Tresy,
I can scarcely believe your campaign to vilify the Serbs, victims of
clear NATO atrocities, on this venue.  In your defense against some very
well reasoned objections to your demonization campaign, you respond by
essentially conflating the situation in Bosnia with the situation in
Kosovo, which is really apples and oranges.  The situation in Bosnia,
while relatively reprehensible, was in the first place fomented by
agents of German and other interested Western imperialisms, just as was
the situation in Slovenia and Croatia which preceded it, and the
situation in Kosovo which followed it.  But more to the point, the
criminal bombing of Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure was never in
any way laid at the door of Serbian behavior in Bosnia, even by the
perpetrators, only at grossly exaggerated Serb behavior in Kosovo, where
they were basically defending themselves against the terrrorism of a
narco-terrorist outfit called the KLA.  You have apparently no
historical background in this struggle, or you could not defend NATO's
aggression as you do.  I put it to you that you are posting your
tendentious arguments on the wrong venue.

Peace,
Ken Freeland


"Given that democratic countries have free and independent media,
President Clinton's visit to Kosovo on November 23, would be a golden
opportunity to take stock of the US-lead Western policies to bring peace
to the region. Here is a selection of questions with some media
advisory. In other words, if I imagine I had been granted an interview
as a journalist, this is what I would focus on," says TFF director Jan
Oberg.


(1) Mr. President, US warplanes bombed Yugoslavia and the Kosovo
province with you as the  Chief Commander of US forces. Does it worry
you that the whole campaign was justified and conducted on the basis of
what has turned out to be grossly mistaken or falsified information
about a genocide planned by Belgrade?

[During the campaign, President Clinton, Secretary Cohen, and Secretary
Albright are on record with figures of between 10.000 and 100.000
missing and probably killed in consequence of the alleged plan by
Milosevic, Operation Horseshoe. However, the Hague Tribunal has recently
revealed that, so far, 2.108 bodies have been identified - of more than
one ethnicity and dead from different causes; in short, not all
Albanians massacred by Serbs. From a human point, of course, this is a
great relief. But it raises serious issues as to of the information and
intelligence basis on which decisions with far-reaching consequences are
made. And it begs the question: what is world public opinion informed
about and what not, and who produces information for what purposes].

(2) What are your thoughts by the fact that NATO, with your country in
the lead, killed at least 2.000 innocent civilians in Serbia due to
stray missiles and bombs? You have apologised to the Chinese people for
bombing their embassy. Did you consider the possibility personally to
apologise to the relatives or, for instance, pay a compensation of some
kind? And how do you feel about the indictment of you, your Secretaries
and all other NATO leaders to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal?

[For the indictment of NATO leaders, see
http://www.transnational.org/features/Indictment_of_NATO.html. For the
indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for, among other things, being
responsible for the death of more than 300 people during the Kosovo war,
see http://www.transnational.org/features/indicted.html ]

(3) Mr. President, the American Camp Bondsteel here at which you
celebrate Thanksgiving Day with your soldiers, is said to be the largest
US military facility the US has built from the ground-up since Vietnam.
I have three questions about it: a) what long term strategic aims does
this huge investment serve, and b) how is it possible to build such a
facility on territory which, according to concurrent legal judgment -
and all UN resolutions - belongs to the sovereign, recognised state of
Yugoslavia whose integrity you are also obliged to respect? And c) are
you not sending a very strong signal that Kosovo's future status is
somehow already settled by fait accompli?

[Camp Bondsteel is described in a November 22 Christian Science Monitor
article - http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/11/22/fp1s2-csm.shtml.
(Check archives, perhaps) It is gigantic: 775 acres, costs US $ 36.6
million, has every convenience and facility needed for its 6.300 US
soldiers, including two chapels and a mobile Burger King; the way it is
constructed is said to be indicative of a multi-year engagement and
wider-than-Kosovo aims].

(4) It is hardly wrong to say that the US was sympathetic to the plight
of the Albanians and cultivated the leaders of the Kosovo Liberation
Army, LDK/UCK, such as the present self-appointed prime minister of this
province, Mr. Hacim Thaci. Are you disappointed by the fact that these
allies of yours - I think we can call them that since KLA and NATO
helped each other -  are also responsible for an ethnic cleansing policy
that has driven 234.000 legitimate non-Albanian citizens out of the
province, according to UNHCR figures? If so, what do you do now during
your visit to put enough pressure on Hacim Thaci and his military and
civilian colleagues to ensure that you can say what you said about the
Albanian refugees in Macedonia and Kosovo: we are going to bring them
back to a safe environment.

