Marcus Tanner: Serbia might once again cause Balkan strife

A Seselj-run Serbia could find plenty to occupy itself in Kosovo, Macedonia and Bosnia

The electoral triumph of Serbia's ultra-nationalists led by Vojislav Seselj leaves Western strategy in the Balkans in ruins. Bang go any hopes of integrating the former Yugoslav republics into the European Union. Ditto the Hague tribunal's hopes of getting hold of the two most wanted war criminals of the 1990s, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

Not only does Seselj's victorious Serbian Radical Party not apologise for the carnage in Bosnia in the 1990s - it would do the same again. If we don't get another war in the Balkans it won't be for lack of enthusiasm for a military project, but because the Serbia they (may) inherit is too feeble to contemplate revanchism by force of arms. A nationalist-run Serbia would not be the roaring lion Yugoslavia was under Slobodan Milosevic. Think more of a furious old cat, hissing away through toothless jaws.

The nationalists, in any case, are not yet in the driving seat. With under 30 per cent of ballots cast, they control only one third of the deputies in the new parliament. Even in alliance with Slobodan Milosevic's supporters, they will marshal only about 100 of the 250 votes. But no one should underestimate the significance of this political earthquake.

In Serbia, and throughout the region, everyone now knows that a messy combination of reformist and not-so reformist parties is clinging to power in Belgrade by a thread. Meanwhile Serbia's nationalists will enjoy the fruits of victory without any of the responsibility. They will claim, with some justice, that Western pressure is all that is keeping them from office.

Vojislav "Vojvode" (duke) Seselj first wowed Serbs in 1992 with a pledge to gouge out secessionist Croat eyes with rusty spoons. Promises to expel all the Albanians from Kosovo, absorb most of Croatia into Serbia and drop bombs on Austria followed. But this was no harmless ranting. Seselj, a Bosnian Serb who had developed his pathological loathing for Tito's federal Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s, became a key ally of Milosevic during the wars of the 1990s in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Until the two men fell out in 1993, Milosevic deputed much of his dirty work to Seselj, who set up a network of paramilitary groups, some known as White Eagles. They carried out some of the foulest atrocities of the war, mainly against civilians in eastern Croatia, which is why Seselj is now in the Hague awaiting trial.

Nearer to home, his thugs roamed the streets under Milosevic's license, terrorising ethnic Albanians, Croats and Bosnians out of their homes. Seselj notoriously emptied a whole village called Hrtkovci in northern Serbia in May 1992. He rolled up in person and ordered all the inhabitants of this Catholic enclave in Orthodox Serbia to get out.

Many will wonder how such a man has risen so far so fast, even in the toxic climate of the Balkans. Some will cite the post-Milosevic government's predictable failure to engineer a West German-style Wirtschaftswunder out of Serbia's economic wasteland. Others will blame the numerous splits in the reformist ranks that gave the government a reputation for instability. But the answer also boils down to the fact that Serbia in 1995 - even after Milosevic's fall in 2000 - resembled Germany in 1918 more than Germany in 1945.

The harsh Ohio peace deal - Serbia's own Versailles - was forced on a nation that remained largely in denial about the crimes in which Serbs were implicated. As in Berlin in 1918, the incoming reformists were unwilling or unable to shake up old networks of power. Many important but unsavoury figures in the police, the secret police and army had defected from Milosevic just before he fell and demanded payback in the form of being left undisturbed. The result was that although Milosevic was gone, his system remained substantially intact, awaiting resurrection. As in Croatia, the reformists were additionally saddled with a traitor's reputation, for "giving in" to the Hague tribunal's constant demands for more arrests and the surrender of indictees.

We can now expect the chancelleries of Europe to press the smaller parties into forming a coalition to keep Seselj out. Even if they succeed, this will be a government composed of many whose instincts are closer to Seselj than to his opponents. From his Hague cell, Seselj will use his control over votes in parliament to block every useful reform, ensuring that Serbia staggers into a fresh election within months in a worse state.

By then the reformists will be even more discredited, Seselj's Radicals may win outright and the Balkans could be in for turbulence. A Seselj-run Serbia could find plenty to occupy itself in Kosovo, Macedonia and Bosnia. The Hague tribunal could forget about extraditing Messrs Mladic and Karadzic in such an eventuality.

Western leaders may wonder if time and the prospect of power have not moderated Seselj's hatred, but there is no evidence that Serbia's military débâcle in 1995 fazed him; on the contrary it gave him a new cause - revenge. "France waited 47 years to recover Alsace-Lorraine," he boasted to the Belgrade weekly magazine Vreme in 1996, "but history is getting faster and faster. We won't wait as long as the French did."

The writer is the author of 'Croatia, A Nation Forged in War' (Yale University Press)