IS MONTENEGRO THE NEXT?

Yıl 2001, Cilt: 6 Sayı: 4, 0 - 0, 01.12.2001

Nazif Mandacı

Öz

Montenegro was one of the two former Yugoslav republics that remained loyal to the idea of Yugoslavism in the beginning of the endgame in the Yugoslav geography. What Belgrade did during the disintegration process primarily in Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia was shared by Podgorica as well. Although he had been in the throngs of the nomenclature that waged war against the rebellious republics of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia FRY , the current Montenegrin President Djukanovic now expresses his nation’s regret for being an ally of the Belgrade regime in the crimes committed against the Croatian people during the civil war in the early 1990s.1 Podgorica under the rule of its Western-oriented new élite, now seeks a new direction, when the very reason, namely the tyranny of Milosevic, that urged it to do so does not exist any more. Many experts see Montenegro as the last but not the least of the stones that detaches from the Yugoslav rocky mass. Just like in the beginning of the Yugoslav tragedy in the 1990s, this republic —or the last remaining republic that is a satellite of Serbia— seeking its independence is warned about the undesirable implications of its act. It is underlined that if Montenegro is separated, it will constitute a moral ground for the other detachments in Bosnia-Herceg Bosna, Republica Sirpska and Kosovo and even Sandzak as well as Vojvodina. Ironically, the same warnings on the grounds that the belligerents should sit around the negotiation table rather than rush to the independence whatever it costs, were made to the Croatians and the Slovenes in the early 1990s, yet they did not listen, thereby giving way to the bloodshed that will never be erased from the collective memory of mankind.2 This article aims to seek an answer to the question whether the recent developments demonstrated to the world that history repeats itself, and Montenegro is resolved to defy it against all odds, and to highlight the conditions that may change the sight of the events from the struggle for independence to an Yugoslav intra-élite power politics.