The reason History has to keep repeating itself is that nobody ever listens. -- Anon.Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe. -- Frank Zappa
In the week since my piece Deus ex B52 appeared in the LF City Times, I've received a great deal of feedback about it, mostly positive. Some, though, either accused me of making light of the very real human suffering in Kosovo or asked me straightforwardly enough, "OK, smart alec, what should we do?"
My short answers to these correspondents are, respectively:
"I'm as sensitive as anyone else to human tragedy, but my daddy taught me not to cry in public. The utter ludicrousness, cynicism, and counterproductiveness of what the politicians are doing there, though, needs to be made obvious."
"You should do whatever you think best to relieve the suffering, whether support for private humanitarian aid, church-sponsored exhortation of the political leaders involved, or whatever. But military intervention in the Balkans by outside powers has only made matters worse for the last 600 years, and it sure doesn't seem to be helping now."
Deus is, as nearly everybody realized, essentially a political cartoon in verbal form. As such it makes use of oversimplification and stereotypes; I'll say no more about it here, since nothing ruins a good joke more than trying to explain it.
The rest of this article is a summary exposition of the history of the Balkans, such as I've been able to discover on the Internet and elsewhere, for anyone who is rational enough to try to understand the causes of its problems before trying to formulate some solution. First, though, let's take a look at the concrete results of the last nine days of NATO bombing.
The President addressed the nation on March 24th, to explain what NATO's goals were and why we were dropping bombs.
One goal was to stop the brutalization of the Kosovars by the Serbian military and their accomplices. But the pace of Serbian operations increased immediately when the bombing started, and Kosovar political leaders were executed. You can't stop small-unit operations on the ground by dropping explosives from six miles up -- a fact known by every military man for three-quarters of a century, but contrary to the pipe dreams of the ignorant politicians who control them.
Another goal was to reduce popular support for Milosevic, a Stalinist thug if ever there was one. But how on earth could such a master of "wag the dog" political tactics as Bill Clinton possibly believe that starting a war would accomplish that? Milosevic's popularity increased; one Serbian democratic activist and Milosevic opponent has written that one day of NATO bombing undid ten years of work by the Serbian opposition. Even liberal, democracy-minded Serbs are now rallying around the government in the face of great-power interference.
Yet another goal was to protect the stability of neighboring
countries. But the anti-Milosevic government of Montenegro is
being pushed towards Belgrade by the "wag the dog" phenomenon,
and severely strained by the influx of Kosovar refugees.
Macedonia fears for its stability under the pressure of
refugees, and worries about their effect on their own large
Albanian minority. The bombing has internationalized the
conflict and made it more of a threat to regional
stability, not less.
These precise consequences, by the way, were predicted weeks and even months before the operation began, by organizations ranging from the CIA to the Cato Institute. When administration officials and European politicians appear on television and wring their hands over current developments, they deserve no more sympathy than a small boy who has burned himself after repeated warnings not to play with matches. Substantially less sympathy, in fact; politicians -- appearances to the contrary notwithstanding -- are supposed to be grownups.
What have these Western politicians learned so far? Nothing. Consider this clever plan, as described in the April 12 issue of Time:
More sorties from more planes -- if the weather improves -- will try to rattle Milosevic by hitting him close to home. The classified guidance for this phase calls for attacks sufficient to break the will of the Serb leader. But some Pentagon officers wonder how wrecking Yugoslavia's military headquarters will do anything to curb violence against the Kosovars. "The Serbs in the field are just thugs on a rampage," says a Navy planner. "They don't need guidance on how to knock down doors and kill people." The Pentagon is no longer talking about an "air campaign" of a few brisk weeks but a war of attrition. White House officials now say the air attacks could last another 20 -- 20! -- weeks. "We'll continue to degrade his forces, and he'll continue his ethnic cleansing," explains an Air Force officer. "And we'll get back to the negotiating table only after he's finished."
In other words, we do not expect our bombing to accomplish anything useful at all; it's now simply face-saving vandalism. And what we are "attritioning" isn't Milosevic; it's the very Serbian people whose goodwill will be crucial to any long-term peace and stability in the Balkans -- the very people who were sickened by Milosevic's thuggery before NATO politicians decided to play video games on their country.
One major lesson -- perhaps the only major lesson -- that can be drawn from the depressing history of the Balkans over the last 500 years is that the current problems in that region are overwhelmingly due to constant interference in the area by great powers.
Our touchy-feely President has given us a lot of psychobabble
about dark tribal hatreds and violent impulses; this is all
complete nonsense. The Balkans are inhabited by peoples whose
culture and civilization extend back as far as any in Europe,
as the monuments and architectural treasures of Sarajevo, Zagreb,
Belgrade, Pristina, Split, and the rest of the region will testify.
But these people have for 500 years been manipulated and toyed
with in accordance with the whims and rivalries of huge empires;
peace cannot come to the Balkans until the countries themselves
work out their own stable borders and relationships.
