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“Ancient ethnic hatreds”, Novi Pazar style

Novi PazarNovi PazarThat the Balkans is a land whose past cannot be distinguished from its present, whose history is an active and even dominant force in its current social and political climate, is a common cliché perpetuated by a good number of foreign journalists to the region.

Take for example the widely read American travel writer Robert Kaplan. In his bestselling travel journal Balkan Ghosts, a book praised by the New York Times and read by Bill Clinton, Kaplan flecks his travel accounts with references to the region’s dark, bloody past, trumpeting the notion that the region will never be at peace because of the innate “ancient ethnic hatreds” of its people. He even goes so far as to inaccurately label the region the birthplace of nationalism. Calling Southern Serbia a “sanctum of dogma, mysticism, and savage beauty,” he writes that only there, “national life was lived. Only from here could it ever emerge.”

Before moving to Belgrade, I assumed such sensationalized conclusions were nothing more than a simplification of the region’s complex history and current situation, and my time in the capital city has only proved my assumption correct. Little in Belgrade, with its chic cafes, globally minded youth, and well-traveled pre-Milosevic generation suggests that the people of Serbia stand with one foot in the annals history.

But after traveling five hours south and west to Novi Pazar, I found it hard not to tightly link the existing community with its age-old past.

Novi Pazar, a small unassuming city in Southwest Serbia, and its surrounding area are dotted with landmarks that not only reflect the region’s history but actually epitomize every major historical era from the dawn of the Serbian nation to communism and its eventual failure. The 9th century ruins of Ras, the capital of the first organized Serbian state, lie just a few kilometers outside of the town, as do several of the earliest Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries largely ruined by the Turkish invasion but restored between the two World Wars. In the town itself, fifteenth century mosques from Novi Pazar’s days as a trading hub under the Ottoman Empire still remain in use. And then you have the hotel Vrbak, a geometric distopia of concrete and glass that truly embodies the peculiarities of Yugoslavia’s communist period architecture.

Not only do landmarks reflect the region’s deep history, but the people there also appear to live along borders drawn over 500 years ago. Urban Muslims dominate the town while Serbian farmers live scattered throughout the hills, reflecting the Ottoman age when Muslims ruled over Serbian peasants from town centers.

My conversation with an orthodox monk at the Djurdjevi Stupovi monastery just outside town only solidified my perception of the link between the divided communities and their Ottoman past. As we talked he leaped between stories of contemporary Muslim-Serb neighbors who barely speak to one another and stories of Turks 700 years ago who scratched out the eyes of saints and apostles depicted in the few frescos that survived the Ottoman invasion. And he told me all this as though it all happened just yesterday.

Leaving the monastery I felt a bit duped. Maybe Kaplan and all the stories of the backwards-looking Balkans were right after all?

Wanting to see a second monastery about 15 km outside of town, I returned to Novi Pazar to catch a cab. As we drove, the driver proceeded to tell me all about the city’s problems from the high unemployment rate resulting from the loss of a sizable denim industry, to the steady flow of villagers into town and townspeople into northern cities, to the spread of poorly planned and under-funded construction. Not once in his rant did he mention ethnicity. He blamed the wars in both Bosnia and in Kosovo for the economic state of his town and even said the town itself had come close to falling into war, but managed to avoid it in the end. Despite living in a town sandwiched between two ethnically divided wars, the prominent concerns on this man’s mind had nothing to do with ethnic divisions whose roots run centuries deep.

Clearly Kaplan and his kind are not correct in the end. If this taxi driver saw economic hardship as a bigger problem than ethnic conflict, and if Novi Pazar, a town brimming with history and ethnic division, managed to withstand a decade of neighboring ethnic war, then clearly the dark, violent tendencies of the past are not as alive in the present the “ancient ethnic hatreds” theory would like us all to think.


One of the monks of the

One of the monks of the highest range from Djurdjevi Stupovi is a very close relative of Milan Lukovic Legija, and during Sablja, there were rumours that Legija was hidden in that very monastery for a while (just for the record).
I really do not know of many neighbours who barely speak to one another because of their ethnicity.
It is nice that you took seriously a story of a cab driver and his point of view, but next time, try visiting monasteries and/but mosques as well. It would be fair enough.


It all makes sense now!

Bill Clinton's Balkans policy was based on his readings of sensationalist travel writers. No wonder he didn't have a clue.


Revision!

