Imagining Kosovo: A Biased New Account Fans Western Confusion

To Malcolm, it was irrelevant that Bosnia's Serbs and Croats were primarily loyal to Serbia and Croatia, not Bosnia, since at least the mid-nineteenth century. He also underestimated how deeply embedded in each of the three groups' collective memory were several major interethnic conflicts in the last century or so in which tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. In 1875, for instance, a major uprising of Christians against Ottoman rule and the Muslim nobility caused a major European crisis that led to the convening of the Congress of Berlin in 1878. During World War II, 400,000 Bosnians out of a total population of 2.8 million lost their lives -- every sixth Serb, eighth Croat, and twelfth Muslim. More than half died in fighting between the three groups. Malcolm, however, preferred to stress periods of interethnic peace and cooperation. He assailed what he considered the myth that the current bloodshed was the result of "ancient ethnic hatreds," a fiction that he claimed was preventing Western leaders from intervening. Instead, he blamed the bloodletting on bellicose politicians, especially those in Belgrade. But the leaders of the three groups, while undoubtedly evil and guilty, could never have won over large majorities of their peoples for their chauvinistic designs if the memories of past suffering at the hands of the others and a hidden thirst for revenge had not been there.

Almost three years have passed since November 1995, when the United States brokered the Bosnian peace accords at Dayton, Ohio, but Bosnia is still separated into Muslim, Serbian, and Croatian parts. Hardly any refugees are returning home, and the common Muslim- Serbian-Croatian government in Sarajevo meets only when the West pressures its members. There are now about 34,000 NATO-led troops, including some 7,000 Americans, policing Bosnia and protecting the Bosnians from themselves. That the NATO force's departure is far from sight is a powerful refutation of Malcolm's belief in impending reintegration and interethnic harmony.

MY OWN PRIVATE KOSOVO

In Kosovo: A Short History, Malcolm is more realistic. He does not underestimate the importance of differences between Serbs and Albanians in terms of ethnicity, language, and religion (all Serbs are Eastern Orthodox, while Albanians are predominantly Muslim, although some are Catholic or Eastern Orthodox). Kosovo, he concedes, was not "always a wonderland of mutual tolerance." At the same time, his starting point is the same as in Bosnia: A Short History -- "ancient ethnic hatreds" are not the cause of the present conflict. He then searches obsessively for those rare historical occasions when Albanians and Serbs fought on the same side rather than against each other.

But why, then, does Malcolm support Albanian demands for independence? In Bosnia, he advocates restoring a unitary state. To be consistent, he would have to demand the reintegration of autonomous Kosovo into Serbia and the resolution of the Albanian-Serbian conflict through Albanian participation in Serbia's political life -- giving the same prescription for Kosovo that he gave for Bosnia.

Malcolm fails to grasp the consequences of his inconsistency. While he chastised Bosnia's Serbs and Croats for refusing to fight for their rights in Sarajevo's parliament, he shows great understanding for Kosovo's Albanians' systematic boycott of elections in Serbia and Yugoslavia. But Albanian abstentions greatly harmed the Albanian struggle for their rights and the development of democracy in Serbia and Yugoslavia. Serbia's nationalistic president, Slobodan Milosevic, all but extinguished Kosovo's autonomy in 1988 and, as Malcolm movingly describes, put Kosovo under police rule and fired tens of thousands of Albanians from state enterprises, the educational system, the police, and the judiciary. Albanians responded by creating a parallel political, economic, and educational system and avoiding military conscription and payment of taxes (their motto could have been a paraphrase of the slogan of the American Revolution: no taxation without representation). All Albanian political groups agreed to accept nothing less than complete independence for Kosovo and under no circumstances to participate in the political life of Serbia and Yugoslavia. But if the Albanians had voted, they could have decisively influenced the presidential elections in Serbia and Yugoslavia, and their representatives would have made one of the strongest parties in both parliaments. There they could have successfully fought for their rights and the restoration of Kosovo's autonomy -- and even, through alliances with Serbian opposition parties, helped oust Milosevic's socialists.

BLAME THE TURKS