I

Wl
i lie t il e western world stood by.

seemingly paralysed, and International

peace efforts broke down, tl
i e former
Yllgoslavia was witnessing Ellrope's
bloodiest conflict for lIal! it centllry.

Tne Oe a ln 01 Yugosl/lvra s tllc first

account to go behind the pubhc face 01

battle and Into the ctosed worlos 01 the

key pa y e . s m the war. Laur" Sitber.

Balkans corresponuent 'or the FmanCI,1/

Times, and Allan little, award wlnnmg BBC

journa 1St. plOl1ho road to ....ar and the war

Ilseif. They P npOlnt Ihe key eventS thai
occurred in the c apItals of Belgrade and
Zagreb, and In Village s f(lvaged by 'ethn,c
cleansing'

and draw on eye,wllness

testimony. sc ru pul ous reseMch and

hundreds

of

Intcrle ....s
.

10

give

urwrecc dcnted access to the facts behind

the media

S\Ofles.

CIliJllenglng the

receiv ed Wisdom \11m the war occurred as

a spontaneous and n
I evlt8ble eruption 01

ethniC hatredS, tile iluthors expose, slep

by-slep, a p',l!l 10 d i v id e the country by

force of arms.

Could anything have been done 10 prevent

thiS temble tragedy? WllOt Will be liS

lasting effects? The authors conSider

these Questions and assess the present

siluallon and Its Imphcat,ons lor IUlure

Inlernallona

reiaiions. Wntten With lIall

and authorily. The Deilrh 01 YIJgoSl8vI8

offers a uniQue InSlghl 11"110 a war

unpreceoenled 11"1 (urope SlIlCe

PENGUIN

Current Events

{6.S9
u."
AUST. 516.95
I recommended I
512.99
CAN

1945.

Laura Silber

is the Balkans Correspondent for the Finanrial Timts. She was

the series consultant for Tht D(alh rfYull's/Qvia and has been based in Ihe
region for eight rears. Widdr acknowledged among journalists, diplomats
and scholars as one of the English-speaking world's leading interpreters of
the causes and progress of the Yugoslav wars, her knowledge of the politics
of the former Yugoslavia is unequalled among foreign journalists.
Allan Little has been a correspondent with BBC radio and television news
since 1988 and has covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia since the
fighting erupted in Ihe summer of 1991. He has reported from most of the
theatres of conflict in Croatia and Bosnia-Hencgovina and hlS won wide
spread praise for his compassionate accounts of the war, and those caught up
in it. His consistently perceptive reporting has laid bare the dynllmics both
of the war itself and of the failure of intemllrional efforts to end it.

CONTENTS
Maps
Cast of Characters
Abbreviations
Note

on Pronunciation

Introduction

vi

X"

"""

XX"

XXI.II

PE.-':CUlN BOOKS

BBC BOOKS

Tbt Dtllih if

YugoJ{av;a which was first broadcast in autumn 199$. The series W1S

This book is published to accomplny

the television series entitled

produced for EBC Television by Bri:lI1 Lapping Associates Ltd.

Associlte Producer Michael Simkin
ProduarlDil"Ktor Attgus Macqueen and Paul Mi tchell
Serin Produar Nonna Percy

Published by the Pengui n Groop and BBC Worldwide Ltd

Penguin Books LId, 27 W rights une, London W8 STZ, England
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375

Hudson Street, New York,

New York 10014, USA

Pl:ngui n Books Austr.dia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canlda Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Onl1rio, Canada l\.-t4V JB2
Penguin Books (NZ) LId, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Regis tered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published 1995

Copyright 0 Brian Lapping Associatn 1995

All rig hlS rc:servnl

The mon.! right of the authors has been asserted

DWgned and t by Nick Morley

Maps by A1elwndarCirit
Primed and bound in Englo.nd by Clays Ltd, St lves pk

in the United Slltca of AmeriCl, thil book is sold sub, , . , '0 'h, COI,m
d . on th at
..... not, b
y w:l.y 0f trade or otherwise' be lem, rt-WId
.II,
h-"
, hIre d OUI or otherwis
e
.
Clmo
. bted WithOut the publish er', prior ronscm in
. 'g or cove
an"
: f.. 1 rm ofb.. ndm
r other

Except

than that in which it i5 published and with

out a s.ml ar co n d ition indu
ding this
condition bemg .tmpod on
th.. subsequem pUl-ch a5er

PART ONK LAYING THE CHARGE

Chapter I: 'This is Our Land'

29

Chapter 2:

36

The Stirring ofSerb Nati onaliJm

No One Should Dare to Beat You'

TIN Rise ofSlobodan Milafroit

April 1987-Deumber 1987

Chapter 3: 'No Way Back'

The Slovene Spring, 1988

Chapter 4: 'Comrade Slobodan, Think Hard'

M ilofroitJ Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution

July 1988-March 1989

Chapter

5:

Chapter 6:

Tsar Lazar's Choice

March 1989-January 1990

:A Croatian Rifle on a Croatian Shoulder'

49

60
74
87

Tht Awakming ofCroatia

1989-1990

PART TWO, LIGHTING THE FUSE

Chapter 7: 'The Remnants of a Slaughtered People'

The Knin Rtbtllion

JanuarrAugust 1990

98

Chapter 8: 'You've Chosen War'

113

TIN Arming ofSlownia and Croatia

April 199G--january 199 1

Chapter 9: 'If We Don't Know How to Work.

At Least We Know How [0 Fight'

TIN DeciJi'lJe Month

March 199 1

Chap ter 10: The Descent into War

Croatia and the SeThJ

Fehruary-june 199 1

Chapter 11: Conversations of the Deaf

146

269

Chapter

19: We are the Winners'

The undon Conftrmu
MorDeumhu1992

285

Chapter 20: The Hottest Corner

293

Chapter

306

TIN Fall ofSrehunicl1 and UN Soft AreaJ

April 1993

161

21: Last-chance Cafe

The Riu and Fall of thl Vanu-Owm Plan
januarrMay 1993

Chapter 22: Beware Your Friend a Hundred-fold

323

Chapter 23: The HMS Invisihlt

336

Chapter 24: A Qyestion of Control

343

Chapter 25: Gaining Moral Ground

354

Chapter 26: To the Mogadishu Line

360

The MUJlim-Croat Conflict

1992-1994

169

Slovmias Phoney War

junt-july 199 1

Chapter 13: 'An Undeclared and Dirty War'

18: The Cleansing

TINSummuof 1992

129

Thl LOJt ChanceSquandered

Marjune 199 1

PART THREE ,THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

Chapter 12: 'The Hour of Europe has Dawned'

Chapter

186

Talks atSm, Summer 1993

The MarJutSquare Bomh and thl

NATO Uilimatum
Fthruary 1994

TlNjNA in Croatia
ju'rDl(emher 199 1

Chapter 14: Yugolsavia Ii la Cartt

urd Carrington's Plan

209

The WOJhington..1grummt
Fehruary 1994

Stpltmher 199 1-january 1992

Thl Battlefor Gorauil, April 1994

PART FOUR, BOSNlA

Chapter 15: Before the Deluge

226

Chapter 16: The Gat..; of Hell

245

Chapter 17: The President is Kidnapped

255

july 199O-March 1992

The Outhreak of War in Bosnia
1- 10..1pril, 1992
May2-3, 1992

Chapter 27:
C onclus ion

i'\ Dagger in the Back'

TheSerhianSplit,fu1l1 1994

373
384

Acknowledgements

390

Index

392

Austria

Italy
Romania

SWVENIA
CROATIA

Pauac

G!,spi

Biha
Banja Luka.
.

BOSNIA

Kni.
.

Jajce

Tuzla

Sarajevo

'"

-y
""

J?rvar

SERBIA

/
Q

Ni

<=>
<f'

Bulgaria

Skopje
MACEOONIA

Yugoslavia

1945-1991

Greece

"U

MARCH 1992: Ceasefire in Croatia and Bosnia on the threshold of war

S/t.ol'tn itJ

Zagreb

I'ojvodlnll

SPRING J 993: Vance-Owen plan

Prijedor

--'.
SaMki

M<><{

BKjK Lu.

'

UN Protected Areas in Croatia

Bo.<;nia-Herzegovin.1:

Cro at majority
[ill Muslim majority
Serb majority

Em Territory without absolute national majority

vm

11,5,91 Muslim provinces

!2. 4, 61 Serb provinces
13, 8 I Croat provinces
110 I Mixed Muslim-Croat province
[7 I Saraj evo, special status

SEPTEMBER 1993:
Serbo-Croat plan for the partition of Bosnia

JULY 1994: Contact Group pJan and front Jines

mediated by Owen and Stoltenberg

Banj. Lub

".... Front line

1::::::::\

Territory Serbs gain

Croat territory

Territory under Serb control

Muslim territory

Territory Serbs have to cede

o Serb territory

Sarajevo under UN administration

Sarajevo under UN control

Tenitory under Muslim-Croat control

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Abdic, Fikrel -LC;,Icler of breakaway 'Autoomous province ofWe lern

.
Bosnia' in the Muslim-populated Bih regIon. A nval of lzetbegoVlc.
Adtic, Blagojc General. JNA Chief of Staff (1991) and Feden.l Defence
Minister (1992).
_

Aksentijevic. Milan -JNA General in Slovenia - impisoned in roat;:l

transferred to Sarajevo when war began. Unceremoniously pellsLoned by
MiiooeviC.

Andjelkovii:, Radmila -Milooevic a.ide during his ris e to power.

AUll\i, Husamedin _ Ethnic Albanian, MiloSevK'S placeman in Kosovo P-arty.
Babic, Milan

Leader of the: Krajina Serb rebellion in Croatia.

Badintcr, Robert -Judge, Chairman of the EC Arbitration Committee: on

Yugoslavia (1991).

Boritner, Ivan - Slovene non-commissioned officer -leaked (planted)

documents to Mladina (1988).

Bosanac, Vesna - Heroic Director of Vukovar's hospital during war.

Boutros-Ghali. Boutros - UN Secretary GeneraL

Brezak, Ivan - Croatian Deputy Interior Minister (1991).

Br? et, Stane:- JNA Admiral and Solvene who was Deputy Defence
. the flTSt big purge of Yugoslav-orientated generals in
MII"Ilsler. PensiOned m
1992.

Broz,josip -llTO - Founder of Communist Yugoslavia. Ruled from 1945

until his death in 1980.

Buin, Nenad - on te ?eo's representative on the Federal Presidency who

reSigned along wllhjovlC In March 1991. Unlike his Serbian coUeagues he
never returned.
Budimirovic, Bko - Kosovo Serb activist.

Bajramovic, Sejdo Appointed Koso o's rep rc sc: ntati e on he Yugoslav

Federal Presidency in 1991- unswervmgly loyal to MiloeV1c.

Bulatovie, Kosta - Kosovo Serb activist.

Baker,James -US Secretary of State (1991).

Youngest Montenegro Party Chief and later elected President of Montenegro.

Savear, Igor Slovenia's Deputy Defencr Minister, and first Police Minister
after independence,

Curington, Lord Peter - First EC peacr envoy (1991-92).

Bulatovic, Momir - Came to power on Slobodan MilokviC's coat-tails.

Christopher, Warren - US Secretary of State -from 1992.

8ilandZie, Dubn -Tudjman's advisor in 1991. Sincr 1994 DepUly Hud of

the Croatian office in Belgrade.

Churkin, Vitaly - Russia's speci:.t.l envoy to former Yugoslavia (1993-94).

Boban, Male -Bosni:.m Croat leader, ousted when the Muslim-Croal

federation was created.

Ckrebic, DoSan - &:rb Communist functionary. Staged mock resignation

ordered by MiloSevic in 1988.

Bogdanovic, Radmilo -Interior Minister of Serbia. ted afm demon

strations on 9 f','larch, 1991. Remained one of Milov\Cs closest confidant5.

Cosie. Dobrica - Influential Serbian nationalist writer seen as spiritual

father of Serbs. President of FRY from 1992-93.

Bogieevie Bogie -Bosnia-Henc:go vina's representative on the Federal

Presidenc . Serb who remained loyal to Bosnia's government during the war.

Cvetkovic,jovan -Mayor of Svetozarevo, confronted Milokvit at Mayors'

meeting in March 1991.

Bokan, Dragoslav -Ultranationalist politician. Serb par amil itary leader.

De Michdis, Gianni - Italian Foreign Minister (1991).

8oljkovac,Josip -First Interior Minister of indep en ent Croatia, responsi

.
ble for recruitment of thousands of new Croat p oll ce 11"1 199G-91.
Boras, Franjo Croat representative on Bosnian Presidency. Never reruffled
to Sarajevo after May 1992.
_

xu

Dedakovie, Mile-Jasrreb - Croatian commander ofVukovar. Arrested after

accusing Tudjman of not helping defend the town.
Degoridja, SIavko - Prominent HDZ official. Held several key positions in
Croatia.

xiii

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Delimustafie, Alija
Fikret Abdie.

Bosnian Interior Minister (1991-92). Muslim ally of

Di'iak.jovan - General. Serb. Deputy Commander of the Bosnian Army.

Dizdarevlc, Raif Bosnia's representative to the Federal Presidency,
replaced by Bogie Bogittvit in 1990.
_

Djukie, Slobodan - Mayor of Valjevo. Attended 16 March Mayors' meeting

when Milokvlt warned: 'At least we know how to fight'.

Djurdje\':lc, Vojislav - General. JNA Commander in Sarajevo.

Doko,jerko - Croat. Bosnian Defence Minister (1991).

Dole, Bob - Republican US Senate leader.

Domljan,Zarko

Dmkovic, Vllk

to liberal.

HOZ official. Spear of the Croatian Parliament (1991).

CharismatiC Serbian opposition leader - from nationalist

Drnovek,janc'l. - Slovenia's representative on the Yugoslav Federal

Presidency and later Prime Minister of independent Slovenia.

Durakovie, Nija'l.

tion to l z etbegoviC.

Bosnian Communist Party leader, remained in opposi

Eagleburger, Lawrence - Former Ambassador

SeCfClary of Slate (1992 ).

to Yugoslavia. Acting

Galbraith, Peler - US Ambassador to Croatia from 1993.

'Yugos l av' represenrative to Ihe Bosnian Presidency, but SDA

leader. Emerged 1992 as Bosnia's dfaCIO Vice President.

Game, Ejup

Genscher, Hans Dietrich - German Foreign Minister, railroaded EC into

Croatian r ecogniti on in 1991.
Gligorov, Kim - First president of independent Macedonia. Shrewd
politician who survived five decades of Yugoslav poli tics.

Gr:.te.anin, Petu - JNA General. Serbian President (1988-89). Interior

Gvero, Milan - Colonel JNA Spok' sman andI ater Dep",>, Commander of
.

the B osman 5 erb s.

Hadi.i Goran - S ecrerary of the Vukovar branch of the SOS in 1991 .

:
.
L ater uccame
'PreSIdent'
of Krajina.
Hadtifejzovie, Senad - Sarajevo televison n ews a nchorm an.

Hafner! V inko - Old S ovene Communist. Member of the Central

Committee ofYulaV1a. Warned Milokvit t hat he was leading 'he
country towards d
lsa srer.
Halilovie, Sefcr - First Commander of Bosnian Army.
Hurd, D ouglas - British Foreign Sec re t ary.
Founding leader of the Muslim Par of 0
ocra c
Action (SA). Elected President of the Presidency ofB nia_
rz ego na
i
cr muln-party el ectio n s in 1990. Presided over Bosnia's declarat on 0f

Izetbegovic, Alija -

ft

mdependence and war.

jackovich, Victor - First US Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

colonel at Virovitica who betrayed General S p egeJ"}.
.
.
.
. Defence Mmlster
Croanas
, over clandesrine gun-runmng operations.

Jagar, adimir -

JN

a , jane -: Sloen.e journalist and opposition activist, who became

ence M m
i ster 10 mdependent Slovenia.

' Ka'j'uSa - Ethnic

Albanian Party Chief of Kosovo, ousted with

J0kano'' e, Zarko - A leader of student demonstrations in March 1991.

,I p.
L ater I
jovanovic, Vladislav - Serbian Foreign Minister.

: e, Orisav - Serbi. 's representative on the Federal Presidency. Held a

t o party and pohlical posts. A close associate of Slobodan Milovit.

Juppe, Alain - French Foreign Minister (1994-95).

Minister in Ante MarkoviC's Government.

i
Jur e, Perka - Croatia's Deputy Police Minister, 1990.

Granic, Mate - Croatian Foreign Minister - from 1993.

l functions, including Prime

Gregurie, Franjo - HDZ official. Held severa
.
(1991)
a
Minister of Croati

Kadijevic, Veljko - Federal Defence Minister 1988-1992.

Ka in. Jelko - Slovene Information Minister - credited with medla bl"Itz

unng Slovene war.

CAST OF CHARACTERS
MilooevK
Karadtic Radovan - Bosnia.n Serb bder from 1990. Split with
The Hague
in 1994. ychiatrist. Investigated by InternationalTribunal in
for war crimes 1995.

Ps

Kavaja, Burhan - Ethnic Albanian Head ofTrepfa mine, imprisoned after

miners' strike in 1989.

Kenes, Mihalj - One of tht leader.; of thc Yogur ' revoluri n. MiIviC's
reliable ally in secret police - instromental m arming Serbs In Croatia.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Lwe, Zoran - President of FRY (from 1993), Took instructions from

Milokvlc.
Lobr, Sonja - Sioven (reformed) Communist official.
Mahmutcehajie, Rusmir - SDA leader - ad\'ocate of forming the Patriotic
League in Bosnia.
M;uoula, Braoko - JNA Admiral, Yugoslav Defence Minister - until 1988.

Kljujii::, Stjepan - Croat member of Bosnan Presi ency. Advocated unified

Bosnia. Rtmoved by Boba.n in 1992 - re-lOstated In 1994.

Manolic,josip - HDZ leader and, until a rift in 1994, one ofTudjman's

.
m05t trusted adViSOr.;.

Koljevil:, Nikola - Bosnian Serb 'Vice President'. Member of Bosnian

Presidency before the w:or.

Markovic, Ante - Last Croation Federal Prime Minister 1989-91.

Introduced market and, to a lesser extent, political reforms.

KoUek, Konrad - General. Commander of the JNA's Fifth Army Dimict.

Markovic, Miana - Slobodall Miloevits wife. Powerful and

influential figure. Belgrade university professor.

Kormil: Iva - Croat member of Bosnian Presidency (1993). Backed

Muslim-Croat federation.
Kordii::, Dario - Bosnian Croat journalist - turned HVO commander.
Kosclmick, Hans - German EC Mayor of Mostar from 1994.
Kostil:, Snnko - Acting President of rump Yugoslavia after Croatian MesiC
withdrew from the Federal Presidency,
Kosril:,jugoslav - Vojvodina's representative on the Federal Presidency in
1991.
Ko:tyrev, Andrei - Russian Foreign Minister.
Krajnik. MOrOCilo - Bosnian Serb Speaker of pre-war Bosnian Parliament
nicknamed Mr No for his tough st;\nce.

Kristan, Ivan - Slovene Chief justice of the Federal Constitutional Court

(1989).

Marrie, Milan - Knin police chief. Leader of Manitevci his own

paramilitary unit in 1991. Lam 'PM' of self-styled state f Krajina.

MaeKenrie, Lewis - Canadian UN Commander in Sarajevo (1 992).

Mendiluce,jose Maria - Top UNHCR official in former Yugoslavia.
Mt!iii::, Stipe - Crotis representative on the Federal Presidency, HDZ
.
leader and, until a rtft In 1994, one ofTudjman's most trusted advisors.
Milok\-i , Siobodan - President of Serbia - singled out by the international
c omunny as most responsible for Yugoslavia's violent disintegration, Later
pr:used for dfons towards peace.
Mitevic, Di.lSan - Confidant of MilokviC and Chief of TV Belgrade.
Mitsotakis, Konstantin - Greek Prime Minister (1993).

Ia ii:, Ratko - General. Commander of Bosnian

Serb Army from
I revlOusly Commander of Knin Corps.

1992.

Kronie, Bko - Vojvodina Party official, ousted in the Ami-Bureaucratic

Revolution in 1988.

Morillon, Phillipe - Commander of UN Forces in Bosnia (1993).

Kuhn, Milan - Slovene Communist Party leader who became the fim
president of independent Slovenia.

Mo na. Rahan - Miloevs token Albanian - Kosovo Pany Chid and

preVIously pollee chief.

Kukanjac, Milurin - General. JNA Commander of Sarajevo.

Nambiar, Satish - General. First UN Commander in former Yugoslavia.

Lagumdtija, Zlatko

Okun, Herben - Cyrus Vance's right-hand man. Former Ambassador.

Bosniall (reformed) Communist leader.

xvii

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Opocic.Jovan - Serb r:.l.bb!erouser from Croatia - who later helped found

SDS.

Rkovicjo"an - Founder of the Serbian Democratic Pany in Croatia.

Mode rate. Eclipsed by Milan Babic.

Oric, Naser - Leader o f Srebrenica defenders from 1992. Fornler bodyguard

of Milooevit.

Rainatovic, Zdjko-Arkan - Commander of fierce paramilitary unit and

brieOy MP. Worked for Serbia's secret police.

Orue, Ljiljana - Saf1lljevo psychiatrist.

Redman, Ch;ules - Clinton's special envoy to peace talks (1993-94).

Owen, Lord David - EC mediator, co-chairman of the Peace Conference

on former Yugoslavia (1992-95).

Rcihl-Kir,josip - Osijek regional Po lice Chief who tritd ro keep w.u from
.
erupting. MUJdered by HDZ extremIsts.

Panic, Zivota General. Commander of the Firs Army Disrict during

Vukovar operations. Later VJ Commander-in-Chlef. Purged m 1993.

Ribitic, Cirit - Slovene Communist leader.

Panic, Milan
in 1992.

Belgrade-born, California millionaire. FRY Prime Minister

Pankov, Radovan - One of the leaders in the Anti-Bureaucratic revolution

in Vojvodina. Minister in Serbian Government.

Rose, Sir Michael - British General. Commander of UN troops in Bosnia.

(1994-95).

Rugow, Ibrahim - Leader of Kosovo ethnic Albanians.

Rupel, Dimitrij - Slovene Foreign Minister.

Paraga, Dobrosav - Founded Croatian Party of Right. Long-time

nationalist Croatian dissident.

Sacirbcy, Mohammed - Bosnia's Ambassador to the UN.

Paspalj, Mile - Speaker of Krajina Assembly.

Sapunx!Uu, Riza - Kosovo's representative on the Yugoslav Presidency.

sacked m 1991.

Pavclic, Ante - Leader of the Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia,

1941-45.
Pavlovic. DragiJa - Bdgf1ll. de P1rt}' Chief and Stambolit's protege.
1'eter1e, Lojze - Slovene Prime Minister in 1990.

Scowcroft, Brtnt - Leading US forign policy-maker. US National Security

Council - until 1992.
SeiIj, Vojisla,: - Ultranationalist MP
who commanded paramilitary unit
dunng. M
ame him his favourite politician and helpe
l
d him
create hiS parly. Later piled him.

Pla\ic, Biljana 'Vice-President' of sd f-prodaimed Bosnian Serb state.

.
Was a member of pre-w;u Bosnian PreSidency.

Skoljc,jme - Head of the Slovene Youth Organization (19119 ).

I'ohara, Armin - Journalist turned Bosanski Bred defender.

Sz.ic. Haris - Prim e Minis

ter of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Form erly
Foreign
Mlllisier.

Poos, Jacques - Luxembourgs Foreign Minister (1991).

Praljak, Siobodan - Theatre director. Commander of Bosnian Croat Militia
(1993).

,?e. edc1jko - One of tht leaders of the Anri-BureauCr:.i.ti

i
III

c revolution

oJvodllla. Part y official.

Sogorov, MiloV'lln - Vojv

odina

Party Chief, ousted in 1988.

Putnik,Jote - Fonner Slovene dissident. Leader of DEMOS opposition

coalition in 1990 elections.

Solevic, Miroslav - Kos

ovo Serb activist.

Ratan lvica Croatian Communist leader - abandoned the last Party

Congrss after the Slovenes. Lost 1990 elections.

the

R:deta, Andrija - JNA General. Deputy Commander of the Fifth Army

District.
XVIII

SPC j, Martin - Croatia's first Defence Minister. Form

Ifth Army District in the
er Commander of
Yugoslav Army.

.
\. . .
5tambolic' Iwn - Commulllst
po lUCIa
n. Helpeu' Miloevic rise to powu
On
Iy to face betrayal
. He was oustd by his best
friend in 1987.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Stambuk, Vladimir - Belgrade University Professor.Close to Mira

Vasiljevit, AleksandaJ" - Head

Markovic.

Sacked in May

Stanovnik,Jane'l - President of

Slovenia

(1988).

V ico, Ratomir -CI ?se as iale

Stojanovic, Svetour - Serb. professor. Dobrica Cosic's dose:

advisor.

Stoltenberg, Thorvald - UN en,'O}' ro InternationalConference, replaced

Cyrus Vance (1993).
SlIklje, Borut

SloveneCommunist. YugoslavCenualCommittee member.

Su!ak, Gojko -Croatia's Defence Minister. One ofTudjman's dosest allies

from

1990.

Suvar, Stipe -CroatianCommunist leader. Head f Yugoslav Party

Tasl/:, David - Mladina journalist. Arrested in 1988 for passing on
military document.

head of peacekeeping.

Serbian party activist, protege of Mira MarkoviC.

Trgovtevic. Ljubinka - Member

of Scrbia's Presidency. Sided with

T rifunovic, Vlado - JNACommander. Arrested after war.

TlIdjman, Fnnjo - Founding leader of theCroatian Democr:l.tic Union
(HDZ) and first presidem of independentCroatia.
TupllrkovslU, Vasil- Macedonian politician. Member
Presidency (1991).
Tus, Antun -CroatianJNA Gcneral. Took charge
Forces in 1991.

of Yugoslavia's

ofCroaria's Armed

Unkovic, Slobodan - President of the Serbian Parliament

van

Commander of

the

Vrhnika Barracks

VUasi, Azem - Ethnic Albanian Kosovo Parry leader. Jailed in 1989 after
MilokvK pledged to arrest him at mass rally. Released in April 1990.
\Vejnaendts, Henri - Dutch Ambassador to France,Carrington's deputy,

1988.

Mladi"a. Atrested as parI of Ljubljana

Zimmermann, Warren - US Ambassador 10 Yugoslavia

(1989-92).

(1991),

den Brock, Hans - Dutch Foreign Minister (1991).

Vanee,Cyrus - UN envoy and co-chairman of the PeaceConference on

former Yugoslavia.

1994.

Zulfikarpic, Adil - Bosnian Muslim businessman in Switzerland

- financed SDA and signed 'Belgrade initiative'

Thornberry,Cedric - UNPROFOR civilian of6cial.

Stambolic.

Vidmar,Tone - JNA General. Deputy

(1991).

Za'TI, Franci - Editor inChief of

a Sl:cret

of Belgrade Serbian

Zubak, Krclimir -Croat President of Bosnia Federation from

Tharoor, Shashi - Special assistant to the UN

o f M ilcvit. Head

1991.

television. InformatIOn Mmlster.

four in

(1988-89).Croatia's representative on Federal PreSIdency 1989-90.

Todorovic, Zoran

of JNA counter-intelligence (KOS) in

1992 in purge of Gener.us.

with Miloevic in 1991.

INTRODUCTION

ABBREVIATIONS

AP
DEMOS
EC
EU
FRY

HDZ
HVO

European Community

Croatian Democratic Union

Croat Council of Defence

International Monetary Fund

NOH

Mass movement in Croatia 1971

Independent State of Croatia (1941)

SOA

Party for Democratic Action

SAO

Yugoslav Peoples' Army

Serbian Autonomous Region

50S
SFRJ

Serbian Democratic Party

Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia

TO

Territorial Defence Force

SPS
SKJ

UN
UNHCR

'

European Union
Federal Republic ofYugosiavia

IMF

JNA
MASPOK

On that day we'll say to HI'II: 'Haveyou had enough?'

And Hell will answer: 1s there more?'
Toga dana mi CNIIO reii paldu: Jesi Ii se lIapuflio?'
Apahao ie odgovoriti: /ma IijOir
Mesa Selimovit, Dervif i Smrt

Associated Press
Democratic Opposition Coalition of Slovenia

Socialist Party of Serbia

League of Communists ofYugosiavia

United Nations
United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees

UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force

NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION
c is 'ts' as in bats

is

'ch' as in archer

cis 'tj' as in tune

dj is 'dg' as in bridge
dz is 'g' as in gentle

j is 'y' as in you
lj is 'Ui' as in million
nj is

'n' as in new

s is 'sh' as in sharp

1; is 'zh' as in treasure

uslim refugees flee into the woods, crowd into lorries, some are
shot dead while trying to escape a Serb onslaught, Blackened
skdetons of buildings form Sarajevo's skyline, Mediators and politi

cians wring their hands, wondering how to stop the wars in former

Yugoslavia, whose waves of wrenching violence have provoked such

public outrage.
Over the past five years, these images have become familiar. They

have faithfully conveyed the anguish of the time.

We wrote this book to shed light on the decisions which led to the

horror and destruction. It is an attempt to identify, dispassionately and

clinically, the crucial events in both the lead-up to the war and in its
progress once fighting had started, and to reconstruct those events
through the accounts of those people who took part in them - the
milestones, if you like, on the road to catastrophe. It does not con
demn, or condone, or justify any of the players in the unfolding

tragedy. It tries simply to relate what happened, and why, an d at whose

behest.
The war in Yugoslavia was not the international community's
'fault'. It was a home-baked cake. War was planned and waged
by
.
Yugoslavs. But It was not 'historically inevitable'. To
attribute the
.
a1amlty that engulfed (he peoples of Yugoslavia to unstoppable forces
.
IS to aVOid
addressing oneself to the central dynamic of the war. It is
also to let the guilty mcn off the hook. And,
from the point of view of
Western statesmen, it also provides a justifica
tion for their failure to
end the war.

This book shows that Yugoslavia in part

did not die a natural death
b ut that, rath er, it was deliber
ately and systematically killed offby men
wh o had nothing to gain,
and everything to lose, from a peaceful
. .
transitI
On from state SOCt. -,
a.l1sm and one-party rule, to a markt-based
econ om and multi-party
democracy. We trace the origins of the war

.
to th e fiSC of S erb
.
-,.l1. Sm among Belgrade mtellec
natlOna
tuals in the
ffi1
'd 19805, and the subsequent
harnessing of nationalist rhetoric by
.

XXII

XXIII

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Siobodan Miloevic. The book traces Milo5eviC's conscious use of

nationalism as a vehicle to achieve power and then to strengthen his
control first over Serbia, and then over Yugoslavia. His centralising,

guilt y. The foot soldiers of Yugoslavia's march to war wefC legion and
wert: drawn from all the country's nationalities.
i
It is as well, 3.150, to state what this book is not. It is not a cr e dr
cO/ur, a call to arms of the 'Save Bosnia Now' type (though we believe
that Bosnia cou1d, and should, have been saved). It is not a polemic
against the failure of the "Yest to protec the wak nst the strong.
'
or Journalists; It IS not a 'we were
And it is not a book about Journalism
there and it was horrible' account of life on the front line.
We have charted what we believe t o be the principal stages in the
country's violent disintegration. In this context - and in a (futile)
effort to keep the book a manageable length, many important events
have been omitted. The fate of Macedonia has been ov erlooked .
Macedonia's somewhat speciftc and wider set of circumstances makes
it possible to separate it from its northern neighbours. Nor have we
detailed opposition movements in the various rep ubli cs . The principal

authoritarian. anti-democratic leadership, and his calculated, clever

manipu1ation of the politics of ethnic imoiera!,ce, pvoked the . other
nations of Yugoslavia, convincing them it was Impossible (0 stay In the

federation.
If our book has a single core thesis, i t's this: that under Miloevifs
stewardship, the Serbs were, from the beginning of Yugoslavia'S disintegration, the key secessionists.
.
.
. , .
We chose to start the book with MiloeVJc s nse to power achieved
by his manipulation of the crisis in Kosovo. w..e the plt how e sus
.
tained himself in power by provoking successive cnses In Serbia; and
how he extended his power base beyond the borders of his own repub
lic. Finally by arming Serb communities ?utside Se:bia, h was ble to
present the o ther nations in Yugoslavia, time after time, With a sImple,
sinister choice: either stay in Yugoslavia on my terms, or ftg ht a war
against the Serbs. Presidnt Mila Kubn of Sloven ia. and Pres dent
Franjo Tudjman of Croatia took h
i S c hall enge . Slo.v enta wn a ltght
in vain that the mternattOnal combelieved
Croatia
while
'war'
ning

munity wou1d come to its rescue.

.
In the run-up to war, Milosevic and Tudjman began to Jostle for a
better position in their battle for the spoils of Yugolavia.It ben

with talks about the partirion of Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia,
at the expense of the Muslims. The Muslims, .unprepared for. war,
were the biggest victims - the traces of their culrural henta,
mosques and graves obliterated. Minarets, Orthodox and Catholic
churches jumbled together for cenruries wimessed the end of the
peaceful coexistence of the three communities.
W hen internationa1 mediators entered the fray, they behaved as
though war were self-evidendy futile and irrariona1; all they needed to
do was to persuade the 'warring factions' of this trui s and, once t e
scales had fallen from their eyes, the guns would fall Silent. They did
not see (or chose not to) t hat war for many ofYugo slavia's leaders had
become a profoundly rational course of action.
Miloevic, like many other rulers in h istory, had used nationalism
for his own ends. He was never a nationalist. He had fanned the fires
of nationalism when it suited him. He was a pragmatist with :l simple
calculation. Unbridled nationalism - even war - would give him the
power to rule unchaJlenged over as big a country as possible.
This is not to say that Miloevic was uniquely malign or solely

xxiv

actors in this disaster have been its leaders.

We have tried to lay bare the dynamics of the war by isolating the
crucial events, the secret meetings, the hidden de ci si ons, and by nam

ing the men whose actions led - sometimes by accident, sometimes by

design - to war. Working with Brian Lapping Associates, hundreds of
interviews have been conducted. As a rule quoted p er sonal recollec
tions are taken from those inte!Views or from our reporting unless
otherwise specified.
The first Yugoslav state was created after World War
One on the
smoulderng ruins of the Ottoman and Hapsburg
empires. It was
called at Its foundation the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes,
and was only later rechristened Yugoslavia.
It was ruled by the Serbian
dynasty
. KaradjordjeviC, and embodied the nineteenth-cenrury dream
of uruty for t e South Slavic people
s Guzni slaveni), which had been
nurrured by mtcllecruals of all
the South Slav nationa1ities who
yeamed for liberation from foreig
n - [hat is to say Austri
and
.
Ottoman - domma
.
tIon. The young Y ugoslav monarchy qUICkl
y
came a Serbian dictatorsh
ip. Croat intellectuals in particu1ar ini"illy enthusiat
..
.
'
about the Y ugos'av 1dcal, grew disillUS
IC
.
ioned and
embittered.

kn Josip Brz, a locksmith who was

half Slovene and half Croat was
own

o hiS army
powers Invaded an
d
.
enemies Germans,
.
mo

narchists

of Partisan guerillas as Tito. In 1941

the Axis
.
.
parttt
.LOnc d Yugos,aVla
. . Tlto counted among his
.
. n f ascist s (Ustak)
Ita,lans,
Croatla
and Serb
(Chetfitks) . C ommufit. st Yugosla via
was declared on 29

'

INTRODUCTION

November, 1943 at Jajce in central Bosnia, and reborn twO years later.
In 1945, the Soviet Army iberated
l
most of Eastern Europe from
German occupation and Moscow installed Communist governments
in Bertin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest. The Yugoslavs had, however,
substantially liberated themselves. Though Tiro rcmained committed
to the Soviet way, he was the only post-war Communist lade who
had built his position from the bottom up. From Moscow s pomt of
view, he was dangerously independent. Yugoslavia was expeUed from
the common institutions of the eastern bloc in 1948.
After the split with Moscow, Tito steered Yugoslavia between et
and west. He was feted in Cold War western Europe, as an antl
Moscow Communist. He used the country's unique position to secure
financial backing, and a prosperity that was beyond its means.
Throughout his stewardship ofYugoslavia, Tito tried to prevent his
state from suffering the same fate as its predecessor. The Serbs were
the biggest nation - twice as populous as the second largest, the
Croats. Successive post-war constitutions were designed to balance
institutional power between the constituent republics, to prevent the
stale falling under the hegemony of one nation.
In his eternal battle to keep the republics on equal footing, Tito.
who was made president for life, carried out pus fIrSt of the Serbs,
then the Croats, or the Muslims. By 1974, at least on paper, the coun
try was decentralised to an unprecedented extent. Yet while Tito was
alive there were no illusions about who held the reigns of power. It was
a one-party state under one man's control. There was a pay-off;
Yugoslavs were allowed to travel, to work abroad. and they did not
suffer the same darkness as life in the USSR and the eastern bloc.
Wary of appointing a successor. Tito created a hopelessly ineffi
cient heir, the collective head-of-state - an eight-man presidency from
each of the six republics and Serbia's twO autonomous provinces,
Kosovo and Vojvodina.
Yugoslavia had a federal parliament, six republican parliaments
and t\vo provincial parliaments. Government institutions had been
established but it was the Communist Party (or Parties) that mattered.
There were ten Communist parcies - one for each of the six republics
and two provinces, one federal party and the party of Yugoslav
People's Army.
. . .
When Tito's health began to decline, the federal party IOstltutlOns
declined with him. Yugoslavia became a country composed of eight
republican or provincial Communist parties and the secret poice.
l
When he died, at the age of eighty-eight, in May 1980, there was a
xxvi

INTRODUCTION

genuine outpouring of patriotic grief among all Yugoslavia's nations.

The ethnic Albanian Communist functionary, Mahmut Bakalli, later
remembered. 'We all cried, but we did not know we were burying
Yugoslavia.'
Finally this book is a lament to the failed promise of Yugoslavia. As
Communism declined in the late 1980s. it was, in many ways, better
placed than any mher <?ommunst state to make the transition to
multi-partydemocracy, clther as SIngle state or as a group of successor
states. There was a real chance for Yugoslavia to take its place in a new
and, at that time, hopeful community of European nations. That that
chance was deliberately snuffed out, in the ways that this book
describes, turned out to be Europe's loss. as well as Yugoslavia's, and a
monal blow to many of the core moral certainties of our age.

XX"fJii

PART ONE: LAYING THE CHARGE

1
'THIS IS OUR LAND'

The Stirring ofStrb Nationalism

of all nationalists in Yugoslavia to put their vision

t was the dreamand
then make it a reality. They knew their plans
paper
on
Icoulddownnot be e ted imm
ediately, hut they were content to wait. The
Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts remains
shrouded in mystery nearly a decade after its existence was revealed.
Was the Memorandum an attempt to settle political scores in Serbia?
l oSevit, the ambitious Party chief, avoid taking
How did Slobodan Mi
revival of Serbian nationalism the first step
this
Was
a public stand?
avia?
Yugosl
bering
dismem
towards
In this rough document, a cabal of Serbian academics1 had cata
logued chelf nat ionalist grievances. They had not yet intended to
publish it, but somehow this unfmished draft appeared in the press.
Set against the savagery of the next decade, the Memorandum now
seems pale and hackneyed, but, when excerpts were published on 24
September, 1986, in Vr{trnjt NavoSli, the mass-circulation daily, it was
a political bombshell. The country was convulsed.
Serbs were in such an unjust position in post-Second World War
Yugoslavia, argued the document, that their very existence was threat
ened. They were the victims of economic and political discrimination
by their Croat and Slovene countrymen. Serbs had made the greatest
military contri bution (and suffered the most casualties) over the last
cntury and, far from being rewarded, were being punished in peace
time. The Serb nationalist convinion that it had always been the
Serbs' fate to 'win the war and lose the peace ,' was gai ning popular
currency. For the Serbs in Kosovo and
the Memorandum
aI1e.d, the situation was even worse. InCroatia,
Kosovo and Metohija, the
traditIOnal Serbian name for t
he republic's southern province, Serbs
facd total enocidc . It
said they were facing the greatest defeat in
.
elr liberation struggle waged since 1804, the Serb revolt ag inst the
urks. The status of Serbs in
Kosovo had long been a subject of
resent ent in Serbia,
but the draft Memorandum went a step further,

SOunding the alarm

about the position of Serbs in the other republics:
ex cu

'9

LAYING THE CHARGE

iH1S IS OUR LAND'

Exupt during the period of the NDH (the 1ndeprndmt Stale of

Croatia, prodaimid in 1941 by the pro-N azi Ustale), Srrbs in
Croatia haw ntiHr bun as tndangertd as thty are today. The
rtJollition of tbtir national status must be a top priority political
question. If a solution is not found, the rnsequnr s will t
damaging on many It'Vtls, not onlyfor re/allons wlthm CroatIa
bllt alsofor all of YugOJlavirr.

mythical statuS was ensured i 1968. hen he .was expelled fom the
Central Committee for accuslOg ethmc .AJbamans
. of separatism and
anti-Serbian ntiments. In the 970s, dlsgruntle mtellectuals rallied
around him. Cosic held clandestlOe monthly meetings on the need for
democratic reform in Yugoslavia. The police watched him constantly,
but he was never arrested. He called this 'pragmatic tyranny'. To
imprison him would have becn counter-productive.