This will not be painless, and it will not happen overnight. There will be tragedies and forced migrations. There will be events of such horror that the rest of the world -- watching comfortably through the bathetic ignorance of a CNN lens -- will cry out yet again for intervention. The voice of reason will sound heartless and insensitive (as I'm afraid it does now). But until the people of the Balkans are permitted to work out their own solution, there will be continuing bloodshed. Any further outside interference will succeed only in prolonging the agony -- just as NATO involvement is doing now.
Mika Stanicavic, an 18-year-old Serb high school student who likes studying philosophy and playing the guitar, writes, with the adolescent bravado of youth everywhere:
"Serbia is not like Bosnia. There won't be any silly diplomacy. We are very mad. If foreign troops come, the best case scenario will be something to the proportions of Vietnam, the worst case, a third World War. Today, normal Serbs -- the same ones that marched in the streets to protest against Milosevic's policies -- destroyed McDonalds, and the American and British Cultural Centers, with their bare hands and rocks."
Mika and teenagers just like him, in Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo and Macedonia and Albania and Montenegro, are going to determine the future of the Balkans. What, precisely, do we think we are accomplishing by injecting ourselves into their lives?
Nutshell Guide to Balkan History
Geographically, the main theme of the Balkans is mountains, incredibly rugged terrain dotted with small isolated fertile valleys. This is what you will doubtless see on the 6 o'clock news as a backdrop to some Tom Brokaw clone in an L.L. Bean outfit, holding the microphone so close you can hear the wild mountain wind whistling through his head.
The conventional wisdom is that the isolation of villages and scarcity of arable land produced a barbaric, bloodthirsty character in the Balkan people. In fact, while this sort of harsh environment will build self-reliance and a strong family loyalty within the isolated village -- both of which are usually regarded as virtues -- the rivers, streams, and long seacoast allowed a reasonable amount of communication between population centers throughout the history of the area.
If one looks at the Balkan situation in the 13th century, one of its
most striking features is its normalcy, by the standards of feudal
Europe. The three major countries of the region -- Croatia, Serbia, and
Albania -- are trading and generally coexisting peacefully. The
Orthodox/Catholic split of 1054 does not seem to have caused any great
tension. All three countries are building churches, cathedrals, and
basilicas and have their own national artistic and literary traditions.
Philosophical study survives in the numerous monasteries of the area --
which is, after all, just slightly to the north of Macedonia and Greece.
But then, in the late 14th century, just as the Enlightenment is beginning to dawn across the Adriatic in Italy, barely a hundred years before the discovery of the New World, the Turkish Empire conquers the entire region and holds it immobile under an egregiously despotic system of feudal rule for 500 years.
Nearly all of the sources of present-day ethnic tensions in the Balkans can be traced, directly or indirectly, to Turkish policies of one time or another during this long period. Moreover, the Turks repeatedly throughout the period played off one group against another, both as a means of controlling the area and as a side effect of the political maneuverings of the various regional Turkish pashas and native aristocrats against each other. As a result, ethnic suspicion grew and festered as the all-pervading fear and hatred of the Turks was propagated from generation to generation.
The Albanians and the Bosnian Muslims, in particular, are regarded as quislings by many Serbs. On the other hand, given hundreds of years of despotic oppression, what sort of "reasonable accomodation" should be expected?
- Muslim vs Christian
As a pacification measure, the Turks tried repeatedly to convert the
indigenous population to Islam. In Albania, for example, Christian
merchants were subjected to much heavier taxes than Muslims. Thousands
of Croatians were taken annually to Turkey to be converted and raised as
slaves. (Both of these Turkish practices were probably carried out
elsewhere in the Balkans; they were specifically mentioned, though, only
in my Albanian and Croatian sources, respectively.) It was to avoid
this enslavement, by the way, that the Balkan practice of tattooing a
small Christian symbol somewhere visible on young girls -- typically
the face, neck, or wrist -- originated: this "spoiled" the girl for
conversion, thus protecting her from seizure by the Turks.
The northern "national boundary" between Croatia and Bosnia reflects the northernmost extent of long-term Turkish control of Croatia. North of that line, continual conflict with Austria-Hungary prevented the generations-long domination that religious conversion requires.
As far as I have been able to determine, conversion to Islam was much less widespread among the Serbs than among the Croats and Albanians. One continuing theme in Balkan history is Russian support of Serbian resistance to the Turks; this may account for the repeated (unsuccessful) Serbian revolts and the apparently lower degree of long-term control the Turks managed to exercise over them.
- Krajina
The "Krajina Serbs" form an enclave along the (current) Croatia -- Bosnia border. During the peace negotiations following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early '90s, the proposition was advanced that if the Bosnian Muslims could secede from Croatia, then Krajina could secede from Bosnia. This was rejected, and the Krajina Serbs form one part of the crazily unstable UN-run ethnic mishmash of Bosnia.
Note below the events of 1690 and 1736. The restive Serbs apparently provoked their Turkish rulers into looking for some kind of "final solution" to the Serbian problem; it is these forced migrations -- both of Serbs to Krajina and of Albanians to Kosovo -- that account for the fact that although Kosovo once formed the heart of medieval Serbia, Albanians currently constitute 90% of the population.
