The 100-year anniversary of World War I (1914-18) may have come and gone, but the role of Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip – the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand – remains controversial in the turbulent history of the Balkans. For some he was a terrorist, for others a hero.

The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo marked the 100 years since assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie over the weekend in series of ceremonies dedicated to the event that triggered the 1914-18 war, and numerous messages of peace were delivered with calls that history should not be repeated and that violence should be excluded from the modern world.

But if many are looking to the future, historians agree that the tragic event of June 28, 1914, still haunts the region, after Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats were plunged into an atrocious inter-ethnic war more than seven decades later.Historians agree that the tragic event of June 28, 1914, still haunts the region, after Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats were plunged into an atrocious inter-ethnic war more than seven decades later

“Unfortunately, it is possible to link World War I and its influence to recent events in the Balkans,” historian Danilo Sarenac of the Belgrade Institute for Modern History told IPS in an interview.

“World War I led to the creation of Yugoslavia, which disintegrated in the 1990s; there is a predominant idea among its former republics that this state was a sort of illusion, a mistake, a kind of ‘dungeon of nations’, and that it had to disappear,” he said.

When Yugoslavia fell apart, six new states – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia – were created. Ethnic Albanian-populated Kosovo declared unilateral independence from Serbia in 2008, but has not yet been widely recognised as a state.

Socialist Yugoslavia itself was an heir to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, created at the end of WW I. Its biggest portion, Serbia, an ally of Great Britain and France, was rewarded for participation in victory over the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany by obtaining South Slav-populated areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia.

The assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was Gavrilo Princip, a 20-year-old Bosnian Serb and member of Young Bosnia, a revolutionary movement seeking the unification of all South Slav nations. He claimed to be “a Yugoslav (South Slav) nationalist” at his trial in 1914. At the time, Bosnia was part of the Austro-Hungary Empire that disintegrated in WW I.

According to Sarenac, “Princip’s action is being interpreted differently, depending on periods we observe in consecutive Yugoslavias.”

“When needed, Princip is a hero who helped create Yugoslavia; but, as newly carved out states (former Yugoslav republics) renounce Yugoslavia, they describe him as a ‘cruel Serb nationalist’. Divisions along such lines were visible in World War II, and came full circle in the 1990s. They were used or abused by everyone at will,” he added.

Princip is blamed by many outside Serbia as the man who triggered World War I, but historians say the world was practically ready for a major war due to many complicated circumstances.

“Princip’s act was just an ingredient that was needed to ignite it,” says Sarenac.

History books say that the Austro-Hungarian Empire blamed Bosnia’s neighbour Serbia for masterminding the assassination of the Archduke; Germany backed the Empire in declaring war against Serbia on June 28, and in a matter of days Russia, Great Britain, France and many other nations were drawn into an unprecedented conflict that took 16 million lives and left 20 million wounded.

For university history professor Predrag Markovic, there is a paradox among the states created by the disintegration of former Yugoslavia.

“They deny that Yugoslavia was created as a deliberate project after World War I, that it was a secular state, designed to bridge religious and regional differences between its new member nations,” Markovic told IPS.

“At the time, Yugoslavia was created much like the European Union today, as a union of entities that share same values. It is absurd that newly created states (since 1991) deny its progressive essence, because many of them – like Macedonia or Slovenia – would not exist had there not been the Yugoslavia after the WW I and Serbia’s victory in it,” he added.

“Their people would cease to exist or would be blended into the ethnicity of the country they’d gone to; Croatia would have been split by Italy, Hungary and Austria,” according to Markovic.

However, he points out, Yugoslavia was a “noble idea”, but with inadequate solutions and deficiencies.

“It inherited all the problems of the empires it helped bring down – Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman (Turkish) state: large numbers of minorities, and an inability to efficiently steer and govern”, he says.

The inter-ethnic problems continued until the Communists took over after World War II, but the two pillars of their regime – late leader Josip Broz Tito and socialist ideology with a human face – helped Yugoslavia to survive.

Markovic says that when these two pillars collapsed, with death of Tito in 1980 and the end of cold war in the 1980s, nationalisms revived and took over in Yugoslavia, setting the scene for the disintegration that began with secession of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991. Bosnia followed in 1992. The secession was opposed by the largest republic of Serbia which was engaged in bloody wars that took more than 100,000 non-Serb lives.

“The experience of Yugoslavia is very ominous for the European Union, bearing in mind the differences that are arising now between the member states,” Markovic argues.

“The circumstances of 1991 were poorly understood by many, the European Union in particular,” The independence of the newly-created states “was hastily acknowledged without any exit strategy or awareness on the consequences, on the next steps; it is much like the rush into the war in 1914, or recently in Iraq,” he added.

In a recent essay on ‘Shots fired by Gavrilo Princip’, Bosnian historian Slobodan Soja summed up the political abuse of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by saying that there is a paradox in recent efforts to establish “whether Princip was a terrorist or not.”

According to Soja, a university professor and former Bosnian ambassador to several countries, “the noble idea of liberation of oppressed and unity among Slav nations is giving way to manipulation” in the deeply divided Bosnian society, where its Muslims, Serbs and Croats are still not mentally at peace.

“Had they known what kind of people would live 100 years on, I doubt that the members of the Young Bosnia movement would give their lives for the generations to come,” Soja wrote.

“The majority of people living today in Bosnia are simply not up to the task of criticising or praising the Young Bosnians. Those were the idealists whose ideas we badly need today,” he added.

Photo circulating in the Balkans on Facebook

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, May 21 2014 (IPS)

The Balkans region is living one of its most horrible springs ever, after the worst flooding in 120 years took 47 lives and witnessed evacuation of dozens of thousands of Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs in a matter of days last week. 

“This is the worst post-war disaster in Bosnia,” President of Bosnia-Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegovic told reporters in Sarajevo on Monday, describing the deluge in the country, while Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic dubbed the floods as “historic” and “catastrophic” only a day earlier.

