The Crescent and the Cross
Introduction
"There are two maxims for historians which so harmonise with what I
know of history that I would like to claim them as my own, though
they really belong to nineteenth-century historiography: first, that
governments try to press upon the historian the key to all the
drawers but one, and are anxious to spread the belief that this
single one contains no secret of importance; secondly, that if the
historian can only find the thing which the government does not want
him to know, he will lay his hand upon something that is likely to
be significant."
Herbert Butterfield, "History and Human Relations", London, 1951, p.
186
The Balkans as a region is a relatively novel way of looking at the
discrete nation-states that emerged from the carcasses of the
Ottoman and Habsburg Empires and fought over their spoils.
This sempiternal fight is a determinant of Balkan identity. The
nations of the Balkan are defined more by ornery opposition than by
cohesive identities. They derive sustenance and political-historical
coherence from conflict. It is their afflatus. The more complex the
axes of self-definition, the more multifaceted and intractable the
conflicts. Rabid nationalism against utopian regionalism, fascism
(really, opportunism) versus liberalism, religion-tinted
traditionalism (the local moribund edition of conservatism) versus
"Western" modernity.
Who wins is of crucial importance to world peace.
The Balkan is a relatively new political entity. Formerly divided
between the decrepit Ottoman Empire and the imploding Austro-
Hungarian one - the countries of the Balkans emerged as unique
polities only during the 19th century. This was to be expected as a
wave of nationalism swept Europe and led to the formation of the
modern, bureaucratic state as we know it.
Even so, the discrete entities that struggled to the surface of
statehood did not feel that they shared a regional destiny or
identity. All they did was fight ferociously, ruthlessly and
mercilessly over the corrupted remnants of the Sick Men of Europe
(the above mentioned two residual empires). In this, they proved
themselves to be the proper heirs of their former masters:
murderous, suborned, Byzantine and nearsighted.
In an effort to justify their misdeeds and deeds, the various
nations - true and concocted - conjured up histories, languages,
cultures and documents, some real, mostly false. They staked claims
to the same territories, donned common heritage where there was
none, spoke languages artificially constructed and lauded a culture
hastily assembled by "historians" and "philologists".
These were the roots of the great evil - the overlapping claims, the
resulting intolerance, the mortal, existential fear stoked by the
kaleidoscopic conduct of the Big Powers. To recognize the existence
of the Macedonian identity - was to threaten the Greek or Bulgarian
ones. To accept the antiquity of the Albanians was to dismantle
Macedonia, Serbia and Greece. To countenance Bulgarian demands was
to inhumanly penalize its Turk citizens. It was a zero-sum game
played viciously by everyone involved. The prize was mere existence
- the losers annihilated.
It very nearly came to that during the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and
1913.
Allies shifted their allegiance in accordance with the shifting
fortunes of a most bewildering battlefield. When the dust settled,
two treaties later, Macedonia was dismembered by its neighbours,
Bulgaria bitterly contemplated the sour fruits of its delusional
aggression and Serbia and Austro-Hungary rejoiced. Thus were the
seeds of World War I sown.
The Yugoslav war of succession (or civil war) was a continuation of
this mayhem by other means. Yugoslavia was born in sin, in the
dictatorship of King Alexander I (later slain in France in 1934). It
faced agitation, separatism and discontent from its inception. It
was falling apart when the second world conflagration erupted. It
took a second dictatorship - Tito's - to hold it together for
another 40 years.
The Balkan as a whole - from Hungary, through Romania and down to
Bulgaria - was prone to authoritarianism and an atavistic, bloody
form of racist, "peasant or native fascism". A primitive region of
destitute farmers and vile politicians, it was exposed to world gaze
by the collapse of communism. There are encouraging signs of
awakening, of change and adaptation. There are dark omens of
reactionary forces, of violence and wrath. It is a battle fought in
the unconscious of humanity itself. It is a tug of war between
memories and primordial drives repressed and the vitality of those
still close to nature.
The outcome of this fight is crucial to the world. Both world wars
started in central eastern and south-eastern Europe. Globalization
is no guarantee against a third one. The world was more globalized
than it is today at the beginning of the century - but it took only
one shot in Sarajevo to make this the most sanguineous century of
all.
An added problem is the simple-mindedness, abrasiveness and sheer
historical ignorance of America, the current superpower. A nation of
soundbites and black or white stereotypes, it is ill-suited to deal
with the nuanced, multilayered and interactive mayhem that is the
Balkan. A mentality of western movies - good guys, bad guys,
shoot'em up - is hardly conducive to a Balkan resolution. The
intricate and drawn out process required taxes American impatience
and bullying tendencies to their explosive limits.
In the camp of the good guys, the Anglo-Saxons place Romania,
Greece, Montenegro and Slovenia (with Macedonia, Croatia, Albania
and Bulgaria wandering in and out). Serbia is the epitome of evil.
Milosevic is Hitler. Such uni-dimensional thinking sends a frisson
of rubicund belligerence down American spines.
It tends to ignore reality, though. Montenegro is playing the
liberal card deftly, no doubt - but it is also a haven of smuggling
and worse. Slovenia is the civilized facade that it so tediously
presents to the world - but it also happened to have harboured one
of the vilest fascist movements, comparable to the Ustasha - the
Domobranci. It shares with Croatia the narcissistic grandiose
fantasy that it is not a part of the Balkan - but rather an outpost
of Europe - and the disdain for its impoverished neighbours that
comes with it.
In this sense, it is more "Balkanian" than many of them. Greece is
now an economically stable and mildly democratic country - but it
used to be a dictatorship and it still is a banana republic in more
than one respect. The Albanians - ferociously suppressed by the
Serbs and (justly) succoured by the West - are industrious and
shrewd people. But - fervent protestations to the contrary aside -
they do seem to be intent on dismantling and recombining both
Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Macedonia, perhaps at a terrible cost to all
involved. Together with the Turks, the Serbs and the Bulgarians, the
Albanians are the undisputed crime lords of the Balkan (and beyond -
witness their incarceration rates in Switzerland).
This is the Balkan - a florilegium of contradictions within
contraventions, the mawkish and the jaded, the charitable and the
deleterious, the feckless and the bumptious, evanescent and exotic,
a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
In this article, I will attempt to study two axes of friction: Islam
versus Christianity and fascism and nationalism versus liberalism.
It is hard to do justice to these topics in the Procrustean bed of
weekly columns - I, therefore, beg the forgiveness of scholars and
the understanding of frustrated readers.