Serbia Archive - Balkanalysis

Feb 20, 2008

Balkanalysis.com Announces New 2006 Archive Uploads

Balkanalysis.com would like to announce that nine months’ worth of archived articles, many previously unavailable on the website, have now been uploaded to our page at the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL.com).

The articles in question number more than 50, and cover the months March-December 2006. They will be of interest to researchers of contemporary Balkan history. They complete the current archive of Balkanalysis.com articles, covering the period 2001-2006. These articles specifically include articles on Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.

Over 220 instititutions from 21 countries currently offer access to articles in the Library. If you would like to access these articles, but your institution is not yet a member of the CEEOL.com program, please have your institution’s acquisitions or reference librarian contact CEEOL.com directly.

Sincerely,

Balkanalysis.com team

Feb 16, 2008

Kosovo: The View from Gracanica

By Nicky Gardner*

When the celebrated English travel writer Edith Durham arrived at the monastery at Gracanica one hundred years ago, she came to a place that had virtually no experience of the twentieth century. It is an episode that Durham recalls in her book High Albania. The incumbents, evidently horribly worried by Durham‘s unmarried condition, interrogated their visitor about the keystones of modernity: “they asked me of the great world beyond the Turkish frontiers; if it were true that there is a railway that goes underground and another on the roofs of houses; of electricity and motor cars.”

Gracanica is a Serbian enclave just a twenty-minute drive south of Prishtina. If, as seems now very likely, Kosovo’s imminent declaration of independence is recognized by some countries in the wider international community, then Prishtina will enjoy a new-found status as a capital city. A real achievement for a place that Edith Durham dismissed as “hopeless looking.”

In the great game of nation-building, there are inevitably winner and losers. With Albanian interests in the ascendant in Kosovo, after eight years of international administration of the province, the two dozen or so Serbian Orthodox nuns who live and work at Gracanica monastery are naturally apprehensive about the future. What place for them in a potentially independent Kosovo that will surely have no great affection for a Serbian minority? A small contingent of Swedish peace-keeping troops and a large supply of barbed wire protect the monastery and its grounds – which are home not just to the nuns but also to the local Serbian Orthodox bishop and his entourage.

The nuns pray, keep bees, paint icons and attend to the marvellous Byzantine frescos that adorn the interior of the beautiful five-domed monastic church. NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999 shook the building severely, but happily the church took no direct hits. It is a deeply religious place, but much more besides. There is something of the Serbian soul in this monastery, and any decent settlement for Kosovo’s future really should include some accommodation for Serbian shrines and holy places that lie within the territory of the would-be independent republic. Kosovo’s religious art, be it at Gracanica or elsewhere in Kosovo, is one of Serbia‘s prize cultural assets, and so surely not something that will be given up lightly.

Rebecca West was another early visitor to Gracanica, when she travelled through Yugoslavia in 1937. West quickly appreciated the monastery’s importance to the Serbian diaspora. “It was as if Chartres Cathedral should stand alone on land that has been shorn of all that was France,” she wrote in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

In the weeks ahead, as every spring, a great carpet of rich red peonies will slowly drape the meadows around Gracanica. For the nuns, as for many Serbs, the red meadows are potent reminders of Serbian blood spilt on the fields of Kosovo. Armies have fought before over Gracanica, and the Serbian embers in and around the monastery could so very easily be a flashpoint in the future. Gracanica is surely a place to watch in the weeks ahead.

* Nicky Gardner is editor of Hidden Europe Magazine, a unique publication that regularly reveals the lesser-known treasures of off-the-beaten-track places in Europe. The present article was originally published by Hidden Europe‘s newsletter on February 13, 2008.

Jan 11, 2008

Spells, Herbs and Surgery: Medical Care in a Provincial Balkan Town in the 19th Century (3)

By Dejan Ciric

In the third of a three-part series, Serbian historian Dejan Ciric narrates the developments that led, by the end of the 19^th century, to the creation of a relatively modern health care system in the small town of Pirot.

During the time of the Turkish reign, there were several doctors in the town of Greek, Turkish and Serbian origin. The most popular was George, a Greek who worked in the middle of the 19th century.[1] The most well known doctor during the second part of the 19th century was Hechim Tana Popkrstic. He was born in Pirot, where his father prepared him for the priesthood, a family tradition; however, Popkrstic learned the art of healing from the Turkish military doctor and opted for the medical profession.

Apart from widely disseminated folk remedies and the Pirot Lekarusa, citizens had the opportunity to get drugs from a professional pharmacist during the Turkish reign. Mihail Andjelokovic opened his pharmacy in 1867 after two years of study in Constantinople and France. Andjelkovic usually ordered drugs and various substances from Belgrade and collaborated with the Serbian Army doctors during the liberation in 1876-1878. In several letters to the government, he mentioned these facts while completing the procedure to obtain a pharmacist’s certificate, in order to influence the ministry to assist him more quickly. However, he apparently failed to fulfill all the requests, and so closed his shop.[2] Pirot’s new pharmacist was Franc Suricek, of Czech origin, who came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1880.[3]

The first academically educated doctors came to Pirot after the liberation in December1877. The first one, Yanko Sienkievicz, a man of Polish origin from Galicia, was the nephew of the significant Polish writer Henrich Sienkievicz. He became Pirot County doctor when he was 32 years old, on February 19, 1879. He graduated in medicine at the University of Vienna in 1875 and spoke Serbian, German, Polish and Russian. He participated as a military doctor in the liberation of south Serbia and showed loyalty to his new homeland[4]. With very modest equipment and staff, Sienkievicz did his job not only in the town, but in the very distant and hard-to-reach villages around it. During all of his short journeys in the region, the doctor famously rode a white horse, whereas physicians in England during the same period usually used different kinds of carriages as a symbol of their status.[5] Dr. Sienkievicz`s greatest achievement, however, was the founding of the County Hospital in 1881.[6] He married a Pirot citizen and stayed in the town until the end of his life in 1904.[7]

In 1883, along with Dr. Sienkievicz worked only one other doctor, a veterinarian and, sources claim, a not particularly skilled midwife.[8] The first veterinarian in Pirot was Radomir Arnautovic, a Serb from Fogaros in Transylvania, then under Austro-Hungarian rule. After secondary school in Kronstadt, he studied veterinary medicine at the University of Vienna and the University of Budapest. Soon after graduation, he joined the Serbian Army as a military doctor in 1876. With an official certification, he became the first Pirot County veterinarian when he was 28 years old in May 1881. Arnautovic spoke German, Romanian and Hungarian in addition to Serbian.[9] As an assistant to the doctors in the County Hospital came Dr. Abraham Mandelbaum, a Jew from Constantinople in 1881. Mandelbaum graduated medicine at Munich University and spoke Serbian, German, French and Russian.[10]

With official governmental permission, Dr. Jovan Valenta became the county doctor in October 1882. Czech by origin, he was born in Prague in 1826 where he graduated in philosophy and medicine. He earned a doctorate in surgery and an MA in the field of obstetrics. In the beginning, he was working in his native town, but he moved to Serbia in 1852 and worked in several small towns. He was a teacher at a Belgrade secondary school and one of the founders of the Serbian Medical Society in 1872.[11] Dr. Valneta first performed surgery in Pirot on November 1st 1883, and stayed in the town until his retirement in 1886.[12] Afterwards, he moved to Belgrade, where he died the following year.[13]

At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of medical staff in Pirot increased. Sinekievicz became a pensioner in 1903, but continued as a private doctor. Mladen Grujic succeeded him as Pirot’s new County Doctor. During the following years, there were several doctors of Serbian origin, as well as Dimitrje Kalijadis, a Greek and Samuel Poper, a Jew. During that period there were two pharmacies in the town managed by Uros Volic, a Serb, and Karlo Skacel from Poland. Aside from the staff in the County Hospital, three sick attendants and a clerk there were also two midwifes.[14]

From the available sources it is however hard to learn where hospitals were located in the town before the middle of the 19th century. The first rooms for healing purposes in that time were rented by the popular George the Greek on the second floor of the Ignjatovic`s family house, one of the prettiest and biggest houses in the town, built in 1854.[15] The other doctors probably worked from their own homes or at the patients’ house. During the liberation of 1877-1878, along with the former Turkish Military Hospital and schools, they used private houses because of the many injured solders[16]. During the short Serbian-Bulgarian war in 1885, according to the priest Djordje Ignjatovic, who was the supervisor and coordinator of all medical care, there were 12 hospitals in Pirot[17].

