Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

The Kurdistan Region is nominally still part of Iraq, and the Kurdish rebels have accepted negotiations.

They wanted independence, but neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would allow it. The Soviet Union, as the Kurds' protector, made it clear to them:

Autonomy is the best outcome you can achieve.

During a private meeting, the leader made some remarks to the Kurdish leaders.

"The Soviet Union supports your rights. But the boundaries of your rights are determined by regional realities, not by principles."

You deserve independence, but independence would trigger a war that neither you nor anyone else can afford. Autonomy is the best you can get.

I'm sorry, this isn't your fault. It's not because you Kurds don't deserve a country; it's just how the world works.

The Kurdish leader remained silent for a long time after listening, and then he signed the document.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The situation is more complicated in the south, where Shia Muslims live.

The new government in Hailala has chosen a two-pronged approach to the Shia insurgency: fighting while simultaneously negotiating.

The government forces had by this time been reorganized by Hailara and were attacking stubbornly resisting strongholds while stopping negotiations with armed forces willing to talk.

Moreover, Hailala did something Saddam would never have done—he invited Shiite representatives into the government!

He did indeed grant several ministerial-level positions. Influential Shia religious leaders, tribal elders, and intellectuals were invited to a “national reconciliation conference.”

This meeting sent a signal to Iraqi Shiites: the new government is not a replica of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the new government is willing to give Shiites a place in the governance of the country.

This tactic proved effective. On April 26, two-thirds of the Shiite rebels surrendered under the dual pressure of military strikes and political persuasion from the government forces.

However, a third of them refused to surrender. They controlled the last two provinces in southern Iraq, the most radical Shiite-majority areas and the most closely linked to the forces backed by the United States.

On May 1, Hailala proposed peace talks.

The rebels' conditions were also autonomy, the same as the Kurds'. After two months of negotiations that broke down and resumed several times, with some back-and-forth on details, an agreement was reached in early July.

Two southern provinces of Iraq have been designated autonomous regions, where Shiites have local government and security forces, autonomy in religious affairs, and a share of oil revenue.

Peace has arrived.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

After the agreement was signed, Hailala sat in her office at the Baghdad Ministry of Defense, observing the new order.

A map of Iraq lay before him: the Kurdish autonomous region in the north, the Shia autonomous region in the south, and in the middle the territory governed by his central government—Baghdad, Tikrit, Anbar, and several predominantly Sunni provinces.

A country was thus divided into three parts.

Yes, nominally it is still a country. The constitution is still there, the flag is still there, and the seat in the United Nations is still there. But the Kurds in the north have the Soviet Union behind them, the Shiites in the south have the shadow of the United States behind them, and the Sunni central government in the middle is struggling to maintain the appearance of unity between the two superpowers.

Hailala wasn't stupid; he understood the essence of the situation: the Soviet Union used the Kurds as leverage, the United States used the Shiites as leverage, and he was in the middle, with both levers able to pry him up at any time.

If he listened too much to the Soviet Union, the United States would create trouble for him through the Shiites; if he tried to align himself with the United States, the Soviet Union would put pressure on him through the Kurds.

He was tied with two ropes.

But at least he is still alive, at least Iraq still exists, at least this country has not become a ruin reminiscent of the Three Kingdoms – it is still a country, just a country that is being tossed about by two superpowers but is still standing!

As long as it doesn't end up like Afghanistan, which is divided, that's fine.

He knew it would take the new government many years to eliminate ethnic and religious divisions. Maybe ten, maybe twenty, maybe... well, given the centuries of hatred accumulated in the Middle East, that would probably take longer than his lifetime.

Hailala stared silently at the map.

He thought of Saddam Hussein, and of his cousin whose portraits covered every wall of the presidential palace's underground bunker.

His cousin treated the country as his private property, attacking, killing, and invading whomever he wanted!

Now that man died in a fire in the desert sky, and he's sitting at this table.

Is this an irony of fate, or a carefully orchestrated arrangement by the Soviet Union? Perhaps it's both.

Hailala closed the map.

He had so much to do: rebuild the economy, resettle refugees, lift sanctions, reconcile with Kuwait, maintain peace with Iran, cooperate with the Soviet Union without becoming a puppet, and distance himself from the United States without becoming its enemy...

