By Veran Matic
Veran Matic is editor-in-chief of Belgrade's banned Radio B92. On Friday, authorities ousted the radio station's director, Sasa Mirkovic, and sealed off the premises. The new director, Aleksandar Nikacevic, ordered employees to meet at their working places by Monday. Radio B92's Web site
The air strikes against Yugoslavia were supposed to stop the Milosevic war machine and, ultimately, to support the people of Kosovo-- as well as those of Serbia, who are equally victims of the Milosevic regime. In fact, the bombing has jeopardized the lives of 10.5 million people, unleashed an attack on the fledgling forces of democracy in Kosovo and Serbia and undermined the work of reformists and peace-seekers in Montenegro and the Serbian entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The bombing of Yugoslavia demonstrates the political impotence of the Western alliance. Protection of a threatened population is a noble duty, but it requires a clear strategy. As the situation unfolds on the ground and in the air day by day, it is becoming apparent there is no such strategy. Instead, NATO is fulfilling its own prophecy of doom. Each missile that hits the ground exacerbates the humanitarian disaster that NATO is supposed to be preventing.
It is not easy to stop the war machine once its power has been unleashed, but I urge NATO members to pause for a moment and consider the consequences of their actions. Just how far are they prepared to go? What comes after the "military" targets? What happens if the war spreads? These terrifying questions must be answered, although I suspect that few will want to live with the historical burden of having answered them.
These questions crowded my mind as I sat in a Belgrade prison on the first day of the NATO attack on my country. Whiling away the hours in the cell I shared with a murder suspect, I asked myself t the West's aim was for "the morning after."
Friends in the West keep asking me why there is no rebellion. Where are the people who poured onto the streets every day for three months in 1996 to demand democracy and human rights? The answer comes from Zoran Zivkovic, mayor of the city of Nis. "Twenty minutes ago my city was bombed. The people who live here are the same people who voted for democracy in 1996, the same people who protested for a hundred days after the authorities tried to deny them their victory in the elections. They voted for the same democracy that exists in Europe and the U.S. Today my city was bombed by the democratic states of the USA, Britain, France, Germany and Canada. Is there any sense in this?"
Most of these people feel betrayed. Yesterday a missile landed in the yard of our correspondent in Sombor. It didn't explode, fortunately, but many others have in many other people's yards. These people now feel compelled to take up arms and join their sons serving in the army. With bombs falling all around, nobody can persuade them, though some have tried, that this is only an attack on their government and not on their country.
I am writing now from the security of my office in Belgrade secure, that is, compared to Pristina, Djakovica, Podujevo and other places in Kosovo. But I can't help asking how F-16s can stop people in the street killing one another. NATO's bombs have blasted the seeds of democracy out of the soil of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro and ensured that they will not sprout again for a very long time. The pro-democratic forces in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity, have been jeopardized and with them the Dayton Peace Accords. NATO's intervention has also given the green light for a local war against Montenegro's pro-democracy president, Milo Djukanovic.
The free media in Serbia have for years opposed nationalism, hatred and war. As a representative of those media, and as a man who has more than once faced the consequences of my political beliefs, I call on President Bill Clinton to put a stop to NATO's attack on my country, to begin negotiations aimed at securing the right to a peaceful life and democracy for all the people in Yugoslavia, regardless of their ethnic background.