Dr. William Johnsen of the US Army War College mentions another contributing factor in his study The Balkan Enigma:
Imperial Austrian practices for populating the [northern Croatia] region with soldier-farmers [to defend against Turkish encroachment] also contributed to the ethnic patchwork that evolved in the region. Habsburg subjects, especially Roman Catholic Croats, originally populated the area. But increasing Ottoman pressure in the southern Balkans drove large numbers of refugees, largely Orthodox Serbs, into Croatia. Perennially short of military colonists, the Habsburgs accelerated this movement by granting freedom of worship to all Orthodox adherents who would settle in the area. This stimulus, combined with small land grants, direct rule from Vienna, relief from manorial obligations, and a share of any captured booty, induced large numbers of ethnic Serbs to settle in the Krajina region. This resulted in Serb majorities, or at least strong minorities, sprinkled throughout the region.
As a side note, I was rather discouraged to find my Croatian source explaining the Serbian presence in Krajina by suggesting in passing that they "probably" arrived with Turkish troops for the siege of Vienna. This appears to be an example of Balkan finger-pointing: displacement of rage against the Turks towards one of the other nationalities of the region. In any case, it appears that the generosity of spirit towards the Serbs shown by the Croatian King Tomislav is sadly lacking in some of his modern descendents....
- Kosovo
This will be one of the most intractable problems. As noted above, before the Turkish occupation, Kosovo was the heartland of Serbia; more than 75% of Serbian national and cultural monuments are in Kosovo, including the 14th century Samodrezi monastery where the Serbian army was blessed just before the disastrous Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389 with the Turks. Even though the blessing was apparently less effective than the Serbs hoped, it remains one of the touchstones of Serbian national identity.
Kosovo is now 90% Albanian, and my Albanian source -- principally a
chamber-of-commerce type of site encouraging trade and tourism with the
country -- expresses some bitterness that Kosovo was not included in the
1995 Bosnia settlement (as though that would have had any long-term
effect in solving the problem!) and mutters darkly that some unspecified
area -- apparently Kosovo -- was stolen from Albania by the countries
involved in the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars. And in fact, from the first,
Kosovo has been regarded by Albanians as their territory; the
first concrete proposal for an independent Albanian state (in 1878; see below)
not only included Kosovo but was formulated at a conference at Prizren,
in the south of Kosovo. Moreover, Dr. S. S. Juka and other Albanian
scholars have adduced evidence that Serbs have been a
minority in Kosovo throughout their history.
The Serbs, on the other hand, point out that the Albanians fought in the
Balkan Wars
on the side of the Turks -- not likely to win friends in the
Balkans. But the Albanians respond that they also fought the
Turks shoulder-to-shoulder with the Serbs at Kosovo Polje in 1389....
(I must emphasize that I have no idea what the real facts were, and I haven't the time to investigate further. But bear in mind that current problems are due at least as much to perception of history by the various factions as they are to the actual historical events themselves. An indisputable fact, though, is that for more than 400 years Serbian balladeers and folk poets romanticised and embellished the battle, keeping the dream of Serbian nationalism alive under Turkish tyranny, to the point that the Kosovo legend is so central to Serbian national consciousness that no conceivable Serbian government would voluntarily relinquish it, monasteries or no.)
For at least the last 125 years, Kosovo has been the site of a low-intensity ethnic war between Serbs and Albanians. In 1878, the Albanian League was founded in Kosovo, with the express aim of forming an autonomous Albanian homeland within the Ottoman Empire. Anti-Serb atrocities in Kosovo were widely reported by western European diplomats during the rest of the century. After World War I, under the new Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia created by the Allies, tens of thousands of Serbs moved into Kosovo; by 1928, the population was 38% Serb. But during World War II, Italy ruled Kosovo as part of Albania; about 70,000 Serbs were driven out while 75,000 Albanians immigrated.
And so back and forth and back and forth. Tito took power in Yugoslavia with Russian help after the war, granted limited autonomy to Kosovo, and forbade displaced Serbs from returning there -- in the hope of attracting Albania into the federation. Kosovo was made an autonomous province in 1963, then granted full representation in the Yugoslav parliament in 1974. Albanians ran the Kosovar bureaucracy and Serbs complained of pervasive discrimination in employment and housing, and accused the authorities of indifference to anti-Serb violence. By 1981, the census showed the population as 77.5% Albanian; Serb emigration continues.
This pattern appears over and over again in recent Balkan history: some policy is imposed by a Great Power for its own purposes, which has the effect of exacerbating existing tensions. In the Yugoslavia created after World War I, the dominant power was Serbia, increasing Croatian resentment. Every country has a gang of sociopathic thugs living in it under some rock somewhere, and when the Nazis invaded, they managed to find one in Croatia and put it in charge of the country (the Ustasha), alienating the Serbs.
When Tito -- a Croat -- took power with help from Russia, the Serbs believed they were being unfairly treated, particularly when Kosovo was granted autonomous status in 1974 -- a status which Milosevic revoked in 1990, as a prelude to the crackdown which not only removed Albanian Kosovars from local government but even drove out many Croats who had been living in the Kosovo area for centuries.
