wfn.org | Kosovo bombing "miserable failure," says Yugoslavia-born pastor

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

April 28, 1999	News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.    10-71B{236}

A UMNS Interview
by Dean Snyder*

The Rev. Paul Mojzes, professor of religion and academic dean at Rosemont
College in Pennsylvania, is probably the only United Methodist pastor in the
United States who grew up in Yugoslavia.  

Mojzes was born to a Methodist clergy couple in Osijek, Croatia, in 1936.
He moved with his family to Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina in Serbia,
when he was four years old and lived in a Methodist parsonage there until he
came to the United States in 1957.  He studied at Florida Southern College
and Boston University School of Theology.  He is an ordained elder in the
Florida Annual Conference.  He wrote the book Yugoslavian Inferno:
Ethnoreligious Warfare in the Balkans in 1995 and edited Religion and War in
Bosnia in 1998.  

Help us understand what is happening in Kosovo.

Mojzes: There is a longstanding conflict over land.  Two ethnic groups  --
the Serbs and the Albanians  --  have felt that this region, which belonged
to Serbia in the 12th and 14th centuries and then again since 1912, really
ought not to be shared by the other ethnic group.
 
The conflict has long historical roots.  During the Ottoman rule from the
14th century into the 20th century, this entire region was occupied by
Turkey.  Because the Albanians converted to Islam in large numbers (70
percent overall but almost 100 percent of the Albanians in Kosovo), they
were privileged and given land holdings which the Christian population, in
this case the Serbs, were not entitled to after they lost the war to the
Turks.   

In 1912 as a result of the first Balkan War, the Balkan states drove out the
Turks from their end of Europe.

The population of Kosovo was at this time mixed Serb and Albanian with a
third to a half Albanian. But Kosovo definitely belonged to Serbia which,
after World War I, formed the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes that
was named Yugoslavia in 1929.

 A demographic explosion happened among the Albanian population in Kosovo.
Serbs moved out in ever larger numbers feeling like they were being squeezed
out by a growing Albanian population.  This was particularly true during
World War II when Kosovo was occupied by Mussolini's fascist Italy.  Ethnic
cleansing, namely large-scale pressure, killings, and expulsion from Kosovo,
was exerted on the Serbs to move them out of the area.

Serbs were moved off of the land by the Italians?

Mojzes:  They were actually moved out in large numbers by the Albanians.
The Italian governors permitted the Albanians to practice ethnic cleansing
on the Serbs in Kosovo.
Ethnic cleansing, by the way, started at the turn of the century in the
Ottoman Empire when the Armenians were being massacred.  There's a history,
a long history, of populations being moved out of entire areas and land
changing hands.

When you use the term "ethnic cleansing," do you only mean populations being
moved out of an area?

Mojzes: It means populations being expelled and also killed.  The way you
expel a population is to terrorize it.  You carry out massacres.  You
threaten.  You drive them out of an area.

When is the first time you heard the term "ethnic cleansing?"

Mojzes: The term "ethnic cleansing" was used already in the 16th and 17th
centuries in that area.  The term arose as a euphemism for massacre and
genocide.
  
During World War II, Serbs had been ethnically cleansed in enormously large
numbers in Croatia. They were forced to convert from Orthodoxy to
Catholicism or be killed or exiled.
My point is simply this: The Serbs have very recent memories of being driven
out of the areas in which they had lived and which they considered their own
for centuries.

So, Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia, but the population became mostly Albanian
while the majority population in Yugoslavia as a whole is Serb?

Mojzes: When Yugoslavia was recreated at the end of World War II, the land
of Kosovo was again incorporated into Yugoslavia which included the regions
of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and
Montenegro.  Tito, who himself was an ethnic Croat, reestablished Yugoslavia
on a more equitable federal basis.  This worked as long as he was alive and
he was the dictator.  He succeeded in establishing an ethnic balance.  No
one was permitted to speak in a nationalistic way. When one nationality made
trouble, if Tito disciplined them, he also disciplined the nationality that
had not been making trouble so no one could say he was favoring one
nationality over the other.

But Tito died in 1980.  It was not clear who would be his successor.  The
communists became more and more loyal to their regions rather than to the
federal government.  The Slovenia communists started to distance themselves
from the federal government. The Croat communists did likewise. And the
Albanian communists in Kosovo also started to suggest that their region
ought to become a separate republic or join Albania.  This scared the Serbs
to death.  It was at this point that (Slobodan) Milosevic started seizing
power.  He was a banker and communist bureaucrat, not really a remarkable
figure, until 1986.

