Milosevic

by Adam LeBor

  In response, Slovenia’s interior minister, Igor Bavcar, and the defence minister, Janez Jansa (a former Mladina journalist), launched a clandestine arms-buying programme. Within three months the nascent Slovene army had 20,000 soldiers under arms. It is highly unlikely that the JNA, which at this time retained all its barracks, garrisons and intelligence organisations within Slovenia, was unaware of this. In October Slovene television showed film of Slovene troops blowing up a tank. Still no order came from Belgrade to halt Ljubljana’s armaments drive. In December the Slovenes voted overwhelmingly for independence in a national plebiscite.

  Slovenia’s momentum was now unstoppable. Milosevic did not object, as long as he could benefit from events. Kucan recalled, ‘Milosevic had said to me we should reach some agreement on Slovenia’s desire to leave Yugoslavia. He said he would not stop us, and that the others didn’t understand what the whole thing was about anyway. But he said he cannot let Croatia go, because Croatia was bound to Serbia by blood.’ On 23 January 1991, Milosevic and Kucan headed a meeting of two delegations in Belgrade. Flanked by their aides, the two men eyed each other warily across the table. It was decision time.

  Asked whether there was a community of interest between Slovenia and Serbia at this time, Kucan replied: ‘One could say that. At a certain period of time Slovenia and Serbia had a common interest for reforming the society, but obviously based on completely different principles. This created the “community of interest” in that Milosevic’s Yugoslavia had no room for Slovenia and Slovenia did not want to be in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia.’ Like Kucan, Milosevic knew exactly what he wanted. After lengthy negotiations, a joint communiqué was issued. Serbia would respect ‘the right of the Slovene nation and the Republic of Slovenia to their own path and their stance regarding the form of future ties with other Yugoslav nations or republics’.9

  What was the deal? Milosevic’s price was hidden in the small print: ‘Slovenia respects the interest of the Serbian people living in one state and ensures that the future Yugoslav government must give proper consideration to this interest.’ Behind the bland diplomatese lay the rationale for the coming wars. Yugoslavia was a balancing act of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia. But because of Yugoslavia’s ethnic jumble – mirrored across the Balkans – the nations did not all live within the borders of their republics.

  While Yugoslavia remained united this did not matter. Croatia and Bosnia were not independent republics but part of Yugoslavia, so the Serbs did indeed live in one state: Yugoslavia. But Milosevic argued that if Yugoslavia broke up and its constituent republics became independent states, then all Serbs, as part of the Serbian nation, should also have the right to live in one republic: Serbia. At first this sounded reasonable enough. If all the Slovenes had the right to live in one state, then why should the Serbs be denied something similar? The answer, of course, was that while over 90 per cent of Slovenes lived in Slovenia, the Serbs were also spread through Croatia and Bosnia. There were 600,000 Serbs in Croatia, and they made up 31 per cent of Bosnia’s population.

  Milosevic was introducing a new and highly dangerous principle: the primacy of nation over republic. This was a deliberate act of political destruction. It invalidated the borders of the republics within federal Yugoslavia. It was a recipe for chaos, uncertainty and, ultimately, war. Yugoslavia was an ethnic patchwork. As well as Serbs in Croatia, there were, for example, Albanians in Macedonia, Muslims in Serbia and Montenegro, and Croats in Bosnia. There was no way to satisfy each ethnic group’s territorial demands. Milosevic, however, was concerned only with the Serbs. How would he bring them all into one state? By moving the borders, that is, by invading and annexing territory. This was Milosevic’s plan for a Greater Serbia.

  But Slovenia did not share a border with Serbia, and so could be let go. Slovene officials deny that the January 1991 meeting endorsed Milosevic’s plan for Greater Serbia. They point to another sentence in the communiqué, which declares that while the Yugoslav nations do have the right to self-determination, that right must also take into account the equal rights of other nations. Thus Serbia cannot just slice off a chunk of Croatia or Bosnia because Serbs live there. None the less, the fundamental principle that led to the redrawing of the Yugoslav borders had been established.