The Serbs dream of a "Greater Serbia," including Kosovo and (probably) Krajina, and have wanted a Serbian port on the Adriatic for more than 200 years. The Albanians dream of a "Greater Albania," including Kosovo, (probably) a large chunk of Macedonia (which is about a quarter Albanian), and Montenegro. The Croats, granted an utterly ridiculous crescent-shaped country surrounding a UN protectorate run by Western European bureaucrats -- a protectorate so flimsy that the UN officials even chose its national anthem -- want most of Bosnia.
I have no idea what the eventual answer will be. It's pretty clear that
in the long run Bosnia will have to rejoin Croatia, but that won't
happen until the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims remember Tomislav and
Sixto V and forget the Ustasha and Tito. The Krajina Serbs will have to
get used to the idea that they're in Croatia -- which they'll never do
until the Croats can forget that the Krajinians are Serbs. It's one
thing to be proud you're Irish; quite another to demand independence for
parts of Boston....
Even though the ethnic situation in Bosnia is a complete mess, somehow before the breakup of Yugoslavia, people managed to get along with each other in multi-ethnic neighborhoods throughout the region's cities. Without the demagoguery and the thugs, there would be no problem. ("If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs." -- Pogo.) Bear in mind that the entire area of Tito's Yugoslavia -- including Macedonia -- is smaller than Montana, and Serbia is roughly the size of Kentucky. (Kosovo is about 65 miles square, smaller than Greater Los Angeles.)
The Serbs outsmarted the Austro-Hungarians by showing marvelous commercial acumen and productivity during the Pig War. Their country experienced an economic boom from peace and trade. Dr. Johnsen on the government of Serbia at the time:
Shortly after Alexander Obrenovic's assassination, the Skupstina [Serbian Assembly] elected Peter Karadjordjevic, then age 60, to the throne. Peter I returned from 45 years exile and immediately revitalized Serbia. Internally, Peter ruled as a constitutional monarch in close cooperation with a Skupstina controlled by the Radicals, predominantly under the leadership of Nikola Pasic. From 1903 to the outbreak of World War I, Serbia enjoyed a period of relative calm and prosperity that saw the country make tremendous strides in civil liberties, economics, education, and national prestige.
(The Radical party in Serbia was nationalist and protectionist, but
advocated universal suffrage and low taxes. Its closest analogue in
contemporary American politics would probably be the populism of such figures
as Pat Buchanan and Robert Reich.)
We can only hope that future generations of Serbs will learn from Petar Karadjordjevic (who had John Stuart Mill's On Liberty translated into Serbian) and his Skupstina, and take their lesson from this piece of their history rather than the continual slaughter that will result from pushing for "Greater Serbia." Another consideration for Serbia is that a moderate and humane policy, both internally and externally, is most likely to retain the cooperation of Montenegro, Serbia's only route to the Adriatic.
The Albanian diaspora should be a source of commercial and diplomatic strength for that country, rather than a temptation to start a regional conflagration for the sake of increasing the power of its ruling elite. Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe, thanks largely to half a century of Hoxha's blundering socialism and pathological xenophobia. Rather than extending the misery by shedding still more Albanian blood in a pointless quest for some mythic Greater Albania, the people would be better served by a serious commitment to civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law within their current boundaries.
But for Heaven's sake, everybody else -- NATO, the UN, Russia -- just get out of there. Nothing you can do will help in the long run, and in the short run you're just feeding resentments and providing raw meat for another generation of demagogues.
An essay by a Serbian human-rights activist, writing under the name Xena Begovic to protect relatives still in Serbia, argues for exactly the opposite conclusion: that what is required is military administration of the entire Balkan area by the European Union for an indefinite period -- essentially a return to the Good Old Days of the Habsburgs, but with Thoroughly Modern Eurocrats taking the place of the more elegantly-dressed 19th-century Austrian aristocracy.
I regard this as a shortsighted counsel of despair, and believe that the people of the Balkans -- like ordinary people everywhere -- are substantially superior in both common sense and tolerance to the politicians who "lead" them. And in any case I do not believe that you can force a youth to grow up by treating him like a child until he turns 30. But the reader is invited to study the Begovic essay and decide for himself.
One additional point not mentioned elsewhere in this essay is that the unprovoked NATO attack on Yugoslavia is quite clearly contrary to both international and US law, and in effect converts NATO from a defensive alliance to an aggressive world policeman for the Western powers. This has been condemned by observers from every point on the political spectrum, from left to right. Typical is this paragraph from the April 19 issue of The Nation, a magazine of the left:
With this intervention the Administration and NATO have abrogated many treaties and obligations of international law: Article 2 of the UN Charter prohibiting the use of force against sovereign states not engaged in outside aggression, for instance; the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties forbidding the use of force to compel any state to sign an international agreement; and the Helsinki Accord Final Act guaranteeing the boundaries of European states. Throw in the failure to invoke the War Powers Act and the constitutional requirement for a Congressional declaration of war. Such concerns are not just legal niceties; this "intervention" has established new parameters for the United States and NATO to make war without any of the checks and balances provided by US law, international agreements or even the realpolitik of the Security Council. Wars without borders, figurative or literal.