The town’s first pharmacy was situated on the left river bank next to Golemi Most (Big Bridge) and consisted of two rooms: a shop and a storage room, which lacked all the necessary equipment, keeping only one-third of the important drugs which the authorities had requested, and not maintaining the correct storage conditions for dangerous poisonous substances.[18] Unlike Andjelkovic, pharmacist Sirucek in the shop across the street had all the necessary drugs, many additional instruments and a well equipped laboratory with various materials, so governmental commission for medical care and drugs gave him a work permit.[19]

One of the biggest, most long-lasting problems for the local authorities at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was a new County Hospital building. The old hospital building built in Turkish times was in very bad condition, and so even basic requests were not fulfilled. The building was also quite small, at only 133 square meters, with two floors. On the ground floor there was an office, a patient room, a small lobby, two storage rooms and a toilet. On the second floor there were four very small rooms where it was possible to put only sixteen beds[20]. It was obvious that the town must build a new hospital because the old one was in such bad condition that every reconstruction would mean losing money. The commission consisted of the County Chairman, County Doctor, County Engineer and two Pirot Community officials who decided to build a new County Hospital.[21]

Systematic primary and secondary education after the liberation in 1877 resulted in the first positive results in the last decade of the 19th century. A new generation of children was brought up with an adequate knowledge to continue education at any foreign university with financial help provided by the state and sometimes also by the municipality. The first was Sima Petrovic. He was born in 1875, and studied medicine in Graz and Vienna. After the First World War, he was one of the members of the Serbian mission at the Versailles Peace Conference, where he served as a negotiator for veterans’ issues.[22] After Petrovic there were several young Pirot cituzens who studied medicine at Graz, Vienna, Kiev and Moscow during the first decade of the 20th century. One of them was Nadezda Stanojevic, born in 1886, the first girl from Pirot to study medicine; her brother Vladimir also studied medicine. Nadezda would become famous as an author of the first Serbian textbook on pediatrics.[23]

Closely interconnected with health improvements was an increasing awareness of hygiene. Perception of its importance gradually increased across all social classes through the 19th century, as its obvious positive effects on preventing infection and diseases became more widely known. Descriptions of the Pirot town and village houses from the first half and the end of the 19th century of the average inhabitant showed very bad hygienic conditions which were accepted as the usual way of life. The best information about this issue is found in the papers of the village teacher Vladimir Nikolic, who collected ethnographic facts amongst the oldest inhabitants and secondary school biology teacher, Lujo Adamic who was traveling and researching through the Stara Planina mountain range. He had interesting experiences with the local peasants and wrote short and useful accounts of his journey.

The majority of the houses in the mountain villages were built of simple materials (stone, wood, mud) with usually only one ore two dark rooms and a small window covered with paper. There was usually no ventilation, and all the family members would sleep in the same room. In the town it was different. The older and wealthier families there, however, usually had houses with several rooms and clean water for drinking, washing and bathing.[24]

Even in other regions in Serbia, the situation was not much better. For example, in the central region of Kragujevac, village children bathed only in the rivers, and only on feast days, while older people often did not bathe at all throughout the year. They slept in the same clothes, changing them only once a week. They worked hard in the fields all day and were in constant interaction with livestock. The consequences of such behaviors were infectious diseases, different kinds of fever, respiratory diseases, various digestive problems and syphilis.[25]

In Dr. Sienkievicz`s account for 1883, we learn that at that time there were no public baths, though in the previous period (until 1878) there had been several Turkish baths in Pirot. According to Dr. Sienkievicz, town people did not have the habit of swimming and washing in the river. During the recruiting procedure, he saw that many boys did not bathe for two or three years.[26] Public places such as restaurants, cafes and hostels were usually dirty and full of various insects, so the local administration provided measures of strict health control. There was prostitution in the town in the last decades of the 19th century, which was hard to control. In 1883 there was a special place for such girls in the same time at a coffee shop. However, there were women who worked as prostitutes in their own homes and constantly there was medical inspection.[27]

Since all of the peasants and many of the town inhabitants worked on the land and with cattle as an additional occupation, their health condition depended on the health of the cattle. In the period of the Turkish reign, there were veterinarians, but the blacksmiths also had to treat some of the livestock’s medical problems.[28]

In order to comprehend the place of Pirot as a small community in Europe and better understand health conditions before and after the liberation, it would be useful to make a comparison with other small towns or regions. While precise and constant accounts about the health situation exist for Pirot only after 1878, in small communities in Sweden such as Linkoping, such records were a standard after 1749. In Denmark after 1829 such regular records are found.[29] At the beginning, accounts were written by local priests; after 1860 it was a task for the local doctors. Yet even in Sweden, there were similar problems as in the Balkans.[30]

Undoubtedly, the most interesting and complete medical account is Dr. Sienkievicz`s, from 1883. This very important document is not only a report about the health situation in the county, but proof of endeavors and new initiatives in medical care. In the main part of the account, after long and precise narrative descriptions followed by many analyses and suggestions, it concludes with 43 causes of death written in Latin and arranged by months. After that, there are facts about mortality arranged by sex and age. Dr. Sienkievicz wrote about food, hygienic conditions in the schools, prisons and coffee shops and analyzed the situation particularly concerning smallpox, prostitution and livestock.[31]

Linkoping in Sweden was a mid-sized provincial town in the 19th century, similar to Pirot in Serbia. Linkoping had 2,680 inhabitants in 1800, but by the beginning of the 20th century around 15,000 citizens[32]. However, despite the fact that the Swedish began to care for the official statistics about the health situation decades before the Serbs in Pirot, medical problems were almost the same in both towns. Infectious diseases, particularly respiratory diseases (17 percent of mortal cases), were most dangerous for both Swedish and Serbian provincial towns. The most dangerous disease for children in Linkoping was smallpox, the cause of death in 5 percent of cases, but vaccination began as early as 1802.[33] It is interesting to note that at that time directions for smallpox healing were being made in Pirot’s Lekarusa.[34] Inherited syphilis was a significant problem for Linkoping in the 1850s, as well as for Pirot in the 1880s.[35] Pirot citizens suffered from diphtheria and scarlet fever, almost as much as Linkoping‘s inhabitants during the second part of the 19th century, when the town lost many people to the disease. At the time this was common, even for metropolises like London.[36]

Indeed, big European towns often had similar problems to Pirot. In Lyon in France, waste waters were directed into the Rhone.[37] Pirot’s citizens did the same in their town, with the River Nisava. In Marseilles in 1886, out of 32,653 recorded houses, more than 14,000 had no capacity for disposal of waste; these people would thus throw away their trash in the gutters, directly onto the streets. If we take into consideration the size of Marseilles, and its location in a highly developed country like France, the shortage of bathrooms in many houses in small and provincial Pirot is not something out of the ordinary. In Dr. Sienkievicz`s account and in the papers of the teacher Vladimir Nikolic, we learn that only a small number of Turkish, Jewish and wealthy Serbian homes had bathrooms. At the time, even Paris had not been rid of infectious disease on a large scale- something that was an everyday fact for Balkan provincial towns like Pirot. For example, because of unhygienic houses in Paris, 33.9 percent of citizens lived in impoverished conditions; some 19.3 percent of inhabitants in the rest of the city died of cholera in 1832. After this epidemic, typhus came in two big waves in 1873 and 1882. Two years later, cholera was again the main cause of death in Paris.[38]

Further, even in highly developed France the practice of pseudo-medicine was widespread due to longstanding tradition, inherited customs, the existence of various spell-casters and the prevalence of uneducated priests. Of course, such conditions characterized the healing science in 19^th-century Serbia, a small Balkan country which was somewhere between an Oriental province under the dominant Turkish influence and a majority Orthodox Christian society prepared to accept every kind of Western European values.[39] One of these values was modern medical care.

Considering its relative disadvantages, these examples and comparisons with other towns and cities in Europe reflect rather well on little Pirot. In little over a hundred years, Pirot went from being a town living in almost constant fear of various diseases, a place with no organized medical care, to a community which, while still provincial, could boast a county hospital and educated doctors capable of working in any town in Europe.

