A short detour into tragedy

No big drama. Last evening I drop by to see a friend, we sit a while, at some point we think we might get something to eat. And where to go? He suggests Manjež. I say, oh, is Manjež working again? He says yes, I say well, you can always go to Manjež.

Historically this last statement was true. You could always go to Manjež. It was the sort of place where you would go if you didn't know where to go. If you were walking in the area you would swing by, because the probability that some group of your friends would be sitting at the tables on the sidewalk in front was reliably high. The place was always dirty, its WC like a scene out of Trainspotting, and their food would always just barely cling to this side of average. The beer was BIP (a local acronym, BIP = Bedna Imitacija Piva). But it was cheap, the crowd of people mixed and welcoming, and before you sat down konobar Draško already knew what you wanted. Manjež was a rare reassurance that whatever else was going on, something was always right with the world.

Last year the place was closed down for remodelling, and the people who did the job could have done a lot worse. They did not fill it with neon and chrome, or turn it into a casino, or stick fountains everywhere. It seems like there was a serious effort to recapture the atmosphere of what Manjež may well have been at some time, a beokafana period piece of the kind in which the characters in an Alfred Hitchcock film might dine while waiting to shuffle onto a train full of hidden murder weapons and a vaguely menacing border guard. They did not raise the prices much, and the food was just fine.

All the same, Manjež is no more. It has never happened before that on a pleasant summer evening, I sit with a friend at a sidewalk table and we are the only people there. Nor that opera arias waft gently though the windows. Nor that we are not repeatedly approached by the local stray cats (what did they do to them?). Konobar Draško is nowhere to be seen. People: Manjež is not Manjež without konobar Draško. More than this: Belgrade is not Belgrade without konobar Draško.

There is one more unremarkable spot in the city, and the world is just a little bit poorer.

Advice you can't really argue with

Ah, so pleased to back in my palatial beogradska garsonjera. Everything is just as we left it except for one thing.

There is a colorful new sticker in the lift advising children on how to behave while sampling that high and frequently operational technology. Next to the useful instructions on how a child should, in case of emergency, phone the gradsko stambeno preduzeće using only an oversized teddy bear, comes this piece of indisputable advice:

A boxing match in the lift?
The lift will be a severe referee!

It's true, I think.

She stayed with me until she moved to Notting Hill

Actually, my guess it that whatever it is, it wont be Notting Hill. Too expensive, and we prefer to mix with a lower class of people. Also, it seems clear to me that if there is any benefit to living in London, it is the opportunity to be in a neighbourhood with a funny sounding name, and "notting" is in the 49th percentile, considerably below "shoreditch" and "tufnell." But if anybody has a suggested location (postal codes, please -- the search engines ask for them) for places where residence is not too obscenely expensive, schools are good enough for our brilliant daughter, and the atmosphere caters both to doggies and gourmands, then we will grateful for suggestions.

This is, by the way, the "news" I have cryptically mentioned a couple of times. Our little family is pulling up its carefully cultivated Massachusetts roots and will be adding its own little brdašce to the London Balkanscape. The Ethniette will acquire one of those accents you hear on late night radio saying "oh seven hours, Greenwich mean time" (I intend to keep my Northwest monotone, thank you very much), Sig.ra Ethnia will ply her trade in that foreign land, and I will be Senior Lecturer in Southeast European Politics at UCL's dear old SSEES. As for Lajoš, the vet has stuck one of those horrifying chips into him, so now he will have the added marginal utility of being able to store phone numbers or recipes or something.

Of course I am absolutely thrilled to join up with the outstanding existing faculty there and with the hugely talented people who will be coming in at the same time as me. Add to this the incredible crew of people at other universities in London and elsewhere in the UK (you know who you are), and it is not hard to see where the new Balkanological paradise is coming together. As much as it is the džob of my dreams, I will do my best never to become one of those things they call an "expat." More of a gastarbajter, I should think.

The coming year will be tough. The family will be separated for some portion of it, and we will have to learn to like jellied eels. But mostly I am stunned by my good fortune, and constantly remembering the pop song line, "when you come from a background of bargain bins, you're bound to fear it ends where it begins." It still seems improbable to me, sitting as I am here in Budapest with three weeks worth of stinky t-shirts and socks from the student trip drying to the eclectic sounds of Radio Petöfi.

My colleagues in the Clark University sociology department, who I hope will come to visit us in London, have been informed. I still have to resolve with the administration under what conditions I will be departing. And I told the students who were travelling with me, who were very sweet in offering me their congratulations and a parting gift of 250 grammes of espresso.

The Yugoslavia pavilion at Auschwitz

The way that the Auschwitz museum is set up, just about all of the exhibits are at the first camp, Auschwitz I (and not at the very much larger Auschwitz II - Birkenau, which is where the large-scale killing for which the place is known was committed). At Auschwitz I is the main exhibit hall with artifacts trucked over from Birkenau for display, some barracks restored as exhibit halls, and a row of the "national" exhibits in former barracks. The "national" exhibits are prepared by specialists from the country represented in the space, and in many it is clear that a good deal of thought went into the selection of display materials, thematic emphasis, the distribution of emotional and historical clues, and many other factors. It is also clear that all of these exhibits are regularly updated and revised. All except one, which has obviously not been changed for a good twenty years, and is not likely to be changed any time in the foreseeable future.

The Yugoslavia exhibit is on the top floor of a barrack that is shared with the very razzle-dazzle Austrian exhibit (which centers on the dangers of nationalism). The first room presents general information on the period, with many photos repeated from the main exhibit hall a few buildings away. There is a very little bit of information about the 24,000 people from Yugoslavia who were put in the camp. Some of them were in a resistance organisation, if you want to know more about that or how resistance organisations functioned, or how the Yugoslavian ones related with the others, you will not find out from the exhibit.

The second room gives a general presentation, very NOB-centric, of the occupation and war in Yugoslavia. Some crimes, some collaborators, and a whole lot of Partisan heroics. The passage of time makes this emphasis more interesting, since this is now the only site at the museum where the myth of massive resistance is preserved. The visitor is able to follow the growth of Partisan divisions, peek in at AVNOJ, trace the expansion of liberated territory. The exhibit ends with a big photo of Tito signing the new constitution of FNRJ.

Since the country that designed the exhibit no longer exists, and since the museum site does not have extra barracks for the countries that have come about in the meantime, the Yugoslav pavilion will probably remain a fascinating relic of Communist historiography for some time. I left the hall torn between the feeling that some good historians could probably (without the sponsorship of any government) do much better on the one hand, and the urge to sing Partisan songs on the other.

Soon to be back and ethnier than ever

Greetings to East Ethnians the world round from the charming Krakow airport. The last students were seen off this morning, and now your humble correspondent is off to a (dare I say well deserved?) three days of vacation in lovely Budapest, from whence posting shall recommence. I believe that in the last post I said something cryptic about the possibility of there being news. Hold fast, it will come.

The blog silence to come

Gave my last lecture to the student group this morning, and we are preparing to leave on our study tour Tuesday. Much of the time I will be out of the range of electronic communication, so the next couple of weeks should be a good time to sample the lovely blogs on the list to the right. I expect to resurface, thoroughly exhausted, in Budapest on 8 June, at which time I may or may not have news to share.

