As a person most of whose lifetime has passed in fighting for freedom of thought and the press, for protection of minority rights, for equality and tolerance among all ethnic and religious groups, I affirm with deep faith that I am unable to be but a strongly convinced pacifist. I believe that, intrinsically, the defenders of human rights should be antiwar activists. I know that the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Milosevic in Kosovo should be immediately stopped, but I am opposed to NATO's bombings, which are sowing death, disaster, and devastation, subjecting to severe trials the fragile democracies in Southeastern Europe. The bombs are not saving the ethnic Albanians. I think it is each staunch human-rights activist's foremost duty to protect the life and dignity of every human being. In this sense, I am afraid that if NATO's further step is to undertake ground operations in Serbia, we will see new scores of lost lives and people with humiliated self-respect - including Americans, French, Germans and all those who may be thrown into battle. The Serbs are seized by the grave determination of people who have nothing to lose - surrounded by the ruins in their country and faced with national catastrophe, they will surely be ruthless towards the Kosovars, as well as to any soldiers of the Alliance who might fall into their hands. War cannot enforce a just cause, for its instruments are destructive - in both moral and material terms. War cannot make one happy or successful. It is only the war industry and some amoral individuals that profit from it, marauding over the misery of millions of people - dictator Milosevic in the first place, of course.
I call on you to unite our efforts for joint action aimed at immediately halting the war and seeking a political solution of the conflict, as well as bringing to justice this criminal against humanity - Milosevic! Let me stop here with my personal viewpoint and emotions.

In my capacity of scholar and expert having knowledge of and experience in the history and political development of the Balkans, I would like to make the following assessment:
1. NATO's military intervention in the Balkans has led to the apparent destabilization of its youngest democracies - Macedonia and Montenegro. In these countries not only objections against the respective governments on account of their pro-NATO positions are growing with each day, but anti-American and anti-West sentiments are being provoked. At the same time, xenophobic attitudes and hatred for the unwanted refugees are uncontrollably escalating. The collapse of the economies needs no commentary, it is evident to everyone.

2. In Bulgaria and Greece, whose democratic governments are deemed to be relatively stable, the anti-American and anti-West sentiments have become widely spread among the population. In the atmosphere of fear of getting involved in the war, and of facing economic destruction, it is very difficult to defend no matter what just cause, to advocate the values of the established Western democracies, to plead for tolerance and human rights. Bulgaria's aspiration for joining the North Atlantic Pact has been motivated, above all, by the Bulgarian people's fears of war, by the guarantees for peace they need, because Bulgaria has gone through more than one national disaster in consequence of wars. Today for a wide circle of the Bulgarian public it has turned out to be a wrong choice, because commitment to NATO  means bomb attacks and destruction, ruined relations with the neighbouring countries.

3. In Serbia, our colleagues and the people from nongovermental civil organizations with whom we share the same views,  the handful of liberal-minded intellectuals have been driven into a corner and feel helpless and deceived. All their efforts to cultivate tolerance, to defend minority rights and the idea of broad autonomy for Kosovo, to fight for undermining Milosevic's regime, all become meaningless amidst the wail of sirens, the thunder of canons, the devastation and civilian casualties. Their arguments have lost all their power. The same holds true of our fellows in the Bosnian-Croatian Federation and the Republika Srpska, who already felt dissatisfied and strained by the outcome and provisions of the Dayton accords.

4. The Balkan scholars and specialists have quite clearly grasped the lack of competent analyses and prognoses concerning the situation in the Balkans  that would reckon with the specific all-Balkan or national characteristics and regularities, that could be used by the European and international alliances and organizations. The unwillingness, or maybe the presumption, of the West-Åuropean and American analytical centres have minimized the part of local experts studying Balkan problems, who know in detail the history, folk psychology and culture of the Balkan peoples. Or the case may be that their knowledge is considered to be of secondary or small importance in making political decisions. Only the regional specialists could perhaps explain the deeply rooted passion of the Balkan nations and states for mutual disputes over borderlines and populations. The Balkan irredentism was activated after the two Balkan wars and following World War I, naturally with the assistance and under the dictate of the West-European governments. Owing to the complexity of ethnic boundaries, all political borders in the Balkans have been doomed to infringe some nation's interests and be unjust even in terms of some most conventional international standards. With the decades past, however, the Balkans know that there is nothing more dangerous and ill-fated than redrawing the Balkan borders, even the internal ones, like in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Scholars in the Balkans have long called the attention of Western politicians by insisting that the Balkans should not be described in general terms, because the differences between the Balkan states and nations, including those between their minorities, are more substantial than their similarities. Never have politicians in the West and their analysts wished to realize the warning that each Balkan nation has a different temperament, mentality, world outlook, culture, and, especially historical experience. Homo Balkanicus is a literary-philosophical metaphor and it is risky to build our contemporary geopolitical strategy upon it.

5. The humanitarian disaster has not surprised the Balkan politicians and analysts. It seems to have confounded only the Alliance and the West-European societies. Under much calmer circumstances, without bombings and terrorist bands, ten years ago over 350 thousand ethnic Turks were driven away or made to flee, pushed along by fear and panic, from Bulgaria. We were then witnesses of large masses of refugees, women, children, and old people, who were living in camps on both sides of the border, who were dying or giving birth on the road. If there is one thing that the Balkan peoples have known for generations and centuries, it is refugee's sufferings and refugee outpourings in all directions.

In Kosovo, the emerging situation is one of a triple press on the ordinary civilians - the Kosovars: the Serb atrocities in the ethnic cleansing, NATO's intensive bombing, and the aggressive radicalism of the KLA nationalists.
Missed have been scores of possible early preventive political moves, which could narrow the scope of today's sufferings, economic losses and prospective geopolitical risks - beginning from timely support for the democratization of Serbia to making dictator Milosevic step down.
The results we have now are anti-NATO and anti-American sentiments in the majority of the Balkan societies, destabilization of the democratic governments, economic destruction. A term until recently forgotten and used only in the history textbooks, usually with a pejorative connotation, the Great Powers, has been revived in the Balkan vocabulary.

Obviously, the human-rights and civil movements in the Balkans and in Europe should summon their energy to undertake joint action against Milosevic and against the war. And I think the harmonization of their efforts is already underway. We would like the Great Powers to abandon their stereotypes and prejudices, as well as the ready-made anti-crisis models and adopt a non-standard and adequate approach aimed at stopping the war and reconstructing the Balkans.

16 April 1999

Antonina Zhelyazkova

IMIR - Sofia, Bulgaria