Bombs a betrayal for dissident Serbs
Serbs who once marched demanding Western values now
cringe when Western jets scream overhead
Saturday, May 22, 1999
MARCUS GEE
In Belgrade -- Yesterday, Day 59 of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, three friends were sipping mineral water in a sunny square in downtown Belgrade when, boom, an invisible NATO warplane broke the sound barrier overhead. In the shocked silence, they glanced reflexively at the sky, then at each other.
Three years ago, these middle-class, university-educated women were marching in the streets for what they considered Western values: democracy, tolerance, justice and peace. Now their country is being bombed by an alliance of Western countries.
That makes them feel not just angry and bewildered, but terribly betrayed.
"Everything I believe in as a human being has been shattered," said Ana, who teaches psychology at a Belgrade university. "I don't believe in the good intentions of the West any more."
Her friend Drogana, 34, is just as bitter. A psychotherapist and veteran opponent of the Slobodan Milosevic regime, she cuts a chic figure in a lime-green summer dress and matching Swatch. In 1996 and 1997, she led an antiwar group that had friends and supporters in many of the same Western countries that are now conducting the bombing.
Tears came to her eyes as she remembered how her two-year-old son woke up during one night's bombing to ask: "What's happening, Mommy?"
"The West said it was better than Milosevic," she said. "Now we can see that was all lies. The only thing different about the West is that it has more money."
The third of the friends, Biljana, another psychologist, had been silent as she listened to the other two. But when she spoke, she was the most vehement of all: "I used to think of myself as a citizen of the world. Now I think of myself as a Serb. It's a hard, painful feeling."
Her friends share her resentment over the narrowing identity that the war has imposed on them.
"Before this war, I was a woman, a psychologist, a wife, a mother," said Ana, a scholarly woman with wire-rimmed glasses. "Now I am primarily a Serb. I have been reduced to that."
It's not an exultant nationalism, but a bitter, resigned one. A very Serbian one.
Sentiments such as these are common among Belgrade's Westernized middle class. It's hard to exaggerate the deep sense of disillusionment that they feel.
They have studied in London or Paris or Vienna, chat with their foreign friends by E-mail and cellular phone, usually speak English and perhaps one or two other languages as well. As citizens of a country that fought on the allied side in two world wars and tilted to the West during the Cold War too, they feel very much part of the European mainstream. Or did.
Now they feel shunned, abandoned, demonized. "We're normal people," said Ana. "We have the Internet, we go to the movies. We don't have money like in Canada, but we're not crazy. We're not like Iraq."
The disillusionment with the West is especially deep among those, like these three friends, who have struggled against the Milosevic regime. For them, nothing rings more hollow than NATO's assertion that it is not fighting the Yugoslav people, only their government.
Whether it was intended to or not, the bombing has turned their lives upside down. Drogana's patients have stopped coming for psychotherapy. They have other things to worry about. Ana, 34, chose to send her four-year-old son to stay with his mother in the country, where she hopes he will be safer. Her voice broke with emotion as she talked about the separation. Biljana, 38, is also out of work, and she and her eight-year-old son struggle to get by on her husband's small salary as an engineer.
What rankles most for all of them is being lumped in with the regime they hate.
"For 10 years we were fighting against these idiots in our government," said Ana. "Now we're being placed in the same bag as they are."
No one believes the bombing will lead to the overthrow of Mr. Milosevic, who has been in power for more than a decade. Like virtually all liberal Serbs, these three believe that he has been strengthened immeasurably by the bombing, which has allowed him to pose as the heroic protector of the nation.
Drogana shared a sardonic joke. Question: What are the first words of Mr. Milosevic's will? Answer: "If I ever die. . . ."
The bombing, they believe, means they are stuck with Mr. Milosevic for a very long time.
"We made a fertile soil for democracy," Drogana said. "And onto that soil is now falling NATO bombs."
That, these women can never forgive. |