Yugoslavia, in its present form, was no longer an adequate solution

to the Serbian question. The Memorandum argued that the country
was disintegrating, and that forty per cent of Serbs had been left
languishing beyond the frontiers of the mother.land. Th . blame, it
said, rested with the Comintern legacy, the national polmcs of the
Yugoslav League of Communists, and their faithful and igorant
Serbian followers. The seventy-four-page tract accused Siovema and
Croatia ofconspiring against Serbia. The campaign had been allegedly
spearheaded byTito himself and Kardelj, the Slovene architect of Self
Management: Yugoslavia's own brand of socialism, based on the concept of social rather than state ownership).
.
.
.
m1u
consIderable
Serbia's Academy of Sciences and Arts Wielded
ence. Removed from the public gaze, along with the Writers' Union,
it was one of few institutions not totally controlled by the Communist
Party. In Croatia and Slovenia, these twO organisations had a similar
status. In Serbia, part of the intelligentsia had enjoyed a century-long
tradition of comfortable coexistence with the rulers of the day.
Memoranda had been used as a means of political communication in
Serbian history. In writing their's, the nationalist academics were
drawing on a Serbian tradition that pre-dated Yugoslavia.
Dobrica Cosic, the writer seen as spiritual father of the Serb nation,
denied that hc contributed to the Memorandum. It is, however, the
undoubted distillation of his ideas, and he defended it when it came
under attack'. A member of the Academy, Cosic went so far as to
explain, rather unconvincingly, that the Memorandum was not
'nationalist' but 'anti-Tito and pro-Yugoslav'.
An icon for Serbian dissidents, Cosic, silver-haired and bespec
tacled, spoke in the accent of a Serbian peasant. His quiet manner id
not mask his belief, and that of his fellow nationalists, in the authonty
of his message. Dspite having been the powerful cultural ideol?e
in Tito's regime, Cosic is credited with making sure that SOCialist
Realism - the mandatory form of expression elsewhere in Eastern
Europe - was not enforced in Communist Yugoslavia. His almost
JO

The President of Serbia, Ivan Stambolic, heard secret police reports

that the Academy had undertaken a covert project, but was told that
it consisted simply of a socio-economic assessment of the current
situation. However, when the Memorandum was made public in
September 1986, its contents shocked even the Belgrade leadership.
Stambolic and his protege, Dragia Pavlovic, the Belgrade Party
chief whose domain traditionally included the media, roundly
denounced the document. For Stamboic,
l a Serbian nationalist in the
eyes of Croats and Slovenes, but accused of being too soft by Serbian
hardliners, the Memorandum was an ominous indication of rising
chauvinism. He called it a requiem for Yugoslavia. The Academy
assailed the federation for dividing rather than uniting Serbs, which,
according to Stambolic, rurned the country's biggest nation into its
most dangerous. The fact that the Memorandum lambasted the
Serbian leadership for arrogance and inaction spurred Stambolic to
respond. He was depicted as totally ineffectual and ripe for removal.
The t Memorandum did not create nationalism, it simply
tapped sentIments that ran deep among the Serbs, but which
suppresse and, as a result, exacerbated by Communism. were
Academy 5 ct echoed opinions whispered throughout Serbia. The
The Serbian press outdid the other republics in the severity of
its
tt.acks on the Mem
orandum and the Academy. Indeed, the Slovene
.Y' D"evik, psed the Belgrade media for its determination to get
''. f natJo
nalism. Croatian politicians bashed the document.
L. Iberals, who dIsagree
the text itself, supported the Academy's
'
WIth
. mnd.dIn
h speak Its

. s the midst of the political furore, only a tiny

of AcademiCian
the docu
. spoke Out agai
. nst
. men
Throughout YugosI aVla,
. t. .
C
ommu
msts
hurled
IOvect
lve
agalOst the
M:mo'a?dum and the Academy.
Except for Miloevic. The leader of
th... Serblan Commum st p
. ated
arty, wh0 usually castig
anyone who
dev," ed eiTom the 0ffi!CIa
' I Ime, remamed Silent
. He let others speak in
. ' '
his pIace, making
ure he document was condemned - this was' after
011, hIS duty - but sh'
. expressio
Ied away from a publiC
n of his views.
.

LAYING THE CHARGE

'THIS IS OUR LAND'

At a session of the Belgrade Party, Duan Mitevic, a close friend

of Miloevic and his wife Miana, denounced the Memorandum as
dangerous for Yugoslavia and the Serbian nation. The fact that ?U
.
speech was carried as a commentary 10 te Ste-ru Belgrade daily,
Po/ifili.Q, meant that Miloevic supponed It. Mllokvte also made sure
.
.
the speech was distributed at a Party meeting
.
.
to find out why
Mltevte
on
pressure
Stambolic and Pavlovic put
.
that there was
answered
ic
'Milokv
Milovic was keeping silent
to th confu
add
to
want
not
id
d
he
and
discussion
much
already too

supporting
a
plays
usually
who
player
role
ootball
f
a
like
is
He
sion.
but then scores the goals,' said Mitevie, then a city Party official.

nation by their big brothe.

which feared domi
.
.
W'th
the
promulgat
ion of the 1974 constlnltlon, Serblas position
l
.
a
succession
preoccupied
ofleaderships6 The question
_1...
m"
'e federation
"
concern. Although
f the statuS of Kosovo became the most pressmg
, Kosovo was regarded by Se.rhs as the cradle
:
nery per cent Albanian
of their civilisation. It was the seat of the Serbian church, the
Patriarchate at Pee. Serbian politicians and intellecruals have wrestled

Cracks were appearing in StamboliC's twenry-five-year friendship

with Miloevic. But Stambolic failed to appreciate the extent of the
danger until their fateful showdown at the Eighh Session of the
Serbian League of Communists. Promoted by his powerful uncle
Petar, Ivan Stambolic had engineered iloeviC's advncemenr to the
post of Party chief. In the style of a typiCal Commurust ruer, he h

silenced dissent within the leadership over the promotIOn of hiS

friend, who was then litde more than the colourless head ofTehnogas,
a state fuel company. At the time, Stambolic justified the purge as an
attempt to revitalize the Party with fresh blood. At the age of fifty,

Stambolic was stepping down from the more powerful Party leader
ship to become Serbian president. He wanted to devote himself to
changing the constirutions.
.
The Yugoslav constitution, adopted in 1974, devolved substanbal
power to Yugoslavia's six republics, giving each a central bank, sep
educational and judicial systems. h gave the same to Serb s
l
poice,

two provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. The provinces elected epuues

to the Serbian parliamem, as well as having their own assebhes..
tWO provinces were made constituent members of[he fede'?"tlon, glvmg
their leaders seats on Yugoslavia'S rotating presidency, which assumed
power when Tiro died. On several occasions, they sided 'vih the other
.
republics against Serbia. In this way, the enormous dispanty between
Serbia and the other republics was diminished. Serbia was no longer

a republic of ten million people, more than twice that of the

biggest republic, Croatia. By virrually abolishing Belgrade's ,u.,horil)'

over Kosovo and Vojvodina, the constirution cut Serbia, now
a manageable population of six: million, down to size. Serbs
complained that the expression 'weak Serbia - strong

;;

embodied the attitude of their countrymen. While the

gave Serbs something to gripe about, it also calmed the other

for more than a century with the thorny question of Kosovo'. The
balance of power had already shifted dramatically in the southern
province when Tiro's hard-line interior minister, A1eksandar
.
Rankovic, was ousted 10 19668. Over the next twenty years, and
especially after 1974, ethnic Albanians ruled the roost, holding most

positions of power in the province.

In the autumn of 1981, a year after Tito's death, ethnic Albanians
took to the streets, demanding independence from Serbia and that
Kosovo become the sevemh republic. The protests were crushed by
the Yugoslav Army and federal police. While the province's powers
almost matched those of the republics, they stopped short of the right
to secede, which the republics arguably enjoyed. Of course, a
decade
later in Croatia it would become clear that the right of
secession was
little more than notiona, impossible to exercise witho
ut bloodshed.
Secretly encouraged by Cosie, a group of Kosov
o Serbs dissatisfied
.their position began to organize. 'They complained about their
pos.mon and I adsd em t write
a petition and to put forward

,
their deands, SaId COSIC. Bur Cosic
was not their only support. They
ha silen backer_ - the Serbian
government. A trio of local Serb
acoVJS, M
lfOslav Solevic, Kosta Bulatovic
and Botko Budimirovic
n clfL1Jlated their frnt protest petition. It attra
cted just seventy-sV:
sl&I:'atures. But, later
, they were to garner wider
public support with

fre
qu?tly repeated simple
message: 'This is our land. If Koso
vo
o etohiJa are not Serbian then we
don't have any land ofour own'.
ve the ncxt four year
s, a motley protest group calli
ng itself the
ommlttee of Serbs
" "
and Montcnegnn
" s sought to Igmte Serb emotions. Tney old
tales ofwoe - ofbeing
forced ro move under pressure
of "pes an ,
d harassmem9. In
"
'
, the group easil
1986
y collected more
than 50 000 Signatures
'
from Serbs calling for a chan
ge in Kosovo"
Even though the secret
poI"Ice had mfil
"
rT:l.ted Sole
the Party
vie's organisation

[:s had nOt yet take

n the movement uner its wing:
On 2 Apr
.
.
BulatovlC. was rres
ted In Kosovo PolJe - and the
police questi
'

oned him regularly

10 the months that
crOnies
followed. His
Went to Be1grad
e for help. Late that
night, they met the

w1

JJ

LAYING THE CHARGE

TlIIS IS OUR LAND'

dissident nationalist writer, Vuk Draskovii::, in the Hotel r.1,d,,

Draskovii:: took them to meet Cosii:: in the nearby Hotel
told them to come later to his house in the exclusive B:::;:::::
of Dedinje, where the Communist establishment rubs

foreign diplomats.
.
Budimirovic noticed that Cosie was shaking visibly, as he greettd.
the Kosovo activists by the front gate. It was midnight. Inside, he
guided his guests to the cellar, where dusty books lined the walls. They
sat there until two o'clock in the morning:

Thry (am to m in fh ullar and w agrud bow thry should

strugg/, what tJuy should do, and whichforms ofmntanu thry
should offir.
I helpd them in everything they did. I co-operatd with them in
their illegal struggle.
Cosie rang Dtffian Ckrebic, the Serbian President. The n morning

at eight o'clock, he received the delegation in Parliament.Ckrebit told

tm , U
them: 'This is where you should be. Not where you were last m',

a key moment. No longer would the movement be 'onfinc

underground. The Communists were about to hijack the nationalists'
cause. Recognizing its usefulness, official Serbia began irs he,d10"l1

was

and ultimately disastrous descent into nationalism. It tapped a

scam of national grievance, officially stifled but privately nurtured

decades. Its primitive appeal, the Communist leadership believed.

would revive Serbia's stagnating poli i cal and economic system. Eight

months after the Memorandum sent shock-waves throughout the

country, its basic message was beginning to take root.

1 The Serbian economist Kom. Mihajlovic, who later became one

MilokviC's closesl advisors, is widdy believed to be the Memorandum's
author. While he never acknowledged lIul he wrote the
papers he published later contained an identical ntionale.
2 Memorandum, p.64.
3 Celebrated as a monumental achievement in the Socialist world,
Management was actually a convoluted syslem based on 'social
.. bY '"
meaning factories are owned by workers and their councils rather ,h,
state, ut in fact it was very difficult to define who owned what.
4 Cosi':: was active in the Committee for Freedom of Speech
defended those throughout Yugoslavia, who were prosecuted for their
cal views. The accused would later becO ' ' WhO " WhO Of th'
1 :
; :
Yugoslavia. Franjo Tudjman, arrested for :::
led for
become Croatian President; Alija Izctbegovic,
:
, jai

President of Bosnia in 1990; Vojislav Seklj, Serbian

nlism would become
paramilitary and MPj and Dobroslav Paraga, a Croat extremist
ist
national
ultra
etc.
and paT2military leader,
once over a fish dinner with Kardelj, even he, the
S Stambolit recalled that
arclJitcct of the constitution, admitted it caused problems for Serbia. Seen as
Tito's heir apparent until he died in 1979, Kardclj said Stambolic and his
comrades should work towards changing the constitution. But by Tito's death
in 1980, no progress had been made, and afterwards the question was shelved.
A Yugoslav ideologue from Slovenia, Karddj also tried to reassure
Srambolit that the country would survive without him and Tiro. 'Whoever
a\Tllcks the equty of nations, the federated t-up, whoever attempts to take
away the factones !ffim Ihe '."'orkers: or to raIse the question of Yugoslavia's
independence we II break hIS neck!
6 Yugoslavia promulgated three constitulions in the post-Second World
946, 1%3,.and 1974. Until 197. the question of regulating
rela
. WIth
nons m Tltos YugoslaVIa was a key tOpiC
a multitude of constitutional
amendments a90pted in the meantime.
7 Dobria Cosie and other .embcrs of is natinalist dissident
clique
.
secretly deVlud a scheme to partlllon the prOVInce, gIVIng
Serbia its treasured
Orthodox monasteries. The remainder would be handed to
the Albanians
leang them free. to unite with their kinsmen across the border
in Albania:
toslt never u
nve
iled his plan. insisting the public was not r
eady [0 give u
P
even part of Kosovo.
8 Aleandar Rankovic was expeUed
from the Yugoslav League of
ComuSIS on 1 July, 1966, for abu5t
of power in the secret police, i.e. wire
tappmgltO. In Kosovo, Rankovifs
name was synonymous among Alba
nians
a.felgn fte or. For Serbs, he ruled
with a mong hand and kept a lid on

n natl n sm. When he died on

20 August, 1983, tens of thousands
of '"'" the funeral
in what became the first mass-prot
est about the
.."s 0f Serbs 10 Kosovo and Yugos
,_.,'
I aVla
" III general. The turn-out signa
.
lled
the .s f
sm. va? Stambolic, then
: ;
Bdgrade City Chief, said: 'All
.
acro
go ;: ey cfltlc
lzed me for not controlling it should I have P"'
tanks round the cem
elery?'
9 In fact, statistics
l' d'lcate that th e Illcld
' , ence of rape was much lowc
KoSOVo than eIsewhere In
r in
Yugoslavia.
-

"!ar ri:

34

::

:j::::

JS

'NO ONE SHOULD DARE TO BEAT YOU'

happening. He watched the crowd from the

_.I to sec what was
ntcu
wa
ownstalfS
what was to beeorne one of
d
to gIVe

in
g
g
o
Y before
bat
c
areer.
'No one should dare to beat
es
ofhi
c
spe
rtant
.
St impo

the
a
modern Serb rallying call.
cOlOlOg
unwIttingly
u ' he bellowed,
the
croW
?
outSide started chanting:
changed,
suddenly
mood
'510bo 510bo'. 'This sentence enthroned him as a tsar,' saidSolevic. He
J'oked hat Milosevic was, in fact, telling the police that no-one had the
right to attack them when he unered the phrase that would secure his
mythical status among Serbs. ut, as Solevic admitted. with a deep
.
.
laugh, mere was not a smgle policeman who did not get a ating that
night. By parking the truck full of stones, the Kosovo Serbs had had

::

'NO ONE SHOULD DARE TO BEAT YOU'

i ofSlobodan Milofevif
The Rse
Apri/1987-Deumber 1987

here was nothing about the Serbian Commnist leader's visit to

Kosovo Poljc on 24 April, 1987, to suggest It would change
course of history. Bm for the rust time Slobodan Milovic donned
the mantic of protector of all Serbs. It was a stroke of good fortune for

the young Party chief. The Serbian President, Stambolic, should have
gone to Kosovo himself for talks with loca1 1eaders, but casually Sent
Milocvic in his place. It was a careless move which set in motion a

train of events that would cost him his career.

On the eve of the trip. MiloSeviC's wife, Mirjana Markovic, a pro
fessor of Marxism at Belgrade University, feared for her husband',
safety. 'Mira was frightened for him, and with reason,' their cloac
friend Duan Mitevic claimed. 'There had been reports from the
police that it wasn't safe. An advert in the Albanian emigre press had
been published. putting a price on his head. I offered to go down with
him to comfort Mirjana, but Slobodan phoned the next morning to
say the was no need'.
Galvanized by the fact that Belgrade was finally paying attention to
their plight, rhousands oflocal Serbs pressed forward, trying to s
the P2rty leader s hand as he entered the drab House of Culrure lD
Kosovo Polje. Frantic to gain his anention, demonsrrators screamed
about Albanian oppression. While Milvic met local Serb represen
ta6ves, police, fearing violence. used batons to drive the crowd
The protestors chanted: 'Murderers.' and 'We arc Tiro's, Tito is
Suddenly, people started hurling rocks - seized from a <n"' wruch
local activists had conveniently parked nearby. Inside the hall,
cians and reporters tried to flOd out what was going on in the
but the doors were locked. Miroslav Solevic, one of the main oq!",i""
of the protest , told the local functionaries that the demonstrators
intent on getting into the building to meet Milokvic. Azern
the black-haired blue-eyed ethnic Albanian Kosovo Party chef,
gested they rig up a sound system in order to calm the
l oSeviC's trip was to stop
After all, he believed, the purpose ofMi

meir weapons ready.

MiloeviC's speech set the tone. Speaker after speaker attacked the

ethnic Albanian Party leaders, calling for a state of emergency, for the
abolition of Kosovo's autonomy, and even the expulsion of Albanians.

They warned they would abandon Kosovo, that their lives were in
danger at the hands of their Albanian neighbours.
For the first time, Milokvic fdt the pull of the masses.

You shouldstay here. This isYOllr land. Thtu artyour houus. YOllr
mtadows and gardtns. Your mtmoriu. YOII shou ldn t abandon
you: In just bmlll$( its difficult to /iw, Imallstyou artprmuud
by m)ust,u nd dl!gradation. It was ne'{Jtrpart oftht Strbian and
nltntgnn ,horacttr togivt lip in thl!fou ofobllac/tS, 10
dtmo
b,lru whtn ils liml! tojight... YOII should stay htrtfo
r IbI! salu of
youranuslors and dtmdnnls. Olmrws
i tyour anuslors wouldbt
dtfiltdanddtsundanfs disappoinled Bul
l don suggtst thaiyou
Slay. tndurt, and toltralt a situation yourt
not satisfitd wilh. On
fht (onlTary, you s uld 'h ngt il wilh
fht WI ofllu progwsivt

proplt htu, In StTb'a and In Y

ugos/ll'fJia.

'

increasingly frequent demonstrations by Kosovo Serbs.

.
Apparently shaken by the screaming outside, Miloevic Said

'

m:

Ji;0rr:_

at da in Kosovo Polje
, VUasi advised Miloevic to distance him
.
t e blgotcd tirade. 'But he
never said anything. ' The stormy
sess'Ion lit
stcd all night If
.
_uze
M
1
I

I
oe\llc
I ' d he could become the
re-.
.
. '
most powerlUI
man m YugoslaVla

by pIaymg

on the dIscont
ent of the
Kosovo Serbs, he wa .
s glving litt!e away. Blit t
e
h
whole
episode had
provided h1m
" Wlth a
.
.
ready formuIa Ior rousm
g nationa
list sentiments.
oeVlC was tra
nsormed, set a. Ire y
fi
b Kosovo,' said Ivan
Stambolic the Serb.
.
lan Presl'dent and t
c_
h
en-u
ndisputed leader of
T
rbia
. he t
.
wo men had been Vlftu
II

a y mseparable for twenty-five

)'ears. They had met as
first-year studc:nts at the
Law Faculty of
se

'Mil

"

37

LAYlNG THE CHARGE

'NO ONE SHOULD DARE TO BEAT YOU'

\'t

Belgrade University. Both were from provincial Sebia, both

ambitious, diligent and bright. Ivan had ,,:,ored hiS way
university, and helped Slobodan get his flISt Job In e
(
.
ntxt twO decades, he made sure his friend followed In his f",,,s",. I
time, they became an awesome political duo.
.
Stambolic had already visited Kosovo on 6 Apnl, 1986, when
than 10 000 local Serbs gathered to protest against the arrest of
activist, Bu1atovic. A year later, aware thal the simation cou1d
over, Stambolic gave his protege, MiloScviC, advice before he
Belgrade: 'Be careful, keep a cool head!'
Despatching Milosevic to Kosovo was the first of StamboliC's
mistakes. The bedraggled, and increasingly radical Ksovo ;'
.
forgave him for not taking the seriosly. hn MlloSev
u: .
pilgrimage, his friend, Stambohc, forfeited hiS nght to be their leader.
It would soon become clear that whoever commanded them
become the leader of all Serbs. After Miloevies visit, the Kosovo
Serbs found themselves the centre of attention. For Duan
Deputy Director of Television Belgrade, and a propaganda
was a simple task to generate popular interest. 'We sowed M '
.
promise over and over again on the T. And hlS IS what
.
him'. The message found fertile ground In SerbIa.
But Miloevies 'conversion' to nationalism was not a chance
He had been to Kosovo four days earlier to meet Communist o,",lolt.
The visit was conveniently forgotten, giving the impression
Friday's events were entirely spontaneous. At the first meering,
.
.
Serb activists rallied 2000 people and many accused Mllooev1C
refusing to address their grievances. 'Comrade
'
monologue, but we invited you for a dialogue,
'We want you to come again: MiloScvic agreed to return at five
on Friday.
.
Over the next few days. Milosevic's minions were busy .
preparations. 'MiloSeviC sent a senior party official to Kosovo Poljt
the Tuesday and Wednesday to stir things up,' said Vllasi. 'He
.
down unofficially, without contacting me, and talked to $oleVlc
the others. They devised way to get the masses there.' The
Party chief realized the visit was of great importance to the
leadership. 'We knew about it from our intelligence sources
fact that the Belgrade merna and TV were aU prepared to come
for this special event. Local TV usually covered thee thin2:
.
Before the April visit, Milosevic had shown little mterest 10 the
uation in Kosovo, or, for that matter, in moves to change the

:::

.
he could
ronstlw.."on . He then realized that, by seizing this agenda,
.
Through
leader
pressure
Serbian
d
lobby
an
mg
over the
the
.
become
.
able
stack
10
were
the
deck
placemen
agamst
Stambolit.
his
summer,
,
.
.
1ft between us
'Following MiloeviC s speech al Kosovo PoIJe, the
.
grew d"per. There were no longer two currents In one party. There
were now twO policies," sald S tamb0I"IC.
Milo!eviC made his next move. H arrngd for a session of the
yugoslav Communist P:u:,ty o the slmanon to Kosovo. n 16 June.
.
1987, Milo!eviC showed Solevlc an advance copy of an mtroductory
speech, reassuring h that it would be ufficient1y togh on the
Albanians. But SO(eVIC feared that the deputIes from Croatia, Slovenia
or Kosovo might block ir.
In order to make their point, 3000 Kosovo Serbs gathered in
Pioneer Park, across from the federal parliament, in the heart of
Belgrade. Public demonstrations were a major event. The political and
military establishment was on edge.
In the absence of volunteers, Ivica Raan, a Croatian member of
the Yugoslav Party leadership, was sent to calm the crowds. Serbian
leaders were pleased that Croatia would now see that Kosovo was
not
just Serbia's problem, bur that it warranted attention from
the top
ranks ofYugoslavia's leadership.
Later that night, Raean and Solevic sat in the
Belgrade city hall.
One hundred metres away, the crowd hurled
invective at the country's
leadr:s, calling them thieves and monkeys. The
Serbs screamed for the
abolio". of Kosovo's autonomy. Raa
n considered it one of the most
.
humiliating episodes of his life, and
one which revealed the malicious
ature ofMilos:evic's politics. Afte
r hours of heated talks. the Kosovo
erbs agreed to leave Bel rade
. But the crowd had delivered an unmisg
ble es ge - the sheer
power of their numbers could easily

dI Srupt daily hf
e.
MiioSevlC understood
what it meant. For the fmt time he
saw that
gry owd could unse
"'
,
"'
ttle the Yugoslav leadership. He mrn
Sa
mboije and
ed to
.
saJ'd'. 'The f:atherland IS
under threat'. Stambolic was
astounded and ask
ed what the matter was. He
saw that MiloeviC was
ng. It struck Stam"
b
0 Ie
.
I" as a deCISl
'
ve
alar
that's how It
ming moment. 'And
' all be""
n fhC natlOnaIIsts
'
ran
into
grabbed h
his embrace. They
.b- ,
.
1'm. He d
ldn
t really enJo
y It very. much. But he knew that it
Was politically very
profitable:
. The lure of nationalism ha
Clans. At t
. d aiways dangled before Serbian politiun' ...s, t
he
y had flme
' h It
' to bolster popu
d Wit
lar support.

shaki

39

LAYING THE CHARGE

'NO ONE SHOULD DARE TO BEAT YOU'

Stambolic - a product of the old Communist regime had shunned

it, believing it too dangerous to tamper wit.. MiloCVIc sense early
on that the promise of change was an ehxu. Serbs. were tued or
the seemingly endless discussion about Kosovo. wlch
ad made
the Serbian leadership seem incompetent. When MlloeviC
resolute action, he won immense popular support. By <on"....
Stambolii: had alw-ays been reluctant make public promises
change. This discrepancywas a rtent oftheir furure an fmal conflict.
The entire political establishment was schemmg Stambolii:. He steadfastly refused to admit that a showdown
imminent, concentrating instead on pushing throug constitutional
changes, in the mistaken belief that this would save him.
In September, 1987, a rapid series of events unfolded wich together
changed the face of Serbia's politica1 landscap: the sensatlOa1 mder
of four army recruits, an unprecedented pubhc attack on Mllo!eviC by
the Belgrade Party chief. and the televid overthrow oStamboit.ln
three weeks, Stambolic would be politically dead. HIS execunoner.
Slobodan MiloSevic, would be in charge.
1n the early hours of3 September, at the ParaCi barrac in centnl
Serbia. Aziz Kelmendi, a nineteen-year-old ethmc Albaman
opened fire on four of his fellow soldiers, killing the as they slept.
Several hours later Kelmendi was found dead halfa mile from the bar
racks. The army said he had committed suicide.The dead included
Muslims, a Croat and a Serb, but the frenzied Belgrade media called
it an act of Albanian separatism against Serbia. Ten thousand
attended the funeral of the Serbian recruit. Against the wishes ofm.
parents, the ceremony became a political demonstration anst
Kosovo Albanian leadership. The bereaved father rumed to
demonstrators. pleading with them to stop abusing the death
son3. For days on end the event obsessed the Belgrade
had been gradually co-opted. For Miloevic, the ';n' w'',' ,'imdy. p!O
viding him with the ammunition he needed for the political
nation that was to follow.
A fortnight later, in an atmosphere of hysteria nd ,n,i-Al'"''''
propaganda, Dragih Pavlovic, Belgrade Party chief, tOOk u"
defuse the tension. He called Belgrade media bosses to a b, def
warn against a resurgence of Serbian na.tional.ism. He arrived
confident mood, but failed to see that MlloSevlc was already
the pace of events.
He told the editors:

situation in KOfO'lJO il llOt improving with th( IUUj....L.

.
J uc g(nerol
I 7
. a dfllIgtrprommd fp....t
",JIj '"II crratmg
' dnired or tasily
r ian
atrno1phtrt ill which .ro."'y ,,!(ml spokrn . agaiml. St

:;tiolla/ism si sten as gWlllg m

40

to Albaman nallonolum.
plolivt words bring nothing but jirt... tIN rang' ofpossibl,
so/utiotU for KosO'lJO has now bUll 1IflrrDW,d dtlWn to JUch an
xttnt that the smollot mistake, ('f)(n mmle in goodfaith, (ould be
not only for Serbs and MO'/rnrgr
/ns in Kos()W, ;or tIN
also
for
tM
baSI(
stab,ht
y ojYugoslavlO.
but
Serbian lIation,

to

twO

...

;ragic

Without naming him, Pavlovic was sounding a battle cry against

MiloeviC, and drawing the front line in Serbian politics. Pavlovic
thought his warning would be enough to sober up the media and send
message to Miloevic and his allies that they were courting disaster.
Unfortunately for Pavlovic, courting disaster was part of MiloeviC's
strategy.
At home, Slobodan was relaxed. Sitting in his living room,
on the table, he told Mitevic: 'We'll take care of this on Mondahisy'. feet
He
and Mitjana then set offfor a weekend at their villa in the south-eastern
Serbian town ofPozarevac, where they had grown up together.
Siobodan and Miana watched the Pavlovic preSS conference on
television. She saw it as an attem
pt to denigrate her husband. She
us Pavlovic of trying to destroy the 'frail hope
' her husband had
!lvcn these poor, oppressed people', the Serbs of Koso
The Miloevits were extraordinarily attached to eachvo.other From
their school days Pozarevac, Slobodan and Miana were ine
para
ble. The fact thatineach
had
suff
ered
cons
ider
able
trag
edie
s
may
ugh[ them together. They were both children of the Seco have
Slobod ' father sru<Iied to be an Orthodox priest at thend World
lty
ofTItcologyas Belg
rade. After the war, he rerurned to hisFacu
nati
Morenegro as a school
her. It was a tim. e ofuncertainry. His wifeve'
Stanl'S,ava' stayed . h hteac
""
two young sons In PO"Zarevac. A rigid Parry
she was to ' t'erl am
' in Communism in her
children: Slobodan, d bOh1(' lOOnoldeanrd faith
brot
her,
a. She would also
to ,onceiU the news of thCIr' f
" ideBorunti
at
h
er
S
'
SUIC
l the boys had
grown U 4 A decade
l.ater, Stanislava would also commit
Slon ke to him
self. A plump and awkward child,suiheciddide. not
like sports
B
accounts, however, he clung to his friend. Mirjan
who, as a hd
a
d
her mo,I,ers
G

partIsan nom de gllrrre, Mir' a.a,

_ng up m' theopshateddow
death and betraya,I she would never
"'IlO'W her mo."
Uler and liv' ed of
apart ITom
" her father. Her mother was
a

n:R

Vist,
k
.,_

..
v
-]
_

_
L

10

WIT

lfiS I

an

IS

"

4'

LAYlNG THE CHARGE

'NO ONE SHOULD DARE TO BEAT YOU'

shot as a traitor to the Party in 1942, at the height ofwar in Belgr,1d..

<0,"',.....

The details remain unclear, but, under interrogation and

divulgcd the names of her comrades5 Baby Mirjana's father was a
tisan chief, who became Party boss of Serbia after the war, and

ried, leaving his daughter [Q be raised by her grandparents. Mira

summers with her father on the Adriatic island of Brioni, where

hand-picked Communist elite and their families took their holidays.

During the weekend, Mira and Siobodan planned a

attack. A cavalier Mi1evK: knew that the key media were

under his control. Two days later, Politika Ehprts launched a
ing attack against Pavlovic. The commentary accused him of de""".,

:-;;:::

.
contacted every member of the Presidency to find out who
allies h.ad
to side with whom. They believed they could win.
was gomg

Miloevi scored a key political victory,

Forry-mne people spoke at the two-day
the right to vote. The first item set the
had
twenty
sesSIon but only
.
L_I: f t
In the na.Jve ucue
meet
ing.
hat he still widded
of
the
tone for the rest
On

I
,
who was usuaUy servile towards the Communist leader, now tried
avoid him. When they fmally spoke, Stambolic found him cold
arrogant. It became dear whose side Minovic was on when

reprinted the article damning Pavlovic.

Determined to fight back, Pavlovic told Stambolic he would

meeting of the Belgrade Party leadership. It seemed a good

Stambolic, who now feared for his own political future. He

letter supporting his friend, an act which would rerum to haunt
11 would, he said, 'fInish off my political life'. Nevcrtheless, the
may have helped to win over the Belgrade Party

party session, most of the forty-fIVe

Howcver, his victory was short-lived.

of the Serbian Party presidency and

sided with
.
.
. ,

At

to announce that the matter was not fuushed.The more powerful

dency of the Serbian Central Committee would meet the next

'examine the case of Dragisa PavloviC'. MiloreviC had trumped

Even some of MileviC's supporters were taken aback by

quickly he was closing in for the kill. 'In Communist

.
you are on the Central Committee agenda,' said Duan MiteVlC,
is an eighty per cent chance that you're dead.'

As soon as he heard about the session, Stambolic rang Milo'"

He said he felt personally threatened by the agenda. 'He told me

to worry - there was no problem in it for me.'

.
ltty.
Despite the warning signs, Stambolic refused to face rea
thought he had enough support, but Miloevic and his most

September,

1987,

authority, Stambolic said:

I wouldpropou ant oth" thing: Itt" not br angry, brClluJi it is not

so important. It would bt goodfor Sloba and DragiJa to mittfor
coffit nxry dayfor a half-hollr. Or let thtm drink Itmonadr. But
Ihey should !nUl lo ovl:fcomr thi diffiwltitS; I know proplt, and 1
wll
i not acctpt they cannotfind human solutions. I will not acupt
that.

ing Serbian and Yugoslav unity. It was attributed to an editor but

in fact, written by Mira MarkoviC>.
The unprecedented ferocity of the n"N;I
" '

Serbian President, Stambolic. He wanted to

editor of the most influential Serbian daily,

18

p1. din_g over the Session.

Miloevic showed no merc)" cutting short Stambolic and

his
pathetic attempts at reconciliation.

This 9utstion ca not br minimiztd by dtlcribing

it as a ptrsonal
.
con '
c(, as two kid havmg a squobblr... This s
i notptrsonol ani
s
,!,OSlty or sympathy and thm art not things that call
bt simplifird
In that mannrr.

fl.

In ths t:nse atmosphere, Milo

evic was called to the phone.
Mira
to her husband recount the
meering sounding
WlCC
rttI
n and nrvous. 'Theres
' o going back now,' she said,
,
'you're
tooTh
d. WIth that Mi.loe
Vle rerurned to the ring
.
,
" rught Mil0eV}(
. . s fncn
ds, most of whom were also
.
members
of th
ncy, thered at the i
l eviCs's modest flat in cent
:
e
'Be
ral
M
il "" .
dIscussed Ihe
r next move.
u:o<:\IJC SaldIt was very dffi seSSIon, plannmg thei
.
I IC U
1 t, that he was very d
Isappointed with
some pea Ie,
hat he couldn't be
iev
l e what some people
M
it-':.< B
P
.
t
said ' said
ut
It was MneVIc
.
...v
"".
wh0 deVlsed a plan of
action. It was
brilliant and brought .
VIctOry Within rea
ch.
The next
morning he met
our other members of
committee
the Belgrade
and persuaded
them to sign a letter, say
Stambolic
.
ing that
'
had pressurIz
.
.
ed them Into
.
couneil
.
supportlOg
Pav
a few d
lOVI
C
at
the city
a
ys earI.ler.
ahaThe Serbia
n Presidency
.
.
meeting resumed
ttered any i

formanc"
llU5IOns
...
. Mlloevlc s per
Stamb0JIC
" ' may have
nurtured that the two me
n

Mar listened

:
'.

43

bAYING THE CHARGE

'NO ONE SHOULD DARE TO BEAT YOU'

could remain friends. '1 thought the Russians had invaded, that
Third World War had begun,' says Stambolic when he ""
face. His voice raised, MiloSevic interrupted the debate:

Iil<"".ii

do. His reasoning was simple: 'I was keen that we

what they should
children'.
say what we think. For our grand
S uld
opened,
the
Communist
E
Session
machinery went
ighth
the
st
another
t
at
a
ime
heightening
was
w
i
.
d
n
There
tension in
motion
i to
Serbia.
The meeting was televized:
throughout
and
hall
ly
the assemb
for the first rime the Communists let the public inside their dark and
It was a shock: For the next two days. people
t:reaeherous
throughout Serbia were glued to thel TV screens, watching the show
down. 1t was supposedly broadcast hve, but, as the meeting went on,
es were delayed fO.r t news. Thn Television Belgrade
the spe
.
began cuttmg the speeches, Mltevlc blatantly glVlng preferential treat
ment to the winning side.
On the streets of elgrade, life ground to a halt as people discussed
the debate. Stambolic seemed paralysed, um.ble to mount a counter
attack. It was as if he did not believe what was hap""n
r- ing, L'JUb'10ka
T
'
h0 was a cetr 1 committee member,
I rgo eVlc, h'Istonan
,,!

.
described seelOg Stambohc transfixed by hIS Impending execution:

h%

Comrades, I htl'Ut hesilaltdfor the laJI hour or two. we haw

reui'Utd a lefler. Finl I {llJudfor it to he checked as authentic, that
tlNre wasn't jome mntake. Then I douhted wINther one could
really read out thiJ Itlter at tIN Presidency itJe/f Mayhe I will he
e. ..
making a mistak

Stambolic was now implicated in conspiring against the Party's

archy. Of course, Milosevic, despite his convincing performance,
already known about the letter. Mitevic's idea had put the
around Stambolic's neck.
It seemed to Milosevic that he was ahead, so he called a vote
expeHing Pavlovic from the party. Eleven voted in favour, five
'
and four abstained. Their winning strategy rested withh <h'
tatives from Vojvodina and Kosovo. They did not like S
was always harping on about constitutional changes. He
of a threat than the faceless, big-cared Milokvit. But Azem
objected to the way the meeting was being run, and refused to vote
Pavlovic's expulsion, in effect backing Stambolic against Miloevif..
Miloevic offered some words of comfort that made St
blood freeze. 'I sincerely hope, I believe in it firmly, that
l was manipulated and not guilty.'
Stamboic

real.

ec

[ :
.::::

PavloviC's fate

was

left up to the Eighth Session of the

Committee of the Serbian Party. MiloeviC's camp did not

to
minute in planning for the Eighth Session, as it has come

known. Borisav Jovit led the charge. The group fanned out
Serbia. They invited sixteen presidents of regional or district
tees, who were also members of the Central Committee, to
in order to persuade them how to vote. In this way, they easily
web ensnaring the regional bosses who, in turn, also met the
members of the Central Committee. They had even planned
Presidency members supporting Miloscvit would act and
MiloSevic was in charge of seeing that speakers opposing him
chose
speak one after the other. It was easy, since, as president, he
was given the floor.
By contrast, Stambolic did not plan his defence before the
Session. On the eve of the meeting, he sat among friends,
44

"

He was co"'.pletf/y incapable ofthinking. /-Ie comufrom a patri

archal tnfJlronmmt, where yOIl don't hit yOllr but friend
and
whtrtyou nroer betray YOllr Party.
r, Stambolic had skirted m y f h
0
laid by rus rivals. Byicalhiscaree
own admission he had only hia?mseIf' to
,
Throughout his polit

'
UI&IlIe for faili
ng to see what Ml'loevic was up
to. 'When somebody
.
.
IooL
lUi at your back for tw
enty-fiIve years, It IS understandable that
'
he
&-- the UQlrc
_
..1 _ _
to put a knife in it at some pomt
' . Many people warned
me but I didn't
acknowledge it.'
.
theThe man who
L._had
< c:Irm m atd aU previous chalel ngers, would faU at
hand of rus uc lfIe
.
nd lv
.
Iilme\'ic.
' Three months after the Eighth

. ,
_Ion, Stambolie' con
r.Ide'd 10
lrgovtev
I" C. 11e toId me that he loved
U
" L.
more
..
..&.UOSCVit him
' own brot
.' than hIS
hers and that he had spent mor
time with
e
__

'

'
Th, session
.
opened
h
p ch eomm morating the fiftiet
h

ofTito as h t
e arty. Roth slds used Tito
as
foil.
a
praised the Co
.
unJ
t leader for fostering unity. 'He
Plied t
hat we were
not wIt TITO. It was
a public lynching,' said
bolic.
the unrele .
nrlOg barrage on P
taJnbor ,
rr
avlovit and, by association
'
I e the next sTll'
r-ak,r Onered 0
ne 0f ti
le r.cw bright spots.

fS.ary
;n

:: ;

LAY1NG THE CHARGE

'NO ONE SHOULD DARE TO BEAT YOU'

Miloevic picked me blond-haired attractive Trgovtevic, h<fi,,""'

waS an inexperienced politician who would not dare to

television pictures showed him holdin his head i his
her speech: '1 am afraid we are returmng to certain methods
were abandoned long ago and I don't want to usc those

words, she said, infuriated Jovic. 'He got angry and said I was

them of Stalinism, but I told him that it could be fascism, too;

Trgovtevic, who left politics soon afterwards, rerurning to
an historian.
While Miloevit's side held the upper hand from the outset,

not clear who would win. After all, Stambolic was an institution.

downfall would bring many down with him. It would be the ,",j olr.
era. Trgovtevic watched the delegates sweat.

The atmosphere was terrib/e. People were standing and biting their
nails in the caft. Everyone turned greyer and greytr. ome people
carried two diffirent speeches in their pock.ets, dpendlng on hOtlJ
things furned out. You must realize that ninety per cmt ofthou
people's caffers andfotures depended on the outcome ofthe muting.
During the breaks, MiloeviC's team lobbied any potential
porters. Jovic was like a bee, buzzing round the restaurant.
Miloevic tried to cajole Vllasi, who resembled the

nob"",

Communist functionary, becoming fatter with each step up the

An eager head of Yugoslavia's Communist youth, A.zem had

Tiro's pet. 'This is now or never. Vote for me and teU the
your delegation to do so, too. You'U sec I wiU pay you ack
MilmeviC. Vllasi refused: 'You have hardly helped me

10

the

I cannot help you now: MiloSevit was furious. 'He called me a

said VIlasi, 'and 1 told him that he was a ;<liar and a cheatm Two
later Milok:vic would get his revenge on Vllasi, jailing him on .
of counter-revolution. By then, Vllasi would cut a starkly
figure, a thin and determined victim ofMiloevic's reg1e.
.
Leaving nothing to chance, the CommuOlst mach!"''Y
out 'telegrams of support'. These were read aloud, .",,.ti
momentum of their own. Once a provincial leader heard
.
bouring municipality had sent a telegram, he understood that
be propitious ifhe also sent a message. Telegrams from Kosovo
particularly helped to stir public emotions and boost support

Miloevic.
As the session went on, Miloevic's supporters moved to the
,6

the end, Srambolic was sitting by himself. When a vote

ofthe all B P l
av ovic was expelled from the Presidency, it was clear
was Cs ed
would not last long. Duan Ckrebic said: 'Serbia is
does nor need new ones.' MilmevlC had won.
and
ders
ti<od o
t yielded handsome dividends. 'MiloSeviC
broadcas
,'
"
,
on
"
I
.,
Thc u e
.
because he was saymg We have had enough of aU thiS

::lie
t

ked
100
talk, this bla-bla thar brought us here"', believes Mitevit, whose

:ili

good

to manipuJate the sequence of events made him the Serbian

Orson WeUes.

Surprisingly, leaders from around Yugoslavia welcomed MiloeviC's

triumph. Only a handful of ederal oficials wanted to put it on the
.
Government agenda. Slovema was umnterested. Croatian function
far
criticize
as
to
their own press for objecting to
aries went so
MiIokviC and the way that he had removed Stambolic. In fact, Stipe
Suvar, Croatia's representative on the Federal Party Presidency, later
explained why he had then defended his furure foe:

Stllmbolif was the mostfearedpoliti(ian on the Yligosiav scene, so

lIN grey bureaucrat MiJofevii made usfiel that we (ould
(Onlrol
hi. You ",-ust remember he was dearly not a nationalist - ev
ery
. the name
thing he dId s m
ofY/lgosiavia - and hsi argument
tlxlllheAlbamans wert St'cmionists was basically
right.
They did not realize

power would extend far beyond

that the implications of Mjlo

evit's rise to
Serbia. His feUow Commun
ists failed
rs
tand that MiloevK' was
about to become the first Stro

ngm'"
..
u:rTlto.

a.:w ;;;
th

ighth Sssion, Milokvic

was free to rum his attentio
,
n
en, believes Stambolic
, 'MiloSeviC became awa
re that
was only the lau
nch pad. The goal wa
s Yugoslavia.'

kotovo reo

He uud hi; tv.

/> r
ru
1St met
ed rarg to t e bull of hod throughout Yugoslavia... II was the
rA-;
othtr nationalisms. When
Ihe biggell nation
-6nj to wa'tlejla6"
<T
s tht sma'"l(!r natlom
were obviously afraid.
'

Befort COming into d!rect

conflict with Sloven
.
ia, Miloevit argu,d
e ISSue f K
of
'
osovo. He earned OUt
a Stalinstyle purg'
g
om
t
rythin
h
e
f,
B
elgrade med'!a to
Serb
th head waiter at the
government
11 AIter
months of lurking
o
:
Sta.nb lit. offieiay Ismlss
in the shadows,
.
ed on 14 Decem
by or.w.,. Ove th
... _
),
Lan

'

Was

47

ber,

1987.

