Socialist Action /July 2001
Milosevic Handed Over to the Hague
By GERRY FOLEY
Serbian premier Zoran Djindjic ruthlessly overode
the objections of the Yugoslav Supreme Court and Yugoslav federal President
Vojislav Kostunica on June 29, delivering Slobodan Milosevic into the arms
of the U.S.-sponsored International Tribunal at the Hague.
Djindjic apparently was ready to pay a high political
price in order to meet the U.S. deadline. Washington had declared that it
would boycott the international aid donors conference held on June 29 if
Milosevic were not handed over by that date.
The Serbian premier got his payoff. The conference,
with U.S. participation, voted to give the rump Yugoslavia even somewhat
more than the billion dollars it had asked for.
In handing over Milosevic, Djindjic undoubtedly
agreed to other conditions that were more onerous and more difficult to
defend, such as an agreement to sell off state companies to international
investors and to guarantee the restoration of capitalism.
Djindjic's abject capitulation to U.S. pressure
exploded the contradictions in the government that rose to power on the
back of the October insurrection. The government's symbolic leader and most
popular figure, Kostunica, is a long-standing moderate right-wing nationalist
who has kept his distance from the imperialist powers. The Serbian premier,
on the other hand, has made no bones about his readiness to collaborate
with the imperialists for the sake of hoped-for material rewards.
Kostunica, besides being a Serbian nationalist,
is a strict constitutionalist, and in response to Milosevic's extradition
he accused Djindjic of repeating the sins of the ousted strongman's government
in trampling on the law.
Both the legalism and the nationalism of Kostunica
were reflected in the make up of the federal government, which was based
on a coalition between the Socialist People's Party (SPP) of Montenegro,
a former partner of Milosevic's Socialist Party, and the Democratic Opposition
that defeated Milosevic in the September 2000 elections.
The SPP is a minority party in Montenegro, the
tiny country (600,000 inhabitants) that is now Serbia's only partner in
the rump Yugoslav federation. The majority party, the Democratic Socialist
Party of the Montenegran premier, Milan Djukanovic, boycotted the last federal
elections and remains committed to secession from the Yugoslav federation.
Since the federal house of parliament is made up
of an equal number of deputies from Serbia and Montenegro, Djukanovic's
boycott left the SPP, with nearly all the Montenegran deputies, as the majority
party in the federal chamber, even though it got only about 120,000 votes.
Thus, in order to maintain the legal forms of federal
government, Kostunica had to try to entice Milosevic's former partner in
Montenegro into a bloc with his coalition. The SPP quickly rallied to the
new regime. An SPP leader, Zoran Zizic, was elected federal premier. But
the base of the party remained Serbian nationalist, very similar to Milosevic's
party.
Thus, the extradition of the former nationalist
demagogue put the SPP in a difficult position. Zizic promised protesters
from the Socialist Party and from the extreme rightist Serbian chauvinist
Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj that he would resign, as he did, bringing
down the federal government.
Of course, the federal government is largely a
fiction, but it is an essential one to the new regime, since Kostunica is
federal president, and would lose his position if the federal union were
dissolved. On the other hand, he is the only one in the new government that
has majority support in public opinion.
According to the old opposition Belgrade weekly
Vreme, Kostunica was isolated in the ruling coalition by his opposition
to Milosevic's extradition. Vreme, and most of the Yugoslav press,
is now speculating that new elections are going to be necessary soon. But
elections are likely to deepen the crisis.
The ruling Democratic Opposition Coalition is notoriously
disparate, and it is now polarized between Kostunica and Djindjic. The issue
of opposition to Milosevic's regime and the threat of a comeback by his
supporters that formerly united it is receding. Programmatic questions,
such as economic policy, can be expected to loom larger. And the aid that
the imperialists have just granted will not solve the country's economic
problems. In fact, given the strings almost certainly attached to it, it
will make them worse.
Serbian nationalism remains the predominant ideology
within the country. It has been gravely affronted by the surrender of Milosevic
to an imperialist court. But it is a historically receding force. It has
been compromised by the defeats in a series of wars and by the slow percolation
into the Serbian public awareness of the truth about the atrocities committed
in its name. In the eyes of much of the youth, moreover, it is identified
with reactionary and antidemocratic attitudes.
There are sound reasons for protesting against
Djindjic's handing over Milosevic to the judicial stooges of the imperialists.
The Serbian and Montenegran peoples are not going to believe that the imperialists
have a right to judge war crimes, given NATO's murderous bombing of their
countries.
Moreover, the people of Yugoslavia have the right
to judge him themselves. They need to do that to clear themselves of association
with his crimes.
Most important, only the Serbian and Montenegran
working people can clear out the corrupt Stalinist bureaucracy on which
Milosevic based himself, as does the "democratic" regime that
replaced him, as well as investigate his role in the attempts to restore
capitalism and the links that these involved with imperialist governments
and concerns.
The imperialists need Milosevic as a sacrificial
lamb to conceal the fact that they encouraged him and used him for many
years for their own purposes.
According to the London Guardian of July 1, "Lawyers
for Mr. Milosevic are expected to claim that Western governments implicitly
backed his regime as atrocities continued over 10 years."
But this argument obviously would be more likely
to be investigated in a trial in Yugoslavia. The same applies to the accusation,
reported in the July 1 London Times that Milosevic sold off state companies
to foreign capitalists to finance his military campaign in Kosovo.
By scapegoating Milosevic, the imperialists and
their local allies in Yugoslavia aim at diverting popular outrage against
the corrupt Stalinist bureaucracy that is their instrument for restoring
capitalism. For these reasons, they were willing to take the political risks
involved in twisting the arms of the new Belgrade rulers.
However, it seems unlikely that effective mass
protests can be built in the rump Yugoslavia against imperialist pressures
unless they are clearly differentiated from the chauvinist heritage of the
Milosevic regime and its fascist-like allies of the Radical Party and the
Serbian Unity Party (started by the gangster known as Arkan).
The present protests, however, have clearly been
dominated by die-hard chauvinists and neo-Stalinists who continue to deny
Milosevic's crimes. They have looked more like the last hurrah of the flat-earth
societies than the rise of a new mobilization of the Serbian masses.
Effective resistance to imperialism requires the
creation of a new force in Serbian politics, since nearly all the established
parties were implicated in the murderous policies of Milosevic. There are
elements in Serbia that are trying to come to grips with the chauvinist
heritage. But they remain small and scattered.
In order to become a force, they need to link up
with the working-class resistance to the effects of capitalist restoration.
But that will require the rebirth of socialist perspectives, since it is
necessary to have an alternative to simply "returning to the world,"
which has been the main slogan of the forces that opposed Milosevic.
For Yugoslavia today, to "return to the world"
can only mean subordination to imperialism because it is the imperialists
that rule today's world. But joining the imperialist-dominated world as
underlings is not only going to mean humiliation for the Serbian people
but still greater material hardships.
Socialist Action /July 2001 |