[5] I. Loudon, Doctors and Their Transport, 1750-1914, Medical History 45 (2001) pp. 185-206.

[7] Ibid, pp. 221-227.

[10] Ibid, pp. 670-671.

[11] http://www.sld.org.yu/sr/istorijat.asp

[12] http://www.zcpirot.co.yu/hirurgija.htm

[20] Ibid, p. 252.

[21] Ibid, pp. 252-254.

[27] Ibid, pp. 15-16.

[28] Ibid, pp. 166, 168.

[29] A. Lokke, Infant Mortality in Nineteenth Century Denmark, Hygeia Internationalis. An Interdisciplinary Journal for the History of Public Health, 3 (2002) p. 144.

[30] M. Bengsston, The Interpretation of Cause of Death Among Infants, Hygeia Internationalis. An Interdisciplinary Journal for the History of Public Health, 3 (2002) pp. 54-55.

[32] M. Bengsston, The Interpretation of Cause of Death Among Infants, Hygeia Internationalis. An Interdisciplinary Journal for the History of Public Health, 3 (2002) p. 62.

[33] Ibid, pp. 64-65.

[34] Pirot Lekarusa, p. 13b.

[35] M. Bengsston, The Interpretation of Cause of Death Among Infants, Hygeia Internationalis. An Interdisciplinary Journal for the History of Public Health, 3 (2002) p. 69; ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¼ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆˆšÃ«Â¬Ã„ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¦ˆšÃ«Â¬Ã‡ ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆ ˆšÃ«?ˆšÃ«Â¬Ã„ˆšÃªÂ¬ÂµˆšÃªÂ¬ˆ‘ ˆšÃª?ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆˆšÃ«Â¬Ã ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆžˆšÃªÂ¬‰¤ˆšÃ«?ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆ«ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆ 1883-1893. ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¬ˆšÃ«Â¬Ã„ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆžˆšÃ«Â¬ÃˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž II, ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¼ˆšÃ«Â¬Ã„ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆˆšÃ«Â¬Ã„ˆšÃªÂ¬ÂµˆšÃªÂ¬Â¥ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¦ ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã². ˆšÃª?ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆˆšÃªÂ¬ˆ«ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¦ˆšÃªÂ¬ÂªˆšÃªÂ¬ˆˆšÃ«Â¬Ãµ, ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¼ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆˆšÃ«Â¬Ã„ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¦ˆšÃ«Â¬Ã‡, 1982, p. 10.

[36] Ibid, p. 71; A. Tanner, Scarlatina and Sewer Smells: Metropolitan Public Health Records (1850-1920) Hygeia Internationalis. An Interdisciplinary Journal for the History of Public Health, 1 (1999) 37-47.

[38] Ibid, pp. 289-290.

Jan 10, 2008

Spells, Herbs and Surgery: Medical Care in a Provincial Balkan Town in the 19th Century (2)

By Dejan Ciric

In the second of a three-part series, Serbian historian Dejan Ciric details those fun diseases — up to and including the plague — that periodically devastated the Balkans in the 19^th century.

Owing to its specific geographic location in the center of the Balkans, midway on the road between the two significant cities of Nis and Sofia, Pirot very often fell victim to infectious diseases. Many armies which penetrated from the Orient into the heart of Europe and vice versa brought various illnesses. Many merchants, who brought different goods from the Levant to the Danube region, carried in their bags smallpox, plague and other infectious diseases over the centuries. Less grand events brought diplomats, messengers and adventurers. In the period 1700-1850 in many Balkan regions, there were 126 years of plague- a significant fact illustrating the constant threat to the local population. Many of these infections were contained within small regions and villages, but several took on the appearance of mass destruction.[i]

Information about the first plague epidemic in Pirot during the 19th century is found in the Russian book Apostle, kept at the church in the village of Strelac. In this short note, we learn that disease came to the town in 1815, resulting in almost 8,000 deaths. Infections started from the direction of Sofia, and in 1813 spread to Pirot.[ii]

The second plague infection in Pirot started in 1838. It emerged first in 1834 in Alexandria, and with the help of sailors spread to Constantinople. The next year the disease passed into the towns of Thessalonica, Kavala and Drama in modern-day Greece. Carried by people who traveled very often, the illness spread from the north to the Danube and in the direction to the west, through Pirot to Nis.[iii]

Such events naturally caused the government of the Serbian Principality to take strong protective measures. Prince Milos decided to make stronger efforts at several border passes in December 1836, enforcing a quarantine that lasted ten days. At the same time, some Bulgarian merchants from Sofia brought news about plague in the region between Plovdiv (Philippopolis) and their town[iv].

However, the Turkish governor in Sofia who tried to take preventive measures did not succeed, and so the disease spread to Pirot in March 1837. In the beginning, there were only several isolated victims. Some of the citizens were saying that vampires killed the people, but shortly after, they would see the real deadly effects of the plague.[v] Widespread infection provoked great confusion and fear, so many town inhabitants moved to villages in order to survive. But disease spread to the villages. The consequences of this can be seen at the village graveyards of Trnjani and Krupac, which contain tombstones with five ore six names.[vi] One of those who was looking for safety in the Serbian Principality was the son of famous Pirot citizen Kostadin Filipovic. Many people were stopped at the border and turned back. Only a small number of merchants, solders, messengers and state officials were allowed to pass into Serbia during the quarantine.[vii]

During the summer, the disease spread to fifteen villages in the Pirot region. In the town itself, more than fifty people were dying every day. Very soon, the infection appeared in the small town of Bela Palanka, around twenty five kilometers to the west.[viii] Over three months, around 15 percent of the population was dead, something due, in the first place, to the low level of medical knowledge.[ix] Those with poor hygiene and their homes were the main reason for the very fast spread of the disease and large amount of victims. At the time, the local population had a custom of exchanging their clothes and footwear, and the activities of merchants, usually Jewish, who traded clothes made of wool and leather, created the conditions for the spread of infectious disease. Additionally, the Turkish population had its own attitude toward fatal diseases: they were taught that deadly illnesses represented destiny sent by Allah, and one of the 366 doors to Heaven, though there were many Muslims who sensibly tried to escape and save themselves while still on earth.[x]

Apart from the great state of fear and confusion, people were trying to protect themselves by keeping families in their homes, burning the clothes of the dead and their bodies, abandoning old houses and even moving entire villages. Many communities were looking for safety in the churches and from priests.[xi] The appearance of tuberculosis in Pirot was not an exception; it could be said that people were living with the disease every day, and suffered from it over their entire lives and through several family generations.

Not long after the liberation of Pirot in December 1877, the government started to realize a very difficult task to introduce some urgent measures in the field of medical care. At that time appeared the first county and municipal doctors, who noted the most important facts about diseases and mortal cases. According to an account of 1883, 25 percent of mortal cases occurred because of tuberculosis- double that of typhus victims, or five time that of fatalities due to diphtheria. This is one of the proofs of the very low level of hygiene in the local population of the time.[xii] According to an account of 1903, however, the situation was much better, because there were only 13 people ill of tuberculosis, and only one dead, though we can be sure there were more cases than noted.[xiii]

Stories about many sufferers could be important and useful for understanding the health circumstances in Pirot at the time. A teacher of Serbian language and literature in the Pirot Secondary school, Sima Popovic, presents a special case. He was working in Skopje and Prizren in Kosovo, at that time in the Ottoman Empire. Because of problems with the authorities, Popovic ended up in prison, where he got tuberculosis. In July 1900 he asked for and received permission to be absent from his job in order to heal (though he had not been working for two semesters in the previous year for the same reason). The next year too Sima Popovic was looking for a leave of absence from the Ministry of Education for health reasons.[xiv] There were accounts of several other teachers who were ill and out of their job for a time.[xv] In addition to this, because of the very bad living conditions of the children who lived in the school building in the village of Sopot, sixteen of them got tuberculosis in 1882. The Ministry of Education was informed about this and the school was closed for a short time. The county doctor suggested the same measures concerning sick schoolchildren in another two villages.[xvi]