Times are changing and it was Slovenes and Croats, together with Macedonians and Montenegrins, who rushed first to flooded areas of Bosnia and Serbia
Meteorologists in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia agreed that only three days of unprecedented torrential rains in what used to be former Yugoslavia last week brought the equivalent of three months’ rains for the region.

Izetbegovic told journalists that the disaster saw “biggest movement of population in Bosnia since the war”, as dozens of thousands in the nation of four million were displaced in a matter of days, looking at their homes disappearing under the river torrents or in one of 3,000 landslides in affected areas. About one million people are without drinking water, he added.

In Serbia, more than 30,000 have been evacuated from the city of Obrenovac, only 33 kms south west from the capital of Belgrade. It houses the biggest thermal power plant “Nikola Tesla” that supplies electricity for half of Serbia.

All the affected areas in Bosnia, Croatia – where 10,000 people have been evacuated – and Serbia lie along the river Sava, described in old geography textbooks as “the river that binds the nations of (former) Yugoslavia.”

It seems to be doing it again now, although Yugoslavia has no longer existed since 1991.

“I was surprised to see a guy in a uniform which was not Serbian, waiving his hand and calling me to a boat,” says Ivica Marjanovic (63), evacuated at the weekend from Obrenovac. “Only when he spoke, I realised he was Croatian … He smiled, I smiled and went into the boat … I didn’t expect a Croat to save me,” Ivica told IPS in one of Belgrade’s sports halls which serves as shelter for the evacuated.

Yugoslavia fell apart in bloody wars after Serbia opposed Bosnia’s, Croatia’s and Slovenia’s independence moves. The wars lasted until 1995, taking the harsh toll of more than 120,000 lives, most of them non-Serbs.

However, times are changing and it was Slovenes and Croats, together with Macedonians and Montenegrins, who rushed first to flooded areas of Bosnia and Serbia

“We had a unique experience,” a Slovene helicopter pilot who declined to give his name told IPS. “We took a woman from Obrenovac to a hospital in Belgrade and she gave birth to a healthy baby only an hour later … We are professionals, we’re used to such things, but somehow it’s different when we’re in Serbia than when we’re in, say Italy … Maybe the common roots are responsible for that,” he added.

Slovenia and Croatia sent 30 members of their rescue teams in helicopters, bringing inflatable boats, water pumps and water filtering equipment to Serbia. Macedonians collected food with long shelf life and sent trucks with bottled water to flooded areas.

Montenegro sent a military unit that participated in evacuating the worst-struck Obrenovac area in Serbia, together with Serbian police and military.

The Croatian Highway Authority (HAC) announced that otherwise hefty tolls would not be paid by vehicles carrying humanitarian aid to flooded areas.

“This comes as no surprise, this solidarity,” said Goran Svilanovic, Secretary General of Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) (www.rcc.int), an organisation that supervises efforts for improved cooperation and reconciliation in former Yugoslavia.

“It should be appropriate for all the nations struck by tragic floods to take joint action before the European Union and jointly ask for financial aid,” Svilanovic told IPS. “Going before the EU separately would not be as effective,” he added.

Serbia is a candidate for the EU membership, while Bosnia-Herzegovina has not reached the status yet. Croatia and Slovenia have already joined the 27-member family of European nations.

Svilanovic’s idea was backed by Serbian Parliament spokeswoman Maja Gojkovic, who told Serbian media Tuesday that “this (the joint action by Bosnia and Serbia) could be an efficient move.”

Conservative estimates have put the amount of damages at half a billion euros (685 million U.S. dollars).

To ordinary people in the region, the re-birth of solidarity among former Yugoslav nations does not seem odd.

“Our languages are more or less the same, our way of life as well; we have common heritage,” says Selma Sebo, a 43-year-old from the Bosnian town of Tuzla. “Our disaster is the same, that’s why we can feel for each other,” she told IPS over the phone.

A breadbasket left in a Belgrade store for the needy to dip into. Credit: Vesna Peric Zimonjic/IPS.

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Dec 12 2013 (IPS)

In the early morning hours, as hundreds of people grab their breakfast at a busy bakery in Beogradska Street in the Serbian capital, a very special basket quickly fills up with croissants, rolls and breads. It is the ‘solidarity basket’.

It’s a concept that around 60 bakeries all over Serbia have introduced. While ordering something for themselves, customers buy an additional bread, croissant or bun and place it in the basket – for the needy.

“Approximately one in 10 customers buys an extra item and leaves it in the solidarity basket,” said baker Veljko Antic."Those who rely on these bits come much later. They usually sneak in and hurriedly walk away."

“Those who rely on these bits come much later. They usually sneak in and hurriedly walk away. They are ashamed, sad and grim…That is why we’ve placed the basket close to the entrance of our bakery so as not to add to their shame,” Antic told IPS.

This is the first initiative of its kind as poverty hits Serbia hard. Similar campaigns are unfolding in neighbouring countries too, mostly nations born out of erstwhile Yugoslavia.

Latest statistics show that 700,000 people in Serbia, which has a population of 7.2 million, live below the poverty line. As defined by the World Bank, this means they survive on less than 1.25 dollars a day. Out of 1.02 million children aged 0-14 in Serbia, 12 percent are poor and 6.6 percent suffer from malnutrition, according to official data.

The ‘solidarity meal’ was introduced by a group of young internet enthusiasts from the portal www.kioskpages.com that promotes online shopping. The inspiration for their initiative – “Express solidarity, buy food for those who need it” – came from Italy, where people leave small change for coffee for those who cannot afford it.

“We liked the idea, but decided to focus on food,” Nina Milos, 24, from Kioskpages told IPS. “People in Serbia are in greater need of food than coffee.”

Serbia has a total of 68 Red Cross-run soup kitchens, but some are facing closure due to lack of funds. Red Cross officials have for long said their efforts are not enough to feed the needy.

“We were worried about the logistics of reaching out to different sets of people – who would introduce the solidarity meal, who would support it, who would use it, as the latter certainly have no access to the internet,” Milos said.

“That’s why we opted for posters at bakeries and ads in free newspapers, and we also networked with NGOs that work with the homeless or the poor,” she added.

