Issue 06
Almost Perfect Discord
By Miss RosenPhotos By Boogie
Illustration By Justin Thomas Kay
“At three o’clock sharp, the enemy must be crushed by your mighty charge, torn to pieces by your grenades and bayonets. The honor of Belgrade must be spotless. Soldiers, heroes, The Supreme Command has erased our names from i ts roll. Our regiment is sacrificed for our King and Father land. You don’t have to worry anymore about your lives that no longer exist . So forward, to glory! Long live the King! Long live Belgrade!”
—Major Dragut in Gavrilovic, September 24, 1915
There are no direct flights from the United states to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Montenegro, a country that, after some 600 years of Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and communist occupation, achieved statehood following wars so vile its since-ousted leader Slobodan Milosevic now stands trial at The Hague on 66 counts of genocide, war crimes , and crimes against humanity. While Milosevic handles his own defense, the prosecution’s case crumbles , as numerous witnesses have been exposed as liars and forensic evidence has not supported the charges against “the butcher of Belgrade.”
Once leading the nightly news with stories of mutilation, rape, and massacres from the war, the trial, which CNN had called the “most important since Nuremberg,” is no longer under the gaze of the U.S. Media. There is a new focus , as the front page of the New York Times Travel section recently extolled: “Belgrade Rocks .” Belgrade is back from the brink, but you’d be lucky to find the city in a guidebook or tourist map.
If you wonder why Fodor’s doesn’t list the city in their new edition, then you, like I, would be the typically provincial American, aware only vaguely of ruinous warfare, mass migrations , and international sanctions that culminated in NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark’s bombing campaign that ended a decade of destruction. If you wonder why the maps in Rick Steve’s Best of Eastern Europe 20 05 fade out rather than feature Serbia, the phrase “ethnic cleansing” might come to mind, but chances are you, like I, would be hard pressed to identify the republics of Yugoslavia responsible for the worst devastation in Europe since World War I I .
Established in 1945, Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics , five of which were composed of distinct Slavic populations : Serbs , Croats , Montenegrins , Slovenes , and Macedonians ; the sixth republic, Bosnia, held Serbs , Croats , and Muslims (who comprised nearly half the population). Marshal Tito, the iconoclastic communist dictator who broke with the Soviet Union and maintained peace by enforcing martial law, united the republics into a single country and expected the people to identify collectively as Yugoslav. To recognize ethnicity before statehood was unacceptable. As Boogie, the photographer whose images are featured here, explained, when he joined the army in 1990 (as was expected of every citizen coming of age), he was asked if he was Yugoslavian or Serbian. Identifying hims elf as Serbian, he received the less-than-stellar assignment of working at an underground military airport in Bosnia.
Despite Tito’s stronghold on the country, the deep wounds of past conflicts did not heal during his reign. Following his death in 1980, tens ions mounted, as the leaders of the republics jockeyed for position. Milosevic, then Communist Party leader in Serbia, Yugoslavia’s largest republic, first came to popular attention posing as a nationalist in Kosovo. A province of Serbia, Kosovo has been inhabited primarily by Albanians because Tito did not allow Serbian refugees to return to their homes at the end of war. During the 1980s , while Albanians were campaigning for Kosovo to have the status of a republic, Milosevic was inflaming the small Serbian population with nationalist rhetoric. With the support of the masses , Milosevics ought more power, deftly overthrowing Ivan Stambolic, then the Serbian president—and best man at Milosevic’s wedding—who soon thereafter dis appeared; later, he was confirmed executed by the state. “[Milosevic] us ed his populist method throughout Yugoslavia,” Stambolic commented. “ It was the red rag to the bull of other nationalisms . When the biggest nation begins to wave flags , the smaller nations are obviously afraid.”
Ands o they began to secede. After Slovenia left successfully, Croatia tried to follow but failed. In 1992, under Milosevic, Serbia and Montenegro declared a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and led various military interventions to unite ethnic Serbs in neighboring republics into Greater Serbia. Expelled from the United Nations that same year, Yugoslavia splintered, as battles for control began in Croatia and spread to Bosnia, where Serbs , Croats , and Muslims tried to grab as much land as they could for themselves . Villages were destroyed, cities were bombed, and refugees migrated en masse to es cape the violence.
