The assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic is deeply shocking — but, sadly, far from unusual in the politics of that country. The pages of its history are littered with stories of political murder.
When King Alexander of Serbia and his queen, Draga, were assassinated exactly one hundred years ago, in 1903, it was already a traditional tool of political upheaval: one king, Michael, had been assassinated three decades earlier, another — also called Alexander — was to die the same violent way three decades later. And, more notoriously, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 unleashed one of the most momentous wars the world has ever known. Recent years have seen no decline in the bloodletting. Since 1997, political assassinations and gangland murders have been too prominent a feature of Serbian life.
Whether this assassination turns out to be the work of local mobsters, as suggested yesterday by the Serbian government, is questionable. Djindjic had tried to take them on in his campaign to normalize Serbian life, but there had been earlier attempts on his life which were very much political in nature. Of course, organized crime and politics are closely intertwined in Serbia; so this could be both.
But while it is easy to dismiss this killing as just another in a long line of purely Balkan tragedies, it would be wrong to believe that Serbs are more prone to violence and bloodshed than others. It is circumstances rather than a defect in the Serb national character that have created a situation where assassination is resorted to. Instability, corruption, rampant organized crime, an economy in ruins, the lack of deep-rooted political institutions, and all complicated by a contempt for the value of human life born from years of oppression — these are what have created the circumstances.
But Serbia is not alone in having to endure them. Similar circumstances exist in Afghanistan following the US-backed overthrow of the Taleban regime. Assassination has been rife there too since then.
There is also a message here for what could happen in a post-Saddam Iraq. Assassination — already a fact of political life in the Kurdish zone — may well become rife there as well. It does not take much imagination to see that the economy would remain in ruins, that the opposition would be at each other’s throats; and behind it all, a contempt for human life. The corruption is already well-entrenched; Saddam Hussein’s family has made millions out of sanctions.
The assassination of Zoran Djindjic provides a sharp and timely reminder of how unstable states can remain when freedom is brought about through the barrel of a gun after a long period of dictatorship, where there are deep social, tribal and ethical rivalries, and no established political institutions. Slobodan Milosevic was toppled as a result of US air strikes during the Kosovo conflict giving heart to the opposition movement of which Djindjic was a principal character.
As we contemplate a US-led war to topple Saddam, Djindjic’s assassination brings into focus the turbulence ahead for Iraq, a turbulence that is as likely to destabilize this region as the killing will destabilize the Balkans.
