This Edition

November 1999

by Alberto L'Abate

The war in the Balkans wrought far less destruction upon the Serbian army (which was "minimally" damaged by the NATO bombing, according to a statement issued on 14 June 1999 by the German Ministry of Defence; whereas the London Times reported in July that only thirteen of the army's three hundred tanks were destroyed) than it did upon civic society. There was a great deal of material damage in Serbia and Kosovo: thousands of civilians killed; nearly a million deportees and refugees (initially Albanians and then also Serbians and Gypsies); pollution (including mines) which will cause injuries, illnesses and premature deaths for generations to come; and the mass destruction of homes, factories and infrastructure (streets, bridges, power-generators, water-works, etc.).

Even greater has been the psychological damage. The ordinary citizen, not only in the theatre of war but also in the West, has been treated as a mere pawn--and has even accepted such a role, thanks to the use of mass propaganda--in regard to a war which should have lasted three days but which went on for a substantial period without ever reaching the basic objective in the name of which it was started: the protection of civil society in Kosovo.

(The persecution and ethnic cleansing became worse after it began, and indeed the whole war was absurd inasmuch as the agreements obtained at its conclusion could have been obtained already beforehand.) The individual citizen has thereby been rendered more "alienated" than before, with a sense of impotence due to the feeling that powers immune to the influence of civil society will henceforth decide upon wars. And meanwhile in Serbia and Kosovo, the last threads of dialogue have been broken and the two national groups polarized so much between the positions assumed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (on the one hand) and by Milosevic and the ultra-nationalist Serbs (on the other) that a future of dialogue and coexistence is now more remote than ever.

The result may well be a partition of Kosovo along ethnic lines as in Bosnia. The international community supports the return to Kosovo of people of Albanian descent who fled or were expelled to neighboring countries (Albania, Bosnia, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro). This is happening in those parts of Kosovo where the international "peace-keeping" forces are in control or where people of Albanian descent were a strong majority. It will be far more difficult to achieve in the communities of northern Kosovo (where the Serbs were the majority) unless they are occupied by foreign troops, and there is even a likelihood that Pristina, where nearly a fourth of the population before the war were Serbs who tended to reside in distinct neighborhoods, may become a divided city such as Berlin used to be.

The hatreds stirred up by the war have reduced the social basis for peaceful coexistence of the two ethnic/religious groups so drastically that a great deal of work now has to be done by way of critical reflection on the past, the reopening of a dialogue, and paving the way somehow for a modicum of mutual reconciliation or at least tolerance when the foreign soldiers withdraw.

A positive dialogue can be developed only if there is a substantial degree of democratization in the entire region and a plan of economic, social and political development leading to the creation of an overall Balkan political entity as part of a unified Europe. If this were achieved, not by being imposed arbitrarily, but through a cultural maturation in the present-day nations of Europe, then the exact status of Kosovo would become a minor issue and it would not much matter whether there was a degree of autonomy (negotiated and protected internationally) or outright independence on a par with other parts of a confederation. But in either case an essential aspect--if there is to be peace--would be that the larger entity include not only Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, but also Albania, Macedonia and perhaps also Bosnia and some other neighboring countries. And in any case the political reshufflings in the former Yugoslavia would have to give way to a process precluding (in a peaceful way) mass migrations. Such a process is indispensable not only politically but also economically, because a fragmentation into little nations would not only limit but even obstruct economic development, whereras a process of political amalgamation would render it feasible. All this requires, however, that Europe herself move apace toward political union and thereby eliminate the disruptive political jockeying by Germany, Italy et al. for access to this or that part of the Balkan market.

(It should also be mentioned, in view of the fact that America's recent military role has destabilized the region directly (by involving Albania more saliently in the conflict) and indirectly (by causing a mass emigration from Kosovo to the neighboring countries), that only a European political union can save us from an enduring American obtrusiveness which could otherwise prove even more inimical to peace than the Cold War was.)

* The theory and practice of nonviolence can play a significant role in the work of recovering a peaceful society. A valuable aspect of that theory and practice is the development of techniques for achieving an open society based on equality among ethnic groups (and among countries) rather than the hegemony of one over another. People with experience in developing and applying such techniques--for peace-mongering, overcoming ethnic prejudices, getting on well in a cosmopolitan society, etc.--are good at teaching others how to do likewise.

There are some residual pockets of competence in nonviolent techniques in the former Yugoslavia. Milosovic's political opponents in Serbia obtained by such techniques the invalidation of his falsified tallies of the voting in communal and provincial elections. In Kosovo the ethnic Albanians conducted for quite a few years a nonviolent campaign for the restoration of the regional autonomy which had been provided for in the national constitution (of 1974); and in 1990 there was in Kosovo an astonishing process of mutual pardoning and formal reconciliation among more than 1250 families who had hitherto been bound by traditional rules of conduct to seek revenge in inherited blood feuds. Most of these families were ethnically Albanian, but nearly a hundred were Serbian, Macedonian or Montenegrin.