LAYING THE CHARGE

I Kosta Bulatovit, a Kosovo Serb activist
who is actually from Montenegro,
explains that few people had been invited and that many
of those who actu
ally received invitations were 'Takojtvilt, a made-up
word for people who say
'ta}oj - That'S the: way it s
i '. In othe:rwords, [ho who blindly obey the polit
ical line.
2 Two of MileviC's dose: associates, Raromir Vico
and his depury DtMlan
Mitevit, were running television at the time.
3 Djulcic. Siavoljub, h.nmlju slaW" i anu/m
r poliritku biogru[ya SloOodana
Milolroiia, Filip Vinjic, Belgr:J.de, 1994, p. 68.
4 Djulcic, lzmdjll slaw i anarrmr, pp 13-17.
.
5 Her sister, another panisan was rumou
red to be Tito's lover during the:
war. She: died oftuberculosis and was reponedly buried
in his backyard. There
were rumours that Tiro was reatly Miana's father.
6 Djukic, hmdju slaw i ana/(mr, p. 71.

'NO WAY BACK'

The SI(J'lIlle Spring, 1988
e:S. in Slovenia were
"
he
hontl
wer t
"dated na
s MilocV1C conSOll
r" . aut
'
the: tilly
r el h es,
relaxing their hold. In the car
}
.
recedented in the
0
ub C:U
llsm unp
.
.
ad
"public embarked on a pen
red and even flour.
were toIer'
O'1'oups
.
Communist world. Alternanve b",
. _.
.
T}1ey covered a WIde
. .
parties
nal
mc<u
.
".
fu
r
almost
as
ished.
nCTlomng
-.
. .." S t
he most accus.
.
'pectrum, from ceoIogy to gaY "ghts.. 5 1ovem a ....vIti-party
'
eIectLOns
.
wmed to plura
lism 0r all the publICS when J11
1\,
(It known as neue
were called. At the same time ,. the moveme (Ired to challenge
Siowm,ische Kunst (New S love man AT:) 'PPb'ccame the standard
Lal
h
parochial Slovem' a. Th e musI' Ca1 OTOUp
0
' . bac .'
and
YugosIaVla
.
Slovenia
iO
,
.
In
bearer of avant-garde
the groups NaZI
Sf
h
e
t
vvest.
t
'"
'
A
fi
It
'
in

ellowmg
outSIde, creatmg a iO
\Jg:osIavs'. Afrer all,
n upset Y
uniforms and frequent use of Germ a
h

.
:
to bludgeoning the
,
'
ar
ll.Jo
, ,.
. '
mocking th e 5econd '"
, was eresy a
vv
VYOfId n
Slovemas 5OC
I .<uISt

' By the rn.ld 1'9805, .

very c
ToundatLOn
0ryugosIaVla..
Lalbach t
he
Youth organisation took a stuoe to the mUSIC,

northwestern

'

'

. givmg

official stamp of approval.

et outdoing the
'
_ I IIIgn
' blJao
ror
a was a cuItu'<u
r the fi
l
cst time, Lu
.
'dered the most
,0051
1ovema was
.
Other YugosIav capita
' .'ls. Unn' I then' 5
.
,
he most
b"t It
developed, and Slovenes the [11o st lOdustno s, J1

.
was an alien con
.
istory, revo unO
conservative Indeed, throughout h
.
ulation. The farm
eept to this devoutly
f
[11 tly peasant
0
P
od
wefe aithful
ers prospered, most owned thelf ?wn Ian
.
3-cly-tended gardens
servants in the Austro-Hunganan e p res. he
T
n sjdc:, distinguished
; l
and Wooden chalets which dot the lovene count
this Alpine republi; from the rest of the
unt.
's
ommunis party
fc;
The diminutive Milan Kuta!l , head 0 loven
ocal trends
from

sin e 1986, turned a blind eye to the new

J1

.
y on
ized
earl
real
O .
mCla
radical to nationalist. This accomphshed porJl:
that Slovenia's future, and his, l ay in reform.

was t

Catholic,

It Was clear to me there waS absolutely flO chtl (e for SIO'Umia

'
,
'fJtJ
' is whm the constar
t . conflict began,
wllhrmt serum
s reform. 1
.
had tak.n O'U(r
between me and Mi/ofevif, in part/Cillar after ht
from Stambolif2.

49

NO WAY BACK-

LAYING THE CHARGE

youth was already

hot water with the Y;:,;

in
lishment. They had caused a furore over Youth Day, il
proposing a Hitler youth poster to promote Yugoslavia's annual
race which marked the celebrations. Eight years after Tito's UUh, tb
Yugoslav Communists still took the anniversary extre mely ."i",,.,
The poster was a gesture of defiance against the Communist
and the Army, which remained the protectors of Titoism. fubniqi
Branko Mamula, federal defence secretary, dismissed the proposal
an attack on Yugoslavia.
It was not only the youth who were in trouble. Slovenia's n"i""oIioI
intellectuals were also on the Yugoslave Peoples' Army's (JNA)
list. In February 1987, they advanced Slovenia's national P"'S"""'"
in the journal, NrJ'UO RNJijo. The Communist establishment saw
an answer to the Serbian Academy's Memorandum. It cUled for
dosing ofnational ranks and a retum [0 Slovenia's Christian ttadilioo
Moreover, Issue 57 ofN()'Uo RNJija, argued that the Slovenes
better off outside Yugoslavia.
Once again, Party organisations throughout the country
the upsurge of nationalism and the attacks on Yugoslavia's !
But while official Yugoslavia was up in arms, Slovene and
nationalist dissidents enjoyed regular and warm contacts, even
their visions of the future ofYugoslavia seemed to conflict. The
wanted centralisation and the Slovenes the opposite. Yet
much in common: more than a decade before the outbreak
both had begun lO question the tenets of faith
together. At [at time the nationalisms were not IT
because they were not from neighbouring republics3
Kutan played a clever game. The Slovene Communists
'Contributions To The Slovene National Programme', the d
published in N()'Uo Rruija, as a rehashing ofold ideas. The only
of originality, his Slovene Party statement said, was that it singled
the Communists as responsible for everything. The Party
ignore 'the sham, high-sounding argumentation' of the authors,
the other cheek and call for tolerant democratic debate. It ,,,,,,, od
Slovene chauvinists of'national intolerance and falsifying history'.
The Yugoslav Anny, however, refused to turn the other cheek.
was furious about the NO'IJo RNJija document. Calling it
Memorandum, Admiral Mamula said Slovene nationalists and
bourgeois right were scheming to destroy the Yugoslav
Slovene

d::::

"lh:':'u:h';;ldjI:::
: ::

;::;

'They negate the national revolution, self-management and

alignment. They hope

to ally

with traitors, and use

5'

the

power.' He said the Programme attempted to launch

rch to Seize
ChU
of defence, proposing that republican armies take
ept
, "'_
neW conc
.Iluy4.
the Yugoslav People s J"1.
OYer
cden

whose
large
round blue eyes gave him a
a asked Kufan,
what was happening
understood
he
if
appearance,
. ng1 angelic
ra He warned there would be trouble if the Slovene
in oven
ignored what was happening. Kutan's apparent dis missal
"""ro
m n
'
groups and the increasing
.
'
. mportance of the new politlCili
of th
Admir
disappointed
left
the
He
.
tri
e
to
Army
fl.atter
.aI
.
the

;
:

_.

lnac
ile wammg about
him for encouraglOg reform, wh
Kula ' praising
want to secede from Yugoslavia or attack
wh
s
al
c
i
d
r

'rho:
state .

YugoslaVla as a
The Army was convinced it would have to draw the line. The JNA

had been formed to defend Yugoslavia against Western cap talist

countries and, after 1948 and the break with the Soviet Union,

Eastern European Communist states. The more enemies there were

abroad, the more potenti.al there was for betrayal at home. The Army
was vigilant. Steeped in Communist Titoist dogma, JNA officers were
isolated from the outside world. They were not allowed to travel

abroad. They were even isolated from the society that gave them their
privileges. Indeed, since its foundation, the JNA had been more secre
tM: than the Soviet Red Army. Officers often started their training as

fourteen-year-old boys. These youths, typically from the countryside,

wouJd grow up in military academics away from home, later making
. . of
the vast maJonty
the officer corps. It was a strange upbringing
m .a country where trad
itional family bonds and limited economic
prospects ade it unusual for 'children' to leave home, even jf
they
.
martled With offspring of their own. In their
intensely sheltered
war d, it was not uncommon for office
rs to be summoned to a confi
dential brig, only to
be informed of events that had already been
public IX months earlier Mter
1980, the JNA knew that, along
S
.
W!.i , the League of Communists, it was the glue that
was holding
Tnos yffi
ugoslaVla
togethcr
Even up to the outbreak of war in 1991
.
mOSt 0 lcers
. .
.
.'
gonume
' 1y -
LX:lieved m the muitm
atlonal umon
.
of SIX
Sociali
8 th " repub cs, and in 'bratstw ijtd
instw', the official slOO":l
-"'-n of
erhood and Uni .
ro
ty
For all its
dete lI.nat.lon, the
JNA could not halt the process of
politieisat
.
ion in ovema.
It
saw
every move as an attack on
Communis
th d :h Yugoslav Federation. Mlodilla, the weekly
magu.ine o
lali st Youth organisation, and a rem
arkable mix of
Iatire and muc ng, launched a campaign to expos
e the JNA as 'an

we

li

a;
r:

LAYING THE CHARGE

'NO WAY BACK'

undemocratic institution always ready to stage a m,;litary <ouo" ."

Slovene judiciary, prompted by Belgrade, had charged
Mladinos editor-in-chief, with authorizing an article
'Mamula Go Home'; and Andrej Novak. of the Slovene Ttltks
zine for his essay 'Generals and Generations'. A year later the
prosecutor took up the case, saying the Slovene courts had not
sued it.
Mladinas first target was Mamula himself. It dubbed him
'Merchant of Death' for selling weapons to the Government
famine-stricken Ethiopias. The Government would use the

Thn.:'::;

.
against its own starving people, wrote Mladina
revealed howJNA conscripts had built the Admiral an e
in Opatija, a famous Adriatic resort town popular with Viennese
'
society before the First World War. This expose
for
standard of living gave even the most loyal officers
u I n
n th '
General Milan Aksentijevic, then a Colonel in

:

was
article
the
,
,, , d
says he remembers the day
Mamula was
feelings, I must say. From the article 1 learnt
ing a castle - and here I was desperately trying to scrape the

::

together to get a flat'.

In March, MamuJa struck back.

1 wanttd to 'Warn thtm that thrr wtrt limits .. Dirt attad.s 011

th Army W(rtforbiddtn in tht constitution; 1 was not agaimt

dtmocratisation and rtconJtruction according to EurOfNan wlun
_ Ihough I did bdi in tht ont-party systm - not so mum

pmonally but as a rtprmntatim ojthe Army.

Frustrated, the JNA was convinced the Slovene leadership

using Mladina for its own ends, When they complained about
magazine. the Slovene response was that the Army should not
upset by a bunch of kids. For the Generals. this tolerance was
mount to approval. 'You must remember this was
Communism,' said Colonel Aleksandar Vasiljevic, deputy co<nro""
of military counter-intclli[ !nce (KOS). 'The Slovenes could
stopped them )n a moment if thcy wanted to.'
Mamula later realized that he had unwittingly helped to .
t
opposition. 'One Slovene noted that, with my threat agams
Slovene opposition, I did more for Slovene independence than
else. But what else was I supposed to stand up for?'
General Veljko Kadijevic, who had recently taken over as
5'

to make an example of Mladina. Mamula believed

r;rt 0' drJycided

one course of action for the JNA - a court martial. A
between Slovenia's independent newspaper and the
medi cbegan
kaged JNA magazine, Narodna Armija, which accused
emigre press and certain foreign papers
f'joining the Ahostile
t:/
rumours'.
On 20 March, DnMJnik, a daily
anri-JN
di:runate
northern province of Vojvodina,
, .s

thiS .Ie

to

joined the
Serbia's
newspaner
r- from
" , \Varmn
v a Rwya
"
d I"
" Kuean that he
an
Mladina
ticized
fray, 1t cri
.
had been slow to realize that the children had moved mto an open and
relentJess struggle for power. Yesterday they advocated the democrati
.tion of society, while today they have already negated the leading
role ofthe League of Communists'. The Vojvodina daily called for the
Slovene League of Communists to take a resolute stand.
As the first step in its crackdown, the JNA called a meeting of its
Military Council, a body responsible for state security, to discuss how

to bring Slovenia into line. The Council ruled that Mladina was
'coumer-revolutionary', charging that there was a foreign-backed con
ipiracy to overthrow the regime. Next, General Svetozar Visnjic, the
Ljubljana Commander, went ro see Kufan to ask how Slovenia would
react ifcharges were brought against the authors of the anti-JNA
arti
cles, He asked Kuhn whether he expected significant public
outcry. If
10, warned Visnjic, the Army would prote<:t military barracks and
pe
nel who wer put in danger. Kuean told Visnji
n

c: 'Any
does not take mto account the extremely delica
te political
llruaon 10 Slovenia, would have irrepa
rable consequences.' Refusing
to discuss politics with
the Army, Ku(:an turned to the Pa
rry He
ed a s al meeting of the
Yugoslav Central Committ

e to
"WIged . the tary Council. 'The
anti-Slovene campaign being
In.Serbia and lsewhere
must SlOp. An anti-Yugoslav mood
.

is
.
In Slovema
10 reaction to the growth of the anti-Slo
M.'-.
vene
&UUUU In the rest of the country It IS
.
" absurd to say the editors of
.
"
_11lQ are mstruments 0r a speCial
war
bemg waged in Yugoslavia
.
.
"1 WorId caPit
....
alism ' K"w.."an toId
t
h
e
othe
r members of the Pu
Iors
OJ
tv
ode h'Ip.

Y
ch

:;

"

At this meetin
gd
' he. became more convinced than
ever that there
.... . (oali.
:on h
,-,
at erung agam
" st 51ovem" a. KuCan saw
.... in the dock, "
that Slovenia
With the JNA as chIe
" r prose
.a. at
_ the
cuto
r.
He
<n
was worried
JNA wou
Id d0 somethmg d
r-_.
.
rastl"c and urged the Central
-.....om mittee to w .g h
1t next step carefully
. 'This problem could break
,
Ipart the cou
n uncompromising
Miloevic disagreed.
'CommuniSts sho
support the peo
ple in the struggle against

:d

53

'NO WAY BACK'

LAYING THE CHARGE

anti-Communism. The question is whether the Military C"U"d ""

right in its actions. I think it was, because it is not right that the
should be put in the position where it has to defend itself.'

An alarmed General Kadijevic uttered what was to become

stock warning: 'Yugoslavia is on the brink of disintegration'.

The very exi,trnu o/Yugoslavia as a socialist ,tale is under threat

by counttr-rroolutionaries. There are (onm(/iom belwttn thae
cirdts in Yugoslavia and Imigrl cire/es... Thry have great influ
enu on thefortign banla and the IMF and they put conditions on
thNr aid, too,jor us -mortfrtedom and human rights and dnnomuy.
Enemyforces are in aculeration. The CIA has concluded that the
Mladina editorial board is iimilar to SolidarnoiC in Poland The
CIA has concluded the foil of Communism in Yugoslavia has
begun. must stop tlu (ounttr-rroolutionary actions.

Kadijevic dismissed Kur:an's suggestion that the Presidency

bers travel Slovenia to see how best to defuse the problem. He
out again:

Our (one/usions don't ntedforther study. KiKan iJ attaddng the

Presidency ofthe League o/Communists o/Yugoslavia in order to
cover up his own mirtaittl in lel/ing an anti-Army atmosphere
develop in Slovenia. did not need to consult with the Slovene
politicalleadmhip at all. In tlufuture the Army will act tlu way
it susfit.
This exchange shoW5 the extent to which relations were
strained within the Central Committee. As Milosevic carried out
purges, the battle lines would be redrawn, but me essence of

dispute would remain the same. Even Kadijevie's threats did not
the Slovene Central Committee into devising a formula to quell
Despite intense anti-Slovene propaganda in the rest

dissidents.

Yugoslavia, no-one made a move. It seemed that me danger

passed. But the JNA was not put off that easily.
Less than a month later, Mladina had a scoop - a ""reI d",,""'"

,..,

from the Ljubljana military district 5044-3

January, m..
instructions on how to prepare for martial law. Franci
revealed that the document came from Ivan Boriltner, a Slovene

of8

commissioned officer, who was about to leave me Army

ing for contacts in the civilian world.
S4

Boriltner. Vasiljevic said the Army

s already watching
The JN
nationalist, 'So we
: Boriltner was an extreme
bad learn .
as an Army cryptO
position
ty
high-securi
his
m
he left the Communist party. He later
e end of
remove :
Slovenes were being degraded and impoverished
the
a
elPl n
6 ' But Borltner had remained in the Army and got
gosl via . .
Iu
.
Mladma.
tn touch wim
gave the document to J anez JanSa, the
unfazed,
was
Zavrl
.
.
expert. The magazine
JNA
already had
Mladina's
' who was
actMSt
..
.
IS
bl'
h
po
csta
d
ltlCaJ
-,
I"
an
'Th'
ment.
Itary
mil
IS was
the
in
contacts
specia l... the document itself was silly and unimportant.' B t
more incendiary document would soon emerge, Jama
ther
'
the Central Committee's 25 March session,
d a transcript
caJ1ed to discuss the Military Council meeting on Slovenia - the one
where KIbn finally realized that the JNA meant business. Jama held

Slovene

d
graPer'd
within

1987

and

= far

of

on to the original, not realizing that the police were watching him.
That night Slovene police broke into Mikro Ada, the computer
company run by Jama and his friends, and discovered copies
the

classified documents. The

of
Slovene leadership was informed me next

day, but took no action.

On 13 May, Mlndina published 'Night of the Long Knives', a story
about Army intervention which said the Army had drawn up list of
people it was proposing to arrest (n maw/. The story was based on the
Yugoslav
Committee session, but the authors, afraid the
aur;twriries would ban the issue. did not quote directly from
me tran
Pt. None the less, the article caused a sensation, In a few days the
IISUe was pulled from news
kiosks. Ljubljana was awash with
about a planned military coup.
was under pressure. Later, he
d reap t benefits of occu
the

Fying the
cal oppOSItIOn and the react Onary
JNA, but, for the time being, he
I
nsure what to do. How
could he explain the document which

was convinced .he ,:as responsi

ble
leaking? He inSisted
the
Y was oversteppmg ts
,,
__
I
the main point was not the
Wi
but theJN
'
A's inl"
"rle
C rence In poI"
ltlcs. Aftcr meetmg the Slovene
poliee, he a......
......;
d to launch an lDvest
L'
"lgatlOn to find out how the tran....
..pt uccame pubre.
I Kocan told Belgrade what he had done
' while
1U, police were oblig
ed to InlOrm
C
[h JNA about the document they
fuund in Ja
'
as computer company
.
Wh
K.d;
",,,,
',", M:unula took early retir
ement in May, 1988 it was up to
to Implement
,
he AImys
' plan t bnng Sloven'ia to heel. He
lent his crack
.
S agent, Colonel
VasllJevit, to Slovenia. Vasiljevic

Central

Kuan

At:

b"

KG

'

bounds:

'

55

rumours
middle ground between
for

LAYlNC THE CHARGE

'NO WAY BACK'

had worked his way up through the ranks of the most elite of
military and security services' counter-intellince. He had
minded the JNA's covert action to crush ethnic Albanian unrest
Kosovo in 1981. He now arrived in Slovenia prepared to ferret OUt
'mole' who had leaked the military documents to Mladina. Alth,,"81
a specialist in clandestine operation s, Vasiljevic informed
S oveni an secret police of his lan s. 'They knew everything about
I met their head, Ivan Erzen, every evening to review events.
Ertl, his boss, also knew of my presence in jubljana.' Kuean
denied that he knew of Vasilje c's presence. 'This was a matter
with by the Army and especially their secret serviceS, The
State Presidency was not informed by the Army about it.' He
admitted that he had co-operated with the JNA.
Vasiljevic and his team were ready to move. On Sunday m"rninl! .
5.30 Ja was sudde y woken up. 'They searched my home
Mikro Ada offices, then put me in a cell without a bed or d,:,li!:h
he said.

vi

nl

They may say they ::rmltd m(for that military docummt but they
never N)tn botherd to ask about it. They 'W"e only intemUd in
how 1got hold ofthe tTUn5cript ofth( March Central Committu
muting. Thry wantd to know who my contacis W"t in tIN
C()'f)07lmmt and the military.

7::

The circumstance s surrounding JanSa's arrest remai n

JanSa, who three years later would rise to prominence during
'ten-day war', accused Kufan of collaborating with the JNA
him. News of the arrest spread quickly. Igor Bav1':ar, Jana's
business partner, was able to get a short report in the city edition
the Ljubljana daily, De/o. In Belgrade the next day, Slovenia's
leaders attended a session of the Yugoslav League of
Among those attending was Borut 5uklje, a Socialist }'Sluth
member of the Central Committee. Kuean turned to Suklje and
'Your friend, a nez ana. has been arrested'. Suklje was alarmed.

::::;::

1 got J(ard 1 didn't know at that time if this circle of arTtJ'!

would tnd with janIa or would continue. At the same time II
became clear to me that Ih"t was no way back. 1got thefte/ig
that KlLan was reafly JUrprised, and that he hadn't known HI
advance what would happen. I couldn't say whether th( SllJVtne
leadmhip collaborated with Belgrade or not.

leadership had been kept

";evic said the Slovene
J
I
., Kad
.
General
he Party conrerence,
,
s
. Dunng a break -In t
en
t
m
lo
v
e
de
f
all
ed
infO . 0
Communists that several men would
h
is
feUow
of
one
Id
KadiJeV1\.. to
_ I"ing m Wrary documents.
Slovenia for steal
be arrested ill
The next day the Slovene poI-ICe handed Jana over to the JNA.
had leaked the incriminating document (it
g n Borltner, who
S,t 'd
, ou
r r to be a 'plant') was arrested, as was the Mladina journalist,
name
' tary documen Order
Tasic, who had passed on the secret w

J.

David
S044-3. According to Yugoslav law, SloveOla was then obliged to
aIIaw tbe JNA to take over the: .investigation, since the three were
ted of possessing secret military documents.
military jail, Jama was interrogated by Vasiljevic, who had
perfected his techni ue over two decades.

"i:

He told me in jail that it wouldn't be a problem roen if 0/1

SIO'I.Jtnes supported me, kcause there are only a hantiful ofus in the
country, and they couid kill a// ofus, ijthry wanted to. Really. He
'WQl very tough. He said: 'We can killyou, we can sentence youfor
fiftun years, we can ruin yourfamily, we can kill your children,
'Wt' can do anything in the intertlt o
fthe state. '
Two weeks later the JNA arrested Franci Zavrl. There was an
immediate and intense public outcry Bav1':ar founded the
Commi ee
.
for the D f
e
ncc of Human Rights, known as Odbor - rallyin
g togeth
.
:
er JOuma
hsts, professors and other Slovene intellectuals.
The arrests
were
e catalyst which effectively created an
organized Slovene
I n movement. It was interesting,
at the time, all old conflicts
JUSt vanished,' says Bavtar.
'Very quickly we found out that this case
d bec?me a p litica
Uy

c
rucial case for Slovene democracy.'
.
t1tlOn calling foc the relea
se of the Ljubljana Four as they
excl .e known, uickly coUected 100
000 signatures, most! but not
USlVy from Slovenia

. Crowds gathered to sign, causing

spontam
m
l- d
emonsrr ..
"' uoos on LJUblana,s usually plaCi- d streets. The
L
_
hUJTiLl'O;rs Were stagger'109,
partt.cu
I arIy r'or 5loverua
of u
.a..u;
_ most
, which had one
coose
' e popuIatlO
' vatlV
n
s,
and
wher
e
comp
laints about
_0mlc
- expIOltanon
cr more WI.
were ta
despread than those about
.
hum," ng
- hts. LaJbach
and other exponents 0f t
he Neue SlowtnlSche
I<Mllst might h cont.
nbuted much to expa
;
nding the Slovene social
lOene but th
arguably contributed
more.
At,' the

tt

tt

neous

;'

bulldozed on, the

irrsib
face of Slovene politics changed
reve
ly The
.
leaders Shi- fted
towards the dissidents. Janez
57

LAYING THE CHARGE

'NO WAY BACK'

Stanovnik, President of Slovenia, made the unprecedented move

receiving Bavar's Committee. This was a dear statement
Slovenia's leadership was supporting the Ljubljana Four.
admits the meeting was in fact not planned. Bavar, a huge
man, showed up for a private meeting, with a crowd of reporters
television cameras in tOW. The mustachioed Stanovnik, looking
the world like a throwback to the days of the A""o-I
Hun1i
Empire, told the impromptu press conference: ' Look. people.
sympathize with what you are doing, I commit myself to take all
necessary steps on the federal level'.
Despite official appeals, the trial went on. Each d,v 'TW"'
ered round the courthouse. For the JNA Colonel A"'.'ntij<i
public abuse the Army suffered during the trial struck
spent nearly forty years of his military service in Slovenia and
come to regard the republic as his home. Now it seemed it was
against Yugoslavia, the country he had spent his life upholding.

u;,j

My barracks wert the hastfor the court. WI' had massivt demon
strations outsidl' tlu building a// tht time - and I had to maJu SUrl'
we wertproptrly dtftnded in case they got out ofcontrol. It was
'IJtry painful. I would have to walk through tlu CTt'J'IIJds and they
would boo me and shout.
Fur Franci Zavr/, the trial WiU pure Kapa. 'ThI'judge W(JJ not
sure what was going 011. We could hear tluptople olltside the court.
Nothing we, in the opposition, hod ever tried to do to rally peoplt
had worked as well as that lrial. It was II symbol: the dissident, tlu
journalist, fht soldier - all youlIg ond with popular appeal. Wi
were the ptrftct ingredientsfor the Sl()'/)ene spring. '

Juxtaposed against these perfect patriots of the new Slovenia

the JNA - acting like a bull in a china shop. The Army made
mistake after another. The pubic
l was excluded. The defendants
not allowed their own lawyers. The trial was conducted in
Croat instead of Slovene - this in itselfhelped to sway the opiini') '
many Slovenes, for whom language is crucial to national identity'.
The Army refused to bend. The Slovene leadership protested.
not too loudly. Kuan was not yet ready to mount an open
to theJNA. The Ljubljana Four received sentt:nces ranging from
months to four years. Instead of relaxing its grip. the federal
lishment tried to force the Slovenes to climb down. An appeal
President Stanovnik for clemency was refused.

imprisonment was Ionesco. 'I

'- ' was Kafkaesque, the
.
If the tna.L
' h a frlendIy Govcmor,' sal-d
Wit
pnson
open
an
in
ce
senten
served he
in my office and my
magazine
the
editing
days
my
pent
I ,
late
was
getting back, I had
I
wht'n
occasion,
'. S
On one
vr
- ,.
IUghts '" Prison.
he wire.
t
over
prison
to b ak into the
e trial took Slovenia one step further from Yugoslavia. It unified
against the JNA - the symbol of the Communist
the tiny republic
. have
I and most others would sull
opted for
early
Federation. 'In
Yugoslavia,' recalls Zavrl. 'But then began Miloevifs attacks in
J(osovo, the attacks on Slovenes in the Army, and the whole irrational
pressure from Serbia and Miloevic. It drove us out much faster.'

';:

1989,

1 Lai/Jarh, the German word for Ljubljana, was the first written reference
10 Ljubljana n
i 1144 - twO rears later the [own was entioned in Slovene.
2 Srambolic and Kutan have remained on good terms since his fall from

1'.""3 The usually docile Macedonians, who revered Tiro for giving the
a
ute within the Yugoslav federation and recognizing them as a distinct ethnic
community after the Second World War, reacted sharply to the Slovene doc
nt for negating the national identity of Macedonia and other Yugoslav
...on.
" Mamula, hi self, wrote a book on Yugoslav defence.
Odbrana

m
may

ma/ih
ZnrutJja, so he
have felt especia!1y piqued.
5 Befoll: 1991, Yugoslavia earned US 12 billion annuall on
arms' expons
y

mostly to developing nations.

. 6 VasiljcviC's .observ.ations
f
r"
"uen t in
. were common complaints.
-.,
tunes ofconomlc depnva
tlOn, about how Siovem. a \vas supporting the
TeSt of
"ViU80' aV\a. At the same time,
Serbia made the same complaints on how the
rat 0 the country was exploi
ting Serbia's rich raw materials.
the7 In faet ,hs
',list of a es was never revea
led and according to Ali Zerdi n
respceted ovene )ourna,-IS,,
It
- IS
- doubtlU' \IIhether it existed at all.
.
8 Thro
their
ugh ccnunes of foreign
cultu
rule, the Slovenes had vigilantly
preserved
for the right to use their
language - whose first written
ae
to
the
twelfth cemury.

more

smg
da 't

59

'COMRADE SLOBODAN, TIiINK HARD'

b tton 2n we would spod to their call,' he

to do was press 2
,

lieve 10 the League of

hod. Instead, bearing Signs S2ymg: We be
SlId
"
" h t e 1974 constltutJOn,
" ' and
.sts of Yugosl2V.la,, 'Down Wit

'COMRADE SLOBODAN, THINK HARD'

Miloit'lJii j- Anli-Burtaucrati( Revolulion
July 1988-Morch 1989

he Slovene spring gave way to the heat of Serbian 'u'nm... "

Throughout Yugoslavia'S biggest republic, Serbs turned out by tho
million for rallies. They flocked to these 'Meetings of Truth'
Kosovo, as they were called, clamouring for Siobodan MiloeviC.
resembled religious revivals. The steely Milotvi(: rode the wave
nationalism which whipped through Serbia. Having secured ,"'.oh..
control over the Serbian League of Communists, he turned fim
the two provinces of Serbia, then on tiny Montenegro, and finalI" 0.:
Yugoslavia itself. The emergence of nationalism was vaunted as
rebirth of dignity. Serbs believed that, after fifry years under
enforced slogan of'brotherhood and unity', Miloevic had once
given them back their national identity, the right to say they
Serbs. Their fervour was fanned by the press. The daily n,'w'I"P'"
doubled and tripled the number of faithful who attended the
Each day the headlines gOI bigger, the messages more
sowed fear in the rest of the country. But there seemed to be
anyone could do.
On 5 October, a crowd armed with triangular ,ru"on, o[",,,"und
milk, laid siege to, and then ousted, the leade"
"hi" P f
ern province ofVojvodina. The leadership was Ii :
;
running the province with little mind to what Belgrade thought.
'Yogurt Revolution', as it came to be known. was the final act in
drama that had begun three months earlier. The fate of the VojvodUl6
leadership had been sealed when Miroslav Solevic. the man
established his loyalty in K050VO Polje by rallying the crowds
1987 on, and helping to stagemanage MiloeviC's dramatic
Polje speech, had organized a rally n
i the provincial capital. Novi
For Solevic, a huge bear of a man, the rally was an immense
the first in a chain of protests round Serbia. However,
thought it was too euly for a rally to be effective against the
leaders. MilooeviC sent his envoy to dissuade the Kosovo
fTom traveUing north to Vojvodina, where, in the jumble nfn"'oed
groups. Serbs comprised over fifty per cent of the population.
Solevic refused. MilcrleviC's people 'wanted it to appear that all

;1:

BOlgn"'

60

m"?u
set off. The slog:ms were brilli2nt in their simple 2ppeal:
!'eo"', t ey
" Serb"12."T
,o ther ue stronger.'
"Jv
" od"lOa I.
" vO
.
'Kosovo is Serbia.
dl
everything
poss.lble to provoke a
Sole"lc
.
B his own admission
.
. The
was
He
not
leadership.
disappomted
Sad
Novi
ct with the
the
Stop
rally
to
m
o
lengths
fr
being
great
held.
to
went
Plrty chiefs
nd-,?-ter
supplies.
was
It
power-a
an
ofi"the
ill-con
turned
1bey even
tidered move. The Vojvodina leadership appeared fO be attacking the
'downtrodden' Kosovo Serbs, who were portrayed in the Belgrade
media as martyrs for Serbdom. In a show of solidarity, Serbs from
Novi Sad joined their K050VO brothers marching to the town centre.
Women wept. This test-case cemented MiloSeviC's conviction that
'protests' were the perfect vehicle for stiing up popular pinion and
destabilizing loca1 Party leaders. By raking to the streets 10 mis way,
be could install his people throughout Serbia and its provinces.'solevic
was me front man, the one the public came to know as the organizer
ofMilokvit's Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution. But behind the scenes,
the SDB, the secret police, helped to get the crowds out from factories
and other wotk-places' . Under the illusion that MiloeviC had
delivered their national freedom, it took little effort to stir up the masses.
On lO July, Bolko Krunic, one of the Vojvodina Party leaders, tried
to defen his province's autOnomy aga.inst MiloeviC's drive to bring
it
under his control. Speaking in a village in Srem, KruniC insisted,
.
ebcally, because he was terrified of wh2t would happen, that he
did not Oppose he constitutional changes Miloe
viC was forcing

He admitted that negotiating the changes had been 'diffi

cult . bt ced on Belgrade to hah its
'unprecedented efforts' to
e his leadership. In fact, Vojvodina was trying to block the
amsn nonal changes - sough
t by Serbia's leaders. But afraid of
ng the wrath of Belgrade, KroniC. even at this late hour, tried
kruni.tt th blame on
to K050VO for the protracted negotiations.
':
provin rerrunded Milo
evic that, unlike the restive mosdy Albanian
ce, the fertile prosperous
plains of Vojvodina were peaceful:

cool

h.

fi

.
..
most StT/ous
poblrcalprohlrm in Yugosla'lJt.a
"
n .i
11 strhsand H
'
lontmtgrlnsfrom Ko!()'f){J...
"
. (>
AI fht SQmt Ilmt
"
'W
'
t
au orud to rtfut to groundln! O((UJQtlons.
.
m In
' y
'
J:
}tJOd
o ' ma nt'fHr asfi
"
Iud 10 ht a upublrc.
Why, andto whom.
tnrdhow long arr
to go on rtJUating this'

m allknow that lIN

.
Ot/,
l
a
y IS Iht tmirrralio

6,

LAY ING THE CHARGE

SLOBODAN. THINK HARD'

'COMRAD E

An attack on Vojvodina's autonomy was also an attack on

leadership and, obviously, all the privileges that came with the job
His plea did not hah Belgrade's smear campaign. To no .
Vojvodina tried to gain supporrwithin the ranks of the
On 5 October, 1988, Mihalj Kertes, an ethnic
one of MiloeviC's most faithful executioners, led a crowd

n.=

workers by foot, bus and even tractor from the town of

to Novi Sad, forty kilometres away. The bombastic Kertes
the protestors from state factories in his native

mance starring Kents, Radovan Pankov and Nedeljko

would become Vojvodina's next leaders, the crowd of 15

at the Party leadership. Hurling stones at the assembly,
chanted:

'DoltfotdjaJj' - 'down

with the armchai";.

:l

splashed the building with yogurt, christening the 'J

Revolution' that was making Milosevic the most

in Yugoslavia.
Inside the building, the Vojvodina leaders
Mitevic, head of Belgrade television, and Milo'"X/ w,,,",.tdung d

events unfold on a live broadcast. They had a direct telephone

with the beleaguered officials. Mitevit said the trapped men
terrified,

afraid for their lives. Fearing the crowd would storm

assembly, they called for Army intervention. Belgrade blocked

deployrm:nt. If the Army had been engad, the embattled

might have succeeded in garnering support among the politicians

other parts of Yugoslavia, who were watching the developments

growing concern. Macedonia's Lazar Mojsov, then President, gave

go-ahead to the Army. General Nikola Ljubific, Serbia's

tative to the federal presidency, surprisingly also said yes -

though he was one of Miloikvie's key supporters. The dispatch

blocked by another partisan hero of the Second World War,
Petar Gratanin, President of Serbia, who was clearly acting at

behest of MilmeviC. Moreover, the JNA judged the Novi Sad

.
in a different light from those in Slovenia the previous

anted '
MilaSeviC, the Army saw a Communist who w
in the Slovene leadership, it saw reactionaries intent on
country. The generals were blinded by their ideological

The crowd swelled, screaming into the aurumn

Sogorov, head of the Vojvodina Parry, desperately phoned Mil'"
appealing for help. He replied coolly: 'Okay, I'll save you, but
one condition: you must all submit your resignations. Ifyou
save you.'That was it. The regime crumbled. MiloevlC was in
6,

h e )<Ogurt Revolution would be rewarded for their

of t
The leaders
c..: _L.c.l
servicel. .
_ uu
divlOe status among the Serbs. No-one
..... il0eviC attamed aImost
.

I"

d. Suddenly he was
doration which he would comman

. patco
.
..J the a
",DO
hotog"ph or portrait, 0ften both, hung III every
....h
.w ere His P
buildmgs. There were
.
' 1O
,.ks, offices and government
fru".
re WIndOW,
.
"
"".,
SlO
.

MlloeV1c stares at one 0f the

bout hi, portrait. In one,
.
""n )okes a
he breaks down and asks:
FlOally,
himself
' [Ures of
thousands 0f pIC
..
'0ne day they'11 ta
ke
answers:
plcrure
The
.
us"
nt'n to
'What will hapr,
.
bl
to
e
t
was
walk
h
h
It
Impossl
roug
you.
hang
'
dow . But they'll
.
capital,
Yugoslav
and
without
Serbian
the
ade
, .
UT'
o of BA
"'0''
,
"'" hearr
the
Milooevits confident gaze. Tlto s Image began to
constantIY meeting
.
-'" ,--,e s over the next SIX
ar. Carrying his photO. at the scores f ,
,,--,
diu

f:, nrnple would chant that Miloev1c had replaced Tito. Serbs

mon

r--

Serbla

loved Miloevic for his pledge to protect them - to reuOlte

divided by the 1974 constitution.

Montenegro was next. It was Yugoslavia's smallest republic, with just

604 000 inhabitants. Like the other republics, under Tito, Montenegro

had its own central bank. steel works, aluminium plant and Academy

of Sciences and Arts, hut it was bankrupt. Workers were demanding

higher wages, the republic seemed ripe for social unrest. Divided into
thirty-five tribes, Montenegrins still know which clan they belong to.
They had traditionally cast themselves as a warrior narion, hailing
&om the forbidding craggy peaks of the Dinaric mountains. Of all
other communities in Yugoslavia, their hisrory, religion, and iden
bty was most closely intertwined with the
Serbs. There are two tra
ditions which run deep in Monte
negro - one the Greens, for inde
pendenc, the other, the White
s, who
themselves Serbs and
want unIOn with Serbia. MilOS:
evit knew that his Serbian revival
would find fertile groun
d in Montenegro. Mter all he was a native
of Montenegro.
A trio 0f rallics, several
months apm, and an
. .
of economic
and
demands, broke the existing Mon
tenegrin regime. On 7
r, ho.t on the heels
of Vojvodina's Yogurt Revolution, crowds
.
turne
tar d out III Titograd in protest,
after police used truncheons and
o prevent a

demonstration by steel workers. Seven men were

in"'
ter the policc
' '''''U ou
" m ordered .
capta
hiS forces to baton-charge the
aowdThe even
.
t was laTer manlp
.
uIated by the Belgrade media
which
.
t
-...J he Montenegn n I
.
.
eadershIp 0f crue
y suppressmg the national
II
>rill. The fa
lly shi
'fted firom
.
economIC concem to demands for change

call

Oc:tlitiCal

amalgam

LAYlNG THE CHARGE

AN, THlNK HARD'

'COMRADE SLOBOD

tl::::,

in Kosovo. The occasion marked the political birth of

Vice President of the Montenegrin government. At his
.e a
k
of fifty, Kostic told the crowd, he was not there to ma
name
himself but to see how he could help. In just three years, by """"'0;
strating his blind loyalties, the pro-Serb Kostic would be
President ofrump Yugoslavia.
The Montenegrin regime stayed in power another three months.
the meantime, a group of young Montenegrin Communists, led
Momir Bulatovic, appeared launching open harsh attacks on
leadership. They knew that the criticism would go u
because their mentor was in Belgrade. At thirty-four,
became the Party chief of Montenegro. MilokviC's control
extending beyond the borders of Serbia itself.

.
over the republics; but when it was in
I
. t'ons
federal IfiSON
_L
" tates 0f
,'
of U
. t
Ia'lmed that Serbia would not . bey the d!c
. ,n
erest.' he C
his
H-<
0
V"
,
m
alner, a
k
warnmg
t
prescien
and
.
tion. 1n a strident
..L. fe
oor,
h
fl
"
d h"IS
e
t
u dera
pomte
k
tOO
n,
Partisa
a
and
C
ran Slovene ommunist
.
vet<
M"I
,
I
on
"
oev!c
sal"d :
gaze
h
iS
ing
x
fi
,
and
h e podium .
t
.
fi08'" across
d
h
h
ave
you
c
roa
osen.
'
whIch
about
hard
think
'Comrade 51 bodan

After Montenegro, what next? The Yugoslav politiCa1

was shaken by MiloeviC's revolution road-show. On I17
the Seventeenth Session of the Central Committee, the
League of Communists tried to stop Miloevic. The
chief, Stipe Suvar of Croatia, proposed a vote-of-confldence in
member of the politburo. It was clear that Suvar's target
Milovic.
Suvar, who earlier had been a MilokviC supporter, was now
vinced that the Yugoslav Party should vote to oust him.
MilokviC protested on the grounds that he was a
buro because he was chief of the Serbian Party, so the Yugoslav
had no authority over him. He won. Using this procedural loo'pbol
the Party bosses from the six republics and two provinces were
from re-confirmation. There is little doubt that ';f1V1;lo'<v;H"d
forced to place himself for re-election before the federal Party.
would have lost. Indeed, the only candidate to fail the ballot
MiloeviC's closest ally, O\dan Ckrebic, Serbia's man on the
Party. By voting against him, the Yugoslav Communist bosses
signalling their opposition to Milosevic. They had sufficient
to sack MiloSeviC, but the rules did not permit it". The YU:go<h.
was powerless to stop this former banker whose gamble
Indeed, Miloevit even manipulated the rules to
point. By invoicing the powers of the Serbian <
.": 'h;:'f:;,::
o

:
,,
Miloevit rescued the elderly Ckrebic. At the iT ,
Party, Ckrebic was reinstated.
With this move, Miloevic made clear his strategy towards
Yugoslav federation: when it was opportune he invoked the

became more

i:

6,

. ed out a series ofpurges with ruthless efficiency. A policy

anyone, from local authorities to

Belgndd,;am
" " was sacked .
agers who refused to kow-tow to MiloVIC,
P ty was dis
Kosovo
the
of

i ;:;:mbe;, 1988, thein leadership

.
mc Albaru s,
Kosovo w s n:rvous. t
ucrenoarion was in full gear;
called l
'

:rn

milled. Already the m.oo?

