With the trial of Slobodan Milosevic underway, the documentary "Bringing Down a Dictator," airing on Shirlington-based WETA this weekend, would seem to be a story nearing its end.
That’s not entirely true, Steve York said. York, a Washington-based filmmaker who put together the story of Milosevic’s fall in "Bringing Down a Dictator," points to lessons in the Balkans that the US could apply to the war on terrorism.
The US bombing campaign conducted against Serbia in early 1999 was intended to force Milosevic to end ethnic cleansing of Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo. It achieved that end, York said, but had the effect of consolidating Milosevic’s hold on power for several months longer.
In the end, he said, the real key to toppling Milosevic was US aid to Serbian opposition groups. Especially, York said, money and support to Otpor ("Resistance" in Serbian), a group of Serbian high school and college students who waged a one- to two-year long campaign against the Milosevic regime, centered on mockery and calls for truly democratic elections.
"I can’t say enough good things about how aid was used to promote and support democratic forces in Serbia," York said.
Aid to Otpor offers another lesson in waging the war on terrorism, York said. The real key to defeating regimes that support terrorists is not bombs, but non-violent opposition groups.
"The thing about a non-violent struggle, is non-violent strategies are inherently democratizing," he said.
<b>"BRINGING DOWN</b> a Dictator" follows Otpor through 1999 and 2000. Otpor members ridiculed Milosevic, spray painting slogans around Belgrade, and holding mock conventions and protests.
They also pushed Serbia’s feuding opposition parties towards unity, provided election monitoring for the September 2000 election that unseated Milosevic, and rallied forces from around the country as the Milosevic tried to steal the election.
But the October insurrection, and the Balkan wars waged throughout the 1990s, play little part in the documentary. That’s by design, said Dalton Delan, WETA’s chief of programming.
"I think the war Milosevic perpetrated didn’t escape notice, I think the revolution that brought him down did," Delan said. "We decided that you needed just enough [about the Balkan wars] to cement understanding. Any more than that would just have been milking it for <i>sturm und drang</i>."
Instead, the focus on Otpor’s activities proves the title true. "The title tells the point of view. You could do a whole other program called Downfall of a Dictator, about how Milosevic thought and acted," Delan said.
Much of the footage of Otpor’s protests are first-person, behind the scenes video, showing the build up, planning and execution of the protests. That footage is the result of a lucky break, York said.
"I was not there for most of this, but there were some extremely good people in Serbia. The independent media were operating next to starvation, they have so little money," he said. "They can’t afford blank tapes, so what they tape, they shoot over it once it’s aired. They lost a lot of good footage."