Surviving Serbia

I have a confession to make.

I completely tuned out during the entire Yugoslavian crisis in the late 1990s. I had no idea what was going on. All I heard was "...Bosnians, Serbs, Kosovo, ethnic cleansing, Hercegovina, Slobodan Milosevich, blah blah blah..."

It was just way to complicated for my little brain.

I like following wars when it's easy to identify who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.

NAZIS = BAD GUYS
ALLIES = GOOD GUYS

RUSSIANS = EVIL EMPIRE
AMERICA = GOOD EMPIRE

SADDAM HUSSEIN = BAD GUY
GEORGE BUSH = WELL, MAYBE SOMETIMES IT'S NOT THAT BLACK AND WHITE

But with Yugoslavia it just seemed way too convoluted. So I just ignored it. I know that's irresponsible. I am a bad person. I ought to be cleansed.

But something tells me I wasn't the only American who was oblivious of the details. So here's...

The moron's guide to the Yugoslavian Civil War

Yugoslavia was a country with 5 regions, with Serbia being the most dominant.
Serbs are Christian Orthodox and live in Serbia (surprise!).
The Serbs don't like their neighbors, who are mostly Catholic or Muslim.
Their neighbors don't like anyone different from them either.
It's been that way for a long time.
This war was just their latest fight.
The Serbs threw the first punch in this round.
The Serbs lost this fight.
They'll be another war this century, because there always is.

It took me a while and I had to talk to hundreds of people, but I can finally sum up the two root causes to the problem:

1) Intolerance of differences, especially religious differences

2) Inability to forget the past and move on

Many folks in the former Yugoslavia just hate those who are different from them. What's bizarre is that the differences are relatively minor. After all, they speak the same language and look the same. The only real difference is their religion.

So there's your simple summary. If you want an explanation that's above 3rd grade level, read this next section.

2000 years of history in two minutes

First, let's start with a map of the area, because it's easy to get lost in this conflict:

To understand why people bonk each other's heads, it's important to understand their history. My conclusion: all the Yugoslavian problems in the 1990s are the fault of the Romans.

Romans conquered the Serbian territory in the 3rd century BC.
In AD 395 Roman Emperor Theodosius I divided the empire and what is now Serbia went to the Byzantine Empire, while Croatia remained in the Western Roman Empire. They made the split right along a river that till this day still divides Bosnia and Serbia.
On June 28, 1389 Turks defeated Serbia at the Battle of Kosovo ushering 500 years of Islamic rule. Some Serbs bring up this 700 year old fight as justification for beating up the Kosovars today.
Serbs won their independence in 1878 and still hold a grudge against the Muslims for forcing them to convert to Islam.
On June 28, 1914 a Serb nationalist killed the Archduke of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, which then invaded Serbia and World War I got underway.
After WWI, Croatia, Slovenia, Vojvodina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia formed the Yugoslavia under the king of Serbia.
Hitler broke it apart again and doled out the regions to his allies.
Josip Broz Tito reunited Yugoslavia after WWII. Everybody still loves Tito throughout former Yugoslavia.
Tito felt bad for the Albanians who were living in the repressive Albania, so he let them cross the border and live in Kosovo. He also wanted Albania to become part of Yugoslavia. It never did. He also never gave the Albanians of Kosovo and the Hungarians of Vojvodina (northern Serbia) republic status. Resentment started to build.
Slobodan Misosevic, Serbia's commie leader, started yapping out a "Greater Serbia" which horrified its neighbors.

Imperialists like using that term, "Greater..."

Hitler talked about the "Greater Germany"
Zionists talked about the "Greater Israel"
US President James Monroe talked about the "Greater America" when he laid out his 1823 Monroe Doctrine (which said our destiny was to expand to the Pacific).

Yugoslavia blows up

With Tito's death in 1985 and the collapse of Soviet Union, Yugoslavia had a civil war in the 1990s.

In 1991 those who aren't Serbs want out of the Serb dominated Yugoslavia.
Slovenia gets out with just a 10-day war, thanks largely that there are no Serbs living in their country (so it's not part of "Greater Serbia")
Bosnia and Croatia (which have mostly Catholics and Muslims, but a strong Serb minority) declare independence from Yugoslavia.
The spark for the first war was in April 1992 when some Bosnian Serbs snipers killed a dozen unarmed civilians demonstrating for peace in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Now that is just bad marketing. If you're going to shoot innocents, don't do it when they are at a peace rally!
War engulfs Croatia too.
Serbs have all the weapons, so it's not a fair fight.
16 months later, NATO gets involved and they bomb the crap out of Serbia for 78 days until the Serbians give up for a couple of years.
Eventually Albanians in Kosovo want out too. Serbs get pissed again and start attacking Kosovo. This is the 2nd conflict.
So in a few years, the Serbs had attacked nearly all their neighbors.

So far it looks like the Serbs are the bad guys. But I wanted to go to Serbia and hear what they have to say.