IOn population,
rwhe1ming maJonty of the proVlnce s 1.9 mill
the

for a crack-down. As the Serbia rallies

m;:racing themselves
.
.
.
feverish - men wearmg Chetmk natIOnaliSt war

mementoes demanded the arrest of Albanian functionaries - Belgrade

[Q str
ip Kosovo of its autonomy. The Serbian leadership
tightened its grip, whi
l e among Albanians popular support swelled for
the embattled leaders, Kawa Jashari and Azem VlIasi. While the
Party Committee met to rubber-stamp the dismissals, secured by
Belgrade. miners abandoned their pitheads in Trepea marching fifty6ft kilometres [Q Prtina. For the nt five days, along with Albanian
students, they braved freezing temperatures as they camped out in
&Ollt ofthe provincial Party headquarters in protest against the fall of
their Party leaders. It was a scenario reminiscent of the Yogurt
Iution in Vojvodina, except that this time the popular protest was
1ft support of the local leadership
and against Belgrade.
Over whisky a few weeks later, Miloevic asked VlIasi whether
he
been behind the November demonstrations. 'He wanted
to know
any people could turn up and take the police completely by
SWpnse, recalled Vllasi. 'He said
that the police could not work out
who
been organizing them.'
'They turned up of their
own will. T certainly did not have the
t pay for them and bus
them in'' said Vllasi in a retort which

IlIIU:C Mi
lokYiC.
!hey
i
we the last Albanian
protests not to end in bloodshed. The
poI ce rema
med on the Sl. deI"meso I
n three months the Army and the
poIice were to
'
assert controI over the sout
hern prOVln
" ce. Belgrade dlsDliued t
h test as
'counrer-revolurion'. Serbia's propaganda was
at
-, Pitc .
.
e press warned of
Alball lan separarism, dismissing the
. ..
_tion as pnmlhve
.
. .
. Intel!,c,
uaI s banded together With
h"
the poilnclans

prepared

had

"

6S

LAYING THE CHARGE

BODAN, THINK HARD'

'COMRADE SLO

to warn of a conspiracy against Serbia from Ljubljana to Tirana,

On 19 November, after several false startS, 'the meeting of
ings' was held in Belgrade. Whenever Serbia argued with
Yugoslav republics, the Belgrade leadership would threaten to
the biggest rally ever. On that grey November day, Miloevit
his countrymen: 'We are not at
afraid. We enter every
intending to win.' The local press said at least one million
turned out to listen to meir leader pledge victory 'even though
enemies abroad are uniting with those inside the country'.
out at the sea of people, MiloevK: said: 'Every nation has a love
eternally warms its heart. For Serbia it is Kosovo. That i, w,v 1<0,,,,
will remain in Serbia.' Milovan Vitezovic, a poet and P',rtj'-h"
coined the phrase: 'The people have happened'. It became me
phrase for the national awakening which propclle MilokviC to
height of power, the most powerful politician since Tito.
MiloeviC's people set up a company to provide the transport
organize the meetings. Tens of thousands of workers were bussed
from provincial factories. They were given sandwiches and
instead of working their shifts. State enterprises forced their
ees to go together to attend the 'meeting of all meetings'.
For the politicians elsewhere in the other republics, Milo
pledge to make Serbia whole again sounded the death-knell
Yugoslavia. KiKan, Party chief of Slovenia saw the significance:
abolishing me autonomy of both provinces of Vojvodina and
Serbia would directly control three-out-of-eight VOles in the
Presidency - in comparison with the other republics that had one
each. That meant turning Yugoslavia into Serbo-slavia.' With a
Montenegro, Milokvic was, eventually, to control half the
the Yugoslav Federal Presidency, effectively ensuring that me
tive head of state could not take a single decision without his
approval.
MiloSevit paid no heed to the intense criticism provoked by
populist methods, bulldozing over the existing instirutions. His
for his opposite numbers was evident at a Party session in
when he made dear he would achieve his goals regardless of
protest. 'The solution will be found through politics supported
ing '
majority of people in this country. Either through the exist
tions or not. On the streets or inside, by populist or elite
MiloScvit was stating explicitly that if he did not get his \\
the existing power structures, he would ratly the masses in
achieve his goal. He had already begun.

all

"'

::

66

tional changes, with the

.
pressed on with the constitu
parliament, on 25
federal
The
him".
o .rop
.
_..,...,..hlics unable '
c the new
,mendments which deared the way lOr
,_ ber, adopted
..
ends.
The
loose
Kosovo
few
a
only
were
'
(
.
.........rn
,
There
...ian consntu Ion.
&'.-h
.
.,..
d
'
emlse.
ot
I
h
n
er
words,
own
ItS
of
avour
f
in
I had t vote
b
controlled
men
his
Kosovo's
sure
make
to
.
.
ed
MUolevll.. nee
b'Ian med'la d'IVI'ded Albamans
'
IOto
, , Pa<ty, The official Ser
Commums
.
'
had aIready pIC
' k
e d th
ree 'honest
MiloScVlc
atist'.
'separ
d
t
; n , IUhman Morina, Husamedin Azemi and Ali Shukria, to
lUL'A"'.. a
carry out his bidding.
Mter the November demonstrations, Vilas; topped the blacklist as
'I was aware that the ground was being pre
ader ofthe 'secessionists'.
my arreSL Serbia was firly open ut it:
even
or
revenge
.-red for
l they got me out of the way, It would be Impos
they thought that unti
IIible to pass the constirutional changes they wanted: he said. Once a
favourite of Tiro, Vllasi was now expelled from the Central
Committee. Milcievic lost no time in installing his trio offaithful Party
.,.",tchh.
i The consrirurional changes were almost in the bag.
On 20 February, the Trepl"a miners went into action again. They
Rfused to leave the pits until their demands were mer - the first of
thcst was the resignation of Milosevic's 'placemen' from the Kosovo
Party leadership. Scenes of the pale-and-determined miners crowded
imo dark dank pits were broadcast throughout Yugoslavia. Grim lines
cut tiH;ir shadowed faces. They pledged to stick
to their demands until
death ifnecessary. Outside their families waited, afraid
ofwhat would
come next7.
Kosoo came to a halt. Strikes broke out everywhere. In Belgrade,
MiIokvit wanted the strike over. He pushed for the
declaration of a
f-emergecy. To Burhan Kavaja, head of Trea mine, the
.
At WI leadership d
Id nor even feign concern about the miners' lives.
"Yi ani e,!,rgency meeting to
try to end the strike, Kavaja warned
Vlas I,eaders that he was worried about
the potential for dis
....... _. explamed that there
were 2400 kg of explosives in the mines.
ucre Were 1300 ml' ers
there. Someone could easily set it off by

mistake
D-,. 11Rai
rpnse, they did not seem to care.'
my s
Only Yugoslav
"'
nt
f DimareVlc
. e<!
_-, the news
' recclv
with apparent distress.
Petu
G
...;r.

,
a
,
.,
.nm of Serbia, d'Ismlssed h'IS appeals and,
ilbment...
to KavaJa s astonbe n a m
. ono[ogue
the
about his own exploits in Kosovo during

1'be nd
. , orld W
diminutive
_ . Gra{:an'm then made
Generou
_ng that
the exaggerated
more than 50 000 arme
d Serbs and Montenegrins were
,"
W

...: lokvtC

t
Z

'

ar.

6,

LAYING THE CHARGE

AN. THINK HARD'

'COMRADE SLOBOD

ready [0 march w Kosovo. Throughout Serbia it was common to

men pledge themsdves ready to fight in Kosovo. It seemed
bluster,a conftdent swaggering boast that would never be tested.
astensions rose, fears of an armed confrontation grew. The

''-;'

leadership argued violently over whether to declare a st,'''-o

gency in the province. There were accusations that the 51"..ne. ,

Croats were sending food and money to Kosovo to keep the

:.;:

going. Miloevic wanted to deploy the JNA to end it. Kuhn told
that he had no right to resort to military means,
strike was prompted by the changes to the Serbian c

MiloiicviC himself had strongarmed.

Intent on stopping the strike. Miloevic phoned VUasi in

He told the ethnic Albanian leader to persuade the miners to

their strike. In response Vllasi said: 'I have been to the mines
convinced that they won't give up, unless their demands are

Furious, Miloevic warned Vllasi that 'someone will have to

this.' Ignoring the clear threat, Vllasi agreed: 'Of course, the one
is responsible. But the miners won't leave until their demands are
Miloevic tried to cajole him into coming to Belgrade for
Vllasi shrugged off the suggestion. This was their last

':

Tensions were at fever pitch. MilaieviC made it plain to

Party politburo that he would not abandon the (,,,,st;';ru,:oo,,oJdw

After all, that was the political platform which sustained his
If the Party would not back the amendments, Milol:eYK told

a meeting of the parry leadership, 'Serbia would do what it

using any means it deemed necessary, be it in accordance with

or not'. Then this is the end of Yugoslavia,' answered Kuhn.
That night, Miloevic made a tactical manoeuvre to buy

three minions on the Kosovo Party leadership offered their

tions. The miners, 180 of whom were already in hospital, ill

week underground, abandoned the strike. But it was tOO 12ft.

situation had spiralled out of control.

The next day, the Slovene capital, Ljubljana, turned out for
the concert hall, Cankarjev Dom, organized by Bavar's
for Human Rights. The entire Slovene political leadership
siding with the strikers against Belgrade. In Serbia, the

shocked. Despite their current war of words, the Serbs

generally had enjoyed good relatiom. Condescendingly, Serbs

pointed out that they had sheltered Slovene children

Second World War when they fled Naz.i occupation. In total

. Serbia after Heinrich Himmler ordered the

sh eIter tn
Iove1leS [ook
. Another component 0f the new-born
Slovenes'
'd' Io I
equlsios
s the constant comparison of the suffering of
Serb n2[lO :ng
.
the Second World War to that of the Jews8. It
the Serbs w
likely to rile the Serbs than the
'n' a slolY<ln
0 - more
trnagt
. "a:.cu!t to
10 koIJc,
ten he d
pom,.by J .:;,
Cnkrjev
at
night,

made that
10
YugoslaVia arc III
ne Youth orgamzatlon. Albamans
I
o
S

th
of .
in World War Two.' For Serbs,
a
r '0 that of the Jews
il
.
r- on Sim
'
ftRIItti
essence
of
their
rekindled
mythology: Ihey were
k
'
(h""
....
,trUc a

II oui:

OSI

ipCCC

this

bruary, speaker after speaker in Ljubljana condemned the

in Kosovo. Belgrade had come the orment r.

the

Serbs for repression

.
.
'Vi
12vi2 is being defended In the Trepea mme. The Situation 10

shows that people are no longer living together but increas

iDgIy against one anoter. POlitics cannot be pursued on the streets or

, .
when lives are put at fISk, 6:1.Id Kuan.

The TrtJia miners are dejmding the rights 0/ citiuns and

Communists in KOJ()'I)() to eifel tlNir own leadership. SI()'{)tn(s are
i
in Yugoslavia. Wl helped create it and are
mil (asual vsitors
i for itsfuture. '*' protest againstfanning the psychosis
mporuhle
tfthe state-oj-emergenry and w( haw warned that a quiet roup
is taRing plact ht/ort our e)'es which 11 changing flu face 0/
YII(,fJslafJia.

Wa!ching the Cankarjev Dom rally on Ljubljana

Television. Dubn

.
MitM
, Belgrade TV chief, made, what he called,

an 'unintentionally'
dangerous decision. He decide
d to broadcast the rally. \Vithin a few
boon, complete with SerboCroa
t subtitles translated from the
th rally sent electric jolts throug
h Serbia, a nation inured to
nationalist rhetoric. The Serbs
appeared not to see that, when
tbe SICIVenes prot
ested against the Serbs in Can
karjev Dom, it was
tlb
year of Serbian nation
alist rallies echoing through
'..
vta
... . The feaction
was instantaneous.
It
7hoy
t<b
Criticized the Serbs so muc
h in Cankarjev Dom. They said
.
wful t
hmo
O""O. abou, us Wh'
h
l
, as a human bemg
IiDdtnnnd
' , could not
.
' GraCanm
later remembered.
Was
He
mc nsed, a
title
d so was the rest of Serbia. It was inconceiv
that th ev
th,
" cr Mucvic, even
if only paying half a mind did not
shock-value
0f h' bfoadcast. It is more
I<om,d
Ii:
likely that he
the Ulll!JI:pected
. .
ammullltJon 10 the mtenslfym
g war of

e,

YI_

IS

IC

"

LAYING THE CHARGE

'COMRADE SLOBODAN, THINK HARD'

words between Belgrade and Ljubljana. 'As soon as I got hOIllt

phone began to ring: said Mitevic:
Friends lold mt /Uople wtre gathering oulfide Iheir blodu of
four
in heottd discussion. Ten minules laur someone laid me stu4nrlJ
wert Itaving Ihe campus. I realiud something 'WOuldhappen tba/
night, so I murntd to tht office 10 organiu cO'Utragt ojevents in
Btlgrade... By 8.00 a.m., thm f.lXTt a million jUOple infronl tf
1M FederalAssembly. They wert UpJetfor no dearpolitical rtasfnl
aparlfrom one Iransmissionfrom Slovtnia whm Ihty had hellTt/
so much abust against thurmlms.

;::;I;e;:

It remains in question how many people turn

u'd out
that night in Belgrade, but Serbs were truly s
tionaries visited key factories around Bdgrade. The federal
Dizdarevic said:

That tvening we received informationfrom federal stott stCurity

thatsrotral Belgradtfoaories wert bting organized 10 call mut
ingsfor tomorrow 10 coordinaf( and to pUI prtlJurt on Ihtfethr01 slruc/urtl. Thtfactory bOlJeS received direcl ordersfrom Zonm
Todorovif, a Party official, widely known as 'kundak' (rifle-bUll)'

Party functionaries frantically phoned round for ;n,nuctic...

reports came in through the night that thousands of students
marching on the city. 'I told Gratanin to stop it,' said D;zd,uoi
Gratanin tried to ease DizdareviC's worries, promising to divert
students outside the city centre. Dizdarevic took his word.
woke to the news that hundreds of thousands of demonstnuol"l
gathered in front ofthe federal parliament smack in th.oc;(Y nil
The MiloeviCs were away for the weekend in Vrnjatka
in central Serbia. Mira Markovic said they did not watch d
demonstration on television, and claimed to be shocked when
about it. Early the next day, they decided to return to
As usual Miloevic was in no hurry to address the rally.
he kept it waiting the more momentum the protest gained.
arrived from Rakovica, the nearby industrial district in Belgrade,
were chanting: 'Slobo, Siobo'. They would not settle for anne
'Miloevic was like a saint to them, not an icon, but a living
believed his every word and would not go home until he
them,' said Borisav Jovic.

I;_

crisis-sessions all day.

and federal politicians held

1be Serblafl
state-of-emergency in Kosovo. Kucan
w-antc_--1u. to declarc a
_... --"-tiIthat Serbia coold use the same
knew
I . He
JWIU""'" " :- _set agamst ths
.J_d

... _
.

.
in the near future.
agvn" Slovenia
,
l. At one point,JovlC
he leadership was losing contro
csa:uses meO thau
.
I,.-<
the crowd wasca
e
II
Outsld
fire
on
is
a
Serbi
.
uy

.
euphOrlt:all
_t...: m ed
_
c;lUA"
- . Uy mcapa
ble
. . Gratanin said: '51000 was psych0ioglc;w
.
for
C.
fr
such large crowds'9. After hours of resisting,
Mi1V1
iDI
ing In ont of
J:...-It
ue\l1n
- g that, as a
l1li.
the federal President, agreed to speak, be"
the
of
crowd.
Suvar of
wrath
the
h' uld not provoke
DizdarcviC's
speech
said.
he
us,'
attack
t
'No. they'll
as
far
he
'As
consay:
'74
to
him
advised
.

Gral:anin had
.
.
I
that
And
promIse
It.
you
on
working
we're
'"oncerned,
S ...
,
on I
llitUb
0
K
part
IS
f
S
b-la.
,
er
osovo
d
concerne
is
Kosovo
as
.
11
ed As far
.
favo
ofY
i
r
are
slavia'
we
concerned,
is
ugoslavia

.
A young Miloevic activist stood bhllld Dlzdare:nc promptmg
him what to say: 'Tell them that you 11 do everyrhmg to protect
YugoIlavia'. His whisper was audi?le over the public address ystm.
Dildarevil:'s humiliation showed Just how weak the federal tnstltu
tical were; they had no power against this maddened crowd. People
buns &om the trees, screaming for the heads of the Kosovo leadership,
jotring at Dizdarevii::, calling for the arrest ofV1Jasi and demanding to

-r---:t
o

::

bo um<d_
The crowd did not disperse. It waited into the night, and was still
dat the next morning. Twcnry-four hours after the crowd had gath

-. MilokviC finally appeared. Again he appealed directly to the

over the heads of the Yugoslav leaders
:
This rally shows that no-one (on destroy lhe (oUnl'1 buaust 1M
f*1!'t won't Itt tmm, 1m /Uoplt art Iht
btll guaranltt, Wt art
ttng 10 gtl all hontsf /'tople in Yugoslavia 10fighlforptau and
Imlty. Nothr.ng can stop tht Strb
Itodmhip andptopltftam doing
'fDhtz1/hry want.
Tagttha wt willfightfor unity and
ftudom in KOIOVO. Wt havt
our (O!lilution, and this will
mtan progrmfor allPtO
r" YugoslaVi
a. Unityfor tht Commufliu Party and theptop
lt.

;:"gt

1'br: crowd roare

.
Jror the arrest of the Albanian Party
. . d' screammg
Ieod.n. Milo!eVlc
answered. 'I cant' hear you, but we w1ll
.
arrest those
ltIponsible mc
u
I
d
mg
tho
s
e
w
h
-I
0 have useil the workers. In the name
_ the SOc
I aliSt people of Serbia 1 pro
mise this.'

LAYING THE CHARGE

Dufan Mit('fJrwidit was MiloS('fJifat hs

i btst. 'It was a slJo.w f{
powtr - to luep (l crowd wai/ingfor hours. TINflderal PraU/tnt
speaks, alld they don't leave. Finally Slobodan (omts. He speaJ.s
britjly for four minlltts. Tht (Towd shouts: "Arrtst Vllasir,
Slobodan did not hear it properly and rtpeated: -wt will arrtsJ
those who have 10 be arresudi No matter what junctiOIl they
hold". "Now go homer and fhry did... It showed hs
i power and
that he was their unassailable leader. '

Vllasi was driving through Belgrade. The car radio was

Miloevic's pledge to arrest him tempted Vllasi to turn up at
He was jailed one day later.
The crowd dispersed. For days afterwards, the d,m"m"",tie,,,,"
likened to 27 March, 1941, when the Serhian people had come
defiance against a pact with Hider's Germany. 'Bol)e rat
'better war than a pact', the war-time crowd had
The Serbs prided themselves on being prepared to go
war rather than accept the dictates of others. General
remembered the day when the 'people reacted spontaneously
pact with the Germans ... J was eighteen at that point':
There wert slreams and streams ofpeople throughout Serbia. ANI
Isaid 10 Slobodan later: 'Ths
i if the 271h ojMarth'andI laidhim:

'You werrn tvtn born at thaI lime'.

The new constitution was announced, ratified by the

assembly. The vote to strip itself of autonomy and submit ",r
authority of Belgrade was assured by the JNA tanks and the
police surrounding the building and deployed throughout Ko.,,"""
28 March, 1989 the elite of Serbia turned out to celebrate the
constitution. The entire from-page of Politika trumpeted that
was whole again. Belgrade had brought the provinces under its
tro!. While girls in white dresses sung the Yugoslav national
in a chorus in a Belgrade concert hall, twenty-two ethnic
and twO policemen were kiUed during two days of protests
new constitution. Official Belgrade said not one word of ""'" til
the deaths of the ethnic Albanians. The changes had been b; " UJ!:JtI
bayonets. The day was declared a state holiday in Serbia.

7'

N. THINK HARD'
'COMRADE SLOBODA
1
2

er,
.f; 9 NO\--c:mb
T
d

j'
by some accountS Ihm: were even
vary 'Idly
ates
snm
1994.
_

ISO 0Cl0

E
_Ie pn:senl.
Id a hosl of key positions from Chief of Ihe Federu
r', K"rtes wasHtOe3.dh 0fCustoms in. 1994 (I n a countryunderem bargo,where
ce
t Pol!
r
c
;;K'>-'
.
'
tha is a chOice post). Another secret po" eman, JOVlca
e smu r
the
top, becomi g one of
He
would rise
III IS
g&"
;
Kertes.
I
n
up
w
ScaniSit
most ;ted allies In May 1995 Milosevic appointed Stallisic his
M.ilok
. vit s ' d signated for freeing UN hostages.

c;=YGt, Serbia'sinother
an in the .Yugoslav politburo, who ad
Stambolit's side the Eighth SesSIOn passed the ballot. Milan
ki, pro-Milvit Macedonian, aimosl did not make the cut-offwith
WI

tO

__

to

'

to

trU

eiP:

11

Slavoljuh. IznmiJu slow i anatme: polititlHl hiogrofua S/ohotiana

MiItJkvi!a. Filip Viinjit. Bclgrde 1994.
5 Siobodan Milokvic, Godlnr rasp/ria, BIGZ, Bclgra.d(, .1989,p. 3.33.

6 tn fact, they wer( relieved to let Belgrade deal With It. Siovema often
protested against the hug conrributions to the cderal fund for the less-d(vd
Oped regions ofYugosla\'1a - KoS?vo. MacdoOla, nd M.ontenegro.
7 Serbia trad(d a cusations With Croatia and Slov(Ola as to whether th(
aiacn were actually on a hung(r-strike. The charg(s were aim(d at compro
ailing the miners. Sine( 180 men were hospitalized, and they all looked wan
aDd ill, it seems unlikely, and, in any event, irrelevant, whether they were eat
c

"OI oot.

Prominent Serbian intellectuals in

1989 founded the Serbian Jewish

non-a1ign(d Yugoslavia's pro-Arab,
1IIti-bnc.li policy. It soon reedved considerable official backing with its
1Ilntaly, Klara Mandie, later to be im'olv(d with severu prominent Subs
Rado:nn Karadiic, to Captai Drag<&n who had his own elite para
military urut inKnin, the Kninjas.
9 Rumours have persisted that Mile
it hates
speak in public. Even
Ihough he came power on a wav( of rallies,
he seldom addressed crowds.

Friendship Society. Th( group opposed

8

to

71

[0

TSAR LAZAR'S CHOlCE

nia. The pay-off

,
" ..ssions from Croatia and Slove
,
wong con....

a
hand With
l. ---l to
roval of Markovic, a Croat, was frec
,
.. , app
pur-o.l....des
r....
C
' was a compromise lor
The cholce

TSAR LAZAR'S CHOICE

he ubiquitous smile of the new Yugoslav Prime Minister,

MarkoviC, became a trademark for his seemingly boundless

mism. He strove to implement free-market reforms, meeting

tanee from the leaders of Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia, who wanted ,
keep control over the economy. His programme offered hope
country caught in a dangerous spiral of nationalism, generated

Serbia. In a short time, the silver-haired, blue-eyed MarkovK

the most popular politician in all six republics, even though he

vilified by their governments. The mention of his name recalls

of prosperity and optimism.
But he is also remembered for presiding over, and

ill

power to stop. Yugoslavia's excruciating descent into war.

tenure, the fIrSt multi-party elections since the Second

were held in the six rpublics. Nationalist parties captured m,.t ,ofl
vote. MarkOYK: cam into conflict with Srbia, Slovenia and
Yet he was at their mrcy. His programm hinged on the

(:

of each regime, but they selectively obeyed or violated it. I

republics, at odds over everything, forged an unlikely alliance

throw him. The Prime Minister was hit from al1 sides. MilocviC
to block reforms which would weaken his monopoly over power.
r
tactical manoeuvre to distance itself f om the federal 'n_
Serbia launched a separatist drive, even appointing its

titutional changes.
I ate was Bonsav
.
d'd
'
rly since the other malO can
articula
vic,
a
rators,
Marko
collabo
pragtrusted
kviC'S most
, Pr

1-0.< one o Milo

.m
pickd a government ostly composed 0r
ketat,
.
tcehnocr
s
orms,
koVlc
ref
Mar
tried
h
to
for
r
suppor
win
o
T

.
ented politicians.
on
10 office, the dinar, the nat
was
he
While
happy.
.
the republics
.
onvertible and It was pegged to the German
cumncy, was made c
pushed through a package of
MarkoviC liberalized imports and
.
the economy in sound fiscal
anchor
to
wanted
He
laws.
tiution
financial policy, rather than political whim, believing that people
would prefer to have a colour television. set, car and foreign travel
nationalist slogans, war and IsolatIOn. He was wrong.
racber

an

cons
.
.,..-d
_
., ....,..., .

March 1989-January 1990

own

Minister, the first Yugoslav republic to do so. It became

currency to say that Serbia could survive on its own.

But these were only tactics. MiloseviC's real intention was to

over the Yugoslav federation.

Slovenia refused to follow the same rules as the other

Croatia wanted to keep its foreign-currency earnings from

Markovic stubbornly trid to defend Yugoslavia, even when

nothing left to defend, pleading for reason over nationalism.
December, 1991, he resigned, ostensibly in protest against the

budget which he called a war budget. Betrayed by everyone, he

trolled little more than the cavernous and sprawling federal

ment building. Finally, he lost that, too.

By supporting MarkoviC's candidacy in January, 1989, S",bu q

J""'ri

::;-

than

Capite the lure of shiny foreign labels, Serbia was still blindcd by the
ndiant glare ofnationalism. On 28 June, 1989, a million Serbs flocked
10 Kosovo to worship at MiloSevic's feet, during celebrations to mark
the aix-hundredth anniversary of Serbia's defeat by the Turks. The

date resonates throughout Serbian history. On the same day, in 1914,

G.wiIo Princip, a Serb nationalist revolutionary, assassinated Austrian
Alchduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, triggering the First World
War. But far more important to the Serb national psyche is St Vitus's

day. 1389, when a Serbian

. Kosovo kno,",:,
place In

army was defeated by the Ottomans in

n as the Field of Blackbirds. According to
the most revered of epICS, Tsar Lazar joined
the ranks of Serbia's
Jesendary heroes, in a battle that ushere
d in the be.n
n
ning of500y'""
o
aCT
,
urlQ,
6m:J
'Iih dOmmat
'
lOn. A the start of the battle, the invading Turks
alation ru Lazar the chOice between fighting to the
death and capit
ey .also offered a reward for
choosi .
his surrender. He refused,
e kingdom of heaven over worldl
y wealth and the betrayal
.
hisng
atln to a foreign opp
ressor.
fng to one version
_ _nli
of the legend, Saint Elijah came with a
r
----..--& om the Mother
of God:

W!N,I /(ingdom shall

I (booJtf
SiNuI I 'boou a httl'Utnly

:;i:fc;

kingdom?
hoou an tarthly kingdo
m?
u an tarthly
kingdom,

4"
II/tarthlY kmg
' dom lam only
a lit/It timt
B Qh
tawnl
y kingaom WIl/ I
'
la
stfor tltrm
.ty and
75

ilJ unluria.

LAYING THE CHARGE

TSAR LAZAR'S CHOICE

::;:

Tsar Lazar chose the heavenly kingdom rather than

the foreign enemy, and the medieval Serb aristocracy died
that battle.

All was holy, all wm honourable,

and the goodnm o/God wasfulfilled.
Milokvit asked his followers to make the same choice.

minions throughout Yugoslavia shou1d pledge to eat roots rather

the numbers game. No-one could

culmination of
u1 a
me spectac
evit
outdo Mi1
Mi1ocvit descended from the heavens
d
ere atmosphere'
s
le
v
_
dU
l
Cderatlon.
'
' .
U
[0 deliver his grandest snub to the Ie
by hehc?ter politicians stood on the stage, looking decidedly
top
.
.
u._1aVlas
IIy In command:
Miloevic was out lO front, tota
bl
, rta e.
ffi1o
'''
gpco

nt'IJer (onquered or exploited others.

s,rlIs in their history have
.
lhemselws and, when
t
hey liberated
wan,
world
Tbro h /1J}()
to
liberate
others
themselves.
ped
lul
abo
they
tINy
Id toforget that at, one time,
allow
not
dotS
heroism
The KosO'VO
we wm brave and dign ified and one 0/thefiw who went into
/NIlile undeftated
Six untunfllafer, again we are in bat/In and quarre4. They are
,,01 armed battles, though JUch things should not be lxcludtdyd.

betray their nation by accepting foreign dictates. This, Lazar's

.
was inimical to the Markovic reforms, which promised a
on earth.

;!/d,

The myth of Kosovo is the centrepiece of Serbian tradition. '

the name of Christ, no other name is more beautiful or m".. ...'"
said Orthodox Bishop Emilijan at a celebration marking the
anniversary in 19391. Half-a-century later, pilgrims stood in
the Orthodox monastery, Grafanica, to view Lazar's bones.
remains wou1d be passed round monasteries in Yugoslavia,
which would be claimed as Serb lands when the war broke
1991. This journey, the fIrst time that Lazar's bones had been
public there, was celebrated

as

a holy national rite. Some

danger. Ljubinka Trgovtevit, an early Miloevic opponent, had

warned the Serbian leadership that the travelling exhibit -

return of Chetnik symbols such as the double-headed wtu" ,",p

the Serbian royal house and the imagery of the Serbian

Church - could upset Yugoslavia's delicate balance. The

said, were the biggest nation and should act responsibly '.'''''.,
smaller, more vulnerable ones. But her advice was drowned

thunderous shouts of Serbs rejoicing in the conviction that

finally, held the country's destiny in their hands.

In an aggressive defiant mood, Serbs flocked from ",,,,,d

,
world to take part in the ceremonial union of all Serbs
leader. After hours spent snarled in traffic, apparently

endure a host of trials to see their leader, they thronged to the

Blackbirds. From daybreak, they waited to secure places at the

but were separated from Mi1oevic by a huge expanse of

celebration at Gazimestan, the battle field, differed from the

: ;

bureaucratic rallies, attended by tired-looking workers

,
o ';' ;
factories. This was a momentous occasion. The state

have delivered the crowds to Kosovo, bur the people here

[0 be part of this powerful expression of Serb unity. G'02;'m'...

Almost within earshot, in Kosovo's capital, PriHina, the decrepit

Socialist high-rise buildings, usually teeming with children, were

lilent. Serb folk-music blared in the heat. The town seemed aban

doned. Even though Serbs were outnumbered ten to one in Kosovo,

011; that day Albanians kept to themselves, fearing they

could be tar
peed by the hordes of pilgrims, many of whom had had a generous

dote of Iljivovica (plum brandy). Miloevit's deputy in Kosovo, vowed

urest Ibim Rugova, the ethnic Albanian leader. That day,

fragile and unsure, waited for the hand of Belgrade
to tight
.
.. Itl gnp over Kosovo.

to

After the March, 1989, const

itutional amendments, Serbia was far

powe?W

cy.
ces,

than the other republics. By taking

control over the

It now had three votes

in the eight-member federal
.

Siovema W:l. afraid of this

unchecked influence so the
S
tem republic sought
to
redef
ine
Yugoslavia; to wea
L_u 0f
ken the
_
the centre.
Serbia was confide
.
nt that lOtroduClOg
.
,one man, one vote' would halt
the Clentrifu
.
rc te nng apart the
federa
tion. Majority vote usually

hand In_ an
.WITh democracy but in this
.
climate, where
.
.
national lnte
.
' d
rests domlnated III
L-....
IVldual ones, it would
"-ft guarante
eould
"" cd, for example, that the numericallysuperior Serbs
oio
t<d
."
alwa, Outvo
te
.,
. . the Slovencs. Convm
the Slovenes
' ced 0f thIS,
on re,atn
, .'
mg 'one fIederal
:",." o.'''",ru
Unit,
one vote stIpulated by the
'
,;."

77

LAYlNG THE CHARGE

In September, Slovenia tried to halt Serbia's drive for

i'1.ation. The north-western republic proposed a package of,,__...
tional amendments, which would spell out the right to secede,
necessary, from Yugoslavia. Independence, however, was not
Most of the leaden;hip considered [he amendments, which ran
gamut from language to the military, an insurance policy th,,, ,_
safeguard Slovenia's special position within Yugoslavia.
By sanctioning the selective implementation of federal
amendments dealt a body-blow to MarkoviC's
helped Ljubljana to mute the rising popular
the Slovene regime, that Yugoslavia's richest
exploited and its prospcrity drained by the rest
all , Slovenia accounted for eight per cent ofYugoslavia's
23.5 million and produced nearly one-third of the
hard
rency exports. This fallacious equation did not take account of the
tually captive markets of the rest of Yugoslavia's 21.5 million
or the cheap labour and raW materials which Slovenia had
elsewhere - in particular, Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia. The
constitution would empower Slovenes - and not the ["I,",ti"n -1II
the right to decide how to allocate the wealth of the republic.
posed yet another obstacle for Markovic, about which he could
little but hope it would not subvert his reform programme.
A storm erupted when Belgrade got 'wind' of the planned
ments. Serbia demanded the right to discuss the proposed
The Slovene leaden;hip responded by pointing out that
amended its own cons6tution, regardless of what anybody
Yugoslavia wanted, even at the cost of Albanian lives in
Slovenia said Serbia had set the precedent: Yugoslav rel,uk.li" hd'
right to change their own constitution. Belgrade argued that
Slovenes were interfering in what was aclusively an internal
a federal state. For weeks, the republics waged a war of words.
The Serbian leadership was infuriated by the amendments,
by subjugating federal to local interests, effectively made the
their own masters - an expressed goal of the regime. Slovenia
then have powers equal to, or even exceeding, those of the
It could decide whether the Army should take action in the
declare a state-of-emergency, redefine its relations with th" o.the' ,
eral units, and choose which parts of federal law it wanted to
meO[. Serbian and federal military leaders debated how to
Slovenia. Between themselves, they argued whether they
threaten to impose a state-of-emergency or actually impose:

E
TSAR LAZAR'S CHOIC

.
with MiloSevic and the
Io ng the various options
t hou p eneral Kadijevic. 'Miloevic and I believed that if
MInister,
pass,d the amendments it would be the end of
Slovenes
le to dissuade the
,
The trio decided it would be preferab

l
ents rather than
amendm
the
YugoIbV te de hip from adopting
ic
decided that the
Miloev
being,
time
SIoatn te y. For the
g a new
to
deterrent
promulgatin
effective
most
cIopIoYi
t 0 loree .......$ the
cbrea
.
.
CMStirution2
Serbia's representative on the Yugoslav PreSidency,
ovit
pen;uade the federal institutions to condemn the Slovene
cional amendments. The eight-member federal Presidecy
ruled :against the amendments, n the grouds that they "",:ould give
.h
lt
m YugoslaVIa. After a meetlOg at the
SIoftnia a privileged staNs w
aailitat)' hideaway of Dobanovci, outside Belgrade, Janez Drnoek,
SIoftne, who was then head of the rotating Presidency, explained
Ibat a harsh public statement would be counter-productive. JoviC
cly agreed to open talks with the Slovenes in Belgrade.
It was not yet time to play hardball.
Tbc Serbian leaders tried to cajole the Slovenes into climbing
down. A senior Slovene delegation turned up in Belgrade to face the
walibly coalition ofJovic, Kadijevic and MarkoviC. Drnoek initiated
the discussion by describing the political atmosphere in Slovenia.
Public expectations were high, he said, the leaders could ill-afford to
.&.appoint them. JoviC, however, argued that the amendments violated
tile federal constitution. The Slovenes claimed the opposite.
Going
further, the Slovenes complained that Belgrade, in fact, was
wioIating the constitution by pressurizing Slovenia.
The Slovenes then threw the Serbs
a bone volunteering to make
ections to te a enments. In fact, ;hey
made a few purely

:rchang
r
es which did lttle to placate their Serbia
i
n and federal
CDanIttparts In h
Is Iega
1Ist
" C and argumentati.ve manner, JoviC told

S
Iovenes what they already knew
.. th
, that the Presidency had ruled
He
ndments would directly threaten Yug
oslaVia's integrity.
' at Be
_, :
lgrade would not tolerate the creation
t
.
,
of an 'asym
-....... Iederanon.
A IUC:cession of
.
meet'lOgs d'd
1
noth.lOg to Impr
ove relations. In a
r
dIialy-Yeiled re
le
rence to MiloseVIC,
.
. K
,
uo.. an accused ,certam
ng havoc '
people of
simpIy to further thei
r
IIid there
own
political ambitions. He
were only two amend
menrs, whIc
' h could possibly be inter.
as u
nconS
";
utuOonal' that whICh
.
gave the republIca
10k righ' to
n parliament
aut
hOflze
"
the JNA to enter S1 veOia
; and another,
0

J)cfence

.-:!...;uA ;

79

LAYING THE CHARGE

E
TSAR LAZAR'S CHOIC

:0:;';:
1

which gave Slovenia the right to declare a """'ofC""''l!''n<y.

att;1cking the Ljubljana leadership over the past
Serbia was destabilizing Slovenia. He asked if
oust the Slovene Communists, because, the Slovene
they would be forced to step down if the amendments were
Jovic retorted by saying that if the changes were made, it would
the end ofYugoslavia which Kocan apparently considered less '
tanto The Presidency, as the Supreme Commander ofthe
not sanction the country's demise - an argument, which, o
three years, would be repeatedly invoked. Jovic said: '} was boke.lI
Kadijevic, which meant indirectly that the Army would use
means under the law to prevent that action. Kocan was visibly
and insisted on an explanation.'
The two sides argued backand-forth over whether the
ments violated the much-maligned 1974 constirution. D,.p'....
stall their adoption, Jovic summoned the heads of the
tions to a meeting early on 26 September, one day before the
Parliament was due to sit. The federal constirutional Court was
in to rule on whether the amendments violated the existing
tion. Chief Justice, Ivan Kristan, a Slovene, argued that his
could not consider hypothetical legislation. The majority ofthe
backed his argument. The Court's decision surprised even
The Chief Justice said: 'If the Court had decided that the
amendments were against the 1974 constirution,
have developed the way Jovic wanted it.' But, the S
had to find its way out of a legal entanglement which might
in favour of the Slovenes. It was becoming clear that 'h,"' .... ..
single body in federal Yugoslavia capable of preventing the
from adopting the amendments - except the Army.
With the two sides digging in, the Serb chiefs hoped that
Kadijevic would take maners into his own hands. They ,
he would suggest Army intervention. At the last m;'n,,
changed his mind, proposing something completely
co-conspirators were dumbstruck, recalled Jovic. Kadijevit's
about-face was the beglnning of a pattern, incompatible
task at hand. With steel-blue eyes and wavy grey hair, Kadijcvit
dapper figure. He was the Defence Minister of a country
being torn apart and could not make up his mind what
He would decide. then change his mind, saying that there

;1;

';;:

..-I t

:}

constitutional backing for armed intervention. This would

the next and final three years of his career. He would never
80

cabal of Serbian nationalists, but lacked the

part f he
.
isavow himself of them. That day.
...rion to d
t ..
conYl
'
_ and
ture. suggested that 'If Slovema
tempera
the
lower
to
g
Yl
'
n
t
Kadi..Je .
.
to adopt the amendments, then the Constitutional
went so ,... as
.
.
. ,
should rule on them.
.
leaders, 'This was a major mIstake and a rurnJOg POJOt ,
Court
To th Serb
He later asked Kadijevic why the A:my changed its
analysing the problem agalO, we concluded
' n He said: 'After
that any move to stop the Slovenes was
so e people might argue
wa forced to adopt anothr plan.
Belgrade
illegal Anny intervention.'
the Slovenes made It clear
t;1cncs.
strong-arm
Des ite the Serbian
But there was one
amendments.
the
with
ahead
go
that th y would
roe card to play. The day before the Slovene Parliament was due to
and, with no advance notice, the Slovene Communists were sum
moned to Belgrade for a Central Committee meeting. Kuean was
aervous. 'It was an attempt to put pressure on the Slovene
Communists by resorting to the principles of democratic centralism praswe on us not to adopt the amendments or to postpone the
.-ion of the Slovene parliament.'
He quickly called a Slovene Party meeting. where their position on
the amendments was reaffirmed. 'The Slovenes are not prepared to
1M: in Yugoslavia at all costs and will not agree to poit
l ical bargaining,'
me Party statement said. Dctermined, the Slovenes called for the for
mation of an 'asymmetrical federation', wh ich would recognize the
IepUblic's special economic and political status. Having dec
ided to
ahead, no matter what Belgrade did, was a decision that one
IeIUor Slovene official called 'crucial
for the dissolution ofYugosJavia'.
Full of !rep.'<I.non
'
about what Belgrade was preparing for them,
=nes duble-checke their contingency plans. That day, the
.
"Il-l- .J _ p, feanng n assassJOatlOn
attempt, took separate flights to
Even dunng harmonious times
, Slovenia had always had
.
.--..... cars ready in
case " was necessary to make an
emergency depar_ &0m Belgrade. The plan
_
now \vas for the entire delegation to
b
.1: ___ y road.
Their escape route would
take them in the opposite
...a;Q'on to
what was expected: no
to
agreb
Z
, towards Ljubljana; but
lID the BuI
At S"''an border, for a CIrC
UitOUS route to Slovenia.
U
le s how-down
' B
JO
Iioo, warning of a d'Irect eIgrade, Kuean defended his Party'' s deciconfl'ICt between the ,orce
'
s of authontarla
' n-. and aOb,esSlO
lHrt- .
n' on one side,
and democracy and reform on the
_ lie info
nned h'IS feUow
.
Commurusts
_
that they were followmg
.
- in 1937
.
the Pany pIOne
ers had said: 'First of all we are

biJn5df
.

:::

8,

TSAR LAZAR'S CHOICE

LAYlNG THE CHARGE

Slovenes and only then Communists'. The Slovenes were

the minority. They got a boost that night at the Central

C;;;;;;;':

:;:

of the Yugoslav Party, when, for the first time, the Croats
sided with them against the majority in a vote that was ni

'
favour of postponing the vote on the amendments a
nd .
The Croat vote was a watershed for the second biggest
Yugoslavia, which, until then, had disguised its support for tl

push towards decentralization. It further unravelled the

disintegrating federal state. II was a logical move for Croatia,

Jol
"
v
saw in Slovenia the only hope ofresistance to M
. ln '<tI
.
atmosphere of intolerance and intense JNA pressure, I..

;,',":',,:c:;

Croatian Communist Party chief, had little choice but tc

fate with the Slovenes.

Slovenia lost the vote, but the Slovenes realized that

would not move against them. The JNA had nUscalculated
that the Slovenes would back down. Croatia was now on their
the Slovene Communists left Belgrade that day in high spirits.
did not use their special escape routes. Kufan ordered whisky
for everyone on the plane. At the end of the sixteen-hour
session, the Communists arrived in Slovenia as national
saying no to Belgrade.
On

27

September, Slovenia declared itself a sovereign state.

Parliament erupted in thunderous applause when the deputies

whelmingly adopted the constitutional amendments with only

dissenting vote and one abstention. In a show of unity, the

Slovene leadership attended the Parliament session. Janez

then President ofYugoslavia, cut short his visit to the "",;..","
General Assembly in New York.. His move showed that Slo,yocu.
more important to him than his position as federal h",d-of-",te.
Slovene people have demonstrated in this war of nerves that
capable of being the masters of their own fate... This is a
.
moment for Slovenia,' said Janez Stanovnik, at a
sion. The atmosphere was exuberant. Some of the
began singing patriotic songs. In his typical
Milan Kocan, the experienced Party chief who had been

in winning this round, went home to sleep. He had climbed

of the Communist party, survived potentially lethal political '

and knew the biggest battles lay ahead.

