By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
It’s clear to everyone, sanctions do the work.
It’s clear to everyone… When you don’t want to solve something, open a parliamentary inquiry and form a commission: when you don’t want to solve something, impose sanctions.
Russia has been under some kind of Western sanctions for 30 years. So, what about sanctions? Ask the people of Ukraine: perhaps they, staring at the graves of their children, see better the scope of sanctions.
How are things going with Dodik’s sanctions? Was he, perhaps, frightened? Has he, maybe, given up?
The misery of sanctions is also backed by those imposed by the Americans against Svetozar Marovic. Sanctions were imposed on him so that no one from the American administration would order its pollen, its “factor of peace and stability in the Balkans”, the most beloved one since the time of Milosevic, to extradite him to Montenegro.
Please, let’s remember something…
In the summer of 1992, sanctions were imposed on Milosevic’s Yugoslavia.
It wasn’t long before Yugoslavia became one of the darkest spots in this world, which is too reminiscent of the Black Hole anyway. The average salary was a few Deutsche marks. The Central Bank in Belgrade stamped money day and night. In the end, they printed a 500 billion-dinar banknote, which was not worth as much as a sheet of toilet paper. Apart from being a war crimes machine, Yugoslavia will be remembered for the greatest hyperinflation in world history.
Author Geoff Dyer once published an article in the Financial Times entitled War by Other Means. Writing about sanctions against Russia (it is good that such a reputable newspaper reported about it, because otherwise the Russians would not have noticed that they were under sanctions, considering that they were hit so severely by Western sanctions), he claims that at one point “…Clinton’s administration began to introduce ‘smart sanctions’ – measures that targeted specific individuals and entities, not the entire population.” Well, he says that they imposed such “smart” sanctions on Serbia as well. (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b18d2c74-b59e-11e3-81cb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xYUSidjD)
But as our people say – what is meant to be always finds its way: these sanctions have damaged the entire population; more or less everyone, except those “individuals and entities” who were targeted.
People spent their life savings to buy food for families in empty supermarkets and on the black market. Since the vast majority of them voted for Milosevic and were willing to suffer and starve, only for the war in Bosnia to last until the final victory, I have no empathy for their poverty: my only regret is that they failed to sell their houses for food, and then voted for Milosevic as homeless people.
Supporting the crime in Bosnia, the middle class in Serbia-Montenegro has agreed to its own destruction: first through sanctions, then through transition. In 1993, there was no price (“If necessary, we will eat the roots”, as formulated by a high-ranking politician of the time, Branko Kostic) that the average citizen of Serbia and Montenegro was not ready to pay, just to kill as many Muslims as possible in Bosnia.
But the whole story about sanctions had another dimension: in the eyes of those who did not go blind from fascism, the Serbian and Montenegrin middle class disappeared. With the middle class, its morals, which we also know as civic decency, disappeared. It was not the economic collapse that produced the ethical collapse: it was just the opposite.
At the same time, the black smuggling-criminal-state elite close to Milosevic and his Montenegrin allies, those against whom “smart sanctions” were imposed, were becoming richer and richer. The money of the impoverished middle class ended up in their pockets.
Pressed by sanctions, Serbian and Montenegrin industry staggered briefly and then collapsed. “Targets of smart sanctions” bought closed factories, hotels, failed banks and shops for some petty cash. This is how hard they were hit by the punitive measures of the “international community”.
The middle class was the collateral victim of sanctions against the Milosevic regime. Sanctions gave birth to a new elite soaked in blood, brought more social injustices. Sanctions were one of the key factors in establishing the local form of capitalism. They helped Milosevic implement a policy of national homogenization. The tyrant pointed his finger at the external enemy and his conspiracy against “our people”. This, in essence, extended the life of the regime. For, as we know, a good enemy is all that a tyrant needs for a long and dark reign.
“Our Orthodox people” burned, slaughtered and ethnically cleansed Bosnia for four years, only to commit genocide in Srebrenica. Milosevic’s Yugoslavia sent not only weapons and armed men to Bosnia, but also money. Huge sums of money. Despite the terrible impoverishment of the population, that period passed practically without social unrest. Why did the workers imitate the muses, so they kept silent when the cannons spoke? Why were the great Belgrade demonstrations of that time nationalistic and not anti-war? Why were they led by nationalists and not the fearless anti-war and anti-nationalist elite of Serbia? Why did even Zoran Djindjic roast an ox in Pale with the Bosnian Serb leadership, thus providing them with support? Why did the Serbian opposition, with a few exceptions, problematize the way in which Milosevic runs “our thing”, but not “our thing” itself?
Because the citizens of Yugoslavia understood very well that they were performing the so-called “patriotic duty” through suffering, so they agreed to pay their share for the implementation of the Serbian war goals in Bosnia.
A completely different story is that sanctions work for, not against tycoons and totalitarian leaders. Above all: they are helping to establish an economic system for which so-called “ordinary citizens” will suffer for decades to come, even when the ruler has long since rotted deep underground and no one remembers the gallows from which he hung. Or we should put it this way: citizens will be paying the price of their complicity for decades to come.
The paradox of sanctions is this: the West is introducing them to encourage “democratization”. In practice, they lead to the destruction of the middle class and they take the country even further away than “democratization and reform” – we have clearly seen this in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia. Milosevic lasted for another nine years after the introduction of sanctions, and the tycoons who emerged from the sanctions continue to this day, both in Montenegro and in Serbia. Nationalism as the dominant social force continues to this day. This is inevitable, because the nationalist conspiracy is perfect: executors and propagandists and concealers are still involved. I say concealers, because the point to which it was possible to view ourselves as a victim of criminal propaganda is far behind us: because when, despite the fact that genocide was documented and convicted, we decided to continue denying genocide, we became concealers.
The conspiracy matrix is maintained, regardless of the fact that part of the conspirators still rob the other part of the conspirators, just as they robbed them on the first day of their joint venture. In order for the conspiracy to be broken, it is necessary to acknowledge one’s own role in it, and thus one’s own responsibility. It’s clear: not the guilt. It’s clear: I am not advocating the idea of collective guilt. I argue, however, that the process of so-called “dealing with the past” is doomed to failure if it lacks – as it did – the question and honest answer which every citizen of the former Milosevic Yugoslavia owes to himself and to the victims of Srebrenica: what did I personally do for Srebrenica not to happen? What misconceptions and actions of mine made the politics and ideology that led to genocide possible?
Since no such question is asked, since lies and cowardice build order in today’s, new Montenegro, Miodrag Perovic recognized the “emancipatory potential” in the Church of Serbia, while Milo Djukanovic recognized the same potential in URA.
The last time I checked, “emancipation” was not synonymous with “lie,” much less “destruction.”
But what can we do: the new world is usually looking for a new language, a language that will support the lie which it is based on.