Department of excessive reactions

We all get frustrated when trains are late, but it seems some people get really angry.

And no, they never did run on time. That is just a myth.

Danas ti je divan dan

A happy 18th birthday to Radio B92! Let's say you had an impressive childhood as a precocious, brilliant and defiant youngster. And let's chalk up all that Ballantine and "Big Brother" stuff to some adolescent wandering. And let's hope for a stellar and productive maturity.

Marija Šerifović and the "new Serbia"

In the comments to the previous post on Marija Šerifović and her Eurovisionary song "Molitva," I linked to another blog that labelled the song a "turbo-folkić," and Bganon argued that "any association is wide of the mark." It seems Vesna Perić Zimonjić agrees. Writing in the Independent, she puts Marija Šerifović in the context of social and political conflicts in Serbia, describing the celebration of her award:

"Belgrade exploded with joy the moment her victory was proclaimed, with thousands taking to the streets, honking car horns and waving the Serbian flag in the capital's central Republic Square until dawn.

Such outpourings are typical when the country's basketball or water polo teams are victorious. But this was different, for it was the first time the proverbially macho Serbs had done the same honours for a young female singer - let alone one with Serifovic's unusual fashion sense."

I am not sure I can say how much importance ought to be attributed to her "fashion sense," which seems to range from K.D. Lang to Bryan Ferry. But it's all good if it supports the characterization of her victory gesture, "Her clenched fist victory salute was widely seen as a show of defiance by the forces in Serbia that stand in direct opposition to the ultranationalists and their policy of isolation and hostility to all minorities."

Maybe that offers a sort of background for the silly argument between the Unija Roma Srbije (in whose campaign Šerifović participated, and in which her mother is a member and her uncle an officer) and the Srpska Radikalna Stranka (of which, they claim, her grandfather is a member) over which political party can claim credit for her singing. She says she is not a member of any party, but that did not seem to distract the party leaders much.

Catherine also has a roundup of press coverage.

Update: It ain't Balkanology without essentialism, right? Here is Frank Tiggelaar's English translation of an article from the Dutch NRC Handelsblad about macho countries and ideal women. Or is it macho women and ideal countries?

Yet another update: Uh oh, bilo bi dobro i meni da pogledate the comments to the previous post, where Paul points us to charges that "Molitva" is lifted from the Albanian hit "Ndarja" by Soni Malaj. And did the unfortunate Scooch pinch a tune from DaRiva?

Readers write!

One writes in with a happy story -- Marija Šerifović, representing Serbia with the song "Molitva," has won at Evrovizija. Apparently that means that Serbia will host the competition next year. That should be fun.

And one writes in with a bizarre story about leech smuggling. The estimated value of 8849 leeches is 722,000 Euros? Apparently leeches are a profitable business. Who knew?

Welcoming the Peace Caravan

The police in Niš are compiling a pretty poor record of protecting people. They are much better at aiding and abetting skinheads.

From CNN's mouth....

Thanks to MediaBistro.

A government, after all

So the deal is: Grobar is out as parliament speaker, Koštunjavi gets to keep the police, and DS gets the military. So it looks as though the DSS coalition with SRS scared the others enough to make them back down.

The government will be weak and ineffective, and DSS will not stop flirting with the far right.

Meat and memory

A friend writes in, with news and photos!

i just saw your blog entry on the canned beef monument. back in my refugee camp days, i myself had to endure twice weekly "suha vecera" consisting of some white bread and cans of "beef in its own juice" which we lovingly referred to by its french name, also on the side of the can next to the picture of the cow head, "boef du son juis" or somesuch because i cannot write french. anyway, that was a convenient time to be a vegetarian.

the discussion on spam sort of misses the point - sending pork to a mostly muslim population under siege would be an insult even beyond the grasp of the international community. or maybe not...? with the beef, they got to feel all culturally sensitive even while sending this sranje.

but my real comment here is that when i visited this monument 3 weeks ago, someone had already altered its meaning. see attached. there is another curious piece of stone nearby, near the entrance to the istorijski muzej, formerly known as the muzej revolucije, which presents another subversive use of the monument genre. that is also attached with english and bosnian versions visible. the other sides say the same thing in french and german.

And now the photos, of the altered monument and the other monument.

Tactics

Early analysis sought to minimize the distress brought on by Tomislav Nikolić's election as presiding officer of the Serbian parliament, stressing that in the likely event that a government is not formed, the parliament would be dissolved on 14 May anyway, and new elections would be called. But today Nikolić proposed an answer to that problem: if a state of emergency could be declared, then no elections would be held. Of course there are many facts that could be interpreted as emergencies: Nikolić proposes the passage of a UN resolution on the independence of Kosovo, and others might suggest that Nikolić himself presents an emergency. Or maybe somebody might burn down the Reichstag.

The gang that couldn't shoot?

Maybe I can be forgiven for failing to get excited about the government's announcement that they have foiled a terrorist attack on the soldiers at Ft. Dix. Partly this comes from the poor credibility of the folks making these types of announcements: the facts tend not to add up to the proposed sum, the prosecutions tend to fizzle, and it is often hard to avoid the perception that somebody is creating panic for panic's sake.

In this case, if there was a planned attack, it seems to have been exceedingly badly planned. A bunch of kids failed comically to maintain secrecy, trained by playing some silly "extreme sport" in their back garden, and planned to go shoot people at a place where they would be massively outnumbered by people who are better armed and trained than they are. Keystone terrorists?

Monument to the international community

In recognition of the effective and unstinting assistance provided during the war, on Friday a group of artists in Sarajevo raised their "Monument to the international community": a metre high golden can of beef. Says Dunja Blažević of the Centre for Contemporary Art, "The message is clear. The Ikar canned beef is remembered by the people of Sarajevo with disgust. Cats and dogs did not want to eat it and people had to. Everybody agreed that we should do the project in this way. It's witty, ironic and artistic."

The person who kindly sent the news along wrote, "With the inscription, 'from the grateful citizens of Sarajevo,' the spam monument is dripping with sarcasm (and a sarcasm that those who are familiar with the region will be sure to recognize!). Besides the obvious chuckle factor, what really struck me about this new monument is that it uses the medium of the monument precisely to subvert its usual message. I think we're likely all familiar with James Young's concept of the counter-memorial, but something like the spam monument seems to be a whole new level of 'counter'."

To protect and to serve

Police will not confirm this, but they appear to be favoring the conclusion that Dejan Anastasijević bombed his own apartment. This was the same police that concluded that Dejan Milenković Bagzi should be sent home with a warning for committing a traffic violation.

Where are the strong and who are the trusted

East Ethnia has has taken the liberty of designing a government for SRS, SPS, NS and DSS now that they are on the verge of making public their coalition.

