PRISONERS OF AN INVENTED PAST
(A Peruvian's journey through the Southern Balkans)

José Luis Rénique

3

Until late 1995 the Banja Luka region had not been directly touched by war. Even the final Croat-Muslim invasion did not leave so much destruction as long as Serb forces withdrew without putting up a fight. It was after the signing of the Dayton Agreements, which ordered the Muslim-Croat forces out of the Banja Luka region, that looting and pillaging by the retreating Muslim and Croat armies took place. Ribnik is one of the towns that were sites of deliberate and systematic destruction. According to an assessment by the United Nations Office for Project Services:

"Schools, hospitals, and other public buildings were destroyed, power sub-station factories and commercial enterprises were stripped of their equipment, livestock was exterminated and individual houses were either ransacked, or in many cases completely burned. Displaced communities which began returning to the region after February 1966, were confronted with a critical situation of partial or total loss of property and economic livelihood."

Six months after those events we met some of those who have recently returned to find out what was left of their town. We hear about their needs, their fear, and their uncertainty. Whether the Muslim or the Croat should be blamed for bringing their town into ruins is still unclear for most of them. Who blew up the memorial at the town's entrance to local members of the Partisans dead in the battle field. Although they are aware that some international agencies are currently operating in the area, they do not know if they qualify to obtain some help.

As we tour Ribnik, volunteer workers complete the reconstruction of the post office building helped by IFOR. In a room of the school building, meanwhile, the weekly session of the Municipal Development Committee is taking place. Set up with the support of Progress-Bosnia & Herzegovina (PBH) -a program funded by the UN that is implementing a similar plan in the neighboring Municipality of Klujc- the Committee's purpose is to become "a coordinating body between the municipal authority and the interests of the community as expressed by the sectoral representatives. It serves as a planning and development tool for the municipality by providing vital information from the grass-roots and ensuring the representation of the whole community in the decision-making process."

Very concrete matters are of concern to the approximately 12 representatives who attend the Committee's session this morning. How many houses could be rehabilitated with the funds delivered by PBH? Would it not better to set up our own sawmill instead of paying for lumber transportation? How the qualification of the beneficiaries of the house reconstruction plan to be decided? PBH's officers expectations, however, are greater. They are based on a broader understanding of the local situation. An integral part of the Municipality of Klujc prior to the war, Ribnik now faces a significant disadvantage in its organizational structure due to its status as a newly created municipality without a strong economic and social center. Unless channels of representation of local interests exist, Ribnik will be left out aside of the post-war order, which is being shaped by a new Constitution and by the necessity to set up new political structures. With all its miseries, they seem to believe, war offers unique possibilities for promoting nation-building. Around reconstruction, they foresee a mobilization capable of strengthening civil society, which is a necessary ingredient of workable local democracy that could provide a solid basis for a plural and multi-ethnic Bosnia.

A few miles away from the center of Ribnik, in the village of Gornji Ribnik, while the headmaster of the primary school discussed about the needs of his town with PBH's officers, I reviewed the collection of the modest school library. Bound in a gray cover with red shining letters, the Complete Works of Marshall Tito still enjoy a privileged place. A fine edition of an illustrated history of Yugoslavia put together what are today the emblems of different nations -the Austro-Hungarian architecture of Croatian and Slovenian cities; the Orthodox monasteries of Serbia and Montenegro and the remains of Yugoslavia's Ottoman past. A monument to a lost possibility I think, a useless homage to an impossible country. For the spiritual leader of this town -a warm and eloquent Orthodox priest- even this atrocious war cannot tarnish what he sees as his people's capacity to live together as good and ultimately undifferentiated children of god. The conversation takes place in an absolutely idyllic setting. A rustic table with two long benches at each side, the plum and apple trees with their mature fruits within the reach of our hands, the graceful local temple on one side, the endless view of green rolling mountains on the other. An early toast with loza, the popular local plum brandy contributed to the lyricism of the meeting. A very concrete request caps the long priest's exhortation to unity and peace. His parish records have been left in a room he had in Klujc. An old friend, a Muslim clergyman, has let him know that they are safe. Now, our host wants to know if we can help him get them back.

From our visit we take with us the feeling that in such small towns as Ribnik, this mad cycle of invasion, destruction and withdrawal has been experienced like a hurricane or an earthquake that takes everybody by surprise, sweeping across the land with unstoppable fury. Like a natural calamity caused, however, by human hands. By a handful of politicians to be precise, who, as the sorcerer's apprentice of the story ended up releasing forces without knowing how to put them back into their cage. As the priest said, "we, the common people know how to understand each other, now it is the time for the politicians to find a common language to fix this mess."

A couple of hours from Ribnik, in the city of Banja Luka, the past and the future are seen in a far less ingenuous way. Although not directly affected by war, Banja Luka was not spared by some of the most perverse effects of this confrontation. The Serb majority conquered the city in the beginnings of the war without encountering any significant opposition. Tens of thousands of Muslim and Croats remained in the city during most of the war although enduring great hardships and fear. "By late 1992 -according to an officer of the UNHCR- severe persecution became a way of life in Banja Luka." At least half of all Roman Catholic churches in the area as well as 16 mosques were burned down or blown. As the Serbs gained control of most of the Bosnian territory, Banja Luka -once the seat of Ottoman colonial rulers- began to feel as the natural capital of the self-styled Republika Sparska. By mid-November 1995, however, according to a reporter,

"Banja Luka is a city defeated. Buildings are still intact. But spirits are broken, and the once defiant pride is shattered. In a sign of how desperate once-proud Bosnian Serbs have become, they are now welcoming the international aid that until recently they disparaged as fit only for the weak. Aid agencies have started to arrive in an effort to deal with the roughly 140,000 Serbian refugees displaced by Croatian and Muslim military victories."

