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Declarations about a "pure Serbian Kosovo" bring back the shadows of the past and show that some dangerous ideas have not yet disappeared from Serbian politics...
If she had been in Slobodan Milosevic's place in 1998, Snezhana Paunovic would have "cleansed" Kosovo of Albanians. This political figure, who in an interview for the Kurir newspaper spoke about the undertakings started but unfinished in the history of Serbs, is a minister in the government of Gjuro Macu.
While expressing her regret for not carrying out an ethnic pogrom against Albanians, Paunovic tried to imagine herself in the role of Milosevic in the past and accomplish what he did not complete. Not that she didn't want to. She just couldn't.
Minister Paunovic carries with her the political legacy of the Milosevic era and came to the government from Ivica Dacic's party. This political force has long since dissolved within the SNS, lost its identity and is gradually fading away.
Today, Paunovic revives Milosevic's unfinished ideas for an ethnically pure Serbian Kosovo, implying that he lacked the strength and determination to do what, according to this view, "had to be done."
For this reason, she also builds a political fantasy: the transfer of the historical role, the wish that she had been in his place then. In her imaginary journey through time, Paunović skips some important parts of the painful myth about the "Serbian holy land", but tries to give herself the role of the leader who would realize a criminal idea that remained half-finished.
Many ideas and many crimes have been realized throughout history. But a minister of today's Serbia suddenly claims that Milosevic did not do everything he needed to. According to this logic, only the final step was missing.
Does this frightening nostalgia for an unrealized ethnic cleansing stem from the fact that the past in Serbia has not yet been completely closed. However, some processes related to Kosovo are already irreversible.
Paunovic, originally from Peja, claims that she would not have marked her "life's work" with liquidations. According to her, Albanians would have fled to their countries of origin. But such a departure cannot happen without expulsion and deportation.
Meanwhile, according to this logic, those who would be declared "terrorists" would be physically destroyed and everything would end in a "safe" and peaceful manner.
“pure.” This is precisely where the source of her anger and disappointment lies: regret for a national project that was not realized.
With this national-chauvinist outburst, the minister in Macu's (actually Vučić's) government once again placed the thesis of the "final solution" at the center. In this vision, nothing else stands in the way of the idea of a Kosovo "heart of Serbia," except for the Albanians who live there.
They simply do not exist as a factor when it comes to the fate of Kosovo. This would also be the central theme of the concept of the “Serbian world”, where there is no place for others. The current leader has accepted everything, claiming that he has given nothing, and from this chaotic political philosophy was born the armed adventure with Milan Radojcic at the helm.
It was a clear reflection of Kosovo's new "heroes" and perhaps the last disastrous attempt by the supreme commander of the army, police, and shadowy structures to do something that would remain in history.
Everything that has happened and that has turned the recent history of Serbs and Albanians into a tragic experience, while political solutions that have long been in agony, have not extinguished dreams of a "more efficient" past.
The minister's reminder of "unfinished business" is a sign that in some minds in Serbia the illusion still survives that major crimes could have been a useful tool for achieving political goals.
It seems that there are still few people there willing to face reality. Instead of empty declarations, pathetic curses and romanticization of past warriors, it would be more useful to help Serbs and Albanians live in that space that has been destroyed for decades by hatred, territorial claims and the belief that coexistence is impossible.
This requires what seems increasingly rare today: reason. The nostalgia for an ethnic cleansing that was not carried out to the end, which Minister Paunović publicly preserves as "the loss of her life", indicates a serious darkening of the political debate in Serbia and the continuation of a deep social and moral crisis. / Pamphlet from 'Vijesti'
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