Prime Minister: Tomislav Nikolić (vršilac dužnosti Vojislava Šešelja)

Deputy Prime Minister and kafe-kuhar: Vojislav Koštunica

Minister of Foreign Affairs: Aleksandar Vučić

Minister of the Interior: Svetlana Ražnatović - Ceca

Minister of Justice: Kosta Čavoški

Minister for State Management and Local Self-Government: Dobrivoje Budimirović - Bidža

Minister of Economy: Borka Vučić

Minister of Agriculture: Petar Panić - Pana Banana

Minister of Mines and Energy: Dragan Jugopetrol Tomić

Minister for Capital Investments and Popular Entertainment: Velimir Ilić

Minister of Trade, Tourism and Services: Nemanja Kusturica

Minister for International Economic Relations: Giovanni di Stefano

Minister of Finance: Željko mali Simić

Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Policy: Bratislava Buba Morina

Minister of Health: Borislav Đorđević - Bora Čorba

Minister of Science and Environmental Protection: Aleksandar Popović (nek "oštro krikuje")

Minister of Education and Sport: Radmilo Marojević

Minister of Culture: Goga Sekulić

Minister of Religion: Tomislav Gačić

Minister for the Diaspora: Brana Crnčević

Minister of Transportation: Dejan Mikavica

Minister for Human Rights and Minorities: Goran Davidović

Director of BIA: Ilija Čvorović

Governor of the National Bank: Dafina Milanović

Without a doubt, this government should remind people of the good old days that the members of the coalition want never to end.

Plus ça change, plus c'est Murta

The parliamentary coalition of SRS, SPS, NS and junior partner DSS has agreed to elect Tomislav Nikolić, an entrepreneurial graveyard director from Kragujevac, as president of the Serbian parliament. According to Nikolić, this is not "yet" a new governing coalition. According to DSS spokesperson Miloš Aligrudić, what motivated DSS to finally abandon any pretence of discontinuity with the old regime was the desire to prevent any changes at the interior ministry and the intelligence agencies.

Disappointment

Went to see The Namesake. It was good until about halfway through, then it turned into The Joy Luck Club. Ah well.

What would Escoffier do?

Now that Zveki Zmija has been given the chance to publicly lament his fate, Serbia will soon face crisis-level shortages of people threatening people. Stepping in: a bunch of people from Kruševac who call themselves the "Car Lazar Brigade." They promise unspecified action in Kosovo, but also to become "the foundation of a new Christian militia."

Leaving aside the fact that private armed forces are illegal (and why not leave it aside, since everybody else seems to), I endorse the nascent practice of naming vigilante groups after brands of cheap red wine. Sadly, there is no wine marketed under the name "dvorska budala" or "topovsko meso." The closest they could come would be one with unfortunate implications of animal abuse.

Two nonstarters

To start your day, two failed initiatives. Political parties failed to agree on forming a government in Serbia, leading the president to announce that he will intervene. And on the burning issue of legalising weed, a bunch of irrelevant people cancelled their march after receiving threats from a bunch of twits.

So this is freedom

After the first of May, the third, which is World Press Freedom Day. To mark the occasion, Freedom House has issued its 2007 press freedom survey, and its press releases today include a number of regional reports on press freedom this year. The report categorizes the press in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia as "partly free," noting the types of pressure and attacks that have been discussed here and on other Balkan blogs, as well as a lot of other places.

Among the failed regional events scheduled to celebrate the day, the Union of Journalists of Serbia (UNS -- not to be confused with the Independent Union of Journalists of Serbia, NUNS) was to deliver an award to Denis Latin, editor and host of the popular TV program Latinica. Latin refused the award, telling Index:

"my moral principles and human conscience will not allow me to accept this award from the hands of the leadership of the Union of Journalists of Serbia who not so long ago showed themselves to be celebrators of crime, destruction, and the occupation of Vukovar. They may have had good intentions, and the award may have some some point. However, the problem is with the leading figures of that Union which played a quite infamous role at the time of the destruction and occupation of Vukovar. I am simply not comfortable accepting the award."

The same article from Index quoted above has some interesting explanation and self-justification from UNS president Nino Brajović about his own role at the time (it is cited to Slobodna Evropa, but I have not found the original). None of which prevented him from writing a letter to Latin in which he laments:

"Sadly, the situation is such that that it is still impossible to carry on a strictly professional discussion, without politicizing and malicious pressures."

But in that regard, he is probably speaking for himself (despite writing as the head of a professional association).

Živio 1. maj!

I neglected to post anything for International Workers' Day (in the Stati Uniti, Loyalty Day), but Seesaw most certainly did not.

The US is of course the only country in which I have lived where 1 May is not celebrated, which is odd, considering the events that led to its becoming an international holiday.

Concrete-eating dogs?

I can confirm that there are dogs who will eat anything, and also that it is vitally important to get a diet with sufficient minerals. This does not mean, however, that I find the story of the psi betonožderi of Piva wholly credible.

Update: Silly me. Rats. That resemble dogs. If you met my dog, you would understand how easy it was for me to become confused.

Ivica Račan

He was ill for a while, and it was expected, but this morning Ivica Račan passed away. He may have done less than what could have been hoped, but his influence was generally positive and hopeful, and in contrast with many of his contemporaries on the political scene, he seemed to be a decent person. The competition to take over leadership of his party has already begun, and if it produces a new generation of leaders who are oriented toward the future, that will be a unique legacy.

Adventures on the employment front

A happily anonymous friend writes of her recent job interview at an institution which will also remain happily anonymous:

The [adjective applying name of university] were not exactly a love at first sight. They are more like a former polytechnic with an excellent business school, 5 sociology people total so far, no research funds of their own, they were even asking how much money exactly I will be able to bring per semester if [name of a perfectly innocent friend whose project we work on]'s project continues, and can I guarantee that the article that I have under revision is going to be published by December 2008 (RAE cut-off deadline). Plus (or minus) large teaching load with students who take sociology for instrumental reasons mostly. Ooh, I should also mention one puffin-guy with a "am I not an aristocrat bohemian" look, who asked if for my research on antinationalism and women's groups I would not use Žižek's work on hegemony? My reply: I could not possibly rely on my concepts of hegemony vs. nationalism taken from a person whose empirical knowledge ends with the view of his kitchen (if that). There was also a [name of an academic discipline which is not ours] professor with the look "I should be at a better university" who asked how I would object to some Weberian criticism that what I am doing is too political. My reply: I don't think that Weber suggested that we abandon politics.

Hideous poor library they have for social sciences, old books, no money for JSTOR database even. But business school is thriving.

On the top of all, they staged the interviews like it was recruitment for a professorship, asking candidates to make two different presentations to two different audiences. I should say that there were some quite friendly faculty people who also looked like they would be trying to get jobs elsewhere.

Thank you, my comrades-musketeers, for writing the letters, let's hope that if you would be pestered to write them again it would be for a more research oriented interesting place. The proximity to [toponyms for locations more appealing than the unnamed one] was the primary reason for me applying. Apart from that, I, of course, do have some torments of conscience for criticizing [unnamed university], because such universities have 2, 3 times larger presence of students children of newer immigrants than, say, Uni [deleted toponym which appears frequently in the work of Billy Bragg]. And now you know everything you always did not need to know about [unnamed university].

One bonus detail I just remembered from yesterday:
Professor Dr. Herr [surname of a person] also asked (cautiously half-smiling like he feared I may jump and bite if he moves too swiftly) if I had instances when people were strongly objecting to what I am saying in class (I think he meant if some Serbs and Albanians were attempting to murder me or each other in my classes). The question really is why one SHOULD be AFRAID of that while doing research, and since when it is ordered that we should try not to disturb feelings of hatred or ignorance. Long live intellectuals' courage Made in the West (sadly it WAS made in the West)!