Dude, you sunk my bridges!

It didn't take long to get a mouthful from the Serbs. I got into my overnight train to Belgrade when a guy came in. He asked me when where I was from. I meekly said, "The United States."

"I am from Novi Sad," he said, "and you guys destroyed the three main bridges in my city."

Well that's a great way to start a relationship, I thought.

"Why did we do that?" I asked.

"I don't know. You didn't bomb Belgrade's bridges. But you did bomb the Chinese Embassy."

Yeah, but they had it comin'.... OK, I didn't say that.

He said that aside from the Chinese Embassy, we only struck military targets in Belgrade. I still felt a little bad about bombing Belgrade, at least until I found out that it has been destroyed and rebuilt 40 times in its 2,300 year history.

What's one more sacking between friends?

Many Serbs just don't understand why NATO bombed them. They had a similar reaction that Americans had on Sept 11. They thought, "Hey, what the hell did we do wrong?"

They view their conflict as a civil war. Yugoslavia was breaking apart like the USA during its civil war. The Serbs were simply fighting to preserve the union.

Of course, they wanted to preserve the union because they were dominant. Meanwhile, the rest wanted out, because they were tired of all the tax revenue and centralized decisions were being made by the Serbs in Belgrade.

"I wish Yugoslavia could be like America," he told me. "In America, everybody feels like they're an American, regardless of their race, religion, or language. In Yugoslavia, nobody identifies that strongly with Yugoslavia. They feel they are Croatians first, and Yugoslavian second, for example. Or Bosnians first, and Yugoslavians second."

Pregnant lady defends the Serbs

I was eating a vegetarian restaurant and saw a pregnant woman eating by herself, so I joined her to get her thoughts. She said:

During WWII Catholics (Croatians) and Muslims (Albanians) put the Orthodox (Serbs) into concentration camps. She said they killed 1 million Serbs.
Croatians in Zagreb threw flowers at the Nazis, whereas the Serbs fought with the Allies.
Both sides committed atrocities in Kosovo, not just the Serbs.

War museum

To get more on the Serb perspective, I went to their war museum. Yup, these Serbs are warriors. Just one fight after another. They have a saying in Serbia:

"Koce kome ako ne syoj svome" which means, "Who else am I going to help but my own family."

But they have a twist of the phrase and frequently say, "Who else am I going to assault but my own family."

The most interesting part of the War Museum was the special room devoted to their war in the late 1990s. The exhibit just starts off with a ton of arrows pointed toward Serbia. Planes and stealth fighters are all descending onto poor little Serbia. They show the number of troops and weaponry in NATO vs. those in Serbia to show the ridiculous advantage of NATO. It gives the impression that the first thing that happened was NATO attacked Serbia.

Nothing is mentioned about how they attacked their neighbors. The word Albanian, Kosovo, or Bosnia does not appear anywhere. They make it seem that NATO just attacked them for no good reason. This is what many Serbs believe today.

They show off a piece of the one stealth fighter they shot down, other US equipment they got, and pictures of innocent Serbs killed in the cross fire. They say that NATO used weapons that are prohibited according to international law.

When I press them about the atrocities in Kosovo, they might say, "But those were other Serbs doing that." Or they say, "Yeah, but the Albania and Croats were terrible too."

OK, they might have a point. And maybe the US military descend on Florida if the Latin Americans living there decided to become an independent state. Or if the folks in Florida use those damn punch cards again.

Wanna wallpaper your room with money?

After the war hyperinflation in Serbia hit an record high in the history of Europe! Wow!

So how bad did it get? Two examples:

1) The guy on the train told me that when collected his father's pension, he had to run to the market to use it to buy 25 eggs. If he waited until the next morning, he could only buy ONE egg with the same money.

2) At one point, it was cheaper to use banknotes to paper walls than to buy wallpaper.

Serbians have few fans

I asked Hungarians, Croatians, and a bunch of other people what they think of Serbians. They say they're "aggressive, arrogant, and dominant." A Slovenian said, "They like giving orders and commanding, but they don't like to work hard like us."

At the same time the Serbian on the street were all nice to me, which is pretty amazing considering I come from the country that dropped bombs on them just 5 years ago.

So how is Belgrade anyway?

It's not a bad city, but it's not amazing. It has two long pedestrian only streets. A castle district. Some nice buildings. And an endless supply of chain smokers.

As soon as I arrived in Belgrade, Serbia's capital, I was impressed by the level of grumpy looks on people's faces. I hadn't seen such grumpiness since...Belarus.

The city is polluted. Unlike the organized Austrians, the Serbs hardly seem ready to conquer the Balkans. They are struggling just to survive. They're selling off their industries and trying to repair the damage. The young can't leave because nobody wants Serbs.

September 13, 2004

2010 UPDATE: To learn more, listen to my interview with a Serbian in my WanderLearn Podcast.