Young Serbs eye West as outlet for dreams, hatred
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CroRadio.net
Mar 7, 2008, 12:49:09 PM3/7/08
to Croatian News
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-03-07-serbia-kosovo_N.htm
Young Serbs eye West as outlet for dreams, hatred
By Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press
BELGRADE, Serbia -- Bojan Mihajlovic, a 29-year-old hotel manager and
father of a 7-year-old boy, watched from his seventh-floor Belgrade
apartment as rioting Serb nationalists tried to trash a Western-owned
supermarket.
"It was madness, violence, all over again," he said.
The next day at work, Mihajlovic processed 30 cancellations by foreign
guests, fearful of the unrest triggered in the Serb capital by the
independence declaration of the province of Kosovo.
To Serbs like him, it's reminiscent of 1999, when mobs enraged by NATO
bombing attacked the U.S. embassy and ransacked a McDonald's. This
time around the embassy was again among the targets of violence, and
many young Serbs are horrified.
They fear the nationalist fervor sweeping Serbia, and worry that their
leaders will push the country deeper into isolation.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: America | Europe | Italy | Union | Muslim |
McDonald | Austria | Turkish | Kosovo | Yugoslavia | Belgrade | Serbs
| Balkan | Slobodan Milosevic | Albanian | Swarovski | Danube |
Serbians | Western-owned
These Serbs, however, tend to be in the relatively sophisticated,
prosperous capital. On the other hand, those flocking to the hard-line
cause are mostly from depressed industrial towns that have never
recovered from the collapse of communism and Yugoslavia's implosion
into six separate Balkan republics plus Kosovo.
On both sides there is confusion and drift. Many Serbs thought that
with dictator Slobodan Milosevic ousted eight years ago by a pro-
democracy movement, Serbia too was on the way to joining the European
Union, like other former communist states of eastern Europe.
Yet suddenly, it's again all about Kosovo -- a region which Christian
Serbia reveres as a cradle of nationhood, even though it is
overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian and Muslim.
While few young Serbians have ever visited there, their schoolbooks
have taught them that a 1398 battle in Kosovo against a Turkish
onslaught was a historic event on which "the nation's consciousness
was built."
In describing the wars of the 1990s, the textbooks dwell on Serb
suffering and NATO's bombing of Belgrade during the Kosovo crisis of
1999, without mentioning the atrocities that brought Milosevic before
an international war crimes tribunal.
For many young Serbs, liberal or nationalist, losing Kosovo is like an
amputation. But patriotic frenzy spilling into violence threatens to
crush the dream of a future with the West.
"Every embassy they smashed, every shop they looted, is one chance
less for Serbia to become a decent place," said Nikola Kovacevic, 21,
who would look at home on any Western city street riding his shiny
black Piaggio XB motorcycle.
Many liberals suspect the government is encouraging a hooligan
minority to bully a majority who might be willing to let go of Kosovo
if it meant prosperity and an end to Serbia's isolation.
But a survey by Strategic Marketing Research, a leading Serb polling
group, paints a picture of deep ambivalence about Kosovo and closer
ties with the West. Even liberals, it seems, are not immune to
bitterness and visceral passion over the loss of the province.
Of 1,100 polled, only 18% support "aggressive action" to stop Kosovo
becoming independent, while 21% want Serbia to cut diplomatic ties
with states recognizing Kosovo.
About 70% want Serbia to join the European Union, but only 33% would
do so if the condition was acceptance of Kosovo's independence. The
poll, taken days before Kosovo declared independence Feb. 17, had a
margin of error of two percentage points.
Many Serb youths dream of contact with the West, but instead of
relaxing visa rules now that the Milosevic era is over, Western
embassies have tightened the rules and applicants must queue endlessly
for visas.
"I feel I am being punished for something I haven't done," said
pharmacy student Jelena Kolasinac, 19, as she danced Friday night away
in the Plastik nightclub wearing a daring miniskirt.
Belgrade today has a deceptively cosmopolitan flair. Floating
restaurants on the Danube fill up at night. Shops peddle Swarovski
crystal from Austria, and music blazes from a swank bar district
renamed Silicone Valley because of voluptuously enhanced young women
who party there. Construction cranes dot the skyline.
But today's young people, having grown up with the isolation and
sanctions imposed for Milosevic's warmongering in the 1990s, are often
ignorant of the West, imagining it either as a paradise or a Serbia-
bullying monster.
