Montenegro

IF YOU WALK DOWN the tree-lined main boulevard in Podgorica, the diminutive capital of the tiny Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, you brush with vitality and affluence, albeit 1999 East European style. Restaurants and cafes are full. So are the smart-looking shops. A member of our delegation found elegant dress shoes she could buy at a fraction of what it would cost her back home in Berlin. She also could have bought them at 9 or 10 in the evening, an impossibility in her own country’s still carefully regulated social market economy. Shops in Podgorica are bustling well after dark.

Evenings in this beautiful little town surrounded by the mountains are splendid. City authorities close off 10 straight blocks to traffic at nightfall and the promenade begins. Well-dressed people. Strikingly tall people, the women included. And hauntingly beautiful. Our advance man had informed us before we arrived — “there’s something genetic going on here.”

Montenegro is the last stop on a six-day fact-finding mission to the Balkans organized by the New Atlantic Initiative and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (Kosovo was the penultimate). But the last is not least. Everyone wants to know, Is Montenegro the next war?

There’s a stirring intensity here. In the lobby of my hotel, Crna Gora (“the Black Mountain”), the desk clerk is cheering wildly at a small television set behind the counter. It’s not a soccer match, but Podgorica’s own live coverage of a session in the Montenegrin parliament. In the face of bitter opposition, the democratically elected government of 37-year-old Milo Djukanovic has just succeeded in pushing through a new law on Montenegrin citizenship — another little step toward independence from Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia, the dominant partner in the Yugoslav federation. Like many people in Podgorica, the staff is almost desperately friendly to Western visitors. You wonder if they are telling you in code, “Please don’t forget us when the bloodshed begins.” Otherwise, on the eve of the next conflict, things appear calm in this place of strange paradoxes.

On the one hand, Montenegrins, at least in the city, live quite well. Streets are filled with Western cars, and upscale models at that. Conversation seems to turn as much on the next espresso as it does on questions of war and peace. And there’s a cheerfulness one encounters that stands in stark contrast to the postwar misery and tension that still dominate life in Kosovo. On the other hand, inflation may approach 100 percent by year’s end and unemployment, by some estimates, is a staggering 80 percent. The economy, it turns out, is propped up by USAID money and a booming informal sector that includes a thriving smuggling industry, from cigarettes to drugs.

Although Djukanovic leads a pro-West government that opposes the rule of a Serbian tyrant and seeks association with the West, his country is still part of the Yugoslav Republic, and Djukanovic himself was, until recently, a close ally of President Milosevic. In 1989 Djukanovic played an important role, in fact, in helping to replace the old leadership of Montenegro with a pro-Milosevic one. In the current standoff with Belgrade, Djukanovic controls the country’s customs service and a police force and militia that total some 18,000. Milosevic controls the Montenegrin armed forces, which are slightly larger in number.

How complicated can the situation be? During the Kosovo war, NATO hit Montenegrin airfields but avoided the naval port of Bar, Serbia’s only bit of coastline on the Adriatic. Djukanovic helped convince the Yugoslav navy to avoid entering the conflict — and the United States thanked him for this by pledging an informal security guarantee for Montenegro. Since the war’s end, Washington has also been working to exempt Montenegro from some of the sanctions being pressed on Yugoslavia, an understandably difficult task.

But there is still some truth in the phrase “Montenegro is Serbia.” (This is the favorite terse warning of pro-Milosevic forces when the question of independence is posed — just as it once was for Kosovo.) In the First World War, Montenegrins sacrificed themselves to permit their Serb allies to retreat to Greece to regroup and fight again. In 1991 it was Montenegrin forces who were primarily responsible for the savage bombing and looting of Croatia’s treasured city of Dubrovnik.

If this little republic of 620,000 emerges as the next Balkan killing fields, one can imagine that the fighting will be difficult and fierce. The terrain is mountainous; the fighting spirit legendary. The wiriest and the toughest seem to hail from Montenegro: the famous Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas, Milosevic’s own father, the indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic (the trained psychiatrist who once acted as one of Milosevic’s leading representatives in carrying out the atrocities in Bosnia).