(5) I have a follow-up to that with a somewhat different angle:
according to the UN mandate that KFOR, UNMIK, OSCE operate on, Kosovo's
citizens and their multi-ethnic composition should be protected.
However, the 234.000 have left under the very eyes of these missions
being present on the ground. I am sure that you, as the single most
responsible leader, regret this failure, given that this is the biggest
and most heavily armed peacekeeping mission ever - and the ultimate test
of NATO in that role. In which ways does America and its NATO and UN
allies intend to change the structure and function of the entire Kosovo
operation before it decays beyond repair?

(6) Mr. President, in every speech you have held also on this tour, you
emphasise human rights, general humanitarian concerns and freedom. Now,
there are almost 1 million refugees in Serbia - many more in fact than
there were Kosovo-Albanian refugees in Macedonia and Albania. They have
fled from Croatia, Bosnia and now Kosovo, driven away for exactly the
same reasons you stated repeatedly at the time about the Albanian
victims: "not because of anything they have done, but because of who
they are." Yugoslavia and Serbia is in deep crisis because of political
blunders and economic mismanagement, that is true, but also because of
NATO's destruction and many years of sanctions and exclusion from the
international community. A humanitarian catastrophe cannot be excluded
this winter. How do you reconcile your personal  commitment to humanism
and moral leadership with actively preventing that THESE human beings
are helped? Do you see any historical evidence that this is the way to
overthrow authoritarian leaders?

(7) In your own speeches before the bombing campaign, you emphasised
that a major goal apart from stopping a genocide was to create stability
in the Balkan region. I think quite a few diplomats and security experts
would agree that neither Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, nor
Bosnia and Croatia for that matter, are more secure now than before
March 24. Rather, less so. I think many would be grateful for your
guidance as to where and when the Balkan situation has improved in any
proportion to the political, moral, military and economic investment we
have made here?

(8) Do you intend to compensate, one way or another, Macedonia and
Albania for America's/NATO's use of their territory and facilities? I
mean in more substantial terms than "keeping the door open" for later -
much later - membership of NATO?

(9) You have stated time and again, Mr. President, that you are proud
that America intervened both in Bosnia and here. And it did so, for
sure, forcefully and with determination - so much so, it seems, that EU
countries are now starting a 'turbo-militarization' with aims such as
military-industrial and -political integration, common policies, EU-WEU
fusion - in short, big steps towards a European army. The reason? They
think they looked timid compared with America! They want to be able to
fix problems in their own backyard. Now, I think I am not offending
anyone by saying that the United States of America has antagonised the
Chinese and the Russians a bit - NATO expansion, the Ballistic Missile
Defence plans, the Test Ban policy, bombing of Yugoslavia, the failed
economic aid, the oil pipeline agreement you just signed in Istanbul,
Georgia's future NATO membership, the 'noise' about Chechenya... - well,
you know the list much better, of course. Do you also sometimes feel
that the US has taken the lead to such an extent that it has antagonised
its European friends and that this could backfire, that they are now
somehow turning away from the Atlantic dimension. Even Tony Blair's UK
seems to want Europe to become more and more of a super power and less
dependent on the US?

(10) Finally - and you have been extremely generous with your time - I
would like to ask you a question that has only indirect bearings on the
Balkans. Wherever you go you promote human rights, freedom and
democracy. I am sure that the right to privacy and freedom of speech is
absolutely essential central in your thinking. Therefore, I can't help
asking you: how come the US has developed technology that permits it to
listen and automatically register not only e-mail and fax traffic
worldwide but also - now - the human voice as we speak on phones with
each other. It is done by your National Security Agency, but - sorry if
you think this is a naive question - does the United States HAVE to feel
so insecure? I relate it also to the fact that US defence for the year
2000 will be more than three times greater than the combined military
spending of China, Russia, and the rogue states Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Libya, North Korea and Cuba?

[The tapping of communication was reported recently by the Independent -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/Digital/Features/spies151199.shtml.
The military expenditure figures were reported by The Christian Science
Monitor (check archives, perhaps) at
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/11/04/fp1s1-csm.shtm ]

"Well, only carefully chosen people get the opportunity to ask the
President of the United States questions. But we can ask ourselves
questions and ponder the answers - such as: why on earth are questions
like these not asked by those who do get the chance? And why are they
not analysed and debated MUCH MORE in your local and in our global
media?

Philip Knightly has stated that war's first victim is truth. Peace
researcher Johan Galtung maintains that complex understanding is its
second victim. It seems to me that war's third victim is
self-criticism - and thus we prevent ourselves from learning about the
real motives behind wars as well as the alternatives to war," ends TFF's
director.



© TFF 1999

You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item,
but please retain the source.


-----Original Message-----
From: The philosophy, work & influences of Noam Chomsky
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Tresy Kilbourne
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 1999 9:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CHOMSKY] Milosevic's Willing Executioners


Every time I read one of Andrej's nauseating attempts to portray his
countrymen as victims, I am reminded of this article. Ironic that
despite
his vituperative denunciations of 'anti-Serb propaganda," the best
anti-Serb
PR comes from his own mouth.

'Central to this mindset is the notion that the Serbs, and only the
Serbs,
are the true victims in the Balkans.'

MILOSEVIC'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS

Milosevic's Willing Executioners

by Stacy Sullivan

Maybe we do have a quarrel with the Serbian people.

In the spring of 1996, as eastern Bosnia's frozen ground was beginning
to
thaw, a photographer and I drove to Kamenica, a village in Republika
Srpska,
the Serb-run enclave that was carved out of Bosnia by Serbian ethnic
cleansing and later given juridical existence by the 1995 Dayton peace
accord. We had been told that Kamenica was the place where Bosnian Serb
forces had killed many of the 7,000 Bosnian Muslims who were missing
after
the Serbs overran the U.N.-protected enclave of Srebrenica the previous
summer.

We veered off the main road through the village onto a dirt path that
led
into rolling green hills. A few minutes later, we found ourselves
standing
on a grassy hillside littered with human bones. Nearly eight months had
passed since the men from Srebrenica were killed, and none of the Serbs
of
Kamenica had thought to bury them. Tennis shoes and woolen socks still
hugged skeletal feet. A stretcher made of a blanket and two wooden
sticks
lay on the ground; the wounded man who had lain on it was now an inta ct
skeleton, still dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. Skulls, vertebrae,
arms,
legs, rib cages, rubber boots, bits of clothing, and ID cards were
everywhere. And, in a thorny bush at the bottom of the hill, we found an
old
Polaroid of four men--all presumably victims--laughing and sharing a
bottle
of beer.

As we walked among the dead, two Serb farmers drove past us on a
tractor,
the tires of their vehicle narrowly missing a corpse that still lay
right in
the path. They seemed not to notice. A few minutes later, two more young
Serb men walked by. I asked them if they knew what had happened on the
hill.
They shrugged their shoulders and told us that they had been on vacation
in
Austria during the summer of 1995.

Ever since that encounter, I have been struggling to understand what
these
men could have been thinking. Even before the current slaughter in
Kosovo,
Serb forces had killed a massive number of civilians in the name of
national
self-defense. Yet it has all gone on with barely a murmur of public
dissent
or protest. Even when I approach Serbs individually, probing them for
remorse, I hardly find any. Why not?

Today, this could be the most important question facing the NATO allies
as
they attempt to deal with the Serbian rampage through Kosovo. The
conventional thinking among many Western intellectuals and politicians
is,
as President Clinton has put it, that we have no quarrel with the
Serbian
people. It is their leader, Slobodan Milosevic, and his henchmen who
manipulated them into waging so many brutal wars. This is the thinking
behind Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's two broadcasts to Serbs
in
their own language, which she learned during a brief childhood stay in
the
Yugoslav capital. And, if it is true, then it suggests a strategy aimed
at
breaking Milosevic's will or, at most, toppling him from power. To use
the
parlance of military strategists, th e "center of gravity" in the war
with
Yugoslavia consists of the government and its armed forces.

But what if it isn't true? What if the Serbs who wear targets on their
t-shirts and gather in morbid celebration for daily rock concerts or
marathon races actually support ethnic cleansing--actively or passively?
In
that case, we do have a quarrel with th e Serbian people. In that case,
the
"center of gravity" in Yugoslavia is something far more difficult to
destroy
than an army or a regime. It is the very mentality of a nation.

I myself used to believe that ordinary Serbs had been deceived and
bullied
into accepting the atrocities done in their name. But now, after five
years
of covering events in the former Yugoslavia, and after trying in vain to
elicit expressions of remorse from the hundreds of Serbs I have met, I
am
convinced that the latter assessment is the accurate one. Whatever else
we
do in Kosovo, we must face the fact that, for all intents and purposes,
many
ordinary Serbs are--to paraphrase Daniel Jonah Goldhagen--Milosevic's
willing executioners.