According to her, the campaign has worked best in the capital, Belgrade, and the northern city of Novi Sad.

And that’s not all, she said. Many greengrocers have started offering for free the fruits and vegetables they haven’t sold during the day. “Several takeaways have joined in,” Milos said.

A similar campaign is being introduced in neighbouring Macedonia too. According to Milos, 10 bakeries in the capital, Skopje, and in the town of Kumanovo have joined the initiative.

“Solidarity had become a forgotten word in Serbia,” psychologist Miljana Radojevic told IPS.

“People are impoverished and hardly think about others,” she said. “However, there are those who are well to do or even those who are not so well off but can spend some extra money for those who need it,” she said.

The transition into a market economy after the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s and the economic crisis of 2008 has battered Serbia. Unemployment stands at 24.1 percent, affecting more than a third of the workforce.

The situation is a bit better in the other nations of erstwhile Yugoslavia, but poverty is knocking on the doors of many in the region.

Slovenia, with an unemployment rate of 12.8 percent, is still holding up well. But there too, a catering service, www.minestra.si, has introduced a similar initiative called ‘an afterwards meal’.

“Such meals are given away to [the Catholic church humanitarian organisation] Caritas for further distribution,” said Peter Bostjancic of Minestra. “They are consumed by the poor and also by employed people whose incomes are too small for them to get by on,” Bostjancic told IPS.

In Croatia, where unemployment stands at 19 percent, the “urban poor” phenomenon is growing. “These are mostly well-educated people who have been left jobless after the companies they worked for closed down,” a source from Croatian Caritas told IPS on condition of anonymity.

“These are people who, until recently, were above the poverty line, but loss of jobs, rising prices and the burden of mortgages have put them in difficulties,” the source said.

And so, the idea behind the solidarity basket is catching on.

Belgrade bakeries work until late evening. Some people who depend on the solidarity basket come to Beogradska Street only when there are not many passersby.

One of them is 43-year-old Zorana Savovic, a single mother with two children who works for a meagre salary at a newspaper stand near a bakery.

“I’m ashamed to have to do this,” Savovic told IPS.

“But it provides the evening meal for me and my children. I eat nothing during the day and keep an eye on the basket across the street. I go in just before they close and then hurry home to my kids with food.”

According experts from the Faculty of Agriculture at the Belgrade University, indigenous fruit and vegetable species in the Balkans have lost the battle against the big international seed-producing companies. Courtesy: Vesna Peric Zimonjic

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Sep 16 2013 (IPS)

This year, summer in the Balkans has been nice and warm, leaving behind a land of plenty, and enough food on the table. Except that people are talking about tomatoes “that don’t taste as they used to,” watermelons that are too watery, cabbages that are hard to slice through and onions that do not sting your eyes.

It is an angry buzz, resonating across popular forums and social networking sites in Serbia. Farmers are being accused of surrendering to the pressures of seed importers and neglecting home-grown or indigenous species that had served them well so far.“One’s own production of home-grown healthy vegetables means salvation for many small people in times of crises." -- Croatian journalist and environmental activist, Denis Romac

“There’s small chance today that you will find out whether what you have bought is a real, home-grown tomato,” says Jasmina Zdravkovic of the Institute of Farming in the central Serbian town of Smederevska Palanka, some 63 km southeast of the capital Belgrade.

“Most probably you’ll end up with one which has a white, inedible middle. It comes from the gene that was introduced to keep the tomato firm,” she tells IPS. Such tomatoes are never ripe; they only get red from the outside, Zdravkovic adds.

According to Zdravkovic and experts from the Faculty of Agriculture at the Belgrade University, indigenous species have lost the battle against the big international seed-producing companies. Native species have been reduced to being cultivated either in private gardens or in small local areas.

Since 2000, when the international sanctions imposed on Serbia following the 1998-1999 Kosovo war were lifted, imported seeds have made an unopposed, uncontrolled entry into the Serbian market. Hybrid seeds from biotech giants such as Monsanto, DuPont or Syngenta have taken over completely.

According to the latest statistics from the Chamber of Commerce, the country imported 230 tonnes of seed and propagation material worth 810,000 dollars in the first three months of 2013 alone.

“Under such circumstances, there is no hope of seeing any commercial production of indigenous species,” Djordje Glamoclija of the agriculture faculty tells IPS.

However, the country has been making sustained effort to preserve its genetic plant heritage. A national programme for conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources is in the final stages. And one of its main proposals is to consolidate a national gene bank.

Serbia’s plant genetic resources (PGR), says Milena Savic, the future head of the gene bank, are currently “scattered around the country, in agricultural institutes and faculties.”

The national collection has 5,000 samples of 273 plant species native to Serbia. “They will represent the basis for PGR, in tune with the national and global policy of preserving original species,” she says.

“Samples have so far been kept for the medium [20 years] and long term [50 years],” Savic tells IPS. Plant genes are kept in special chambers at temperatures of minus 20 degree Celsius, while plant samples are kept at four degree Celsius.

Working with these indigenous species, Serbia hopes to develop improved seed varieties by crossing them with high-yielding plant types. Serbia is also part of the regional PGR conservation initiative called the South East European Development Network.

West of Serbia, the outcry against the dominance of imported seeds in Croatia had peaked before the country’s entry into the European Union (EU) on Jul. 1 this year.

It continued throughout the summer, with 18 non-governmental organisations asking the authorities to prevent the “greed of multinational corporations that threaten to endanger resources that represent the foundation of Croatian food industry.”

Croatia does not have a single seed-producing facility any more, and relies completely on imported seed. The nation spends 60 million dollars annually on the import of seed and propagation material, according to the Croatian Society of Agronomy.

One particular cause for concern was the new EU regulation on seeds and propagation material that required, in the name of consumer and food safety, the registration of all fruits, vegetables and trees before they could be reproduced or distributed.

The regulation was finally changed under pressure from European NGOs, including the 18 in Croatia. It now allows home gardeners to save and swap unregistered seed and small organisations with less than 10 employees to grow unregistered vegetable seed.