On the trip wire of independence, Djukanovic’s foreign minister, Branko Perovic, says the government wants to avoid “clear deadlines” with Belgrade and would like to “postpone a referendum as long as possible.” Predrag Bulatovic, the middle-aged apparatchik who leads the “moderate” wing of the pro-Milosevic party, hints at swift retribution, saying that independence means “we will respond equally.” For now it’s a game of chicken.

The Djukanovic government proposed a renegotiation of the relationship between Montenegro and Serbia in August. Milosevic refuses to reject the initiative out of hand and makes clear that independence is unacceptable. The government in Podgorica maintains a go-slow approach and at the same time continues to establish facts on the ground that spell eventual independence.

Most recently, Montenegro introduced the deutsche mark as a parallel currency to the Yugoslav dinar. Meanwhile, pro-Milosevic opposition leaders have helped initiate a new federal security service which would give Belgrade full control of all military and civilian intelligence in Montenegro. Tit for tat. Preparing for the showdown.

Milosevic could smother Montenegro if he wanted to (Serbia’s population is 10 million). It’s possible he will use this slender swath of land as his last stand to defend Greater Serbia. That is, Greater Serbia less the breakaway republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and the province of Kosovo. He might consider deploying the Yugoslav army, still smarting from its defeat in Kosovo, and, like Russian forces in Chechnya, looking for redemption and renewed self-esteem.

It’s more likely, though, that Milosevic will quietly help unleash a civil war. In the pro-Milosevic north of the republic, Belgrade has already reportedly infiltrated some 2,000 paramilitary forces to prepare for the fight. In following this course, Milosevic would do what he does best: Strike, retreat, wait for the West to react, and then watch us wring our hands while we fret about what to do next.

No one believes that Djukanovic can postpone a decision on independence forever. Some government officials speculate on a referendum as early as spring. Polls indicate between 40 and 50 percent in favor and 40 percent against. If Djukanovic can spur the economy with the help of his new currency, he’ll campaign hard for 60 percent support. It is possible that Djukanovic’s real endgame is not independence, but rather to replace Milosevic himself.

In the meantime, the Serbian dictator will try to stir things up. Trouble in Montenegro may even help Milosevic divert attention from his own worsening economic and political crisis. “A cart is rolling down the hill, picking up speed,” says Muhamed Sacirbey, Bosnian ambassador to the United Nations who has his own experience in dealing with Milosevic. “The question,” says Sacirbey, “is when it will hit the wall.”

So what will the West do? One adviser to the Blair government says “the Blair people put their foot down recently” when they learned that defense planners in London were conducting the politically incorrect exercise of thinking out intervention scenarios for Montenegro. As usual, secretary of state Madeleine Albright also enjoys being a hawk on the cheap. The administration promises more economic aid to Montenegro and support for the forces of “democratic change.” But Albright opposes independence, and has little to say about Montenegro’s security.

What’s more, the administration refused to help Djukanovic raise the $ 40 million he pleaded for during his visit to Washington in early November to offset his depleting foreign reserves. Djukanovic had hoped that Washington’s assistance would help gin up support from the Europeans who themselves have dithered from helping Montenegro, in part for fear of offending Russia.

In the end, intervention will be ugly. Yugoslav forces stationed inside Montenegro total 20,000 and are thought to be staunchly pro-Milosevic, at least at the commanding officers’ level. Public opinion inside Montenegro will remain divided on independence. A new war will also mean a serious challenge to U.S. policy in the Balkans. Milosevic still plays a hand in Kosovo, offering moral and logistical support to Serb militants who seek to make life extremely difficult. In Mitrovica, a town in northern Kosovo, the Serbs have been consolidating their own de facto partition.

“Don’t think it’s impossible,” says a senior NATO official, “for Milosevic to push his way back into Kosovo” at some point. Even in Bosnia, and even after the defeat in Kosovo, some Serbs still proudly fly the flag of Belgrade from their apartment balconies, making clear where their loyalties lie. A victory for Milosevic in Montenegro would radicalize Serb behavior throughout the region. More important, perhaps, it would undermine the nascent democratic opposition inside Serbia proper.

The Balkan madness began this decade when the butcher of Belgrade cut loose and an American administration concluded that the United States “had no dog in the fight.” We’re in it now. One way to avoid the next war? Tell Milosevic that if we have to intervene in Montenegro, we’re finally coming to Belgrade. It’s a visit long overdue.

Jeffrey Gedmin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative.