by Adam LeBor
Marko’s fascination with guns was not unique. Weapons had always been a part of the region’s culture. For a Balkan man it was a matter of pride to be able to physically defend his family, and village. The Titoist doctrine of territorial defence – that Yugoslavia should be prepared for invasion from either East or West – was rooted in this tradition. The cult of the gun was given new impetus by the inevitable spillover from the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Soaring crime, the atomisation of society and a general collapse in morality all combined to brutalise Serbia. When the state itself robs its citizens, ‘ordinary’ criminals no longer feel constrained by any notions of crime or punishment. Serbia descended into crime and anarchy, a world worthy of Mira Markovic’s favourite author, Dostoevsky. Raskolnikov, the hero of Crime and Punishment, who killed an old woman to see if he had the courage to transgress moral law, would have felt quite at home in early 1990s Belgrade.
‘Weekend Chetniks’ drove across the border into Bosnia on Friday nights, spent the weekend fighting and looting, before returning to the factory or neighbourhood bar. Others fought turf battles in the mafia wars that broke out across the city. Weapons were easily available. A Kalashnikov could be had for £150 ($220), a pistol for much less. The gangsters’ motto was ‘Pistolj, Pajero and Plavusa’, Pajero was a four-wheel drive car, and plavusa a blonde. They listened to a raucous and patriotic music known as turbo-folk. The best known turbo-folk singer was Svetlana Velickovic, a.k.a. Ceca, who later married Arkan.
This was ‘Weimar’ Belgrade, dancing on the edge of total meltdown. The hero of the hour was a young gangster called Aleksandar Knezevic, known as ‘Knele’. All over Belgrade youngsters adopted Knele’s style. He wore a Gucci tracksuit top tucked into trousers, open to the neck to show off several thick gold chains with heavy medallions. Knele had been one of the hard men in the front line of the March 1991 street protests against Milosevic. In March 1992 he was shot dead in his room in Belgrade’s five-star Hyatt hotel.
The Milosevic gangster generation respected nothing of the old rules. During the 1980s, the Yugoslav authorities had come to an arrangement with their gangsters: they turned them into criminal guestworkers. State security provided passports in exchange for ‘favours’, such as the elimination of troublesome émigré politicians. A former secret service official explained how it worked: ‘They stole in western countries, and came back to Yugoslavia with plenty of money so they didn’t need to steal anything here. There was peace here in Yugoslavia with this kind of system. They spent their foreign currency here, and when they had spent it, they went back to the west for another salary.’19
Many of the older criminals came home once war broke out in 1991. But they soon discovered that old territory divisions were irrelevant. What the new generation of criminals wanted, they took, by force. Violence exploded across the streets of the capital. The police looked on, unable to stem the tide of crime, which added to the growing sense of anarchy. A mafia leader known as ‘the Duke’ lamented: ‘This young generation is unbelievable. We could divide everything, have enough for everyone, and all have money. But they are not interested.’20
The nihilistic weltanschauung of ‘Weimar’ Belgrade was captured in an extraordinary documentary of criminal life, called, aptly enough, See You in the Obituaries, made by the independent B-92 station. Mihailo Divac was twenty-eight, a member of a gang that operated in the concrete tower blocks of New Belgrade. Like many of those interviewed, he was open about his life of crime. ‘I don’t know a different kind of life. Everything is interesting for me, to live like this. It is a challenge, and I won’t withdraw because of pussies. It is bullshit to say that you can leave this kind of life. Once you are in this kind of life, you never give up.’
Divac soon took his own place in the obituaries. He was shot dead in 1995, one of three gangsters interviewed to be killed before the programme was even broadcast.
Another man featured was Goran Vukovic, a legendary figure in the Belgrade underworld who had survived five attempts on his life, including one in which an anti-tank missile was fired at his car. Vukovic had plenty of enemies because he had killed a former head of the Belgrade mafia. ‘There is a list of mafia leaders prepared by the state, of who should be killed,’ he said. ‘I know this list exists and my name is on it. I will defend myself. If they start to kill us we will kill them. There are enough weapons for a war, we will defend ourselves. I don’t say we can, but we will try.’22 Vukovic was shot twenty-five times leaving a Belgrade restaurant in December 1994.