“Seeds represent the richness of today and tomorrow,” says Denis Romac, a Croatian journalist and environmental activist. “One’s own production of home-grown healthy vegetables means salvation for many small people in times of crises. No wonder people are taking to lots in cities or even growing something on their balconies and gardens if they have them.”

The economic crisis of the past year has indeed hit the region hard, with the unemployment rate in Serbia hitting 27 percent of its 7.22 million population and 18.5 percent of Croatia’s 4.26 million people.

Serbian farmers and home gardeners, meanwhile, have taken recourse to the oldest yet safest method: of saving seeds at the end of one season and planting them in the next.

“I keep seeds from year to year and use them in the garden,” Milentije Savovic tells IPS. He has several hectares of different vegetable gardens near Belgrade and sells his produce in the city’s popular Kalenic green market.

In his stall, one can find the popular “oxheart” tomatoes, “cake” or flat onions, small pearl beans and very dry “cerovaca” melons, popular among elders as the fruit of their youth.

“As for domestic [indigenous] species,” says Savovic, “there is no doubt that they are the best adapted to our climate, soil and means of protection. So why change them if they are good?”

The agriculture faculty’s Glamoclija, however, strikes a note of caution here. “One should not confuse the growing of traditional or old, autonomous species with the modern trends of healthy food growing,” he tells IPS.

“Well-adapted home-grown species need good care and adequate protection. Non-treated fruits can contain toxic bacteria instead of pesticides. So the so-called ‘return to nature’ can be like riding a bike in the downtown of a city amidst gases exhaled by heavy vehicles,” he adds.

A man walks by the police checkpoint in Gundik Shalal in northeast Syria. There are believed to be more than 300 Muslims from the Balkans fighting in Syria. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Aug 2 2013 (IPS)

This holy month of Ramadan comes with a difference for some families in the Balkans. It is the first without their young sons, husbands or brothers who died far away from home fighting in Syria.

Muaz Sabic (41) died near Aleppo two months ago. The family from the tiny village Puhovac near the central Bosnian town Zenica only recently learnt of his death.

From what they know, Muaz was member of a unit of young Muslims from different countries who went into Syria to fight the regime of President Basher Al-Assad.The monthly income for jihadis paid through organisations disguised as 'humanitarian agencies', can be about 600 dollars.

“It was his choice,” Muaz’s brother Ilijas Sabic told IPS over the phone. “He was a farmer, lived in the village with our mother, and made honey. I don’t want to talk about him any more…Everything I ever told journalists was abused.”

In earlier interviews with Bosnian media, Ilijas said his brother left Sarajevo for Istanbul in March. Muaz travelled with a couple of young men from Zenica and nearby Kakanj.

According to the local reports, Muaz is one of 52 Bosniak Salafis who left for Syria. Volunteers from Bosnia reportedly gather in the Turkish town Antakya and cross into Syria illegally at the Bab el Hawa crossing.

There are believed to be more than 300 Muslims from the Balkans fighting in Syria. They come from Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia.

Volunteers gather again in the Syrian town Sarmada, where they are trained to join the Free Syrian Army. Most join the Al-Nusra unit, labelled by the U.S., the United Nations and Britain a terrorist organisation “with links to Al-Qaeda.”

The fighters are Salafis. Salafism is a movement within Sunni Islam calling for a return to the original values of the faith. It aims to clear modern Muslim life of any influence of Western models and principles.

Bosnian Muslims are Sunnis. Many have re-invented their religion after the 1992 – 1995 war in which more than 100,000 people died, most of them Muslims. This return to Islam was strongly backed by humanitarian aid organisations from Arab countries and particularly Saudi Arabia where Wahhabism which is closely linked to Salafism is the dominant form of Islam.

According to a former top official of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bajro Ikanovic (37) is among those taking Bosniak Muslims to Syria. In 2007, he was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Sarajevo court on charges of terrorism. His home in Hadzici near Sarajevo was found to be a storage for explosives.

At the time of his trial, Caucasian looking Muslim extremists engaged in terrorism were dubbed “the white Al-Qaeda”.

Ikanovic was freed after four years, and began to organise volunteers for Syria.

Ikanovic told the religious site www.putvjernika.com in an interview that “the difference between us and other revolutionaries is that we are firmly convinced of the righteousness of Islam as the only real way, and the only way for man to return to normal. I absolutely don’t care what becomes of my children, we leave them to the law of Allah and we’ll be proud of our deeds and our lives the way we lived them.”

Muaz Sabic was not the only victim from the Balkans in Syria. Two young men from the southern Serbian town Novi Pazar died in Syria in May. Their deaths were praised on the local www.sandzakhaber.net site. Known under their battle names Abu Bera and Abu Merdia, Eldar Kundakovic and Adis Salihovic died in an effort to free prisoners from the Al-Safira jail near Aleppo.

The SIPA official told IPS that “the war in Bosnia opened the doors for re-invention of Islam; jihad fighters who came here to fight along their Muslim brethren against Serbs or Croats brought their ideology, customs and enthusiasm. For some young men that was a revelation, a kind of missing link being revealed. However, there was never enough evidence that this led to mass scale.”

But some Sarajevans see the more fundamental change.

“It is no secret that people are being paid to go to Syria or other fronts for that matter,” a local resident told IPS. “Mosques are places where people gather more than ever in the past…they hear their imams calling for solidarity, explaining the sufferings of fellow Muslims in Syria and all over the world.

“For those who are barely earning any money, as unemployment reaches almost 45 percent here, this is an opportunity to get something.”

The monthly income for jihadis paid through organisations disguised as ‘humanitarian agencies’, can be about 600 dollars. “Isn’t that a lot under the circumstances?” the resident said.

The Serbian Orthodox Church is highly influential in Serbia. Above, the Cathedral of Saint Sava in Belgrade. Credit: George Groutas/CC by 2.0

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, May 16 2013 (IPS)

The influential Serbian Orthodox Church publicly crossed a line recently when two of its top clergymen took part in a Belgrade rally with messages amounting to direct threats against the lives of government officials.

