A brief history of decay

From the perspective of the remnants of the former state, the Slovenian duo Kučan-Drnovšek - of whom Janez was also the president of the SFRY presidency and, as such, already opened some of the summits of the non-aligned movement in Belgrade - records the incomparably best balance from the jubilee tenth anniversary of the dissolution. Everyone else can go around waving national flags, blaring national anthems and marking new historical dates all they want. After all, in most of the remnants of the former Yugoslavia, these are the only gains, if we ignore the massive mafia-political criminalization of almost all the newly created ex-Yugoslav states and all its obvious consequences.

Franjo Tuđman handed over power posthumously and, in that sense, willingly: his place as president of Croatia is now occupied by Stjepan Mesić, who in 1991 was installed as the president of the SFRY presidency by the Dutch/European Hans van der Broek. As the latter, it will turn out later: "The task has been completed, Yugoslavia no longer exists", read Mesić's report to the Parliament of independent Croatia a month later. Its current prime minister is Ivica Račan, at that time the president of the Union of Communists of Croatia and a lover of the literary works of Umberto Eco.

Alija Izetbegović, for whom the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina at one point was more important than the sacrifices that will be made in achieving that goal, is now in some kind of political retirement. Biljana Plavšić, his like-minded person in terms of the number of lives that should be "laid" in the foundations of Serbian national independence, then a voluntary collaborator in the seduction of the Dayton Peace, is awaiting trial in The Hague. Psychiatrist, poet and fiddler Radovan Karadžić is hiding from the same in the forests and mountains of the entity. Slobodan Milošević, their occasional mentor, occasional opponent - depending on whether he played the role of "Balkan butcher" or "guarantor of peace and stability" - is awaiting delivery to the International Tribunal for War Crimes in the former Yugoslavia, last post: Prison Unit, Scheveningen .

Until yesterday, it seemed that Kiro Gligorov had retired into a peaceful political retirement, i.e. family and memoir leisure. It seemed that the distinguished long-time "staff" of the restless SFRY found a formula for the independence of Macedonia, despite the Greek sullenness, Old Serbian, Bulgarian and all other radical Balkan pretensions. Political outsiders who - like Milošević entered into an alliance with Russia and Belarus, renewing the traditional Serbian-Chinese friendship and socialism as a world process - based their international position on the recognition of Taiwan's independence, and the security of their own country on the residence tax of foreign advisers, observers and troops, now they are painfully facing the symptoms of gangrenous balkanization.

But Macedonia may not be the last in this short history of disintegration. What is called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is now governed by interest associations under the names of political coalitions based on various gathering grounds, from the tribal call for blood, through murky business interests in the Balkan tavern and principled past at all costs, to pragmatists who yesterday kept Milošević in power, opponents they gave him up last night, and this morning they would hand him over to someone else, who knows better what he did and how much it costs. And so, after ten years, in the place of the former SFRY, we find a dozen entities that see themselves as states, while in essence they are what the politically correct international vocabulary defines as Southeast Europe and the "Western Balkans" in a better way, and the "former Yugoslav republic", an entity and a protectorate at worst.

The beginning of the disintegration of the SFRY was marked by two traveling circuses. In one, political, Kiro Gligorov, Slobodan Milošević, Momir Bulatović, Alija Izetbegović, Franjo Tuđman and Milan Kučan agreed, as it were, on the possibilities and ways of survival of the common state. In the second, some walked through the "Serbian lands" with the relics of Prince Lazar, while others dug up the bones of the victims of Ustasha/Chetnik/communist terror and revealed the secrets of the outrageous crimes that the fraternal South Slavic peoples have been doing to each other since coming down from the tree, i.e. different trees. By the way - in the meantime the word: collateral - has come into vogue - the consequences of the still unfinished nation-state liberation were hundreds of thousands of dead, physically and mentally maimed, millions of refugees, expelled and displaced "persons", in short: homeless.

That is, in short, the balance of disintegration. Credit for that – or blame, depending on how one looks at it, whether one likes it or not – is now being weighed and apportioned in The Hague. But even his last judgment will not make any of those who escaped Scheveningen innocent, just as the punishment of the "greatest" will not diminish the merits and responsibility of the international community for the course and outcome of the disintegration of the SFRY. Wherever the world fought for multi-ethnic communities in the former Yugoslavia, single-national states, entities, ethnic federations and confederations emerged; the last remaining multi-national state is FR Yugoslavia, but in this context it should perhaps be understood as a reason for concern. While on one side it condemned, on the other side the international community supported and recognized the ethnic cleansing. No one seriously encourages or ensures the return of refugees, but they also do not care about the "surplus" Albanian population that appeared in Kosovo after the bombing in 1999. It is now quite certain that it is on the way to independence, which will be ensured by NATO in the future, as well as the "survival" of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and, of course, the FR Yugoslavia.

Well, cheers.