Brace Belden and Lily Lynch dive into Kosovo’s tangled past, starting with missing journalist Liz Francak and the Balkans’ unresolved wounds—USAID’s shadowy role, sexual slavery in conflict zones, and color revolutions. Lynch, a correspondent across former Yugoslavia, ties Serbian politician Andrei Grubachek’s pro-Gaddafi protests to Tito-era Non-Aligned Movement legacies, listing the seven successor states while correcting "Croatian Bosnia-Herzegovina" as a historical misnomer. The episode links U.S. interventions to Serbia’s deep-seated distrust, framing Kosovo’s conflicts as a microcosm of Cold War echoes still shaping regional instability today. [Automatically generated summary]
My good friend Liz Francak is unfortunately missing, presumed dead.
So tonight, in morning, I called up my old friend Lily Lynch out in Serbia to talk about the Balkans, USAID, sexual slavery, and color revolutions.
Enjoy the episode.
Kind of weird to do a one-man cold open.
Yeah.
I could.
So welcome to Crank Anchors.
Welcome back to True and On.
I am running solo.
I am inhabiting like the character Too-Faced from Batman.
I am half Liz, half Brace.
And we have us with here tonight.
It was actually evening here, but we have Lily Lynch of the Balkanist.
Say hello, Lily.
Hi.
To your Dorian fans.
Our resident Serbian or well, you're not Serbian.
Our American correspondent in Serbia.
Or just all over the Balkans.
I don't know.
Are you only based in Serbia or do you kind of cruise around there?
I cruise around.
Gaddafi's Condolences in Serbia00:03:08
I've lived in pretty much all the countries in the former Yugoslavia.
Okay, you know, I hang out with this guy here, this guy, Andrei Grubachek, who's fucking, uh, his...
Really?
You know him?
Yeah, I hang out with him.
Well, I used to hang out with him all the time.
I hang out with him sometimes.
You know that guy?
I mean, only kind of vaguely with him.
I think his grandfather was like vice president when Tito was in charge.
Yeah.
Fucking Mozy.
Yeah, yeah.
He seems like a really cool guy.
I was actually looking up.
So I guess Tito's grandson is still around.
Yes.
Yes.
He has a very marginal political party here, too.
Yeah, that's kind of what it seemed like.
I just I like one of the things I read is that he right before right after Gaddafi got killed, he sent his condolences, which.
Oh, yeah.
Same.
There was a that's that was a pretty big deal here.
When Gaddafi died, this is actually, I was here when Gaddafi was murdered by it.
And there was a protest, like a pretty significant protest on the main square in Belgrade.
And people had like green flags.
They had Libyan flags and like big signs with Gaddafi's face.
And because Yugoslavia and Libya were quite close, there's like some Libyan bands that sang in Serbo-Croatian and in Arabic about Gaddafi, but like in the early 80s, these were students in Belgrade.
And because obviously Belgrade was the capital of the non-aligned movement, which Tito co-founded with several other world leaders.
Or sorry, leaders from the third world, predominantly.
So for those of our listeners who don't know, Yugoslavia was made up of what countries, Lily?
Or with what nations, rather, not what countries?
That's a good question.
So the successor states of socialist Yugoslavia are Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia.
Now it's called North Macedonia.
Yes.
That's a whole different story.
Kosovo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.
I think I've said it all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's 2.40 in the morning.
If I forgot any nation, that's not because I dislike any one of you.
They come up.
They come, they go.
There's so many of them.
Slovenia.
Slovenia.
Yeah.
Sorry, guys.
And there was actually a, I think there was a Bosnia-Herzegovina within Kosovo at one point, if I'm not mistaken.
There was like a separate one.
It was, no, it was called Croatian Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I've been getting really into the Balkans in the past few days preparing for this interview.
And so you were saying about the Libya protest.
So I imagine people in Serbia are rather sensitive to United States interventions abroad.