Some peace activists, such as Marko Hren from Ljubljana, have raised these questions: "it is impossible to put the aggressor and the victim of the aggression on the same plane, nor condemn all vio-
November 11, 1991 • #216 International Viewpoint lence in a general way". Is not self-defence against aggression legitimate? "It sometimes seems" says Marko "that the Slovene elites who want to create a Slovene state need the war to make the state" This does not in his eyes mean that they bear the responsibility for the split.
"No real dialogue... could be established between the Slovene government and the Federal authorities, all the more in that the international community persists in taking a position in favour of the mere survival of the pre-existing federation, thus blocking any possibilities for negotiation and pushing Slovenia into a dead-end" according to the Ljubljana Pacifist Centre in a text of July 4, 1991. "Subsequently, without other alternatives, following the logic of the right of a people to self-determination... the Slovene government launched a process of secession." In such a context "the intervention of the Yugoslav army must be considered as an act of aggression."
The right to self-defence
Thus the right to self-defence is accepted — but what type of self-defence? Sonja Lokar, one of the organizers of the "Insurrection for Peace" ' a feminist and deputy for the (ex-Communist) Party of Democratic Renewal in the present Slovene parliament, insists on the notion of popular territorial defence as opposed to a professional army. "When the Federal army intervened in Slovenia after the proclamation of independence on June 25, 1991, it ran up not against the force of an army with powerful means, but against popular hostility expressed through territorial defence. "12
Slovene pacifists denounce the official propaganda that has transformed the army intervention into a real war that justifies a rigorous "war budget" as well as considerable ideological pressure on independent thought and criticism. The army evidently did not expect to meet such resistance in Slovenia, but it is also true that its brief (at least at first) was limited to that of gaining control of the borders: in the videocassette "Ljubljana at the barricades" which is being sold in the streets, the discomfiture of the young conscripts, told that they have to protect the "Yugoslav frontiers against the threat of Austrian or Italian intervention and replace the border signs" is obvious. They had not been prepared for a fight with the population.
In fact there were three dead among the Slovene territorial defence force and three civilians, with the army suffering some dozens of fatalities. The purges and desertions that erupted after the Slovene adventure and the open crisis of the civilian federal institutions forced the army high command hard core to fall in behind the Great Serb projects of the Serb leadership.
The big problem confronting the antiwar movement is the mixing together of several types of interests in this war. The sovereignty of Croatia has been over-ridden in the name of Serb self-determination. The army's privileges are defended in the name of the protection of the Serb minorities. Milosevic's neo-Stalinist regime conducts his Greater Serbia policy in the name of Yugoslavia — which was not an arbitrary creation and whose dismemberment also tears apart many families.
Whatever the manipulations that they suffer, the uprising of the Serb villagers is a reality against what they perceive as the "Ustasha menace"* of an independent Croat state. The hysteria about this fostered by the Serb media is given credibility by the real nationalism of Croatia's leader Franjo Tudjman and his statements describing the Ustasha state as an "expression of Croat aspirations", the repeal of the December 1980 constitution and the explicit reference to the Serb nation as a component of the Croat state, the sabotage of attempts at negotiations by representatives of the Serbs in Croatia, the many symbolic provocations and, finally, the existence of Ustasha groups reinforced by the Croatian emigration. The constitutional amendments and propositions later made by the Croat parlia ment to the Serbs are perceived by the latter as so much sand in the eyes of the international community.
However, the Serbs of Croatia have lived there for centuries, half of them in the big cities, where they have intermingled with the Croat population. "You can't tell the difference any more; normally the Latin alphabet is used*; now, suddenly, the differences are being raised
YUGOSLAVIA — both here and in Serbia. It was stupid yesterday to forbid the use of linguistic variants. It is just as stupid now to use them as barriers, and introduce the old Croat in the daily press in a stupid and often ignorant fashion." This is a young playwright, of "mixed" Jewish and Serbo-Croat origin, talking. "In my plays I often use Croat idioms, but I have to be free to use them or not" says this activist in the Society for the Improvement of the Quality of Life, one of the components of the antiwar movement in Zagreb
Vesna, a Croat student, is also a peace activist. Her father lives in one of the Croat villages of the Banija which is right by the Serb villages. He is a former Partisan. "He has bought a rifle and wants to see the army leave" says Vesna, who has not been able to see her father for several weeks, "but the Serbs are his friends and in many cases remain so: some have taken refuge in his house, having been marked down as traitors by the extremist groups."
