Day 15

I've come to my final week in Serbia. I can't believe it's already 2/3rds of the way over. I'm still waiting for a few interviews to come through but I have what I'm hoping will be a great one on Wednesday with Vladan Živulović the president of The Atlantic Council of Serbia. I'll also be going to a conference on EU-Serbian integration on June 22nd which should make for a lot of very interesting contacts to take home with me.

Thus far I've had seven formal interviews. Three of them are professors of political science, one a former chief editor at Politika, another a member of the DSS intelligentsia, another a visiting political scientist, and finally a Serbian official at the USAID Competitiveness Project. Everyone has a different perspective but interestingly enough I've found the following issues to be foremost in these people's minds:

ICJ ruling on Kosovo
Everyone is in agreement that the ICJ will refrain from taking one side or another. One of my interviewees went so far as to say that really the opinion has no significance what so ever. The others however, look at the ruling as significant in that it makes political space for movement on the part of the Serbian government. One of my interviewees said that the ICJ ruling will contain hints of opinion either towards the American et al. side or the Serbian et al. side which will determine the subsequent policies. Another of my interviewees said that the ICJ ruling will allow the Serbian government to begin to step back from the Kosovo issue by telling the voters look we did all we can. All agree that deciding to recognize Kosovo would have catastrophic effects upon Serbian politics. The main question seems to be how to proceed forwards in international politics with this given.

EU Visas
Everyone I've spoken with seems to agree that this has to happen this year. That the EU has strung Serbia on far enough. There was a huge amount of expectation following the last election. Several of my interviewees have stressed the importance of the last election. Following the declaration of independence by Kosovo Tadic (DS) and Kostuncia (DSS) split over how to handle the issue. Kostunica wanted it to be a stumbling block to the EU while Tadic advocated a more moderate approach.

NATO membership
There strong division on this issue. One interviewee said that it may very well prove to be a source of further conditionality by the international community especially if the US and Russia continue in the Cold War-esque standoff begun during Bush administration over the proposed missile shield defense system. My other interviewees have been dismissive of this concern. One said that Serbia will be able to choose whether or not it wants to join and the international community will not do anything about it. Another advocated approaching the issue from another direction. The commonly sited statitics over Serbia and NATO is the fact that around 75% of Serbs are against NATO while nealry the same percentage is for the EU. My interviewee said that given NATO's bombing of the region it is significant that 25% of those surveyed are in favor of joining NATO. Moreover he pointed to other surveys which have found that support for Serbia's current Partnership for Peace(PfP) which is a political alliance with NATO without full military commitments is at 60%. This means, therefore, that Serbs do want to be aligned with NATO at least politically.

Impact of EU conditionality
This is perhaps the most surprising result of my interviews and the point which makes me so greatful I've come here to conduct this research. I am learning the importance of distinguishing between rhetoric and practice and between what the US media reports and the actual behind the scenes actions/relations of the politicians. I have heard, from several of my interviewees (which is signifiant considering how much they disagree) that "threats" made by foreign leaders leading up to an election have not had a detrimental effect upon the ability of the political parties within Serbia to obtain votes. Moreover, some have told me that really the EU doesn't have the power that it would like to think it has. However, I have now heard the phrase several times "using gasoline to stop a fire" in reference to the issues of the ICTY and Kosovo and continued delayed EU promises.
There's more to say but I'm running out of brains :-p I'll go into it more later. --Suzie

Day 13

Alec landed safely in Lima albeit 6 hours but he's there.

Yesterday I had an interview with Professor Jovan Teokarevic at the faculty of political science which went quite well. It was great to talk to someone who was well aware of the politics of Serbia and the EU. He came right out and said that he believed that some point in the future Serbia will have to make a choice between Kosovo and EU membership. This is a significant statement. Everyone else I have spoken to has danced around the issue. It was marvelous to speak to someone who undersands the domestic-international political dynamic on a practical rather than simply theoretical stance.

He actually brought up some of my major concerns vis-a-vis EU policy/ trajectory-- he mentioned the little known 2006 amendment in the French constitution which stated that after Croatia the French public would have to vote in favor of each member states acession. All member countries must vote unanimously for a state to enter the EU. As Jovan said bringing the French public into the equation would have been catastrophic. Luckily under Sarkozy the amendment was nulled.

Jovan and others are calling for Thesoloniki II. The Thesoloniki conference occured in 2003 between SE European countries and EU officials in which the EU affirmed that the SE European countries' futures do lie within the EU (as opposed to Belarus and Ukraine). Since then, however, the commitment of the EU to the region has been incredibly blurry.

Jovan said that the unspoken message conveyed by the EU to Eastern Europe acessor states in the late 1990s differs strongly from the one attitude currently conveyed to the Balkans. The message to Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, etc.) was that you will get in once you are ready. To the Balkans (Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania) the message is that you will get in once you are ready and once we (EU states) are ready as well.

Consequently, Jovan said, despite the posturing of the states to the contrary, all Balkan states are rooting for each other to get in.

Anyways it was a very interesting interview.

I came back and spent the rest of the day waiting for Alec's call-- he got a weak signal to send an email and have a 3 minute skype call at 11pm last night and finally got my longer call this morning at 4:30am. I am understandably taking a bit longer to get up this morning :-p

I'm posting some pictures I took on Thursday walking around town. The pink toes picture above is the view form Kalemegdon.

Day 7.2

Interview with Bogdana went quite well.

Still processing...

On the frivolous side today I got The Prisoner of Azkaban, Where's Waldo in Hollywood, and a Tintin collection in Serbian!!! annnd, even better, I successfully paid for them using only Serbian! (Vesna you should be very proud :-p)

I also made a waiter laugh by ordering in Serbian, I guess my accent was bad but he said he understood me. Speaking of which, yesterday I forgot to mention, I went to buy musli, and yogurt at a corner store and freaked the clerk out because he honest to goodness thought I spoke Serbian-- I should explain-- I've gotten good at doing the smiling and nodding thing when I kind of understand what's going on through body language and minimal language skills. Apparenty I did such a good job that he totally bought it-- it took a few seconds to convince him that I actually had no idea what he had been saying. Luckily he thought it was funny! Once again I'm the wierd American girl traipsing around a foreign country trying not to act like an idiot and often failing.

Experiences like these are helping to balance the intensity of my interviews.
Sigh... okay so tomorrow I have a meeting with Dusan Pavlovic at the Faculty of Political Science at 12:30. Planning on taking my first Serbian taxi! (thanks once again Vesna for the number!) I tried to figure out the buses but I couldn't find a bus map anywhere online. I probably should have just gone to a bus stop or some place for a hard copy but silly me I'm used to everything being online accessible. Oh well. According to my maps it's only a few km away so shouldn't be a big deal. I'm going to call at 11 and hopefully it'll all work out!!!

Missing everyone and for all my non-Serb readers-- you must put Belgrade at the top of your international travel to-do list. :-D