For the Milosevic family, the increasing criminalisation of Serbian society was having unexpected side-effects. Marija also boasted to women’s magazines about how she looked good with a pistol on her hip. But the increasing atmosphere of menace and intimidation was affecting Marija’s business. At the end of 1995, she phoned her father about problems she was having at her Kosava radio station, where an advertiser was refusing to pay his airtime bill. Marija’s boyfriend wanted to get heavy. Milosevic was not a fan of his, describing him as ‘a scoundrel and a nouveau riche’.
Marija says: ‘Hi there, there is this guy threatening Kosava, says he will buy us all, that we can all go to hell, that he has the court, the police and the SPS [Socialist Party] and that he will fuck us all. Says he [the advertiser] will buy us all. I mean he might have a lot of money, he came from Bosnia, a crook. Says we can suck his dick because he’s got everything.’
Milosevic gave his daughter some financial advice but was not very supportive. ‘Next time don’t play commercials for someone who hasn’t paid up front. Huge debts are a problem of every company in Yugoslavia. OK let’s not talk further, I can tell you are very busy.’ He advised his daughter to file a lawsuit. ‘OK Marija, don’t spread this further, it might end up looking like someone is threatening to kill us, for Christ’s sake. He won’t pay? Big deal. Sue him. Everything’s OK.’23
Milosevic sounded rattled. Earlier that year a hand grenade had exploded not far from the Serbian presidency building. The vacuum left by his destruction of state institutions was being filled by forces over which he had no control. During the next few years some of the Milosevic family’s closest associates would be picked off, one by one, in professional assassinations.
18
Weathering Operation
Storm
NATO Bombs the Bosnian Serbs
1994–5
Hrvoje, what is this? What did we waste all these hours for? You shouldn’t have done this. The shelling has to stop.
Slobodan Milosevic on the telephone to President Tudjman’s secret envoy Hrvoje Sarinic in May 1995, as Croat forces attack
Serb-held Krajina.1
After a few visits to Belgrade, Hrvoje Sarinic was getting the measure of Slobodan Milosevic. ‘When you spend thirty-eight hours with someone tête-à-tête, you start to know the person, whatever his mode of presenting things is. You know what he is hiding.’2 The two men fenced verbally, but Milosevic just ducked and weaved. Sarinic challenged Milosevic: ‘I said to him once, “President Milosevic, you have said wherever a Serb is, that is Serbia.” He said, “I never stated that, who told you that?” But it was generally known that it was his policy.’
So widespread was the belief that this was Milosevic’s policy, it spawned this mordant joke: in a last-ditch attempt to save the old federal Yugoslavia, a team of astronauts is sent to the moon: a Bosnian Muslim, a Croat and two Serbs. When the rocket lands, the astronauts get out and immediately start squabbling over which republic’s flag to raise. The Croat says: ‘Look at all the mountains and rocks, it’s just like Croatia.’ The Bosnian says: ‘No, no, look at us, a Muslim, a Croat and Serbs all together, it’s just like Bosnia.’ Then one Serb takes out a gun and shoots the other. He says: ‘A Serb has died here. This is Serbia.’
Beneath the word games, Milosevic’s objectives were far more realistic. At this time the Serbian leader had two main objectives: in the long term, to get sanctions lifted, and in the short term to acquire as much oil
as possible. Sarinic noted how cold it was in Belgrade, and the lines of bedraggled vendors hawking bottles of petrol or logs for firewood. When he accused Milosevic of taking the Serbs back to the Middle Ages, he merely said, ‘I know’.3
Milosevic saw that sanctions were substantially eroding his support. Factories were closing for lack of oil. The parlous state of the economy, a massive increase in crime and poverty, and hundreds of thousands of refugees from Bosnia and Croatia were threatening Serbia’s social stability. And while Milosevic outmanoeuvred the international community on a day-to-day basis, he knew that to stay in power some kind of settlement would have to be reached eventually.
Milosevic was thinking of recognising Croatia and normalising relations, as a step to easing Serbia’s economic and diplomatic isolation. He was in any case losing patience with the Krajina Serb leadership. The Napoleonic policeman Milan Martic and the baby-faced dentist Milan Babic refused to consider the proposals put forward by international mediators that would offer some kind of autonomy, within the borders of Croatia. Martic and Babic insisted on ‘independence’ for their quasi-state. The Krajina Serbs were becoming a financial millstone, and an obstacle to Milosevic’s efforts to present himself as a peacemaker.