  On 25 June 1991 Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav flag was taken down, and the Slovene one raised. Slovene border and customs guards sent their Yugoslav predecessors packing. It was daring and audacious, and it triggered the first of four wars that would tear Yugoslavia apart. Milan Kucan denied that by leaving Yugoslavia when it did, Slovenia bore responsibility for later events. Although Milosevic and Kucan had agreed a form of words about Slovenia’s future development in their January communiqué, it did not provide for outright independence. There was no agreement to simply surrender Yugoslav strategic assets such as Ljubljana airport, and federal border crossings.

  Slovenia invested a lot of effort into reforming the Yugoslav federation. We first proposed an asymmetrical federation. Then, we proposed a confederation as a transitional arrangement until either the dissolution or the reintegration of the country. Finally, we proposed an agreement on the dissolution of the country, knowing that the whole thing could end in tragedy. When it became clear that none of the proposed solutions would be adopted, we had to focus on our responsibility towards our own nation. I have heard this allegation several times. I have asked others what they would do in the same position. Would they primarily consider the interests of others and not those of their own nation? I never got an answer.

  For Milosevic, everything was going to plan. By declaring independence for the Slovene nation, and arguing that all Slovenes should live in one country, Ljubljana was setting a useful precedent. But Milosevic played his usual double game: although he had no real objection to Slovenia leaving Yugoslavia, he publicly presented himself as the defender of Yugoslavia. He could not be seen to sit back contentedly and watch Yugoslavia’s richest republic stroll off into the European dawn. Milosevic needed the support of the army generals, who believed in federal Yugoslavia, and who were fervently opposed to the break-up of the country. By getting the JNA to fight to keep Slovenia within Yugoslavia he set a second precedent: that the army would go to war to prevent secession, which he could later exploit in Croatia and Bosnia.

  There were two war options. Plan A involved 670 police and customs officers, accompanied by 2,000 troops being deployed to retake the border posts and the airport. In Plan B the 63rd Airborne Brigade would spearhead a full-blown invasion of Slovenia, backed up by the JNA’s Fifth Military District. Martial law would be declared and the independence movement crushed. There would, the generals warned, be ‘heavy casualties’.

  Plan A was implemented. In the early hours of 27 June, Kucan was informed by his chief of staff that the JNA was moving through the country. At 5.00 a.m. he summoned his war cabinet. Two-day-old Slovenia had two options: to fight back or surrender.

  Slovenia went to war. The Slovene militia surrounded the JNA bases and cut off the water and electricity. A JNA helicopter flying over Ljubljana was shot down. Pieces of charred machinery and two men’s bodies lay on the streets of the capital, while pedestrians looked on in awe and fear. There was no going back from this. If anything, Slovenia had declared war on the JNA. The 35,000-strong Slovene army, highly motivated and well trained, proved superior to the lightly-armed JNA troops, most of whom had no idea why they were fighting.

  In Belgrade Milosevic watched the generals rage at the JNA’s humiliation. It was all falling into place. The JNA was involved, but it couldn’t win without going to Plan B. The generals demanded authorisation to pour in the troops and put down the uprising. But Milosevic and his allies would never allow this, because he wanted Slovenia to secede. Borisav Jovic recalled: ‘I put it bluntly. We didn’t want a war with Slovenia. Serbia had no territorial claims there. It was an ethnically pure republic – no Serbs. We couldn’t c
are less if they left Yugoslavia . . . We would have been overstretched. With Slovenia out of the way, we could dictate terms to the Croats.’10

  Forty-four JNA soldiers were killed and 187 were wounded in ten days of fighting. Slovene casualties were in single figures. The Yugoslav casualties were mostly frightened and bewildered teenage conscripts. This was the human cost of the ‘community of interest’ between Milosevic and Kucan. Seasoned officers like Colonel Vaso Predojevic were utterly confused by being ordered to fire on their former countrymen. Predojevic, a Bosnian Serb married to a Slovene, was stationed at the Fifth Military District headquarters in Zagreb. ‘We couldn’t believe it, because before we were friends, living together, and then we had to fight each other. It was very hard to understand, because I was a Yugoslav, an army officer, then all of a sudden I realised that there was no more Yugoslavia. It used to be one country and it would never be the same anymore. It was very difficult.’11

  Predojevic soon retired from the JNA. When the Slovenian war broke out, he had told his superior officer that he would not take part. ‘He told me not to worry, that there would not be an attack on any JNA army officer or soldier, and that not even a stone would be thrown. He said everything had been decided in Ljubljana and Belgrade.’