Balkan Timeline
Sometimes history can become incurable. -- The Economist, March 27, 1999
Based on ABC News' history timeline in their background coverage on the Balkans.
Additional information and comments added by CG, who takes responsibility for any errors, omissions, and misinterpretations. Other sources used include:
- Croatia -- Darko Zubrinic's history pages. Mr.
Zubrinic wishes me to emphasize that the views he expresses in these pages are solely his
own, and that he neither represents nor is supported by any organization or individual
other than himself.
- Serbia -- Articles in The Rockford Institute's
magazine Chronicles by Dr. Alex N. Dragnich, a Serbian-American professor
of Political Science.
The Historical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts has a number of papers emphasizing the importance of Kosovo in Serbian culture and history and discussing the demographic history of the area.
The Srpska-Mreza Bookstore has several books on Kosovo online, including a particularly interesting summary of Serbian history in the 13th and 14th centuries.
- Krajina Serbs -- Srpska history page.
- Bosnia -- Bosnian history page at CalTech.
The Muslim Minorities page of MuslimsOnLine reprises anti-Muslim atrocities during the recent fighting.
- Albania -- The history page
at www.albania.co.uk
The US Library of Congress' Country Study on Albania
Dr. S.S. Juka's The Albanians in Yugoslavia offers a detailed historical discussion of the Albanian presence in the Kosovo area.
- Deciphering the Balkan Enigma --
a detailed historical and strategic discussion by Dr. William T. Johnsen of the US Army War College.
In addition to having a doctorate in history, Dr. Johnsen is a retired infantry officer, so this fascinating study
is somewhat more reality-connected than we usually expect from academics.
- Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History by Steven W. Sowards of Michigan State University Libraries -- historical and economic analysis, including a detailed discussion of Ottoman feudal organization and almost a play-by-play account of the 19th century. The last of these lectures provides an excellent summary of the background of events from 1985 to 1995.
These are hardly exhaustive, of course. Any expert on Balkan history who wishes to comment or suggest additional substantive, relatively objective Balkan history links, please write to me. It is unfortunately easy to find special pleading on the Web, since events and demagoguery on all sides have so polarized the region.
The Srpska, Bosnia, and Croatia sites mentioned above, for example, each present the case for their own ethnic claim to the Bosnia region and conveniently omit historical facts relevant to the claims of the others. [sigh....]
Thanks to Stojan Ratkovic, Darko Zubrinic, and others for suggestions. Again, CG takes full responsibility for errors and omissions.
Inset maps courtesy of the BBC.
165BC King Gentius ("of pathetic memory") of Illyria is defeated
by Rome and brought to Rome as a captive. The Balkan
region becomes a Roman dependency.
395AD Rome splits into east and west; Illyria under Byzantine
rule.
ca 500-700AD Southern Slavic tribes invade Illyrian territory
from the north and assimilate Illyrian tribes throughout
the northern and western Balkans. The Slovenes arrive
first, followed by the Bulgars, Serbs, and Croats in
the 600s.
Southeastern tribes (including the Albanoi, for whom
modern Albania is named) drive them back, avoiding
assimilation and maintaining their language.
The Albanians are tough.
ca 550AD Emperor Justinian I creates a definitive compilation of the
laws of Rome. The Codex Justiniensis remains the basis of
most European legal systems ("Roman law") today.
Justinian is an Illyrian from the Albanian region.
732 Byzantine emperor Leo III detaches the Albanian church from
the Pope, placing it under the patriarch of Constantinople.
879 The Pope recognizes Croatia.
924 Bulgaria occupies Serbia. Serbian refugees granted asylum
by King Tomislav of Croatia, one of the most powerful monarchs
in Europe, with forces consisting of 100,000 infantry and 60,000
cavalry, plus a navy of 180 ships.
1054 The Roman Catholic Pope in Rome and the Greek Patriarch in
Constantinople finally split over issues of doctrinal
authority, dividing the church into Orthodox and Catholic.
1172 Stephan Nemanja of Raska overthrows Byzantine rule and
unites with the less-developed principality of Zeta to
form the first Serbian state.
1199 Bosnia leaves the Catholic fold for the Bogomil heresy, which rejects
icons and elaborate rituals:
It was ... in Bosnia that their greatest development took place.
In the twelfth century they were already very numerous there,
and spread to Spalato and Dalmatia. Here they came into conflict
with the Roman Catholic Church. The title of the rulers of
Bosnia was Ban, the most eminent of these being Kulin Ban. In
1180 this ruler was addressed by the Pope as a faithful adherent
of the Church, but by 1199 it was acknowledged that he and his
wife and family and ten thousand Bosnians had joined the Bogomil
or Patarene heresy, otherwise churches of believers, in Bosnia.