In addition, the Serbs in Knin were allying themselves not with Belgrade but with Karadzic’s increasingly hard-line Bosnian Serbs in their mountain stronghold of Pale. Karadzic was also refusing to follow orders. Milosevic had not one but two monsters on his hands, who were ganging up on their Frankensteinean creator. Meanwhile the military intelligence reports landing on Milosevic’s desk reported that the Croatian army had become a powerful military force, while the creaking JNA was demoralised. The UN arms embargo had done nothing to prevent Croatia acquiring a plentiful supply of weapons, while western powers turned a blind eye. The question was, what should he do about it?
Milosevic and Tudjman had temporarily settled the Croatian question in January 1992 by agreeing to the Vance plan, named after Cyrus Vance, the American mediator appointed by the UN. By the end of 1991 rebel Serbs held over a quarter of Croatia. The fighting and the front lines had more or less stabilised. At that time Milosevic knew that the war in Croatia was deeply unpopular at home. The JNA had been wracked by desertions, and many officers were unhappy about the Serbianisation of the once multi-national institution. Milosevic understood that for now at least, it was time to call a halt.
The Vance plan institutionalised Serb gains in Croatia. The Serboccupied areas were designated UNPAS, UN Protected Areas, divided into sectors: north, south, east and west. Sectors North, South and West were roughly contiguous, a crescent of occupied territory nudging the coast near the Adriatic port city of Zadar, and stretching along the Bosnian border. Sector East was separate: an area around Vukovar overlooking the Danube, which was the border with Serbia. The Vance plan called for the JNA and the paramilitaries to withdraw, a ceasefire to be implemented, and the return of refugees. It was a clear victory for Milosevic. The government of the Republic of Serb Krajina remained in place. The paramilitaries were not disarmed, and there was no realistic right of return for Croatian refugees who wanted to go home. Milosevic had finessed the UN into enforcing the division of the country, and ensuring that the Serb rebels kept control of the territories they had seized. There were no open transport or communication links between the UNPAS and the rest of Croatia. UN troops sat at heavily guarded checkpoints, controlling all access into the UNPAS. Crucially, the UN would not actually administer the areas, merely monitor their administration.
The international community presented this as a diplomatic triumph. Perhaps it was, considering the diplomats’ response to the situation so far. Admittedly, on 12 November 1991 the European Community had resolutely ‘condemned the further escalation of attacks on Vukovar, Dubrovnik and other towns in Croatia’, but even the most resolute condemnation was poor defence against a barrage of 155 mm artillery shells. In Sector East Arkan’s Tigers remained in place, murdering those who questioned their actions.4 The JNA did withdraw, which anyway suited Milosevic as he had other plans for the Yugoslav troops, in Bosnia.
Milosevic – and Tudjman – understood the significance of the Vance plan. There was no political will in the international community to enforce a military solution to the Yugoslav conflict. The way Milosevic saw it, Belgrade could take as much territory as it wanted, stop fighting when it needed, and then sit down at the negotiating table and present itself as a peacemaker. At which point a grateful international community, spared the problem of taking difficult decisions, would send in UN troops to consolidate the Serbs’ gains. Milosevic was correct. UN aid-workers would engage in relief work for refugees, and UN troops would help enforce an already agreed peace, but they would never impose one by force of arms. Tudjman realised that the Vance plan in effect gave him the green light to go ahead with his planned annexation of southern Bosnia. If Milosevic could get away with it in Croatia, then why shouldn’t he in Herzegovina?
By the end of 1994 it was clear that the UNPAS were not a viable long-term solution. Sarinic’s secret missions to Milosevic were increasingly focused on one question: how would he react if Croatia attacked the rebel Serbs? Everything hinged on this, said Sarinic. ‘We wanted to know would Milosevic be involved, would he defend his Serbs, because he pushed them to revolution. We knew the ratio of forces, and if the Serbian army intervened it would be a different story.’