Over the next month, the war of nerves intensified. Slovenia

swipe at Markovic, declaring the republic unable to
S,

.
. .
ds out 0f its
txed
,_ ..I.ra! fun
ms, 51oveOla cntlc.lZCd the fi
et-oriented refor
mark
.
R:U"
mme,
his
of
for
progra
ays
mainst
the
IC
' h was one of
. ,
I1lte, wh
.
-0
._I.
....
. .....at':
b
d
y,
export
ase
uas
econom
Slover
g
hurtm

l e claiming to support
own income, Whi

,
,

,
he dinar and
.
owervalUing t
announcemnt th' MII eVlc ' crnveI:
. stakes were l1lised with an
.....
dubbed agam the Meetmg 0f Truth ,
.
f nationalisr rallies'
. . '
.. CJrcus o
..
1:
_
oe
bread and salt, an
the traditIOnal
Bearing
jana.
in Ljubl
of hospitality, the Serb nationalists said they would
.
ich now separated them from the
the barriers, wh
break
about Kosovo is not known in Ljubljana,' said a
S10Ycne The truth
cial.
.
.
.
Yugoslav Communist offi
how to deal with thiS deliberate
Kufan's leadership pondered
the rally, saying that it was
provocation by Belgrade. Slovenia banned
an excuse for military
become
would
riots
that
afraid of violence,
searched
were
before entering
Serbia
from
rains
T
n.
interVentio

:: ::;:;rure
d

SJovenia, The bold move helped Kocan, who was worried about the
upcoming free elections which Slovenia had called before the other
aepublics. By standing up to the Serbs once again, he knew there

would be some political cachet.

At the last minute, the Serb organizers who had warned that
Slovenes would
try to stop it by force, cancelled the meeting. But Belgrade did not
IIIow the issue to die. Far from it. The Socialist Alliance of Serbia, an
of e Communist Party, called on 'all institutions and enterprises
.. Serbia to sever all relations with Slovenia on the grounds that all
Nndamenral human rights and liberties had been suspended there'
.
December, the seventy-first anniversary of the creation of the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovene
s Belgrade struck back with a
braun diktat - the order to 5ever
ties wih the northwestern republic:

people could be killed at the rally, claiming that [he

o.n 1

Wi ae syi1/g dearly that no ritlU'! ofSrhla

willheg S/(l'f)t1/ia to
:
maf1/ In Yugoslavia or lownhimself 10 offir hread a1/d JaIl 10
t Sf who areprepared
to Jhoot at him.

re than 130 major

' Serbian enterprises cut
-L...:_ Wi. ll

L Slove
.
n
ia
.
Th
e sl'Ightest reSistan
ce was punished. The
L..t. .
uaoaan
newspaper Po0r
III"l
w rounded n Yugoexport - one of
top

r the next month mo

'

the

.
g Store fo;
ffendlng the Sentmlents of Belg
rade by display109 Slovene C1ot
h
.
es ln the shop d
.
Win ows. The boycott was a classu;:
-.oifestation
f 'mat

' (spite). Belgrade

wanted to hit the Slovenes
it woul
hun most, re""
.
<>rd
less 0fhow h
Igh
'
the pnce for Serbia".
_

LAYING THE CHARGE

TSAR LAZAR'S CHOICE

Serbian factories relied on Slovene products, too. This was just the
beginning. It was a move which cut both ways.

eastern Europe, Communism was in its death throes.

Th oughout
r those three days, the country's Party leaders came no closer to
over
of the organization. On the contrary, any
ment on the future
.,> >
'fl"
n
nci lallo coIIapsed.
pro peets (or reco
Party falling apart, the Bosnian leadership
Communist
ith the
between
the two sies. Nijaz Durakovic, chief ?f
caugh

nervOUS,

Milokvic rubbed salt in the wound. He had just been endorsed by

Parliament as President of Serbia. In an address lO the Assembly, the
newly-elected Serbian President accused the Slovenes of depriving the
rest ofYugoslavia of the chance to lead a normal life in a stable COuntry,
In a classic example of the Orwellian double-speak, which so charac

terius Milokvic, he said:

This SIO'IJtnt ItadtTJhip is a prottctor of (onurvatjsm in

Yugoslavia, and one of the last protectors if conurlJatism in tht
socialist (ountries in gtneral. Conservatism in S/rwtTIia, in (071flict with thtfoms ofprogress in Yugoslavia, and especially with
tlxprogrmiw ttonomic andpolitical changes in Sn-bia, has reatttd
aggresis wly and trutlly. Such aggrmivffleSJ and crutlty as a rult
distingush
i all conservatism.

Delegates hurled invective at one another. Milovic warned that if

have had enough of you.' Rafan, Croatia's Communist hader, turned

pale. His hands and voice shook: 'You are doing everything to force
me to take sides in a dispute 1 don't want to be part 0[5.' A statement
from the Slovene leadership blasted Miloevic's speech, for its

'unfounded and absurd assertions'.

Minutes of Party meetings reveal the enmity fostered over twO
years ofbiner dispute. It seemed that they could not agree on a single
thing. They even quarrelled about what song should open the extn

ordinary Fourteenth Congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party; the

or the
Inttrnacionalt, the national anthem, 'Htj Slaveni' (Hey
popu1ar song, 'Yugoslavia'. At one point Ratan said: 'It is not
tant how we begin, but it is important to finish with YugoslaVJa,
apparently missing the irony until the others broke out in laughter'.
.

Fourteenth Extraordinary Party Congress on 23

Throughout the doomed session in Belgrade's Sava Cn'"",. d"" II""
oIf<
. tw,
.?
argued over the fate of the Party. Should it be divided int.o
JI]
,
ings, Socialist and Communist, rather than according to r" u
then, the gulf between Serbia, on one side, and Slovenia and
on
other, had become seemingly unbridgeable. Indeed, the

the

westem republics had already called free elections for the

the Bosnian Parry, tried to mend fences: I have a mandate to kneel In

front of President Kocan and Miloevic and beg them to find some
.
sort of compromise: he said
The deputies roamed the halls, bars and restaurants, trying to find

out what was going on in the conviction that Party decisions were
never reached in public. Serbia and Slovenia continued their polemics
over transforming the Party, no fewer than 458 amendments were
proposed to the final Party resolution.

The Communist chiefs began to quarrel when they heard about

this inaugural speech. One of MiloScviC's allies screamed at him: 'I

The final showdown between Serbia and Slovenia took place at

the Yugoslav Party disintegrated, then the parties in each republic

wou1d become 'nationalist' or 'national socialist'. One Slovene deputy
sa.id that it was Milokvic's Party that was 'national socialist', implying
that the Serbian Party was fascist. Dubn Mitevic rushed to
MileviC's defence, praising him for his vision of Yugoslavia which
was 'acceptabte for the working class of Serbia, the
Serbian people,
and the nations and nationalities of Serbia7'. For three days and
nights, Mitevic made sure that the Congress filled televisio
n screens
throughout Yugoslavia.

Each Slo
:ene proposal - from human rights to Yugoslavia's
role in
Europe - failed to get even half the total of
1612 votes needed to be
adopted Rounds of applause greeted
each defeat. The Slovenes were
.
huml>,lated. It became
clear to them that the Serbian and
ntenegrin delegation had
been instructed to vote down any
ne, proposal. the Slovene amendments were rejected,' said
n. The ubstance of
the Slovene proposals was completely irrd

::"t. Anrthmg that we submimd

would have been rejected.' For
>
ft e
h Slovene de
>
>,egates It was not a questi> On of If.
" but when the
Congress should
be abandoned
Meanwhile the
Serbs goaded
> the Slovnes, defying them to walk
OUt. The Slov
enes had already planned a Sign
al to leave - Ciril Ribi6c
Would take h
b
5, " floor and say: 'This orientation
cannot be the orientaon of ovene
.
C0mmUOIs
ts and we are leaving the Congres
Fed up, the
s'.
Slovene delegati
on walked out of the ConO'1'ess. Son,
Loka
,
r a prom.
ment Slovene part
'
.
y offiCial,
t1y
wept as her delegation
filed 0Ut Of th
/:I'
e hall. Many 0f the remamIng
Serbian delegates
>

OSt 0

>

LAYING THE CHARGE

applauded the midnight walk-out, convinced they had scored a victory

against the Slovenes.
In whatwas one of MilooeviC's first political blunders, he scrambled
on to centre stage and called for the Congress to continue. 'Let thOSe
'
who want to go, go, and we will make a new quorum. But hi.s bid was
.
ignored. The confident leader, who was used to lflg hailed with
feverish enthusiasm, suddenly was at a loss. He had rruscalculated. 1vi.ca
Racan had pledged that his delegation would follow the Slovenes if
they pulled out of the Congress. MiloSeviC had ignored this. A third
of the members of the Croatian delegation were Serbs. Milooevit was
relying on them to keep the Croatian delegation at Conss. He was
wrong. The Croat delegation abandoned the Congress In support of
the Slovenes.
The Congress had dissipated into a quarrel about everr aspect of
political life. It ended in the disintegration of the Commullist Party of
Yugoslavia. The Fourteenth Congress was the last attended by all s
.
Yugoslav republics. The glue that was holdmg
federal YugoslaVIa
together had come unstuck. Federal Prime ister te arko
put a brave face on the break-up, 'Yugoslavia will continue, he said
grinning.
.
.
.
The Army High Command made their trepidation eVldenL
Warning Momir Bulatovic of Montenegro, who was chairing that
session, General Kadijevic said: 'Defending the Party means defend
ing the country'. But there was to be no compromise. tr the Croats
refused to continue the Congress, the young Bulatovlc did not know
what else to do. He called a fifteen-minute break which, as he later
observed, 'lasted throughout history'.

1 Irena KostiC nd Siobodan Vuksanovii (cds), Ptlma () K()J/1fJu, "''''' ,

Jrpl1w ptJaija, Belgr.1de, 1991, Vidi<:i SKZ, JedinstvO p. 12.
2 After the Army w:lS called in 10 Kosovo in February, 1989, th leader
ship in Belgrade increasingly viewd it as a means of conducting, and
enforcing, policy.
.
. o .er
' a c ild
c
3 Jovita Vlahovic, a man who sys he lost hLs han while
the partisans, but actu:i.lly it was injured whLle
.
Montenegro, was one ofthe more colourful extremists/agents involved
Slovenia debacle.
4 Djukit, Siavoljub, lzmtdJu 1lavt i anatme.
5 Vmne, Agonija SKJ, 5 November, 1990.
(, Vrrmr, Agonija SKJ, 12 November, 1990.
7 Vjesnik, 23 January, 1990.

86

6
RlFLE ON A CROATIAN SHOULDER'
,'A CROATIAN
Tht Awakrmng ojCr()(Jlta
1989-1990

.
roatJa watched the rise of Miloevic in silence. For twenty years,
" s secnd largst -: had been
this western republic YugosIaVla
of
as the Silent Republic, after the crushing byTlto, In
1m
a n nalist movement called Maspok, which was led by a faction of
Croatia's ruling communists'. The Party leaders who had spearheaded
the campaign were purged; indeed, anyone even remotely associated
with it was sacked or jailed. The Croatian cultural organization,
Marica Hrvatska, was dismantled after becoming a major focus of
dissent, with a nationalist platform reviving economic and historical
grievances against the Serbs. Nearly twO decades later, many of
Maspok's ousted leaders would rise again to take part in the country's
first multi-party elections since the Second World War. The winner of
that poll, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) rose to power with
the backing of a highly-politicized community of emigre Croats
living abroad, many of whom had fled Yugoslavia after the Second
World War with a second wave after
A hardened-core ofCroat
emigres had long been depicted by the Communists as the bogeymen
ofYugoslavai , and had, for twenty years, stood accused of international
terrorism. In the hostile climate of MiloeviC's reign, the HDZ was a
mass movement which easily captured the vote on its pledge to realise
Croatia's IOOO-year-old dream of statehood.
Croats, nursing their resentment since the crack-down
on Maspok,
had log awaited change. State security
agents and military intelli
gece Interrogated anyone suspected of
having links with Croatian
emigres, who were supposedly comm
itted to the revival of an indepen
dent Croatian state. For Com
munist Yugoslavia, Croatian inde
pendence was a taboo theme,
tantamount to an attempt to rehabilitate
the Usw Independent

State of Croatia (NOH). Each arrest served

a warnlOg - vigilant Yugo
slavia would not tolerate any manifesta.
_,.
tIOn of Croafan natlO
.
na
usm. Pnso
I
'
.
n sentences were meted out for
smgmg nationalist
songs or carrym
' g thc 10hovm(fl roatlas red-andy,.h
Ite checkerboard
'
emblem, whIC
' h had been the coat-of-arms in
th' Pfo-Nazi
ND
H
in
'hos
It remains in doubt how many of these
til
e-actiVI' ties' symhois
were planted' by police. For example, the

-:

1971,

::

1971.

'

1941.

'

C "

LAYING THE CHARGE

'A CROATIAN RIFLE ON A CROATlAN SHOULDER'

possession of extremist propaganda could land someone in jail, If an

Ustak pamphlct was posted from Germany, it was sufficient evidence
to bring charges against the un1ucky recipient in Zagreb who, in fiaet,
may have known nothing about it.

Against this selective repression, the Croat national elite cultivated

a sense of separateness from the eastern parts of the country. In the
Croat nationalist mindset, Serbia was Communist, backward and

poor, while Croatia - developed and modern - belonged to civilized

Central Europe, its cultural heritage tied with the Austro-Hungarian
for centuries. As the battle-lines were drawn, Croats would insist that
they were outside the dark Byzantine world of
Balkans. They
grumbled that me Serbs ran the show; were over-represented in the

the

media and in me securiry forces. Interest in the Catholic Church

swelled. For many Croats this was an affirmation of their identity

distinct from their Serb Orthodox countrymen - rather than an

v1C at his height, a section of the Party leadership

:1oe
",,

JVlll
. . "
WIth
k out - while another part counseIIed silence, lOltlauy
spca
to
wanted
'
such as ee!estIn
<
leader. Thc relormers,
ng the Serbian
even backi
.
tlme
same
e
t
d
at
h
were
an
'
conMiloevlc,
in
"t, saw a threat
Sardeu
_.
'
Communist Party's role needed to change. The IOtern;u
-Le
_ " tha, U
vlOccu
I
c
.
c
relormers
ITOm
the
mountlOg
d'b!
a
prevented
ere
I
e
feud, howeVa,
n.
campaig
.
electoral
.
.
In h run-up to the dectlon, TudJman gave the seethlOg crowds
hat :h:y wanted: a strong dose of nationalism as an antidote to the
'-

coming from the east. Tudjman, unlike Miloevic, was a gen

unationalist, but both Iader.s buil their power on mobilizing the
ur

asses. Croatia's Communist chief, IVlca Racan, whose renamed Party

:;. Democratic Change lost to the HDZ, saw Belgrade's role in
enhancing Tudjrnan's allure.

Miloftvif's aggrmive policy wal fbt strongut propaganda for

Tudjman. Milofevit was unding his gangs to Croatia, wbo wert

expression of faith,
By the time Communism fell in eastern Europe in 1989, the deaf
ening echo of Croatia's silence was reverberating throughout the west
ern republic2, The rise of MiloeviC gave credence to those who

dancing and singing: 'Tbil il Serbia' wbich provokd and libtr

atd thi national pridt and tbt nationalist rtallion of CroalJ
which WIlS 1fictiw/y uud by Tudjman.

demanded that Croatia should abandon Yugoslavia, in order to get out

from under the Serbian heel; and served as a warning to even the most
Yugoslav-oriented Croats that it was time for urgent reforms.
Years after Serb nationalism had taken hold in Belgrade and pro

pelled Mi
l oSevK: to power, the behaviour of Croat nationalists was still

muted, manifesting how effective the suppression of Croatian nation

teeming

alism had been. The vast Serb processions and mass rallies,
with Serbian imagery and symbolism of domination, were often to be

seen, but, as late as 1990, its Croatian counterpart was cowed and

furtive. Across the political spectrum, Croatian intellectuals began

whispering in cafes and strolling in city parks to elude the ear of me
state. In various combinations, they debated what should be done.1be

most influential group included a former JNA General and histo

Franjo Tudjman. On 28 February, 1989, the Croatian DemocratIC
Union (HDZ) held its first public gatheringl. A brief item broadcast
on the late news was sufficient to attract supponers to me HDZ.
Party was not legalized until December, 1989, when, foowmg
Slovenia's lead, Croatian Communists decided to call moln-partY
elections The Communists had run out of steam. A feud between

conservaive hard-liners and reformers had paralysed the party. Si

Maspok, one of the most important criteria for entree into Crona '
.
ruling elitc had been an absence (or denunciation) of nationalism.

88

His pledge to deliver Croatian statehood was also Tudjman's

personal obsession. Born in 1922, he was early-on promoted to the
tank of General. Years later he would justify his Partisan valour as his
youthful struggle for a free Croatia, not Yugoslavia.
In spite of his Communist past, Tudjman's nationalist credential
s
were in good order. Named by Tito as Head Political Commis
sar, by
1967 he had been sacked for nationalism. Tudjman
never missed an
Opportunity to point out that he had been
in the avant.gardt of
Maspok.. He was jailed in the 1970s
- a[ the time of the Maspok
purges - and again in the 19805.
In deference to his Partisan recor
d
Tudjman received better
treatment than his feUow nationalists
prison. One inmate
was dismayed when he saw the extent of th<=
former G n<=ral's priso
n privileg<=s and privacy: Tudjman was accom

modated m the relaively

comfonabl<= prison infirmary and had daily
t Water to shave
with. The irascible Tudjman was no ordin
ary dis
ent. It was rum
oured that the great writer Miro
Krld
slav
a, the
.
.
n1fant ttrT
' e of eroatla
lbl,
'
n Intellectuals had interv
ened with Tiro to
.
SUs""'
rnd'T'
.
lUd'Jmans
, pnson sentence4.
preerential treatment
was even more precious outside prison.
It
as to mfluence
Croatia's future. Unlike many dissi
dents in

SI

'!:IS

'

89

LAYING THE CHARGE

Yugoslavia, Tudjman was allowed to have a passport. DUring the

1980s he travelled abroad, fostering ties with Croat migres, which
eventually would help to secure his position as leader of the Croat
nation. Of all the opposition contenders, Tudjman controlled the
purse-strings of the Croatian emigres. The dection campaign in April
1990 allegedly cost four-million dollars.
Once a political pariah, Tudjman had waited, for years, for his
fortunes to reverse. He could count on one hand the faithful who had
risked visiting his spacious home in the hills above Zagreb, the exciu
sive Tukanac districrS. Despite his crooked smile and strained
demeanour, Tudjman carried himself as a man who believed in his
august destiny. His demeanour was borne in part from his military

background, but also grew from the strength of his personal convic
tion that he had a mission to rule.
Tudjman had fallen from grace for the sin of nationalism - among
his most errant beliefs was his contention that the Communists had
vscly exaggerated the number of Serb victims in the Second World
War. The military establishment was outraged by his claim that the
official figure of 600 000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies killed in the UsWe
concentration camp, at JasenoV3c, was more than a ten-fold exaggera
tion. Tudjman, however, insisted [hat, during the Second World War,
the real figure of killed in all of Croatia was closer to sixty thousand.
The argument about how many Serbs died at the hands of UstaJe
death-squads, and in the concentration camps of UstaSe leader Ante
Pavelic, has never been resolved and probably never will be6. With this
public dispute, Tudjman gained currency with even the most radical of
emigres - it was his mea (ulpa for his partisan past.
Neverthdess he had a soft spot for Tito. Indeed, later as a power-

ful President he would be ridiculed for his efforts to imitate the

debonair Yugoslav dictator. In 1969, in his book Great JdtaJ and SmJJJJ
Nations, Tudjman wrote that Yugoslavia's peaceful and independent
course could be attributed to Tito as 'one of the most distinguished
statesmen of new nations and of the contemponry world in general".

For decades Croatian emigration had been painted in the Yugoslav

media as a uniform, consummate, lurking evil, first responsible for
butchering Serbs in the Second World War, then sowing the seeds of
terrorism throughout the worlds. 'All Croatian emigrants were branded
by the Communist authorities as fascists, Ustae: said Tudjman:
'although they lived in democratic America, Canada or Sweden.
Indeed Communist Yugoslavia, obsessed with its political

'A CROATIAN RJrLE ON

A CROATIAN SHOULDER'

unit to liquidate
. a and elsewhere, established a special
.
..
from Croan
...
Rainatovlc,
A
a
has
Leljko
rkan, would
,
agent
d One
them abfoa .
some
There
war.
were
former
1991
the
torious during
become no
S
d
econ
'"
the
vorld
v
after
War.
In
escape
to
d
manaut'
Ustak who had
0. .
Y
d
h
Jman
u
e
d
t
a
gamut.
h
prescience
polttlcal
.
the
ran
oTcS
fiact, the emia

hat Croanan

emlimportance ear)y on. He imew t
to rec;ize their
d be a key to an HDZ victory. Josip BoljkoV3c, former
for
)nterl0' M,nister of Croatia .and HDZ Vice President, arranged
gees
.
.
visas through government connections
Yugoslav
get
to
emigres
the
By inviting the emigres to Zagreb for th HDZ ongress on
February, 1990, Tudjman made what he said was hiS most cuclal
political decision, even compared to [he Sleps he took later while he
was President of a newborn country torn by war.

o
To invillthe tmigraJion back to tht homdandf
r a great muting
was risky to the point that evm thostpeoplt who were later in my
Itadmhip wailed till the last minu!t to stt whether we would bt
a"tsfed or not. This is why that was a turning point in my lift in
terms ofdtci
sion making...
Grtat duds, both in individual creative terms, and tspecially in
SlJ(ial innovation and even militarily. art creaud on the razors
edge btfwun tlu poniblt and tlu impossible.
Thtrtfort, it is in such momenlJ thatjudgemtnt iJ important to
achieve something that uems impossibltfor mOJl people.

It was not until 2500 delegates packed into Lisinski Concert hall
in
Zagreb, that the HDZ lellders knew they would nOt
be arrested. By

the,

the HDZ was a mass phenomenon, claiming 200 000 membe

rs.
TudJman told the highly-emotional crowd
that he would strive for the
Croatian right to self-determination
and sovereignty.
Ouropp'0ntnts su nothing in our
programme but the claimfor the
re/orallon ofthe indeptndent
Croatian Ustafl statt. Thesepeople
fori 10 Stt that the Jlau was not the crtation offasc crimin
iIt
als; it
Iso Jl(}I)dfor tht hiJloric aspirations offlu Croal
ian pevplefor an
,ndtptndtnt lIatt. They knew that
Hitltrplanned to build a new
Europton ordtr.
His speech was
Imme

dlate
)y seized
on by the JNA and the Serbs'
.
.
those fi
rom n
ll
_-.u. parts of Croatia. In a Croatia which
hai
l ed the return
. . _.
.
of alleged wat-cn
mlll;su and allowed TudJma
n to

P._
....ICU
)ar)y

9'

LAY1NG THE CHARGE

IAN SHOULDER'
'A CROATIAN RIFLE ON A CROAT

speak, Serbs claimed their future was not secure. The HDZ main
tained that Tudjman was not rehabilitating the violence of the UstaJe
but separating out the good parts, which was the realization of Croatia
of the NDH. When Tudjman remarked: 'Thank God my wife is not
a Jew or a Serb,' the hysteria grew.
Aside from predictable attacks on Serbian nationalism, Tudjman
also made dear his total disregard for Bosrua-Herzegovina, calling the
central Yugoslav republic a 'national state of the Croatian nation',
Croat nationalists saw Bosnian Muslims as Islamicized Croats - their
Serb counterparts allegcd they were Orthodox Serbs. Later, u
President, during a meeting with the US Ambassador Warren
Zimmermann, Tudjman exploded into a tirade about lzetbegovi and
the Muslims of Bosnia. He denounced them as 'dangerous funda
mentalists' who wanted to use Bosnia as a springboard for spreading
Islam into Europe. Unable to keep control, despite the efforts ofru.
aides to silence his outburst, Tudjman said Bosnia should be divided
between Serbia and Croatia.
The Herzegovina lobby - Croat emigrants from Herzegovina u
well as their kin in the country - formed an important pillar of
Tudjman's support. In return for financial and political backing, he
was beholden to this clique. They openly advocated the annexation of
Herzegovina, the southern part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Extremist
ambitions to extend Croatian territory as far as Zemun, a town just
north of the Serbian capital Belgrade, even entered popular humour at
the time. One joke said HDZ stood for HrvotJIUJ do Ztmuno, which
means Croatia all the way to Zemun. The Herzegovina lobby eventu
ally would come to blows with the continental Croats who did not
share the expansionist drive oftheir kin.
At the two-day Congress speaker after speaker asserted Croatia',
right to secession and to freely forge alliances with other countri
shaping the HDZ's election platform. In order to foster cua,
spiritual rebirth, the HDZ pledged that perceived historical lffibal
ances would be redressed - such as fIXing the disproportional repre
sentation of the Serbs who made up thirteen per cent of Croatia's 4.7
million population in the police and media. 'There won't be
improvement for Croatia until a Croatian rifle is on a Croatian
der, and a Croatian wallet in a Croatian pocket,9' proclaimed
Djodan, an HDZ leader, who later briefly served as Defen
"
'' " '
The Congress took place in an atmosphere of intense el , .
nationalism, and the audience waved banners emblazoned
SohMmica. No longer was Croatia mute from apathy or fear of

::;: :I
With

9'

.
for nationalism or anti-Communist statements. The
impnsoned
had crossed the threshold, and Slobodan Praljak, a theatre
movement
"
Croat mili"tla,
"
become a commandcr 0f th e Bosman
director wh0 later
a
stages
r
e
e
fvul
d
h
C
bl
"
passe
0
t
e
o
uancy:
lJ
had
HDZ
the
described how

ollhol limt Wi would win. Andso this dte/orotion was a

Ik
night. Thtre iJ
jmilor to lhol or
t'W
fitt,n.m
'J a dim/or. on on optning
g ..
.

has fimsmd. We 'Wtrt no

. and also $OdntlS that somelhmg
Wt WtTt no longtr hound
JO
or
ive
group
.of
s txe/us
;';gtT Ihi
gs.
tl
tgol
mtt/m
and
to Ihis shadow st(Tuy
l

4.

The Croatian silence was shattered.

If Croatia careered towards frcc elections, Slovenia strolled. It was a

different 'game' altogether in this northwestern republic, where the
official five-month campaign had actually begun long before. C2!1asi
political interest groups had existed since the early 1 8.0s. The Slovee
.
.
Communists wefe forward-looking enough to Inmate
democratic
reforms on their own, rather than waiting for public pressure to build.
In September 1989, reformist Communist Party President, Milan
Kufan, led the drive to adopt constitutional amendments, which laid
the ground for elections and Slovenia's sovereignty. In December, the
Slovene League of Communists changed its name, retaining its ini
tials as a memory of the past, while emphasizing the Party's transfor
mation: ZSK-Parry of Democratic Reform. Its message, put forward
in cheery child-like colourful shapes, was 'Europe Now!'. The
reformed Communists and the opposition parties all shared
what
0Can described as a 'Slovene perspective' with 'no fundame
ntal
diences' between them. The main
point of contention among the
politlal pr ies was the prospec
u:r
ts for reform within Yugoslavia.
DespIte the Intense political
disaVT
0" cement ' the reformed Communists
belived It
" was posSIble to transform Yugosla
via into a modern demo
eratH: state.
e electoral campaign
revolved around the question of Slovenia's
role 10 Yugoslavia.
Shou
ld
the most developed, modern republic
rtma.lO pan of the
Yugoslav federation? DEMOS an unwieldy seven

oppOSition coalition,
campaigned on a pled e to hold a referen
um on IOdepc
ndence.
The elections we
"
re a compI"!Cated, tI
)reeround proportIOnal system
""hi h ve a
&,a
wealth of parties representa
.
tion in the Parliament.
Slo enlas
were the fiITST Ifee
C
" ns 10
eIecno
" any of the six republics. They

"

arty

93

LAYlNG THE CHARGE

were testament to a successful and positive democratic transforma_

tion. In the second round of polling, Kucan defeated DEMOS Presi
dential candidate,JoZe Pocnik, a former political prisoner in the 19SOs
who had left Slovenia as a gaJlarbeitrr and gone on to become an
academic in West Germany.
Rewarded for his defiant stand against Miloevic, Kufan became
Slovenia's first President - quickly giving up his Party membership in
order to represent all Slovenes. DEMOS won fifty-five per cent ofthe
vote and the reformed Communists seventeen per cent. This victory
resulted in a jumble of political options because DEMOS included
such divergent parties as the conservative Christian Democrats and
the Greens. The Christian Democrats emerged as the strongest party,
although they actually won fewer votes than the Communists or the
Liberal Democrats (the former Socialist youth), whose magazine
Mladina had led [he charge against the JNA
In the run-up to the elections, the federal Defence Minister, Genen1
Kadijevic, who was half-Croat, half-Serb, made several visits to the
Fifth Army region, which encompassed Slovenia and Croatia. The
visits fuelled speculation that the JNA would strike if the country's
first free elections went contrary to the Army's wishes. On 7 April, the
'eve of the poll in Slovenia, Kadijevic travelled to Ljubljana. He open
ly threatened to retaliate against any political party which called into
question Yugoslavia's territorial integrity:
Thou who today negatr all values and achievements ofdevelop
mrnt in Ihe t1ections, who offer afralricidal war, redrawing Ihe
borders and tearing aporl the country, must rM/iu thatlhis will
be stopped.
A high price warpoidfor ourfreedom, which musl be preseNiti
and maintained by engaging all patrioticform. The JNA and
the armedforces as a whole will still be committed to thepolh of
reform ofsociety. It will make itsfull contribution to the dI
.
opment ofdemocracy and those processes which make a ma1l1 Iift
.
more human and richer, but it will, according to its {om/l/utional role, decisively combat theforces which are digging up the
foundation of the SFRj, and weakening its powers of deftnce
and security1O.
In Slovenia, Kufan pondered how seriously he should take
Army's threats:

'A CROATIAN RIFLE

ON A CROATIAN SHOULDER'

so I knew how this paper tig" thouK,ht, what poweiful

take to go
Llds
in his hands and bow !title II would
f.I
means I", "
.
.
.
mood
11/ the Army {m/e, whIch was
if
,"/1/S0ne, ,on 'he eu"hor
r
.
JUpported by the Party and thefidtral bodieS.

Even

JNA threats against what it. caJled th dangerous HDZ only served
Admlral Branko Mamula, a cl?se
to bolster Tudjman's popularity.
. .
friend of Kadijevic and forer pCfence MInister, urge the Croatian
.
Communists to use thei maJonty m. the Sabor, the Parliament, to ban
HDZ, which he said was poSSible under the electoral law prohibiting extremist parties.
.
Mamula told Ivica Raan that, ever Since the HDZ Congress, the
Serbs in Croatia had been frightened of another genocide - of a turn
to the Second World War. He tried to persuade him that the Croats
must speak out in defence of the Serbs. The JNA was extremely con
cerned about recent developments - particularly about the return of
emigres. some of whom the Army had been looking for and dealing
with for years. He urged Rafan to stop the emigres who were being
issued passports at the airport in Zagreb.
Faced with JNA arm-twisting and threats. Raan responded that
the Yugoslav military was to blame for allowing Milokvlt to go so far.
lUtan told Kadijevic:

the

Wt are nol breaking apart Yugoslavia because wt are taking the

democratic route, but it is Milafevit andyour refosalto resist him.
hould you make a tragir mistake and intervene in Croatia,
'WIth armyforce, you'llfirst have to liquidate me and my
friwds,
and thm maybe the nationalists in Croatia.

The JNA made clear its disdain

for the weak leadership of the
Croatian Commums
. ts wh0 dOd
I not stomd a chance 0f mounting
"
a
ehle to the HDZ
. After one particularly heavy-handed attempt
to t ldate the
Croatian leadership, !<adijcvii: rurned up accomp
.
ten generals. General Marti
n Spegclj, a leading Croatian in
, later recalled that he was taken
aback by Kadijevic's anger:

::
A
::: IN

He launched m
' ta a harsh, unpItasant lectur
e on how they should
not have allowed th
.
.
efiormatloll ,I"
0 p(lrtle! along natlo
nal lmes,
how they can .t
.
a/low separatISm
and
how the army is strong
enough to slo" su
. . I'Ie said
r
h ttild.ennes
that elections should only
be QUowed wtt. hm
the jramt'lJ)()rk of the Socialisl Alliance He
.
.

95

ON A CROATIAN SHOULDER'
"A CROATIAN RlFLE

LAYING THE CHARGE

allaciud nationalim in Croatia and thm aJ ulual: Ihf CIA; al!

Wtst European (Ounlrus that want to rul( Yugollavia; and Ihf
Valitan,

star abandoned. The Croatian

the Communist red
d
,
u
gr
n
O
back
d what he wanted. Just
yet" however accomplishe
"
Presldent had not
a Croatian state. There was one problem
was h" d earn of
out 0freach
sesSIon,
SDS deputies boyconed the
the Serbs. All five

IS r

Efforts by the Federal political and military esrahlishment to frigh

ten
voters away from the nationalist opposition failed in Croatia. JUSt

they had in Slovenia. In two rounds of voting, Tudjman's HDZ

205 of the parliament's 356 seats. The reformed Communists took
seventy-three seats and the remaining places in the Sabor were ru...
tributed among the centrist Coalition of National Understanding. the
Serbian Democratic party (SDS) and six smaller parties.
In fact, the electoral victory appeared more resounding than it was.
The HDZ got 1.2 million votes to 994 000 for the refonnc:d

Communists. But Croatia's British-style flrst-past-the-post, single.

member-constituency electoral system gave Tudjman's party an

absolute majority of the seats in the new Sabor, even though it had
won fewer than half the votes cast in the country. Small parties were
- the system favoured a mass movement, such as the
HDZ, which was well-organized throughout the country. Tudjrnan',

weeded out

message: Od/ulimo sami 0 naJoj sudbini (We'll decide our fate

ourselves) hit the target.
Everything seemed to back-fire in the Communists' l"u

for masOfJni jNJkU

1 Maspok ' hort
Goldstein, a liberal Croatian imellectual ..nd
b
Slavko
2 Term U5CU Y
publisher.
rv the Belgrade media was reporting that
28 Febru
-J'
"
3 On thaI same day,
I, m:.lSS movemem.

" "
d in front of the Federal Par,"lamem In protest
U2.there
Y
lion 5erbs had '
one mil
' v Dom.
LlJe
n....
.
Ca
in
ly
ral
e
Sloven
....." the
/JffJalsKoj: prilozi pOllijtsfi hf1)alsKog
II
BanKrt
4 HUde,1st, Darko,
. . '
3 oteka Dnront"', 1991) pp. 9-37.
Blblh
eb:
},
(Zagr
9
-199O
8
"
naf]a
.
"
1IlSdtfa
p.
96.
,
sliOj
wt
.
Kr! II Hr

"

5 Hudelist, Ban

Al,
6 ,O'il
1. as"
} },-}9 3, Cambridge Harvard University Press,
RrtJO utrOrl

and Communtst
ksa Thr Contrsltd COllntry: Yllgoslav Untty

1991, pp. 103-

127.
rud"Jman
pts from FranJ"o ,
7 Faal Tribllne, 25 January, 1994 excer
6
b, 19 9.
ska,
Zagre
Hrvat
a
tic
a
M
,
ations
N
Smoll
I&as and
9.
8 Danas, Zagreb, 17 April, 1990, pp. 27-2
90.
p.
1990,
.
April
17
b,
Zagre
s,
9 Dana
10 Danas, Zagreb, 17 April, 1990, p, 9.

campaign. One disastrous poster showed a huge picture ofIvica

with the unfortunate message 'Nt' splattered across his chest,
perhaps was his defiant 'No' ro Belgrade, but seemed more like
warning not to vote for Ratan. The name-change and the fact

Ratan had guided, albeit haltingly, Croatia towards a m,uri-p"

system did little to convince Croats that the reformed c.om,m,miS!,

elected, would fight for their national imerests.

Within days of the HDZ victory, a football match in the C!
"'
capital between Belgrade's Red Star and Zagreb's Dinamo
teams left seventy-nine police and fifty-nine spectarors injured.

horrified nation watched on television as the Serbian 'De/ye'

l were quickly
charged the Croatian 'Bad Blue Boys'. The poice
.
powered and crazed fans rore off the plastic scats hurling them III
air. In vain, the announcer appealed for calm. The clash surpassed

usual fierce footbaU rivalry, and the chaos and destruction .,," ,."..
of fear throughout Yugoslavia.
,ill in:
On 30 May, amid considerable pomp, Tudj man was fm,,,y
gurated as the first democratically-elected President of
. .
wore a redwhitc-and-blue sash. The Iahovnica was displayed In

97

Gr(at

TS OF A SLAUGHTERED PEOPLE'
'THE REMNAN

PART TWO, LIGHTING THE FUSE

7
'THE REMNANTS OF A SLAUGHTERED PEOPLE'
The Knin Rebellion,
January-August 1990

ilan BabiC's poli ical education gan be eath a mulberry tree iza

pents ome the Vllla of Velika. There.

the garden of
M
.
mstillets of distrust and fear, and esfab..
s a Y' h [e ned the
h
lS

III

twm

Iished In h,s mmd an unbreakable link between his own survival and
that of the Serbian nation.

In 190 my clousl neighbours were the most active people in

flrmmg the HDZ party branch in my vi/lage. Theirfather in
1941 was the head oJthe UslaJe gO'Vernment oj/he village. In lhe
lUmmer o/1941 he brought a group of Us/ale killm fa slaughter
.
myfamIly. Myfather WQJ 12 years old at the time, and escaped
only buoltJt hisfamily ha
tdfr
om his homt.
djl
Whtn thil man came to kill the family andfound no-one af
home, he took. a great carving kniftfrom our house. He wid it to
make a gh in the bark ofthe Mulberry ITu i" ourgaTdtn. TIN
tTU hQJ smugrown large, but the jcar rema;"td And'Wt childr",
who wtre hor" aft" tIN war wn-e shown IJx tru - and thot scar.

Babic was born in 1956 - fourteen y(:ars aft(:r th(: cutting of

scar, and a full d(:cade after Tito's Partisans had victoriously - in
.
offiCial parlance of the post-war Communist regime - reunited
Yugoslavia's nations in Brotherhood and Unity. But the p,,,i-ng 0(-m.
scar (in Babic's caS(: literally as well as metaphorically)
nera
tion to generation was typical of the atavism which would com(: to
characterize the mentality of Serb nationalism, and,
of the
Yugoslav conflict itself: the deliberate evocation of atrocities thar -""
rO
'"' ".d P
long passed from living memory; a consCiOUSly-f,
fed at least as much by rumour and myth as by h: ,: J
the use of the past as a weapon of conflict, and, later, of war;
above all, in common with Communist societies everywhere,
sublimation of individual identity to that of the collective - in
case, the Serb nation.