“Living under Milosevic was like living in a mental institution. It was apocalyptic,” recalls Boogie. “Especially during the biggest crisis in 1993. Pens ions and salaries were like three to five U.S. Dollars . People, especially the old and retired, were literally dying of hunger, or committing suicide rather than starve to death. The streets were empty. There was a shortage of gasoline, so there were very few cars on the street. And then, in the middle of the night, you could see a police truck cruising slowly. There were protests against Milosevic every day. In the beginning they were peaceful,s o I didn’t go. I don’t believe in peaceful, passive resistance; it’s either grab the gun and go to the woods ors it at home. But then they turned violent. The police were very brutal, beating protesters mercilessly. And that’s when Is tarted to go out ands hoot [photographs ]. Milosevic wasn’t sure cops from Belgrade would be tough enough—they might not want to beat on their neighbors . So cops were brought from other parts of Serbia, huge cops with mustaches , in riot gear. Shit, I ran from them a few times . Scary.”
Initially, Washington ignored the conflict; as James Baker, secretary of state under George H.W. Bus h, explained, “We don’t have a dog in that fight.” But as the fighting escalated into a full-on war, the Clinton Administration drove the diplomacy, creating the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995, which redrew the national borders . Peace lasted briefly. Soon thereafter, ethnic Albanians , organized as the Kosovo Liberation Army (recognized by the United States as a terrorist organization), began rebelling against Serbian control of Kosovo.
In the strangest way, the history of the Serbs is a living entity. Their wars of independence, domination, and rebellion are acts of vengeance carried out by sons for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers, as fierce Serbian nationalism arose during centuries of occupation and oppression. When I asked Boogie what made one a Serb, he answered succinctly: “ Orthodox.”
The story of Kosovo is central to Serbian tradition. “Besides the name of Christ, there is no name more beautiful or sacred,”stated Orthodox Bishop Emilijan in 1939, on the battle’s annual commemoration, June 28. The Battle of Kosovo is a tribute to the Serbian fighting spirit— death before dis honor. Ands it was on June 28, 1914, that Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist revolutionary, assassinated Austrian Archduke and heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (now the capital of Bosnia), triggering the First World War. “I am a Yugoslav nationalist,” Princip declared during his trial, “aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs , and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free of Austria.”
In 1989, the 600th anniversary, the Battle of Kosovo loomed large. As Lazar’s bones toured the country, stopping at sacred Orthodox churches for Serbian pilgrims to view, Milosevic stood at the Kosovo Field on June 28, delivering a speech sure to ignite Serbian passions: “Serbs in their hi story have never conquered or exploited others . Through two world wars , they liberated themselves and, when they could, they also helped others to liberate themselves . The Kosovo heroism does not allow us to forget that at one time we were brave and dignified, and one of the few who went into battle undefeated. Six centuries later, again we are in battles and quarrels . They are not armed battles , though such things should not be excluded yet.”
The armed battles of Milosevic’s prophecy came to be. After the failure to secure lands in Bosnia, Milosevic wanted to ensure dominion when, in the mid 1990s , Kosovo Albanians began rebelling against Serbian authority. With arrogance, he set out to win; with complete humiliation, he lost it all. Following the NATO bombing s— the only time the Serbian republic was heavily attacked during the decade of war—Milosevic was removed from power by his people in 2000. In 2001, the United Nations allowed Serbia and Montenegro to return under the name of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
“After Milosevic was sent to The Hague, Prime Minister (Zoran) Djindjic emerged as the strongest leader,” Boogie observed. “He had good connections with the West, was great speaker, and motivated people to work and not just to sit home and wait for miracle to happen.
You could feel the optimism in the street; people were smiling again.
After Milosevic was gone, the energy level was through the roof. But then Djindjic got assassinated, and everything stopped.”
Today, Milosevic remains on trial, as he has done since 2001. Kosovo remains governed by the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, as it has been since 1999. And Belgrade (actually Beograd, “the White City” in Serbian, a reference to the Roman Empire-era buildings) remains strong, beckoning adventurous tourists to what was previously considered the end of the Earth, as it has done since time immemorial.
“On that day we’ll say to Hell: ‘Have you had enough?’ and Hell will answer, ‘Is there more?’”
—Mesa Selimovic, Dervisi Smrt