Minoslav, Prince of the Herzegovina, took the same stand, as did
also the Roman Catholic Bishop of Bosnia. The country ceased to
be Catholic and experienced a time of prosperity that has
remained proverbial ever since. There were no priests, or rather
the priesthood of all believers was acknowledged. The churches
were guided by elders who were chosen by lot, several in each
church, an overseer (called grandfather), and ministering
brethren called leaders and elders. Meetings could be held in
any house and the regular meeting-places were quite plain, no
bells, no altar, only a table, on which might be a white cloth
and a copy of the Gospels. -- Pilgrim Church
Many Albanians were also Bogomili (from the Bulgarian for "beloved of
God") at this time, and it has been hypothesized that the persecution
from both Rome and Constantinople (and later Dushan's Serbian Empire)
led these Bogomili to convert to Islam more readily than the Orthodox
Serbs.
1217 First internationally recognized Serbian kingdom.
ca 1300 By this time, the Orthodox Serbs have developed a rich
medieval kingdom, with a traveling court, a literature and an
opulent artistic tradition. By midcentury, the Serbian Empire
stretches from the Sava to the Aegean.
1332 Father Brocardus (Gulielmus Adae, a French Dominican, Archbishop
of Antebari) remarks that "The [Catholic] Albanoi are oppressed
under the intolerable and very hard servitude of the most hateful
and abominable lordship of the [Orthodox] Slavs because they are
overburdened with taxes, their clergy is lowered and humbled, their
bishops and abbots often imprisoned, their monastery and priests
lost and destroyed, their nobles deprived of their possessions".
-- Juka
ca 1360 Tvrtko I ascends to the throne of Bosnia, centered on the
source of the Bosna River and extending beyond the boundaries
of modern Bosnia-Herzegovina into Serbia and Montenegro.
1388 The Turks invade Albania.
1389 The Battle of Kosovo, where Serbs, aided by Croats, Bosnians,
and Albanians, lose to the Turks. It is essentially
the last time in history that the Serbs, the Croats, the
Bosnians, and the Albanians cooperate on anything.
Although the Turks win, the battle at least slows them
down; it takes three-quarters of a century for them to
reach Croatia.
1443 Gjergj Kastrioti (Skanderbeg) drives the Turks out of
Albania.
1453 The Turks capture Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire falls
under Ottoman rule.
1463 The Turks invade Croatia. Over the next two centuries,
more than two million Croats are either driven into
exile or taken as slaves to Turkey.
1506 The Turks retake Albania.
1580 The Turks form the Bosnian Eyalet (Pashadom), covering the whole
territory of the present Bosnia & Herzegovina, parts of Slavonija
and Banija, Lika and Krbava, large parts of Dalmatia, as well
as parts of present western and southwestern Serbia and western
and northern Montenegro, essentially the same areas as had been
under the rule of king Tvrtko I. (from a Bosnian history site,
credited to BosNET archives)
Dalmatia, by the way, refers to the Adriatic coast north of
Montenegro. Throughout this period, most of Dalmatia was
controlled by Venice, which in turn was part of the Habsburg
(Austrian) Empire.
1585 Pope Sixto V (1521-1590) elected. His mother is Italian,
his father a Croat from the Montenegro area. He begins
the construction of the Vatican Library.
1683 The Turkish army ranges north to besiege Vienna. Their
Balkan subjects consider the regime oppressive and
cruel. (Duh! Not really! -- verbatim from ABC)
1690 A failed Serbian revolt prompts 70,000 Serbs to migrate from
Turkish-dominated Serbia to Hapsburg Croatia under the
leadership of Patriarch Arsenije III. Their descendants
become the "Krajina" Serbs who remain in Croatia along the
Bosnian border today.
1736 Second migration to Krajina: about 140,000 Serbs led by
Patriarch Arsenije IV move into Croatia. The Turks begin
to push more and more Albanian tribes into Kosovo.
1739 Treaty of Belgrade between Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman
Empire establishes the River Sava as the boundary between
Croatia (on the Austrian side) and Bosnian Pashadom.
1766 Turks abolish the Serbian Patriarchate. Increasing Albanian
conversion to Islam. Albanians act more and more frequently as
surrogates and allies of the Turks in local conflicts.
1776 Book I of Gibbon's Decline and Fall ... published. He
describes the Balkans:
"Dalmatia, to which the name of Illyricum more properly
belonged, was a long, but narrow tract, between the Save and
the Adriatic. The best part of the sea-coast, which still
retains its ancient appellation, is a province of the Venetian
state, and the seat of the little republic of Ragusa. The
inland parts have assumed the Sclavonian names of Croatia and
Bosnia; the former obeys an Austrian governor, the latter a
Turkish pacha; but the whole country is still infested by
tribes of barbarians, whose savage independence irregularly
marks the doubtful limit of the Christian and Mahometan power.
"... On the right hand of the Danube, Maesia, which, during the
middle ages, was broken into the barbarian kingdoms of Servia
and Bulgaria, is again united in Turkish slavery."
1804 The Serbian population of the Belgrade region, with sporadic
Russian support, starts an insurrection against their Turkish
masters that lasts until 1815, the year Napoleon is defeated at
Waterloo. With Napoleon out of the way, the Turks worry that
Russia might again intervene and make Serbia autonomous.
