c. 1999 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ On the day three U.S. servicemen were captured by Yugoslav forces, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Irinej Dobrijevic found themselves on the same CNN talk show discussing the Kosovo conflict’s religious dimensions.
The two men had never met, but after the show Jackson approached Dobrijevic, a Serbian Orthodox priest from Cleveland, with a question: Did he favor an American religious delegation going to Belgrade to seek the servicemen’s release _ and perhaps giving impetus to a negotiated end to the bloodshed?
Dobrijevic was all for it.”I thought the NATO bombing was immoral because you don’t employ violence to achieve peace, and because there had been no real diplomatic effort to resolve the Kosovo question,”said Dobrijevic, an American-born son of Serbian immigrants who spent 1996-97 teaching Orthodox theology in Belgrade.
That March 31 exchange at CNN’s Washington studios began an intense month of interfaith networking resulting in the high-profile delegation that went to Belgrade and secured the servicemen’s release. Jackson was the group’s uncontested media star, a dynamic, camera-savvy personality who previously had gained the release of Americans and others taken prisoner in conflicts involving Syria, Iraq and Cuba.
But traveling with him was a diverse group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives _ many of them well-known within the American religious community _ with varied motives and hopes for making the dangerous trip. What united them was their faith that dialogue between sincere religious leaders provides a moral compass in the midst of military conflict, and that as people of God their job was to seek peace no matter what the obstacles. “We were convinced that working for peace was demanded by our faith,”said Bishop Dimitrios of the Greek Orthodox Church of America.”We felt that even if we failed in our goals, making the attempt was enough because just that could help to bring some peace.” The first step in the process was to secure an official invitation from Belgrade’s Serbian Orthodox hierarchy to provide religious sanction. Dobrijevic contacted Bishop Kodic Mitrophan of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada. Mitrophan, who joined the delegation, said he then contacted Patriarch Pavle, the Belgrade Serbian Orthodox Church head who already had called for the release of the three American servicemen. Pavle gave his blessing to the effort and promised to help gain Yugoslav government approval.
Meanwhile, Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition began working with Yugoslav officials in Washington and at the United Nations. Jackson also contacted the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the New York-based National Council of Churches, a coalition of 35 Protestant and Orthodox denominations. The two have a long history of working together on a variety of issues.
After Jackson told Campbell of his plan, she suggested making it an interfaith delegation to bolster credibility, she recalled in an interview Thursday (May 6).
Orthodox Christians had to comprise a large part of the delegation, she advised, because the Serbian leadership was Orthodox. But a Muslim was needed because the Kosovar Albanians are mostly Muslims, a Jew was needed to link ethnic cleansing with the Holocaust, and a Roman Catholic had to be on board because of Serbia’s conflict with Catholic Croatians elsewhere in the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Bosnia, Campbell said.
Dr. Nazir Uddin Khaja, a Torrance, Calif., physician and president of the American Muslim Council, said he joined the effort in part because of what that might do for his community’s image.”The American media has not done justice to American Muslims, always portraying them as terrorists,”said Khaja.”I wanted Muslims to be seen as peacemakers, even though Muslims were the ones being brutalized.” Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs, whose relationship with Jackson dates to the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s, said he went despite opposition to his doing so from some leaders in his own Reform Jewish movement who have taken a hawkish stand against the government of President Slobodan Milosevic and in support of NATO military action.”Innocents were being killed on both sides, and I felt a Jew should be represented in a group trying to do some good,”said Jacobs, who leads a Reform synagogue in Woodland Hills, Calif.
The Rev. Raymond Helmick, a professor of conflict resolution at Boston College, said he was asked to join the delegation because none of the American Roman Catholic bishops could, or would, go. Although a veteran of behind-the-scenes mediating in such hot spots as Northern Ireland, Israel-Palestine, East Timor, the Balkans and elsewhere, this was the first time he had worked in the sort of media glare that accompanied the delegation.”I have never gone around in a camera lens,”he said.”For the kinds of things I do, usually mediating things, as soon as you’re out in the newspapers it’s all over.” The delegation soon found out the White House opposed their going, warning their effort might hand Milosevic a propaganda coup that could undercut the U.S.-led NATO attacks. The group also was warned their physical safety could not be assured in the face of round-the-clock NATO bombing.
In retrospect, delegation members agreed, not having White House approval worked in their favor.”It made it more convincing that we were not a U.S. government group, and that we only represented the community of faith,”said Dobrijevic.
As for being manipulated, the Rev. Roy Lloyd, an NCC communications official who accompanied the delegation, said Yugoslav leaders made clear they felt they were the ones being taken advantage of.”We were fully aware that they would try and turn our visit to their own advantage, but I think we stayed focused on the greater goal,”added Jacobs.