:;

ide and
Babic began to talk publicly about genoc
the
people
ience
of
exper
e
real
o
t
o
ly
not

was appealing
e
.
.
s
of
the
Serb to b(:
rawalso
m whLch It IS the fate
to a folkloric belief.
rdians of
e,
sole
gua
the
ayed abroad and left alon
cked at home, betr
. . memory. The summer of
their own destiny.
hvmg
from
d
pasS(:
had
s
tie
N all atroCi
a deep impression on . the conscious.ness of the
194 ad burned
IS Powers had mvaded and
the Ax
of that year,
_"
v
Jma Serbs. In April
'
H
,
[\
- s,
sast
- n (a
- , the Croatla
B
osma
d
an
roatla
C
.
.cioned Yugoslavia. In
Ia
Croat
t
of
State
enden
Indep
the
ed
declar
b Ante Pavelic,
's UstaSe movement, which,
a Nazi regime governed by Pavc1iC
outlawed terrorist group
an
been
had
30s,
and
.on the 1920s
- n was to create a ure
' deciared -LtentlO
.
living mosdy in exile. Pave1-ICS
Lc Serbs were either racially
Croatian nation state. In Ustae rhetoT
iction - simply lapsed Croats who
inferior or - in an apparent contrad
s, by converting to ortho
had betrayed the nation to foreign interest
in the distinctive
dressed
orces,
f
Ustae
dox Christianity. PaveliC's
embarked on a
1990sl,
the
in
e
re-emerg
to
were
black uniforms that
and
killing the
up
rounding
villages,
Serb
levelling
killing spree,
them
loading
after
s
sometime
village,
their
in
s
sometime
s,
inhabitant
.
into trucks and driving them into remote countryside In the most
notorious cases, entire villages were locked into the local Orthodox
church, which was then set on fire. No-one knows how many victims
there were; the figures are disputed. But there is little doubt that
hundreds ofthousands of Serbs died either in concentration camps, or
at the hands of the Usta!ie death-squads. Often, the victims were
buried i? open pits, which, in the interests of preserving Brotherhood
and Urury, were never spoken of in Tito's Yugoslavia - at least not
publicly.
:v.th the .revival of nationalism in the 1990s, mass-graves were
.
d
lsln[
fl"Cd WIth great ceremony and political symbolism. The method
by,:hlch Pavelic sought to create his ethnically-pure territory was the
. at:Lon
. ofthe Serbs as a people. In a phrase which, even in 1990,
ani1
car:rld a dep and abiding sense of terror among the Serbs, he sought
to
at
hird, expel a third, convert a third (to Catholicism)' It was
y or nationalist leaders to evoke the horror of 1941 and to waken
'
. '
. to
In the Serbs, a deSlfe
avenge the suffenngs
'
of the past. The last time
there was an In
' dependent Croatla,
- they argued, the Serbs had only
..ved themselves from extinctIOn
by taking up arms. The Krajina
peopIe were the d
escendants 0( those who surVIved
by fighting
backthe remnants ofa
sIaughtered people'. The hlstOTLCal
memory of an
e

:'

Milan

(ND)

"

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'THE REMNANTS

in.dependent .roatian state that ended as far east the Drina

. SerbIa - made the Serbs, living
River - Bosmas border With
west of
rivet,
consider
themselves
the most vulnerable of all. To them, the
the
demand for a single state which would embrace all Serbs had Partic
ular appeal.
The word Krajina comes from the Serbo-Croatian word hvj
meaning end, or edge. The name of the region, Vojna Krajina, m
Military Frontier. It is one of the great geo-strategic fault lines of
European history, across which the warring empires of Austria_
Hungary and the Ottoman Turks ebbed and flowed. The Austrian.
created the Krajina. They recruited Orthodox Christians who had fled
the Ottoman subjugation of Serbia, settled them on the land, and
employed them as a permanent defensive barrier against Ottoman
expansion. In return, the Krajina Serbs enjoyed autonomy, being ruled
neither from Zagreb nor from Budapest, but directly by the Imperial
capital, Vienna. Thus Krajina embodied, from its very creation, two
traits that were to burst on to the Yugoslav stage again in 1990, and
with violent expression: a fierce pride in local independence; and aD
enthusiastic resort to arms.
But at the start of 1990, Milan Babic was a young provincill
dentist in a town that most Yugoslavs knew only as a railway junctioa.
Knin is a lonely dust-bowl of a place in the isolated barren wastelandl
of Croatia's Dinaric mountains. Krajina forms the hinterland of
Croatia's prosperous Adriatic coast, with which it had traded aad
intermarried for centuries. Knin, and Krajina generally,
nomically, integral parts of southern Croatia. The Serbs ofKnin spoke
the western variant of Serbo-Croatian and wrote, mostly, in the Latia.
scriprl. Croatia, in turn, needed Knin because it was the vital n.il-
road junction conneciing Zagreb to the southern coast. The interde
pendence of Krajina and the rest of Croatia had been self-evident for
generations. Each, without the other, was economically untenable.
In appearance, Babic cut an unlikely figure as a warlord. Mia
boyish round face, soft pale skin and wire-rimmed glasses gave him an
almost cherubic expression. Babic was an unimportant, unremarkable
figure on the fringes of C. )atia's ruling Communist Party. He had
broken with the Party in 1989, determined, at first, to form a new'
political organization. His ambitions were modest. He had in mind a
local party to be called the Democratic Union ofKnin. Although pre
dominantly Serb in population, many Croats also lived in Knin.
Party of Babit's early aspirations had no explicit national orientaton.
But a radical new alternative presented itself and Babic first seIzed

were, CCO"'

OF A SLAUGHTERED PEOPLE

"
, finally' reshaped it to his own. design.
ed their own party the preViOUS year the
Even befI th yfound
Miloevifs fiery words
l a l on 9 Ju1y in the echo ofndred
Serbs ad he
th anniversary of
six-hu
the
This celebration of
"
" Gazlmestan.
C
"
'
C
"sts. ThCit
ommum
roatlas
by
ized
0 was olV":l
D-n
osov
K
f
0
battle
the at this rally was diamerr.icy opposed..lt was that.the future
er In YugoslaVia. But the
mhi"''lI'
' the cOmmunities remaining togeth
"""" on
Serbs led by Jovan
of
local
group
a
by
me was disrupted
shod abandon. the
Serbs
the
that
crowds
the
told
a clerk. He
ncl
cha
shoul
They

ia.
lav
.thelr energy IOtO
. ldentlty.
;:;- about Yugos
i
S
lfltua
and
cal
P
politi
Serb
the
stregth
:ng
the
p was arrested and jailed for three months, at Sibenik on
Croatian coast.
.
. .
?,ot
His persecution stl;uck a chord WIth Serb nationalists throug
OpaCIC
to
su
of
port
egram
te
a
sent

p
Yugoslavia. Dobrica Cosic
met m Belgrade, m December 98;
prison. On his release, the
.
Opafic was still reeling from the shame of a pflsn term ad OS.IC
encouraged and urged him to contact Jovan RakoVlc, a psychlatnst In
the town where OpaCic had served his time in detention, and with
whom Cosic had been in regular contact since the early seventies.
Rakovic was from Knin and had spent his entire life in Croatia,
anending high school in Zagreb and taking his PhD at the University
there. In Januarr. 1990, he emerged - anointed by the hand of his
friend, Dobrica Cosii: - as the leader of Croatia's Serbs. He was a
magnetic orator, and his long grey-brown beard, bushy hair and
hypnotic eyes made him instantly recognisable. Among Serbs, he was
a crowd-puller and me masses loved him. Among Croats he quickly
acquired a reputation as a dangerous enemy. He was not, however, to
last long. He was to be eclipsed by Babic, the man anointed by the
hand of Slobodan Milocv1C.
Early in February 1990 R.akovic and Opa6c agreed to turn a
cul dub, Zom, into a political party. Rakovic wanted to leave
onal orientation OUt of the name of the Party altogether - to call
It sl1TIply the Democratic Party, an early indication, despite his fire
reputation, of the moderate nationalism that was to discredit
O; the ees .of an increasingly radicalized Serb community. It was
who Iflslsted that the Party must be a vehicle for the expres.
. .
lion ofthe natlOn;u
of the Serbs. The Serbian Democratic
J).,
_
...
. . (SDS) was bornmterests
in Knin on 17 February.
e formation of the SDS brought Rakovic and Babic together
fo
r the fIrst time. Thell"
" d"
merences were immediately apparent.

d "' ,nd
it, then dominate I ,

nD-
;;:

two

10

ran

'0'

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'THE REMNANTS OF A SLAUGHTERED PEOPLE'

Rdkovic firmly rejected any move to take the Serbs of Croatia OUt of
the republic. In June, he addressed a rally oflO 000 people in Petrinja,
a small town south of Zagreb, whose population was half Croat, half
Serb. His [Irebund rhetoric disguised the fact that his demands were
in fact moderate.
Belgrade radio reported:

footing. They should

along with the Croats, and on an equal
Croat"a
.
1 ,
na
y. ThIS struck at the
tlon;u mlnont
starus 0f a
o be reduced to the
- [0 secure for the
politics
in
of Tudjman's very raison d 'ttre
e
's daughter,
Rakovie
own.
their
of
state
tian people a nation
C
T
ud
j
man
had
produced
no
result:
w
ith
talks
the
nUl".., later said
Sa

Addmsing tlx crowd,jO'Van RaJl:ov;/... sad

i that tlx S"bs admil
the Croatian people the right to tlxir sO'VnYign stair, hul thty {the
Serbs] demand in thai stalt an equal positionfor the Serhian and
other peoples. The S"bs do not want a stcond stolt in Croatia, hut
they demand autonomy... The Serbian people in Croatia should he
tnahltd 10 speak Iheir language, to wnlf their script, 10 haVt their
schools (churs), to have their tducation programmes, their pub
lishing housts, their newspapers.

Despite RakoviC's profile, the SDS was not, organizationally,

ready for the 1990 election, and it polled badly, fielding only a hand
ful of candidates and winning only five seats in the Croatian
Assembly, all of these confmed to a cluster of municipalities -around
Knin. Most Serbs in Croatia opted for a party that had no exclusive
national orientation, the reformed Communists, now renamed the
Party of Democratic Change (SDP). Despite the 'ancient hatreds' that
were later reputed to characterize relations between Croats and Serbs
in Croatia, most Serbs expressed faith in a party that was led by a
Croat - the outgoing Communist President, lvica Raan.
Tudjman's HDZ was a broad church. more a movement than a
party, of moder2te and extreme nationalists. Tudjman spanned both
wings. RdkoviC's SDS enjoyed a surge in popularity after Tudj man's
election rriumph. Croatia's rural Serbs, in particular, many of whom
lived in exclusively Serb villages and communities, were srunned by
the scale of his victory and frightened by the tone of his subsequent
pronouncements. In spite of the SDS's poor showing in the election,
Tudj man none the less recognized Rakovic as the legitimate leader of
this belligerent and alarmed community. In response, he looked for
some conciliatory gesture to offer to Raskovi c, but one that would not
alienate his own anti-Serb constiruency. In May, Tudjman and
Raskovic met. Tudjman courted the leader of the Serbs with offers of
government jobs in the new coalition. Raskovic had little or no inter
est in entering Tudjman's government himself. First and foremost, he
wanted the Serbs [0 be defined as a constiruent nation in the neW

ro

_1

He [RaI10'llii] laid that il was wry dijJicult to talk with Tudjman

k(Ouse he has some smltnces thai ht repeats allthe time. 'Croatia
is an independmt country. I want Croatia to he indtptndmt. lYe
waited nine centuriesfor this. 'Tudjman was tortured by one delu
sional idea, to be Iht Messiah ofthe Croatian peoplt and that he
war going to give them afret Jlate.
My/ather told him that this could mate a great problem, because
the Serbs don't want it. He gave him the advice not to hurry with
the new Comtitution and to wait a hit.

Raskovie's

were vague. He wanted autonomy for the

had no explicit territorial dimension. There was to be
no specific autonomous region; the Serbs were to enjoy national
rights, as individuals and collectively as a nation, wherever they lived
in Croatia. Even so, it was unacceptable to Tudjman's HDZ, which
saw in Serb autonomy, however mild, the negation of their over
the founding of a Croatian nation-state. So
riding objective
Tudjman did not wait, as Raskovic had advised. In June, his govern
ment, two months after taking office and with the minimum of con
sultation outside the ruling group, produced a draft constitution.
Disastrously for Raskovic, it defined the state of Croatia as the sover
eign state of the Croatian nation. It made no reference to the Serbs.
Under Communism they had been a constiruent nation of the repub
lic of Croatia. Now they were dropped from the constirution. Ethnic
o:c1usivity was to be written into the basic law of the state. It was
a amIfo1er blow to Raskovic. It strengthened the hand of Serb
natlonalists much more radical than he: those who wanted territorial
autonomy, and, finally, secession from Croatia.
1."djman blamed Belgrade for initiating and manipulating the
aJlna erbs' rebellion. He saw Rakovic as the wilful agent of an
insurrectIOn both inspired and sustained by Miloevit, and as little
ore. RaskoviC's final humiliation came in August. Tudjman's office,
10 an apparent attempt to discredit Rakovic among his own support
ers, leaked the transcript '[0 the Croatian weekly Danas of what was
supposed to be a private conversation, in which Rakovit had confided
demands

Serbs, but this

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'THE REMNANTS OF A SLAUGHTERED PEOPLE'

to Tudjman that the Serbs were a crazy people. and that he had
nothing in common with the communist MilokviC
The leaked conversation ruined Rakovit's reputation among the

to turn the Association of Serb Municipalities

.
g. He sought
-Id
m
bUi
h at,' he sal-d,
ng a 5erb assembly. 'By t
.
ational entity by convem
nto
through the
ounded
f
we
which
region
g

in
ted the self-govern
.
we
ous
autonom
an
mto
If
me

nSlorm
rra
r
to
es
n
illl
municip
,,""". tion of
_
e
Th
ts.
'
n
ng
h
natlonou
.
sovereig
s
er
b
[5
)
the
preserve
regIOn to
Iea
er, and
_ kOV
d
Its
lauy
till
,
nomlf
.
h
S
"
n
ru
25,
July
on
Assembly met
event that was to mark the start of open, armed hos
;ouoced the
and the Ktajina Serbs: the August 'referendum'
Croatia
ty betwccn
nty.
on Serb sovereig

'.

Serbs. But ifTudjman thought he could destroy the Krajina rebellion

by destroying Rdkovic, this was among the most crass of his many
blunders. It had, if anything. the opposite effect. For. while Rakovic
and Tudjman were talking in Zagreb, Milan Babic was laying the
groundwork for the real insurrection of the Serbs, and not, as

Rakovic had advocated an 'uprising without weapons's, but an upris

ing armed, supplied and directed by Belgrade, the purpose of which

was not to secure for the Serbs autonomy inside Croatia, but to take

the Serbs, and the land on which they lived, out of Croatia altogether.

Within the Serb leadership in Croatia, Babic now led an assault on

Rakovic. By now he was number two in the SOS hierarchy, and

Mayor of Knin. He began by building an alternative power-base, tak

ing advantage ofthe Rakovic-Tudjman dialogue to buy time. In May,
he established the Association of Serbian Municipalities. One by one,
Babic toured the areas in which the Serbs constituted a majority ofthe

population. By mid-summer a handful oflocal municipalities, neigh

:;;

;;

_ I:

'

ation of th extent to whjc he had lost

Tudjman's ftrst serious indi
.
the KraJlfla Serbs came lfl early July.
WIth
conrrol over the dispute
and a man already trusted by
Milan Martie, a Knin police inspector
in Belgrade (by-passing
Ministry
Interior
Federal
the
Babic, wrote to
and his officers would
he
that
it
inform
to
Zagreb)
in
his superiors
Croatian
police, in particular
the
of
unifonns
new
the
wear
to
refuse
strongly associated
Serbs
which
shield,
chequered
Iahovnica
hated
the
with the atrocities of the NDH. BabiC's SOS had evoked the terror of
those years repeatedly during the election campaign and after. The re

But by no means all the Serb-populated areas backed BabiC's rebel

i SDS
emergence of the symbolism of an independent Croatia was, n
fas
ian
Croat
of
too,
re-emergence,
the
of
rhetoric, certain evidence
the
against
genocide
towards
predisposition
a
it,
with
along
and,
cism,
Serbs. Tudjman's insistence on the Iah01lnicQ as the symbol of a sover

impose his authority. In Korenica, for exD1lple, the SOP members

fonned a majority on the local assembly. They did not join Babic's
Association. Instead, they invited Tudjman's local government minister,

Martie's letter provoked what seemed, at the time, a comic inter

lude in rhe mounting tension. Tudjman sent a three-man delegation

bouring Knin, had signed up to his Association: Obrovac, Over,

Vojnic, Oonji Lapac.

lion. Many were interested in dialogue with Zagreb, and were far from
hostile to the new government. In these

areas,

Babic used force to

Slavko Oegoricija, to visit the region. They wanted to talk about inter
nal investment, and about plans to develop the tourism potential of
the Plitvice National Park. a vast and beautiful lake-land wilderness
whose spectacular waterfalls were one of the most popular and suc

cessful tourist attractions in Yugoslavia. Babic pre-empted the meeting

by sending forty armed men from Knin the night before Oegoricija
was due to arrive. In the weeks that followed, the SDS staged a series

of rallies in Korenica until the SDP deputies were drummed out of

office. By BabiC's own admission, the local leadership had to be
changed three times before the SDS finally secured control of the

municipality. When it did, another chunk of what Babic was to tum

into the independent Republic of Serbian Krajina had fallen into place.
The Serb demand for autonomy was acquiring territorial definition6.
In July, Babic completed the second phase of his exercise in state-

eign Croatia, and his insensitivity towards legitimate Serb anxieties.

were grist to the mill of BabiC's Party. Guided by Belgrade, the SOS
consciously revived memories of the 19405. Tudjman had handed
them one of their most powerful propaganda devices.
to Knin on May 5 to bring the rebel Serbs to heel: the Croatian
Intrior Minister Josip Boljkovac, his deputy Perica Juric, and Ante
BUJas, the Commander of the Sibenik police, within whose regional
cmmand the Knin municipality fell. The trio addressed a meeting of
runety members of the Knin police, in the town's police station. They
we received with silent, impassive hoS[ility. Across the republic, Serb
policemen were losing their jobs: sacked to be replaced by Croats in a
am-flsted effort by Tudjman's government to redress the national
.
1mbance 10 a police force which he said was sixty per cent Serb, but
was lO fact no more than tv.renty
pet cent Serb7.
,
W,Bokova
c spoke first. He had been a partisan during the Second
orId War, and fclt some sympathy
toward the Serbs. He was

LIGHTING TIiE FUSE

conciliatory. He told them he

was prepared

'THE REMNANTS OF

to forgive them for the

breach of discipline that the letter represented, and to find a solution

through dialogue. The Knin police had not sought forgiveness nor did
they believe they had done anything to be forgiven for. They made no
response. Boljkovac argued that the question of the new national sym

bols was a matter of trivia, of secondary importance. He reminded

them that one of the first acts of the Tudjman administration had
been to increase the salaries of the police. Some officers were eaming
ten times as much as they had under Communism.
At that, Martie took the floor. Martie was not a physically-impres
sive man. He

was

short and round, and wore a clipped little mous

tache, which, coupled with his puffed up arrogance and cocky swagger,

would have made him, in other circumstances, an easy figure offun, a

backwoods' Napoleon in a smaIl town in the middle of nowhere.
Martie said he was insulted by this latest contribution from Boljkovac,
which was, he said, an attempt at bribery, an effort to persuade the
Serbs to sell their national dignity for higher salaries, 'Gentlemen', he
told them:
. . .you ha'IJtJorgottm omJact. Ya, it is niu to liw //' to haw

a good COT. HOWl'fJU tlMn is som

thing which monty cannot buy. What cannot IN bought is OUT Suh
dignity. Hi- would Tot1m- go hungry. m long as aTe togetlxr
with OUT Suhpeople. Wt will eat potatoes and husla. hut we will
he on the side ofOUTpeople. Hi- will remain human.

goodpay. to haw good clotlNs.

Juric spoke next. He was more aggressive. He told them they had
committed one ofthe worst criminal offences against the constitution
of the republic that was paying their salaries, that this was unforgiv
able and that they would face the consequences. The meeting erupted.

According to Juric. 'They all jumped up like devils.' Boljkovac grew

nervous. A crowd, thousands-strong, had gathered outside the police

station. The three visitors were trapped. The purpose of their visit was
was to get out in one pica:.

forgotten. and their priority now

Boljkovac spoke again. 'Gentlemen', he said. No response. Then

'Friends!'. Still nothing. Finally, desperately, since the term was never
used in Croatia's new nationalist political culrure, he appealed to them
as 'Comrades!'. Then, according to Juric, Boljkovac lost his nerve.

'Let's promise them anything,' he said, 'as long as we get out of here
alive. These
hang us!'

are

Chetniks! You don't know what that means - they'll

",Ij

A SLAUGHTERED PEOPLE'

had begun with the

an ignominious end to a visit that
on a group of rebels
authority
Zagreb's
stamping
of
purpose
cO I
they
now, so clearly,
s
seriousnes
the
with
regarded
not
till
h w re s
author
of the defiant
the
Martie,
for
triumph
a
was
nted. It
the hour. By the end of the meeting
of
hero
outspoken
the
Ietter and
"
very uves,
secunty,
thelr
.
ed controI. These three, thelr
h had establish
,
ndingly
granting
occasion
condesce
He rose to the
w re in his hands.
past the waiting crowd and out of town. It was
escort
security
a
hem
official delegation from Zagreb was to set foot in
he last time an
territory had been taken out of Croatian
Croatian
Knin. A part of
to fol1ow.
was
more
h
jurisdiction. Muc

::
I

:::.a
:

Events were gathering pace: so much so that even Jovan Opaac,

whose Serbian culrural society had given rise to the whole movement
and who, less than a year earlier, had spent three months in jail as
a dangerous radical nationalist, declared himself shocked at the
direction in which Babic was moving. In May, he had sent a 'very

dramatic' letter to Ra"!ikovic pleading with him not to approve BabiC's

nomination as Mayor ofKnin. Babic, he said, had struck him as a man

who 'desired power with a pathological craving'll. But Rakovic was

already in political decline.
Milan Babic, increasingly dismissive of Ra"!ikoviC's ineffecrual and

vague notions of 'culrura1 autonomy', had been making friends in

Belgrade. On August 12, on MileviC's instruction. he met Borisav

JoviC, Serbia's man

on the Yugoslav Federal Presidency, and. at that

time, its President9. The Federal Interior Minister Petar Granin was
also there10. Babic asked them for guarantees: first, that the Croatian
flag would never fly above Knin: 'because under this flag our fathers,
our grandfathers and OUf nation were murdered'; second, that

Croatian police should not be allowed into the area; and third that
Serb policemen in Croatia should never be forced to wear black uni
formsH.

e next day, Gmanin haughtily rebuked Tudjman's Interior

. ISter Boljkovac,
M
m
in a telephone call. GraCanin warned him not to
try to wrest control of Knin police station and impose a new force,
com
men loyal to Zagreb. Miloevic's men had now explicitly

O!

ken Sides ill the conflict. Milan

Babic returned to Knin certain that
e had been given
the green light to build a Serbian state in Croatia.

On August 17,
two days before the scheduled 'referendum' on Serb
autonomy, Knin
awoke to a frenzy of rumour. Croatia had declared
'7

UGHTING THE FUSE

'THE REMNANTS OF A SLAUGHTERED.PEOPLE'

the referendum illegal and had undertaken to prevent it12, and was
now trying to move in on Knin once and for all. It was the first USe of
force by Croatia against the Krajina Serbs and it failed.

now firmly installed

' Interior Minister the previous month,
Tud'm""
into
action.
men
his
ordered
and
chief
himself as police
'
()'IJtr tht po/itt Ita/ion. I mud the order to the
their rijltS. Wt hrokt into the warthouu whert
talu
to
jttmm
WtTt stored and ga'Vt arms to the
her arms for tht politt

rally took
I ru

That morning, the Mayor of the neighbouring town of Obrovac

frantically telexed Babic to warn him that a Croatian police formation
was about to descend on Knin. The Croatian Interior Ministry had

sent three columns of police vehicles - from Zadar, Sibenik and

Karlovac - to make good Tudjman's promise to queU the Knin rebel
lion. The telegram warned that the poice
l
station at nearby Benkovac,

which, like Knin, had a Serb majority, had been disarmed. An attempt
had been made to do the same at Obrovac, but had failed. The Serb
police there had distributed weapons to the people the day before. The
Croatian police had deployed seven armoured vehicles for the opera
tion, from a total of ten at the Interior Ministry's disposal for the
whole repubic.
l It

was

the heaviest show of force the Croats cou1d

muster.
At the same time, three Interior Ministry helicopters took off from

Zagreb, bound for Knin, loaded with police reservists. JNA jets, sent
on a direct order from the Chief of Staff in Belgrade, intercepted the
helicopters, first buzzing them from above. Perica Jurie, the Deputy
Interior Minister, was on board the lead helicopter:

Thjtt slTam thrnJ} us toward tht ground. W haTtty managtdto

stay in th air. Thtn thry hlodud our radio (onnutjom and w
(ouldn'/ tn (ommuni(a/t with a(h olhn: Afttr a few minuts
tht MiGpilot (ontacltd us and his ordtr was tltry short: tithtr 'W
rtturn dimtty to Zagrth, or they would shoot us down. HIt had
Ont minutt to do so.

The helicopter raid ended in farce, with the federal authorities able
to claim, plausibly, that they had intercepted the flight for no other
reason than that the helicopters had, deliberately, or

strayed from their scheduled flight pathl3.

SO

it seemed.

In Knin, BabiC's defence committee was meeting. All afternoon,

Serbian Radio Knin was feverishly broadcasting reports on the events

at Obrovac and Benkovac. The Mayor of Obrovac had appealed to the

JNA to intervene, to prevent the Croat police from moving in. Early
in the evening, Radio Knin announced that Babic had declared a 'full
state of alert'. Shops and workplaces closed. The streets filled with
people. Radio Belgrade reported: 'the people are demanding arms and
are being given them.' Martie, the hero of the show-down with

,08

ptoplt.

An hour later, Knin Radio announced that Babit had declared a

There was chaos and panic. People took to
tate ofwar' in the region.
outside
the town, convinced that they were
woods
and
e hills
armoured assault. The beUs of the
Croatian
inent
imm
an
fleeing

Orthodox churches rang out to warn the people. Air-raid sirens were
sounded. In Belgrade, the media announced that theJNA had moved
on to the streets of Knin and taken control ofpublic buildings, includ
ing the railway station and the post office. Roads were blocked and
telephone lines went downl4
Babic was nowhere to be found, only appearing from time to time

on Radio Knin by telephone, but not disclosing his whereabouts. He,

too, had taken to flight. There was a frenzied exchange ofphone calls
between Belgrade and Zagreb, between two nationaJ leaderships who
plainly hated one another. Croatia's Interior Minister Josip Boljkovac
telephoned his federal opposite number, Petar Graz:anin. The Croats
accused the federal authorities of using the JNA to thwart the legiti
mate law-enforcement bodies of the Croatian republic. The federal
authorities and the Belgrade media accused Croatia of launching a
genocidal attack on the Krajina Serbs. Both sides knew that they were
edging closer to the brink of civil Waf. And each side behaved as
hogh it were more intent on self-justification, more intent on prov109
lf the aggrieved party, than on avoiding the precipice.
the helicopter reinforcement grounded, the Croatian police
formations did not continue their
advance on Knin. The Croatian
Interior Ministry later claimed
that they withdrew in order to avoid
Ioodshed. Serb leaders,
both in Knin and in Belgrade" (singing
.
tncreasing1y, the same rune)
claimed that the armoured columns had
bee
. n repulsed by a spontaneous uprising of Serb people who had
seized weapons
from the police stations in Benkovac and Knin and
mOunted road-hi
.
'
ocks by Cuttmg down trees. Croats dended
the events
of Ausu.st 17 as the
Log Revolution.
d It was a revolution.
At the very moment Babic had received his
tel
rom the Serb Mayor
of Obrovac, appealing for military help, the

l
Wl

UGHTING THE FUSE

discredited SDS leader, Javan Raskovic,

arrved

'THE REMNANTS OF A SLAUGHTERED PEOPLE'

::,::i'

at '
Kn
in

headquarters. He asked Babic to go with him, i

r

Benkovac. to appeal to the people to stay calm. He was shocked at

speed with which events were moving, and opposed to the teson
arms. He suggested lying down in front of the Croatian police

cles. Babic told him there was no time for meetings and

fif'O',:

protest; the time had come for the Serbs to defend tI

'Rakovic remained speechless,' Babic said.

Ht didn't know what to do. [Then} one ofmy associata arriWd

Dufan Orlooit, who worked in my poliu - and told mt that the
[Croat] Spuial Form W(T't approaching on the Lihl road. 1 told
him 'Stop them'. He lifi. That is how thefirst barri(adts wmt up.

Babit later denied that he had declared a 'state of war'. The JNA

denied that its troops had taken to the streets, though not that troopt

had been seen. The Garrison Commander issued an implausible and.

in the circumstances, almost laughable statement late that night:

1 amrt in the most wpansible way that the army did not go oul

on to the struts and that tht nNVS broadcast earlier on concerning

this dots not correspond to the truth.

The confusion, amongst observers present in Knin. the statemc:m

continued:

.. . couldhafltbun caustd by about two hundredsolditn who went

oJJon Itaw. Owing to a train bting latt they had btcome caught
up at the railway station and its immediate 'Vicinity whilt
waiting/or the train.

; :

There is no doubt that the Krajina Serbs enjoy

ed
l th"
and political guidance of the Belgrade regime. It is a :

sheer quantity of arms that they possessed when hostilities

.
the following year, that a programme of covert
had

Y':'I;::

place; and that individuals in the JNA and the

Ministry were engaged in arms-smuggling with tacit
But there is no evidence that the JNA actively engaged in support
the rebels as an army as early as August 1990; that would come
.
For now, the Army was still commanded by the old,
Communist officer corps. Babic had been received warmly
"0

Bdgr:tde,

Maroc

:z::e

tO

will

vague assurances. But neither he nor

and given certain
absolutely. Even Tudjman quickly
JNA
the
d
e
trust
Army's behaviour. In a te1evized
the
with
on
satisfacti
is
e said: Th
iht
my is not, and
that
later
c
li
b
u
p

re
the

'

.;r

be involved in the destabilizatIOn of Croatia.

a revolution of sorts had taken place. Croatia had

N:: the less,least
a show of force. for the first time, to try to stamp

.. . or at
.
used Iore....
.
And It had been thwarted. Th
.e Kni
n
.Its will on the rebel regions.
curtain had fallen across
'on was barricaded. An impermeable
the rest of the pub
from
areas
SDS-controlled
atia. separating
li The Krajina Serbs had drawn more closely under the protectton of
tgrade, and under the contrOl o Slobodan Miloevic. Babi's
,
nascent 'state within a state had acqUlred, for the first ttme, a defiru

a:-

rive border, to be defended and, soon enough. to be pushed forward

ever deeper into the territory of Croatia. The war in Croatia. one
which was to spread fac beyond the borders of that republic . had

begun without a shot being fired.

1 In 1991, HOS, the military wing of the extreme nationalist Croatian

Party of Right (HSP), the political successor to PaveliC's Ustak. wore all-black
uniforms n
i a deliberate evocation of 1941.
i onali st poet Matija Bet.kovit. Kniinmt
2 The phrase is thaI ofthe Serb nat

Nwi1lt, Belgrade

15 September, 1989, p. 3.
3 Sub nationalists argued that the Latin script had been forced on them.
In Knin, however, while the official signs are now exclusively wrinen in
Cyrillic, the graffiri appeared mosdy in Latin.
4 Rdkovi died, a broken and disillusioned man, in Bdgrade, in July 1992.
5 Thompson, Forging War (Article 19, London, 1994) p. 157.
6 Degoricija also visited areas that had already atJen
to SDS control. In the
sum
m
r of 1990, he visited Lapac, where the radicaJ Serb nariQnalist David
one of BabiC's closest lieutenants, was Mayor. Degorici
ja addresd
se
. .
I public meetlng
also spoke, demanding recognition of the cyrillic
alphabet, the Serh l a
n language, and separate Serbian schools. Degoricija
ed tha tere ere a hundred people at [he meeting
.
. 'At one point I said

. y, if thiS IS so Important to you, we c

an remove all road-signs in Larin
pt and rep[ce them with cyrillic signs,
but how shall we employ people,
at are your Ideas for
the economy?" He said: "We will feed on the leaves,
=cthe rss: but w will be Serbs!" I said, "Well,
David, this is a strong eco
;
mdeed and everybody laughed.' (Interv
iew with Degoricija,
MlY, 1 4
7 Serbs were
.
' trad"monaily, dIsproportlOnately represented, both in the
police fa
d stte security services, including
in Croa;;
the officer corps of the JNA
stoncally, they had been the poorer,
national ups,
more TUral of the two
and more dependent on
st1lte employment and a:.med service,

Rutt,

astovic

::;

Y
::a

LIGHTING THE FUSE

"t

even more so in Krajina, where Serbs had been settled for the
ofdefending, and polieing, the frontier of the Austfo-Hunganan
Chapter Eight of this book: 'You've Chosen War'.
8 According to Opaeit, Raskovic ignored the advice.
9 The Presidency, since Tito's death, rotated on a one-year basis by
lie. Serbia's representative BorisavJoviC on 15 May,
.
Drnovkk as head of the rotating Presidency. Stipe
vice president.
10 There has been sperulation as to whether Babic met MilokviC
ally at this stage. There is no evidence that he did. Babic says he met
Serbian Presidem for the first time in December, 1991. It seems lik.eJy
MilokviC, who was sriU keeping a certain perwnal distance from the
rebels, would have deleg1lted his contact with them to
mit himself to them publicly by meeting Babic. It is typical
tics not to commit himself to anything or anyone (at least not
he has to.
II Croatia had never profXJSed the adoption of black uniforms for .
police. The impositions, to which Martic and Babic objected, were
imaginary than real. In fact, they were deliberately invoked as a "",'O U
which to begin an armed rebellion.
12 The 'referendum' was organi e
h SD nd h d
Serbs
to ta
ke
the Zagreb government. It invitedzonly
b Y '
.
.

'!
;
s ':
idency qualification all Serbs born i :
:
'l

paper
there was no specific question put: the :

:
read, simply,
,
.
autonomy: FOr/Agai nst'
13 Juric later denied that the helicopters were
insisted that they had been intended as no
}NA, 10 demonstrate pubicly
l
that
Serbs in the dispute. Others,
I I
Manolic, say the helicopren
bound for Knin as part of a force that would try to storm the police
there.
14 Tanjug 17 August, 1990.

Jovit "'h":
: ;

;
5

8
'YOU'VE CHOSEN WAR'
The Arming ofS/()'/.)(nio and Croatia,
April 199Januory 1991

pounced the very dy the ew com

he Army wasted no time. t
.
government in Sloverua came to power. Its Immediate target

weapons stores of the Slovene and Croatian Territorial

ence (TO) forces. The TO embodied a central plank of Yugoslav

invasio could be deterred by. the pres

defence theory that foreign
flse up to fight a guerr
illa war to
would
rhat
army
civil
huge
ence ofa
and,
costiy,
ultimately, unsustainable. It was
occupation
r
oreign
f
rende
a citizens' army in waiting, and it rested on the principle that all

citizens would act.

But the TO owed its allegiance not to the Yugoslav People's Army
(JNA) but, dangerously, given the political hue of the incoming

governments in Slovenia and Croatia, to the individual republics1.

This had never presented a problem under the monopoly rule of the

Yugoslav Communist Party. But during the run up to the Slovenian

and Croatian multi-party elections the JNA High Command had
come to fear that the TO, now had the makings of separate republi
can armies, at the service. potentially, of secessionist governments
.
The JNA was a Communist army, inseparable from the ideology on
it was founded. In the slogan-rich environment of Tito's
Yugoslavia, the JNA had marched to the cry 'ArmiJa Je rodima u
.

which

&t!olurijt

'The Army was born in Revolution!' And it still did. Its

generals were confident that the collapse of Commun
ism elsewhere in
tem Europe would not spread to
Yugoslavia. They argued that
then Cmu
nist revolution had been indigenous and not impose
d on
an u
n
willi
ng population. They even
believed Communism would
to e former Warsaw Pact
countries. If Communism were to
m. their own
country, the Army's place in society, hitherto
a
tiable, would fall with
it, as would the privileges enjoyed by
eel y officers. To a Communist fumy,
multi-party pluralism present
mre than a threa
t to its own position. It presented a threat to the
f e state. On
16 May, two days after the new government
erua a n
office, the JNA began to disarm the Sloven TO
e
The re b
.
D
c tt
c s new government was not informed. The incoming
efen e I ms
ter, Janez Janb, was, after
all, the very man whom the

::s

"3

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'YOU'VE CHOSEN WAR'

Yugoslav authorities had jailed only two years earlier for pu'bli"hi..
military secrets. The Slovene President, Milan Kocan, claimed that
heard of the mass confiscation of weapons only informally.

it bifort the elec/ion. We kn when we

d thought aboul
W, ha
that
we wouldn't know whom 10 trust, and
_ minislrlJ
nc
" .1
. .
{ame to ,
o,/ organlZlltlon
" dJ
1
'U
> a n .o;In
that
bUI
to
haw
that WI would
. an
command.
In
three
months
we
our
bUIlt
under
Id befolly
:::y 0/20 000 armedpeople. And 1MJNA didn't knO'W.

The mayor ofJeseniu called and said they'daskedhim to hand in

1M arms. So didthe mayor ofSIO'/Jet/gradtl. I immediately tried to
find Gmeral Hotevur, the commander ofthe SItl'fNne TO. He said
that they were replacing 1M WW2 artm with nroJ ona. I 'W4J
satisfied. I had no reason to disbelieve him. Bul tM next morning
messages (amefrom many municipalities that this was not at all
what was happening - that all the anns had to be handed ill. J
{ailed General Hotevar again. He told me thaI he had bun
ordered to move the armsfrom the TO stores, that he had an qrder
from Belgrade to conceal thisfrom the Slovene leadership.

Kui::an ordered the TO to surrender no more arms, and

increased poice
l protection on TO weapons stores. However,
republic had, according to Janh, already lost about seventy per cent
its weapons stock-pile. The }NA's disarmament programme
came to a halt. A stand-off had begun between theJNA and the
.
that was, within little more than a year, to transform itself
Slovenia's national army. The dispute between Slovenia and
Yugoslavia's federal instinuions had acquired a military dimension2,
The crisis further widened a split in the Slovene government,
which was, in any case, a broad and unwieldy coalition of parties united
only by their desire for greater autonomy for SI<,.,ni,. J""" ,,,,'>ted '
. an
use the existing TO strucrure as the basis on which to
force independent of the JNA. Kocan was more cautious. He
reluctant to commit Slovenia to a secret, and illegal, ",ns-pn"",""
ment and smuggling programme. Relations betweenJarua
had been cold3 since lama's imprisonment; Kocan had been head
the Slovene Communist Party during the attempted suppression
the 'Slovene spring'. Now, JanSa did not trust Kui::an: 'The dis""""
ment of the TO showed us that Kucan wowd be too soft, that
would accept everything he had to, that he would wait, and
behind', he said.Jama's calculation was that the TO - a force
men - now had fewer than 10 000 weapons between them. The
fall had to be made up. As Defence Minister, Jana initiated a
buy weapons abroad, smuggling them into Slovenia in smill q",nri."
Igor Bavi::ar, Slovenia's Interior Minister, took part in the
tine operations:

Slovenes acquired only small ars, and thse

In the beginning, the
the JNA stepped up Its campaign
September,
In
s.
quantitie
m mall
Federal
Defence
Minister Veljko Kadijevic
The
TOs.
the
agam t
nced that there wowd be no republican military operaions or
outside the control of the Army. Slovenia then dismissed the
mmander ofits own TO, who had already demonstrated his loyalty
October, the }NA took control of the TO head
to Belgrade. On 4
quarters in Ljubljana.
The show-down with the JNA united Kocan's government, which
earlier had been reluctant to commit money to the project, behind
Jama's weapons-procurement programme. Kui::an now learned of, and
approved,Jana's plans. Knowledge of the project was restricted to five
or six leading members of the government. In December, the first
anti-tank weapons arrived - shoulder-launched Ambrust missile
systems. They were stored in barracks at Kocevska Reka and placed in
the possession ofthe nascent Slovene Special Forces.
A referendum on sovereignty had been scheduled to take place later
that month. Anti-Federation sentiment was running high. Jama, and
his deputy, Jelko Kacin, decided to gamble on a show of defiance and
a display of strength. The republic, they decided, would openly declare
itself armed and ready to repel any attempt by the JNA to interfere
with its new democracy. Kacin flew to Kocevska Reka in a police heli
COpter. A Slovene television cameraman was waiting for him. There,
Slovene troops fired two or three Ambrust missiles at an old and
obsolete tank. The film was broadcast on Slovene television two days
later. The Slovenes were raising the stakes.
.

an;
:U

Not for the last rime Slovenia had blazed

a trail that left Croatia
strugglig to catch up. The disarming
of the TO in Croatia was
ccomlished quickly and efficiently
. The incoming government
und Itself with no armed
force capable of acting independently of
e Ai. except the
police. According to the Croatian representative
o
deral Presidency, Stipe Mesic, Croatia had no more than
nfles, all held by civilian police, only one armoured personnel
canier4 and no
heavy weapons of any description.

;,

"5

'YOU'VE CHOSEN WAR'

UGHTING THE FUSE

With its TO disarmed, Croatia decided to turn its dom'''"q>ol''

force into an army. The task was two-fold: not only had the

,,;;;;;

be supplied with weapons; it also had to be d,-S'"b,i

Traditionally, Serbs had been disproportionately represented in
state security services as well as in the officer corps of the ]NA.
had been a persistent source ofgrievance to many Croats, who

the imbalance, Serbian hegemony. Across the republic thousands

Serbs now found their careers suddenly cut short. They were
lined, demoted or sacked. At the same time, as part of its drive to

Io,;;;

a national state for, and of, the Croatian people, the relml,li,",
Ministry ran a recruitment drive to bring young Croats into the

Thousands responded, many of them zealous young n"'o,uli,b

responding to what they saw as the challenge of the day: Tudjman's

yet unspoken call-to-arms. They were hurriedly trained and, in

cases, promoted to positions for which neither their

of Slovenia. It used the network of

.
t dWarfed that
'
.
OpcflltlOn tha
fund and orgamze gun-runmng operto
.
d
abroa
alists
n
natlo
n
atia
Cro
by truck and, in countless small
were brought in by ferry,
.
aoos Arms

d to as
those mvo ved relerre
method
a
car
, b private
cons1gnments Y
the Yugoslav
ing,
arm
was
Croatia
While
ant'.
led
hi
)
.
,small four-whee
.
ce (KOS was wate ng.
Army unte ntelligcnce sem
Spegelj believed Croatia was sufficiently armed and
cem
By
.
down the might of the JNA once and for all. In an
rganze .to fa

Belgrade, General Kadijevic, who had already accused

..teew Ill
1941, of fascism and genocide
rekindling the fires of
.
Tudman 0f
,
' and explicattack on Croatla,
ng
blisten
a
ed
agaanst the Serbs, launch
C
"
to
di
e
sar
m CrotJ.as
e
u
lor
to
,
cim
fITSt
e

.
idy threatened, fO.r th.
. mg, he
drastically
detenorat
was
ugoslaYla
Y
III
li,e;S. The siruanon
po
'bility:
said. Civil war was now a pOSSI

;
:;

ence qualified them. Belgrade accused Zagreb of mobilizing

The recruitment drive promoted an atmosphere ofn,"oo']-"'''hi'"ty
and intolerance in the police. It explains, in part at least, why so

Serb policemen and civilians, who might otherwise have been

suaded to live in an independent Croatia, joined the rebels when
war began in earnest a year later.

The task of arming the new police force - or Croatian N"tio,nal

Guard as it was to be renamed - was entrusted to Martin Spegelj,

JNA's most senior Croat officers, as Commander of the Fifth

District, an area encompassing all of Slovenia, and most
.
Furthermore, his commitment to Croatia's

Co"'ia.

doubt: in April, he had publicly attacked me JNA for

view - disarming the TO. This combination of military

sound national credentials made him, in Tudjman's judgement,

ideal candidate to nurture Croatia's fledgling defence force.

Spege1j proved himself more radical than Tudjman could

predicted. He secretly toured the country, establishing within

Army barracks a cadre of reliable Croatian JNA officers, who
an alternative command structure in readiness for the day when
conflict with Belgrade would begin. He set up a network of

0"'''

patrols, arming Croatian civilians and training them to 0

a defence force for eaeh municipality. He ran an m'-"nuggl
u6

The biggeJt dangerfor the countrys inteity and 1eCUrity cmeJ

from the intenJive. u:orll. towards Jetting up purely natIonal
armus. They are drtvlng the countryfurther towards the abyss if
i cannot and will not become another
afratricidal war. Yugoslava
set up outside the army will be
ormations
f
armed
All
lLbanon.
duarmed Those responsible for Jetting them up will be held
accountable before the law. Since, under the law and constitution,
thu comu under the competence ifthe armedforces, there will be
no negotiations or compromiJes. Those who try to oppose the army
byforce will be thwarted byfom.

police reservists, in addition to those brought in to the

republic's Defence Minister. Spege1j, a bear of a man from

stock, with the weather-beaten face of a hardened drinker,
distinguished military career. Now retired, he had been one of

'

In Zagreb, KadijeviC's remarks were taken as the signal

of an
.

impending military coup.

In s cret, General Spegelj now unveiled his plan to an increwdulous
c:
and pl3J.nlynervous meeting of Croatia's small defence counci1.Spegelj
argued that the JNA was too weak to launch
the war that Kadijevic
was threatening. The JNA
was made up, he said, of eighteen- or nine
teen-year-old conscripts, the
majori of whom were non-Serbs, and
wh would not be prepared to fight.
Spegelj argued that the Croatian
police should lay
siege to JNA barracks in Croatia' and cut off food,
.
'Watc!" and e1ecrnclty
"
supplies and telephone lines. The garrisons, he
said, wre. by JNA convention, all physically separat fro the logis
m
'
ed
tics

units on which they depen

ded. If the two were separated for long
_.ough the ga
.....
'
ITisons wou1d Tau
en apart by themselves. Thelf members
the
e
nd
men
or blo ffi
could

then be invited to transfer their loyalty,

t or 10 Vldually, to
the new anned forces ofthe Croatian republic.
_

U7

LIGHTING THE FUSE

My idea was to put the JNA lip against a wall and say IfYOIl
want to taRe our weapons, there'll be a war right n()'ul. /fwe had
diJQrmtd tlu JNA thm 1m 'W()uld haw gained 3000 artillery
p;ec(1, 1000 tanh, ammunition for two years of war, and
700 000 small arms. With this change ofpower, there probably
'l/}(}uld not have bun a war.
Tudjman was stunned. The meeting fell into silent disbelief. No
one supported Spegelj's plan. Tudjman dismissed it out of hand:

It was clear to me that it would bepolitical suicidefor democratic

Croatia. Wt had no possihility at that time ofdiJarming thejNA,
no possibility ofcrushing the insurgents ;n Knin. Had we accepted
that plan we would havi bun (ondemned by the world as outlaw
u((Jsionists who wanted to O'WTthrow tIN (onstilutional system.

