Montenegro: Something rotten

Date: 19/07/03

The prospects for Montenegro, whether independent or not, are bleak

SERBS and Kosovo Albanians do not agree on much but these days a lot of them see eye to eye on one thing, at least. They will not be going on holiday to Montenegro anymore because they say it is too expensive and the service terrible. That is bad news for Montenegro, which relies on their business and in any case is finding that it is not just the next-door neighbours who don't love it these days. Its general reputation, in the Balkans and in the wider world, has sunk pretty low.

Ever since the fall of Serbia's strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, in October 2000, Montenegro, Serbia's only remaining partner in what was left of Yugoslavia, has found the going increasingly tough. When its former president and current prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, came out against Mr Milosevic in 1997, the West lavished aid on the tiny republic and overlooked its lucrative UN-sanctions-busting trade with Serbia, seeing it as a means of keeping the republic afloat. But those halcyon days of dodgy money-making with no questions asked are over.

While the assassination in March of Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's prime minister, laid bare Serbia's networks of organised crime, secret policemen and shady politicians, no such single traumatic event has overtaken Montenegro. But murky affairs have recently served to distract attention from reform. When its leaders meet their foreign counterparts, they are increasingly fed up with having to talk about cigarette smuggling and people trafficking rather than about pressing economic reforms.

But Montenegro's biggest scandal, which has convulsed the country since last November, concerns a woman from Moldova known only as “SC”, who claims that she fled from a Montenegrin brothel where she had been kept and abused, among others by top Montenegrin officials. The deputy state prosecutor was arrested on charges of involvement in sex trafficking. Officials admit that their country has been a conduit for traffickers but say they have taken robust measures to stop the trade. They also say that the Moldovan scandal has been manipulated, or even created, by the government's enemies. But last month's decision by the judiciary to drop the whole case has led to howls of protest, at home and abroad.

Spooking the duke

Alas for Mr Djukanovic's government, the Moldovan affair is not the only thing embarrassing it. Over the past two weeks the prime minister has been furiously denying allegations, aired among others by ANSA (Italy's main news agency) and by the media in Belgrade and Podgorica, the Serbian and Montenegrin capitals respectively, that he was involved in a smuggling operation connected to some dubious people in Naples. A former ally of his has also asserted in a Belgrade magazine that Mr Djukanovic used a Swiss bank account to salt away a large amount of money.

Before these allegations surfaced, Mr Djukanovic had been named last October in a lawsuit brought by the European Union against an American tobacco firm, R.J Reynolds, over cigarette smuggling. The Montenegrin prime minister has also been under formal investigation for alleged involvement in smuggling by a prosecutor in the Italian town of Bari, just across the Adriatic Sea. But he and his allies say that these allegations are baseless and - along with the Moldovan affair - are all part of a conspiracy to spike his plans to lead Montenegro to full independence.

After Mr Djukanovic fell out with Mr Milosevic, Montenegro operated as an independent country in all but name. It was only under fierce pressure from the EU that its government agreed last year to stay in a very loose “state union” with Serbia, at least for three years. In February this union came into being, consigning the name of Yugoslavia to the dustbin of history. Now Montenegro is painfully reintegrating - at least, a little bit - with Serbia. Harmonising customs and tariffs between the two has been tricky. Serbia, for example, exports food, while Montenegro imports it.

Those who favour independence, especially the current government, grouse that they have been forced into a wasteful and costly arrangement with Serbia against their will. They also point out, correctly, that one of the main reasons the EU brought so much pressure to bear on them to stay in some kind of union with Serbia was because of Kosovo.

Westerners trying to make policy for the region have sought to stall Montenegrin independence, fearing that it would provoke another crisis in Kosovo, now a UN protectorate, whose mainly ethnic-Albanian people want nothing less than independence. If 650,000 Montenegrins can have independence, then - the Kosovars would say - why can't 2m Kosovars too?

In any event, many Montenegrins are becoming angry. Their average month's pay is a paltry €120 ($135), a third of them have no job, the government is poised to cut the bloated civil service, and industrial strife is growing. Critics charge that the government's cronies are trousering all the spoils of privatisation. Aid from abroad is drying up. For honest reformers, the choices are grim. If you dislike Mr Djukanovic's lot, but still revile the old pals of Mr Milosevic who make up the main opposition, where can you go?

Mr Djukanovic says it is only a matter of time before the world recognises Montenegro's independence. He may be right. Yet his own people are unsure. Recent opinion polls in Serbia suggest that 60% of Serbs now favour independence from Montenegro but pollsters have never found such strong support for independence in Montenegro itself.

Independent or not, Montenegrins have a lot of work to do - and very few people qualified to do it. No wonder some wag has sprayed, on a wall in Podgorica, “Vote for the Moldovan”.

The prospects for Montenegro - whether independent or not - are bleak.