By this time, the ratio of the population in Kosovo had gradually changed to
90 percent Albanian and only 10 percent Serb.  When Milosevic realized that
the Serb population was threatened by domination and even violence by an
overwhelming majority of Albanians, he made a bid for leadership. He
envisioned himself as a possible successor to Tito. His leadership was not
accepted by most of the regions of Yugoslavia and this led to the falling
apart of Yugoslavia.  By 1990 or 1991 the federal government fell apart.
Instead of one, you suddenly had five countries.  Only two out of six
federal units stuck together  -- Serbia and Montenegro.

So Serbia and Montenegro under Milosevic continued the state of Yugoslavia?

Mojzes: Most of us call it rump Yugoslavia.  Other states took on as their
nations' names the names they'd had as republics  --  Croatia, Slovenia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia.  
About 15 percent of the population of Croatia was Serb.  The Serbs there
tried to get Croatia to stay in the union.  They didn't succeed even after a
four-year war.  The Serbs then were all expelled from Croatia.  Today
Croatia is an ethnically cleansed country.  It contains practically no
Serbs.  Interestingly enough, the West did not do much. There were some
diplomatic pressures on the Croats not to do it, but when they did it
anyway, there was no punishment. 

Why do you think NATO has decided to act in Kosovo now?

Mojzes: This is, to me, not entirely clear.  On the one hand, the Balkans
continue to be a restless place and, I suppose from the perspective of a
more peaceful Europe, the upheavals and wars in the Balkans are undesirable.

 
The problem is the upheavals in the Balkans should not have been addressed
in a military way. They should have been continually addressed in a
diplomatic way which, of course, was not very easy because basically the
Serbs said, "It's none of your business what's happening in our state.  You
are mixing into our internal affairs."

It is like when the riots took place in Los Angeles.  If another country had
said to the United States, you have to resolve this in such-and-such a way,
we would have said, "None of your business. We're a sovereign country.  We
know how to deal with our problems."

The Serbs were strongly resenting this intrusion into their affairs.  Much,
much more could have been accomplished by providing genuine negotiations
with the legitimate government of Serbia.  We don't like Milosevic but he
has three times been elected by the majority of the population of
Yugoslavia. 

Who elected him?

Mojzes: All the inhabitants of Yugoslavia who went to vote.  The Albanian
population, as a protest, didn't go out to vote.  They decided to boycott
the election.  But that doesn't make an election illegitimate.  I think that
was one of the mistakes the Albanian political parties made. They decided to
isolate themselves and not participate in the political processes.  They saw
the secession of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia
had succeeded.  The Albanian politicians in Kosovo hoped they could also
secede.  They thought if they participated in the political life of the
country they would weaken their possibility of seceding.

NATO decided to unilaterally take events in its own hands instead of taking
it to the United Nations, probably because it thought it could act more
decisively as a military pact than the U.N. would.  But by what authority
does a military alliance decide to intervene in a non-member state when none
of the NATO members are themselves under attack?   The U.S. leadership made
a fatal mistake in going with NATO, thinking the only way to deal with
Milosevic is through the use of force.  They thought they were going to
coerce him by threatening Serbia. 

NATO came with predetermined demands rather than encouraging direct
negotiations between the Serbs and Albanians.  The Kosovo Albanian
guerrillas (KLA), who also resisted NATO at first, were persuaded to sign on
to the demands under considerable pressure from us. We convinced them that
if they signed on and the Serbs did not, it would be to their advantage,
because Yugoslavia would be bombed into submission and NATO would de facto
become an ally of the KLA. The demands, however, were totally unacceptable
to the Serbs.

Why?

Mojzes: They would require Yugoslavia to accept NATO military not only in
Kosovo but in its entire territory in order to implement the Kosovo
pacification process.  This is unacceptable to Yugoslavia as a sovereign
state.

They would then carry out a referendum in three years time to determine
Kosovo's future.  The Serbs see no reason for a referendum.  Kosovo is part
of the Serbian state.  Constitutionally it doesn't matter how many Albanians
live there; it is still part of Serbia.

Why isn't the bombing working?

Mojzes: What the bombing did was exactly the opposite of what its intentions
were.
It was supposed to stop the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo but it
resulted in a greater expulsion.  This turned out to be a miserable failure.
The expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo is vastly greater after the attack by
NATO than before, some due to bombing and some due to the activities of the
Serb military and paramilitary units.

I'm not justifying Milosevic's behavior in Kosovo.  It was atrocious.  There
were repressions, murders, massacres, humiliation of the people.  All of
their political rights were very, very seriously restricted. But their
situation should not be equated with the fate of the Jews in the Holocaust.
Kosovo Albanians also used violence on the Serbs.

