western countries, by allowing Kosovo its independence, and opposite and equally strong pull from a newly nationalistic and resurgent Russia to protect Serbian nationalism.

Jesus, if I wasn’t already sitting down, I would need to sit down. The above is not even a tenth of it. For nine years, proper resolution of this problem has been put off, but now it has finally bubbled to the top of the pond. Macedonia has made a break for it, Montenegro strode into the independent world, and now Kosovans are asking why their turn has not come. I can’t see any commentator coming up with an answer, I sure as hell don't see a way out. It is like trying to please one individual in a crowd to the detriment of the other five. And whatever you do it will be the same. You will please a different person and piss off the other five. Does this unfortunate region really need to bleed again to force a timely and permanent resolution? Or is it really true that this region is damned to ever-shifting borders and scrappy civil and cross-border conflicts?

This region has even lent its name to a word, ‘Balkanisation’ that has been galvanised in the minds of all to simply stand for the wrenching apart and lasting division of an entity. Many have said that the only solution to the area was the kind of binding Greater Yugoslavia, a loose coalition of nationalities as presided over by Tito, no matter how unpalatable the side-effects were. It might be that we are paying the price now for the satisfying of nationalism in the horrific wars of the 1990’s and that this is merely the final chapter in a genocidal conflict that started with the secession of the first state over 15 years ago.

This was a conflict in which previously happy neighbouring families were convinced almost overnight to murder each other over newfound patriotic loyalties. A conflict in which even the word ‘genocide’ found two new concrete definitions. Firstly, codifying that mass-killing of only males could also be considered genocide, as they were unarmed, and stipulating 8,000 as a number acceptable to be labelled as such. This precedent was found on considering Srebrenica. Secondly, it realised that in defining ‘genocide’ was the destruction of people, it submitted that mass rape also constituted genocide, as occurred when rape was used as a deliberate policy by the Serb armies to water down the gene pool of a certain ethnic group. The gravity of this conflict should never be forgotten, and its potential to reignite should never be ignored. There will clearly be plenty of unsettled scores here ready to seep up through the cracks in the ground that were not sealed properly in the previous decade.

What mustn’t happen is for politicians to hide from the inevitable deadline. In the middle of all the worrying and head-shaking over Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Darfur and all the rest, all of course deserving of sensitive resolution, it would be a travesty to let this issue in a corner of our own continent to become obscured. It would be wrong to have it treated as an inconsequential secession of a miniscule state from a country deserving of punishment. It’s easy to sound a bugle for Kosovo’s independence as a final shame on the heads of the Serbs. Many have pointed out that in a conflict of this complexity, the customary search for ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in the Hollywood tradition is pretty much futile. The balance in those wars swings against the Serbs, certainly, but it is so unclear in its details that to base present decisions on a need for collective punishment is dangerous.

The trying of Serbia’s war criminals, and the search and conviction for those missing ones should be the just punishment to the country for its atrocities To mete out punishment for a past conflict that is intrinsically contained within the settlement of the present situation smacks a little of the reparations demanded from Germany in the wake of the First World War. And talking of that era, lest it be forgotten that that very war started from a single act in the tinderbox of Serbia? It would be melodrama to portray the present situation as likely to have similar implications. Given the horrors that have gone on in the Balkans in the recent past, however, not even the slightest chance on allowing a new outbreak of armed conflict can be allowed.

It remains to be seen how much influence other leaders like our own will have over events. The best that we can hope for for now is that this issue does not fall off our politicians’ radars. It remains to be seen how much influence global leaders will have over events. And amid all the fear-fabricating that is going on to fuel evermore extreme policies relating to the War on Terror, hope that it has been realised that, not too far away, an aching finger is about to be lifted from the pause button of a venomous conflict.