Lucy... Kaplan's book was heavily influenced by the political situation it was written in. I rarely would consider anything written about a war, while the war is happening (any war) to be trustworthy. Usually the writters fall into the mind-set (or payroll) of one of the opposing sides. Books and Journalism is BUSINESS, they tend to write what sells.
And incidently, as both a WESTERNER and Balkan-boy, I'm sick of Europe constantly Defining the BALKANS. I often feel that these analyst pricks critique the Balkans just so the west can feel good about themselves.
The truth is (AND THIS IS THE TRUTH) that the peoples of the Balkans had less conflict history between them than GERMANY and FRANCE for instance. Outside 4 years in WWII and the last 10 years, the people of ex-Yugoslavia have never been at arms against each other in almost 1000 years of sharing these rocky Balkans!
In the end it's Perspective. The west has a VERY poor perspective on the Balkans. Kaplan goes to N.Pazar and finds some sort of 'nucleus of nationalism'. Let's me and you go to Alabama, Mississippi, Florida... see what kind of Red-neck racist hick bastards we find. Let's write a book about it and call it the 'Nucleus of Slavery'. Let's look at the West with the same CRITICAL eyes the west applies to the Balkans and let's see what we find.
The great powers always used the Balkans... Now they're using them to re-write their own history... World war 1, nationalism and all the great tragedies of the 20th Century are no longer the consequence of Colonial injustice and Great Power Politics... No, now all the tragedies of the 20th century are The Balkans fault. We started it all, we influenced it all, we poisoned the entire world with our hate... England, Russia, Germany, France the US... They were just inocent bystandards trying to get a grip.... We're cleaver bastards aren't we!


solomon,

i agree with you, although you were losing control step by step in your comment. but, i don`t blame you for that.

western eyes are blind; nobody is interested what is realy going on under the surface of media psycho-propaganda that was being made relying on each other`s (mis)understanding of the problem, that was maybe wrong (false) from a very begining. for exempel, cnn journalist confides kaplan, while kaplan suits the needs of his readers and free-market laws writing about misunderstandings on sidewards of war-propaganda and national prophets.

the intruder question_how much longer ?


Quote:"In the town itself,

Quote:
"In the town itself, thirteenth century mosques..."

Impossible since the first Turk stepped on our Christian soil in the late 14th c., and Serbia fell in the mid-15th century (some 70 years after the battle of Kosovo).

"13th century" is the period 1200-1299 AD. You know that, right?

Islam is the main source of backwardness, hatred and instability.

Regards,
M

===========
IC XC NI KA


Not to mention

Not to mention that the city itself was founded cca 1459. The first mosque probably dates back to that period.

I am really puzzled why B92 chooses to host blogs for just about anyone who blogs in English? Lucy, no offense, but you're a young American woman who lives in Belgrade - that's all. You really have no expertise on the subjects you write about. The same is true of many of the other English-language bloggers. Why then are they even here? But, I suppose I'm answering my own question by reading and commenting on these pages...

Sure, anyone can write about anything them want on the internet. But by giving them a place on B92, you're giving these people prominence they could never hope to achieve on the sole merits of their writing.


Lucy for the president!

Well, I wouldn't go that far, but leave Lucy alone. It's true that criteria for foreign bloggers are more lax than for Serbian ones. I guess that B92 expected that they will all denigrate Serbia incessantly. But from what I can see, most of these foreigners are bigger Serbs than some "Serbian" B92 bloggers. I could agree with most of what Lucy said in this post.


Promasena tema

It's not a question of agree or disagree, or "pro-Serbia" or "anti-Serbia". I hate that kind of categorization and that's not what I'm advocating here.

All I am saying is that if you're blogging on B92 in the "VIP" section, you should really qualify as a VIP by something you've accomplished, or some specific insight you might have, and not solely because you're a foreigner living in Serbia. That kind of attitude hints at our (Serbian) sense of inferiority, in that we believe *any* foreigner is better or more qualified than us just for being a foreigner.

For e.g. I would not mind having Tim Judah blog here, or even someone like Will Montgomery, Wes Clark, Jamie Shea, even if some of these names are controversial and probably hated here. Those are examples of people with real newsworthy insight.

Putting the foreigners we have here on a B92 VIP blog gives them access to a much wider audience than they would be able to earn on their own.


What makes you an expert?

What makes you an expert on the subject? The fact that you're a Serb? Unless I see PhD in Serbian history attached to your name, then save it.

Do us a favor and drop the condescending attitude towards foreign people who blog here, especially the ones who go out of their way to understand Serbs and don't pass judgment on them automatically like 95% of the rest of the world.

Your "no offense" gambit failed miserably. If there's one thing about Serbs that gets under my skin it's the "you have no right to say anything about Serbia because you're not a Serb" attitude. I run into it all the time in Chicago and it's utter crap. You would do so well to practice what you preach when it comes to making comments about other people, religions, and countries.

As for your last sentiment, I really enjoy Lucy's and the other foreigner's posts about Serbia, because I don't understand the language yet. If you're going to comment on the merits of their writing, at the very least try to make sure that yours is not antagonistic, patronizing, and condescending. Is that too much to ask?


your right...