Before the bombing, there was no mass expulsion.  It was in trickles.  Now,
600,000 people have been expelled.  God only knows if Milosevic's intention
now might be to completely eliminate the Albanian population from Kosovo as
his response to NATO bombing.

We bombed also because we did not want the Kosovo situation to destabilize
neighboring countries.  That also was a miserable failure.  Macedonia,
Albania and the state of Montenegro are severely destabilized.

The purpose of the bombing was to force Milosevic to realize that NATO is
serious about imposing military control over Kosovo so that he would yield.
We believed three or four days of serious bombing would do it.  What
happened was exactly the opposite.  The military itself has not sustained
serious losses in the bombing.  The civilian population did.   

In Kosovo, Belgrade, and Novi Sad, huge numbers of objects have been
destroyed  -- bridges, factories, military barracks, roads, railroads and
chemical factories that have created an ecological nightmare not only for
Serbia but also for its neighbors.  Anything that allegedly can be used for
military purposes has been bombed although those same objects are used for
predominately civilian needs.
  
Because the bombing is so comprehensive and indiscriminate, the population
of Yugoslavia, except for the Albanians, have now strongly rallied around
Milosevic.  His power was weakening every year since he grabbed power in the
late 1980s.  Yet now all of the people who opposed Milosevic are saying they
have absolutely no grounds to continue to oppose him.  

In a country under danger where everybody's lives are in jeopardy, what else
is left but to unite together and oppose the NATO intervention?  So instead
of weakening the dictator, it has served exactly the opposite purpose.  It
unified people around him and Yugoslavia lost any hope for serious
democratic movements in Serbia for God knows how many years.
 
I come from the Vojvodina, the only place in Yugoslavia where there are
Methodists.  What I think is horrific in this whole thing of presumably
punishing Milosevic for being such a horrible dictator engaged in genocide
is the fact that we are bombing the ethnically inclusive area of Vojvodina
equally as furiously as we are bombing Kosovo or any other part of Serbia
and Montenegro.  I suspect there may be damage to the Methodist church in
Novi Sad because there are military barracks within half-a-block of the
church.  Since we are hitting all the so-called military and industrial
targets, I'd be very, very surprised if our church is undamaged. 

What would you do now?

Mojzes: I would stop the bombing immediately.   I'd at least say we will
stop bombing for 10 days.  Then I'd call an international conference in
which I would give the Russians a strong role to play.  I don't believe I am
saying this because I had great fear and suspicions of the Soviet Union in
the past, but currently the Russians appear to be capable of playing a very
positive role because Serbs and Montenegrins believes the Russians are not
hostile to them.
  
It seems to me something could be worked out for some military presence to
be in Kosovo but it must not be NATO --  the United Nations or the
Organization of States for Security and Cooperation in Europe, perhaps  --
but not those countries that have bombed Yugoslavia.  

It doesn't make sense that the people who bomb you are the ones who are
going to come and implement peace when in fact they were part of the
aggression against your country.  The peace forces must have a different
kind of a make-up.  My own sense is that, because of history, German troops
are not acceptable. Italian troops and Turkish troops are not welcome.
Unfortunately, now American troops are no longer acceptable because
Yugoslavia considers the United States to be its major antagonist.  So it
would have to be countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Russia, the
Ukraine.

Are you in communication with Methodists in Yugoslavia?

Mojzes: Not recently.  As an American, I wouldn't know what to say to them
that would ring authentic.  How can someone who lives in security provide
assurance and consolation to them when they could die at any moment?  I just
read a press release, however, that said that the Methodist clergy, all
ethnic Slovaks, strongly condemn the NATO aggression against their country.

Who are the Methodists in the Balkans ethnically?

Mojzes: There are about 1,000 to 1,500 Methodists in the Vojvodina region.
Approximately that many are also in Macedonia although I am not sure of any
recent growth or attrition.
Methodists in Vojvodina tend to be non-Serbs.   The largest number, 80 or 90
percent, are Slovak, as in Czechoslovakia, as well as some Hungarian, a few
Germans and a handful of Serb converts. In Macedonia, they are all
Macedonians. One of our Methodists, Boris Trajkovski, has become a deputy
foreign minister of Macedonia.  Recently at a press conference he sharply
criticized western nations for reproaching his country for its reluctance to
accept refugees yet doing relatively little themselves to provide housing
and food for them.

One thing is clear to me.  Bombs and rockets fall indiscriminately on both
Serb and non-Serb, the foes as well as the friends of the Milosevic regimes,
and none of them delivers human rights, democracy, or a civil society to
those whom they hit. 

#  #  #
*Snyder is director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington Annual
Conference.

______________
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