The regime's propaganda, though powerful, can account for only so much
of
the Serbian behavior we have witnessed since Yugoslavia's disintegration
in
1991. Consider a conversation I had on a sweltering afternoon in late
July
1996, when I went to Kravica, another Serb village near Srebrenica.
There,
forensic scientists from the U.S.-based group Physicians for Human
Rights,
accompanied by NATO peacekeeping troops, were excavating a suspected
mass
grave. The scientists gently probed the earth in search of human flesh
and
began removing dirt, layer by layer. As they got closer to the corpses,
the
stench of decomposing flesh became stronger. By the time they exposed
the
dozens of bodies, the stench was unbearable. The bodies had their hands
tied
behind their b acks with wire and had been executed at close range.

A family of Serb refugees from Sarajevo had been resettled in a
farmhouse
right next to this mass grave. I found the head of the family,
68-year-old
Pavle (he wouldn't give me his last name), picking apples about 50 yards
away. When I asked him about the mass grave, his first reply was: "Those
bodies are probably Serbs. Six Serbs are missing from this area." When I
told Pavle that more than 7,000 Muslim men went missing after the fall
of
Srebrenica, he told me, "The Muslims probably killed each other." Pavle
went
on to explain that the Muslims had quarreled about what to do when the
Serbs
attacked Srebrenica. Some had wanted to fight and some had wanted to
surrender. Eventually, these two groups started fighting and killed one
another off.

Both of Pavle's stories--that the victims were really Serbs or that the
Muslims had massacred themselves--could have easily come from Belgrade
television, which had retailed similar exculpatory yarns throughout the
wars
in Croatia and Bosnia. Yet it's hard to imagine he really believed
either
tale. That became clear when I pressed him on the Muslim shootout
version.
If the Muslims had killed one another in gun battles, I asked, how come
the
corpses' arms were tied behind their backs with wire? "How should I
know?"
he shot back. "And why should I care about recovering those who forced
us to
leave our homes? The international workers would be more useful fixing
our
house than digging up those bodies."

Obviously Pavle knew the truth. Just as obviously, his true sentiment
about
the fact that so many Muslims had been slaughtered was: "They asked for
it."
After all, the Muslim-led government had, he believed, forced him out of
his
own house in Sarajevo. I have had many, many such conversations. Sooner
or
later, ordinary Serbs stop denying and begin arguing that the massacres
by
their forces were justified. Milosevic's propaganda is not really
intended
to create a new belief system among its audience; its true purpose is to
arouse and reinforce a belief system that already exists, just below the
surface of the Serbian personality. And central to this mindset is the
notion that the Serbs, and only the Serbs, are the true victims in the
Balkans.

This belief system, to be sure, is based partly in reality, both
historical
and contemporary. Serbs suffered terribly at the hands of the Germans
and
their allies during both world wars. And, in the conflicts since
Yugoslavia's breakup, it is true that both the Croats and Muslims
committed
their share of atrocities against Serb civilians. In fact, the
Srebrenica
enclave was the base for raids by Muslim guerrillas that killed hundreds
of
Serb peasants. "In the twisted minds of us Serbs, knowing that what we
are
trying to do is right is enough justification to close our eyes to
brutality," a Belgrade friend of mine once explained to me.

Yet even this doesn't quite wash, because no rational consideration of
the
facts could produce the conclusion that the current abuses against the
Serbs
(let alone those of the past) could constitute moral authorization for
the
far larger slaughter the heavily armed Serb forces are now perpetrating.
This is where myth enters the picture. Serbian culture itself is built
around elaborate sagas of failure and betrayal, all beginning with the
1389
defeat of Prince Lazar by the Ottoman Turks on the battlefields of
Kosovo--a
heroic last stand that sanctified Kosovo for all Serbs for all time. For
centuries, Serbs have been taught not only that they sacrificed more
than
any other Christian European people to resist pagan aggression, but also
that their sacrifices have never been appreciated or recognized. Rather,
outside powers ungratefully denied them their independence.

It is this deep-rooted historical sense of frustration and grievance
that
makes Serbs feel that they are, by definition, victims. And the Serbs'
sense
of their own collective innocence is mirrored by an equally intense
sense of
the collective guilt of the other Balkan ethnicities. In the grand sweep
of
history, today's deaths of Muslims or Albanians (yesteryear's allies of
the
Turks and Germans) are still nothing compared to the repeated "genocide"
against the Serbs in the past. Thus, if the Muslims of Srebrenica were
massacred, that is an appropriate form of retribution for what the
Muslims
of Sarajevo did to Pavle and his family. Cosmic payback.

