Kosovo excitement

February 22, 2008

Well, having learned that blogging is really not my preferred mode of writing, I had basically let this page die with little intention of returning to it. However, it seems that recent events in my chosen city of living are now mandating that I write SOMETHING about it, and this is probably the simplest way to get it out there, sooooo… I’m back!
By now the entire world has seen the highly dramatic images of quasi-urban warfare coming out of Belgrade, black gendarmerie jeeps driving in formation through billowing clouds of teargas, angry crowds tearing through a burning US Embassy, all highly cinematic, almost like it was made for TV.
First things first, to answer the dozens of “are you ok?” emails in my inbox, yes, I’m doing just fine, albeit very tired from all the excitement and the slight strain of now very real daily paranoia. The warm welcome and hospitality I felt for a year and half has overnight switched to nasty resentment and blind anger. I have to watch out now because I am simply another dumbass American now in a place filled with a lot of people really, really pissed off at the US government. It’s not the first time and it will undoubtedly not be the last time, but it still is disappointing and frankly infuriating, for my part, that I simply cannot escape the consequences of myopic and totally pigfucked US foreign policy, even when I want nothing whatsoever to do with any of it.
But enough self-pity… I was in the midst of the protest last night for several hours, and I can comment on a few things. The first thing to point out is that, as mentioned before, the images on CNN and co. are indeed highly stylized and dramatic, but the reality of what happened was perhaps a bit less so. For once, the news got it more or less right, it was indeed just a few hundred hooligans, and not representative of the actions of the vast majority of 150,000+ protestors.
I had been moving with the main body of the protest from the National Parliament towards the downtown church that served as its final destination. At the intersection with Kneza Milosa, the large avenue that houses all the embassies and that was the scene of the action last night, I myself broke off from the main body and wandered down that way to check out the US Embassy; I was positive there would be some action there. We’ll return to this point in a bit, but almost as soon as I broke off from the main protest, I immediately noticed groups of hooligans everywhere on the edge gearing up for some trouble. They were finishing up their beer and warming up by breaking signs, stores, or whatever else would crunch and crack nicely, and they already had scarves/masks/hoods over their faces. Rule number 1 in dangerous places: if people are hiding their faces, get the hell out of there because they’re about to do something bad. A second later one of them started jeering at me for taking pics so I took the hint and just walked back into the main protest body, it already felt pretty volatile and dangerous, and I’m sure I would have been a delightful target for them to go after in the fray, a lone dumbass American in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was about 20 minutes before the embassy came under attack, and to me, it was already clear at that point that Kneza Milosa was going to be a hot zone, and boy was I right.
For the record, it should definitely be said that this was NOT the work of the majority of protestors. I was in the midst of the whole thing from beginning to almost the end and 95% of everyone was behaving completely civilly, it was definitely by and large a massive, peaceful protest… There were definitely pockets of hooligans here and there though, but even when smashing windows and looting stores, they kept to themselves and didn’t let the violence spill into the main group all that much. At least that’s what I saw…
The news has covered this in great detail by now and I don’t have anything particularly salient or profound to add except to put my own question mark on the Serbian government’s response as to why this happened. On the one hand, I do understand, to an extent, the validity of the argument that the protest was so massive that there simply weren’t enough police to dedicate to guarding the embassy. It really was THAT big of a protest, the ENTIRE city was filled with people, and from a security point of view I don’t doubt for a second that it was a formidable logistical undertaking.
BUT… That said, I find it almost unbelievable that they did not anticipate action at the US Embassy in particular. I was so sure of this lone fact that I took it for granted when I wandered over the Kneza Milosa to check things out, there wasn’t even any question in my mind that there would be SOMETHING there, and this was before I even saw the hooligans. I actually wondered if the whole protest march was supposed to go in front of the embassy to make a point… So, I’m quite dubious about the fact that the embassy was left totally unguarded at that moment, massive protest or not. SOMEBODY had to have known something was going to happen, and even if not, there was also ample time to see the trouble coming and mount a quick response. Maybe I’m missing something, but wasn’t that why there were vans shock full of riot cops in full gear ready for action just… waiting around, looking pissed off, EVERYWHERE? Why didn’t they get SOME kind of quick tip-off that people were moving on the embassies?
When I reached Slavija, a large traffic circle near the end destination and about a mile away from the embassy on foot, hooligans were already breaking away from the group and frantically running down towards Kneza Milosa. Even then, there was no question about what was going on, especially when one of them stopped for a second to take the scarf off his face and nicely ask a pretty girl what she thought was the fastest way to get to the US Embassy (I’m dead serious). So the question does need to be asked… Did the Serbian government LET this happen? It’s not my place to comment on that.
But that’s it for the speculations… Here are some of the better pics I took of the peaceful part of the protest, since I didn’t get close to the embassy. I have a lot of videos that turned out better that I will try to put up as soon as I figure out how.
Until next time… Pozdrav.