SOCIETY-SERBIA: Aggressors Turn Babysitters

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jan 21 2004 (IPS) - Marko Jovanovic is busy these days helping children paint a mural at a home for disabled children on the outskirts of Belgrade. This is where he will do his military service for the next 13 months.

“It’s definitely okay not to carry a gun, but to be a kind of babysitter,” says Marko, an arts undergraduate at Belgrade University. He is from the first generation ever in Serbia who can choose between nine months of classic military training in the barracks or 13 months of this kind of service.

About 180 institutions across Serbia now accept social service by military conscripts. Of the first 848 conscripts who preferred such service to the barracks, the army has found jobs for about half. They are working in hospitals, libraries, kindergartens, theatres and 22 homes for the disabled.

A new law introduced last year brought the change. The earlier army of the regime of former president Slobodan Milosevic had engaged in wars in Croatia, Bosnia and in Kosovo in the 1990s. The wars led to more than 250,000 deaths, and tore former Yugoslavia apart.

The army of what is now Serbia and Montenegro was described often as an aggressor’s army. Western media added to the picture by depicting Serbs as a “traditionally warring nation”.

The army under Milosevic had more than 150,000 men. The reforms since Milosevic fell from power in 2000 have reduced the numbers to less than 70,000.

Mass desertions were common in the old Serb army. Thousands of young Serbs emigrated to the West to avoid being drafted.

Under Milosevic’s laws draft dodgers were deprived of property rights, and faced up to 10 years in prison if caught. But after 2000 the arrested draft dodgers were offered amnesty, and their properties were returned.

“I waited for this law to be adopted as I did not want to be a draft dodger,” says Vladimir Lukic (27), now serving as a construction engineer at the Belgrade city maternity hospital. “I could not imagine carrying a gun or going to a senseless war. That is how my friends described their army service during the 90s.”

Lukic is overseeing construction of the hospital archive by way of military service. At the hospital lab a young physician is reviewing some test results, while a traffic engineer is despatching emergency vehicles, all in lieu of the barrack-style military service.

“We tried to find them jobs to match their education,” says hospital administrator Slobodan Petrovic.

Under the new law conscripts work in the town they live in, and get the weekend off. Classic military service means nine months away from home.

“What was unimaginable only years ago has became real,” military analyst Milorad Timotic told IPS. “Pacifism prevails in the Balkans after years of war.”

At a gloomy house for stroke victims and paralysed patients in Belgrade, head nurse Mira Djapic says “young and educated guys brought in new atmosphere.”

Nine conscripts, among them journalists, architects, lawyers and economists reorganised records here and brought in classical music. “This makes you think you are of some real use,” says journalist Milos Milicevic.

Critics of the innovation come mostly from remnants of Milosevic’s era and the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, which won the largest share of votes in the recent parliamentary elections. The new measures “degrade the fighting level of a country,” a spokesman for the party said.

Not everyone agrees. “Experience from other countries shows that civil service within the army never endangers its defence level,” says Miodrag Rakic, advisor to the Serbian defence minister.

“Instead of trying to push some 9,000 cases against draft dodgers through the legal system, which was the number we saw in 2000, we opted for a better solution with the new law – serve your country the best way you can,” he said.

Such civil service in the name of the army is becoming popular also in other countries that fought one another in the Balkans. Hundreds of educated young men have chosen such substitutes for military service in Croatia. Dozens work in kindergartens in capital Zagreb.

Parents were surprised at first to see young men taking care of their children alongside more familiar female teachers. “But we got used to it, and children were particularly impressed,” says Marta Sizic from Zagreb.