  12

  War No. 2, Croatia

  A Joint Criminal Enterprise

  1990–2

  The outlook in Serbia is particularly unpromising.

  Reginald Wyon, 1904.1

  Despite its human cost, the war in Slovenia was essentially a sideshow. It was in Croatia and Bosnia that Milosevic and his allies were planning the ‘armed battles’ of which he had spoken at Kosovo in 1989. As Borisav Jovic had noted, the Serb leadership had no real interest in the fate of Slovenia. Croatia and Bosnia, with their substantial Serb minorities, were another matter. They would provide the casus belli that Milosevic sought to bring the Serb-populated areas of Croatia and Bosnia under his control, allowing, in effect, all Serbs to live in one state, the vision described as ‘Serboslavia’. Well over a year before the brief conflict in Ljubljana, Milosevic, Jovic and the federal defence minister, General Veljko Kadijevic, had been discussing the likelihood of future war, as Yugoslavia began to disintegrate. The three men had met on 13 February, recorded Jovic in his diaries:

  Sloba said: ‘There’ll be war, by God.’

  I disagreed: ‘We won’t allow it, by God. We have had enough war and death in two world wars. Now we shall avoid war by all means!’

  ‘There will not be the kind of war which they want,’ said Veljko, ‘but it will be the kind of war which it must be, and that is that we shall not allow them to beat us.’2

  It is not clear precisely when Milosevic decided on war. Milosevic’s secretive, authoritarian modus operandi makes it unlikely that there is a ‘smoking gun’: a single incriminating document, or even a paper trail, of the kind sought by the investigators for the Hague Tribunal. But Jovic’s diaries are a valuable resource. The two men worked closely together during the collapse of Yugoslavia, and Jovic was one of Milosevic’s most trusted allies. If Milosevic was discussing war in February 1990, by June he was talking about more concrete plans to carve off territory from Croatia, and was both redrawing the map of Yugoslavia and planning the necessary constitutional gerrymandering to ram his decisions through the federal power structure. In his diary entry for 28 June 1990 Jovic records that Milosevic proposed that:

  the cutting off of Croatia be carried out in such a way that the municipalities of Lika, Banija and Kordun, which have created an association, should stay on our side, and people should later decide if they want to stay or leave; second that [federal] presidency members from Croatia and Slovenia be excluded from the vote on this issue, because they do not represent that part of Yugoslavia taking the decision.3

  Milosevic understood that war – especially the right ‘kind’ – cannot just be conjured up. It needs co-conspirators and extensive preparations. Which is one reason why Milosevic’s indictment for war crimes in Croatia (and Bosnia) describes him as a participant in a ‘joint criminal enterprise’ to ethnically cleanse about one third of Croatian territory, as a prelude to setting up a Serb para-state. This demands great organisation. Milosevic knew that lines must be drawn on maps, men deployed, guns and ammunition distributed and the population roused. Broadly speaking, he needed to control three Serbian power-structures, and two within federal Yugoslavia. In Serbia these were: the Communist – later Socialist – Party, the media and the secret service. The party controlled the political process, the media shaped public opinion and the secret service supplied the weapons to the Serb rebels.4

  Within federal Yugoslavia, Milosevic needed to control the Yugoslav armed forces and the Federal Presidency, the supreme commander of the military. While there was opposition within the military to Milosevic’s policies, Milosevic was able to dominate the federal defence minister General Veljko Kadijevic – himself a Serb. It was Milosevic’s luck and Yugoslavia’s great misfortune that his ally Borisav Jovic had in mid-May 1990 taken over as president of the federal collective presidency, which was the supreme commander of the Yugoslav military. Jovic was a pugnacious Serb nationalist who set the tone of future meetings with a belligerent inaugural speech, after which he refused to offer the customary thanks to his predecessor, the well-regarded Slovene politician Janez Drnovsek.