Only about 15% of Serbs have even bothered to get a passport. When Lea
Vajler's high school graduating class went to Italy for a week-long
school trip last year, she was among just three in her class of 30 who
already had a passport. The rest of the 18-year-olds had to apply for
the first time.
"When we got there, it was like stepping out of a cage," she said.
"They gawked, wide-eyed, never having been out of the country."
Many Serbs have bought into Milosevic's propaganda that accused the
West of willfully dismantling Yugoslavia. They remain convinced that
Serbs, who enjoyed a dominant position in Yugoslavia, have been
wronged and misunderstood -- and that superpower America has
spearheaded a campaign to cast them as perpetual bad guys for the
carnage unleashed by Milosevic.
Srdjan Bogosavljevic, who runs Strategic Marketing Research, says
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's government is intentionally
perpetuating that sense of victimhood.
Milos Arsic, 25, was 4 when he last visited his father's native Kosovo
village of Musutiste. But his family's ties to it run so deep that his
22-year-old sister is named Kosovka, after the province.
In 1999, he said, ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army
killed his cousins, a brother and sister, in a raid on their Serbian
village.
"So don't talk to me about Kosovo's independence," he said. "It's
rubbish, it's a huge injustice and no one can say differently."
A technician in the industrial Belgrade suburb of Jerkovic, he blames
the West for Kosovo's secession, and says Serbia must fight to recover
it.
"I would be the first to take up a rifle and go there," he said.
The divide between nationalists and pro-Western modernizers also cuts
through families.
Marija Josifovic, 19, a student of electrical engineering, says Kosovo
doesn't matter much to her even though "in theory" it had no right to
secede.
She's more concerned about professors at her predominantly male
engineering school who mock her for being a woman. In the West, she
believes, women engineers can get jobs as easily as men.
"What really worries me is my younger brother -- he is in high school
and he wants to go fight to reclaim Kosovo" -- an idea she thinks he
may have picked up at school or from friends.
The rise of extremist youth organizations under the keep-Kosovo banner
makes life harder for liberals like Srecko Sekeljic.
His student group, called "There is no Alternative to Europe,"
advocates dialogue with the EU despite its support for Kosovo, and he
gets telephone and e-mail threats while nationalist websites instruct
followers to "deal" with the activists.
As Sekeljic spoke to a handful of students at a rally in heavy rain
outside the philosophy faculty at Belgrade University, leather-
jacketed young men of a group calling itself "Serb Patriots" looked on
and jeered.
Young Serbs eye West as outlet for dreams, hatred
By Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press
BELGRADE, Serbia -- Bojan Mihajlovic, a 29-year-old hotel manager and
father of a 7-year-old boy, watched from his seventh-floor Belgrade
apartment as rioting Serb nationalists tried to trash a Western-owned
supermarket.
"It was madness, violence, all over again," he said.
The next day at work, Mihajlovic processed 30 cancellations by foreign
guests, fearful of the unrest triggered in the Serb capital by the
independence declaration of the province of Kosovo.
To Serbs like him, it's reminiscent of 1999, when mobs enraged by NATO
bombing attacked the U.S. embassy and ransacked a McDonald's. This
time around the embassy was again among the targets of violence, and
many young Serbs are horrified.
They fear the nationalist fervor sweeping Serbia, and worry that their
leaders will push the country deeper into isolation.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: America | Europe | Italy | Union | Muslim |
McDonald | Austria | Turkish | Kosovo | Yugoslavia | Belgrade | Serbs
| Balkan | Slobodan Milosevic | Albanian | Swarovski | Danube |
Serbians | Western-owned
These Serbs, however, tend to be in the relatively sophisticated,
prosperous capital. On the other hand, those flocking to the hard-line
cause are mostly from depressed industrial towns that have never
recovered from the collapse of communism and Yugoslavia's implosion
into six separate Balkan republics plus Kosovo.
On both sides there is confusion and drift. Many Serbs thought that
with dictator Slobodan Milosevic ousted eight years ago by a pro-
democracy movement, Serbia too was on the way to joining the European
Union, like other former communist states of eastern Europe.
Yet suddenly, it's again all about Kosovo -- a region which Christian
Serbia reveres as a cradle of nationhood, even though it is
overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian and Muslim.
While few young Serbians have ever visited there, their schoolbooks
have taught them that a 1398 battle in Kosovo against a Turkish
onslaught was a historic event on which "the nation's consciousness
was built."
In describing the wars of the 1990s, the textbooks dwell on Serb
suffering and NATO's bombing of Belgrade during the Kosovo crisis of
1999, without mentioning the atrocities that brought Milosevic before
an international war crimes tribunal.