The political and diplomatic case won over the military. Spegelj
believed that Tudjman was being naive.
Spegelj knew the JNA well enough to know that his arms-buying pro
gramme would not go unnoticed. He knew that the defence estab
lishment in which he worked was riddled with people still loyal to the
idea of Yugoslav unity, and hostile to Tudjman's increasingly seces
sionist government. Spege1j knew he was surrounded by spies; but he
did not know who they were.
In early October, 1990, Colonel Vladimir )agar, a JNA officer
at Virovitica, near the Hunga
rian border, contacted JNA counter
intelligence. He reported that Spegelj had tried to recruit him into a
secret nety,lork of Croat agents who were distributing weapons to
Croatia's growing reserve police force.
The JNA counter-intelligence officer, Colonel Aleksander
Vasiljevic, ran a security check on)agar. He was the son of a close, life
long friend of Spegelj. Jagar and Spegelj were from the same
village. Jagar's mother had died when he was a young boy, and he was
raised as part ofSpegelj's own family. Spegelj loved and trusted Jagar
almost as though he were his own son. Jagar's betrayal would be all the
more damaging as a result. Within ty,IO days, Vasiljevic had recruited
Jagar as an agent.
At the same time,JNA informants in Austria reported to Vasiljevic
that a consignment of 20 000 kalashnikov machine guns were to be
delivered across the Hungarian border some time between the 8 and
"a

'YOU'VE CHOSEN WAR'

October, at a crossing near Viro.vitica. Vasiljevi.c placed the area

.
oder heavy surveillance. The operation was so sensItive that he com
anded it personally. He was foiled by the weather:

11

II was afoggy night. wryfoggy. w saw the two lorris crossing

fr
ove
om Hungary with tlu licenceplates that 'IJ)( knew hat th
r
would hav. A" h same time they hrought ahout30spmalpolICe
there. and tINy escorted th whir/e with heavy security, with a
police (or at tIN lNad of tIN (olumn and one behind 'he second
truck.
The area was swarming with Croatian policemen - Vasiljevic esti
mated bety,leen ty,IO and three hundred officers. He was stunned to
see, among them, four or five of the highest-ranking security officials
in the republic. The ty,IO trucks were not checked by the Yugoslav
customs officers on duty6. lnstead, they were driven away, escorted by
twO police cars, one leading, the other following. The two trucks
disappeared into the fog.
.
The next day, Vasiljevic instructed Jagar to seek an urgent meetmg
with Spegelj. Jagar telephoned his old family friend, and told him he:
had information that he could not divulge on the telephone. SpegelJ
told him to come to his house in Zagreb. When Jagar arrived,Spegelj
answered the door with a pistol in his hand. He signalled to Jagar that
the house was bugged. Josip Boljkovac, Croatia's Interior Minister,
who had responsibility for Croatia's police force, including, officially,
its recruitment drive, was also there. He waved his arms frantically at
Jagar to warn him not to speak. Jagar had found the o me in a state
of acute paranoia, tiptoeing around the house, mouthlll&: thelT onver
,
sation in silence. Eventually, the three left the house, III BolJkovac s
car, where they began to talk open1y. Unknown to the other two,Jagar
was carrying a surveillance device. Their conversation was being
recorded.
VasiJjevic had ordered )agar to encourage Spegelj to talk as much as
possible about the smuggling ofweapons, and to disclose details of the
arms-distribution nety,lork. Vasiljevic wanted to knowwhere the para
militaries were based, who was in charge, where the weapons were
stored. He needed a detailed breakdown of the operation in order to
plan a JNA campaign against it.
Jagar had a delicate and dangerous task. He had to tease the infor
mation out of Spegelj without arousing his suspicion. He did it
brilliandy. Over the next six weeks Vasiljevic was to gather more than
"9

LIGHTING THE FUSE

a hundred hours ofaudio tape from Jagar, including

material in which
Spegelj appears to describe secret 'liquidation squad
s' whose task
would be to assassinate senior Serb officers and kidna
p their families7.
Whether such a plan ever existed remains a matte
r of conjecture.
What mattered for now was that Vasiljevit had suffic
ient materia1 on
tape to produce the convincing and startling case
that it did.
Vasiljevic and }agar went funher still. They hid
a video camera in
jagar:s ho.ue. Spegelj was fUmed trying to yersu
ade a colleague of
jagar s toJOI the secret network of officers. Spegel
j knew that he was
under surveillance. He ew that he , as almo
st certainly being
:
bugge, but not once dd he suspect hiS
truste
d
young friend of
i
.
compliCIty.
silvic kept the Federal Defence Minister informed throughout.
adlJeVlc heard the first audio tapes in early October. By the begin

nmg of December he had produced a repor

t for the Federal
Presidency, the JNA's supreme commander. One
of its members was
Stipe Mesic, a man whom KadijeviC's report direct
ly implicated in the
arms-smuggling programmes.
KadijeviC's report was marked 'Top Secret'.
The accusations it
levelled at Croatia revealed the extent to whic
h the }NA had inft.!
trated the covert weapons-distribution programm
e. It accused Croatia
f importing arms from warehouses in Hungary, under the cover of an
Imrt-export company in Zagreb, called Astra
. It accused Spegelj,
ollkovac, and ther members of Tudjman's government of direc
t
Ivolvement, JaYllg
l out a case for their immediate a.rreSt and prose
cu
tion u?er federal aw. It described detail the
building of an iUegal
.
paramilitary force III Croatia an armed wing
of Tudjman's ruling
parry, the HD. The }NA had also uncov
ered Spegelj's plan to
surround and dlSable }NA barracks in Croatia.
Although, the docu
ment said, there :ns enough evidence to arrest and
prosecute the leaders
.
of thiS planned lllsurrection, the political conse
quences would be too
great. Instead, Kadijevit's recommendation
was that the Federal
Presi?ency issue an order to disarm all paramili
tary formations. This,
he saId, was the only way to avoid civil war.

ni

The Federal Presidency session at which Mesic was to be confronted

took place in mid-winter, 9 January. The atmosphere was electric, with
both the regular Croatian police and the jNA on full alert in a
volatile, rractious stand-off, each knowing that by now the Cratian
countrYSide was bristling with weapons that had been secreted or
stolen from }NA warehouses or smuggled across the Croatian-

'YOU"VE CHOSEN WAR'

Hungarian border. Zagreb was seething with rumours of an impending military coup.
.
.
istrust, joviC presented the
In an atmosphere of intense mutual d
.
allegations from the Kadijevit document He proposed that the }NA
be given a free hand - that th paramilitaries shuld be dised, by
force if necessary. To the surpnse and fury ofJOVle, the Bosman delete Bome BogiCevit objected. The resolution failed to get the five
- was reahed.
g-.<
- -On. A compr.omlse
under the constitutI
bvotes. it needed
disarm
The paramilitaries should be given ten days to
Iuntarily. It
DrnovSek
Siovellias
and
MeSIC
secured the majority it needed. Only
had voted against.
.
But Mesic had succeeded in inserting into the resolutIOn the word
illegal'. This was the loophole by which Croatia was to avoid act!ng
on the Federal Presidency's order. Mesic returned to Zagreb, knowmg
that Croatia did not have the slightest intention of disarming the
police, or the reservists that Spegelj had recruited and armed over the
previous six months. Cratia would, insted, embark on a t:n-da
. \Vlth the }NA, argum that he only ,illegal
game of brinkmanship
.

paramilitaries in Croatia were the rebel Serbs m KraJina.

For seven days, no weapons were surrendered. On January 17, the
US Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann, met JoviC and
told him the US would not accept any use offorce. A democratic solu
tion had to be found through peaceful negotiation. The Army was not
to be used to round up the paramilitaries.}ovic was furious. It proved,
he wid Zimmermann, that the US was in league with the German
conspiracy to pand its influence south to gain a warm-water port, by
desrroying Yugoslavia. And he reiterated what were to become the
mainstays of MilmeviC's argument: that the borders betwn. the
lsmte
republics were administrative only; that if Yugoslavia were ( d
an
na
lOns,
the
only
that
and
grate, the borders were no longer valid;

.
}OVlC
federation.
the
from
secede
to
right
the
not the republics, had
later conceded that Zimmermann's intervention had been an impor
tant factor in the }NA's reluctance to move in with force on the
Croatian police.
The next day, JoviC met MesiC.. He told him that if force became
necessary, every member of the Croatian overnmnt wod find
himself on trial, accused of plotting armed Illsurrectlon agaillst he
state. Mesic agreed to go to Zagreb and try to find a compromise.
Milosevic, according to }ovic, did not trust the Croats, and urged Jovic
to order the Army into action immediately, to arrest Spegclj and
Boljkovac. Bur there were still twO days to run on the ultimatum.}ovic

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'YOU'VE CHOSEN WAR'

kne:w that Kadije:vi would not

act without se:eking further
political
authority from the: Pre:side:ncy.
On January 19, the day before:
the deadline for disarmament
was
due to pass, Kadijevic showed
the Spegelj film to Jovic. Kadijev
ic was
convinced that the: Croats were:
not preparing to disarm, and
that the:
film was the evidence the JNA
needed to arrest Spegelj and the
others
involved in the armsdistribution
.
plan
}oviC telephoned Mesic. MesiC said
he needed more rime. He asked
(or two more: days. JoviC agreed
.
Two days passed. Kadije:vic
told JoviC that the Croats had
not
handed in any weapons. Me:sic
telephoned Jovic from Sarajev
o where
he had been attending a con
ference. He repeated Croatia
's position:
the only illegal paramilitaries
in Croatia were the: Krajina Ser
b re:bels.
Jovic told Mesic: 'You've chosen
war.'
Miloevic began to pre:ss Jov
ic for a change in the Fed
eral
Presidency's instructions to the
JNA. Miloevic, according to
Jovic,
argued that if the Croats inte:
nded to sece:de, then Se:rbia sho
uld not
try to prevent it.
Instead, Serbia should use: its
hold over federal institutions
par.
ticularly its control of half the
votes on the: Fe:deral Preside
ncy
to
protect the Serbs in Croatia
. MiloseviC's position was tha
t the JNA
should not fight the Croats, but
should withdraw (rom places
of Croat
majority to areas of Croatia wh
ere: Se:rbs predominate:d.
At the: same rime, Milokvic
made it clear to the Sloven
es that
Serbia would not try to pre:ven
t their secession from Yugosla
via. On
the night of 24 January as
the Federal Pre:sidency gather
e:d (or the
second time in a month to
demand the disarming of the
Croatian
police, MilokviC held a sep
arate meeting with Sloven
e
Pre
sident
Kutan. The two reached an easy
agreement. According to Ku
tan:
_

II was oiNious al lhal

muting that Ihe StrOs wou
ld not illS;sl on
kuping Slown;a wilhin
Yugoslavia... We SI()'f)tnes
said Ihal we
wanud the nght 10 hav
e our (J'/JJn stale. Milaft:'Vif
said Ihe StrOS
wanted the mognit;on of
Ihis righlfor Ihome/ves,
too - Ihal is all
Serbs in Yugoslavia in one
Jlale. My reply, of COUT
U,
W05 Ihallhe
Serbs also had Ihis righ
I, but in the same way
05 the S/()'f)enes
,
wilhout hurling Ihe righ
ls ofolher natjom. Milo/e
vi, replied 'Yu
ofCOUTU, this is dear' and with
thai weflew home to LjUb
ljana.

There we:re no Serbs living

in Slovenia, and there wa
s, from
Belgrade's point of view, no
distinction to be drawn bet
ween the

.
nallo and [he Slove:ne republic. The same was not ru for
;erb.Slovene agreement, when it was made: public, I fu
Croatia. The
_ -1 he Croats. To0 them , it read as though Kutan had gJ-vcn
riat
cu [
.
Slovene

.
Miloevit :re h d to partition Croatia.
.
ing
his
optln,s
:
aster
tactician,
was,
as
always,
ke:e
e
t
MiloSeVlC,

e had not yet aband0ned the goal of preservlOg YugoslaVlas

open. H
. .
.
'lling to d0 so
I
'wnal mlcgn' ty, but he had signalled that he was W
J
to
""
OVIC:
According
arise.
need
(
e
h
d
'
""uI
sho
Wt Ihought Mi1oeviC and I, Ihal lbere waJ no rtason to ktep
.
, 0m In Yiu osla'tJia and we thought the Army should
Croatia by1
e Strb tern'Ionts. But the Army could not
ha t withdrawn to Ihlg'
stand Ihis becalm they still bt/it't)ed thry Jhou"
t.J
end
u d't:.
J
unueT
Yugoslavia.

This was the primary d'Ier nc t the beginning of 1991, between

h Command of the Yugoslav
u
Milo evic and the
: c l
s
the enerals, the unity Yugosla,?a
Peoples Army. . or K
.
was sacrosanct, for MileviC it was negotiable, a bargammg chip m
h
his hold on power. Over the
his perpetual effor
wto wrench theJNA away from its
months that followe'
.
.
.
hlstonc
urpose, which was to preserv the Yugoslav state, toward a
.
wholly different goa1. - that
of protecting the Serbs outside Serbia and
'_1
.
of{.orgJng a new terntoflou entity. Gradually t.h e: Yugoslav Army would
.
. .
_"
.
:l
rv
; objective, and, eventuaJ..LY, 10 Its
become 10 Its overn'd"Ing milit
.
.
'
.
.
ethmc composmon and Ideology, the army of Greater Serb"la.

il:r

.
'Today may have changed the:
On January 25 Jovic wroe 10 h'I d'
l
entire cou of Y s
nd he sis' He and Kaclijevic had pre:t
fi
a nal attept to force the Croats into
pared on
ast ;
w hIC
"h
a corner m
u the'y would have to disarm. This was how the stage
was set.
"
Miloevic te:lephoned ]OV1C to urge h'm
I again as Supreme
Commander fthe Yugos1av Ar toact to prote:ctthe serbs ofKnin.
::erals would not move without the
a
ovi old il eVl.
s
Jexphclt
aut
t
e e:J Presidency. Miloevic instructed Jovic
to nvene aO. :er meeting of the Presidency to give the Army the
.
pOlttlCal authonty t ne'd d Jovic scheduled the: se:ssion for two p.m.
" hed (.ever pitch. Tudjman addressed a
1n Zao
crreb, tenSiOn had' reac
.
.
special session of Parliament. He told them he was prepartng to go to
Belgrade that very day. S0 acute was the paranoia that many delegates

'

% : :

"3

UGHTING THE FUSE

'YOU'VE CHOSEN WAR'

to d him he would not come back alive. Tudjman

consulted hi.
.
ministers. Many of them agreed. A trip to Belgrade was
too danga
ous. In the eent of aJNA crack-down, Tudjman would be
vulnerab1e.,
.
Only SpegelJ told him he thought the trip safe.
Croatia fe were well-founded. The Army High
Command had
made detailed preparations for a military takeover of the
eountr)t
That night, the Army was placed on full alert. There
were tr
movements in Croatia, further fuelling the rumours of an
impen
roup . d'ttat. A secret document, drawn up by the Federal
Def..,.nng
.
ee
M'mistry, was circulated to every major Army barracks in
Yugosbvia,
and rea to JNA commanders across the land. It was called
A Report

ConctmmK. the Actual Situation in the World and YugoslO'Uia

and
the Immediate Tash oftm YugoslQ'/J Peoplei Army. It welcomed
recent

developments in the Soviet Union, including the slowing

down
of the refrm ovement, and the growing strength of the

conser
,
vative Sovlet-onented faction in Soviet politics. It also
welcomed
te increased obilization of t e Soviet Army because
,
it
said, 'It

.
limItS the West s freedom of actIOn and scope for influenc
ing world
,
vents . It ttackd the West for supporting 'disintegrative tendencies'
III the SOVIet Ullion (and, by implicat
ion, in Yugoslavia), and accused
Western governments of having plotted the overthrow of socialism
in
eastern Europe in order to extend their own influence:

The supportfor democracy expmud in urtain nrdes in the West

is t
ansparent demagogy, htcauufor them democracy is only that
whu
h (ornsponds to their aims and inUres/so
. It attaked .th e wom it regarded as agents of Westem
imperial

Ism - by ImplicatIOn, the governments of Slovenia and Croatia who

'
were seeking greater autonomy or independence,

Yugoslavia ran exut only as a state. Ifit si not a stall then it u not
Yugoslavia, hut so"'.ethng else. That whi(h some in Yugoslavia
off"tT as a (onfodtTatlon ufiUlual1y not a state, nor ran it he... Our
hasi( taSR must be to create the (onditiOnJfor thefunctioning oj
. mrans, first of
the flderal state. ThIS
all, the liquidation of all
rea(hes "!ae in. thefield ofunity ofthe armedform: ie disarm
mg and hqUlafmg allparamilitary organizations in Yugoslavia,
Implementatton of this task will infli(t a pfJWtTfol deftat on
nationalist-uparatistpolititS...

,
coup in every respect except one:
rv
milita
0.

J
-print 1c"
It was a blue
The Generals were ready to
alone.
..red to act
was not prep....
he
the Slovene TO and t
of
the ArmY
might
recencly_,equired
take on the
'
Slovene and Croanan
.
.
' was ready to arrest the
" e,. It
nouc
Cro2nan r WI
. a
to
cover
wanted
It
But
law.
martial
nose:
roents and Imr_
.
:l: ry t
aJI.to a mwta
l;rv
. . J what amounted
g<>"'"'of constltu
....
....
, "'onal lc6
veneer .
ency.
authorization from the Federal PreSid
(J'Ier. S? It . u ht
the Presidency session. He repeated his deter
ressed
d
s:o
Ka JeV1c a
the Croatian paramilitaries. He asked the
.
'
nation to d'ISarm
the JNA 'm Croana.
nu .
authorize armed intervention by
Presidency to
.
that the propos"
learmg
Drnoek,
The 51oven.
.. ..
,... presentative'..Janez
.
L'
d
a
UlIOUS row WI'th
e
l
'
provok
,
wanted
ic
KadlJeV
would t th majority
him
and announc
behind
th
door
in
a sto ed out, slamm
JoviC
press
conference.
a
hold
to
na
Ljublja
to
back
109 that he was going
.
_ 1 was put t0 the
proposll1
S
Jevlc
a
"
d
"
d
K
,
resume
I
Wh,n the session
'
the
0f armed 'Illterventlon,
vote. It was deadlocked, On the question
.
get
d
to
a
il
' . It f
from BoSllla
,
Serbs had lost the support of Bogicevl
.
.
men,
lc
s
MlloeV
nly
the five votes it needed to secure a maJonf?' - ?
ontenegro
and
(
the representatives of Serbia, Kosovo, VovoiJna
was not
tive,
representa
an
voted in favour. (Tupurkovski, the Macedom
that
suggested
to
retur
ed
persuad
been
present.) Dmoek who had
?
.
,
members
PreSidency
the
ile
Wh
seSSIon,
the
into
brought
Tudjman be
waited for Tudjman's arrival, Kadijevil: sprung the surprise he had
been planning for months - a final 2ttempt to terrorize the Bosnian
delegate to vote against the Croats and Slovenes. He made what

th

:m

seemed an innocent suggestion: that the Presidency members take a

brnk to watch the evening television news.
The Croats sat in a separate office in the Federal Presidency build
ing. They watched the news in srunned disbelief. Belgrade television
was broadcasting Vasiljevifs clandestine 61m of the Croat Defence
Minister's arms-smuggling activities, together with a heavily doctored
audio tape ofSpegelj apparently disclosing details of a plan to attack
d disable the JNA in Croatia. Belgrade television devoted forty-five
millutes to a grainy black-and-white ftlm in which the Croatian
Defence Minister argued that Croatia was already at war with the JNA.
KdijeviC's last attempt to win over the Presidency was a spectacu
lar piece of showmanship and manipulation, and a ringing conclusion
to t.he wholeSpegelj
affair. The film had been released to Belgrade TV,
was controlled by Miloevic, deliberately to coincide with the
esldency session
as a way of frightening its members into compli
ance. But it failed.
The Bosnian delegate was not impressed. He did

hlh

"5

'YOU'VE CHOSEN WAR'

UGHTING TIiE FUSE

not change his vote. The Kadijevic plan was still deadlocked.
would be no Presidency endorr;ement of a JNA crack-dawn OQ
Croatia's paramilitaries.
Kadijevic lost his nerve. He would not order action
Presidency - his supreme commander - had explicitly voted
and Tudjman left the room. Between them
Kadijevic would call the Army off alert in
the prosecution of a handful of people who had been
morning in connection with the arms-smuggling operation.
also told Tudjman that he intended to have Spegelj arrested.
returned to Zagreb the next day declaring that his courageous nll",,,
CO the enemy capital, undertaken at great personal risk and, despite the
mortal concern of his ministerr;, had saved Croatia from invasion.
Spegelj went into hiding. Croatian television broadcast the film
his clandestine meeting the day after Belgrade, describing it as an out
rageous forgery. When he heard about it, Spegelj initially concluded
that he had been betrayed by PericaJuric, the Deputy Police Minister;
Spege1j had used Jurie's car on the occasion when the film was
The two men met in secret.Spegelj wore two pistols in his waistband.
He told Juric there were only two people who could have colluded
produce the fIlm: 'One of them: he said, '] trust implicitly. The
is you'. Only when he saw the fIlm did he realize that he had
betrayed by Jagar. The camera had n hidden in the television tin
Jagar's living room. In retrospect,Spegelj now remembered that Jap
had, on that night, insisted that he sit in a particular chair. so that the
camera could film him face on. Croatian police dynamited Jagar't
house in the village where the deception had taken place.Spegelj's own
house. in the same village, stands less than a hundred metres from the
ruins. Jagar. a Croat, was never to return to Croatia. It was not, in
case, what he considered his homeland. That was Yugoslavia.
was disappearing beneath his feet.
JoviC's prediction that 25 January would be the day that <1>,"'11'"
the course of Yugoslav history was prescient. But he, more than
other individual (with the single exception of Miloevit), knew
was really raking place. KadijeviC's indecision, his refusal to oM wiim;
out political authority, played into Milokvit's hands. Jovic had
ofSpegclj's arms-smuggling and distribution programme since
October. It had taken nearly four months to reach even this i""o"d,,
sive compromise. Throughout that time, the federal authorities
once mounted a serious effort to prevent the arming of the
either by taking control of the border crossings or instructing the
,,'

i Yugoslavia could not be

decided: f
l kvie had already
oms. M
1 0- I:zed, then the Croats, like the Slovenes, would be
au
__I
.
5<Uvaged and ccntt
. WIth them those
,
not be allowed to tu.e
o. B u t they would
to

llowed
a
. ... that MiloeviC's men considered Serb territory.
f their repub110_
ever more closely under
0
partsrebel Serbs f Krajina were being drawn
e
1 ade and the control of Slobodan Milokvic.
Th
.
Be O"T
,
0the protection 0
tic
forces (Drtnt snagt) ofthe federal republ consis
1 Strl. ct1 the armed
other.
ment
each
comple
to
ed
design
d the TO. They were

ent1 cust

A
TOs
levels of comman .uP. to the.highest, when te
e dat :; on
:

Its
JNA
had
the
while
ies,
miniStr
They
d to the republics' defence
ed of

rr
reiegate

all

were
of the supreme command.
united at the level
.
",preme command. They then
helr
rough t
angcabIe th
mter<:h
were
h hly integnted - the officers
They
the rest
soldiers,
ime
t
full
were
officers
highest
the
only
.
careers. n . TOs
AImy units were fully-active units The TO- kit
were resefVI,rs. Most of the
.
TO Units were 0ften based on the partisan
the place. The
was stored all over
.
,
.,lon;
so a b-Ig ,actory
0f a ba[[...
th e SIze
being
brigade
a
iples,
princ
b de
have
often
it
would
and
ity,
icipal
mun
a
or
unit,
d have its own TO
.
i DSZ - Dpumarodna odbrana 1
weapons' stores in the workplace itself. 'DND
popular self
t/ndlwna samOZilltita,' was Tito's doctrine, which means: 'general
of the armed forces.
defence and society's self-protection'... the socialization
j..witjsutra, i radj
Abo their doctrine was: 'Moramo u sprtmati ZD rat kao da (t
Ii .u mir kao do (t trajati stotinu hiliada godina' - we have to be ready for war
will last one
u if it will break out tomorrow and work for peace as jf it
own

we;e

hundm:'l thousand yean.

2 It is not clear on whose authority the JNA was acting. The Commander
in ChiefoftheJNAwas, constitutionally, the eight-member collective Federal
Presidency. The Slovene representative, Janez Drnovkk, had been President

ofthe Presidency until 15 May - rwo days before the disarmament of the TOs
began. He knew ofno order to disarm, and later claimed that only the Serbian
representative, Borisav Jovit, who assumed the Presidency of the Presidency
aite.r Dmek, knew anything. 'My term [as President of the Presidency]
Ired on 15 May. On 17 May this disarmament was done. They had
w:utcd for my term to apire. Only JOvlC was informed about it and, for the
idecy, it was a foit uccompli. They nevcr voted on it. I , of course, was
:lglllnsr It, and demanded a Presidency meeting to discuss it, hut the others
were against me.'
J Klbn ha .had his doubts about the appointment of Janb and his ally,
B
' to poSmons of such sensitivity. and had expressed them to Prime
M
tcr Peterle when he was forming the Government in 1990. Why, he
}NA eterle, arc yo ppointing a man with such a record ofconflict with the
iii ' . Defence MlOlster? And Bavtar, who had a personal history of con
wlth the police, as Interior
Minister? Peterle had told Kufan not to
.
un
mln his ministers by
expressing these doubts in public. Kufan, despite
hili .,sg.lV\n , acce
pted the appointments.
4 An u
.
n
hkely clam, Since
Croatla
- was, by August, sendmg columns 0f
1

w::

"7

LIGHTING THE FUSE

armoured vthicles, including seven APes, to try to regain control of

5 Kadijevit gavt his interview the night before Serbia's first free
It was widely seen, at the time, :IS a whole-hearted
SPS.
6 There is little doubt that the arms-smuggling operation could h,, >_
stopped. KOS's strategy was to allow the operation to continue.
7 $pcgelj disputes this. He sa the film and audio tapes were
make him appear to be arguing for selective assassinations.
advocated this, and that the audio rapes were tuen from a
had once givtn in which he had been asked to discuss
8 Kadijevit said he had evidence that MesiC had accompanied
Budapest to buy weapons.

9
'IF WE DONT KNOW HOW TO WORK,
TO FIGHT'
W
AT LEAST WE KNO HOW
Month
The
March 1991

Derisive

arch was the decisive month. Miloevic set the country on the
coUfSC to waf.

silence of Bulevar Revolucije. Scattered fires burned

Parliament. Gusts of wind whistled through
Federal
. front of the
were screams as police stalked Belgrade
There
ashed windows.
rians at random.
pedest
g
arrestin
and
beating up

Tanks broke the

::

The city stank of tear-gas. A seventeen-year old srudent, Branivoj

Milinovit, lay in a pool of blood, shot dead by a squad of fifteen
policemen just a few yards from President Miloevic's office. The

police were intent on revenge for a colleague who had been stoned to

death by angry protesters.

It had been a chaotic frightening day, during which the Serbian

regime vented its anger on the hitherto quiet streets of Belgrade. It

9 March, the day on which it became clear that
President Miloevit would not hesitate to use force against his own
people in order to preserve power. Just four years after promising
Serbs in Kosovo that 'no one will ever dare to beat you', MiloilcviC sent
tanks into his own capital The grim night-time parade stood in stark
contrast t the dawn of democracy elsewhere in eastern
Europe. In
fact, the dis playof force was planned well before the anri-government
onsrrat1. n, which supposedly provoked
it, got out of hand.
?
sav
then President of Yugoslavia's collective leadership,
ed nngmg members of the
Presidency asking for approval to
"
l y tanks even before
-o
-to
the f1(st outbreak of violence.
the stage for bloodshed
had been set earlier. The Interior
stry, acting at the last
minute, banned a city-centre protest
.
Iga1n t govern
ment control of the media. Hundreds of policemen
yed, with dog , horses
and armoured vehicles. They set up

bl
around SerbIa to seal off
the capital But the ban was
Un
d 10
' the certain
knowledge that it would be violated. By noon
on
a
000
ople, mostly supporters of the opposition

1tader' U
rakovlc, and his nation
alist Serbian Renewal
was Saturday,

!!:;

M!Ut

= t

r jg

,,8

"9

UGHTING THE FUSE

'IF WE DONT

KNOW HOW TO WORK..:

Movement (SPO), converged on Belgrade's central squllt,

Trg Republike. Drakovic was nicknamed Kralj TrgO'Va (King of the
Squares) for his ability to draw a crowd - a skill at which he surptssed
even Miloevic. Drakovil: was one of the principal targets of
elaborate state-run smear campaign to discredit anyone who
challenge MilooeviC. Among a plethora of wild and absurd ",""..,
tions, Belgrade Television - state run, and immensely powerful
shaping public opinion - repeatedly accused the. charismaticin
Drakovil: of secretly plotting to destabilize Serbia,
alliance with the revived 'Ustak regime' ofPresident Fnmjo 1:U,ljrn".
of Croatia'.
Belgrade Television was firmly in Miloevifs grip. It was the ideal.
tool for stirring up hatred against 'the enemies of the S" b;'", "'''Pie'
- first Kosovo's Albanians, then the Slovenes, the Croats, ana. nn'IIJ
the opposition in Serbia itself. After his overwhelming victory
Serbia's first free elections in December, Milokvic continued to
the media as his personal propaganda machine, refusing to
opposition any airtime. To the anti-Communist protesters, Belgnode
Television symbolized Milovifs total control over Serbia.
From the balcony ofthe NationalTheatre, opposition l"d""oaIeI di
for freedom ofthe press as the police moved in. Drukovic cut a
ing figure with his great mane of black hair and flowing beard.
called for the Bolsheviks to step aside in favour of radical """,!.
demanded press and broadcasting freedom, and an ni dependent
ciary. The police tried to disperse the crowd with water-cannon
salvoes of tear-gas canisters. Drakovic urged his followers to
and bellowed 'Charge! Charge!' seconds after rows of police, clad
full riot gear, surged forward. The demonstrators tore apart
grabbing iron bars and sticks for the fight. In vain, Dkovic
to the security forces to rally behind the people
the
The police beat a retreat. For a few hours - in
demonstrators seemed to have won. They smashed w;ndo ca
I
not a single pane of glass intact in the Serbian Presidency, the
ing which housed MiloeviC's office. But the opposition didn't
what to do next. Hijacking several fIre trucks. the euphoric
stratars massed in front of the Serbian Parliament. Upstairs,
tion leaders tried get in touch with Miloevic or anyone from
Serbian Government.
Miloevic was at Dobanovci, the military compound
Belgrade. He knew it was time to take action, and Borisav
- President of the Yugoslav Presidency and C"m'm'nd,in-CIU" .

to order in the tanks. As the demonstration

lling h'm
te
,
y
the:
w more nervous.
ssAhen
following the events closely. They

rals had alsovicbeenwanted

The)
the Army
to avoid
e
'
KadiJ
!
nera
. turning
_ diVl'ded Celice
h
reveaIs
owever,
ation,
convers
taped
A
force.
into othB Adfic, the hulking Chief-of-Staff, cursing at the
I g them to beat the demonstrator
s.
Gene
.
police anddorinderin
majority
needed a ' vote f the elg. ht
the Army Jovieone,
't sen
most
by he phoned those he thought
.
Presldcncy members. One
On
.
ruter
mterventi
tacy
m
d
I
ili
"
or
s deman . .
u-.y to supportrivesMi1oevic'
, VOJvodma and Montenegro all
Kosovo
from
resenta
the
Vasil Tupurkovski ofMacedonia
rang
he
men'
&wokviC 'place
we need to get th Army on o
'Vasil,
begging:
vote.
to theinfifth
sto.p. what will h.appen
power
of
n
rati
demonst
a
to thetostabi
cbe streets
lity and secunty ofthe
detnmental
very
be
will
Bclgnde.1t
'
began in the morn
calls
the
says
politician
Macedonian
The
.
muntry
ing, several hours before the demonstration in Belgrade got out of
calls from Jovic every haif-an
control. The calls became frantic: 'I gotJovic
tells me: Vasil, I have five
noon
hour requesting a vote. At about
Give me your vote because we want to later recalled
Tupurkovski. By his own account, Jovic started phoning 'at eleven or
twelve -at the time when they began to attack the Defence Ministry.'
But his memory is faulty. At midday, the crowd was nowhere near
the Ministry.
Bogie Bogicevic, Bosnia's representative to the Presidency and
non-nationalist Bosnian Serb, also gave in. But he insisted later
tbat)oviC never mentioned the word 'rank', asking only for the
Praidency's approval to secure vital buildings. Despite their yes votes,
both Bogicevic and Tupurkovski were wary of Jovie's tricks.
T"P"'ko",\ci,

'30

'3'

rose

ta

Arm

"L_'

2 A r.
-

secure

III

'IOta.

act",

Wt cptd wihjovi(for at leart halfayear,

with a/lkinds ofmlXJet
by hun to muu.u our statu; as Presidency members, apeciall fret
y
flirt towards Bogilroif
and myselfon many Ofcasiom, so Wt wut
cartful about his initiati
ves.

:: :nks rolld thrugh the streets, the police raided and shut

bera! station, B-92, and Studio B the only Belgrade

OOiCYlSlon StationradiO
not In. government hands, which' were both reportina: th d :strati on. 'The
de.
Serbia requested the
pat:h o; y unus
rshipty ofofpolice
. thelead
. SlOce
majori
units are engaged
....,,
... _.

T KNOW HOW TO WORK...'

UGHTING THE FUSE

'IF WE DON'

in Kosovo,' said a statement from the Federal Presidency, exl']>;";'

why the JNA was caUed instead of the police.
In parliament, DraSkovic realized he was about to be arrested.

Ont oftht stCurity mm asktd ifI had tattn anything all day. Ht
told mt I would arr;w too laltfor dinntr and that brtnkfast 'W4U
wry bad in tht Ctntral Prison. Ht ofJtrtd to buy mt a II1ndwuh.,
yogurt and {igaretttJ. Hi! name was Nastr Orii. (Orii, a membn
f
orm, was lat" to achit'IJt Ttnown as ItOlkr
ofthe Strbian stlUTity
ofthe Muslim dtftndm in tht tintem tndavt ojSrtbTtnjca.j

>

l of stalwarts encamped at
to pounce on a handfu
.
hey
ut '
lor some reason t
B
m.
founta
nth- r........nturv
.,

pOised
were
s n tee
!JC

'

>
ru

referri

ng to stand by, silent and menacing. The students

the release of Drakovic, and the
.P d mands: they wanted

thC1

of Belgrade Tc:levision, and

Head
the
,
;uSw Mitevicnterior Ministe
r, whom students blamed

ogdanoviC, the
day.
preVIous
the
the violence of
week tes f housands of B c:lgr,ade's liberal elite
next
the
()ver
b'
srand. SinglOg Give Peace a Chance , they recreated,
,...de their last
t lerance tat had once been the ha.u
8ccCingIy, the atmosphere ofwh
.
e life, but ich had disappe d from public life
mark of 8c:1grad
seemed transformed. People would stop by
aDder MilokviC. The city
blankets o the srudenrs, brving freezing tempera
to bring food or
mghI professors, wrtters, and actors would
tura on Tcrazije. Each
platform on the fountain, which the demon
a
from
crowd
ICIdress the
makeshift podium, and the focal point of
a
into
turned
d
a
IIIUOn h
1beir city-centre vigil.
Mi1o!evit was infuriated by the Terazije forum. Prominent nation
.... intdlecruals, such as Matija Betkovit, Head of the Writer's
Union, deserted him. Speakers read tc:legrams of support from other
citieI in Serbia, where local protests were being staged. A message
6I:m Zagreb was greeted with loud enthusiasm.
The crowd jeered at Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox
CIan:h when he begged the srudents to abandon their protest.
MiIoIevic had persuaded the frail seventy-seven-year-old priest that
1IoIcnce. was inevitable. Pavle believed a rival gathering organized by
MiIaIevr, would march on Terazije3. But at the park on the conflu
tace ofthe Sava and Danube rivers, the Ue, the
people bussed in for
rally were too few, too old and too tired to fight. Pavle returned to
nts to ask f
veness, saying he had been deceived. 'Paunls
_lktl", ChJ/.drm oorgi
n Tuozijt: read a headline in Borba' the inde.,-...
It
.::> Belgrade daily.
In the conviction that Y
ugosIaVla
> must be pulled back from the
Walt f atastrophe, tens
of
thousand
turned out on
TeruL..
/:" ut few were aware of the speeds ofwithpeople
...
their coumrv
which
>,
. Ient
IlW"Ulng tOWards VIO
Uapse. 0n 11 March, a speech to an
co
.
*_____
&.cy session ofthe Ser
b>Ian ParI.ament, which he peppered Wlth
__
. S of pIans to st
..a..-..._ tion
age
> -style revolution' Miloevic
a RomaOlan
___ that he Was shaken:
"

are

Drdkovit was taken to jail.

MiloeviC's brutal tactics came as a shock to Belgrade. It was one
to read about tanks in Kosovo, but quite another to see them on
street outside. To make matters worse, Milokvic was in no mood
compromise. He saw no reason to concede anything to the oPI""I'"
which was scrambling to make capital out ofpublic outrage.
ing televized speech, on Saturday evening, was a warning
blatantly obvious as the tanks that he was to remain the un,jl''"
I
leader. It was also probably an attempt, cleverly devised, to prepare
public for the declaration of a state-of-emergency.
Today tht biggnt aslt/ that our country and ptople haw W/U
tndangtrtd in Serbia and Btlgradt. Peau wasjtopardiud Peate
is tht baJ;c condilion withoul which tv.! cannol sucwifully solve
any singlt probltm lhat Wt haw. and Wt hQ'/Je many.
Thtrifort, Strbia musl oppou thtforus of chaos and madness
using all constilulional means. I am Ihus asking and demandjnt
Ihat allcilium ofSerbia contribute 10peau and the eJlablilhmenl
oforder, by abovt all exttnding aid to state organs.

In other words he was calling on the people to side with the

was the last straw. On Sunday rught 1000 srudents from
Grad, the biggest campus in Belgrade, broke through police
headed for the city centre. The police, in helmets, gas-masks and
seemed better suited for all-out war than controlling unarmed
Under clouds of tear-gas, they used their batons to stop the
But, around midnight, from donnitories all over the
of srudents reached the centre, Terazije, in front of the
The srudents took Milokvic by surprise. That first cold

;::

:c

'3'

::

>

>

>

10

7!toy tlTe tryinfoT loft,u Ser.bla> 10fiorego Yugoslavia and accept a

'33

>

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'IF WE DONT

diktatfrom the northwest about the diJuJJOciation ofYugoslavic

into as many staW as there are republics. Serbia would then
to abandon the political ideal with which it enttred into the
ation ofYugoslavia.
The deputies of MiioseviC's

Socialist Party

Communists), occupying 194 of the

250 seats, wildly

his speech.
Unnerved by the demonstrations, Milosevic took steps

the damage. The regime was afraid that the student m,,,,..
,

would inflame all of Serbia. The Serbian President de<:ided to

representatives of the opposition and sr udents. Zarko Jol"nori

twenty-six-year-old srudent and politician, who was part of a
which met Milosevic on March 11, was ushered into a huge
empty but for a big table in the middle. 'It was luxurious and
a tsar.'
Separated by the vast expanse of the table, Milosevic at first

ally ignored the group, then warned the srudents that they were
ing into the hands of the Ustase and Albanian separatists.
should not destabilize things at a time when we are trying to

resurgent fascist Ustase forces, Albanian secessionists, as well

other forces of the anti-Serbian coalition which are endangering

pIe's freedom and rights.'

KNOW HOW TO WORK.

emergency session of the Federal

. . called an
law. JOV1C
not the demonstrations hut the
discuss
to
12
,
.
..nnI for Mareh
__
PreSidency order t d"Isarm ara-J

out the January 25

.
c
o
. He made a late-rught televlSlon
fiIilute r .a.rrr
Cfoa,'Ia and Slovenia
.
.
_
It:.
'es
III
tpJll tan
summonmg the PreSidency members. It was
ment, publicly
"
\y "Imp\ym
" g that
....unce
.
lears, ommous
pub\"Ie ,
' heighten
.
..J...I;berate alternP to
as Commander of the Armed forces.
'
1"ng in his capaCity
ac
he was now
rose.
rature
'J'be political tempe
way gripped Terazije. They
d'itat was under
r
Rurnoun that a coul>
.
repeat his attempts (which
to
ng
planm
was
Jovic
unded.
were well-fo
ederal Presidency to approve a mili
f
the
get
to
y)
Januar
.... failed in
ing that had taken place over the week
takeover. 'With everyth
last chance.'
said Jovic, 'this was our
Drnowek, Sloveia's representa:ive on
Fearing arrest, Jancz
the sessIOn. When Stipe MeSIC,
boycotted
IOtlDng Presidency,
the Federal Presidency, the usual
at
arrived
ti
Croa a's representative,
alarmed to find a group ofJNA
was
he
sessions,
Presidency
wnuc for
him into a milituy bus,
ordered
They
there.
im
h
for
waiting
o8ioen

ri
,...ral

:to

t?C

which was waiting in the forecourt. Mesic took this as a sign that he

... being arrested. He climbed aboard and took a seat at the back of
me bus along with other members of the country's highest ruling
body. He spent the journey, wrapped in his overcoat, head down,

pipped by fear. The entire group of politicians was taken to TopCider,

repeating that he did not have the authority to do anything

the Presidency's emergency meeting place in the event of war. When

country? You are behaving like the Qyeen of England when you
the power of a Russian tsar.'

joke. 'Don't be angry now, Veljka, I was just checking.'

The students put forward their demands. But MiioseviC

a line that was to become his trademark. Looking at him

Jokanovic asked: 'Are you currently responsible for anything in
The Serbian President sat impassive. Spiky-haired Jokanovit

ifhe had watched the news the previous night, 'It could h, pn'"
a civil war.'The atmosphere was tense. Milosevic hid his

vuln,,.!"!

Tihomir Arsic, a young actor popular for his rendition ofTito,

permission to open the window for some fresh air. The room was

denly filled with the demonstrators' chants of 'Slobo,

paring him to the Iraqi dictator who had waged war against
world and brought isolation to his country, Milosevic pretended
hear. Jokanovic showed him the picture ofMilinovic, the
during the demonstration. 'Is there anything human left
Serbian President turned deep red, but said nothing.

DI
A few streets away, the Belgrade power-brokers were pn
..
'34

they arrived, Mesic, from the very back of the bus, asked the waiting
General Kadijevic, 'Are we under arrest?'
The General was irritated, replying the Army would never act in an

unconstitutional manner. Mesic, though still nervous, was now able to

'Ibere followed a bizarre scene - filmed and later televized in a JNA

on entitled Who BetrayedYugodavia?- in which the country's

sat round a bare table in an Army
command bunker in sub
peratures, some dressed in military-issue furs,
others shiver
.. 'W
h cold, and discussed
it
whether or not to impose a state-of
hroughout Yugoslavia. Macedonia's representative, Vasi
l
1trled .vski' :-as in no doubt about why the meeting was being con
n thiS extraordin
ary and inappropriate location. The
Prt.ide
brought to TopCider, he said, to be intimidated, to
'bt.nble
ore the military'.
'It
ry cold. It was
scary: later recalled Mesic. 'It all showed
they
te us to
capitulate. '

CY

tas
=

'35

LlCHTING THE FUSE

W HOW TO WORK..

