SHRINKING SERBIA

In the summer of 1982, I was invited to participate in a Guinness Festival, along with a number of other Guinness World Record holders, held in Austria's Lake District.

At the welcoming reception, we all went around to each other to introduce ourselves and ask, "What are you in the book for?"

There was a fellow with the most consecutive situps: over 27,000.  Another with the most consecutive one-armed pushups: over 600.  A lady with the most consecutive hours belly-dancing.  A rotund guy with the most consecutive hours treading water.

And yes, it was cool for me to answer:  Sky-diving on the North Pole, the world's most northerly parachute jump (April 15, 1981, 90º North Latitude).  "A record that cannot be bettered," as one Guinness edition said.

I had brought my rig, as the Guinness folks wanted me to do a demo jump.  They got a small plane with a door removed and we flew as high as it could go, almost 18,000 feet.  When I exited, I was overwhelmed by the sight below.

Turning one way, there was Austria, with the Lake District spread out like a Disney cartoon – the Wörther See, the Faaker See, and other smaller lakes dotting the landscape of forests, green pastures, and picturesque villages.

Turning the other way, there were the Julian Alps, named after Julius Caesar, forming the border between Austria and Yugoslavia.  There were hundred of jagged alpine peaks jutting out of a sea of snow, ice, and glaciers.

I kept turning back and forth, transfixed with the two views as I fell through the sky.  Soon enough I was even with the Julian peaks, then below them.  Time to pull.  The canopy deployed like it was supposed to, and I landed where I was supposed to, right in front of the crowd.  It was one of the most memorable sky-dives I've ever had.

I'll never forget the sight of the Julian Alps.  Back in 1982, they were in Communist Yugoslavia.  Now they are in Slovenia, the first country to escape, in 1991, from the Serbian Empire.

For that's what Yugoslavia had become after the death of Josip Broz "Tito" (1892-1980), who ran the place for the Soviets.  They kept their colony together until they found the right replacement in 1987:  Slobodan Milosevic.

Tito's father was Croatian and his mother Slovene.  He had no sympathy for Serbian hegemony over his country.  Milosevic was Serb, and he was determined to keep Yugoslavia together under Serbian imperial control.

He was not able to prevent Slovenia from slipping away in June, 1991 as the whole Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union itself was breaking apart.  There weren't many Serbs in Slovenia, but there were in a region of Croatia called Krajina.

So when Croatia tried to follow suit later that month, he got the Krajina Serbs to rebel, then sent in the "Yugoslav" (i.e., Serbian) Army to "protect" the rebels, precipitating a disastrously bloody war, and turning historical cities like Dubrovnik into rubble.

It took until 1995 for the Croatian Army to prevail, and now Croatia is free.

Milosevic used the same tactic, using Bosnian Serbs, when Bosnia tried for independence in October, 1991, culminating in the Sebrenica Massacre, where Serbian special forces known as Scorpions slaughtered over 8,100 Bosnian men and boys in July, 1995.

At the direction of Serb commander Ratko Mladic, 60 truckloads of Bosnia women and children were taken out of Sebrenica to execution sites where they were bound, blindfolded, shot with automatic rifles, and bulldozed into mass graves.

Ratko Mladic remains a free man in Serbia today, protected by the government in Belgrade. 

With the wars to retain Croatia and Bosnia distracting Milosevic, the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia was able to quietly elude his grasp, declaring independence in September 1991.  After Milosevic turned his attention to the south and began organizing Serb uprisings in 1993, Bill Clinton sent in U.S. troops to "stabilize" Macedonia and preserve its freedom.

(Even though it's an independent country, Macedonia drives the Greeks crazy, as it's next door to their province of Macedonia and fear the latter will secede and join their liberated brethren.  So they hysterically insist the place be known as FYROM:  the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.  Believe it or not, that's its official name.)

During all of this, there was the problem of an "autonomous region" of Serbia proper called Kosovo.  Over the years, it had become over 80% ethnic Albanian.  It tried to declare independence in 1990 which Milosevic was able to squelch.

The wars in Croatia and Bosnia had produced a lot of Serbian refugees, whom Milosevic settled in Kosovo, expelling a lot of Albanians from their homes and towns.  Thus the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) appeared, resulting in Serbian reprisal-atrocities.

This triggered the Kosovo War of 1999, during which Serbian forces tried to systematically wipe out Albanian culture and tradition from Kosovo.

Since the end of the war by NATO troops, Kosovo remains technically a part of Serbia but is governed  as a United Nations protectorate (UNMIK – the UN Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo), with security provided by a NATO operation known as KFOR – the Kosovo Force.

Up until last month, Serbia had been able to retain one last remnant of Yugoslavia: Montenegro.  Then on May 21, Montenegrins voted for independence.  Now Serbia is all alone, landlocked and shrunken.

And it may shrink further.  Here's a map of the now-independent regions of former Yugoslavia:

You have to give Montenegro and Kosovo a different color as they have also escaped from Serbia.  But notice there's another Serbian "autonomous region" called Vojvodina.

The reason it's autonomous is because of the very large numbers of ethnic Hungarians – notice it borders Hungary.  So the Serbs had better be on their best behavior now and maintain (enhance would be even better) Hungarian ethnic autonomy in Vojvodina.

Milosevic is gone now, found dead in his jail cell at the Hague International Tribunal last March.  There's nostalgia for him and empire among many Serbs, while many other Serbs want democracy and peace.  In March 2004, Serbs elected Vojislav Kostunica as prime minister of their shrunken country. 

He's no Milosevic, but he refuses to turn over Ratko Mladic to international authorities.  Like his countrymen, he's resentful and resigned over Serbia's fate.

It's a fate that the Persians of Iran would be well to heed.  They need to understand why There Is No Such Country As Yugoslavia.  For soon, as we discussed this week in There Is No Such Country As Iran, there will no longer be a Persian Empire of Iran, just a shrunken Persia like there is a shrunken Serbia.