  By 1990 Serbian politics, the media and the secret service were all under Milosevic’s control. He had brought in a new secret service chief, Jovica Stanisic. Stanisic was a high-flying career intelligence officer, and soon became one of Milosevic’s most important allies. Like Lenin, Milosevic understood that an efficient security service was the most important bastion of any authoritarian regime. Together they turned the service into a proactive organisation: agents had helped organise the ‘anti-bureaucratic revolutions’ in Voivodina and Kosovo, as well as the massive Belgrade demonstrations. Stanisic was just one of many powerful allies Milosevic had at the time. He had widespread support in the Yugoslav power structure, according to Milan Kucan. ‘A very large part of the federal administration was interested in having a Yugoslavia which in essence would be a Serboslavia. The entire army structure, especially the leadership, many people in foreign affairs, in the police, and in the security services supported this.’5

  Milosevic and Stanisic deployed their key people to prepare for conflict: Mihalj Kertes, Franko Simatovic and Radovan Stojicic. Kertes had brought in the demonstrators during the Voivodina ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’. Simatovic, known as ‘Frenki’, headed the secret service’s murky special operations unit. Radovan Stojicic, nicknamed ‘Badza’ (after the violent bully character in Popeye) was a commander of the police special forces, who had operated in Kosovo during the miners’ strike in 1989. Together with Jovica Stanisic, these three men were the key figures in what became known as the ‘military faction’ within the all-powerful Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP). The MUP controlled the domestic intelligence service, the police, and the police paramilitary and special forces units (as distinguished from similar units in the regular military). The job of the military faction was to organise an armed uprising of the Serbian minority in Croatia against the Croatian authorities, in preparation for a de facto annexation of the territories to Serbia itself.

  This is how they did it. In spring 1990 the JNA disarmed the Croatian TO, just as had happened in Slovenia, and kept the weapons. Belgrade’s plan was to distribute the guns to Serb militants based in Knin, a dusty railroad town situated in the heartland of an area known as Krajina. Whoever controlled Knin controlled the roads and railways linking Zagreb to the coast. Many of Croatia’s Serbs were concentrated in the towns and villages of this rocky hinterland, set back from the Italianate jewels of the Adriatic seaside. The Krajina had once been the borderland between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires.

  The Knin Serbs were stubborn, hardy and nervous about Croatia’s first multiparty elections, to be held in April 1990, and the prospect of livi
ng in independent Croatia. Memories were still fresh of the first Croatian state, the NDH, and the wartime massacres carried out by the Ustasha in the remote Serb villages. Many of the Knin Serbs were unsophisticated folk. When Milosevic sent men from Belgrade to warn that their lives were in danger, they listened. When Frenki and Badza offered weapons, they took them.

  Encouraged by the Serb nationalist writer Dobrica Cosic, the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia had set up their own political party, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), which replaced the old Communist Party. Although the name had changed, the political bosses remained the same. This was a familiar story, repeated all over post-Communist eastern Europe, but the SDS served a different purpose: it provided a ready-made weapons-distribution network. The links were later formalised in February 1991, when Milosevic submitted a law to the Serbian parliament establishing twenty ministeries, including the Ministry for Links with Serbs outside Serbia. This ministry was used as a channel to rebel Serbs in both Croatia and Bosnia.

  Milosevic also built his own network within the JNA, known as the Vojna Linija, or ‘Military Line’. This was an ad hoc group of pro-Milosevic officers, who saw that Yugoslavia was about to break up and wanted to arm the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, as a prelude to annexing territory to Serbia. The key figure in the Military Line was a Serb JNA colonel called Ratko Mladic. Stocky and intelligent, Mladic was also extremely violent. Everything about him exuded menace. The writer Misha Glenny recalled how Mladic offered round his home-distilled rakija at a morning interview session in early 1992. Some in the party demurred, but only temporarily. Mladic had boomed: ‘For a moment . . . I thought you were going to refuse my home-made. Which is very funny, you know, because nobody refuses my home-made.’6