### Accusations of treason
The Banija, in the Kordun region, is full of former Partisans. The Mayor of Kordun's main centre, Vrginmost, is Dmiter Obradovic. Commander of the district's territorial defence, he has been denounced as an "extremist communist in his political options" and a "false Serb in his national consciousness" in the journal of Milan Babic, the leader of the "autonomous territory" of the Knin Krajina. Obradovic is accused of "having been and remaining a partisan of the cohabitation of the two peoples" who, by this attitude "paralyzes the whole life of Kordun." This is equal to a death sentence; to support the cohabitation of the Croat and Serb is in Serb nationalist eyes to "collaborate with the fascists"
Even the most peace-loving Croats are disgusted by the way in which the Serb propaganda identifies any form of Croat national sentiment with "Ustasha positions", and by the obvious revanchism of the Serb extremists as well as the attacks on towns, ports and historic sites that have nothing to do with the "Serb cause". The pressure to get the military means to wage war is strong in Croatia. However the most radical supporters of armed struggle 1. As I was told by one of the activists from Sarajevo's Centre for Peace, who is furthermore the leading light in a new journal, Spektar and a TV broadcast called Good Vibrations. 2. The Territorial Defence, created by Tito after the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, comprised citizens (including women if they wished) from the various republics undergoing regular training When the 1989 elections began to show the rise of the nationalist parties and pro-independence currents, the Federal army began to gather in the arms distributed for territorial defence in Croatia and Slovenia. The Slovene leadership, however, hindered this process. 3. A reference to the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime set up in Croatia during the war, which was responsible for massacres of Serbs. 1. Tract and ly Rode Crab thie Crits use the Latin 15 alphabet and Orthodox Serbs the Cyrillic.
International Viewpoint #216 • November 11, 1991
YUGOSLAVIA "to the death" are the Ustasha groups.
The incoherence of Tudjman's policies has polarized opinions, on the one side reinforcing far right currents and on the other arousing criticism from the left of the government's anti-democratic practises. The latter are seeking ways which might make it possible to win over the Croatian Serbs to the cause of Croatian state sovereignty.
This is why, if for the moment the Croat peace movement is in an invidious position, its main way forward is in supporting the approach of Milorad Pupovats, leader of the Serb Democratic Forum in Croatia, who is opposed to Slobodan Milosevic's policies and the Greater Serbia programme.
"If you want to oppose this logic, then you have to understand the pivotal role of the Serbs in Croatia" insists Pupovats, who considers himself representative of the views of Serb intellectuals living in Croatia's cities. "The solution proposed for their rights is a key issue for the self-determination and emancipation of the Croats as much as for the Serbs. " But how to stop the fighting? "We cannot enforce a ceasefire, because we have neither the arms nor command of the troops. We can only help to turn an attitude of national resistance into political activity. It is no easy thing to do in the Serb villages where the Serbs are, by long tradition, warriors with little inclination to express their point of view in a political fashion."
Approaches to the villages
The Serb Democratic Forum is trying to bring together and politicize wide forces, including Serbs from all social outlooks and from both the towns and villages in Croatia. Approaches to the villages have been made together with the leader of the Croat Peasant Party. "This is a long and difficult path since we are considered traitors by the supporters of both Tudjman and Milosevic.
The antiwar activists in Serbia also live under suspicion of treason. There, even more than elsewhere, the propaganda barrage ravages understanding: the Federal Presidency, reduced to the Serb and Montenegrin bloc, has just explicitly declared that the Federal army cannot withdraw from the "territories in Croatia where Serbs live since this measure would leave them exposed to the danger of their physical liquidation"S It has justified its call for the mobilization of reservists by the "danger of imminent war".
In this context, it is certainly the media attention attracted by the presence of a member of the former royal family that prevented the prohibition of a demonstration against the bombing of Dubrovnik. On October 5, in Belgrade some 3,000 "traitors" marched and signed a petition in defence of young people who do not 16 ber, but, given the circumstances, vital for want to conduct this war. A small num-
In fact, partisans of a Greater Serbia are also to be found in the opposition to Milosevic, and even in the antiwar movement. This is the case of sympathizers of Vuk Draskovic, the leader of the Movement for Serb Renewal, who supports a Greater Serbia by means of negotiations. But, apart from a desire to oppose Milosevic, such contradictions express the fluidity of positions sensitive to the effects of the war, and a rejection of policies which pit the Serbs against everyone else with the bogus argument that in fact everyone is against the Serbs.
