© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved.

Letter from Belgrade

 

 
By Petar Lukovic*
March 28, 1999
 
1190 words
 
BELGRADE -- The wailing sirens announce a new air strike. Radio Belgrade is broadcasting patriotic songs. There is news of yet another rally in support of President of Slobodan Milosevic.
 
We are in for another night of heavy shelling and complete insanity, blackouts and general darkness. There is no trace of light at the end of this mad tunnel.
 
Only a few days ago, Belgrade was the last vestige of urban sophistication in Serbia: the center of techno-happenings, art performances, current world-cinema premieres. We know that Shakespeare is in love. We have all the top 40 hits. There are hundreds of different restaurants, clubs and bars. Young people hang out at Internet cafes and surf world news, the latest music and pornography.
 
Even through the years of Communism, Belgrade was known as the most liberal of cities, providing a whiff of fresh air amid the general stagnation. During the past decade, it somehow managed to remain at peace despite the years of war in neighboring Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It survived the terrible period of shortages and poverty, international sanctions and the highest inflation rate in the world. Belgrade is a good place to be in the spring.
 
Now, the city feels the war directly, and it is a huge shock for its two million inhabitants. The streets are empty (gasoline is very scarce), people rush to air raid shelters, and a state of war has been declared. Above it all are the constant, eerie and terrifying wail of those sirens.
 
Some people strive to maintain an air of normality. They go to work despite the fact that schools, the university, post offices and banks are closed. Most shops have switched to shorter hours; most private stores are locked, and in the evenings, on the ghostly deserted streets, there are no cars or taxis. The city transport system operates at minimum capacity. Commuting back and forth to work has turned into a day-long adventure.
 
An ominous, unreal silence descended on Belgrade with the first wave of NATO bombings. According to a March 10 poll in the magazine Nim, 78 percent of the people did not believe there would be air strikes. The same poll showed that most thought that if NATO did attack, Russia and China would retaliate on Serbia's behalf. Seventy percent of the people said they would be willing to go and fight in Kosovo.
 
Today, with the bombings a reality, the regime has no need for such polls. After several days of this unfortunate, politically undefined bombing, support for the Yugoslav president is stronger than at any time in the past few years. While hundreds of thousands of Belgraders walked the city streets for months in 1996 to protest against Milosevic, today there is not a single voice that would dare oppose him or the politics which have led us into war.
 
The day before the NATO air strikes began, Radio B92 -- the only truly independent radio station in Belgrade that provided serious political information -- was shut down. A few days later in Novi Sad, Radio 21, another radio station which the authorities did not trust, was also closed.
 
Since the attacks began, most of Belgrade's television stations have abandoned their own programming and merely rebroadcast state television, RTS channel one. RTS, an infamous nationalistic stronghold, was one of Milosevic's most potent weapons during his previous wars. Now it stirs up national feelings through unbearable displays of patriotism. There is absolutely no news of what's happening in Kosovo, the province Serbia supposedly cares so much about. There is no concrete information on what damage has been done by the bombing. There is not even any news about what's going on in the Serbian and Yugoslav governments.
 
Instead, it broadcasts hardcore propaganda, celebrating "the firm, dignified politics of Slobodan Milosevic". NATO nations are now "fascist aggressors." The president of the United States now has a range of new titles: "Killer Clinton," "Satanic Clinton," "Scum bag Clinton," "Worm Clinton," "Mental case and sexual deviant Clinton," and best of all, "Adolph Clinton, the biggest criminal in the history of the world."
 
The bombing has also destroyed the last vestige of the independent print media. Only government-controlled publications are issued on regular basis.
 
In this atmosphere of legalized repression, fear has been amplified by declaration of a state of war. All potential misdeeds are subject to court martial. It's the same with conscription. Although mobilization has not yet reached its maximum level, many young people are in hiding, spending nights away from home trying to avoid the knock on the door that brings with it the demand that they fulfill their "military obligations". Meanwhile, the state media provides constant updates on the "huge number of volunteers" joining the army to "defend the homeland".
 
City authorities have removed foreign films from the movie theaters. The few cinemas that have remained open now only show old Yugoslav movies. It has been announced that theaters will stage free performances of "patriotic" plays. This, however, creates some complications, since one of the great theatrical themes here is the struggle against the Nazis during World War II, when Serbian partisans were allied with Britain and the United States. But the primary lesson is supposed to be that the Yugoslavs can take on anyone and survive.
 
With diplomatic relations with the United States, Germany, France and Great Britain severed, a preposterous anti-American, anti-French, anti-English and anti-German vocabulary has come into use among politicians. The leaders of these countries are now referred to as "murderers", "criminals", "mutants", "fools" and "enemies".
 
The windows of the American Culture Center, the British Council and the German "Goethe Institute" have all been smashed. The monument erected in gratitude to France for its support of Serbia during World War I has been covered with a black flag.
 
Life grows constantly more complicated, due to the expected shortages of cooking oil, flour and sugar. Panic-stricken residents are hoarding great quantities of bread. The exchange rate for the German mark, the favorite currency in Serbia, has soared in the past few days, from 8 dinars to 1 DM to 12 to 1. The black market in currency has also disappeared overnight. Gasoline has become, in the words of Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic, "more valuable than gold". Almost 12,000 Belgrade taxi drivers have been out of work for days.
 
Some people talk about how the bombing has created a sense of wartime solidarity, with friends and neighbors coming together to cope with adversity. But if you're like me and tend to express your opinions about the regime, the media and the general insanity of Serbia, it's impossible to get through the day without getting in a furious row. Your nerves end up being completely shot -- a particularly problem since cigarettes are no longer available.
 
At least the telephone lines, in general, are working, and Internet links continue. This makes the war even more unreal: one can communicate with the U.S., a country with which we have broken off diplomatic relations, but it is very difficult to call a friend some 100 kilometers south of Belgrade. Not to mention Kosovo, about which we know absolutely nothing.

* Petar Lukovic is a columnist for Feral Tribune and editor of XZ, a cultural magazine, in Belgrade (www.beograd.com/xz) and a writer for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting'sBalkan Crisis Report in London.

 

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© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/.

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