From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna,soc.culture.europe
Subject: ARTICLE: Interview with Tanja Petovar
Date: 9 Nov 92 22:53:22 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB

The following interview appeared in Svenska Dagbladet, a major
Swedish daily, Tuesday November 3rd. The interview was made by
Richard Swartz, who has covered Eastern Europe for the account
of SvD for around 20 years. Translation mine.

I think Ms. Petovar has some interesting viewpoints which I may
find a bit too cynical, but I still found worth sharing with a
broader audience.


    Tanja Petovar, with the background from a Slovenian-Serbian
    family, was ever since 1984 one of the most important barristers
    at political trials in Yugoslavia; not the least she regularly
    assisted Albanians in Kosovo who had been accused for "hostile
    propaganda" or "state-hostile activities". In 1987 she founded
    the Yugoslavian Helsinki committee, with the mission to survey
    how the human rights were respected. Since the break-out of war
    she has given juridical support to conscripts who have refused
    to join their units and she has helped to arrange several peace
    demonstrations in Belgrade. Currently, she has a position as a 
    researcher in Olso.

    SvD: How long will this war in the former Yugoslavia continue?
    Is there any way to stop this at all?

    TP: To answer this question, one must first understand how this
    war started. The causes are several, but for me two are crucial -
    the political power game itself and the desire of those who have
    launched the war to grab as much property as possible. This is
    firstly not a national or an ethnical war; it is a war over who 
    is to have the future political power over the politics and the
    capital resources of the society. Over money, companies and banks.
    In Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic and his gang have already grabbed 
    almost everything of value in Serbia.

    SvD: Does the same thing take place in Croatia?

    TP: Of course. The process is also in progress in Slovenia, but
    in far more controlled and legal forms. As a matter of fact it
    is happening all over Eastern Europe, but in Yugoslavia it is
    particularly complicated. In other places it was "state property",
    and it was obvious what the "state" was. But by us, one had "self
    management" and other mystifications which made the ownership 
    relations very dim. Who did really own what? In Belgrade there
    is now a political maffia busy with grabbing all property. A real 
    maffia.

    SvD: But how has this little group managed to start a war which
    comprises a lot of people which cannot be counted as members of
    the maffia?

    TP: Because the desire to steal is on all levels of the society,
    and what happens on the bottom is only a reflection of the "re-
    distribution" which takes place at the top of the society. All
    these self-declared soldiers really makes a common case with the
    politicians: they assault a city, burgle into the houses and loots.

    And there is a lot to steal there; in the West one might not know
    that an agricultural people like on the Balkan have their money
    and their gold in the mattress. Never on the bank! History has
    taught people to not trust the bank. What you own you have at home,
    sewn into the mattress. And the Yugoslavs were not poor - through
    tourism and as guest workers they earned to fair deal of money, in
    difference to other people in other places in Eastern Europe.

    SvD: But Serbian and Montenegrian soldiers were never into Dubrovnik?

    TP: No, but the entire beach part around Dubrovnik was looted, almost
    every private house between Cavat and Trsteno! Thus, here came Monte-
    negrian soldiers from their poor and sleepy mountain villages and
    suddenly were to see how people were living with expensive furniture,
    cars, three TV sets in each house, and the pantry full of ham and
    cheese. For them it was a shock. And they brought with them every-
    thing! The stolen property they loaded and bound on their tanks; like 
    in a film of Bunuel. For me it is therefore not an ethnical war, but
    a social war.

    SvD: A war of classes?

    TP: No, that sounds too Marxistic. It is indeed a war between those
    who have and those who don't. But the latter group in Yugoslavia
    was not really extortioned and suppressed in the Marxistic sense:
    under communism they fared well, they could be lazy and yet the
    state took care of them. Instead it is a war between the moderns,
    those with success, and the bottom of society; thus the genuine
    rag proletariat together with what has been recruited from the
    party and state bureaucracy.

    SvD: Even if this was the correct description of the reality, so
    does the official rhetorics talk about something different: a
    national, purely ethnical war.

    TP: Yes, because there is a need for an alibi. So everyone has been
    equipped with a splendid ideological excuse: you have a right to
    kill and besteal someone else, because he is on the wrong side.

    SvD: Hate between the nations would not have been one of causes
    behind the war?

    TP: No, I don't think so. As all multi-national societies ours is
    naturally more exposed to those who wish to manipulate us, but
    with the exception of those years during WWII, Serbs and Croats
    has not really been in a real bloody conflict with each other.
    The Croat fascism during the war came from the outside; it came
    to us from Hitler.

    I think our only authentic national conflict is the one between
    Serbs and Albanians; these people have never been able to live
    side by side. Either one has appeared as oppressor or been oppressed.
    The Serbs may not hate the Albanians, but they regard them as inferior,
    as second class humans. Now it only remains to see if it this will
    lead to war or not. Probably Milosevic will in the long run need
    a war with the Albanians to stay in power.

    Still we don't know how things will turn out; would the war break
    out in Kosovo, would this enemyship from several centuries be the
    exception which prove what I nevertheless perceive as the rule: 
    ethnical conflicts does not necessarily lead to war. It is instead
    war which leads to ethnical conflicts.

    SvD: Then we are back to the first question - how does one stop the war?

    TP: No one can now get control of the barbaric brutality which has
    been let loose; it has already rooted. They who consciously and
    from the very beginning fanned the open violence will try to preserve
    this state of anarchy as long as it suits them, thus until they have
    finished the accumulation of property which I already have talked of.
    But in the end they will need institutions to protect what they have 
    acquired.

    In their own interest they will need ordered and peaceful conditions,
    and therefore they will try aim at stopping the war, just like they
    started it. It is likely that precisely those who are now stealing
    what they can in large scale, are laying the ground to the Rocke-
    fellers and Rothschilds of the future Yugoslavia. In some generation
    they will already appear as refined and civilized families. The
    origin of their fortune will then already be forgotten.

    The problem is however that these persons are starting to loose control
    over the war. Because how do you create so called ethnical hate between
    people! You send for example Vojislav Seselj's bandits to a village and
    let them kill a few Croats and Serbs; five doesn't matter much. Revenge
    is the next step, from a virus you get a epidemic, of the epidemic a
    disaster.

    SvD: The war feeds itself.

    TP: Yes, as I've already have said, the war creates ethnical conflicts,
    not the opposite. Without the war no hate, without hate no "ethnical
    cleansing", without "ethnical cleansing" no ethnically "pure" national
    state. The war is the consciously staged presumption for the national
    hate between the people and the redistribution of the resources of
    the society. Who leaves his home and the place there his family has
    lived for hundreds of year, if his life is not in danger?

    SvD: It sounds like the war would never end. And as if the plan
    of the "maffia" would fail nevertheless.

    TP: In any case, the "cantonization" which seems to be approaching
    in Bosnia is hardly a step towards a peaceful solution. Disregarding
    that the "ethnic cleansing" in this way is indirectly accepted, one
    one giving the war mongers some kind of legitimacy. The same persons
    who are on good ground suspected for war crimes! None of these local 
    "leaders" will stand in the lead for anything but a banana republic, 
    controlled with help of poverty and brutal repression.

    - Also, their appetite is growing. A Radovan Karadzic or a Goran Hadzic
    is dreaming of becoming a Milosevic, like Milosevic in dreaming of
    becoming a Tito. It is very probably that they sooner or later will 
    clash. And the surrounding world is now prepared to recognize them 
    internationally. That is not really the way to strengthen democracy
    on the Balkan.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se