Tatiana Obrenovic
U.S. Ambassador Hill is sending a message to the Serbs that they should not do what they want to do but they should do what he wants them to do.
Just less than a decade ago, Dusko Markovic, the last prime minister of 'Montenegro', the country established in place of what used to be and has always been Crna Gora (and is now mercifully back on the historical and political maps), back then contrived by Milo Djukanovic's DPS political party, Markovic bragged about something that an intelligent person would well and truly be ashamed of, that more than 85% of the people of Montenegro were against Montenegrin government's recognition of Kosovo as an independent state back then. But he said (somewhat sneeringly): "We did recognize it nonetheless' They had a vision to do exactly that - he said so emboldened by this 'success', they, in the same 'visionary' way, could conveniently do away with the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro 'in one leisurely sweep', which (the Serbian Orthodox Church in the newly identity-ed Montenegro) reminds them all in a rather uncomfortable way that Kosovo is Serbia after all and that Njegoš and the King Nikola knew that historical fact centuries ago. And those Crnogorci (who do not know the truths which Njegoš and King Nikola knew cannot essentially and truly 'be' Crnogorci any more after they had ceased to be Serbs as well. Anyhow, who are they indeed if not who Njegoš and King Nikola were? It is common knowledge that he used to go 'namo, 'namo da vidju Prizren...(6). because Kosovo is mine and ours and I belong to it and oнамо покој добићу души, кад Србин више не буде роб .
Thus, there emerges a justifiable question.' When did the country of Crna Gora come to be if it is not in any way the same as or similar to who King Nikola used to be during his reign? Shortly afterwards, the unwavering people's litije began - long, nationwide processions of Serbian Orthodox Church believers in pious pursuit to protect and defend the Serbian Orthodox Church and its thousands of holy places of worship and Montenegro did, commensurate to how much is 'allowed by the NATO standards' slowly begin retrieving its Crna Gora centuries-old, historical and political identity.
Therefore, this case of Crna Gora is most precious due to the fact that the same issue is hovering in the political mid-air above Serbia too. It is called the French - German Plan, which has unwittingly evolved into the European Plan in the meantime. It is heavily supported by the USA so it could be conveniently called the NATO plan as well. Let me remind you, NATO is the military pact which committed a brutal act of aggression on SR Yugoslavia (N.B. the official union of Serbia and Montenegro at the time) in order to eventually rip Kosovo and Metohija away from us, the Serbs. In brief, this NATO plan is now for the rest of the then Yugoslavia, which is in fact Serbia now, after Crna Gora had already done it, to recognize that Kosovo does not belong to Serbia any more. They want us to believe that it is not ours any more but theirs. What (utterly lackluster) Dusko Markovic called a 'vision', the EU mediator Miroslav Lajcak describes as a difficult decision to make, yet the crux of the matter is the same. Namely, we the Serbs are ordered to do what the Serbian people are absolutely against. It seems that a 'particular' kind of 'democracy' is that in which these all manner of 'envoys and leaders' of all sorts do not act in accordance with the will of the Serbian people but completely contrary to it.
In Serbian language we interpret this sort of (arrogant doublespeak) approach as: subjugation. The U.S. ambassador in Belgrade, Christopher Hill seems to have thought it was incumbent upon him on that count to approach us in a certain weekly magazine with his address to the Serbs in this way as follows: 'I had heard people talking about sovereignty in the Balkans, and I would always ask the same question 'How come some other countries in the Western Europe as small as Serbia do not worry about their own sovereignty?' Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani elaborated further on what that truly meant. Europe does not have a real foreign and defense policy. We always follow in the (political) footsteps of the USA - he told the Italian reporters of La Stampa. Ramush Haradinaj said something very similar a few years ago in the capacity of the then prime minister of the pseudo state of Kosovo, though we laughed at him back then. Now we understand that this aberration is more common than we thought. There seem to be some nations who welcome their usurpers of their own land with joy. They threw flowers at the Germans when the Germans entered Maribor (Slovenia) or Zagreb (Croatia), for instance. The very same Germans threw bombs at Belgrade (Serbia) at the time. Slovenia and Croatia are now NATO members jumping with the very same joy. (Macedonia and Montenegro were swindled into NATO in the meantime). And yet again all of them are together on their Generalplan Ost onward march against Russia. But we (the Serbs) again bang on stubbornly about our sovereignty, eh? That is the reason why the Germans, and the Germans always follow in the footsteps of the Americans, just like the Italians and Ramush Haradinaj do, as one of the conditions and there were seven of these conditions in total, they asked for our mindset to change. But, we adamantly refuse to forget our past and our history and surely not their bombs.