The diplomatic dance began. First, Milosevic asked Sarinic for support in lifting the economic blockade. Maybe, said Sarinic, for a price: Belgrade should recognise Croatia, within its internationally recognised borders. Sarinic pushed harder. If not, Croatia would attack Knin, the headquarters of the rebel Serbs, and anyway take back its territories by force. Milosevic tried to stall. But he specifically warned Sarinic off attacking eastern Slavonia, known as Sector East, which was under the control of Russian UN troops who made no secret of their sympathy for their Orthodox brothers, the Serbs.
Sector East was notoriously corrupt. It was the centre of a flourishing black market in smuggled petrol. Sarinic recalled: ‘Milosevic told me not to touch eastern Slavonia, because it was on the border with Serbia. I told him, “Be careful, Mr President, because if the battle starts for eastern Slavonia, then war could come to Serbia, which did not happen before.” I saw that Milosevic’s situation was not as easy and comfortable as it had been two or three years before. I told him that time was not working in his favour any more.’ When Sarinic quipped that Milosevic would have to put the SANU Memorandum – that many saw as the blueprint for Greater Serbia – in a drawer, Milosevic replied, ‘Well everyone thinks about better times.’ Sarinic reported all this back to Tudjman. His own assessment was that Milosevic would not step in to save the Krajina Serbs. The Croat military stepped up its preparations to attack.
Milosevic enjoyed his meetings with Sarinic. One took place at Milosevic’s remote mountain holiday home near the Romanian border. Sarinic travelled there by helicopter with Thorvald Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian foreign minister who was now the UN’s special envoy to Yugoslavia. Together with his European Community counterpart, Lord Owen, Stoltenberg co-chaired the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY), which had been founded after the London conference, where Milan Panic had told Milosevic to ‘shut up’.
The flight took an hour and a half. As the helicopter landed Milosevic came forward to greet his visitors. He was accompanied by a large dog, recalled Sarinic. ‘He was very polite and gentlemanly. Milosevic said the dog used to be wild, but now he fed him, so the dog was his dog.’ Ushered inside, Sarinic and Stoltenberg were directed to a reception room to wait for Milosevic. The UN’s envoy was left alone to kick his heels while Milosevic consulted with Sarinic. ‘Stoltenberg wanted to come as well, and after the meeting he was very curious as to what we had discussed,’ Sarinic recalled.
Yet at times it appeared that Milosevic’s grip was slipping. His consumption of pear brandy was rising. He usually took no
notes of what was agreed, or said. He wanted to go on holiday. In one conversation with Sarinic, in January 1995, he seemed to try and convince himself that the wars were not his fault. Milosevic’s words provide a rare glimpse into his inner thoughts, and the mass of contradictions therein. There is even a hint that he felt guilty. ‘When all this was happening I was on vacation in Dubrovnik and I realised straight away what this was all about. I can’t wait for all this to end so I can go to Dubrovnik again. I will do everything I can from my side to make this happen this year already. Some idiots were saying Dubrovnik was also a Serbian town. Serbia has no territorial pretensions, if you insist, not even towards Baranja.’5
Mira too was also a great fan of the jewel of the Adriatic. It was Dubrovnik which had ‘stolen her heart for ever’, she had written, reminiscing about a holiday the family had taken there in 1984, driving from Belgrade to the coast in their small Volkswagen. ‘Towards evening, down below the highway, the lights of Dubrovnik came into view. Dubrovnik – sparkling, boisterous, all in flowers.’6 Mira had written a poem on her seventeenth birthday for the city, and there seen Hamlet for the first time. Battered by a rain of JNA shell and mortar fire during the Croatian war of independence, it would be a long time before Dubrovnik welcomed the Milosevics.
Milosevic and Tudjman communicated through shells and infantry attacks, as well as envoys. In January 1993 thousands of Croat troops attacked and captured the Serb-held area around the Croatian port of Zadar, a strip of land that allowed the rebel Serbs to virtually cut Croatia in two. The Croat offensive was condemned by the UN Security Council. Two French UN peacekeepers were killed. None of which stopped the Croat tanks from rolling across the UN lines. Tudjman had learnt the lesson taught so well by Milosevic. The international community had neither the will nor the ability to stop the warring sides using force. Milosevic’s message to Tudjman was unspoken but no less clear for it. Belgrade did nothing.