The war has dragged on for far too long on this land that flows with black gold. Those who have never experienced war yearn for it, but only those who have truly experienced war understand the preciousness of peace.

Outside the window, the April sun in Baghdad shone on the buildings riddled with bomb marks. Some buildings were still smoking, while others were already being cleared of debris.

People moved away the rubble, packed up their furniture, and salvaged usable bricks in preparation for rebuilding their homes on the ruins.

The story of Saddam Hussein's regime has ended, but the story of the millions of working people living on the land of Iraq is far from over.

Chapter 119 Yugoslavia will disintegrate like an avalanche.

"At first, nobody cared about the disaster. It was just the independence of a constituent republic, a border conflict, the destruction of a bridge, the disappearance of a neighbor, until the shells landed in their own living room."

—Slobodan Milosevic, President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

April 25, 1991, Plitvice Lake District, Republic of Croatia

Plitvice is a beautiful place where sixteen terraced lakes are linked together by travertine waterfalls, and emerald streams flow through the karst valleys.

UNESCO has designated it a World Natural Heritage site, and every year millions of tourists from all over Europe come here to hike, take photos, and listen to the sound of the waterfall from the boardwalk.

This is the most open "socialist country" in Europe.

In 1945, Tito led the Yugoslav Communist Party and army to defeat the fascists and rebuild the Yugoslav Federation after the war. On November 29, 1945, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was declared.

After World War II, Yugoslavia adopted socialism, with Tito as president. Under Tito's rule, Yugoslavia maintained a distance from the Soviet Union, adhering to independence and the Non-Aligned Movement, making it one of the few socialist countries in Europe that did not join the Warsaw Pact. Tito worked hard to develop the country's economy, making Yugoslavia one of the wealthier nations in Eastern Europe.

In February 1948, the Soviet Union pressured Yugoslavia, forcing it to sign a protocol for consultations on foreign policy and unilaterally suspending trade negotiations. Stalin hoped that Yugoslavia would submit to Soviet leadership, like other socialist countries in Eastern Europe that had been fostered by the Soviet Union, but Tito rejected this proposal from his father party.

In April, the Soviet Union withdrew all its military advisors and civilian experts from Yugoslavia, and relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply. In June, the Soviet-led Cominform passed a resolution expelling the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

In 1949, the conflict escalated further. The Soviet Union and Eastern European countries completely severed trade relations with Yugoslavia and launched a political siege and military threats.

After Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev visited Belgrade, apologized to Tito, and overturned the 1948 resolution, thus normalizing relations between the two countries.

However, Yugoslavia embarked on a path of independent development, free from dependence on any single party, a path to break free from the Soviet model, and a path of socialism with Yugoslav characteristics. Since the political and economic reforms of the 50s, the lives of ordinary Yugoslavs have become significantly more liberalized; Western literature and films were permitted to be disseminated in Yugoslavia, and over 600 million tourists visited the country annually!

By 1976, more than one-third of the people in Yugoslavia owned their own cars, one television for every 1.8 families, one refrigerator for every 2.1 families, and all children aged 7 to 15 received eight years of free compulsory education.

Although it lagged behind developed Western countries, the people of Yugoslavia lived a more affluent life compared to socialist countries of the same period.

However, the problem of regional wealth disparity in Yugoslavia has always been very serious. The most developed country, Slovenia, has an economic level similar to that of its neighbors, Austria and Italy, while Macedonia and Kosovo are among the poorest regions in Europe.

It is said that the road up the mountain is difficult, while the road down the mountain is easy.

Following Tito's death, Yugoslavia's economy continued to decline, and conflicts between its various ethnic groups intensified. The European Community was willing to accept Yugoslavia as a member state, maintain the unity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and even provide it with economic aid, provided that Yugoslavia abandoned the one-party rule of the Communist Party and implemented a multi-party system!

Yugoslavia, already struggling with inflation and economic hardship, had no other choice.