I am happy to say that she is happily employed at a happier place than this one.

Technocracy

As the weeks drag on from January's elections in Serbia, there is still no governing coalition in sight. SRS got more seats than any other party, but no party will enter into a coalition with it. DSS took a distant third, but cannot countenance the possibility of losing complete control over both the premiership and the "power" ministries. DS leads the pack among the Loose Grouping of Parties That Are Not SRS, but is demanding more than DSS is willing to give. G-17+ is happy just to be there, and LDP is not on anybody's list of coalition partners nor does it want to be.

Today the junior partner of DSS, Velimir Ilić, floated the possibility that everyone has been muttering under their breath since the elections: that DSS and whatever the heck his party is called would try to form a minority government with the support of SRS, which would be handed control over the parliament. It is not as implausible as it sounds, since DSS has experience with governing as a minority with distasteful backbench support, and DSS has more in common with SRS than with its other potential coalition partners. A government of this type would be short-lived, chaotic, and phenomenally unsuccessful, and at the cost of doing lasting damage to the country would have the beneficial side effect of demolishing DSS. A victory worthy of Pyrrhus of Epirus, in the eyes of some.

Naturally, it is not to be. SRS quickly declared that they were not disposed to carry the weight of another party's failure, and Mr Ilić's effort to scare his coalition partners into submission backfired. So now it is back to pretending to carry out negotiations with people he fully intends to stab in the back, and to treating the electorate as though its principal duty is to assure that anybody who once controlled a ministry will always have large quantities of public property at their disposal.

Jao, baš je super!

Kryptonite mining comes to Serbia.

Troljetka

The Let 3 blog has launched.

Another reminder -- get the guidelines and submit, submit, submit!

REMINDER - The Muabet Project at the Watson Institute at Brown University is accepting submissions for the essay competition entitled "Evaluating Intervention: Local perspectives on democracy-building in the Post-Yugoslav countries and territories." Students, scholars, professionals, activists and practitioners in the region are invited to submit essays which analyze the social, cultural, political or economic dimensions of international involvement in transition. Essays can be in English, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian or Macedonian, and the deadline for online submission is MAY 18.

Further details, as well as downloadable versions of the call for papers in languages of the region, are available at http://watsoninstitute.org/muabet/contest.html

Does anybody regret the demise of SPO?

Interesting remarks today by a person who will not be minister of culture for very long, if by "interesting" you mean "utterly foolish and morally leprous." Dragan Kojadinović comments on the recent attempt to assassinate Dejan Anastasijević by pointing out that if he would just fail to do his job, live like a hermit, and have absolutely no expectation of anything as exotic as law enforcement, he would be just fine. Says Mr Kojadinović:

"Anastasijević is an exceptionally good professional, he does something which is unfortunately rare in this country, and that is analytic journalism. His themes are dangerous themes. If I were in his place, I would not permit my child to come home at 3:00 AM, I would not live in that apartment in Vračar, no matter how big it is. He could exchange that apartment for one that is not so nice, but more secure. This has affected me so much that I have considered all aspects of Anastasijević's security. If I were in his place, as a journalist, I would never let myself do this. We can blame the state, we can demand protection from the police, but first we should do everything to protect ourselves."

So for heaven's sake everyone -- do not do your job well, speak the truth, live a normal life, or in any way make anything inconvenient public, particularly if you live somewhere. We still do not know whether Mr Kojadinović has any comment on the housing situation of Dinko Gruhonjić. No doubt he knows where he lives, since the gentlefolk at Stormfront do.

On the off chance that you have not read it already, here is what Dejan Anastasijević has to say about the situation himself.

Update: Students get it, politicians do not. Surprise.

And Plan Nine?

The interview was certainly done before the first of many resignations from the negotiating team was announced this morning, but here is what sometime East Ethnian Florian Bieber had to tell Slobodna Evropa about the future of Kosovo and "Plan B."

For the record, na engleskom

Here is the letter that Geoffrey Nice sent to several newspapers, and here is the response by OTP.

And here is my take: whatever may have happened with regard to documents being made available (or, as it turned out, not being made available) to the parties before ICJ, the very narrow interpretation of the law by the court's majority would probably have produced the same verdict. That may be as far as it goes for the lawyers behind the bench and at either table facing. But of course, it goes a lot further for researchers -- make the documents public, and we will interpret them without the constraints that ICTY and ICJ have.

Horrifying, wretched story from Virginia Tech

You already know about it. Now tell me, since firearms are banned from every place where privileged people in positions of power and influence congregate -- and where ordinary humans who never carry weapons are subject to various forms of humiliation in order to enforce this ban -- why are they not banned from every other place as well? Get moving, irresponsible politicians.

Beasts of burden

Call it a big event, it would be better if wild horses were to drag them away.

Update: Elvis Burazerović has a fine name and a good point. He says, "Surely our big city has enough open spaces where even 150,000 people can fit in. We think the Hippodrome should be left to horses."

Essay competition: "Evaluating intervention"

Just a reminder to everyone that the deadline for submissions for the essay competition "Evaluating Intervention: Local perspectives on democracy-building in the Post-Yugoslav countries and territories," is coming quickly on 18 May. We are hoping for a whole lot of really outstanding articles.

Back from NY

We just got back from lovely New York City, were planning on spending a longer weekend but Sunday's rainstorm with high wind persuaded us to just pack up and begin the trek back to Boston more or less persuaded that it would be slow. Highlights of the ASN conference were mostly seeing friends, but there was a fine panel "fieldwork after fire" in which Orli Fridman, Chip Gagnon and Saša Milićević stepped down, in different ways, from the academic pose of objectivity to discuss ways in which the real experience of real contact with real people, good and bad, transformed their perceptions of what they were doing and why. There was also a screening of the very fine film on Vukovar by Janko Baljak and Drago Hedl -- great documentary work, with amazing footage of various bad guys (particularly Brana Crnčević and Tomislav Merčep) continuing to lie about what they did. Surprisingly, there was not much said in the film about various good guys, including Josip Reihl-Kir.

It was also nice to find out what you get when you type "hrpa bezveznjaka" into Google.

Ivica Račan

I have just been informed by a friend, but have not yet seen in the news, that Ivica Račan died this morning.

Update: I will have to guess, since nobody is confirming the news, that either there is a conspiracy or there is a false alarm. I'm going with false alarm.

East Ethnia: Back with you as if it had never been gone

After ten days of confusion, rushing about, and bricolage, my dear pet computer is back from the majstori. Apparently it needed a new hard disc, so Apple sent one, but it was a bad one, and Apple had to send another. Srpska posla s tim jabukama! This comeback post jets your way from some random hotel lobby, where I am waiting for the bus that will take me to bucolic New York, where every April the world's finest Balkanologists attend the ASN conference.

I know that I have missed major events which could have made for some fine blogging. Will be right on it.

An explanation for blog silence

Nothing dramatic. It's the usual end of the semester work crunch, plus my computer is at the vet. Posting will be fairly intermittent for a while. East Ethnia, as always, thanks its readers for their patience.