Terrible hygienic conditions and very bad food lead to weak and sensitive bodies, vulnerable to various diseases. According to Dr. Sienkievicz`s medical account, it is possible to ascertain a general picture of the health situation in Pirot. During 1883, 25 percent of fatalities were caused by the infectious diseases of typhus, scarlet fever, diphtheria and dysentery. Various kinds of fevers were involved in 32 percent of all mortal cases. It is interesting that Dr. Sienkievicz noticed marasmus as a cause of death in 4.5 percent of cases. Most fascinating to note is that more than 50 percent of all mortal cases involved children of less than one year of age.[xvii]

In order to better comprehend these facts, we should compare them with those in developed countries. Fore example, in the USA, the mortality rate in children up to five years of age was 20 percent at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The main cause of death there were infectious diseases (mainly diphtheria and smallpox), just as in Pirot.[xviii]

As a more effective measure against smallpox, healing doctors recommended vaccination; a priest, Dimitrije Cvetkovic, ordered in January 1881 that all clergymen must teach the local population about the significance and positive effects of vaccination. This order was enforced at all churches in the region.[xix] Smallpox healing was well known in the Pirot area decades before, but it had not been carried out systematically. The evidence of this can be found in the Pirot Lekarusa.[xx] Over the years, this measure showed positive results and became an obligation, so that by 1903 some 3,119 children in the county were vaccinated.[xxi] Similar measures were undertaken by many European states during the 19th century, so that by the beginning of the next it became almost a kind of national prestige.[xxii]

However, even this general improvement in living standards and conditions and better medical treatment could not help during the Balkan Wars in 1912-13. The difficult war situation caused a typhus epidemic in 1913, despite the fact that the local authorities introduced measures and the bishop of Nis resorted to prayers and extraordinary sermons.[xxiii] Pirot also had major problems in the fight against syphilis because the citizens of the town and local villages were so highly infected by the end of the 19^th century that doctors thought the disease to be an epidemic. Many of them were sure that the infection had come to town with the many seasonal workers returning from Wallachia (Romania), Bulgaria and Constantinople. Dr. Sienkievicz did not prove this with evidence, but did suggest, as a precautionary measure, establishing several quarantine areas at the border passes and providing fast transportation of infected persons to Pirot Hospital. This measure were justified by the facts that annually 8,000-10,000 men in the region from the ages of 12 to 40 went away for seasonal work, and many girls from the ages of 17 to 20 were appearing at the town hospital with high levels of syphilis. Twenty years later, in 1903, Pirot County Doctor Grujic in his annual account wrote that the local authorities were giving special funds for the fight against venereal diseases.[xxiv]

[ii] Ibid, p. 75.

[iii] Ibid, pp. 33-34.

[v] ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã²ˆšÃ«?ˆšÃ«Â¬Ã‡ˆšÃªÂ¬Ã¦, 77-79.

[viii] Ibid, p. 90.

[ix] Ibid, p. 9.

[x] Ibid, pp. 180-81.

[xi] Ibid, pp. 187-190.

[xiv] Ibid, pp. 326-27, 362.

[xvii] Ibid, pp. 8-10.

[xviii] A. Minna Stern and H. Markel, The History of Vaccines and Immunization: Familiar Patterns, New Challenges, Health Affairs, 24 (2005) p. 611.

[xx] Pirot Lekarusa, sheet 13b.

[xxii] A. M. Stern and H. Markel, p. 614; P. Domingo, The Triumph over the most Terrible of the Ministers of Death, Anales of Internal Medicine, 127 (1997) pp. 635-642; P.Skold, The Key to Success: The Role of Local Government in the Organization of Smallpox Vaccination in Sweden, Medical History 45 (2000), pp. 201-226.

[xxiii] Ibid, pp. 1036-37, 1039-40, 1042.

Jan 9, 2008

Spells, Herbs and Surgery: Medical Care in a Provincial Balkan Town in the 19th Century (1)

By Dejan Ciric

In the first of a three-part series, Serbian historian Dejan Ciric digs through the unknown archives of Pirot to shed light on medical practices in the Pirot of yesteryear.

Our attitude towards our own body, and that of the other, has through the centuries reflected cultural heritage and social norms. It is the result of long lasting behavior and the fruit of climatic and geographical circumstances, but at the same time, and almost to an equal measure, it has been the consequence of the economic situation and opportunity for the successful use of cultural influences and the surrounding nature. The town of Pirot in southeastern Serbia, along with several other small towns in the region and many villages, were under the constant influence of their geographical location on one of the main transport routes in Southeastern Europe. This influence not only affected material culture; it also have very deep roots in the mental structure of the local population and therefore in the attitude to the physical side of their existence.

The period 1800-1914 in the region along the Nisava River (Central Balkans) is interesting for research in itself, due to the many changes in politics, economy and of course in the everyday life of the local population. Even during a first reading of the official governmental documents, memoirs, journey accounts, journals and newspapers and brief notes in the margins of old manuscripts and printed books, we can see the slow changes of cultural standards which were passed from Oriental to Central and Western European models throughout the last decades of the 19th century.

As in other Balkan regions before the national revival at the beginning of the 19th century, folk medicine in Pirot County was predominant. What is more, some elements were significant even during the first decades in the 20th century. The art of healing was usually transferred by the oral tradition and very often was found on the edge between spells and old herbal therapy. However, there was also written medical knowledge in use. The oldest medical manuscript in Pirot County is The Pirot Lekarusa (Pirot Healing Manual) created at the end of the 18th century.[i]

This small manuscript (17×10 cm) is one of the most important in the Pirot Museum‘s collection. This book is an interesting source of medical knowledge in the region and at the same time for local dialect research. The manuscript has been protected in a cover of brown leather and soft cardboard. It consists of 64 paginated sheets, almost half of them damaged on the bottom. The book has two parts: the first was written at the end of the 18th century, the second at the beginning of the 19th century. Originally, the Pirot Lekarusa was the property of Hadzi Pavle, a Greek who moved from Constantinople to Pirot. The first part of this short medical manual content has directions for drug-making in the Serbian tradition, but in the second part, there are Turkish folk medicine instructions as well.[ii]

Even during initial readings, it becomes clear that the authors of the Lekarusa did not have wide-ranging medical knowledge. What is more, their terminology is very unclear and changeable in accordance with time, place and cultural circumstances. Terms for diseases and drugs are very often folk names and descriptive phrases using many Greek and Turkish words.

In the text, recipes for cures are not systematically arranged in the frame of certain groups, so no system or order can be established throughout the manuscript. Drug recipes for the same or similar diseases are situated sometimes in two or three places in the Manual and often by using very different substances and diverse procedures. We cannot find the terms “drug’ or “healing’ because the authors always use several Turkish words or some descriptive phrases.[iii] It is very hard to be completely sure of the meaning of descriptive phrases such as “when the heart is aching,’ “when the navel are running,’ “for thundering ears,’ “for a child when his ball is falling,’ “when the breasts are hurting,’ “when the head is puffing up’ and “when the heart is puffing up.’

These phrases became the accepted ways to describe certain medical problems which were not called by a specific title because the medical knowledge was very simple and limited at that time. For instance, we find different recipes for drugs prescribed for eye pain at the beginning and at the end of the Manual, while for headache there are two identical recipes. For throat pain the Manual suggests something that is to us a very strange healing procedure: catch a frog, cut it along the body, add some yellow sugar and ammoniac-chloride and put it on the throat for 24 hours. Against toothache, the manuscript suggests burned deer horn powder and burned onion seeds.[iv] Amongst many interesting recipes, there are simple ones against back pain[v], against breast pain[vi] and earache[vii]. Recipes for drugs against high temperature are situated on three pages and the most interesting, suggests applying a compress on the feet, made of yogurt, rakija (Serbian brandy) and garlic[viii].

There are special remedies for eye and mouth infections and bleeding of the gums.[ix] In the Pirot Lekarusa, there are also uses given for rose jam- even nowadays a well known drug and a sweet for mouth pain in the Pirot region.[x] A wide range of infection diseases constantly threatened the local population, and there are directions for making two drugs against syphilis.[xi] Pirot’s folk doctors in the 19th century used drugs for yellow fever, rabies and smallpox,[xii] scarlet fever, deafness, crusts, suffocation, vomiting, diarrhea and nocturnal urination[xiii].