In March 1989, Slovenia took the lead in proposing the "end of the one-party system and the implementation of a multi-party system." In October of the same year, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia held its 3rd Plenary Session of the 10th Central Committee and adopted the "Program for Political System Reform," officially declaring at the official level that it would abandon one-party dictatorship and accept a multi-party system.

At the 1th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia held on January 20, 1990, the ruling party, after heated debate, formally voted to relinquish its constitutionally guaranteed monopoly on power and proposed that parliament pass a law allowing the establishment of a multi-party system.

The conference also fell into division due to significant differences of opinion among the republics, with representatives from Slovenia and Croatia even walking out of the meeting.

Six months after the ruling party made its decision, on July 25, 1990, the Federal Parliament of Yugoslavia formally passed the Law on Political Association. This law stipulated that citizens had the right to freely associate and form political parties, with a very low threshold (100 citizens were sufficient). Thus, a multi-party system was formally established in law.

After the law was passed, each republic held its own independent multi-party elections in the latter half of 1990.

In republics such as Slovenia and Croatia, the Communist Party lost its ruling party status after failing in elections.

In the April 1990 elections in Slovenia, non-communist forces, including the Democratic Alliance, won.

In the May 1990 elections in Croatia, the Democratic Community (a Croatian nationalist party) won;

In the December 1990 elections in Serbia, the Communist Party, led by Milosevic, retained power and continued to govern by reorganizing and changing its name to the Socialist Party.

In the November 1990 elections in Macedonia, the Social Democratic Union (formerly a reorganized Communist Party) won.

In the November 1990 elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Muslim Democratic Action Party and the Serbian National Party (a nationalist party) won.

By November 1990, the grassroots Communist Party organizations of the Yugoslav federal institutions had also ceased operations.

Therefore, strictly speaking, by the end of April 1991, Yugoslavia had been almost completely destroyed by peaceful means, and was just one step away from collapse.

Economically, Yugoslavia had the highest degree of economic capitalism among the socialist camp, even surpassing that of the Soviet Union. The major reforms of 1965 expanded enterprise autonomy, making them independent commodity producers; at the same time, price controls were relaxed to allow the market to play a greater role in pricing, and foreign capital was allowed to enter in the form of joint ventures.

These measures made Yugoslavia the "most market-oriented" economy in the socialist bloc at the time, ushering in more than a decade of prosperity.

So, what is the cost?

The economic crisis in Yugoslavia worsened after Tito's death. In the late 1980s, further liberalization, privatization, and capitalist measures were introduced in an effort to salvage the economy.

For example, in 1988, Yugoslavia abolished the credit ceiling. But all of this occurred within the framework of Yugoslavia as a socialist federation, where the Communist Party remained the ruling party!

But in 1990, as the various republics within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia abandoned one-party rule and tore off their last fig leaf, the last vestige of Yugoslavia as a socialist country was thrown into the sewers.

Croatia and Slovenia, which were not under communist rule, began to fully embrace capitalism, even though Yugoslavia had not yet disintegrated and Tito's idol still hung over the heads of civil servants in state institutions. These countries began to promote privatization on a large scale and establish a genuine capitalist market economy.

In countries where the former communist parties continued to govern through reorganization, such as Serbia and Macedonia, these behaviors were relatively restrained. However, everyone understood that as time went on, it was only a matter of time before Yugoslavia fully embraced capitalism.

In some places, market-oriented reforms were implemented, but in the end, apart from the government buildings which still had red flags, everything else became capitalist. Only after a sudden brake was applied that the red flags were no longer displayed.

In some places, the red flag was even lowered. By this time, a significant portion of the Yugoslav Federation had effectively become capitalist countries.

Even Serbia, which still maintains communist leadership, is now exhausted both physically and mentally.

This is the moment when the edifice collapses.

In March, anti-Milošević demonstrations broke out in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Miloseć responded with a strong and decisive action, directly ordering tanks to be deployed to suppress the demonstrations and defend his regime.

The demonstrations will not stop because of the appearance of tanks, because the conflict will never be resolved. Since March, armed clashes against other ethnic groups have broken out in Serbian-majority areas of Croatia.

In April 1991, the first large-scale bloody conflict broke out, marking the beginning of the Yugoslav Civil War.