Guidance

If you are looking for sensible commentary, you can always rely on Richard Falk. And if you are looking for guidance on the difference between right and wrong, Anegdote has that.

Raštafarijanizam

One of our happier surprises last summer was going to dinner with some friends at a place they chose, Restoran Oskar in Dorćol. This was in fact a place we had passed hundreds of times but never noticed, its appearance is not remarkable from the outside and not much more remarkable inside (when we arrived, we were the only customers save for a couple of cops who were watching a football match). The food was traditional and perfectly prepared, and nicely set off by good rakija and some outstanding Slovenian wine.

Like in so many good places, the best approach at Oskar is to ignore the menu and ask the waiter what is good today. On that day they were featuring sarme (lamb sarme!) with raštan kupus, and the waiter more or less insisted that we have this Montenegrin specialty. Everyone at the dinner will support me in saying these were the best sarme we had eaten in our lives. And naturally we became addicted to raštan, got it and made some sarme of our own, and began to lament the fate the fate that awaited us on our return to a forlornly raštan-free Massachusetts. Apparently other lovers of that little slice of leafy heaven have confronted the same problem.

But now a friend of East Ethnia writes in to tell us that, after exhaustive and delicious research, he has determined that raštan is nothing more or less than that humble and hearty (and monumentally healthy) Southern staple, the collard green. I love them, children hate them, and the bitterness can be turned into a fine sweetness by sauteeing them with a bit of vinegar. Anyone who is intimidated by their healthiness should be reassured by the fact that they go best with some nice, greasy, salty smoked meat.

This also solves an old East Ethnian mystery. Way back in 2006, we posted a photo of a proud farmer with what had to be the biggest kupus anyone had seen. A canny philologist noted that it looked a lot like blitva. Well, there you have it.

Izadjite na terasu....

If you are not happy with your dictionary, that may be because of the way it subjects the nice Morava-Vardar race to the spendthrifty Dinarians. So say a bunch of deep thinkers, who will no doubt say it again.

Up jumped the US representative, he's the one with the tired eyes

I know I haven't been posting much lately -- it's been a busy period at work, and with Mrs Ethnia off on a trip, this has given me the heavy but delightful obligation of single-fathering it these past couple of weeks. Expect the pace to pick up over the weekend.

In the meantime, a faithful reader, who is just fine but prefers to remain anonymous, writes in to ask for your recommendations for the most fabulous new Balkan films. Recommend them in the comments!

The first time as tragedy, the second time as impossibly close to satire

Things that just cannot be made up: who is getting paid to advise the US military on how to transform the wretchedly disastrous and ill-conceived adventure in Iraq into something much worse? You must have already guessed: somebody with experience in that area.

News flash: Drunken twit makes fool of self

As reported here. And also here.

Hardly knew ye

A year ago Slobodan Milošević died. The manner of his death was different from those of the people whose deaths he caused. He was not shot in the street, or kidnapped and shot, or run into by a truck filled with sand on the highway. He was not pulled out of a hospital and shot in a field. He was not kidnapped from a train after which all trace of him was lost. He was not incinerated in a bombing or killed by sniper fire from the hills. He was not rounded up with the other surviving males from his town and shot. His body was not transported by freezer truck to an air base under cover of night. He was not left to face a bombing attack on RTS while the higher-ranking employees evacuated.

Most indications are that he is still dead.

69% support, sort of

I expect there is quite a bit more in the raw data than in the part of the announcement that is carried in this news story. Strategic's survey finds that 69% of people in Serbia support cooperation with ICTY, 15% for reasons of justice, 28% to avoid negative consequences, and 26% to satisfy the EU. I'd like to do some crosstabs and longitudinals on that.

Update: OSCE has the summary.

The royal y'all

My favorite newspaper Press carries a declaration from RS politicians. Pay attention to the prepositional phrase that begins the first sentence:

"U ime Republike Srpske, odbacujemo kao zlonamerne i štetne sve pokušaje da se nametne kolektivna krivica za zločine počinjene u proteklom ratu i na tako iskrivljenoj slici izazove nasilna i radikalna promena ustavnog uređenja Bosne i Hercegovine, na štetu RS i njenih građana, precizira se u zajedničkoj izjavi srpskih zvaničnika u BIH i RS."

Hey guys (and they are all guys):

1. Vas šestorica niste "Republika Srpska,"
2. Šteta ne bi bila po građane nego po vas,
3. Nije bre narod kriv nego ste vi.

Jean Baudrillard

Goodbye, Jean Baudrillard. It was real. Very real. Too real.

For your reading pleasure

Now available from the Džeferson Institut in Belgrade: Informal Economies of St. Petersburg: Ethnographic Findings on the Cross Border Trade, by Irina Olimpieva, Oleg Pachenkov and Lubov Ejova with Eric Gordy. It's a short text, perfect for an afternoon on the beach.

Passed on without comment

Man drives stake in grave of Slobodan Milošević.

Long post: Q and A on the ICJ verdict

As I promised, a review of the ICJ’s decision in the “Case Concerning the Applcation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro).” The decision is long and dense, 171 pages of pure lawyerese. Summaries are already available in other places, so what I will try to do here is discuss some of the most important issues in a question and answer format. I haven't taken the separate opinions and dissents into account.

1. What does the decision have to say about the jurisdiction of ICJ?

There are no surprises on the question of whether the court has the authority to hear the case. They affirmed their previous rulings. The first 53 pages of the decision are dedicated to recounting the history of the case and to supporting the court’s decision that it has jurisdiction in the matter.

The discussion of the applicability of the Genocide Convention begins on page 54. Here the court affirms its jurisdiction to rule on disputes under the Genocide Convention, but at the same time limits the scope of its ability to rule to Article IX of the Convention. The effect of this is stated in the judgment:

“[The court] has no power to rule on alleged breaches of other obligations under international law, not amounting to genocide, particularly those protecting human rights in armed conflict” (55, para. 147).

The effect of this is to stake the entire force of the judgment on the question of whether or not the events in question constituted genocide – the court has declared that it is not authorized to rule whether crimes against humanity or war crimes occurred. What this means is that any set of facts which are found to amount to something other than genocide are excluded from the verdict. There seems to be a strong implication in several of the court’s findings that the facts correspond to the definition of crimes against humanity, but in the paragraph cited above they have forbidden themselves from saying so.


2. Can a state be charged with genocide?

The next big issue which the court takes on is whether genocide can be taken up legally as a question of state responsibility rather than the responsibility of individuals. The position of the Serbian representatives was that “the Genocide Convention does not provide for the responsibility of States for acts of genocide as such. The duties prescribed by the Convention relate to ‘the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide’ when this crime is committed by individuals” (59, para. 156). The court concludes that the Convention does prohibit states from committing genocide, and that states can also be held liable for complicity (63-64, paras. 166-169). What may be most important here is the court’s affirmation of “the duality of responsibility” (65, para. 173), by which international law binds both individuals and states. So the court concludes that “if an organ of the State, or a person or group whose acts are legally attributable to the State, commits any of the acts proscribed by Article III of the Convention, the international responsibility of that State is incurred” (67, para. 179). The court goes on to establish that it can find a state has committed genocide even if no individual has been convicted (68, paras. 180-182).

