>From Johnsons Russia List 3303 25 May 1999
#10
The Guardian (UK)
May 25, 1999
[for personal use only]
Serb experts get the cold shoulder 
Their knowledge of Serbia is vast, yet the expertise of academics is ignored, 
says Peter Kingston

"If I had been advising the prime minister on March 23..." Celia Hawkesworth, 
senior lecturer in Serbian and Croatian studies at London university's School 
of Slavonic and East European Studies, pauses. The fact is that she and her 
colleagues have not been asked to advise Tony Blair, or any of the other 
panjandrums running the British end of the Balkan campaign. 

So accustomed have she and her colleagues become to the notion that their 
expertise on the peoples, their histories, languages, politics and cultures 
is not required by the decision-makers that she clearly feels embarrassment 
at having started the sentence. 

Had the premier called her, she would have given the same advice she thinks 
he would have got from any Balkan academic, viz that the bombing wouldn't 
work. "I would have said that it would homogenise the country and undermine 
all those people who have been opposed to Slobodan Milosevic in increasingly 
large numbers. I would have told him some thing to understand the mechanism 
that Milosevic has been using - of the symbolic significance of Kosovo in 
Serbian history and culture which Milosevic has exploited." 

The difference between this and previous conflicts is the volume of email 
communication between the 30-40 academics here specialising in various 
aspects of the Balkans and their contacts in Serbia. No doubt the same is 
true for academics in other countries. 

"I can get 10 emails a day from Serbia," says Hawkesworth.The recurrent 
messages from her contacts, academics, non-government organisations, people 
who had courageously spoken out against the regime in power and had said they 
were making ground, are that their task has been put back years. 

"Their cry of woe is that they've invested an enormous effort in trying to 
function normally and oppose him and they feel betrayed by countries that 
have been their models - western democracies. It's no longer possible to 
appeal on behalf of democracy because this is where it leads - to being a 
bigger bully." 

Academics feel frustrated to be holding all these communications from inside 
Serbia without having an official outlet for them, she says. Some of the 
emails are sent straight to government with rows of academics' signatures 
saying: read the above. I haven't initiated any. I've just signed them." 

Between the Balkans flaring up in 1991 and the Deyton Accord, a substantial 
number of young people came to Britain to finish their interrupted studies in 
a range of subjects or to avoid conscription. From 1992 the bulk came from 
Bosnia, she says. 

Among these, a few have come to the School of Slavonic Studies to study their 
own culture because they want to understand what has been going on there, she 
says. "It's very difficult when you are responsible for an area which is in a 
state of conflict. As an academic one has to remain impartial. At the same 
time, as a human being, one has views. But since the conflict started in 1991 
we've had to be evenhanded, particularly when we've been getting students 
from different parts of the region with different experiences." 

The requirement on academics to be dispassionate, to give "on the one hand, 
on the other hand" answers, she acknowledges, would irritate government 
decision-makers. 

Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, her colleague, concurs. She is a German 
academic whose field is Albanian studies, specifically as a social 
anthropologist interested in history and political science. She has not 
entirely had to stand on the sidelines. She knows that a website she set up 
with details of Albanian scholars has been accessed by a range of 
organisations, from the World Bank to the Foreign Office. 

"But we are not brought directly into the political decision-making process 
because political decision-makers always need clear strategies and we do the 
opposite. We show how complicated realities are and possibly we might get too 
area-specific." 

Academics look at micro- phenomena, she says. "We try to unpeel reality like 
an onion in all its complexities. Decision-makers have to take into account 
more global issues, for example how is Russia going to react." 

If an invitation to play a role is extended, academics can begin to feel 
uncomfortable, she says. She was called a couple of days ago by a 
high-ranking military officer in Brussels who wanted names of influential 
families in Kosovo to talk to to ensure the development of a civil society in 
Kosovo after the war. 

He was assuming a quasi tribal structure which, although it might be applied 
to some rural parts, does not fit urban areas where people want other models, 
she says. 

"As a cultural and social anthropologist, I am saying: we should think 
carefully before we endorse structures which are really means of local power 
struggles and inclusion and exclusion." 

So, how did she resolve her dilemma? "I said I was an Albanian specialist and 
gave him the name of a Kosovan specialist." 

*******
Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL 
Languages and Professional Development
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL UK
Tel: 01524 32371  (+44 1524 32371)


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