Gunfire was heard everywhere in Plitvice, Croatia. With Croatia poised for independence, yet Serbs held virtually no positions in the Croatian government while large Serbian populations remained in the eastern suburbs, Serbian militias, armed themselves and secretly supported by Belgrade, launched an uprising.

They engaged in large-scale gun battles with Croatian police forces in villages and along roads surrounding the lake, resulting in triple-digit death tolls. Bodies lay along roadsides and against village walls, in parking lots that had once been filled with tour buses. Among them were uniformed police and militia members, as well as unarmed civilians caught in the crossfire.

The news reached Moscow.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

There were two reports on Slava's desk.

The first document came from the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry's assessment was:

The situation in Yugoslavia was serious but manageable. Separatist tendencies in Slovenia and Croatia were clear, but the core Serbian-Montenegro framework remained intact.

If Yugoslavia removed a few of its centrifugal members—letting Slovenia go, or even Croatia go—the remaining Yugoslavia could still exist as a nation-state with Serbia at its core.

The second report came from the KGB. The KGB's assessment was completely different:

The situation in Yugoslavia was out of control. Once the first brick was removed, the whole wall collapsed. Slovenia's independence would not be the end, but the beginning of an avalanche—Croatia would follow, then Bosnia and Herzegovina, then Macedonia, and possibly Kosovo.

The large Serbian population living in both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina could turn this independence movement into a war. This is not a problem that can be solved by providing economic aid to Yugoslavia or reforming the government; it is an avalanche, a final solution to a century-old ethnic conflict.

Slava set both reports aside and picked up the Soviet Foreign Ministry's records on Yugoslavia.

From its inception, Yugoslavia was a patchwork of different nations. With the end of World War I in 1918, both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires collapsed. On their ruins, the peoples and regions of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia were brought together to form a kingdom called Yugoslavia.

Why were they grouped together? Because the mapmakers at Versailles thought that the southern Slavs—Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—all spoke similar languages ​​and were all Slavs, so they should form one country.

But they overlooked one thing: "Similar language" does not equal "Similar people".

Serbs are Orthodox Christians and use the Cyrillic alphabet. Croats are Catholics and use the Latin alphabet. Bosnian Muslims are Muslims, and Slovenes consider themselves more "European" than anyone else. Macedonians are unsure whether they are Macedonians, Bulgarians, or Greeks, and the Albanians of Kosovo are not Slavs at all!

During World War II, the Ustaše regime in Croatia, as a puppet state supported by the Nazis, perpetrated genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Roma. The death toll in the Jasenovac concentration camp remains controversial, but even the most conservative estimates place it at tens of thousands! The Chetnik militia in Serbia retaliated with massacres of Croatians and Muslims.

Therefore, it was truly a miracle that Tito was able to unite Yugoslavia and prevent its disintegration.

After the war, Tito, a communist of half-Croatian and half-Slovenian descent, used an iron fist to bring these nations, who had been fighting each other, back into one country. His method was to set aside past differences and move towards a shared future.

Yugoslavia had six republics, five nationalities, four languages, three religions, and two alphabets!

But Tito said, "You have only one identity, and that is Yugoslavia."

In 1980, Yugoslav helmsman Tito died.

After Tito's death, Yugoslavia operated on a sophisticated rotating presidency system—six republics and two autonomous provinces, eight units taking turns to serve as federal president, each for one year.

The original intention of this system was to prevent any one republic or nation from becoming too powerful, but its fatal flaw is that it can only function under the premise that everyone is willing to abide by the rules.

Throughout the 1980s, Yugoslavia's economy was in constant collapse. By 1989, inflation had escalated into hyperinflation, with an annual inflation rate exceeding 1,000 percent!

Foreign debt is piling up, and the economic gap between the republics is so huge that it is despairing—Slovenia's per capita output is eight times that of Kosovo, Slovenia and Croatia feel that they are feeding their poor relatives in the south, and Serbia feels that its rich relatives in the north are looking down on it.

Then Milosevic arrived.

Slobodan Milosevic, the chairman of the Union of Serbian Communists, uttered those words to a group of emotional Serbs in Kosovo in 1987 that later changed the fate of the entire Balkans—

"No one dares to hit you."