...about the date. That was suppose to be 15th century. I changed it.

...but not about Islam. Can you actually defend such an extreme statement?


yeap, here some evidence:


Sure. Find me one Islamic

Sure. Find me one Islamic country that's a democracy. The Islamic culture is not receptive to dissent, tolerance, citizenship and the most basic of human rights. It promotes oppression, violence and submission.

From 630 AD until the present day, it has not changed. Its aim is global domination and subjugation of the infidels (us Christians and the Jews, first and foremost).


Here are two:

Turkey and Iran.


Iran is not a democracy. The

Iran is not a democracy. The unelected Supreme Leader has pretty much absolute power (holds absolute power over the armed forces and the secret service, and has the power to declare war) and appoints 6 of the 12 members of the Council of Guardians. He is ranked above the President of Iran (who is elected). If someone wants to run for president s/he has to be pre-approved by the Council of Guardians.

I have nothing against Iran, but Iran is clearly not a democracy.

Turkey could be classified as a democracy but Turkey is not an Islamic country (unlike the Islamic Republic of Iran). The main religion is Islam, but Turkey has a secular constitution and laws are generally free of religious influences. There is a clear division of church (for the lack of a better word) and state.

The only reason why Turkey was able to move towards a democratic society was Ataturk's break with Islam and the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1922.


Islam extremism in Serbia

This unfortunate statement is accepted truth in Serbia used to destroy all the mosques after 1848 promise in Berlin not to do so. And they repeated it on remaining two in Belgrade and Niss recently. Banja Luka brothers mined UNESCO registred Ferhadija. Compare that with important Serbian monuments still left at Kosovo after 500 years of Turkish occupation.

GWB war on terror plays in Serbian hands against Islam with Russian help. Balkans curse resulting in economic disaster.

Regards from Ljubljana & come and see western Slaves!


Quote:Compare that with

Quote:
Compare that with important Serbian monuments still left at Kosovo after 500 years of Turkish occupation.

Are you on drugs?! 150+ churches and monasteries have been blown up over the past 8 years alone and more than 400 mosques have been built; some over the rubbles of the dynamited Serbian churches.

Quite a few of those churches & monasteries were on the UNESCO World Heritage list.


Have to say that I disagree

Have to say that I disagree strongly with where Kaplan came from in his book. In a word patronising, speaking to the 'civilised' whilst explaining the backward tribes of the Balkans locked in ancient ethnic struggles and bound to tradition etc etc etc...


Srdjan Mitrovic je upravio

Srdjan Mitrovic je upravio izbisao sve komentare sa svog prljavog, pljuvackog bloga uperenog protiv glumice Sonje Savic.

Predlazem da se Srdjanu Mitrovicu uskrati dalje pravo pisanja, tj. vodjenja bloga na B92.


zoxter,

podrzavam tvoj predlog.
inache, priprema postupka vec je u toku.


Taj lik je mamlaz zesci. Ne

Taj lik je mamlaz zesci. Ne znam zasto posecujes njegov blog. Ovih dana zaista svako ima blog na B92.


Had the 'civilized' West

Had the 'civilized' West kept its nose out of our business, there would've been no 'ancient ethnic hatreds' to begin with. Their centuries-long policy of divide et impera is the main cause of the ongoing crises in the Balkans.

The 'ancient ethnic hatreds' approach is the stupidest theory I've heard. What 'ancient ethnic hatreds'? That's a very convenient way for the West to avoid responsibility for the mess they've created.


"Black Lamb and Grey Falcon"...

...is a brilliant book by Rebecca West, a british journalist, writer, intellectual, feminist, extremely eloquent, knowledgeable, educated and witty. She writes about her visit to Yugoslavia sometime in the 30ies, with so much understanding and knowledge on the history and culture and so much openness and love to Yugoslav people. It is an extremely valuable account on the whole Balkan region, yet much more objective and relevant than any of the thousands of books written since the war broke out.
You should definitely read it, it's huge (1000 and then some pages!) but it's definitely worth it!


West's is one of the best

West's is one of the best books I've ever had the pleasure of reading!

H. W. Temperley's "History of Serbia" is THE best book on Serbia out there.


innate “ancient ethnic hatreds”

Honestly Lucy, it's a "bull". I was never born into a state of hatred although I was born and have lived the most part of my life in Novi Pazar. Never felt hatred among my fellow neighbours, classmates, friends either (and all mentioned were a mixture of both ethnic groups). Up until today our people pay respect to eachother's newborns, death, festive occasions and beyond "the occasions" are co-existing with no issues of animosity or hypocrisy (assuming that hatred is our innate state of being). Our people do have differences, but so do many other nations. And its about understanding those differences and not about "finding the root cause" for the same deep in history that will keep us going forward together.