Greets the new president of Serbia
Brunner, Kira
A CROSS THE STREET from the compound where Slobodan Milosevic barricaded himself against police last winter before being carted off to jail sits a beautiful villa once inhabited by...
...At the arraignment the day before Montgomery's party, Milosevic defiantly dismissed charges that he orchestrated the expulsion of seven hundred and forty thousand ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the violent deaths of hundreds of others...
...Ah yes, Dissent," he says, "I used to read that when I was young...
...Like it or not, any economic stability for Serbia now lies in rejecting the raging nationalism of the former regime and instead following the dictates of a Western agenda that could lead to acceptance into the European Union...
...The invitations arrived just as Milosevic was being shipped off to the Hague to stand trial before the United Nations war-crimes tribunal...
...This is fantastic," Savic commented, taking in the sight of more than a thousand people on the front lawn...
...Elected last fall after the October demonstrations that over threw Milosevic, Kostunica cut a fine figure as the poster boy for stability and democracy in the Balkans...
...When I am introduced to him as an American who works for Dissent magazine, he is gracious and polite...
...Not only did the two go to school together, but they use the same dry cleaner and run into one another when picking up the laundry...
...A CROSS THE STREET from the compound where Slobodan Milosevic barricaded himself against police last winter before being carted off to jail sits a beautiful villa once inhabited by Marshal Tito...
...People were just too scared to come...
...and world-weary NGO workers blow kisses to one another over the heads of well-dressed "businessmen," the profiteers of the Balkan wars...
...At times Belgrade has the nosy intimacy of a small mid-western town...
...Asked by Judge Richard May whether he wanted the indictment read, Milosevic replied, "That's your problem"—a statement that sums up his attitude during the last thirteen years of war and destruction in the Balkans...
...Milosevic claimed that this trial's aim is to provide false justification for the war 8 n DISSENT / Fall 2001 crimes committed in Yugoslavia" by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...
...Women in silk floral dresses and men in breezy summer suits waited in a forty-five minute line to shake hands with the U.S...
...One glance around the party was an uncanny peek at what Berlin might have looked like after the Second World War...
...Last year when they threw this party, only a hundred people dared to show up...
...Do you want to meet him...
...ambassador, William Montgomery, and his wife for their Fourth of July garden party...
...K K OSTUNICA HAS succeeded in walking a very narrow political line, balancing his own nationalism and indignation at the mandates of the West, on the one hand, and a sincere reverence for democracy and incorruptibility, on the other...
...Once the party was well underway, Presi dent Vojislav Kostunica arrived...
...Savic, who spent the last ten years resisting the Milosevic regime, was giddy as he waved his invitation at the two security guards in dark suits standing at the gate...
...In this way the West has felt confident that although he may whine and balk, he has catered to their most urgent demands...
...uniformed officers shake hands with bright-eyed liberals newly elected to Parliament...
...Another who hadn't forgotten was Mira Markovi, Milosevic's wife and political partner, who was quoted earlier that morning as saying, "I still find him cute and likable...
...Nearby, the special police—better known for midnight raids and war profiteering—paced back and forth between Milosevic's former compound and the party, directing traffic and keeping the crowd on the walkway...
...The resentful grimaces on their faces were a hint that they, unlike the crowd they had been commandeered to patrol, had not yet forsaken Milosevic...
...ambassador...
...The international community has had little trouble forgetting Kostunica's own nationalism, which rears its head sometimes in subtle ways, as when he bemoaned the sur render of a strong Serbian identity for a "Yugoslav, European, or anti-nationalist" one, and at other times in not so subtle ways, as when he was photographed on a trip to Kosovo brandishing an AK-47 alongside Serbian militants...
...KIRA BRUNNER is an assistant editor of Dissent...
...As the band plays "Summertime" and "Old Man River," intellectuals rub elbows with ambassadors from ex-socialist countries...
...Milosevic, in his seventeen-by-ten-foot cell, was all but forgotten as the United States Independence Day party moved into full swing...
...DISSENT / Fall 2001 n I 9...
...An objective truth commission would probably have been difficult to establish in Serbia and would have dealt with little beyond Milosevic's crimes against the Serbian people...
...It wasn't only those who have always spoken out against Milosevic who ventured out to sip gin and tonics with the Americans...
...In order for Serbia to recover economically, it must open its arms to Western aid, entrepreneurs, and corporate investors...
...Members of the old power elite had put on their finest, taken up a new line, and simply walked across the street from Milosevic's house to make nice with the Americans...
...This same villa, with its manicured gardens and freshly painted façade, was the site chosen by the U.S...
...Yet, as Kostunica makes his way across the lawn, Milosevic sits in prison...
...And a dismissive attitude toward the past may prove dangerous as fighting heats up in Macedonia...
...Cream-colored invitations stamped with an American bald eagle were hand-delivered a week earlier to politicians, heads of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academics, ambassadors, and Serbian socialites...
...The tide has turned, and everyone present appeared aware that it is in America's favor...
...I found myself in line with the others at the invitation of Obrad Savic, president of the Belgrade Circle—a small NGO that publishes left-leaning books and holds annual lectures on the future of democracy in Serbia...
...Obrad asks as he catches sight of Kostunica...
...As we entered the garden, a jazz band was playing as waiters in tuxedos served drinks and finger food to the Serbian elite, many of whom had made their fortunes under the Milosevic COMMENTS & OPINIONS regime...
...But behind the trappings there has been little serious examination of Serbian nationalism...
...Kostunica had continually stated that he would never send Milosevic to the Hague, resolving instead to establish a "truth commission" to try Milosevic in Serbia...
Vol. 48 • September 2001 • No. 4