Adrian Schockenhoff, Bundestag and Chancellor Angela Merkel's envoy to Serbia a decade ago or so, demanded exactly that in all seriousness, and he even committed that demand to paper, translated into Serbian. He handed it out to the reporters so as to avoid any possible misconstructions lost in translation. It happened in 2012 because a little earlier in 2010 we did not obey the commands by Wolfram Mass (the German ambassador in Serbia before him) He said 'I have to voice my criticism of the Serbian authorities for still using the terms such as NATO bombing. Imagine that you walk along Knez Milos Street and your child asks you 'Daddy, who did this?' (showing the buildings torn down by the NATO bombing). You would respond ' NATO did '. What do you expect your child to think of NATO then? Unlike this particular situation, when I was a child, says Mass, I used to see some ruins in Germany but I did not hate those who did it because there were others there who were able to explain to me why they did that. He then added that the European and NATO integrations are interconnected, because the issue of Serbia joining NATO is not a matter of 'if' but of 'when', regardless of what we think about that. (Truth be told) that means subjugation for the Serbs and we are not having it!
The very same things are now demanded by the U.S. Ambassador Hill, after he sent a message to the Serbs that we should not do what we want to do but we should do what he wants us to do; he explained to us 'in a nice way' (as if we would fall for Hill's niceties) that Serbia is now at its most important pathway in its history, towards joining Euro-Atlantic integration, including EU of course... and including NATO of course. That is the true meaning of the Euro-Atlantic integration. That is the reason why, the (infamous) ambassador complained to that Belgrade weekly magazine: 'It was the greatest disappointment for me that the matters which I thought had been resolved a long time ago, are still fresh in the minds and memories of the locals. I was surprised when I came here last March that there were some remembrances of 1999 on a regular daily basis. You have to look into the future! This geographic region is packed with history. One should respect history but one should not be its hostage.'
Moreover, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, Russian Ambassador in Serbia, warned that Hill would like to erase historical memory of brutal atrocities committed on the Serbs and our tragically lost lives taken away by NATO. And indeed, if history is the life's teacher, which it is, where would these history teachers (such as the arrogant, infamous Hill) take us in the future, and where would the likes of those who would like to erase our history take us? When they place us, that is, on that most important pathway in our history, the way Hill depicts it. To be something we have never been before, the generations of Serbs who willingly renounce its own Kosovo and Metohija, rather than simply singing patriotic songs about Kosovo at least, waiting for the 'Dogodine u Prizrenu'. When would the history of the Serbs in that case (the way Christopher Hill wants us to see it) begin the same as in the case of those Montenegrini in Crna Gora?
We would renounce Kosovo and (in that far-fetched scenario of theirs) we would renounce our centuries old Serbian Kosovo, pre-Battle of Kosovo cantos and post-Battle of Kosovo cantos of epic poetry from our folklore national heritage, what would in that case our children learn in Serbian language classes in school? And the famed epic poem quote 'Kasno Marko na Kosovo stize' would not be ours anymore because we are not Marko's own people any more. 'Pocetak Bune protiv Dahija ' would not feature in our Serbian language and literature classes anymore because even there we recite poetry and sing songs about King Lazar, Milos Obilic and Kosovo and our liberation from the Ottoman Turks and then onward to the revenged Kosovo in 1912. Yet, the likes of Christopher Hill want us to believe that those appear to have been some other Serbs and not us. The same as what happened in 1999 and 2006 when the Constitution of Serbia was passed, our Serbian most beloved and revered Patriarch Pavle also voted for it and led the whole nation in their pious pursuit, because the Constitution says that Kosovo is the heartland of Serbia, be it with its essential autonomy.
Yet, this is a kind reminder that in 2008 there seemed to have been 'some other Serbs' who rejected rather than accepted in total subjugation the self-proclaimed pseudo state of Kosovo.
If we were to obey what Hill orders us to do and the likes of him preaching about the life lessons, and all the other thieves of our history and our land, if we were to make those tough choices with which Miroslav Lajcak relentlessly continues to threaten us, if they were to blindingly blur the scope of our vision which Dusko Markovic had, we would become but sheer subjugated slaves who, because they do not have the past anymore, cannot have the future either 'the future which is in our own hands and not the hands of others. Of course for the sake of the interests of others (i.e. the interests of NATO, USA and EU and surely not our own). To the Serbs, it feels far more like freedom to be the hostage of our history. It is ours at least. And history is a life's teacher, way better than Ambassador Hill, Wolfram Mass and all the rest of those who would rather brutally and illegally seize and plunder our land and distort our mindsets. our world views and our consciousness in such a way that we start thinking (mistakenly) that we deserve it all.