The rally last Friday was organised by opponents of Serbia’s recent and historic agreement with Kosovo that essentially ceded authority over Kosovo’s Serb population to Pristina.

“We pray for the dead souls of government and parliament, and may all their sins be forgiven,” Archbishop Amfilohije told some 3,000 ultra nationalists who gathered at the central Republic Square.

Amfilohije’s words were followed by a warning from Bishop Atanasije to current Prime Minister Ivica Dacic. “The prime minister speaks about real politics only,” the bishop said. “That is how Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic [assassinated in 2003] used to speak, and we all know how he ended.”

The agreement with Pristina was signed last month under the auspices of the European Union (EU) and called for the normalisation of relations between Serbia and its former province.

It also caused deep disturbance among some 100,000 Serbs who live in Kosovo and refuse to recognise the authority of Pristina, despite their largely having autonomy.

A tense history

Populated by 1.7 million ethnic Albanians, Kosovo was part of Serbia in the former Yugoslavia, which fell apart in 1991, and was under direct rule of Belgrade, with a Serb minority holding power until 1999.

In the 1990s, armed rebellion against Belgrade led to bloody repression by the security forces of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic that left more than 13,000 ethnic Albanians dead. The bloodshed was stopped by 11 weeks of NATO bombing in Serbia in 1999 and by the introduction of United Nations rule over the former Serbian province.

After building its first democratic institutions, Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and has so far been recognised as a state by 96 nations.

But Kosovo is also the cradle of the Serb medieval state, embedded in the hearts and minds of millions of Serbs as the home of their rulers and Orthodox Christianity. Some of the oldest and most important monasteries and churches are in Kosovo, despite the fact that ethnic Albanians have become a majority there.

“Nothing can justify the scandalous behaviour of two bishops at the rally,” religion analyst and author Mirko Djordjevic told IPS. “Speeches by two SPC [Serbian Orthodox Church] primates are unprecedented and will certainly bear influence on future relations between the government and the church.”

“It’s high time the SPC stopped meddling into affairs of state,” commented leading Belgrade daily Blic. “The reputation of this institution has now been burnt to the ground, and its hate speech should be sanctioned.”

Public outcry and anger were most visible on media sites, where hundreds of visitors, even those who identified themselves as believers, posted protests against the clergy’s vitriolic speeches.

The role of the church

The SPC became influential in Serbia when the former Yugoslavia collapsed and Milosevic loosened his communist anti-religion grip for the sake of gaining allies in his wars of the 1990s. The church joined him, following the official policy of Serbia that said it was only “defending Serbs living outside [the] mother country”, meaning in Croatia and Bosnia. Milosevic’s wars led to the deaths of more than 200,000 non-Serbs and deeply tarnished Serbia’s reputation.

Religious curriculum was introduced in Serbian schools in 2001, as the regime that replaced Milosevic’s wanted good relations with the SPC.

“The church used the void left by [the] collapse of previous values and lack of new ones in the war chaos of the nineties,” Zivica Tucic, an independent analyst and expert on religious matters, told IPS. During political and economic transitions and crises, “people have nowhere to turn to but the church,” he explained.

According to the 2011 census, 94 percent of 7.3 million Serbs were Orthodox, but analysts say that most people consider religion and nationality to be equal. As Milan Vukomanovic, a sociologist from the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy, said, “The church has taken its place in the past two decades and one can hardly expect it to leave the space it obtained.”

“The phenomenon arose after direct ethnic mobilisation in former Yugoslavia in the wars of the nineties,” he added. Those wars were fought along ethno-religion lines – among Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosniaks.

“Despite the fact that the war has ended many years ago, we still don’t see any engagement of the SPC in reconciliation, aid to the poor, et cetera,” Vukomanovic said.

The SPC clerics were widely engaged in wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Some of them went to battle or blessed troops that committed war crimes in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where about 8,000 Bosniaks were massacred in 1995.

Although the SPC is not immune to other kinds of scandals, Djordjevic pointed out that the “top clergy never goes to court”, and court practise in Serbia is to allow statute of limitations for cases involving clergy.

The SPC also has a court of its own, the so-called “canon court”, which debates certain cases and suppresses scandal by retiring or mildly disgracing controversial priests. Cases involving paedophilia or embezzlement of church funds rarely end before regular courts.

Despite video evidence of a bishop with young men, for example, or moving stories of suicide attempts by victims of Pahomije, a Serbian bishop, little was done to reach justice. Similarly, a purser at the Patriarchate of Belgrade who stole more than 1.5 million dollars also never went to court.

The public now awaits the traditional SPC assembly, due to be held from May 21 to June 3. The assembly resembles a church parliament that debates the most current developments in all dioceses.

A highly placed source at SPC who insisted on anonymity told IPS that the scandals would not be on the agenda, and when asked whether the accountability of Bishops Atanasije and Amfilohije for their rally speeches will be discussed, he responded, “That is out of question.”

By Emma Bonino
ROME, May 14 2013 (IPS)

The recent agreement for the normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo has confirmed that the European Union (EU) is still acting as a “magnet”, attracting its external neighbours and transforming and integrating them. Thanks to its prospects for EU membership, the whole Balkan area has become more stable and secure. Unfortunately, this virtuous magnetism no longer exerts the same force of attraction on our own citizens.

Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Emma Bonino. Credit: Victor Sokolowicz/IPS

With every passing day, the founding fathers’ dream of peace and freedom seems to be turning into a nightmare for many.

The EU is increasingly being associated with austerity policies that lead to recession, unemployment and social despair. More worryingly, there are signs that the current crisis is not limited to the EU’s economic sphere but also impacts its most fundamental values.

Everywhere in Europe we see rising intolerance; growing support for xenophobic and populist parties; discrimination and a weakening of the rule of law; and entire populations of undocumented migrants, virtually without rights, punished for their status rather than their individual behaviour.

Our inclusive and open community is threatened by destructive actions pursued by nationalistic and demagogic groups. But they are not the only ones inflicting damage on the Union.