The strongest implication of this relates to individuals who have been charged with genocide by the ICTY. The ICJ has nothing to say about their guilt or innocence, but it has restricted itself to determining whether their “acts are legally attributable to the State.”


3. Has the court applied an unreasonably narrow definition of genocide?

I don’t think that I can conclusively answer the question of what is reasonable or not. This would seem to depend on the outcome that the person asking the question prefers. Would you like future courts to determine that genocide happens frequently or rarely?

However, it is clear that the court opted for a very narrow definition of definition of genocide, and a very high standard for evidence for demonstrating the elements of the crime. The terms in the Genocide Convention that are the source of the most controversy are “intent,” “group” and “part.” So let’s take them one by one.

The issue of intent is, possibly, the source of the most controversy in the case. The Genocide Convention requires a showing of genocidal intent, and the court opts for a narrow definition: they demand specific evidence of genocidal intent, and repeat that it must be “defined very precisely” (70, para. 187), with evidence of “something more” (70, para. 187; yes, this is really the language they used!), and there must be “a sufficiently clear manifestation of that intent” (70, para. 189). The court did not find the evidence of intent presented by the plaintiffs persuasive (132-133, paras. 371-372; 133-134, paras. 374-376). This means that the fact that the crimes took place is not sufficient, nor is a pattern of facts sufficient. A finding of genocide as opposed to a finding of crimes against humanity requires specific and direct evidence of intent (70, para. 188). But Catch-22, the court has already found (55, para.147) that it has no authority to find that crimes against humanity were committed!

In a related fashion, the court finds that the popular term “ethnic cleansing” has no specific legal meaning, and finds that in absence of specific evidence of intent “[n]either the intent, as a matter of policy, to render an area ‘ethnically homogeneous,’ nor the operations that may be carried out to implement such policy, can as such be designated as genocide” (71, para. 190). This may be another Catch-22, as they appear to be ruling out the use of intent as evidence of intent.

Another part of the Genocide Convention that is vague has to do with the provision that genocide involves “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such” (Article II). The controversial elements have to do with defining “group” and “part.” The court draws mostly on ICTY and ICTR jurisprudence to arrive at a fairly narrow definition of “group,” which must have “a positive identification” (73, para. 194; this would appear to be confirming the respondents’ objection that the category “non-Serbs” was too vague to constitute a “group”). At the same time, they use interpretive criteria to set standards for the definition of “part” – the “part” must be “substantial” but can also be “geographically limited” (74, paras. 198-200). This is meaningful in the sense that it allows the court to find that genocide occurred in a particular place (say, Srebrenica) without having to find that it occurred in the entire country.


4. Did the court adopt an unreasonably high standard of evidence?

In another finding that will have major implications for future cases, the court finds that the standard of proof should be high: “claims against a State involving charges of exceptional gravity must be proved by evidence that is fully conclusive” (76, para. 209). So they rejected the claim that charges could be proved by “a ‘pattern of acts’ that ‘speaks for itself’” (76, para. 207). This also meant that they determined to “treat with caution evidentiary materials specially prepared for the case and also materials emanating from a single source” (77, para. 213), while they regarded ICTY decisions (but not indictments) as reliable, as they had been tested both by the internal procedures of the prosecution and defense and by cross examination (78, para. 214). They also gave weight to reports “from official or independent bodies” if they were “the product of a careful court or court-like process” (81, para. 227). The last finding refers specifically to the 1999 UN Secretary General’s report on the fall of Srebrenica.

Whether this high standard is reasonable or not is of course a matter for legitimate debate. A recurrent controversy in the definition of the “intent” requirement of the Genocide Convention is whether this requires that a document be shown in which genocidal intent is clearly stated. It is not clear that such a document exists in any known case of genocide, and the reasons a government would have for not producing such a document are probably too obvious to state. It seems as if the “fully conclusive” standard requires this, and together with the rejection of the “pattern of acts” standard this does indeed mean that genocide is a very difficult charge to prove before ICJ.


5. How could the court find that VRS was not under the control of SRJ?

On the relationship between VJ and VRS, and on economic support of RS by SRJ, the court makes notes of the arguments by both parties (85-87, paras. 236-240). Their conclusion is that SRJ “was making its considerable military and financial support available to the Republika Srpska, and had it withdrawn that support, this would have greatly constrained the options that were available to the Republika Srpska authorities” (87, para. 241). Much of the uncertainty over the verdict turns over why this factual finding was interpreted as “failure to prevent and punish” but not as “complicity.” The parallel conclusion with regard to paramilitary forces (138-141, paras. 385-395) may be instructive: in order to attribute responsibility for unofficial units to a state, the court requires a showing of their “complete dependence” (140, para. 392) on the state. This is an alternate standard to the one requiring a showing that the state exercised “overall control” (143-144, para. 402), which the court rejected as too broad (144-145, para. 406). The principal reason for not finding that the “Scorpions” were “completely dependent” is that their cases and the cases of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic have not yet been completed (141, para. 395). This line of reasoning might be thought of as hugely evasive, and could easily be interpreted as severely weakening the finding (141, para. 395) that “the acts of genocide at Srebrenica cannot be attributed to the Respondent.” However, the court treats as an established fact that the genocide was committed by VRS (150, para. 417). As to whether this acquits SRJ of complicity in genocide (which is in fact what the court found), the reasoning in paragraph 422 is instructive, and here is the relevant text:

“Undoubtedly, the quite substantial aid of a political, military and financial nature provided by the FRY to the Republika Srpska and the VRS, beginning long before the tragic events of Srebrenica, continued during those events. There is thus little doubt that the atrocities in Srebrenica were committed, at least in part, with the resources which the perpetrators of those acts possessed as a result of the general policy of aid and assistance pursued toward them by FRY. However, the sole task of the Court is to establish the legal responsibility of the Respondent, a responsibility which is subject to very specific conditions. One of those conditions is not fulfilled, because it is not established beyond any doubt in the argument between the Parties whether the authorities of the FRY supplied – and continued to supply – the VRS leaders who decided upon and carried out those acts of genocide with their aid and assistance, at a time when those authorities were clearly aware that genocide was about to take place or was under way; in other words that not only were massacres about to be carried out or already under way, but that their perpetrators had the specific intent characterizing genocide, namely, the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a human group, as such” (151-152, para. 422).

In this case, then it seems that the grounds for rejecting charges of complicity is that “full awareness” had “not been conclusively established” (152, para. 423). There might be a bit of a disjunction here with the finding that SRJ “could not have been unaware” (165, para. 461).

This does not apply to the charge of failure to prevent genocide, however. There the court finds that “the Respondent has not shown that it took any initiative to prevent what happened, or any action on its part to avert the atrocities which were committed. It must therefore be concluded that the organs of the Respondent did nothing to prevent the Srebrenica massacres, claiming that they were powerless to do so, which hardly tallies with their known influence over the VRS” (158, para. 438). Similarly with the charge of failure to punish, the court accepts that Serbian authorities knowingly harbored at least one fugitive (160-161, paras. 448-449).