In the Manual there are recipes for plenty of drugs, emulsions, herbal teas and directions for healing; the manual even prescribes remedies against hair loss. One of them says that first the head should be washed well and then be smeared with smashed blackberry leaves.[xiv] There are also several recipes for burns, frostbites and a remedy for every kind of injury.[xv]

The use of folk medicine in the Pirot region was, however, much wider than what can be gleaned from the Lekarusa`s pages. Further evidence can be found in ethnographic sources or in other written documents, though they are rare and tend to be very short. For example, in the Psalm Book of a village teacher, Mane Pesic, there is a handwritten note giving brief directions about healing epilepsy.[xvi] Aside from the so-called hechim (Turkish word for doctor) who were recognized as skillful in medical problems in the town, in surrounding villages there are many various healers, magicians and spellmakers. Local people often visited monasteries, churches, various cult locations such as water sources, trees, cliffs and cemeteries. According to a widely disseminated public belief, there was a water source in a certain cave near the town of Trn (now in western Bulgaria) capable of healing eye illnesses, snake poison and madness. Amongst people who were looking for health in that water were many Pirot inhabitants.[xvii]

Fake medicine was not an extraordinary phenomenon in Pirot and particularly for surrounding villages even during the first decades of the 20th century, so the fact that a certain local woman, a religious pilgrim, was well known in the town for healing powers during the 1880s is easily accepted. According to her story, she had visited Jerusalem and brought back miraculous icons, parts of saint’s bodies and diverse amulets and miraculous water from a spring in the Holy Land. In her house, she built a sort of chapel and healed many people. All of her healing usually consisted of a little powder from the alleged body of the saint, prayers, spells and a recommendation of abstinence. Records show that this woman was punished several times during the 1870s, but because of this “persecution’ she became even more respected amongst uneducated people. All of her substances and equipment were sent to Belgrade by a local doctor, Yan Sienkiewicz, as evidence of the low level of medical culture in 1883 in Pirot.[xviii]

At that time, there was also a barber who wrote on his workshop window that part of his main craft was surgery. He also performed this job in the nearby villages. The barber tried to cure scrofulous to a 20-year-old boy, but it instead caused an infection and required three months of difficult recovery. Despite the chronic wariness of the local Orthodox Christian population towards the Muslim inhabitants, Pirot citizens in the 19^th century very often turned for help to a certain local Muslim priest, called “Sheriff.’ According to contemporary accounts, he protected children from spells and heart attacks and pulled out teeth with his hands. This man was so popular that people visited him more frequently than an educated doctor.[xix]

[i] Regarding Serbian medicine from the early Middle Ages to the modern period see R.V.Katic, Srpska medicina od 9. do 19. veka, Beograd, 1967.

[ii] Dejan Ciric, LekaruˆšÃ–Â¬Â°a, Gate of the East, Gate of the West (CD) (Also: http://www.pirot.pi.co.yu/istkul.htm)

[iii] Pirot Lekarusa, sheet 11b.

[iv] Ibid, sheet 8ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž.

[v] Ibid, sheet 9b.

[vi] Ibid, sheet 9ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž.

[vii] Ibid, sheet 22b.

[viii] Ibid, sheet 23b.

[ix] Ibid, sheet 15b.

[x] Ibid, sheet 31b.

[xi] Ibid, sheet 3b, 9b.

[xii] Ibid, sheet 12b, 15ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž, 26ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž, 43ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž.

[xiii] Ibid, sheet 4b, 6b, 7ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž, 17ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž, 22b, 47b.

[xiv] Ibid, sheet 47b.

[xv] Ibid, sheet 6b, 17ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž, 24ˆšÃªÂ¬ˆž.

[xvii] B. Lilic, The Chosen Works, Pirot, 1998, p. 179.

[xix] Ibid, p. 18.

Dec 30, 2007

2007 Balkan Year in Review: Key Underreported Trends for the Future

The year 2007 was an eventful one in the Balkans, though several major trends remained underreported or were simply ignored. The Western media utilized most of its limited capacity to the political dimensions of the future status of Kosovo, choosing to tell and retell a tired story of good vs. bad (i.e., the West vs. Russia and Serbia), barely scratching the surface of what is if not necessarily the most important, at least the most hyped issue in the region.

Kosovo is however intimately tied to specific events and factors that, on the larger level, indicate an emerging strategic balance of power in the region, one that may not quite be what had been planned by the West, and thus which will likely leave a complicit media scrambling to find explanations for years to come. In this special retrospective report, Balkanalysis.com discusses a few of the major trends that have been identified in 2007 and which will likely help shape the Balkans in 2008.

The first major event has to be the growing power of Russia in the region and the future way in which this power, even if lessened, will be exerted. Less than a decade ago, the chief successor state to the USSR was grasping for economic stability and political respect on the global stage, with the nadir being reached in March 1999, when it proved powerless to stop NATO’s air war on Yugoslavia over Kosovo. This national humiliation was aggravated when the West failed to grant Russia equal partner status in keeping the peace in post-war Kosovo. Russia could only watch helplessly as half of Kosovo’s Serbian Orthodox population was driven out of the province by Albanian ethnic cleansers, with tacit Western approval.

From the ashes of this defeat arose Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB officer determined to not let the national interest be trampled on again. In fact, Putin’s opportunity was created by the West in its reckless game in 1999. Until the question of changing Kosovo’s political status arose, Russia had not had a point of strategic leverage in the Balkans. For Putin, simply fomenting stubborn diplomatic opposition while an increasingly frantic West tries to appease the independence-minded Albanians has proven a very cost-effective and powerful strategy to contest Western ambitions and reassert his country’s role as a major power.

Nevertheless, the Western media has more often than not chosen to simply condemn these tactics rather than provide objective analysis, thus betraying their own sympathies with Western governments. Although there is little to be learned from boring invective, it would prove embarrassing to the powers that bombed Kosovo in 1999 for journalists to ask whether the intervention itself provided an opportunity for Russia to expand its sphere of influence, and precisely an opportunity that had simply not existed before. True, the US got its enormous military base in the heart of the Balkans with Camp Bondsteel €šÃ„Ã¬ now more than a liability than anything else €šÃ„Ã¬ but Russia has made major inroads on Balkan energy acquisitions, as well as buying considerable valuable seaside real estate in Montenegro, that former partner republic with Serbia whose independence, myopic and partisan Western diplomats still today maintain, is yet another well deserved punishment for the Serbs.

Reporting on the changing Russian role in the Balkans becomes even scantier in terms of its relation to the year’s second key trend, and perhaps the most astonishing- the diplomatic triumphs of Greece. A member of both the EU and NATO, Greece is a thoroughly Western country which has however sought to maintain its diverse relationships in nurturing national interests- in the process perhaps becoming guilty of wanting to have its cake and eat it too. While Greece’s major new alliance, with Russia, is more a harmonious convergence of certain interests than a deliberate planned partnership, it has been amply displayed and was singled out in a €šÃ„Ã²power audit€šÃ„Ã´ by the new interventionist think-tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, some of whose members are famous for their roles in the Kosovo war and peace.

Greece‘s convergence of interests with Russia owes primarily to two things; wariness over national security, vis-ˆš€ -vis perennial enemy Turkey, and its ambition to be a regional player in the energy sector. As with the Russian bear’s awakening over Kosovo, Greece determined these interests in the late 1990′s, in response to Turkey’s enhanced position globally. The first Greek concerns were registered with the Clinton administration’s determination to use the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan for the terminus of a new oil pipeline (the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, or BTC pipeline) that would bring Caspian oil to the West and bypass Russia in the process. Under such a scenario, it was only natural that both affronted parties would reach out to one another in the energy sector, as has been the case with both LUKoil’s acquisitions in Hellenic Petroleum and in the major efforts to hammer out a deal on the anticipated Burgas-Alexandroupoli Pipeline bringing Russian oil to the Aegean via Bulgaria.