In some countries, including Italy, we see too many violations of the rule of law and of international and European treaties, an unreliable justice system, inhumane and degrading conditions in prisons, serious infringements of human rights and grave cases of lack of accountability. How can we preach respect for universal values abroad if we are among the countries most condemned by the European Court of human rights?

It is in our vital interest to react to all these alarming trends.

To defend the European construction, we need to rediscover its mission. Its founding fathers had to discard a whole world of prejudice and fear. They knew from their tragic experience that building fortresses and walls under the guise of ensuring peace and security was an illusion.

They chose integration, and rejected barriers. And they understood that all freedoms are closely linked: one cannot want free trade yet hinder the free movement of people.

Nationalist and demagogic groups are spreading fear and prejudice across Europe by exploiting the current malaise and social despair of all those without a job, and without faith in their future. As European Central Bank President Mario Draghi stressed: “It is of particular importance at this juncture to address the current high long-term and youth unemployment.” This is a fundamental mission of the new Italian government. The data flow is still depressing, urging us to adopt new measures in coordination with our partners and in full respect of our fiscal commitments.

However, I believe that the choice is not simply between fiscal tightening and reckless spending, nor can fear of and disaffection with Europe be tackled with economic measures or financial engineering alone. No solution is credible without a political dimension and without encompassing the whole European architecture.

We need a new score: a federal solution.

I have spent a lot of time, passion and energy supporting the creation of a federal Europe; not for ideological reasons but simply because I do not know any other system capable of allowing 500 million people – belonging to different nations, cultures, religions and speaking a multitude of languages – to live together in freedom and diversity in the 21st century.

Federalism does not mean that the central European government should become a Leviathan, as described by the frightening words of the Europhobes.

A couple of years ago, I proposed a “light federation”, an institutional model that would absorb no more than five percent of European gross domestic product (GDP) in order to finance specific government functions such as foreign and security policy, scientific research, trans-European networks and safety of commercial transactions, among others.

For instance, how can European governments provide adequate security, with fewer financial resources? Only a shared European defence system, with common, integrated armed forces, would enable us to get out of the corner into which tight budgetary constraints are confining us. European governments are reluctant to take decisive steps towards this goal. The consequences of that reluctance are fragmented initiatives, wasted resources and a growing irrelevance of European influence on the world stage.

The same applies to scientific research, a field where national programmes are often too small to be productive and compete successfully with the huge projects of the other global powers.

The 2014 European parliamentary elections will be a significant test. If we want to prevent the risk of an over-representation of populist parties, we need to put federal Europe at the centre stage of the electoral campaign. The pro-Europe political families should present their own candidate for the presidency of the European Commission and submit political agendas for the future of the EU, stressing that a federal solution would save significant financial resources. So, the federalist perspective could assume concrete meaning for all citizens, avoiding the risk of being perceived as an abstract juridical matter.

In 2014, exactly a century after the murder of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that led to the destruction of Europe, we will have another opportunity to give a new impetus to the federal project, under the Italian presidency of the EU. And after 2014, a review of the treaties could give European citizens a stronger sense of ownership of our common institutions and ensure an easier coexistence between countries in the eurozone and the other member states.

If Europe does not solve its problems of recession and populism, we could lose all that we have achieved since the 1950s, with no estimate of how long it will take to regain the same level of democracy, prosperity and stability as before. But if we adopt a new vision, engage our citizens and unite our governments, we could start a new phase of boosting growth and fostering democratic legitimacy and global influence.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

After two months of waiting, people from the central Serbian town Valjevo followed the call of their bishop and went to local Orthodox Church to pray for rain.

“It wasn’t because I am religious, but because I didn’t know what else could help,” said Milan Stankovic (55), who attended the Sunday service. “Half of my raspberries are gone, half of the corn as well.”

And the rain fell in the night between Sunday and Monday all over the Balkans, bringing a little relief to a region where hundreds of thousands of farmers spent most of the summer looking at the sky through four heat waves since Jun. 1.

“All over the Balkans farmers are listing damage,” analyst Misa Brkic told IPS. “But nations of the region should admit they are doing almost nothing in regard to agricultural strategy…governments put agriculture high on their lists of priority, but only in words.”

The Commercial Chamber of Serbia (PKS) has put the damage from drought at 2.1 billion dollars. “Half of total plant production of Serbia was destroyed by this year’s drought,” PKS agriculture expert Vojislav Stankovic told journalists. This goes for corn, soy, wheat, fruit and vegetables.

Stankovic said Serbia, the biggest agricultural producer in the region, needs to invest 2 billion dollars in the irrigation systems that currently cover only 200,000 hectares, or four percent of arable land. The coverage needs to be taken up to two million hectares, he said.

Agriculture is Serbia’s most profitable export branch, and netted in 2 billion dollars in 2011.

“That substantially supported the national budget, but this year will see nothing alike,” Brkic said.

“Harvest losses do not mean only that we’ll have to be careful with use of agricultural produce,” head of the Product Exchange, Zarko Galetin, told IPS. “Those losses transfer into reduced produce of meat, eggs, milk etc., and higher prices of food.”

Consumers in Serbia have already felt the impact, with two hikes in the price of meat of about five percent each in just the past two weeks.

Irrigation has proved difficult. “Our wells have lower levels,” said Mirjana Kiric (35), a vendor at the biggest open air green market Kalenic in Belgrade. “We use old pumps and can almost hear the ground slurping the water.”

In neighbouring Bosnia-Herzegovina, comprising the Croat-Muslim Federation and the Serb dominated Republic of Srpska, there is no joint agriculture ministry. Soil temperatures in the south have hit 47 degrees Celsius, and the government has estimated damage to crops at almost a billion dollars. Farming accounts for 20 percent of employment in the country, where unemployment stands at 48 percent.

“The situation has not been this bad since the end of the (1992-95) war,” Jovan Jankovic (65) from Ljubovija told IPS over the phone. “Corn will be as rare as gold here.”

The World Bank (WB), which in May approved a 40 million dollars loan to improve the irrigation system in Bosnia, said then that the countries of the Balkans had “huge agricultural potential, but lacked the infrastructure and strategy.”