6. How did the court determine that genocide was committed in Srebrenica but nowhere else?

In the long section (89-98, paras. 246-277) in which allegations of crimes other than Srebrenica are considered, with the general finding that these are either unproven or that they constitute something other than genocide. The principal sticking point has to do with “specific intent” (98, para. 277), but the court explicitly states that the fact that other elements of genocide, particularly the killing of substantial numbers of members of a group, were present. A similar finding is made with regard to systematic rape and other physical abuse: the facts are established, but not the intent (115, para. 319). And again the same finding is made with regard to the systematic shelling and sniper attacks against urban populations: the facts are established, but not the intent (118-119, para. 328). And again the same finding is made with regard to expulsion and forced resettlement: the facts are established, but not the intent (120, para. 334). And again the same finding is made with regard to the treatment of prisoners in camps: the facts are established, but not the intent (127, para. 354). They specifically rejected arguments on a point which was a major part of wartime publicity: the use of rape and sexual violence as a means of forcibly influencing demographic change (128-130, paras. 355-367)

Considering the evidence on the destruction of cultural and religious property, where the evidence of Andras Riedlmayer was the source on which the court relied most, the court found that the evidence established the facts, but decided not to consider destruction of cultural property as genocide (144, para. 344). Given the court’s narrow interpretation of the Genocide Convention elsewhere, it is not surprising that they did not decide to set a precedent that would expand the definition. But their endorsement of the facts and their inclusion of them in the record may be important in their own right. And the court did endorse the ICTY finding that “where there is physical and biological destruction there are often simultaneous attacks on the cultural and religious property and symbols of the targeted group as well, attacks which may legitimately be considered as evidence of an intent to physically destroy the group” (144, para. 344). So this opens the door to future consideration of cultural destruction as evidence of genocidal intent, regardless of the fact the court decided not to take that step in this case.

Comparing this analysis to the court’s analysis of Srebrenica, the importance of the ICTY verdicts becomes clear: among the most important foundations of the finding that genocide was committed at Srebrenica were the findings of ICTY against Krstic (105-106, paras. 292-293) and Blagojevic (106-107, paras. 294-295).


7. Can the decision be interpreted to imply that Slobodan Milosevic would have been acquitted of genocide if there had been a verdict in his trial?

There are several reasons why the ICJ decision does not have bearing on the case against Milosevic. Probably the main one is that the court was ruling on a different issue – not on the innocence or guilt of individuals, but on the responsibility of the state. In fact, the decision has very little to say about Milosevic. It also leaves untouched what could have been the central issue that could have linked the two cases, which is whether Milosevic acted as an agent of the state or as an individual. However, the findings do seem pretty clear in placing responsibility on Mladic and VRS rather than on SRJ. A lot of this seems to depend on the unresolved status of cases in other courts, though.

They do offer up a little tidbit, however. They seem to determine Milosevic’s “failure to prevent” (157, para. 437), citing Wesley Clark’s testimony at ICTY.


8. So, is Serbia off the hook?

No. Failure to prevent and punish genocide is a grave violation of international law, and it carries with it positive obligations. The verdict could have been more severe, but it is not a finding that the state is innocent.

The court rejected claims for financial reparations (165, para. 462), but did find that Serbia remains in violation of its obligation to punish genocide (166, paras. 464 and 465).


9. Who the %*&@$% are you to second-guess the world’s highest judicial institution?

Second-guess the ICJ? I wouldn’t dream of it. They are the world’s top lawyers, and I am just some guy with a funny looking dog. In fact, I am not even a lawyer, and anybody who uses me as a source of legal opinion has got to be out of their mind.

In fact, you should ignore everything I have said and have a look at what some real lawyers have to say:

Phon van den Biesen (representative of BH before ICJ)
Sakib Softic (representative of BH before ICJ)
Radoslav Stojanovic (representative of SRJ before ICJ)
Antonio Cassese (former presiding judge of ICTY)
Edina Becirevic (University of Sarajevo)
Martin Shaw (University of Sussex)
David Luban (Georgetown University)
Anthony Dworkin (Crimes of War project)

Shaina at Bosnia Vault and Observer at Neretva River are keeping good track of what the lawyers have to say.

Yugo faster than yu ought to

This was a home project that probably had to happen. For better or worse.

Photo courtesy of Jalopnik. Ko je dasa u ekstazi /
Kada preko stotke gazi?

Guest post: Another response to the ICJ ruling

A view opposed to what I posted below comes by e-mail from friend of East Ethnia (and plaintiffs' witness) Andras Riedlmayer. Here it is, shared with permission:

As you know, a summary of the judgement is posted at:

http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/ipresscom/ipress2007/isummary_2007-2_bhy_20070226.htm

There's this bit:

"[...] With respect to the destruction of historical, religious and cultural property, the Court finds that there is conclusive evidence of the deliberate destruction of the historical, cultural and religious heritage of the protected group. However, such destruction does not fall as such within the categories of acts of genocide set out in Article II of the Convention."

In other words: my evidence was found to be convincing, but legally irrelevant. The latter is more or less as expected, though disappointing all the same.

But the logic of the World Court's decision as a whole is troubling. As Le Figaro aptly headlined its report on the ICJ ruling:

"Srebrenica, un génocide sans coupable"

There's some measure of reassurance in the words of the dissenting opinion appended to the ICJ ruling by the Court's vice-president, Judge Al-Khasawneh:

[...] On the merits, Vice-President Al-Khasawneh felt that through a combination of methods and assumptions, uncalled for in law and not suitable to the facts of the case, the Court achieved the extraordinary feat of absolving Serbia of its responsibility for genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina save for failure to prevent the genocide at Srebrenica, where in any case he thought Serbian responsibility was more actively involved than the mere failure to prevent.

Firstly, since intent is usually elusive and, together with attributability, often carefully concealed, the Court should have sought access to the papers of the "Serbian Defence Council" which would probably have made the Court's task much easier. Refusal of Serbia to divulge documents should have led at least to more liberal recourse to evidence. By insisting on a very high evidentiary "standard" and no shifting of "Burden of proof", the Applicant was put at a huge disadvantage. Secondly, the Court also applied a strict test of effective control: the Nicaragua test, to a different situation where inter alia shared ethnicity and shared purpose to commit international crimes, e.g. ethnic cleansing, require only an overall control test. Thirdly, the Court also refused to infer genocide from a "consistent pattern of conduct" disregarding in this respect a rich and relevant jurisprudence of other courts. Fourthly, the Court failed to appreciate genocide as a complex crime and not a single murder. Therefore, events which when looked at comprehensively gave rise to responsibility of Serbia, were instead seen in a disconnected manner, e.g. the participation of General Mladic in Srebrenica and the role of the "Scorpions". Fifthly, even when there was a clear admission of guilt, e.g. the Serbian Council of Ministers' statement as a reaction to the video showing the execution of Muslim prisoners by the "Scorpions" was dismissed as a political statement though legal weight is attached to such statements in previous Court jurisprudence some of which the Court did not even invoke.

The Vice-President concluded that had the Court tried to see for itself it most probably would have found Serbia responsible either as principal or an accomplice in the genocide in Bosnia. This it could have done without losing the rigor of its reasoning or the high standards of evidence it required. With regard to Srebrenica he was sure that active Serbian involvement was proved to satisfactory to standards in facts and in law. [...]

--

Unfortunately, he was in the minority.