It is normal that in Serbia as elsewhere the broad antiwar movement draws in diverse forces. On the other hand, it could become a genuine resistance front, essential if the trend towards desertion by the young, which is more and more affecting Serbs as well, who feel themselves victims of manipulation by the authorities, is to broaden. It also fosters the expression of pluralist points of view and the dissemination of information about the war that helps people gain some independence from the war psychosis whipped up by
Promoting democratic
The Slovene Marko Hren defines the role of the antiwar movement thus: "it is a question of putting up front democratic criteria and mechanisms for the solution to crises rather than proposing the solutions themselves." That is, the expression of all the interests involved in the conflict without giving priority to one above another, thus the defence of the right of expression of minorities and the struggle for systematic and coherent answers to the totality of inter-related problems. And despite the difficulty of even thinking of atmosphere where national chauvinism and the logic of war predominate, a common approach does in fact seem to exist.
This is witnessed by the demands put forward on July 4 by Slovenia's Centre for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence, which included: "recognition of the right to self-determination of the citizens of Slovenia and for every nation in Yugoslavia (such as the Kosovo Albanians, the Croats and Serbs and so on)"...."The taking into consideration of all the conflicts and the search for overall solutions (for Kosovo, the Serb regions in Croatia, Bosnia) and not only for Slovenia."
There is a clear convergence here with the views expressed by Milorad Pupoits wishes. But the basic measuring rod principles of self-determination and sovereignty." He is one of the rare Serbs to raise the question of the Kosovo Albanians in the same breath as that of the Croatian Serbs: "The difference between the Kosovo Albanians and the Croatian Serbs is that the former did not freely decide to join Serbia, while the latter on the other hand, were one of the constituent nations of Croatia and of Yugoslavia, on a voluntary basis. However, in all other respects, the situations are the same and the rights must be the same.
"The Albanians are divided between several states and they must have the greatest possible means for political, cultural and territorial autonomy and for relations between each other — not only with Albania but also with Albanians in MaceYugoslavia and international institutions to protect their rights. The same is true of the Serbs in Croatia. In the republics there should be national-ethnic forms of sovereignty in a framework of sovereignty for all citizens; these are two types of sovereignty for which forms of representation should be found. At the moment, the Croatian Serbs face two ways like Janus; one turned towards Zagreb, the other towards Belgrade. Now people are trying to make them choose one or the other. But the art of politics is all about expressing the whole physiognomy."
In Sarajevo, echoing previous positions, round tables of a pre- (or parallel) parlia ment are regularly held. It is organized by the founders of the UJDI, the Association for a Yugoslav Democratic Initiative, of which Pupovats is a member. They wen set up two years ago with weak from various republics to defend a rai democratic approach to the resolution conflicts, in the first place that in Koso Representatives of all the protagonis whether on the government or opposition side, have been invited to the meeting: al the pre-parliament.
Some may see this as naivety or an attempt to prolong the life of a dying Yugoslavia. However, according to Pupovats: "Yugoslavia is not an end in itself for the UJDI. The main thing is the search for democratic solutions. On the territory on which we live, unilateral approaches may be legitimate, but they are justified and doomed to end in an impasse."
### Rights and frontiers
And by way of conclusion: "It is easy enough to exploit nationalism" thinks Marko Orsocic, a very popular Franciscan monk, a Croat from Bosnia, and a passionate defender of a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina in an Yugoslav framework. "With nationalism it is not necessary to think, you only have to feel.
"And since the regime has not encouraged people to think... barriers between religions and languages are being set up with the aim of consolidating frontiers But in fact, if rights are respected, so will frontiers be - and will start to lose their importance."* 5. Le Monde, October 13/14, 1991. 6. Danas, October 8, 1991.
A militarized society
- and its critics
November 11; 1991 • #216 International Viewpoint
YUGOSLAVIA system for the militarization of society out of what had been planned as a decentralized system respecting the sovereignty of individual republics.
As we can see today, the Second World War and the struggle against fascism only covered over the internecine struggle of the peoples of Yugoslavia. The militarist nature of the culture here was shown in
THE outbreak of the war in Yugoslavia has severely tested democratic and peace activists in the country, as they try to apply their ideals in a situation of armed conflict and intense nationalist pressures. The following three short articles are drawn from a longer essay by the Slovene peace activist
Marko Hren, which first appeared in a special October 1991 issue of the Austrian magazine Ost-West Gegeninformationen devoted to the Yugoslav crisis.
MARKO HREN