“Former Yugoslavia used to have one of the most advanced irrigation and drainage systems,”

said Holger Kray, the WB’s lead official for agriculture and rural development in Europe and Central Asia. “Unfortunately, these systems have degraded, eroded,” Kray told Belgrade media.

In Croatia, less than one percent of arable land (16,000 hectares) is being irrigated. Agriculture Minister Radimir Cacic admitted to local media last week that the country’s approach to agriculture is like that of “primitive tribes”.

“If there’s rain, there will be crops, there will be electricity. If there is drought, there’ll be nothing. This has to change,” he told Croatian Radio Television (HRT).

So far little has been done in that direction. The only ray of hope for Croatia is the European Union (EU) funds that will become available when it becomes the 28th EU member in July next year.

The drought has had a severe impact on energy production. Hydropower plants have had to scale down due to low water levels. In Serbia, electricity production has fallen 20 percent.

Low river levels have led to a slowdown in international shipment on the Danube and Sava rivers.

Fires as a result of the drought have destroyed large tracts of forests and bush in Bosnia, on the Croatian Adriatic coast, and in Montenegro and Serbia. Some of the fires raging on the border between Serbia and Kosovo are still beyond control because mines left over from the war over the former Serbian province make the area inaccessible.

“Whoever we have to thank for the rain, we do,” Milan Stankovic told IPS. “But it came too late and in such small quantities that it was of little consolation.”

In the decade following the break-up of Yugoslavia, it was rare for a statement made by a foreign politician to stir heated debate in the Eastern European bloc.

Since 2001, the independent nations of former Yugoslavia have been focused on rebuilding their economies from the rubble of simultaneous and protracted conflicts throughout the region and geopolitics have largely been confined to the slow process of reconciliation among neighbouring states.

But the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s proclamation last week that Bosnia-Herzegovina is now in the “care” of his country generated much public controversy in the Balkan states of Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

“Bosnia and Herzegovina is entrusted to us,” Erdogan told a meeting of the provincial heads of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara last week.

He recalled a statement made by the former Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first president, when Erdogan visited him on his deathbed in 2003. “He (Izetbegovic) whispered in my ear these phrases: ‘Bosnia (and Herzegovina) is entrusted to you (Turkey). These places are what remain of the Ottoman Empire’,” he said.

Izetbegovic, who led Bosnia into the war of independence in 1992 and subsequently became the country’s first president, died of a heart disease in 2003.

The thought of being passed off as a ‘trust’ to any country is enough to spark intense opposition but the statement is made worse by the fact that Bosnia is home to a highly diverse population comprising various ethno-religious communities including Bosniak Muslims, Catholic Bosnian Croats and Orthodox Serbs as well.

The latter two groups make up more than half of Bosnia’s population of four million. For them, the 500 years of Turkish-Ottoman rule that ended only with the collapse of the empire at the end of World War I are remembered almost exclusively as a period of severe oppression.

Bosnian Serb politicians were quick to voice their anger over the statement.

“Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a land to be inherited,” Igor Radojicic, a spokesman for the Bosnian Serb Parliament stressed, while Bosnian Croat leader Dragan Covic told local media he doubted that “Izetbegovic could be so powerful as to believe he has a country to give (away) as a trust.”

The controversy quickly went viral online, with websites in the region becoming the battlegrounds for a war of words between various ethnic groups.

United against Muslims, non-Muslims expressed outrage against the statement and open fear about the influence of Islam in the region.

“People who are not of Islamic faith tend to be surprised when they see many women in Sarajevo dressed in traditional Islamic ways, with scarves or even in abayas, as Bosnia was a secular country before the wars of the ‘90s,” Zijad Jusufovic (47), a tour guide in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, told IPS.

“But there are also others signs that are not yet visible (to a majority of the population) – for instance unemployed men get financial support if they become regular mosque goers, war widows get financial support as well – up to 600 dollars – if they and their children become devout Muslims.

“That began in the 90s, as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Malaysia (began) to support Muslims here,” he added.

Pragmatic foreign policy

Belgrade historian Slavenko Terzic told the leading Serbian daily ‘Politika’ that Erdogan’s proclamation was “a dangerous statement for the Balkans”.

His colleague, Cedomir Antic, described the move as “an unprecedented provocation” that should be “officially renounced by Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia”.

But for analysts and experts, the statement by the Turkish Prime Minister came as no surprise.

“The statement represents a political reality: that (Turkey) considers the Balkans a priority in its ambitious foreign policy,” Darko Tanaskovic, an expert in oriental studies at the University of Belgrade, told IPS.

For Voja Lalic, a veteran journalist who dedicated his career to Turkey, Erdogan’s statement was “neither accidental, nor unexpected”.

“The (AKP) government is trying to impose itself as a regional power in areas of the former Ottoman Empire, not only in the Balkans, but in the Middle East and former Soviet republics of Islamic background as well,” Lalic told IPS.

“Perhaps the statement about ‘legacy’ was a little counterproductive for Turkey’s long-term interests,” Tanaskovic told IPS, especially since it raised fears in Bosnia about Ankara’s expansionist mindset.

He added, however, that Turkey’s foreign policy is distinguished by a high degree of pragmatism, referred to by historians and analysts as ‘Neo-Osmanism’. Tanaskovic described this ideology as a mix of Islamism, Turkish nationalism and Osman imperialism, a foreign policy strategy that is “nostalgic for imperial times”, he told IPS.

“It is (this) pragmatism that dominates Turkey’s foreign policy,” Lalic says. “Turks are excellent traders and they use that skill always and everywhere,” he added.

Sarajevo columnist Borivoje Simic recently wrote, “Private capital, interested in profit only, which does not differ between nations, colours or race, has yet to enter Bosnia. So far, this country has not proven to be a stable, comfortable place for investment, despite the ‘political love’ that has been expressed by many, including Turkey.”

But a brief look at Turkey’s economic presence in the Balkans shows that this is now changing. According to Turkey’s economic ministry, trade between Turkey and the countries in the Balkans grew from 2.9 billion dollars in 2000 to 18.4 billion dollars in 2011.