Physical safety was always a concern. While many in the delegation had experienced war firsthand elsewhere, this was the first time for others. April 29, the day the 19-member delegation arrived in Belgrade, turned out to be NATO’s heaviest night of bombing to that point in the air campaign.”It’s very strange to be in a nation at war, yet you’re staying in a Hyatt hotel and eating well as if nothing is happening,”said Dimitrios, the Greek Orthodox cleric.”Yet we could hear bombs going off and we visited some sites of the damage. You never forget that.” Campbell said that while she never previously thought of herself as a pacifist, her first visit to a war zone”moves me very close to that”position.”It’s just very clear that war is hell, and you look at Littleton, Colo., and say, `what are we teaching our children?’ Are we teaching them that when there are problems violence is the solution?” Once in Belgrade, the delegation _ which included Rep. Rod Blagojevich, D-Ill., the only House member of Serbian descent _ met with local religious leaders and Yugoslav officials. On Friday (April 30), Jackson, Blagojevich, a New York Times reporter and a CNN camera crew were allowed to meet with the three captured U.S. servicemen for about 40 minutes in a room at the Belgrade Military Court building.
Because the delegation previously had been assured that all members would be in on the meeting, members briefly discussed whether to agree to the last-minute change in plans, said Khaja, the Muslim representative.”There was a little discussion at that point if anybody should go or no one should go. We decided by consensus that the process should proceed no matter what,”he said.
The servicemen _ Spec. Steven M. Gonzalez of Huntsville, Texas, Staff Sgt. Andrew A. Ramirez of Los Angeles and Staff Sgt. Christopher J. Stone of Smiths Creek, Mich. _ were each given a Bible signed by all delegation members. Jackson told the trio they were”heroes.”The meeting ended when air raid sirens sounded across Belgrade.
The next day, Saturday, four members of the delegation, including Jackson, met with Milosevic, after which Jackson also met privately with the Yugoslav president.”We appealed to him to release the servicemen,”said the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, an ecumenical official with the Orthodox Church in America who was one of the four, as were Campbell and Khaja. Kishkovsky had previously met with Milosevic during the war in Bosnia as part of another delegation seeking peace for the Balkans.”We told him it could be a powerful symbol that could open the door to peace, but that that alone was not sufficient for ending the conflict, that there had to be a withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and a return of the refugees. We said we were not authorized to negotiate and had no power, but that if he didn’t make these moves the situation would become grim for him.” Campbell said Milosevic was upset at being portrayed as a devil in the West.”I said if you don’t want to be portrayed as a Satan, then do something that Satan wouldn’t do”and free the servicemen. That was a very, very testy moment.” Khaja said he had to overcome his hatred of Milosevic to shake the leader’s hand at the meeting’s onset.”It brought up a very difficult moment for me,”he said.”I had to get past an enormous sense of revulsion to lift my hand to grasp his. I did it because the issue was beyond him and if I could help bring about a solution it was OK. It was a test of faith.” That day, Milosevic agreed to release the servicemen, and on Sunday they and the delegation were on a bus out of Yugoslavia, the first leg of their journey to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. On the bus, where the group celebrated with chocolate cake and Coca-Colas, Khaja asked the soldiers to briefly write down what freedom now meant to them for his 10-year-old son.”It’s a precious document,”said Helmick, the Catholic priest. He declined to reveal what the men wrote, saying”we all felt it’s a very private document.” Officially, Campbell and Jackson were the delegation’s co-leaders. But in Belgrade and back in Washington where the group met with President Clinton Monday at the White House, Jackson clearly was treated as being in charge by the politicians and the media.
Other members of the delegation said that’s what they had expected, and it was all right with them.”Look, we’re pretty informed people,”said Kishkovsky.”We knew Jesse Jackson would be the star and we knew what the media does with stars. That’s just the way it works.” The group _ rather hastily put together for the sensitive task they undertook _ jelled under Jackson’s direction, those interviewed agreed. When he publicly called for a halt in NATO bombing as a goodwill gesture in response to Milosevic having freed the servicemen, even Khaja, who went to Belgrade fully supporting the military action, was in agreement”to consider other options and bring about some modicum of sanity.” Delegation members also agreed to continue working together to help solve Kosovo’s bloody ethnic and religious divisions. They hope to return to the region as a group in the coming weeks to visit the Kosovar refugees languishing in refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia.
Helmick called such a journey necessary for the delegation members to maintain”a kind of moral balance … We don’t want to leave it as stop the bombing of Serbia and forget about the Kosovars. You can’t forget about the Kosovars.” Did the delegation help the diplomatic process, which Thursday jumped forward with Russian agreement with NATO on a proposal for ending the bombing?
Campbell, for one, thinks so.”I do think we at least laid some groundwork,”she said.
DEA END RIFKIN-BANKS
