The coup that restored democracy

Milosevic’s exit has taught the comity of nations an oft-repeated lesson. In the post-Cold War era, there are limits to using economic (that is, embargo) and military prowess. National pride overruns any international diktat and internecine forces can tumble any castle sans chinks and fissures. This lesson is the positive outcome of the long haul Balkan tragedy.

Despite the posturing of armchair NATO strategists, sanctions ruined the Serbian economy as much as communism and the mafia did. While Milosevic stashed his jingling pennies in subterranean vaults, the Serb middle classes were isolated and impoverished. And Milosevic met his waterloo in advancing the presidential election scheduled for 2001. When the democratic opposition led by Kostunica, a diehard Serb nationalist, polled 57 per cent, provincial Serbs, urban radicals, the army and police refused to annul the result. The revolution of the masses began and the true arbiters of power, the army, unshackled their fetters. It was a coup to restore democracy.

Allies of Milosevic have abandoned parleys on a temporary administration for Serbia, the dominant republic within Yugoslavia. Supporters of Kostunica have accused socialists and ultra-nationalist radicals of obstructing a peaceful transition to democracy. If Milosevic paid back in his own coin, Kostunica has miles to go. For behind NATO’s Tomahawk missiles and the Belgrade uprising was another cataclysm. Milosevic’s stride to power began by protecting Serbs against Albanian atrocities in Kosovo. He was instrumental in ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from Bosnia and Kosovo. The Hague tribunal has already indicted Milosevic for these `war crimes’ though President Kostunica has refused to hand over his predecessor for trial.

But what catapulted Milosevic to backtrack Yugoslavia to the dark ages was the doublespeak and opportunism of the West that encouraged Balkan fascism. The genocidal cleansing of 250,000 Krajina Serbs and NATO’s supervision of Kosovo Liberation Army cadres only enhanced the Serbs’ inherent fear. The average Serb bitterly hated NATO as much he ferociously detested Milosevic. The purges always follow a revolution. A war-ravaged Serbia would halt regeneration of the Balkan peninsula. And a Serbia on the brink of disintegration can always threaten to destabilise Bosnia and Kosovo. A democratic though unstable Serbia is a better bet. Peace in the Balkans has a chance after the mass uprising in Belgrade.

In this hour of Yugoslav glory, few remember that Kostunica was one of the most vociferous critics of NATO bombing across Belgrade. The leader the West is now banking upon to metamorphose a tattered Yugoslav policy and comparing to Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel is no great reformist. A flashback into the past shows Kostunica as an orthodox Serb nationalist who vehemently protested Milosevic’s signature of the Dayton accords as mere buckling under the pressure of western imperialism. As an opposition leader, Kostunica remained a silent spectator to the Kosovo conflict and termed it "America’s private war". The new president has to prove his Serbian credentials foremost if he is to survive in the quagmire of Balkan politics. For the miasma left behind by communism has been further infected by intervention.