By: Blendi Fevziu
You have lobbied against visa liberalisation for Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina! This was the essence of the accusative declaration of the European parliamentarian Sarah Ludford, made a few days ago in Brussels in a confrontation with the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeremic. Ludford referred to the activities of the Serbian Embassy in Brussels, the officials of which had lobbied the members of the European Parliament to impede visa liberalization for Albania and Bosnia. She also referred to a confidential e-mail of Minister Jeremic himself addressed to a Dutch member of the EP asking him to not support the platform on this issue of European parliamentarian Tanja Fajon in the Security, Justice and Freedom Committee.
The objections to these accusations and justifications of Jeremic bear little importance in this context. In fact, the story must be observed more comprehensively, beyond this particular context. Serbia was certainly the most important Republic and continues to be the main heir of the former Yugoslav Federation. Former Yugoslavia enjoyed the benefits of the West for many years, not to mention how it profited from both West and East in the Cold War context. The funeral of former leader Tito is the best example in point, exposing as it did, how East and West raced to demonstrate their friendship and solidarity with Yugoslavia. And perhaps they were right. Tito’s Yugoslavia was the first communist country to exit the Soviet Union’s yoke and to likewise refuse to re-make itself subject to it after Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s subsequent efforts.
But the extent to which the Yugoslavia of the nineties, or Serbia rather, brought havoc to the Balkans and beyond was not exactly negligible. Serbia is the protagonist of 10 years of war which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Serbia is the protagonist of chilling platforms of ethnic cleansing, platforms of the kind the world had forgotten about since the Nazi Holocaust of the Second World War. Serbia was the country to demonstrate the powerlessness of Europe and the United States in halting nationalist hysteria. And finally, Serbia was the one to lead the civilized world to join in a coalition for the first moral war in world history, the Kosovo war.
This story is over. Today’s Serbia is not the one of yesterday. Today’s Serbia is a democratic country. But when a country reaps the benefits of its past, it must equally bear the problems of that past, the recent past in fact.
Fortune saw to it that Serbia obtained visa liberalization, just like Macedonia and Montenegro. Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina were left out. The arguments were simply technical and the issue needs to be expanded beyond that. After ten years of suffering, Bosnia, the principal victim of the Balkans, was once more left in isolation, and Serbia, the cause of this tragedy, comes out of the whole affair advantageously and with much more luck. Furthermore, Bosnia is administered by the internationals themselves and each failure therein is as much a responsibility of the national political elite as it is of the international community.
In a wider context, it certainly does not seem fair to leave Bosnia and Albania out and include Serbia in the visa liberalization deal. As it does not seem fair that Serbia lobbies against Albania and Bosnia, reminding us all of other times, of another Serbia that should bear no resemblance to the one today. Serbia should have been the first to come out in favour of visa liberalization for Bosnia and Albania, to demonstrate, even if through a mere gesture, repentance over events in the Balkans.