Greece‘s second point of panic, though a far less reported one, came with the deepening alliance in the late 1990′s between Turkey and Israel. This first of all involved the transfer of lobbying know-how from the latter to the former in Washington, and soon developed into full-fledged intelligence cooperation, with one jarring result being the Turkish MIT’s kidnapping of Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, supposedly under Greek protection, in Nairobi. The Israelis had participated in gathering intelligence. It was a major embarrassment for Athens and a wild success for the Turkish government, by which it effectively ended the Kurdish insurrection, at least for a few years. Israeli-Turkish cooperation would strengthen and, with the victory of George W. Bush in 2000, catapult the neoconservatives, closely affiliated to both Israeli and Turkish lobby groups, into power in Washington.

Greece, like Russia a historic ally of Serbia, had also been less than thrilled about the NATO intervention of 1999, and chose not to participate in NATO air strikes; pivotally, however, it also chose not to veto the operation as Serbia had hoped. Alienated and insulted on all sides, Greece began to develop a parallel security infrastructure to that of NATO, turning to Russian expertise, most significantly in the advanced S-300 and TOR M-1 mobile anti-aircraft system which by virtue of its provenance was not supposed to be acquired by a NATO member. Intense interest in Greece’s air defense capacities from the Turks led, in May 2006, to a brief skirmish between Turkish and Greek fighter jets near the island of Karpathos, leading to the accidental death of a Greek pilot.

Aside from the defense sector, Greece’s budding partnership with Russia has also comprised energy diplomacy- the factor that will raise Greece’s political and economic stature as a transit corridor for oil, at a time of fierce competition between European countries desiring such a role. The expected Burgas-Alexandroupoli pipeline, in which Russia’s stake will be larger than either of the two countries through which the pipeline will actually go, is also seen by Athens as a defensive precaution against Turkey: it will hug the militarized eastern border in Evros, a tangible investment deterring any Turkish invasion. This factor was dramatically enhanced with the Greek Cypriot government’s decision, against Turkish protests, to drill for oil off of the island’s coast. Should multinational oil companies be active in Cypriot oil projects, the logic goes, Turkey will have to take a less bellicose stance towards Nicosia and, by extension, Athens.

The larger implications of Greece’s diplomatic success in 2004 in lobbying for Cyprus€šÃ„Ã´ unconditional entry into the EU €šÃ„Ã¬ that is, with its membership not being contingent on the passage of the €šÃ„Ã²Annan Plan€šÃ„Ã´ for unification €šÃ„Ã¬ have indeed registered this year, with the EU’s second Greek state ready to uphold Athens€šÃ„Ã´ policies within the bloc, particularly on the Kosovo issue, thus relieving Greece of having to take the strongest stance possible against Kosovo independence. So long as Cyprus can be counted on to conduct an identical policy, Greece can desist and so appear more €šÃ„Ã²accommodating€šÃ„Ã´ to Western interests- something that also buys it more political capital to expend on issues which are (erroneously, perhaps) equated with the national interest, such as trying to force the Republic of Macedonia to change its constitutional name. Despite increasing world sympathy for the Macedonian side, Greece has continued to prevent major EU powers from recognizing the country’s name, allegedly due to economic threats. At the same time, Greece is happy to let Turkey remain bogged down on its eastern front, embroiled in a war against Kurdish guerrillas that has now unwisely led it into northern Iraq.

That said, the major point of inquiry for journalists in 2008 has got to be the question of finding the source of Greek power. A NATO member that uses Russian military technology, opposes Kosovo independence, and that has threatened to torpedo NATO plans by vetoing Macedonian accession in April, Greece nevertheless continues to have its way with the West. Despite all of these apparent red flags, there has never been a detailed media investigation into precisely how Greece wields its economic and diplomatic clout to extract results that diverge wildly from those of its allies.

This brings us to the third major issue in the Balkans this year, though before considering it we must acknowledge that for the Greeks, success may be coming at a price: the massive summer fires, which blazed along fronts of up to 70km in width and which reached urban Athens, while decimating large stretches of the Peloponnese, can be considered the greatest threat to national security, and we expect that they will be happen again this coming summer.

While some fires occurred due to natural causes amidst parched, hot natural conditions, the majority occurred due to human involvement. Everyone from arsonists to property developers to Kosovo Albanians have been blamed, all with different alleged motives. While the last of these propositions has been derided as conspiracy-theorizing, it is clear that for irredentists with no chance of undertaking military action against much stronger state forces, the only other possibility for pressuring Greek policy is by causing widespread material destruction through fires or other terrorist acts. However, the Western press by and large chose not to look at the situation from this strategic aspect.

The third major underreported issue of the year in the Balkans has been the intrinsic connections and future possibilities of the major international bodies€šÃ„Ã´ self-created problems in the region. The issue of Kosovo, Western governments have continuously maintained, is one that cannot be considered a precedent for any other of the numerous self-determination struggles across the globe- even as the representatives of these independence movements continue to remind that no, in fact Kosovo is being perceived as a precedent for them.

The possibility that Kosovo could be partitioned, anathema to the West as potentially having the capacity to set off a chain reaction in the Balkans, has ironically been given precedent due to the admission of a divided Cyprus into the EU in 2004. In that case, both the UN and EU were unable, or unwilling, to force Greek and Turkish Cypriots to settle their differences and enter as one nation, thus exacerbating the existing political animosities between Greece and Turkey. Whatever the reason for Cyprus entering the EU divided may have been, it is clear now that the whole thing has proven an embarrassment for the credibility of the supranational world bodies.

Since the UN could not force the non-warring Greeks and Turks of Cyprus to come together in 2004, it should be no surprise that the UN is now saying it can€šÃ„Ã´t do anything more to solve the Kosovo conundrum, and will hand it off to the EU to figure out. This is another blow to the credibility of the alleged global peacekeeper, and will be perceived by potential secessionists around the world as evidence that the UN has no ability to curtail their future ambitions.

For its part, the EU has enough of a headache dealing with embarrassments more recent than the Cyprus fiasco. The two countries that made headlines on Jan 1 by joining the bloc, Bulgaria and Romania, did so on condition of implementing further reforms in the future. European diplomats state that by the end of 2006, the whole train of EU enlargement had built up such momentum that it could not be stopped; and, had everything gone according to plan with the Romanians and Bulgarians, the EU might be more confident now of its future enlargement. However, the complacency that has been shown by the new members €šÃ„Ã¬ disinterested in finishing reforms, safe in knowing that they are finally in the club €šÃ„Ã¬ is making Brussels much more circumspect about further Balkan enlargement. While the value of Croatia’s tourism industry and its relatively homogenous Christian society could indeed keep it on track for membership, Macedonia, Bosnia, Albania and Serbia could find themselves out in the cold, stymied both by the cancerous presence of Kosovo in the middle and the recent legacy of less-than-honest candidate countries.

For 2008 at least, therefore, events in the Balkans should continue to outstrip the control of supranational institutions, and perhaps at an accelerated pace. While this is not necessarily a recipe for war, it does mean that the demonstrated trends in the region towards the bold and unpredictable unilateralism of the pre-WWII alliance systems will intensify. To paraphrase the friendly Chinese curse, we are indeed living in interesting times.

Finally, another emerging trend in the Balkans to watch during 2008 will be the activities of Islamic extremist groups in the region. Although their activities in 2007 were reported mostly in the local medias, the international press took interest as well when Serbian police in March broke up a Wahhabi training camp in the mountains of Novi Pazar, in the southwest Sandzak region; recently, from the other side of the border, Montenegro’s intelligence chief attested that the fundamentalists inhabited camps in Montenegrin Sandzak, while also masquerading their activities in NGOs and youth groups. Also in 2007 Macedonian special police carried out an action against an Albanian irredentist group near the Kosovo border, killing at least one known Islamic extremist in the process. And failed jihadi plots against the US Embassy in Vienna and Ft. Dix in New Jersey both had clear connections with the Balkans. These are only a few of the stories that emerged this year, indicating activity that we believe will increase in the year ahead. The fact that certain Western countries and Israel are starting to take a closer look at the phenomenon of Islamic extremism in the Balkans provides further indications that it remains one of the major, if more underreported, issues affecting regional security.

Dec 21, 2007

The Language Game of Kosovo Diplomacy

By Nikolas Rajkovic*

Three key words have animated the policy-speak on Kosovo to date: “negotiation’, “compromise’ and “solution.’ These terms seem uncontroversial in their literal sense and have been accepted by the parties and the “Troika’ powers (the US, EU and Russia) without dispute. As such, the verbal landscape has been marked by the strategic use of this vocabulary. Yet the professed failure of Kosovo “status talks’ now suggests a profound disconnect between stated and actual meaning. The objective here is to critically examine how these terms have been used in diplomatic practice, with a view to revealing the contradictions between rhetoric and action which have fed this latest Balkan crisis.