A detailed discussion and analysis of this insurrection
can be found in Lecture 5 of a series on Balkan history
by Steven Sowards of Michigan State University.
1817 Karageorge (or "Black George," the leader of the 1804
insurrection) returns to Serbia and is murdered by Milos
Obrenovic, his erstwhile friend and fellow revolutionary.
Milos has the rebel's head stuffed and sent to Istanbul.
This treachery begins the Obrenovic -- Karadjordjevic family rivalry
that plagues Serbia for the rest of the century. Obrenovic is
regarded as merely a "Christian Pasha" by most Serbs, and
unquestionably deserves to be known as Serbia's first real
Politician.
1833 Prince Milos Obrenovic is awarded the nahijas of Jadar, Radevina
and Stari Vlah as a reward for his faithful service to the Sultan
during the uprising of Captain Husein Gradascevic [establishing]
the borders between Serbia and Bosnia [on] the river Drina. (from
the Bosnian source. Send the Sultan a rebel head and get control
of more Serbian territory...)
1844 A year after Ilija Garasanin becomes Minister of Internal Affairs
for the Serbian state, he issues a secret memo called the
Nacertanije ("Program"), outlining his plans to seize
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and northern Albania, all Turkish
possessions with Serbian inhabitants, forming a Greater Serbia.
1878 Albanian League founded in Prizren, Kosovo. Its goals include
unification of all Albanian territories -- including Kosovo
-- into one autonomous state within the framework of the
Ottoman Empire. Serbian historian Jovan Cvijic estimated
in 1913 that between 1876 and 1912 about 150,000 Serbs were
forced to leave Kosovo.
Anti-Serbian atrocities in Kosovo reported by French and
British diplomats during last quarter of the century.
1878 The same year, Serbia and Montenegro receive their independence
from the Ottoman Empire by the terms of the Treaty of San
Stefano, which ended the Russo-Turkish War.
1889 Plans for Croatian participation in the 500th anniversary commemoration
of the Battle of Kosovo Polje are suppressed by Austria-Hungary. In
spite of Habsburg censorship, though, Obzor (The Horizon, Zagreb)
on June 27th manages to print:
Whoever among the Serbs rose up to lead whatever part of his
people to freedom, he always appeared with the wreath of Kosovo
around his head to say with a full voice: This, O people, is what
we are, what we want, and what we can do. And we Croatians
-- brothers by blood desire with the Serbs -- today shout for joy:
Praise to the eternal Serbian Kosovo heroes who with their
blood made certain that the desire for freedom and glory would
never die. Glory to them and to that people who gave them birth.
1903 Coup-d'état in Serbia:
On a June night in 1903, twenty-eight conspirators [junior
officers in the Serbian Army] assembled at the Belgrade Officers
Club, then marched to the palace. Other conspirator unlocked the
gates, seized the telephone and telegraph offices, and confined
civilian politicians to their homes. The plotters blew the
locked doors off the royal bedroom with dynamite, then cornered
the [Obrenovic] king and queen behind some curtains, where the
plotters shot them 48 times, hacked them with swords, and threw
the bodies off a balcony. Within days the parliament was restored,
and Peter Karageorgevic (Alexander's son) became king. The appalling
violence of the crime was condemned across Europe, but was
popular in Serbia. -- Sowards
1906 The Pig War, an economic showdown between Austria-Hungary
and Serbia, begins and lasts until 1911. In an attempt to crush
Serbia's economy, Austria-Hungary refuses to buy any livestock
from Serbia. Serbians quickly open new trade with Egypt, Greece,
Turkey and Germany, and their economy booms. The Pig War
contributes to the tension between Serbia and Austria-Hungary
that starts World War I.
1910 Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu born in Skopje, Yugoslavia (now Macedonia).
Her parents, Nikola and Dronda Bojaxhiu, were Albanians who settled
in Skopje shortly after the beginning of the century. Eighteen years
later she will become a nun, and eventually become world-famous for
her work among the poor as Mother Theresa.
1912 Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria cooperate to attack
the Turks and throw them out of Macedonia and much of Thrace in
the First Balkan War. Most Albanians fight on the side
of the Turks.
1913 Greece, Serbia and Romania fight the Second Balkan War
with Bulgaria over the spoils of the First Balkan War.
Victorious Serbia increases its territory by 82 percent, a great
stride toward Garasanin's vision of a Greater Serbia. Serbian
attention now turns north to Austrian-ruled Bosnia and Croatia.
[This is verbatim from the ABC page. It may be accurate, but
it is phrased in strongly anti-Serb tones. Comments?]
The August 1913 Treaty of Bucharest established that independent
Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about
28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of
800,000. Montenegro, whose tribesmen had resorted to terror,
mass murder, and forced conversion in territories it coveted,
had to surrender Shkodar. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an
ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw
from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas
with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western
Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the
region's nationality problems. -- Library of Congress: Albania
1914 Great-power involvement in the Balkans causes World War I.
Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after the assassination
of an Archduke by a Serbian patriot. Russia is allied with
Serbia, so the Czar declares war on Austria-Hungary. Germany
is allied with Austria-Hungary against Russia, so.... France
is allied with Russia against Germany, so.... Britain is allied
with France, so.... The Balkans didn't "explode" to cause the
war; Europe imploded.