Half a year later, the empty lots where religious buildings were located look like the silent proof of Serb intolerance meanwhile in the very center of the city, the pillars of a monumental Orthodox Church under construction symbolize the attempt by the conquering Serb faction to rewrite the history of this once multi-ethnic city.

As I followed the war from afar I did not dispute the generalized consensus prevailing in the Western press that the Serbs were the primary aggressors in this tragic war. Few voices in the United States dispute the universal condemnation of them as the barbaric agents of massacres and "ethnic cleansing." Maybe it is time for us to learn how to make peace with the guilty, stated recently Charles G. Boyd a former Chief of the U.S. European Command in an article published by Foreign Affairs. He furthermore asserted that "What is frequently referred to as rampant Serb nationalism and the creation of a greater Serbia has often been the same volatile mixture of fear, opportunism, and historical myopia that seems to motivate patriots everywhere in the Balkans."

The chorus of indignant responses sparked by this article clearly illustrates how sensitive the discussion of this issue could turn out to be even among foreign analysts. In a statement typical of Boyd's critics, historian Malcom Noel asserts that while the rebel Serbs "have been trying to create an ethnically pure state, the Bosnian government has been trying to defend a multiethnic country and society." In his response to his critics published by the time the Dayton Agreements were about to be concluded, Boyd restated his argumentation in the following manner,

"If I have emphasized Serb concerns, it is not because I find them worthier than those of the Muslims or Croats. I do so because their perspective has largely been ignored by those who would fashion a peace accord. Centuries of perceived victimization and the resulting paranoia had produced a very real Serb demand for self-determination that any successful peace agreement must accommodate."

As peace enters into a phase of implementation, the need for pragmatic solutions became indeed an unavoidable fact. Commenting on the refusal by NATO forces to have a role in war-crimes investigations in Bosnia, US correspondent Chris Hedges writes that "perhaps the West is gearing up to help put the lie to such denials as that the crimes committed in the drive to create an ethnically pure Serbian state never took place or were somehow ordinary and therefore forgivable."

Too much honesty, indeed, could upset a still precarious peace depriving the Serbs of what Hedges describe as "an important defense mechanism for the ordinary Serb." A mechanism that permits the participants and their countrymen to believe that, "however awful it all was, what they did was unavoidable. It was part of the war." A thorny question ultimately remains -whether by bringing the Serbs face to face with themselves or by allowing them to deny their crimes a lasting and enduring peace would be attained. What would be the best way to strengthen the path to peace and stability: Forcing the Serbs to face up to the terrible consequences of their nationalist doctrines or allowing them to deny their criminal acts? It is as if history had described a full circle and we were again in 1921 or 1943 and once again, after descending into hell, a new cycle of apparent harmony were about to begin.

"This is the third time in this century that we are being pressured to become a part of a state designed by foreign interests" says Radovan Rodic, the deputy director of the Economics Institute of Banja Luka. He then goes on to argue in favor of the Republika Sparska as a viable economic unit destined to be a full member of the European economic sphere. His views echoed those of Dusko Jaksit, the director of his institution currently in a leave of absence. His introduction to an economic survey of the Republika Sparska published by the Economics Institute of Banja Luka in 1995 can perhaps gives us some hints of those Bosnian Serb's views that General Boyd refer to in a previous paragraph.

To provide "an objective image of the Republika Sparska's demographic and economic potentialities" is the author's major concern. In doing so, he expects to counter the old practice of underestimating the economic value of these territories as a way to persuade the Serbs to leave them and go to their Serbian fatherland.

"Persistent efforts of the opposite sides and their friendly international mediators -so the argument goes- to deprive the Serbs of a part of the territory show that they, too are aware of the economic value of the Serbian ethnic territories." (sic)

After two years of life, therefore, and with self-confidence on the rise, the very existence of the Republika Srpska means a significant enhancement

"Of the negotiating position of the Serbian people and of the final solution of the Serbian cause. National identity, once lost, was perceived and regained in the merciless war circumstances. There was a dilemma about the acceptance of the imposed war, because every other solution would have meant a disappearing, together with the state this people has, for seventy years, experienced as its own, as the permanent solution." (sic)

It is the lack of understanding of this historical-psychological dimension of ethnic relations on these territories that according to Jaksit makes international mediators propose formulas that attempt to deny the fact that, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, "the three peoples are inevitably separating."

"Frankly speaking -the author concludes- we cannot expect of the utterly pragmatic and rational western politicians and mediators to understand all our frustrations."

Ill-understood, constantly subjected to all sort of conspiracies and persecutions, sometimes even described as "suicidally romantic," Serbian nationalism made an unexpected comeback in the 1980s when, in the context of a deep economic and political crisis, popular nationalism became a substitute for a democracy for which Yugoslavia had been scarcely trained under Tito's rule. As Professor Bogdan Denitch wrote in an analysis of the collapse of Yugoslavia,

"Without the voluntary groups' identities, which can be assumed in a contested multiparty environment, the only group identity that was recognized was the nation, expressing itself through the republic in which it was dominant."

In the wake of Tito's death, as the regime he had created entered into a process of accelerated decay, Slobodan Milosevic emerged as the champion of Serbian nationalism, as the most consummate manipulator of that symbiosis of Communist and localist nationalist politics that emerged as a replacement of Titoism. Milosevic's rise as a leader of Serbia would be in that sense inseparably linked to the succession of tragedies that pushed the former Yugoslavia into the path of war. Under his leadership, as the entire Communist world plunged itself into turmoil, from defensive utopia Serbian nationalism completed its transition into doctrine of aggression. As the 1980s came to an end, the full extent of this metamorphosis' implications were still to be seen.