Surely, though, Pavle is just a peasant, an uneducated man susceptible
to
sentimental stories and stirring folk music. Modern Serbs, those who
live in
the big cities and have received an education, must be immune to such
appeals. Well, not exactly. Indeed , as Michael Dobbs reported in the
April
19 Washington Post, many Belgraders have access to Western media
accounts of
Serb atrocities against Albanians and dismiss them, reflexively, as
"propaganda." And it was a famous 1986 memorandum by leading members of
the
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the most distinguished institution
in
Serbian intellectual life, that set off the Serbian nationalist movement
in
post-Tito Yugoslavia. The document was a tendentious mishmash of demands
for
recompense for the past sufferings of the Serbs at the hands of both
Tito's
government and such rival nationalities as the Croats and Albanians (see
"A
Final Solution," by Ryan Lizza, page 28).

As hostile as the Serbs may feel toward Croats or Muslims (and vice
versa),
the deepest and most authentic intergroup hatred in the former
Yugoslavia is
between Serbs and Albanians. Serbian anti-Albanian prejudice is
perfectly
crude and yet perfectly respectable in Belgrade. And it extends through
all
levels of society.

In the summer of 1997, I attended a party in Belgrade at the home of a
beautiful artist, who had spent most of her life in Sweden but had
recently
returned to Belgrade, and her boyfriend, a talented graphic designer
working
for Saatchi & Saatchi. Most of the guests were like the hosts--handsome,
talented, university-educated, and well-traveled.

I had recently been to Kosovo, where I had been looking into what was
then
an obscure group of rural militants who called themselves the Kosovo
Liberation Army. At the party, I met a Swedish diplomat who had also
just
returned from Kosovo. We quickly realized that we had met some of the
same
people and gone to the same bars in Pristina. As we recounted the good
times
we had with the Albanians we knew in common, many of the well-bred Serbs
in
the room started laughing. They thought we were joking. Surely, we
hadn't
really gone out for a beer with Albanians. As it gradually dawned on
them
that we were serious, the room fell silent, and, one by one, everyone
left.
I assumed that they were bored with us or that they didn't speak
English. I
learned later, from an appalled Serb who has since left the country,
that
the other partygoers had gone into another room to express their dismay
that
the two foreigners had been associating with Albanians.

There are, of course, "good Serbs," educated and considerate people who
know
the truth and wish that they could act on it. Any number of Bosnian
Muslims
owe their lives to such people, who risked all to spirit them out of
Bosnia
just ahead of Milosevic's ethnic-cleansing machine. I asked one such
Belgrade Serb how it was possible that so many Serbs could walk past the
empty shells of houses, see piles of rubble that were once mosques, even
step over the skeletons of the dead without showing remorse or any
emotion
at all. She was quiet for a moment, seemingly genuine in her anguish. "I
feel terrible when I see the images of Albanians being forced into
Albania,"
she told me. "Believe me, there are many others who do, too. Not all the
good Serbs have left, as many believe. We are still here, desperate and
horrified. We are silent, but we are documenting this Serbian madness."
She asked that I not use her name or otherwise identify her for fear
that
she would suffer reprisals. My friends in Belgrade tell me it is
impossible
to protest the atrocities of the regime, especially in a state of
war--and
Yugoslavia has been more or less permanently at war since 1991.

This view, too, has a rational basis. Back in 1992, as the war in Bosnia
was
just getting under way, Serbian peace activists marched through Belgrade
in
opposition but were brutally silenced. They made another effort in 1993,
but, again, a violent crackdo wn ended the protest quickly. Now, since
NATO
started bombing Serbia, they say things are worse than ever before. "To
show
remorse now would be suicide," explained my friend, pointing to the
April 11
assassination of Slavko Curuvija, the Belgrade publishe r who had been
critical of Milosevic's policies. He was gunned down just days after the
official press had branded him a supporter of NATO's bombing.