At the same time, direct investment into these nations grew from 30 million dollars in 2002 to 189 million in 2011.

“Out of the 1.8 million dollars invested abroad in 2011, seven percent went to the Balkans,” according to Turkish offocials. This money was poured into diverse industries such as communications, banking, construction, mining and retail sectors.

Culturally, too, Turkey’s presence in the Balkan’s is increasing rapidly.

“Turkish soap-operas have (become more popular than) South American shows,” Tanaskovic told IPS.

“It is this strategy (so-called ‘soft power’) that creates a positive image about Turkey,” he said in reference to the dozens of Turkish TV series that currently rule the Balkans’ screens.

Millions were glued to their TV screens from February until June this year, when the first 55 episodes of a saga on Suleiman the Magnificent aired in the region. Stories of the 16^th century ruler and his court immediately captured the hearts of thousands of citizens.

Such was the popularity of these shows that various sociologists began to study the phenomenon.

“The Turkish oriental element presents a shared and familiar atmosphere for millions, harkening back to a collective cultural identity, and even elements of a common language, that have survived for centuries,” according to Lalic.

Turkey has also opened two universities in Bosnia – the International University of Sarajevo (IUS) and the International Burch University (IBU), the latter established by private individuals that include Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.

“The growing popularity of the Turkish seaside is also an indicator” of closer ties, Lalic added.

The Turkish seaside ranks third among Serbs, whose favourite holiday destinations have hitherto been Montenegro or Greece. Now the Turkish Mediterranean coast is attracting thousands: 140,000 Serbs flew there in the first half of the year, with more tourists expected in the coming months.

“It is such fun to be in Turkey,” said Ivana Djuraskovic (40), who plans to re-visit the Turkish resort of Bodrum this year.

“When I hear ‘Turkish’ words, which are Serbian as well, such as sanduk (box), kapija (gate), hajde (come on), taman (enough), carsav (linen), secer (sugar), kackavalj (cheese) or kralj (king), I feel at home,” she added.

(END)

Former university graduates, current students and professors are embroiled in an unusual scandal this exam season, as news reports filtering in from around the Balkans reveal a major online trade in stolen final papers.

“I was shocked when I recognised my final paper, with only its title changed, posted on the website of my (Alma Mater) and credited to another person,” said Jelena Stojanovic (31), who graduated from the Belgrade Technology Faculty six years ago.

“I contacted the girl listed as the author and she admitted to buying the paper for 3,000 dinars (33 dollars) on a site that offers a database of final papers in all areas (of study),” Stojanovic told IPS. “I protested to my faculty, but they said it’s currently impossible to establish if the graduation paper is forged or not.”

Under the current education system, high schools and most university faculties require students to complete extensive final papers in order to be eligible for graduation. But the requirement appears to be too much effort for many, who are turning to the digital world for a quick fix to their end-of- semester blues.

Stojanovic is just one of thousands of graduates whose final papers have appeared on the seemingly enormous number of sites that offer term papers for a sum of 33-110 dollars, depending on the area of expertise. Short midterm papers or high school essays are sold for about five dollars.

‘Customers’ are offered the option of paying online using Serbian dinars, Croatian kunas, Bosnian marks and euros for Montenegro, as the database is easily able to serve Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins due to the similar language spoken throughout the region.

The market is huge and covers an area of more than 15 million people. Serbia alone has a population of a million students at all levels of education.

“I believe that the universities’ practice of posting graduation papers online is being abused,” Stojanovic said. “But there’s no way to prove it or take legal action.”

So far, there is no clear law governing this kind of scheme in Serbia or anywhere else in the region. Experts say the laws are slow to follow the developments of modern technology.

“For the time being, the only way (to avoid the scandal) would be to register one’s graduation paper as intellectual property and sue those who use it illegally,” according to Vladimir Maric, from the Institute for Intellectual Property.

In the meantime, the business of obtaining online final papers appears to be flourishing.

Creators of the databases seem to have access to some of Serbia’s biggest Internet providers – thousands of netizens recently received an e-mail offering a shopping spree at a site with readymade graduation papers for high schools and various university faculties.

The papers on offer covered 44 areas, ranging from short essays on Serbian writers to highly sophisticated works on the history of Serbian international relations to analyses of technological processes in the textile industry.

Users must register and pay a small membership fee in order to gain access to the site, but they in turn are given no information about the site’s operators.

It was only recently that Serbia was “able to ban mobile phones and ensure that sophisticated equipment such as bugs were excluded from final exams,” said economics professor Rade Mitrovic.

“But we seem to be one step behind the imagination of students and their helpers,” he added.

Though there are no formal laws on cheating in Serbia, students caught doing so can be prevented by teachers at any education level – be it high school or university – from sitting the exam. They are usually allowed to take the exam the following semester.

So far, only one site with contents described as “illegal” has been shut down in Serbia and that too only because the Association of Serbian Publishers decided to push for closure of the site, which contained e-books by both domestic and international authors; universities and high schools have yet to take action.

Meanwhile, the public was recently stunned by the discovery that various degrees were forged as well.

“We recently checked some 2,000 diplomas (belonging to workers at) the electricity company of Montenegro,” said Velimir Tmusic, head of the inspection in Belgrade. “About 10 percent were forged, mostly from the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics in Pristina.”

In the past decades, many Montenegrins studied in Serbia or in Kosovo, so the check had to be carried out in Belgrade. Pristina, now Kosovo’s capital, was under the Serbian education system until 1999.

“Most of the forgeries were from the 90s,” Tmusic added, referencing the decade when lawlessness was common in the war-torn region.

Now, a simmering scandal about the newly elected president Tomislav Nikolic (60) is adding to the confusion.

Nikolic’s official biography says he graduated in 2007, and obtained a Master’s degree in 2011 at the Faculty for Management in the northern town of Novi Sad.

However Nikolic himself claimed that in 2007 he was studying at the Faculty of Law in his native Kragujevac. He was also unable, during a recent TV interview, to name a single professor at his alleged alma mater in Novi Sad. The public is still waiting for the president to clear these lingering doubts.

(END)