Now that the war has exalted militarism and has stirred up so much hatred and reciprocal prejudice, it is important that not only U.N. soldiers go to the war-torn zones but also some people with expertise in the mediation of conflicts and in the practice of nonviolence--such as, for example, the European Civilian Peace Corps proposed by Alex Langer and recommended in February 1999 by the European Parliament.

Pending the official appointment of such a corps, its work can be anticipated by members of certain NGOs (non-governmental organizations)--such as the "Campaign for a Nonviolent Solution in Kosovo", the "Blessed Peace Makers", and the Associazione Giovanni XXIII's "Operation Dove"--which have been active in the former Yugoslavia during the last few years and are well suited to lend a helping hand to the indigenous peace NGOs that were pushed aside during the war frenzy. Those local NGOs should now be brought to the fore and linked up with one another, between as well as within the various ethnic groups (Serbian, Albanian, Macedonian, Montenegrin etc.). The collaboration of like-minded foreigners could help the local NGOs become fit to play an invaluable role in enabling people to set aside the thirst for revenge and seek a more valid way of overcoming their sufferings without forgetting the crimes committed against them. (A model for this could be the way in which, in South Africa, the Committee for Peace and Reconciliation has achieved a kind of justice without vendetta.)

In Italy, the Campaign for a Nonviolent Solution in Kosovo (Campagna per una Soluzione Nonviolenta in Kossovo) and its "White Berets" are making plans already to set up some postwar NGO "Embassies of Peace" in Belgrade and Pristina. The idea of sending such emissaries to Bosnia was proposed earlier by some Yugoslav pacifists, after a caravan of hundreds of their Western confrŠres had visited strife-torn areas of Bosnia in order to demonstrate support for the peace movement there; a letter signed by pacifists from several countries in the region and published in "Peace News" said, in friendly but very clear terms, something along the lines of: "We appreciate your good will in supporting our movement, but would like you to find some new ways of doing it. During your sojourn we were glad to collaborate openly with you, but when you leave we will still be here, and our having supported your venture will make things difficult for us by making us targets of reprisal from governments and from people favoring the war. Perhaps you could explore the possibility of sending, not a lot of representatives for a few days, but a small number for a longer period. They would come to understand better the conditions here and could then in many ways help us approach our shared goals of peace and friendly relations among peoples."

A similar request was made by the Albanian population of Kosovo during its nonviolent campaign for the restoration of the autonomous provincial status which Kosovo had enjoyed under the national constitution of 1974 but which was withdrawn in a sudden and brutal manner in 1989. So the Campaign for a Nonviolent Solution in Kosovo was formed, in 1993, to coordinate the efforts of Italian NGOs that were active in nonviolent projects there, and to try to wean Western governments away from their exclusive respect (in regard to Kosovo) for the language of Serbian violence. It was between 1995 and 1998 that the Campaign for a Nonviolent Solution sponsored, with financial support from the Campaign for Conscientious Objection to Military Expenditures, an "Embassy of Peace" in Pristina, drawing upon the lessons learnt from our "Peace Camp" at Bagdad in 1990, from some other projects linked with that initiative, and from a study of the successes and failures of some analogous Quaker projects of mediation in various strife-torn parts of the world. The Embassy of Peace tried to open lines of communication between the antagonistic groups, to support the few organizations in Kosovo that had not yet succumbed to "ethnic cleansing", to make known in Italy (by means of talks, conferences, study-visits, photographic exhibits, videos, articles and books) the problems that Kosovo was confronted with, to study in depth (and with careful attention to the arguments made on both sides) the possibilities for a nonviolent resolution of the conflict, and to convey such ideas (of our own and of othee NGOs active in the region) to our (Italian) government negotiators, ministers and parliament members and to members of the European Parliament.

Some critics have said that fact that the war took place means that the Embassy of Peace in Pristina may be dismissed as a failure. The following points should be taken into account, however:

(a) It had long-range as well as short-range objectives, and under current circumstances the kind of work it undertook (and in which it built up expertise) is likely to be very useful.
(b) It was a step in the direction of building up (1) a beneficial aspect of the current historical trend to transcend the limits of nation-states and (2) a kind of peace based, not on balance-of-power quicksand, but on the solid foundation of a substantive transformation of relations between peoples.
(c) There has been a vast imbalance between investments in war- and peace-making. The expenses incurred, for instance, by all the activities of all the NGOs trying to prevent the war in Kosovo were less than the expenditures for five minutes of the war, or (to put it another way) less than 1/20th of one percent of the fiscal cost of the bombing without taking into account the costs ensuing from the damage. (Let us forbear here to discuss whether some people regard all those grotesquely larger costs as a bonus.)