On the grimmest day in the Serbian calendar, Dejan recalls the epic defeat more than 600 years ago as if it occurred within the 25-year-old’s living memory.
”We were defending all of Europe, trying to save Christianity,” the Bosnian Serb says of the 14th-century battle of Kosovo, at which the Balkans fell to the Turks. ”We were betrayed.” His friend Jovan remembered a more recent ”betrayal” on the same fateful date. ”That was the day they sent Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague. They should never have done that. It was a very bad symbol,” he said.
Lowest ebb
Across Serbia on Wednesday, in the old Serbian monasteries of Kosovo and throughout the Serbian half of Bosnia, soldiers paraded, Orthodox church bells pealed and morose speeches were delivered as Serbs marked the holiday of Vidovdan or St Vitus’s Day, a day of disaster that this year finds the core people of the former Yugoslavia at their lowest ebb. Montenegro abandoned its union with Serbia last month and declared independence. The southern Albanian-dominated province of Kosovo is also being taken away.
The country’s negotiations to join the European Union have been suspended. Later this year the International Court of Justice in The Hague could rule that Serbia was guilty of genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s, leaving the country vulnerable to large reparations claims. To add insult to injury, Serbia and Montenegro were thumped 6-0 by Argentina in the World Cup, the biggest defeat of the tournament.
Braca Grubacic, a Belgrade political analyst, said: ”The football in Germany absolutely reflects the mood of the country. It’s very depressing. People here are shattered after the loss of Montenegro. Psychologically and politically, it is also very hard to lose Kosovo. We feel as if everyone is leaving us.”
Some international officials fear a backlash. An opinion poll in Serbia last week gave the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical party 118 of 250 seats in the Serbian Parliament. In Kosovo, as the international community steers the province towards a form of conditional independence later this year, the UN administration is preparing for an exodus of tens of thousands of Serbs. Others among the Serb minority are arming themselves. Nato troops are redeploying to protect the Serb minority and nip in the bud any Serbian attempt to partition Kosovo. In Banja Luka, the main Serb city in Bosnia, nationalists are reviving demands to kill off Bosnia and unite with Serbia. ”As Kosovo gets close to a decision [on independence], Belgrade will try every ploy it possesses to stir up secession in Bosnia,” said a senior international official in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.
Rights
Marina Pelemis, a Bosnian Serb student in Banja Luka, said it was only ”logical and natural” that the Serbs should have the same rights as the Kosovans and the Montenegrins. ”In their souls, the people here would rather be in Serbia. But in their heads it’s different. The whole place could collapse socially, financially, politically. People know that.”
Senad Slatina, a Bosnian political consultant, said the Bosnian Serbs were ”opening a Pandora’s box” by reviving talk of secession. ”After Kosovo it will be worse. The Serbs are saying ‘this is the era of referenda, no one can stop us’.”
Visiting Kosovo on Wednesday for St Vitus’ Day in a ”private and religious capacity” after obtaining permission from the UN authorities running the province, the beleaguered Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, pledged never to give up Kosovo. In London this week he rounded bitterly on the international community after British Prime Minister Tony Blair told him he had to choose between Kosovo and the EU.
Grubacic said: ”Kostunica blames everyone but himself. He had three pillars to his policy: keeping Montenegro with Serbia, retaining Kosovo, and getting EU negotiations. He’s lost two of those and is about to lose the third one.” – Guardian Unlimited Â