Initial response

I am still going to have to give the ICJ decision some study, but my initial take (brace yourselves and prepare to disagree vehemently) is that the judges made a pretty good decision.

Some of the reactions in BiH are unsurprisingly less than delighted. Sulejman Tihić probably spoke for a lot of people when he said he was "not completely satisfied" with a decision that confirmed that genocide occurred but did not confirm the government's claims about who was involved and about the scale. Victims' associations are a lot less satisfied, which is also to be expected. There are a couple of things to keep in mind here, though. First, the suit was filed in 1993, while the war was still going on, with the intention of producing a legal finding that would obligate other countries to intervene. It made maximal claims about the events, and the evidence to support these claims to the satisfaction of a high legal standard was not available at the time and still is not. So it is not surprising that several years later the court's interpretation should do something less than support maximal claims. This is not necessarily a bad thing, either, in the sense that it offers a basis that will let the BiH government move away from rhetorics of pure victimhood, and maybe toward a more inclusive account of what happened between 1992 and 1995.

In Serbia it does not seem that the judgment is being taken lightly. Over on the far right, Tomislav Nikolić stepped back from self-congratulation to show that he is aware that the finding that genocide occurred will not be useful to RS. No doubt he had in mind the court's statement that Serbia is obligated to support and assist in undoing of the results of genocide. B92 is offering more initial reactions, and while there are unsurprising comments from Vojislav Koštunica and Milorad Dodik interpreting the decision as a complete negation of responsibility, people with real responsibility are offering statements that are more, well, responsible. The statements by the lawyers for the defense and by Serbian war crimes prosecution spokesman Bruno Vekarić are constructive in the sense that they point to the "failure to prevent and punish" finding as obligating Serbia. President Boris Tadić took the opportunity to remind citizens that the state is obligated to clarify its position on the genocide that occurred. These are mostly useful responses.

The greatest hope was always that the court might find a way of reaching a conclusion that would move the process of open discussion forward rather than fixing it at some predetermined point. For now I am inclined to think that they did the best they could. Time will tell us a lot more, of course.

Having said that, it seems that there are also some important issues that are not resolved in the decision. The finding that a crime occurred but that nobody is guilty of committing it tends toward a bizarre sort of mysticism. And the finding that the Serbian state is not responsible seems to be based on a very strict interpretation of rules of evidence, in which the destruction or withholding of documentation may have proved to be an effective strategy, and indirect evidence was not treated as relevant. This seems to offer a sort of legal invitation to criminals to cover their tracks, and the precedent will probably be controversial.

Not everyone will agree with me, of course. What I have seen in Blogland so far: Viktor Marković was hoping for a middle path and got it, while Neretva River flows colder, worried that the decision is a backhanded acquittal of Milošević. And Yakima Gulag finds the end run around the issue of guilt "lame assed" (and I have a feeling she is not thinking of an injured donkey).

ICJ's releases today

A press release, the full text of the court's decision and of separate and dissenting opinions, and a not very brief summary. I will have some sort of analysis, most likely tonight.

First signs of a mixed verdict?

No complete reports are in just yet, but the preliminary ones I am seeing seem to be pointing toward a mixed verdict. According to Reuters and Index, presiding judge Rosalyn Higgins is reading the ICJ verdict which defines the killing around Srebrenica in 1995 as genocide, but stops short of accepting the plaintiffs' argument that genocide was committed on the whole territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina. It will most likely be a few hours before it becomes clear how this adds up to a disposition in the case, and before the transcript of the decision is released (at this spot, when it is). I'm a bit busy with other things today, but will try to keep you posted as well as I can.

Update: Mixed as can be, BBC's report says ICJ rejected the charges, on the basis that the direct involvement of Serbia was not shown. These early reports will tend to be confusing, though, as reporters try to sum up what they have heard all of yet. I can link to each report as it comes in, or just hang on for the end. Probably better to hang on.

Another update: Back to Reuters, which is reporting the verdict as: 1) there was genocide at Srebrenica, but 2) Serbia did not commit it, but still 3) Serbia did fail to prevent and punish it.

Slika, prilika

Found these through a link at the Belgrade blog, 41 very fine photos of Belgrade (mostly) by Nikola Mrdalj. Set it up as a slideshow, sit back and enjoy.

Waiting for the verdict

Tomorrow the International Court of Justice in the Hague is expected to make its ruling on the lawsuit by Bosnia and Hercegovina charging the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at the time of the filing of the suit; Serbia and Montenegro at the time the case was argued; Serbia and Montenegro separately now) with committing genocide between 1992 and 1995. While the case was being argued last year, I wrote a series of posts (1, 2, 3 and 4) looking at some of the issues involved. Of course I cannot predict what the ruling will be tomorrow, but in anticipation of it I'll offer just a few observations.

1. The ruling is going to be one on questions of law, not on factual questions. That is, ICJ is not being asked to rule on the issue of whether violations of international law occurred, but rather on the question of whether they fit the definition of genocide.
2. Some of the propaganda out there puts forth the contention that a guilty verdict would declare Serbia to be a "genocidal nation" or some such variation on this. This is pure nonsense, of course, since no such qualification exists in the law. A lot of the confusion may have to do with the question of what constitutes "guilt." I have argued in other places (in this article, at this lecture, and in my contribution to this book and this one, for example) that the framework offered by Karl Jaspers provides some useful guidance. He distinguishes criminal guilt (the only sort which law is able to declare, and which can only be attached to an individual perpetrator) from other types which might plausibly be thought of as collective or shared: political guilt (the shared burden on the part of all people who are part of a political community), moral guilt (the responsibility that all individuals have for deeds of commission and of omission, including acts of loyalty) and metaphysical guilt (the responsibility that all humans have for evil in the world of which they are aware). I have also argued that it is useful to think of only the first type of guilt as guilt, and the others as responsibility. The state might be guilty, and the people are always responsible, but the whole formulation shows the weakness of trying to cast moral and political questions as questions of law -- responsibility is not "guilt lite," and it is also not a condition which a court can impose on a person or free a person from. A guilty verdict would not change the criminal guilt of the people who ordered, facilitated and carried out crimes, nor would it change the legal innocence of the huge majority who did not. But it would mark a moment at which it would be appropriate to embark on various ways of recognizing responsibility. Of all of the potential definitions of "responsibility" out there, I prefer the simplest one: the ability to respond.
3. Whatever the court finds is going be very important in terms of how the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina is understood. One of the most controversial elements of the charges is that the BH government is asking the court to find not that there were instances of genocide during the war (such as around Srebrenica in 1995), but that the whole war was genocidal. The judges' decision can accept or reject that entire argument, or split the difference in various ways. No court is required to take the political consequences of their decisions into account, of course, but it seems that the way in which the decision is framed will make an important difference (assuming anybody reads it, naturally).

With that, all there is to do is see what happens tomorrow. This type of business will always be implicated in day to day politics. The Serbian Radical Party wants the country to quit the UN in the event of a guilty verdict. Afghanistan's parliament has passed a resolution granting amnesty to a whole hatful of powerful war criminals. And the general assembly of the state of Virginia has passed a resolution apologizing for slavery. Insistence on denial or opening up the books are pretty much the only options available. Time does not make anything go away.