Recent “Troika’ talks were grounded on a commitment to negotiation. Washington, Brussels and Moscow agreed that a lasting and sustainable solution was best attained through negotiated consent. However with the proclaimed failure of negotiations, that commitment is wavering in Washington and some European capitals due to the alleged inability of Belgrade and Pristina to make mutual concessions. However, does this depiction place blame on the wrong doorstep? An affirmative answer points to how Washington scuttled negotiations by announcing its intention to recognize Kosovo “independence’ in the event that “Troika’ talks failed. This created the bad faith incentive for Pristina to thwart negotiations and run out the clock until December 10. The “Troika’ negotiations existed in name only.

This point regarding spoiled negotiations brings us to the next term, compromise, and its similar misuse. The most commonly stated storyline is that Belgrade and Pristina failed to compromise. However, does this account match actual negotiating behaviour as seen? When one examines the conduct of “Troika’ negotiations between June and today, a noticeable pattern emerges: Belgrade offered genuine models of far-reaching autonomy (e.g. Hong Kong, the Aland Islands), while Pristina merely reiterated “independence.’ Indeed, Pristina did present a post-independence “treaty of friendship,’ but was that a bona fide compromise? In fact, at a recent summit in Brussels, outgoing Kosovo first minister Agim Ceku made no secret of his unwillingness to compromise when he hailed Kosovo independence as the “most predictable, unsurprising and unremarkable development in south-eastern Europe for generations.”

Thus we come to the final term — solution — and the current efforts to conflate its meaning with independence. The narrative is as follows: failed negotiations and inadequate compromise make independence the only viable solution for European policy-makers. The first problem with this claim is procedural; it runs afoul of the clean hands rule, which states that the Kosovo Albanians should not be allowed to profit from their own misdemeanour of failing to negotiate and compromise in good faith. A unilateral, one-sided statement of independence is perilous in that it provokes foreseeable and dire consequences. Here independence advocates should be taken to task for their ostrich-like disclaimers that they don’t know what will happen after independence is declared.

First, the historical record is unequivocal: defiant secession in most of the ex-Yugoslav republics has produced a series of bloody inter-ethnic wars. Second, one-sided independence is likely to prompt Kosovo’s Serbian-controlled north to “secede’ and rejoin Serbia proper, prompting attacks from the unofficial Albanian National Army and ensuing reactions from Kosovo Serbs. Third, Kosovo secession hands the ultimate Christmas gift to the populist Serbian Radical Party and secessionist forces within neighbouring Bosnia and Macedonia. Finally, the unilateral dismemberment of Serbia would fundamentally change the rules of sovereignty which have maintained precarious stability in the Western Balkans over the past 12 years. Plainly stated, Kosovo independence would herald that “all bets are off’ in the Balkans and elsewhere.

In closing, diplomacy on Kosovo has produced feats of rhetoric unmatched in actual practice. The present crisis on Europe‘s doorstep is attributable not to failed negotiations but rather disingenuous diplomacy that has failed to make the ethnic parties ultimately responsible for their future. Such a result can only happen when the “Troika’ powers unanimously and resolutely declare that a true “solution’ only rests in genuine negotiation and real compromise; and anything less is poor fiction. The political end-game which must be sought has no home in the zero-sum theatrics of independence, but rather must be found in the politics of good and responsible government, bearing the flag of prudence and caution.

*Nikolas Rajkovic is a political sciences researcher at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.

Nov 18, 2007

Kosovo auf Deutsch

By David Binder

Forget about status negotiations for a moment. The near-term outlook for Kosovo is unalterably grim: an economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of young people with “criminality as the sole career choice;” an insupportably high birthrate; a society imbued with corruption and a state dominated by organized crime figures.

These are the conclusions of “Operationalizing of the Security Sector Reform in the Western Balkans,” a 124-page investigation by the Institute for European Policy commissioned by the German Bundeswehr and issued last January. This month the text turned up on a weblog. It is labeled “solely for internal use.” Provided one can plow through the appallingly dense Amtsdeutsch – “German officialese” – that is already evident in the ponderous title, a reader is rewarded with sharp insights about Kosovo.

Occasionally a flicker of human frustration with the intractability of Kosovo’s people appears in the stolid German text. That reminded me of an encounter 44 years ago in the fly-specked cafeteria of Pristina’s Kosovski Bozur Hotel, occupied by a lone guest drinking a beer. He introduced himself as an engineer from Germany.

What was he doing here?” I inquired. “Ich verbloede,” he replied – “I am stupefying myself.” – (or, I am making myself stupid).

In this text, the authors make clear that Germany‘s interest in Kosovo rests on its “geographic proximity” and its roles as the most important supplier of troops and provider of money for the province. Failure would mean “incalculable risks for future foreign and security policy” of the Federal Republic. The authors point out a “grotesque denial of reality by the international community” about Kosovo, coupling that with the warning of “a new wave of unrest that could greatly exceed the level of escalation seen up to now.”

The institute authors, Mathias Jopp and Sammi Sandawi, spent six months interviewing 70 experts and mining current literature on Kosovo in preparing the study. In their analysis the political unrest and guerrilla fighting of the 1990s led to basic changes which they call a “turnabout in Kosovo-Albanian social structures.” The result is a “civil war society in which those inclined to violence, ill-educated and easily influenced people could make huge social leaps in a rapidly constructed soldateska.”

“It is a Mafia society” based on “capture of the state” by criminal elements. (“State capture” is a term coined in 2000 by a group of World Bank analysts to describe countries where government structures have been seized by corrupt financial oligarchies. This study applied the term to Montenegro’s Milo Djukanovic, by way of his cigarette smuggling and to Slovenia, with the arms smuggling conducted by Janez Jansa). In Kosovo, it says, “There is a need for thorough change of the elite.”

In the authors’ definition, Kosovan organized crime “consists of multimillion-Euro organizations with guerrilla experience and espionage expertise.” They quote a German intelligence service report of “closest ties between leading political decision makers and the dominant criminal class” and name Ramush Haradinaj, HashimThaci and Xhavit Haliti as compromised leaders who are “internally protected by parliamentary immunity and abroad by international law.” They scornfully quote the UNMIK chief from 2004-2006, Soeren Jessen Petersen, calling Haradinaj “a close and personal friend.” UNMIK, they add “is in many respects an element
of the local problem scene.”

They cite its failure to improve Kosovo’s energy supply, and “notable cases of corruption that have led to alienation from Kosovo public and to a hostile picture of a colonialist administration.” They describe both UNMIK and KFOR as infiltrated by agents of organized crime who forewarn their ringleaders of any impending raids. “The majority of criminal incidents do not become public because of fear of reprisals.

Among the negative findings listed are:

The justice system’s 40,000 uncompleted criminal cases;

The paucity of corruption-crime investigations (10-15 annually);
The province’s 400 gas stations (where 150 would suffice), many of which serve as fronts for brothels and money-changing depots;

A Kosovo Police Service “dominated by fear, corruption and incompetence”;

The study sharply criticizes the United States for “abetting the escape of criminals” in Kosovo as well as “preventing European investigators from working.” This has made Americans “vulnerable to blackmail.” It notes “secret CIA detention centers” at Camp Bondsteel and assails American military training for Kosovo (Albanian) police by Dyncorp, authorized by the Pentagon.

In an aside, it quotes one unidentified official as saying of the American who is deputy chief of UNMIK, “The main task of Steve Schook is to get drunk once a week with Ramush Haradinaj.”

Concerning the crime scene the authors conclude that “with resolution of the status issue and the successive withdrawal of international forces the criminal figures will come closer than ever to their goal of total control of Kosovo.”

Among the dismal findings of the German study are those on the economy:

Sinking remission of money from Kosovans working abroad, a primary source of income for many Kosovo families, pegged now at 560 million euros per annum;

Some 88 percent of the land now in private ownership, meaning ever more sub dividing of plots, usually among brothers, leading to less and less efficient agriculture;

Proliferation of NGOs – now numbering 2,400 €šÃ„Ã¬ the great bulk of which exist for shady purposes;

A hostile climate for foreign investors, frightened by political instability and the power of mafia structures.

