he major grievances of the Yugoslav western ideologues
have been in the area of the political domination of the east
over the west. Serbs, the west says, have dominated the
state apparatus, the police, the political system, the army,
and the leading industrial management positions through their
majority membership in the League of Communists which had
been the political party in power since 1945. This system
enabled the east to siphon the resources from the west for
their wasteful projects, west says, which lead to the major
slowdowns of their own economies.
he western areas, their Yugoslav eastern counterparts say,
have enjoyed the fruits of the liberation war (1941-1945) in
which the Serbs have taken most of the load and suffered the
most casualties (many inflicted by the other ethnic groups).
The west has been able to develop faster and is now wanting
to separate at the expense of the Serbs, they say. Also,
many Serbs live in the west and under no circumstances should
another separation of the Serbian people from their mother
country be allowed; especially not such that the Croatian
Serbs might again be decimated at the hands of Croatian
fascists (during the Second World War many hundreds of
thousands of Serbs and others were killed under the fascist
regime in the Croatian puppet state). In addition, the
peoples to the South, the Macedonians and the people of
Montenegro, are not separate ethnic groups at all, Serbs say,
but are actually Serbs who, due to the anti-Serbian
conspiracy, have been awarded a nationality in order to
diminish Serbian influence and a rightful, leading position
in the region.
hen we include the Albanian question into the picture we
can recognize the full spectrum of problems. About two
million ethnic Albanians live in Kosovo, the southern region
of Serbia, where they are demanding self-determination and
have had a luck to establish themselves in the region of the
original medieval Serbian state.
learly, there are at least two groups of people here with
drastically different agendas, each seemingly reasonable if
examined in isolation. Those agendas are that the west (and
also Macedonia) wants to go alone after unsuccessful trial
union and the east wants to maintain the union and if not
that, then "Serbia should be wherever Serbs live," and since
there are many Serbs living in Croatia and Bosnia-
Hercegovina, those two areas can not be allowed to be
independent. Since both sides have reached the point where
they are not willing to compromise, the militarily stronger
side has decided to impose its agenda by means of war.
The tragic side to this situation, in addition to the
suffering of the war, is that all sides attempt to correct
some "injustices" of the long gone times. The trouble is that
justice is many times based on memories of the generations
from the far past which never solves the problems of the
living. For example, there are strong currents among both
the Croats and the Serbs who claim that the central region
(Bosnia-Hercegovina) should rightfully "belong" to them since
at one point in the past (in 12th or 13th century) it used to
be a part of their respective states. While this is true, it
only aggravates the existing problems and makes their
solution so evasive.
t is irrational to argue about the issues related to the
people's territorial rights based on the facts from 200, 300,
or 600 years ago. Consequently, the solutions to these
problems are irrational too—over 20,000 people dead, over 2
million displaced, huge damage to the national economies and
even more to the environment.
propose that the fundamental reason and the force which
fuels this tragedy is the model of human existence which
humans have adopted thousands of years ago. This model is
based on the "survival of the mighty," male domination, and
bows to the life taking rather than to the life giving
powers. As long as it is not replaced by a more natural and a
more beneficial for all model of human co-existence, where
linking is preferred to ranking, we will witness wars and
destruction and wonder why they so persistently follow us
around this humble little planet which gives us all that we
have.
ince June last year, major changes occurred in the area.
Yugoslavia, which once was a country which many looked up to
as an inspiring experiment in achieving social justice, has
hopelessly fallen apart. The differences between the
industrialized and traditionally Central Europe-oriented
regions to the West (Slovenia, Croatia, and partially Bosnia-
Hercegovina) and the more basic-industry oriented,
agricultural, less developed regions in the East (Serbia,
Montenegro, and Macedonia) became too strong for the fragile
union to survive. Absence of a central, old-style communist
state authority exarcebated those differences to the point of
no return. Yugoslavia was doomed to crack open. 