Anybody Else Hear That??

Oh no not again. What will it take to stop them from hating? :(

Ah, the Balkans.

Having grown up nearby, I've always kept an eye on the Balkans situation. So naturally, I was a bit shocked when I saw that tempers are running high again. My reaction was, largely, the same as that of Lt Col P. Except, having a bit of a feel for how people on the Balkans think, I tended to gravitate towards option (2).

My thesis is that we're gravely misunderstanding the Balkans. Here's why.

We tend to believe that there was, or at least is supposed to be, a steady progress form abnormality to normality, from war to peace, and that the current peace is 'normal'. It is, most emphatically, not. Great store is set in the Balkans' success, because it would be an example proving that humanitarian intervention does not, by necessity, have to result in a failed state and absolute disaster, and thus be the prototype of Coalition success in stabilising Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe that this political importance colours our judgment of what's going on in what used to be Yugoslavia, and we're consistently misinterpreting a simmering conflict for peace.

It's not a difficult mistake to make. Walk through the streets of Belgrade, Sarajevo or Dubrovnik, and you'll find a scenery not much less normal than your average English or American urban life, complete with McDonald's (at least in Belgrade - I didn't find one in Sarajevo, to no great regret though ;). We assume that what looks like normal 'here' is normal 'there'.

Except, it is not. Walk through the same streets, and every male you see in the age range 30-60 is potentially someone who has done something terrible during the war and got away with it. Civil wars are considerably messier than wars between states - you go back to live next door to your former enemy. A few of the more prominent war criminals have been sent to the Hague, some have been dealt with domestically, but the overwhelming majority got away because the new governments of the successor states summarily eschewed witch hunts for former war criminals, so as not to be weakened by sectarianism right at the start. There's a lot of hurt among those people, and reconciliation and justice has been traded for peace and a semblance of Western normality. That's a big gamble - it supposes that the attractions of Western style wealth, welfare and liberty are worth forgetting about the past altogether. But as most Eastern European post-Communist democracies show, promises of the Western lifestyle wear thin after about a decade - so by the mid-noughties, the same old hatred and unresolved conflicts started to emerge. And memories in Eastern Europe are long, very long.

The Balkans problem is a complex one - religious, ethnic, cultural, economic. It is also not the sort of problem that goes away - in some way or another, it has been going on for the last five hundred years. I'd love to see this pan out well and without bloodshed, but I'm afraid the odds for that are far from betting odds.

Chris- you're the one on the scene, so you likely have the best perspective on things, especially compared to those of use who look on from across the pond. The length of time for which the unrest has moved between all-out war and uneasy peace is enormous. Memories do not fade in the Balkans. I too believe LtCol P's option 2 is the correct choice.

In the COIN world, the current buzzword of choice is "culture". The U.S. feeds its troops a constant diet of attempts at cultural understanding. However, this approach fails to incorporate a method to allow an American trooper the ability to view an issue through the target culture's eyes. For example, how difficult would it be to see the world through Bishop Komarica's eyes (p.3 of the linked article).

While it may be easy for VP Biden to stroll over and state its time to put aside your differences, such paternally patronizing statements will likely result in an increase in sectarian division. Ultimately, each of the three ethnic groups will seek a patron of international standing. Sound/look familiar????

You cannot legislate away hate. Like Israel and the Palestinians, these people really dislike each other and will not be happy until one dominates the other.
In one sense they are solving the problem themselves. Let them all move to an area where their culture is dominant. They they will either learn to live as friendly neighbors or declare war and destroy themselves.

the memories are long, indeed, in Balkans.
Not only Balkanian christians suffered from the muslims of the Ottoman Empire, the much recent history does not endear Balkanian muslims to Balkanian christians, either: Bosnian muslims joined the Ustashi (Croatian nazi) and 20,000 Bosnian Muslim volounteers were put under the Waffen SS command; both groups were mercilessly hunting and killing off non-catholic christians and Jews during 1941-1945. Croat and German sources estimate that 770,000 Orthodox Christian Serbs, 60,000 Jews, and 25,000 Gypsies were murdered in the reign of horror - the worst genocide during World War II in proportion to a nation's population.
http://prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Clubs_Ustashi.Islam
or you can check wikipedia.
"grave misunderstanding of the Balkans" is a grave understatement.

Does this mean we can re-open Taszar? That was a fun place to be.

JP,

Admittedly, I have been distracted, but I haven't heard a word about this here CONUS-side. Nowhere. All have been bewailing the passing of Teddy Kennedy - Hero of the Chappaquidick.

Thanks for sounding the alarm.

S/f,

D5 sends