A central issue in Kosovo is an “inexhaustible supply of young people without a future and therefore ready for violence,” the study says. The only remedy for dealing with this “youth bulge” is to open northern Europe‘s gates to young Kosovans seeking jobs, the authors say.

In anticipation of a transfer of oversight from the UN to the European Union, the authors warn: “the EU is in danger of following too strongly in the wake of a failed UN and to disintegrate under the inherited burden unless they make an open break with practices and methods of UNMIK.” One of the experts they interviewed put it more bluntly: “the EU is inheriting from UNMIK a fireworks store filled with pyromaniacs.”

In the estimate of the authors neither NATO nor the EU or UN appear capable of self examination, much less self-criticism. The authors draw a picture of self-satisfied incompetents in all international organizations dealing with Kosovo.

However, in their depiction, Kosovans appear equally beholden to legend – in their case of historic exploitation – such that if they finally achieve independence, all will suddenly be well. In the past Kosovans could and did always blame somebody else for their troubles: Ottomans, Yugoslavs, Serbs. Now they have begun to blame UNMIK. But what will happen if they have only themselves to blame?

€šÃ„Â¶

*David Binder (born 1931) was a correspondent for The New York Times from 1961 until 2004. He specialized in coverage of central and eastern Europe, based in Berlin, Belgrade and Bonn. The current piece was published in Belgrade‘s Politika on July 16, 2007.

Aug 16, 2007

News from Balkanalysis.com: Summer Recess, New Books, Essential Articles

Balkanalysis.com would like to inform its readers that the site will be on summer recess through September. Look for new articles and photos to be posted then. Until we€šÃ„Ã´re back, readers may like to check out two new books from Balkanalysis.com director Christopher Deliso, and to peruse the archive- as well as new hand-picked essential background articles presented for you below.

The first new book, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West, published by Praeger Security International, details in depth the sordid story of how Western interventions in the Balkans during the 1990′s directly allowed foreign Islamic terrorist groups to set up shop- and how Western policy since has created a climate in which extremist groups can thrive, boding ill for regional security.

A work of unprecedented depth, The Coming Balkan Caliphate analyzes the situation on a country-by-country basis, and will be useful for general-interest €šÃ„Ã²beginners€šÃ„Ã´ to Balkan issues and experienced professionals alike. Relying on five years of field research and dozens of interviews with ranking security officials from several Western and regional countries, The Coming Balkan Caliphate dispels myths and enhances our knowledge of the emerging extremist threat coming from the Balkans.

The second new book, Hidden Macedonia: The Mystic Lakes of Ohrid and Prespa, is a travelogue out now from London’s Haus Publishing, which details the author’s circular journey around Lakes Prespa and Ohrid, through Greece, Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. Along the way, the history, culture and contemporary life of the great Macedonian lakes are intertwined with a little adventure, camaraderie and good food and drink. Hidden Macedonia will appeal to travelers looking forward to visiting the region, or those who are content to imagine the Macedonian lakes from afar.

Finally, here is a list of twelve original and essential articles (in no particular order). All are among those published over the last year, and will enhance readers€šÃ„Ã´ knowledge and help tide you over until we return from summer recess.

Thanks for your understanding and continued reading.

-Balkanalysis.com

The Strategic Significance of Greek Thrace: Current Dynamics and Emerging Factors (Ioannis Michaletos & Christopher Deliso)

Turkey: Why a Coup, Soft or Hard is Unlikely in 2007 (Mehmet Kalyoncu, December 2, 2006)

Estimating Yugoslavia, (David Binder, December 22, 2006)

In Macedonia, New Concerns over Rural Fundamentalism (Christopher Deliso, October 2, 2006)

Bulgaria To Finally Open Secret Files (Jan Buruma, May 15, 2007)

A Brief Travelers€šÃ„Ã´ Guide to Sarajevo’s Local Traditions, (Lidija JulariÆ’Ã¡, November 17, 2006)

Exclusive: How the US Ordered Increased Activity against Macedonia’s Islamists after the Fort Dix Arrests (Balkanalysis.com, June 22, 2007)

Turkey: Europe’s Emerging Energy Corridor for Central Eurasian, Caucasian and Caspian Oil and Gas (Mehmet Efe Biresselioglu, January 20, 2007)

Varieties of Religious Experience in a Macedonian Village (Christopher Deliso, September 27, 2006)

The Hijacking of a Nation (Sibel Edmonds, November 29, 2006)

Wahhabis in Labunista Antagonize Locals, as New Details Emerge about Italian Arrests, (Balkanalysis.com, January 5, 2007)

Greece, Turkey and Balkan Security: Interview with John M. Nomikos (Balkanalysis.com, December 12, 2006)

Aug 9, 2007

A Pause that Refreshes

By David Binder

Remember what it was like last winter and spring with the Kosovo issue? Hardly a day went by without a declaration or a prediction that a resolution would be achieved in days, weeks, a month. Independence was just around the corner. Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Burns, Daniel Fried, Frank Wisner and the pathetic Michael Polt went before microphones and cameras to make these vows with the seeming assurance of biblical prophets on behalf of the Bush Administration.

They were echoed by longtime advocates of independence for Kosovo (some of them paid by Albanians) like Richard Holbrooke, Morton Abramowitz, Rep. Tom Lantos and Janus Bugajski. And those were only the Americans speaking.

Then on April 3, Marti Ahtisaari submitted his version of a solution-resolution to the United Nations Security Council. Did anyone hear a “kerplunk” sound of something dropping into the Hudson River behind the U.N. Building?

Since then the silence has grown.

It seems that Serbia, with a huge boost from Vladimir Putin and his able team of diplomats has succeeded in torpedoing Ahtisaari, paralyzing the Security Council and stalling the Albanian drive for independence. At least for a moment it leaves Serbia with more to hope for than could have been expected last winter and the Kosovo Albanians with less than they were counting on as late as April.

We now have a pause. (For an American it calls to mind the first great advertising slogan for Coca Cola, from 1929: “The pause that refreshes”).What might we expect when the pause ends sometime in the autumn? Predictions in foreign affairs are dangerous, especially concerning the Balkans. Yet I think we can discern several changes that may influence the Kosovo deliberations.

Even before his July meeting with Putin in Maine, President Bush seemed to be in the process of scaling down United States plans on Kosovo, leading him to one of his “what did I mean when I said that?” moments. In Rome on June 9 he stated: “In terms of the deadline there needs to be one”

However, a day later in Tirana, the president forgot that he had mentioned a “deadline” and then said: “The question is whether or not there is going to be endless dialogue on a subject that we have made up our mind about. We believe Kosovo ought to be independent.” And, a bit later, “At some point in time, sooner rather than later, you’ve got to say: Enough is enough – Kosovo is independent.”

Whether he expressed such plaintive thoughts to Putin in Maine is not known. But it was clear that the two presidents decided not to tangle on the issue and to delegate it to their foreign secretaries. At least the Kosovo conundrum momentarily reached that height between the superpowers, which it had never ascended before.

Another factor has appeared, which may gain some bearing on the next stage of Kosovo deliberations: a decline in the political influence of the United States as President Bush’s time in office draws to a close.

A Pew poll conducted among 1,000 citizens in each of 47 countries and made public in June showed the United States in disfavor in 26 countries. Germans, French, Canadians and Britons said they trusted Putin more than Bush. Two-thirds of Germans said they disliked American ideas about democracy. Three-quarters of the French polled said the same.

Conceivably, these sentiments could translate here or there into government policies. Still, the Bush Administration continues to be numb to the interests and commitments of others. Among the numbest it seems is Condoleezza Rice. On June 28, she said at the US-India Business Council: “What is the meaning of non-alignment? It has lost its meaning. One is aligned not with the interests and power of one bloc or another, but with the values of a common humanity.” The next day India‘s foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, icily retorted: “India is a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and believes that the movement has contributed substantially to the struggle against colonialism and apartheid.”

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News from Balkanalysis.com: Summer Recess, New Books, Essential Articles

A Pause that Refreshes

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