The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980-92

By Branka Magas. Verso, London and New York, 1993, 366 pp. List: $22.95; AET: $17.95

Reviewed by Grace Halsell

The value of this superbly documented book lies in its clarification of how and when the greatest holocaust since the Nazis began. As to who destroyed Yugoslavia, the author places the blame clearly on Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs who began a war of territorial conquest, the first in Europe since 1945.

The Second World War cost the country 10 percent of its people, yet at the end of it Yugoslavia emerged united. Its new ruler, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, had one of the longest incumbencies in modem times. Soon after Tito's death in 1980, Milosevic became the undisputed leader of Serbia.

Only a year later, Milosevic and the Serbs started armed aggression in Kosovo, whose non-Serb inhabitants were not eligible for citizenship in the successor state now under construction-Greater Serbia. Yugoslavia's constitution specified that it was a federation of equal nations, but it was Milosevic's plan to change the country's internal balance of power in favor of Serbia.

Branka Magas, a Croat journalist who has painstakingly documented the events of 1980 to 1992, reminds us that under Tito Yugoslavia had been a nation of six republics and two autonomous provinces, both within the Republic of Serbia. One of the provinces was Kosovo. Kosovo occupied some 4 percent of Yugoslav territory and had 8 percent of the population, some 2 million people. While some Serbs live in Kosovo, the overwhelming majority are indigenous Albanians. Kosovo, in fact, is home to almost as many Albanians as is the nation of Albania itself. Most Albanians are Muslim.

Due to the size of its population, Kosovo's leaders sought by public demonstrations to have its status changed from province to republic. Rather than grant them ore independence, however, the Serbs tried to deny the Kosovo Albanians any autonomy at all. Serbia suspended all government bodies and dissolved the Kosovo parliament, all in defiance of the Federal Constitution of 1974. Serb officials sacked Albanians from all positions of responsibility, replacing them with Serbs. Serbs closed down Albanian-language radio and television in Kosovo and they began a rule of oppression and terror in Serbia's "occupied territory."

By playing the Kosovo card, writes Magas, "Milosevic was able to place himself at the head of the emergent nationalist conservative coalition, crush the liberal opposition and—by forging 'unity' within the party—satisfy also the morbid fear of the central apparatus that the party was losing control over political life in the republic. From now on, all criticism of the party leadership was presented as an attack on Serb national interests."

The tragedy of Yugoslavia, writes the author, is "not so much about what happened in the distant past. " Rather it's about "the fanning of state-sponsored nationalism. " It's been a case of Milosevic's Serbs treating other Yugoslavs—most particularly Muslim Yugoslavs—as an enemy who must be "cleansed" or, more plainly, eradicated. In his territorial conquests, Milosevic counted on the West to aid him. And, says Magas, the West has actually done so. "By failing to distinguish between victim and assailant, the West has become an active participant in Serbia's aggression."

The United Nations arms embargo has meant intervention in favor of Serbian aggression. The embargo "gave Belgrade's forces an advantage in Croatia," and had "an even more catastrophic effect in Bosnia." The Serbs, she writes, waged war against Bosnian civilians with one aim: "die complete destruction" of the Bosnian people and their culture. Meanwhile, the West duly denounced the Serbian policy of ethnic cleansing—a term blatantly defined and criminally carried out by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic through the shelling of cities, the creation of concentration camps, and the rape by Serbs of Bosnian Muslim women and even infants. Western leaders recognized and defined these events. They knew it was a genocide, a holocaust of Muslims and they accepted this. Some acknowledged Serb leaders should-later on-be tried for war crimes. All the while, however, Western leaders regularly met the perpetrators of the holocaust, treating them "as legitimate participants in the 'peace process."'

Like the Nazis, Milosevic will not easily be appeased. As Magas makes clear: "Milosevic's regime can survive only -by creating new sources of war and conflict. " Just as Kosovo, beginning as early as 198 1, became a dress rehearsal for the rape of Bosnia, a ravished Bosnia is most likely to become a dress rehearsal for a bloodier "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo.

Magas's book, a collection of articles published over a 10-year period, reminds us repeatedly that not only a journalist such as herself, but world leaders including those in England, France, Germany and the United States, were well aware of a holocaust in Europe. A "never again" holocaust has happened again. It was-and is-occurring before our eyes. Was "never again" meant only for Jews?

Washington, DC-based writer Grace Halsell, author of 12 books, has traveled in 1993 and 1994 to the former Yugoslavia to interview Bosnian victims of Serbian atrocities.