1917 World War I ends; Yugoslavia is formed.
Once the war ended and the Italian threat receded, the rivalry
between Croats and Serbs revived. Serbian leaders retained a
vision of a centralized country united around Serbia, as
described in the Nacertanije and painfully pursued in
past wars and crises. They had little understanding for Ljudevit
Gaj's Illyrianism, Croatian Yugoslavism, or the Croatian
experience of Magyar domination, which underlay demands for
federalism and autonomy... In 1921, when a national assembly
adopted a centralist constitution based on that of pre-war
Serbia. The voting followed ethnic lines: although the election
was fair and democratic, it set a bad precedent because the
voting amounted to a tyranny of the majority. -- Sowards
According to documents provided at the Versailles Peace
Conference, Yugoslavia suffered 1,900,000 deaths (from
all causes) during World War I. Of the 705,343 men Serbia
mobilized during the war, 369,815 were killed or died of
wounds. This represented nearly one-half of the young
male population -- a demographic disaster that continues
to plague Serbia. -- Balkan Enigma
1928 A Serbian Radical Party delegate pulls a revolver during a
debate on the floor of the Skupstina (the Yugoslav parliament),
fatally wounding three Croatian deputies, including Stjepan
Radic, the leader of the Croatian independence movement.
1941 Nazi Germany invades Yugoslavia and is welcomed by the
Croatians, who set up a puppet government run by the fascist
Ustasha. The Ustasha attempts to drive Serbs from Croatia by
forced conversion, deportation or execution. They are credited
with calling this process of ethnic repression "cleansing."
Serbs, Jews and Communists went to death camps patterned on the
German model, the largest of which was Jasenovac... Croatian
apologists state that only 60,000 persons died in these camps;
Serbian detractors claim as many as a million; the figure of
600,000 is accepted by many historians... Many German and
Italian officers in the area regarded the Croatian fascist state
and its activities with distaste: refugees who reached the
Italian-occupied coast generally escaped further persecution.
-- Sowards
Some Muslims join Ustasha groups to massacre Serbs. Serbs fight
back fiercely in "Chetnik" guerrilla groups and Communist bands
against the Ustasha, each other and the Nazis until the end of
World War II.
October 1941 Chetnick leader Col. Draza Mihailovic meets with 
Communist leader Josip Broz Tito, but they cannot agree on who
is in charge. The two competing resistance groups battle each
other as well as the Germans. [Tito was born in 1892 in
Croatia to a Croat mother and a Slovenian father.]
1945 World War II ends.
Total casualties came to approximately 1.7 million dead out of a
population of 16 million. The numbers of wounded and maimed can
only be guessed. Coupled with the massive losses sustained in
World War I, two generations of Yugoslavs effectively had been
wiped out. Continuous fighting decimated the agricultural and
industrial infrastructure of the Yugoslav economy. More
importantly, perhaps, were the scars left by the ideological
civil war, with its intense ethnic and religious overtones,
waged by communists, royalists, and ultranationalists that
helped set the stage for the ongoing wars in the former
Yugoslavia. -- Balkan Enigma
Envoi
Why can't everybody just leave everybody else the hell alone? -- Jimmy Durante Demagogue, n.: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be false to men he knows to be idiots. -- H.L. Mencken
Who the hell are you to be telling us what to do? You have no idea what they did to us / how we feel / what they would do to each other if we left.
Quite right, I'm nobody in particular. I'm just a libertarian who still believes, in spite of decades of disappointment and piles of evidence to the contrary, in the power of persuasion over the power of force.
And I'm a guy who got up this beautiful Easter morning in north Alabama, looked at the trees budding outside, and watched my young son's eyes get big as he opened his mouth to bite the ears off the enormous chocolate Easter bunny in his basket. And it occurred to me that, allowing for differences in local flora and holidays, I was doing all that any man on the planet has ever really wanted to do.
It also occurred to me -- again -- that the one thing throughout history
that the colonels and khans and vizirs and viscounts and senators and
sultans and barons and bureaucrats and pashas and presidents and princes
and potentates have never, ever been willing to do is just leave people
alone to make their own livings and raise their own families and solve
their own problems in peace.
And I realized that the Creator of my beloved rolling hills and your beloved rugged mountains doesn't care a bit about Greater Albania or Greater Serbia or The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere or Regional Autonomy or Patriotic Monuments or The Grand Old Flag or even Taxation Without Representation, nor about any of the other nonsense being spouted by some psychopath behind a podium. He has something much more important to worry about: You.
Hristos voskrese! Happy Easter. Pray for peace.
Computer guru Craig Goodrich lives in a house in the woods in Elkmont,
with his wife, two children, and four cats. He is a
member of the Libertarian Party of Alabama,
a smoker, and a gun owner.