Even so, fear of repression doesn't quite excuse or account for the
ineffectuality of the good Serbs. After all, Serbian military and police
began shelling Albanian villages and killing Albanian civilians more
than a
year ago. How is it that the good Serbs could not find it within
themselves
to protest the war on Kosovo's Albanians long before NATO got involved?
Furthermore, democratic-minded Serbs have, in other circumstances,
showed
that they are not afraid to take on the regime. There was actually a
brief
moment when I thought Milosevic's day of reckoning had finally come. It
was
December 1996, a year after the war in Bosnia had ended. Tens of
thousands
of Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade demanding that Milosevic
resign. In
Belgrade's beautiful old town, I stood amid throngs of protesters in
Republic Square. They were students and workers, elderly men and women
and
families. They carried whistles and placards, banged pots and pans.
Their
mood was joyous and defiant--caught up in it, I, too, could hardly
contain
my excitement at the prospect that Milosevic would soon be gone.

Their ostensible reason for marching was that Milosevic had overturned
election results in several cities, including Belgrade, where opposition
mayors and other city officials had been elected. But surely, I told
myself,
the Serbs had finally found their soul and were also moved by their
leader's
role in the siege of Sarajevo, the leveling of Vukovar, and the massacre
at
Srebrenica.

The Serbs carried on with their protests against Milosevic for 90 days
through sleet and snow and subzero temperatures, every day, without
exception. In so doing, they disproved the contention that the Serbian
people were mere putty in the hands of state television's propaganda.
Milosevic's TV tried to label the tens of thousands of demonstrators a
small
group of terrorists and hooligans, but speakers at the rallies ridiculed
this as the primitive propaganda it was. Indeed, as the protests went
on,
one of the movement's demands became that Milosevic give up his
television
monopoly because the public was sick of the lies and propaganda.
As for the fear factor, scores of demonstrators were beaten and
imprisoned
by police, but the movement continued undeterred. The three months of
protest ended peacefully, with a partial victory for the demonstrators:
Milosevic ceded some power and positions to his opponents.

These demonstrations constituted one of the most impressive displays of
civic resolve I've ever seen. I was wrong, though, to imagine that they
had
anything to do with the regime's crimes in Bosnia. At no time did
Belgrade's
democratic movement ever add the war crimes in Bosnia to its list of
complaints against Milosevic. To do so, in fact, would have divided the
opposition (which contained ultranationalist elements itself) and
alienated
the public.

Serbia is not Nazi Germany; Slobodan Milosevic is not Adolf Hitler; and
the
Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar Albanians, whose own irregular forces have
killed Serbs hors de combat, are not exactly as helpless or as blameless
as
the European Jews were. Still, the relative absence of effective Serbian
protest and, especially, the silence of intellectuals on the matter of
war
crimes raise disturbing questions about the culpability of Serbs as a
whole
in the actions of the authoritarian government that rules them.

The very notion of collective guilt is uncomfortable. The whole concept
of
an international war crimes tribunal is appropriately based on the
assumption that individuals, not whole societies, are to be held
accountable
when atrocities such as those we have witnessed in the Balkans this
decade
occur. And yet what is striking about the ethnic cleansing by today's
Serbs
is the same thing that struck Daniel Jonah Goldhagen as he reviewed the
conduct of ordinary Germans toward the Jews during the Holocaust. It 's
not
only the utter lack of sustained or substantial protest against it; it's
also the gratuitous sadism--the "volunteerism, enthusiasm, and cruelty
in
performing their assigned and self-appointed tasks" (to use Goldhagen's
phrase)--that the Serbs, like the Germans during World War II, have
exhibited. Albanians tell of being forced to chant "this is Serbia" as
they
were driven from their Kosovo homes, or to hold up three fingers in the
Serbian salute. Kosovar Albanians have been systematically searched for
jewelry and money; their homes, looted. Such things went on in Bosnia,
too.

Perhaps the most telling detail of the Belgrade protests was the nature
of
the insults these Serbian pro-democracy marchers would hurl at
Milosevic.
"Slobo is a Turk!" they would cry, a term that refers to Serbia's hated
historical enemy, the Ottomans--but is also a common, modern-day slur
usually aimed at Bosnian Muslims. "Slobo is an Ustasha!" they yelled,
referring to the Croat fascists who allied themselves with the Nazis in
World War II and killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs. And, when the
busloads of heavily equipped riot police dispatched by Milosevic arrived
on
the scene, the protesters' response was to suggest that the cops were
focusing on the wrong target. "Go to Kosovo! Go to Kosovo!" they would
scream.

Stacy Sullivan is a consultant at the John F. Kennedy School of
Government's
Human Rights Initiative at Harvard University. She covered the Balkans
for
Newsweek for two years and most recently wrote about Kosovo in The New
York
Times M agazine.
(Copyright 1999, The New Republic)