For many young Serbs, liberal or nationalist, losing Kosovo is like an
amputation. But patriotic frenzy spilling into violence threatens to
crush the dream of a future with the West.
"Every embassy they smashed, every shop they looted, is one chance
less for Serbia to become a decent place," said Nikola Kovacevic, 21,
who would look at home on any Western city street riding his shiny
black Piaggio XB motorcycle.
Many liberals suspect the government is encouraging a hooligan
minority to bully a majority who might be willing to let go of Kosovo
if it meant prosperity and an end to Serbia's isolation.
But a survey by Strategic Marketing Research, a leading Serb polling
group, paints a picture of deep ambivalence about Kosovo and closer
ties with the West. Even liberals, it seems, are not immune to
bitterness and visceral passion over the loss of the province.
Of 1,100 polled, only 18% support "aggressive action" to stop Kosovo
becoming independent, while 21% want Serbia to cut diplomatic ties
with states recognizing Kosovo.
About 70% want Serbia to join the European Union, but only 33% would
do so if the condition was acceptance of Kosovo's independence. The
poll, taken days before Kosovo declared independence Feb. 17, had a
margin of error of two percentage points.
Many Serb youths dream of contact with the West, but instead of
relaxing visa rules now that the Milosevic era is over, Western
embassies have tightened the rules and applicants must queue endlessly
for visas.
"I feel I am being punished for something I haven't done," said
pharmacy student Jelena Kolasinac, 19, as she danced Friday night away
in the Plastik nightclub wearing a daring miniskirt.
Belgrade today has a deceptively cosmopolitan flair. Floating
restaurants on the Danube fill up at night. Shops peddle Swarovski
crystal from Austria, and music blazes from a swank bar district
renamed Silicone Valley because of voluptuously enhanced young women
who party there. Construction cranes dot the skyline.
But today's young people, having grown up with the isolation and
sanctions imposed for Milosevic's warmongering in the 1990s, are often
ignorant of the West, imagining it either as a paradise or a Serbia-
bullying monster.
Only about 15% of Serbs have even bothered to get a passport. When Lea
Vajler's high school graduating class went to Italy for a week-long
school trip last year, she was among just three in her class of 30 who
already had a passport. The rest of the 18-year-olds had to apply for
the first time.
"When we got there, it was like stepping out of a cage," she said.
"They gawked, wide-eyed, never having been out of the country."
Many Serbs have bought into Milosevic's propaganda that accused the
West of willfully dismantling Yugoslavia. They remain convinced that
Serbs, who enjoyed a dominant position in Yugoslavia, have been
wronged and misunderstood -- and that superpower America has
spearheaded a campaign to cast them as perpetual bad guys for the
carnage unleashed by Milosevic.
Srdjan Bogosavljevic, who runs Strategic Marketing Research, says
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's government is intentionally
perpetuating that sense of victimhood.
Milos Arsic, 25, was 4 when he last visited his father's native Kosovo
village of Musutiste. But his family's ties to it run so deep that his
22-year-old sister is named Kosovka, after the province.
In 1999, he said, ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army
killed his cousins, a brother and sister, in a raid on their Serbian
village.
"So don't talk to me about Kosovo's independence," he said. "It's
rubbish, it's a huge injustice and no one can say differently."
A technician in the industrial Belgrade suburb of Jerkovic, he blames
the West for Kosovo's secession, and says Serbia must fight to recover
it.
"I would be the first to take up a rifle and go there," he said.
The divide between nationalists and pro-Western modernizers also cuts
through families.
Marija Josifovic, 19, a student of electrical engineering, says Kosovo
doesn't matter much to her even though "in theory" it had no right to
secede.
She's more concerned about professors at her predominantly male
engineering school who mock her for being a woman. In the West, she
believes, women engineers can get jobs as easily as men.
"What really worries me is my younger brother -- he is in high school
and he wants to go fight to reclaim Kosovo" -- an idea she thinks he
may have picked up at school or from friends.
The rise of extremist youth organizations under the keep-Kosovo banner
makes life harder for liberals like Srecko Sekeljic.
His student group, called "There is no Alternative to Europe,"
advocates dialogue with the EU despite its support for Kosovo, and he
gets telephone and e-mail threats while nationalist websites instruct
followers to "deal" with the activists.
As Sekeljic spoke to a handful of students at a rally in heavy rain
outside the philosophy faculty at Belgrade University, leather-
jacketed young men of a group calling itself "Serb Patriots" looked on
and jeered.
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