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A foreigner’s view of Belgrade today

I’ve been the darling of the pro-government press in Serbia the last few days, largely because I called on Prime Minister Vucic in front of a lot of photographers. As I’ve sometimes been highly critical of Serbia (especially its behavior in Bosnia and Kosovo), I’m alleged to have changed my opinion, as if that accords a democratic seal of approval.

First: let’s be clear about who I am: just a private citizen with long experience in the Balkans, starting with my first trip to Sarajevo in November 1995. That does not make me more than a devotee of the region whose views are strictly unofficial. If you want to know what the US government thinks, ask its ambassador.

I suppose it is true that I’ve changed my view of Serbia, most of all because Serbia has changed in important ways since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic going on 16 years ago. I’ve given a detailed account of those changes in a recent book chapter that I recommend highly, as any self-respecting professor would. Serbia today has made significant progress away from the electoral autocracy Milosevic ran. Progress towards the European Union was slow under President Tadic but has accelerated under Prime Minister Vucic. Serbia is headed in the right direction.

But that doesn’t mean the road ahead is clear. Here I’ll give a quick summary of just the more important challenges Serbia’s democracy faces today, all of which have more to do with values rather than the more technical requirements of Europe’s acquis communautaire:

• The government exercises excessive influence on the media. This is well-documented by the OSCE as well as others and is the most common complaint I hear from friends across the political spectrum in Serbia. Editors are too often court-appointed, journalists are intimidated, self-censorship is common, media are heavily dependent on government advertising, and the prime minister too often attacks the questioners rather than the questions.
• The courts are neither independent nor efficacious. This makes a difference in many spheres: cases like that of the murdered Albanian American Bytyqi brothers remain unsolved despite many promises to prosecute the perpetrators, impunity for corruption and abuse of state resources is still more the rule than the exception, citizens feel alienated and abused, and investors are wary of risking their resources.
• The security services still require reform. Higher-level war criminals have not been brought to justice, eavesdropping and other domestic spying is too common, police are still not trained to serve and protect, and civilian control is not strictly observed.

Let me add a fourth:

• Russia’s anti-democratic influence has grown by leaps and bounds. Moscow subsidizes candidates, high officials embrace Putin’s autocratic behavior, emotional pan-Slavism is all too common, Belgrade refuses to align itself with European Union sanctions levied in response to the invasion of Ukraine and some even suggest that the US is attempting to mount a Euromaidan type coup in Republika Srpska.

Now one Serb wag or another will respond that all those problems exist in one form or the other in the US as well, even the last. Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration of Vladimir Putin.

My response would be: yes. That’s true. Putin’s Russophilia is just as ridiculous as some of what I’ve heard in Belgrade. Washington also has trouble bringing war criminals to justice, our police mistreat too many citizens, our courts are sometimes subject to too much political influence, and the White House is often accused of manipulating the media, most recently on the Iran nuclear deal. There are differences of degree, and validity, but all democracies continue to struggle with these important issues. Neither the US nor Serbia is an exception.

But I hasten to add that a lot of what I’ve seen here is positive. Last night in Belgrade I attended a packed documentary film about the wholesale murder of Albanians in Kosovo in 1999 and the hiding of their bodies at a police installation in Serbia because Milosevic thought “no bodies–no crime.” The Albanian diplomat who represents Kosovo here came up to introduce himself. I also enjoyed a beer with two friends from Kosovo I met on the street here: one is Serb and the other Albanian. They had driven from Kosovo together yesterday afternoon. Picture that happening 10 years ago.

But it is still is incumbent on a foreign visitor to hold up a mirror and point out the most glaring things needing correction. If he is lucky–and I think I am–he might be heard by those with some power and authority, or those in civil society with energy and influence, to do something to fix things. He can also offer a helping hand, if the local people want it.

If not, he can still write another book chapter, or a blog post.