'If' WE DON'T KNO

In JNA barracks, on the outskirts of Belgrade. tanks were

up their engines - waiting for the order to move.
With Drnowek absent, JOvlC hoped it would be possible to
through a smeof-emergency, which would give theJNA the
ity it had long sought to impose a
MiloseviC's political neck and disarm the Croatian
that he could count on his allies, Nenad Buein of M""" n"gn,
Jugoslav Kostic ofVojvodina. He only needed twO more Votes
Sapunxhiu, from Kosovo, who had just been released from
and Bogicevic, a feUow Serb, might cave in. But he knew that
take a lot to make them crack..
Kadijevic did his bit by conjuring up nightmarish images from
.
Second World War. 'In Yugoslavia all possible enemies
and united Yugoslavia have emerged on the scene, Ustde,
Albanian, beloguardist and other factors. We are fighting against
same enemy as in 1941"'.'
The first two votes came as no surprise. Mesic and
Tupurkovski of Macedonia immediately said there were no
for declaring a state-of-emergency. Jovic was irked by
suggestion that the Serb leaders wanted to strengthen their
positions following the turmoil on Belgrade's streets - rather
disarm paramilitary formations in Croatia. Tupurkovslci saw
J ovie's anempt to push through what amounted to a legal
d'i/al:
It Waf aproposalfor a Irgal takr()'IJtr. Lrgal brcauu it uld'
a vote ofthr pwidmey, and it had thr prerogatives to do thai,
a take()'IJ(f brcauu the army would have bun the main actor,

he"':

mainfoctor ofthat situation.

Tupurkovski was an immensely popular political

Macedonia and throughout Yugoslavia. He was known
ovski (Jumper-man) because of his preference for casual .
and affable, he had a common touch. His habit, despite his
status, was to ride public transport, rather than take adva?t,age
black Audis or Mercedes favoured by most of Yugoslavtas
leaders. He voted against Jovie's proposal, and then asked for
to request warm clothing for those who had come unprep:ued
meeting in such conditions.
Sapunxhiu, the delegate from Kosovo, was next to declare
Frightened and ill, he voted ys. Jovic now had four votes. Be
'16

. The entire decision

his stat-of-emergency
rna: t ;;recevic.
BOglcevit remained sil:nt. Like a deer on
WJth B
headlightS
of an on-commg
he seemed
nthe
L.

"
nI
.- ght
short-tempered J

;-r one.

. ...... ru

....
, Ilv

OvtC
h,k,n by screams from the
H
_1
. , ""up, and vote.
t-":""
.
. . .
.
fOr hi
m t hurry
Invoked the consmufrom Serbia BOglCCVlC
iS counte.mart
:t.. h
r
.
'
l basis for action. He balked at endors'a
o
. on finding a [c"
. tlng
JnSlS

tion.
the Iegally-e1ected governments 0f
bypassed
d " which
iaI Proce u Jovic insisted that the Presidency had the authority
die SIX republics.
nts of the
declare a stateof-emergency without te governme
.
only
was
an mter
othefWIse
of
said
which
rule
any
said
.h.l; H
at could be changed by the Presidency itsel BogiCeviC,
, stood his ground. He refused to cast a vote. Mter a long
silence, he said: 'I can't vote'.
.
Outraged, Kadijevit warned that theJNA would seize the weapons
.
DO matter what the politicians decided. 'The JNA has deCided to take
ower, regardless ofany decision made here, to stop the civil war. We arc
ping to do our job.'
.
. .
.
.
'Kadijevit, your personal army will lead to CIVIl war, said MeSIC.
1 am not going to dance along with you lot any more; said
kadijevit storming out of the room.
The debate went round in circles. Mter half-an-hour, Kadijevic
came back to warn of impending war. Regardless, he said, the Serbs
wuuId fonn their own army within fifteen days.
jcMf warned the dissenting members of the Presidency that he
woaId resign on the grounds that he refused to 'implement the deci
..... causing the disintegration of the country'.
It was clear that they could not agree on anythin
g - let alone the
fUture of Yugoslavia. Bur, no matter
what Serb leaders were deter'
mined to have their way.
car,

:fn;

AI Commander-in-Chief, Jovi{:

Kadijevic to Moscow that night

Defence M.in.ister DimitrisentYazo
v. The othr members of the

hree were kept the dark about the mission.

T ?
. months earlier, Admiral Mamula had gone

:;:.:::: :t.
10

to Chatham
London, General Blagoje
AdZit to Paris, and Admiral
o M scow, to try to assess how the interna
l , to a military coup in Yugosl
avia. 'On
;
the Army ecld
. ed
UK and France would not be opposed,'
RUSsla
welcomed the plan, although mad
e it clear that
not support the
move publicly.

10

)::.!:

III

:o:

'J7

W HOW TO WORK .. .'

'IF WE DON'T KNO

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'We were interested in their assessment as to whether the

would intervene if we tried to disarm the paramilitary units
There was no question - the West would not intervene,' said
Word would later leak out about the mysterious trip to
Kadijevie came back believing that President Mikhail
would not last long and that, jf they cou1d hold out just a
1
Communism would be shored up in the Soviet Union.
The next day, 13 March, the students believed briefly that
had won. Drakovic was released. Looking out at the huge
on Terazije, he demanded: 'Freedom for Serbia.' But Drukovie
realized that he had been stronger inside prison than out. In a
get the students off the streets, the Serbian President agreed
Mitevic and four other editors at Belgrade Television. The
Minister Bogdanovic who two days before denied he was even
sidering offering his resignation, also agreed to step down.
agreed to organize a parliamentary investi-gation of police actions
March 9, which could have punished the violence.
Over the next three years of war, MiloeviC would never again
shaken by a mass protest. The brutal police reaction signalled
although Miloevic had reluctantly allowed multiparty electioN!
Serbia, the last of all six republics, he refused to tolerate
opposition. His victory was bolstered by the ethnic
i
since
had boycotted all official Serbian institutions and
the elections. The Terazije demonstration turned into a giant
high school students.
On
March, MesiC, the Croatian representative, this time
by his Siovenian counterpart, Dmoek, remained locked in
with jovie. They insisted that anyjNA action would plunge
try into war.
The Presidency again refused to endorse jovie's
emergency, joviC and his allies were livid, He and K d
J
they would take steps to allow the Army to act. The
blocking them;Jovic was unable to deliver on his promise. But,
with this eventuality, he had crafted a fall-back plan: if the P""id"
refused to suppOrt him, he would break it. An hour later,jovic
television, putting the plan into action. Blaming 'prevailing
the Yugoslav PreSidency which do not care about th '
independence and territorial integrity of the country',.
Head of State declaring that he was 'not prepared to a party to
decisions which contribute to the destruction of the countrY.
ordered, Buein and Kostic followed

::'::

1990
14

l::::: ;:

;::::;

along

-J
", S l d,nrv
cIoWI1 from the n

with JOVK, although with consider-

pomp5
Presidency created a power-vacuum
ering of the
disrn
Th
.bly
" s Icadership hoped - and expected - the JNA would fiU.
which Sefbla
so thar the only body with the constirus.gned p--is
.... ... ely
J.oVL had cc 1 to preven
t an Army crack-do,VTl would lx: unable to
authority
O
night of 15 March, a statement from the Supreme
Dona!
tuncnon' n the
Army would consider what. measures to take
Conunand said: 'The
.
. g mter-ethRIC
' d at preventm
acmed
after ' recommendations aJffie
y
Presidenc
with a
the
by
down
voted
were
civil war
I

e;

confli andvotes '

majority of

' ugoslvia is finished', and

The next day, Miloevic declared :
Itself bound by federal
conSidered
longer
no
Serbia
that
announced
Serbia's
secession from Yugoslavia.
bodies. In effect he was declaring
:
(I
have]
said
In an address to the nation he

... ordered the mobi/iwtion of spuial reservists and the urgmt

formation of additional Serbian militia units. Yugoslavia has
mlmd into itsfinalphast ofagony... The Republic ofSerbia will
no longer rtcogniu a single derision reached by the Presidency
IIndtr lxish'ng ,ircumstan(ts became il would bt il/tgol.6
Miloevit threw down the gauntlet to the Federal Army, announc

ing that he would form his own special forces and carry out decisions

ing the legal federal instirutions. In short, he was prepared to do

Iy what be had accused his rivaJs from the Western republics of
'. He put the finishing touches on a plan to throw the country
mto disarray.
. That day rebel Serb leaders in Knin, the cemre of Krajina, declared
independence ITom Croatia on the grounds that jovie's resignation
pf that Zagreb and Ljubljana were destroying Yugoslavia.
okviC hoped that Tudjrnan would send in his
special police units
to put down the inSUrre
.
.
.
.
. n and a
ctiOn,
promptmg
Army mterventlO
. Poln
. ted.
cy, but he was d1sap
ftlte-of-eme
'o_n
S ' 'b"'as obedi
nt assembly, where Milo!eviC's Socialists had a comfo_
b,
' .
e two-thuds maJority,
Voted to remove the recalcitrant
.
Sapun
xhiu ITom h
. iS

seat
as Kosovo's representative on the Federal
"-'
nqldency But the P
resl'dency - now comprised of Mesic, Drnoek,
T
_" .
.. ki
' and B
,... "ll YS
' . "c - refused to accept Sapunxhiu's resignaolceV1
tion, saying the
Parliament had no powers to remove him from the

'39

'IF WE DON'T KNOW HOWTO WORK.."

UGHTING THE FUSE

Presidency. In time, Miloevit would get his way.. In place of

Sapunxhiu, a former officer of the World B
he appoLnted the loyal
.
Sejdo BajramoviC, head of the Kosovo veterans associatIOn, who ran a
bingo hall in his sare time7.
. ,
.
While the publtc was reehng from shock, Serbla s mUOlclpal lead

ank:

ers were attending an important meeting. Before dawn broke that

morning, the republic's local police had carried out an unusual task.
They phoned all 200 of Serbia's mayors and informed them to
expect an urgent message. Soon after, each municipal leader was

handed a telegram summoning him to the Serbian parliament at 6

p.m. The Mayor of Valjevo, Slobodan Ojukic, the on1y pposition
mayor in office, described how 200 black sedans made quite a scene
in front of the Parliament. But it paled in comparison to the confu

sion within.
Everyone believed the secret meeting had been called in connec
tion with the vacuum caused by Jovie's resignation, and, of course, to

co-ordinate steps to fill it. All day Djukic had speculated abut i
family
ous possible schemes at hand. When he said gdbye to
that morning, he had even suspected that he might be placed under

hiS

arrest while in Belgrade. But Bora PetroVic, Deputy Speaker of the

Parliament, immediately tried to dispel speculation of any plan to

declare a state-of-emergency.
.
.
'It seemed that those politicians who had called the meetmg di
d

not have a dear agenda, or any agenda at all,' Ojukic said ofthe meet
ing. Djukic later recalled that the speakers started mumbling nonsen
about the economy. The mayors jeered in protest. 'You, Comra es.
said Jovan Cvetkovic of Svetozarevo, 'dragged us hundreds of kilo

metres to this meeting to tell us the same thing we can read in our
own newspapers.' They were furious that MilokviC \vas not there to
meet them.
The outraged city leaders started to walk out. Cvetkovic led the

revolt.

1 aslud tht chairman what it was all about - Yugosla'fJia was dis

inugrahng and Wi wert suppostd to uui1Jt somt important

in/ormation, but nobodyfrom the extcuti'f)f bodies was hrre.
'Where is Mr Milofroil, when is thl Primt Ministrr"

Finally, the Speaker of Parliament, Slobodan Unkovic, said be

would urge Milokvic to meet them. The meeting was adjourned for
an hour. It was at this covert session that Mi1oeviC made clear that he

ready to drive our [he Croats and Slovenes. 'I understood after the

va . ready to fO.rm a Yugoslavia without the

ting that he
::
Catholics', said DJu
kic. That everung, and over the next week,

Miloevic laid out his vision for the end ofYugoslavia:

Tht brtak-up ojYugoslavia is in qutstion hm. It is /rut that the

SIO'fJents wont to stude. It is trUt that tht Croats want to studt.
Bllt I think that tht Muslims do not have any reason to stetdt
from Yugoslavia. Somt ofthtm ha1Jt bun indoctnnattd, but most
oftIM MUlliml wantgood. tolerant, eulturtdand1 'WOuldsoy rivic
and friendly rtlations with tht Serbs and othu nations in
Yugosla'ilia. After all, thry all li1Jt ;n srwral rrpublics. TJuy Iuroe
no reason to dutroy Yugoslavia.
Miloevic outlined the possible steps the Army could take. Asked
by an irate Cvetkovic what Serbia's strategy was, Miloevic answered
that the strategy would not be broadcast on the radio. His next sen
tences would echo throughout Yugoslavia:

Ifwt ho1Jt to, we'ltlfigh . J hopt thry won't be so CTazy as tofight

against us. BecaUlt if'Wi! don', know how to work anddo husiness,
at least 'Wi! know how tofight.
TIx army has the comt;tutional authorization and obligation
to
dift?d Yugo/aviaJ constitution. 1don't doubt tlxArmy will
carry
out fI COsfltu/jonal authoriZAtion btcause tht Pmid
enry stopptd
fimctomg. This is nol a coup - becaust the army
will bt acting

comfflutlOnally ifit diJarms fht HDZ tomo

rrowg.
Miloevic had finally taken
.
off his gloves. The new govemment
line clear. Yet his
opponents in the Presidency fought back
. Mesic
In. f r ]oviC as Command

erin-Chief. He appealed for 'reaso

n' e IndlVlduals in the Arm
y' to refrain from using force which
Sald
, would preci
he
. ....
,,[e
.
a CI'vi! war. 'But my I'nf1uence
. ph
on the Yugoslav
Army (even as Its
Commander-in-Chief) was
the same as my influ.
ence on the Fi .
millSh Army,' laughed
MesiC later.
on 18 March,
the representatives of
the four Yugoslav republics
th..... remn
.
'
ants of t
he PreSidency, found themsdve
i.mmense
s alone at the
Pal
ace
of the Federation.
entire b
It was deserted - virtually the
lIreallcracy had
d'Isappeared. The c encaJ
be found
'
.
.Jwas nowhere to
so t
he PresIdency em
D
bers wrote their own press releases.
iploma
and reporters
lT
lled round the building. Tupu
u
rkovski

'.'

'

S[aJl

1F WE DONT KNOW HOW TO WORK...

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'

hoped that they would somehow break the impasse with the INA.
which, like Milevic's proxies, was boycotting the presidency. 'The
Army has always obeyed the constitution and, I suppose: ty will
.
continue to do so,' he said doubtfully. On Monday KadlJeVlc boy
cotted a meeting of the Federal Government of Ante Markovic, who
threw his support behind the remaining Presidency members aware
that his fate was inextricably linked with that of the other federal
institutions Miloevic was trying to commandeer9.
The next day, the Serbian President apparencly had no choie but
.
to beat a retreat. The fires of protest had died down, but MlloevlC was
still reeling. He had never before beenjeered or screamed a. While he
showed no feelings for anybody - he counted on the adonng masses.
The students, whose predecessors during the mass demonstration in
1968 had made peace with Tito, had turned against Milvic. They
hated him. The intellectuals, who had helped transform him from I.
floppy-eared Communist apparatchik to a Serbian national icon, aban
doned him. Nationalists joined liberal intellectuals to take a stand
against Communism at the Tcrazije demnstrations. The
.
realized Miloevic was usmg
them for hiS own personal power
because he shared their beliefs.
It seemed like a cement wall was beingbuilt up around him. He
weak. Miloevic tried to lower the temperature by consenting to
unprecedented session with 200 studems and professors at Belgrade
University. He squirmed in discomfort. as students, who had become
his staunchest opponents, controlled the agenda. They demanded
know what he planned to do ,vith Yugoslavia.
He repeated virtually verbatim his message t? the Mayo
Meeting. The audience fmally understood It was obVIOUS YugoslaV1&,
.
as they knew it, was fmished. But he pledged that all 'Serbs would
in one State'.

n
Ithas not o{{u"d to us to diJpult tIM right ofthe Croatian natitJ.
to seudrfrom Yugoslavia, ifthat nation decides ofits ownfire wl1
in a refermdum... hut 1 want to make it complrtely elrar that t
should not occur to anyone that a part ofthe Serhian nation dl
h allowed to go with them. Because the history of th Serhllln
nation in th Independent Slate ofCroatia is too tragic to risk such
afate again1o.

While discarding hopes for settling the dispute with the Croats
order w save Yugoslavia. he baldly dismissed 'all nationalism as
'4'

" ,""on', and any division along those lines as medieval'11 . He

en" mln
ap aced to forget how he had come to power.
vain, the students appealed for him to understand that the future
rested on transforming it inw a democracy. Neboja MilikiC,
(Serbia
o
student, boldly told Milocvic that his resignation would pave the
y for the fall of his nationalist counterpart in Croatia and the build
ing of democracy:

rn

:.a

i only one national inteust,

You have to undersland that there s
that Serhia and Yugoslavia hrcome democratic states . . . TIMpeople
and tIN leadnl will not try to escapefrom thatkind ofstate. Ifyou
resign tomorrow, Franjo Tudjman would 10J( all support within
15 days. He huilt his myth on you12.

l oevic realized his attempt to impose a state-of-emer

Shaken, Mi
gency had failed. He could not work within the system. He decided to
scrap the boycott of the Presidency, ordering his Parliament to block
Jovic's resignation.
MilokviC recovered his political balance after secret talks with
Franjo
Tudjman in Karadjordjevo, Tito's favourite villa for negotiations
and
huntingl3. Word soon leaked out that the two Presidents
had made a
pa we strolling through the serene grounds of
Karadjordjevo.
MilokviC has never divulged the details of their
discussions - while
Tudjman bragged how he had doubled the
size of Croatia. Convened
to avert war, the two men agreed
on a plan which meant war.
They discussed Serbia's demand
to oust Prime Minister Ante
MarkoviC. The Croatian President
wanted in rerum the sole authority
to resolve the status of the
Serbian minority which a week earlier had
declared independence fro
m Zagreb.
The
o leaders also discussed the partition of Bosn
iaHe na. Tudjman

said he proposed either the confederation

or
par tltJon of Bosrna.
' 'Th"IS partltJon had been
staned with the CroatSerb' greemem
of 1939 when the representatives
of the Croatian
and er
people agreed to create the
r
Banovina Hrvatska' he said
in rere
rence to the S
porazum (Agreement) between Vlat
Croan
ko Mal:ek of
' Serbian counterpart
" nd his
, Dragia Cvetkovic. Cvetkovic
"''',d a C
.
matlan ban()'I.Jma
.
wh"Ieh IOcluded much of Bos
Slavoru"a - a
"
nia and
bout th'If'Y per cent
0f the ter"ntory and populat"
Vugo,l,v"la.
ion of
M"I
l ose
ViC
' " was IOterested "10 whateve
r deal would maximize
hi. gn"p on power. Tud'man
.
was IuIIed .Into belie
' vmg
.
that hiS dream of

an
Ian

"

"

'43

LIGHTING THE FUSE

'JFWE DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK.. .'

an independent-and-enlarged Croatia was within reach and that

could be avoided. He could not contain himself and afterwards boast
ed to a handful of trusted associates that Croatia would be 'even big
ger than it had been under the Macek-Cvetkovic Agreement'.
In fact, according to Mesic, Tudjman even believed that Croatia
would get a chunk ofBosnia as well as part of Srem and Vojvodina, in
northern Serbia. His exuberance rings true.

te

Tudjman {am bacl. in a good mood, wry satisjitd, rd in tlu/au

saying tV"ything was JiM. The JNA wouldn't a/facl. and that
Croatia was going to be bigger than it has ev" bun. Milo/tV;,
had agrttd
II was a gmt/anm's agrummt.

By contrast, Miloevic denied that any such agreement was ever

reached. Pragmatic as ever, he kept his cards close to his chest, never
divulging what he and Tudjman had decided on that day in the first
of a series of secret encounters designed to carve out their own ethnic
states.

Tudjman told me he wanltd an independmt Croatia. But we

simply (auld not agru

he wanltd to destroy thefodera! in;titu

tions and I (auld not agrtt to that. I suggested as I had before thaI

wt'

should (hange the constitution to allow ulj-det"minalion.

There has bun sptculation that we dtcided how to split

YugoslQ'f)ia: I can Itll you now if we had decided that there

(ould haw done it immtdiauly.

I believtd

country.

we

that the btst solution was for all to /iw in ont

The agreement between the two lC2ders however did not I"" I" ...
Just onc day later, Serb rebels moved to take control of a

station in Plitvice national park and took the fi" " ,o'nb,,-,,,;u,lti, 01
the war. Within four months, backed by the Yugoslav People's
Serbs would be fighting a real war to build a country of their own.

t Belgrade Tdevision frequently broadcast films ofUstae leade,

in 1941, woven with scenes of Tudjman and the newly-elected C;,o.""
Democratic Union (HDZ).
2 This is one ofa myriad ofexamples when lovie, in league with Mil""
adopted a legalistic approach to justifY the abuse of power.
3 Ev n Radovan Karad1it, then President of the Serbian [)""",,,,,iq ""J

addressed the students, who booed at his seemingly irrelevant

.
of Bosm.a,
the time of Pamsans and ehetnl'ks was over. In 'act, "IT was Just
,hat
.
.
,
rema!""
being re-born.
v ,Q smb STUff" 'I jUgtJ
"
'O'VljU,
' , '10 h'IS book ",0
S
I
4 Kadijevie as quoted by MeslC
.
Zagreb 1992, Globus.
.
.
.
5 The Serbian Communist preViously had used the reslgnanon ploy when
Du3'an Ckrebii: stepped down in protest against the Yugoslav League of
i Ocrober, 1988.
Communists n
6 The normally obedient Kosovo representative had not, as MileviC had
expe<:ted, resigned fTOm the Presdency along with
others.
.
7 BajramoviC was also a lraglc figure. He died 10 1993 after the Croats
failed to hand over the corpse of his only son, a JNA officer, killed in Mostar.
8 Vum(, 15 April, 19919 MarkoviC criticized the Army deployment in a rather short-sighted
statement, saying JNA units should be used in disputes between nations and
republics, Borba, 10 March, 1991
10 Borba, document: 19 March, 1991.
11 Jbid.
12 Ibid.
13 Karadjordjevo i s 125 kilometres from Belgrade 330 from Zagreb. It
was surrounded by hundreds of forests, wheatfields, sugar cane, and a lake.
Tito last visited in 1980 to celebrate what turned out to be his last new year.
Despite his fondness for Tito, Karadjordjevo was an odd choice for
Tudjman, since this was the location where Tito had begun his crackdown on
Maspok.
-

THE DESCENT INTO WAR

10
THE DESCENT INTO WAR
Croatia and the Serbs
Februarrfune 1991

y the spring of 1991 the Krajill<l Serbs' rehellion had spread.

Milan Babic and Milan Martie were, respectively, the political and
military leaders of the uprising, and, in February, they targeted the

town of Pakrac in Western Slavonia. Rebel Serbs, loyal to their self

proclaimed Serbian Autonomous Region, seized comrol of the local

police station and the municipality building next door. They jailed
those officers who refused to submit to their authority, among them
many Serbs. Then they announced that they would, from now on, tab

instructions only from the Interior Ministry of the Serbian

Autonomous Region of Krajina. Another piece of Croatian territory
had fallen into rebel hands_
Serbs formed the largest community in Pakracl, but the town- l.i.U
its western Siavonian hinterland - was a kaleidoscope of interming
ling national groups. The town's boast was that it had twenty national
minorities: Czechs, Poles. Ruthenes, Italians, Slovaks, Hungarians
and others. For weeks a hidden campaign of terror had stalked Paktac

harassment of Croatian officials. machine-gun bursts in the night,

threats, and intimidation.

When news of the takeover of the Pakrac police station reached

Zagreb, Tudjman did not hesitate. He could not afford yet another
Knin. He ordered that the renegade police station be retaken by force.
Perica Jurie, the Deputy Police Minister, assembled a force of200

men, trained in anti-terrorist operations, in the neighbouring town of

Kutina. Some would travel on foot, through the woods; others,

crammed into the backs of civilian trucks, lying flat, and covered. on
top and at each side, with flack-jackets, and then rubble. The trucks

travelled separately, rather than in convoy: several Serbian villages by

along the route: Jurie did not want to alert the rebels that an inter
vention force was on its way.
They co-ordinated their arrival time. At 4.30 a.m., they entered the
centre of the town. The rebels were caught unawares; they had erected
no barricades. The first commando unit of twenty men stormed

municipality building and arrested the Serbs inside. Some of thero.

according to Jurie's account later, were found sleeping off the

up a command post for stormd king session. Jurie set

.
'
of a heavy- nn
was shooting - machine-gun
There
door.
io n next
.
" e tat
.
.
he pouc
ong t
.
l station and nelghbounng houses. But the
-om the poice
ndnfle fi.lfc fi
a

.
quickly reinforced by armoured police
was
,quad
.
.
'
mterventlon
rr d no
suuere
men
d
J
an
uncs
ce
resistan
little
up
put
. 1es. TI
1e rebels
vehlc
k
.
hundred and eighty men were arrested, and the rest too
A
ties.
.
1
ua
cas
rr d phYSIC _....,
uere
town had su
The
town.
the
around
hills
'to thc wood-d
and roofs. But no-one
.
windows and pock-marked walls
.
damage. broken
k
fieccly executed.
On,
per
operatI
l led or injured. It was a text
was ki
of
, 20 000flood
a
refugees
g
reportm
The Belgrade press erupted,
been
had
Serbs
eleven
that
claimed
and
Serbia
strOng, Pouring into
de
gra
1
e
B

s
1
e
anon
Th

-clrcu
ma
nest.

od
ox
.

.
killed. including an orlh
page
on
front
e
on
t
dlt
SpecIal
a
m
rerted

daily. Vtlrmje NfJVOSfi,
It said the priest had been
that the priest had been killed; on page two,
Jovan
wounded, and on page three, it carried a statement from him.
in
but
waning
now
Croatia
in
leader
SDS
the
ormally
f
still
Rakovic,
political influence, told a rally of Knjina Serbs that Croatia had that
"

day'dedared war on the Serb nation'. In Belgrade. the President of the

Federal Presidency, Borisav Jovie, agreed to a request from the
Defence Minister Veljko Kadijcvic for armed intervention. Kadijevie
sent in the tanks. The JNA intervened in Croatia for the fIrSt time.

JoviC issued a statement. The Army had intervened, it said, in a dis

pute 'between the two national communities'. Belgrade painted the
dispute throughout as an ethnic conflict which only the Army could
prevent. Zagreb insisted it was a conflict between the legally-elected
Croatian Government and illegal paramilitaries. It was to become a
familiar pattern of events: Krajina Serbs provoking the Croatian
authorities into conflict, the Army stepping in to 'separate the two
sides' and, in effect, protecting renegade Serb areas from the Croatian
authorities' attempts to bring them back under Zagreb's jurisdiction.
Under a cloak of impaniaiiry, the Federal Army was now another step
closer to becoming the army of Greafer Serbia.

By four o'clock in the afternoon, the Croatian special forces had

.
estabhs
hed theif control of the town. The JNA tanks rolled in later
that evening. There was chaos,
with the Serb rebels fIring into fhe
t?WO rom the hills
above, Croatian police establishing defensive posi
ons m and around the town and the JNA under fire for the f1fSf
'
tome, caught in the
exchange.
From Belgrade
, Jovle sent the leading JNA Counter-Intelligence
officer, Colonel
A1eksander Vasiljcvic, to find out in person, what was
}
gomg On. From
Zagreb, Tudjman sent Croatia's epresentative on the

LlGHTING THE FUSE

THE DESCENT INTO WAR

Federal Presidency, Stipe Mesic. The two met, by chance, in the

Pakrac police station late that night. Vasiljevic, according to Croatia's
Police Minister Degoricija, was as 'messy as a pig, covered in mud'.
The Croats tk this as evidence that he had been tramping through
the woods th the run-away reels, and accused him of instigating.
.
and organizing, the whole rebelhon1. In everything the Krajina Sem.
did in the early months of their rebellion, Tudjman's men saw only the
hand of Slobodan Mi10evlC.
The Croatian police regained control of the town. The Federal
Presidency ordered both sides to end their stand-off by pulling back.
The crisis ended, but nothing was resolved.

Deputy Interior Minister, Slavko Degoricija6, contacted

of Koreruca, Bosko BozaniC. But BOZanic told him
h S rb Mayor
contr
no
l oer Marne's men. They had come from Knin
t h had
their will. .
.
lind had imposed
.
. time,
the Serbs were bct
Degoricija scnt an intervention unit. ThiS
.
force
ith
w
met force
ppared
.
' and
d at fiIve 0 cIock on the
lef
_1 umts arnve
The Croatian policc SpeCI"41
end
B
wee

stcr
E
31,

: t MartiC's men had erected

moming ofMarch
the park, the column of
les
mSlde
i
m
Two
walt.
in
lay
barricades, and
nute firefight. A rocket
a
ftfteenmi
was
There
.
ambushed
vehicles was
Croatian policemen, but
of
coach-load
a
at
fired
was
grenade
propelled
failed to explode. The Croatian police units outnumbered and out
gunned the rebels. In the battle for control of the local post fice, the
first casualties of Yugoslavia'S wars occurred, one on each side: Josip
Jovit, a policeman in his early twenties, and Rajko Vukadinovic, a local
butcherturned-militiaman, from Korenica, in his thirties. This Croat
and this Serb were the first to die in Yugoslavia's wars of secession.
While the rest of the world was still pre-occupied with the after
math of the GulfWar in which a multinational force had evicted Iraqi
troops from Kuwait, this first spilling of blood sent shock-waves
through Yugoslavia, further polarizing public opinion in the two dom
inant nations. In Belgrade, the extreme nationalist Serbian National
Renewal Party accused the Croatian Government of 'warmongering'
and warned that 'the entire Serbian nation', in Yugoslavia and abroad,
was behind the Serbs in Croatia. For the first time, the Serbian
Government formally recognized the existence of Babic's self
declared 'Serh Autonomous Province of Krajina'. The SPS, Milokvit's
ruling party in Serbia, sent an 'urgent delegation' to Knin to assess
what 'forms of aid' Serbia could make available to the Serbs of
Croatia. In Sarajevo, the leader of the Bosnian branch of the SDS
Radovan Karadzic, called for an armed force of the Serbian ople t
be set up thrughout the Serb lands ofYugoslavia. He goaded the fed
.
eral authontles for failing in their constitutional duty.
The Plitvice
",ents had, he said, represented the 'greatest defeat
the Presidency
for
o( Y"gosiavia whIC
h has not even been able to Implement .Its own
..
deCIS
lon
to
disa
rm the ml1Itlas
'. I
-Ie said
. .
. the Federal Army no long"
mstlUed the kind 0f trust th
at It had earned when it had saved Knin
firom armed interventl.
On by the Croats the previous August?
The Army responded. In Belgra
de, Jovic convened an emerg,n,y
.
meetmg of
.
the 1"ederai PreSidency.
It called for a four-point plan to
.
d,ruse t
he tension at Pli
tvice:

Martie's next target was to shake 200 Italian tourists from their beds
with the rude discovery that war had come to their secluded holiday
resort. .rhe Croatian coast attracted ten million tourists a year, pro
viding Yugoslavia with twenty per cent of its hard-currency earningsl.
There were few spots more precious to the tourism industry than the
Plitvice National Park, a vast terraced lakeland, connected, lake-to
lake, by cascading turquoise waterfalls. Plitvice lies to the north of
Knin, in the Serb-majority region of Lika. The main town, TitOVl
Korenica, had, initially, resisted the SDS, electing, instead, a local
authority led by the reformed Communist party, the Party of
Democratic Changes (SDP). A series of popular rallies, stage-man
aged by Babic's ople, finally chased the town's moderate leadership
from office, to be replaced, evenrually, by SDS hardliners loyal to Knin.
In late February, an angry crowd of Serb nationalists staged another
Muting ojTru/h rally, this time at PlilVice, to protest against the set
ting up of a Croatian police station in the park'. They accused
of trying to 'appropriate' the park, and called for the resignation
park's managers. Within days, Milan Martie had sent a force ofarmed
militiamen, mostly civilians in combat fatigues, to impose, by armed
might, the will of the demonstrators on the park. The park's managers
were removed and replaced by others, loyal to Knin. Some of the
workforce \V3.S dismissed.
On March 30 the Croatian government responded. It called the
Plitvice uprising 'the most extreme violation of the constitution and
the law of the republic of Croatia... [which] threatens the sovereignty
s'
of the republic, the constitutional order and the rights of the citizens ,
The Plitvice rebels were warned to rerurn the park to its former man
agers and staff, or face police intervention. They were reminded ofthe
precedent set by the Croatian police intervention at Pakrac.

CTOatia's

: :

THE DESCENT INTO WAR

UGHTING THE FUSE

1. a/ul/ and IIn(ondilional uasl-jirl.

2.jNA to mSllrl uasl-jiu s

i uS(tuf.

J. withdrawal ofall poliu unilifrom olltsidl thl arm.

4. combat-rladinw to bl raiud among certain IInits ofIhl
Yllgoslav PeopldArmy.

For the second time in as many months, the Army was on the
streets of Croatia. By the following morning, 1 April,jNA-armoured
units were positioned at all main bridges, public buildings and road
intersections in the area.
But the JNA was still not offering the kind of assistance that the
Serb rebels were expecting, and were eventually - though not yet - to
receive. Korenica's mayor, BOZanlC, had, in the early hours of 31
March, sent an urgent telex to Belgrade, pleading, with the over-state
ment that is characteristic of SDS leaders: 'We are completely
surrounded. Take urgent steps or we will all be liquidated'. He com
plained bitterly that the Army had not arrived until eight hours after
the shooting had begun. As the Croat forces were establishing their
control in the region, he was on the phone to Radio Belgrade's main
lunchtime news programme, declaring that:

TINArmy hm arriwd now. bllt we au totally dissatisfied wilh i/.

We (onsidlr such a delay IIna(uptable in such a critical silualion.
have twopeople dead and many woundd. lifefiel unproteeld
and al exlrune rilk. and we are calling on the wholl ofthe dlma
era/ie Yugoslav pllb/ir to mist ilJ voiu agaillst the IInprludenltd
ttrror ofthe Croatian (omlabll/a,y.
Indeed, it was the Croats who praised the Army's involvement. The
only part the JNA had played in the conflict was the ferrying of the
wounded to hospital by helicopter. Otherwise, the Croatian police
were left to do the job they had set out to do. Twenty-nine Serb rebels
were arrested, eight of them, according to the Croatian Interior
Ministry, wearing the uniforms of Serb special forces, the remainder,
civilians in combat fatib'Ues.
On the 1 April, Tudjman rejected the Federal Presidency order of
the previous day to withdraw his police force, declaring that a polict:
station would be established in Plitvice armed 'with all the force
necessary to keep peace and order'. There followed another round of
brinkmanship between the Croatian and federal governments, traS
Iared now, for the first time, into a stand-off bet'.veen armoured uIUts

and the Croatian police on the other.

JNA 0n one side
.
of the
he Anny to act -f
I the
..
y to authOrize t
..
enc
- d
ed the Presid
Ka lJeYlc ask
. Orne.
- ht,
mg
Th
at
1
OCat
13.00
by
a".n
w;thdr
lice h,d not
.
CroaDan po
by
d
mne.
were
replace
they
but
out;
pulled
forces
.
the Croatian spe...,...ial
of GOSpl.
y
lice officers from the nearb town
I
of Kijevo, fifteen miles
village
The
edge.
knife
a
on
was
a a
ly by Croats, but surrounded on all
\ populated exclusive . .
from Kn-Ifl, "'''
enclave wlthm an enc1ave) . 0n 1 Apn-I, the
'd by Serb viJlages (an
nervouS. A bomb had exploded on the outskirts of the
Vl
llagers OTew
0'
the
. ,
but rocNng
- no d amage or mjury,
m the early hours, causing
._.
II
n.
fth
elr
SituatIO
ousn
0
ss
precan
the
of

inhabitants into conSCIOusness

e.
the
villag
nces
to
entra
the
at
Th erected barricades
men of mil
Knin, the Serb authorities began to compile lists of
throngs of
that
boasted
They
fight.
to
g
n
\villi
were
itary age who
.
III the "" ake
combat
for
to
olunteer
f?rward
coming
were
Serbs

,
young
rally that the
of the Plitvice events. Milan Marne told a protest
President of Serbia has promised to send arms"). He said if the JNA
did not take action against the new Croatian police station in Plirvice,
then Krajina 'would drive them out in the way it sees fit'. Thirty thou
sand men had volunteered to defend the Krajina Serbs, he said. Hours
later, in the dead of night, a series of explosions in Knin destroyed a
_

ty J:.

lIes

;:

bakery and a cafe, both owned by Croats.

Plitvice sem ripples of alarm throughout Yugoslavia. It hurled the

Slovenes one step further down the path to secession. For them, the
intervention of the JNA was a dangerous foreshadowing of thing5 to
come. President Kutan believed that it proved that the JNA was try
ing to redraw Yugoslavia's internal borders. He announced that he
would immediately ask the Slovene Assembly to adopt a declaration
of sovereignty because, as he put it, in the event of a JNA coup, the
Assembly might not be able to meet to declare anything.
The next day, 2 April, Franjo Tudjman followed suit. He addressed
Croatian Youth rally and declared himself in favour of reconsritut
LOg Yugoslavia as a confederation of sovereign republics, each with its
own armed forces. BUT, he said, if Slovenia unilaterally seceded,
Croatia 'would not stay a day longer'. And it would not allow an inch
.
ofCroatmn
'
terntory to be taken out of the republiclO.
It had been a tumultuous and portentous Easter weekend. The
louds of war had closed
in on Croatia and, briefly, the storm had
roken. Mainland Europe
suffered its first casualties of war since
.
194811
. The pOsitions
.
0f both sides had hardened. Yugoslavia had
ta
ken another - and,
on the part of some ofthe players, wilful - lurch

'5'

LIGHTING THE FUSE

THE DESCENT INTO WAR

tOward war. And 200 bewildered and frightened Italian tourists

arguably the first western Europeans to wake up to the tragedy tha;
was about to unfold, had spent twenty-four hours in the middle of a
pitched battle, only to be driven, at eight o'clock in the morning, OUt
of the sudden war zone, and back to the holiday resorts of the
tourist season had begun, although the
Dalmatian coast. The
indstry was having its worst rear for three decades. e foreign
.
hohday-makers were largely obbvlOUS of what was happerung in the
hinterland. But an atmosphere of foreboding had settled on Croatia.
There seemed a terrible inevitability. Full-scale war was less than three
months away.

er their nationality, the do/ljad were, th( old

Ottoman Tu,"-', whatev.
ved, barbarians.
se lers belie
set Siavonia on edge. The SD immediately
h' plirvice events
region be annexed to Serbia. Across the
entire
the
demanded that
' dcs went up, and came
and towns, barTica
illages
v
Serb
" in
O'T'I!at p1runs,
. . and fear that
.
the
SuspICion
as a barometer of
o-own, nsing and falling
d
' f SDS orgame paranol"d rhetonc
hold, stoked by -'was now taking
.
.
to
those "ready iO

'
,
mltror
IOrmiOg
.
were
OIzers. Armed village patrols
. nee in Croat-populated areas. It became dangerous, and , 'tn
t
"""
' ht, and
' Jar1y at OIg
long d'Istances - partlCu
pI ces impossible to travel
ear
being
f
stopped
of
the
of
because
roads
main
iduarly off the
men.
masked
often
and
armed
of
y an illegal patrol
Radical HDZ activists did what they could to provoke conffict. In
s, Jed by
the middle of April, a group of highlyplaced HDZ member
per
advisors,
whose
closest
udjman's
T
President
of
one
Sw:ak,
Cojko
sonal fortune, from an Ottowa pizza company, had helped fund
l chief
Tudjman's 1990 election campaign, called on the regional poice
and
Slovene
mixed
German
of
was
Josip Reihl-Kir. Although Kir
had
who
moderate
a
was
He
.
descent, he considered himselfCroarian
to
front-lines,
rapidly-forming
the
of
sides
both
on
irelessly,
t
worked
remove barricades and restore murual trust. Now, Srn:ak asked Kir to
lead him, through the cornfields and along the country paths that
criss-cross Slavonia, to the outskirts of Borovo Selo, a Serbpopulated
village near the town of Vukovar on the Danube.
Kir was against the excursion. He knew that it would inflame the
local Serbs. But, under intimidation, he agreed.
From outside the village, 5rn:ak and his companions fired three
sou1der-launched Ambrust missiles into the village. 'They're crazy,'
Kir later confided, in disgust and disbelief, to a colleaguel2. One
rocket hit a house; another landed in a potato field and failed to
explode. It was later exhibited on Belgrade television as evidence of
Croat aggression. Petar Gratanin, the Federal Interior Minister, took
the unexploded shell, with great showmanship, to a meeting of the
Federal Presidency to wave it in the face
of the Croat representative
.
MesiC and demand an explanation. MesiC could offer no
. d'
erence. It was, 10
by
, Isputably, an unprovoked act of aggression,
.
.
"
OCtremlsrs
10 MeSlc
' . s own party, deSlgned
'
to provoke ethOic confllctl3.
The three rockets caused
no casualties in Borovo Selo. But it gave
the Serb vilJagers
l'
every excuse they needed to strengthen their
derences. Kir cont'
,
,
lOued h'IS palOstaking
efforts to restOre confidence
between the
Serbs and Croats.

1991

One of the men arrested at Plitvice, and subsequently released, was

the Secretary of the Vukovar branch of tht': SDS, Gor-m Hadiic. His
name meant ittle
at the time. But it was soon to loom large. BabiC's
l
rebellion was spreading far beyond the confines of his Kninshl
Krajina. The plains of eastern Slavonija, the flat, vulnerable, fertile ter
ritory, that stretches towards the Danube valley in the east, and whose
cornfields had filled the bread-baskets of central Europe for genera
tions, were now stirring to the strains of Serb and Croat nationalism,
This land had been farmed, for centuries, by national communities too
numerous to count. Croats, Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenes.
Italians, Hungarians and, until 1945, Germans, had lived togetber on
this southern rim of the Ausrro-Hungarian empire. The clash of the
two great empires to its north and south notwithstanding, Slavonija
had enjoyed a tradition of peaceful co-existence for hundreds of years.
But the twenticth ccnrury had brought disruptions to this delicate
multi-national patchwork. New tensions were to manifest themselves
in ethnic conflict. The real divide in Siavonia was not between Serbs
and Croats. It was between the old settlers and the new. The starou
dioci of all nationaliries could date rheir presence on this territory to
the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. After the creation of Yugoslavia,
in 1918, they were shaken by two successive waves of immigration
from other parts of the n(w state - first, after 1918, and then after
1945. TheJlaroudioci spoke disparagingly of their new neighbours, the
doJljaf; (newcomers), refugees from further south settling in the
homes of German or Hungarian families who had been killed or
expelled after the World Wars. Slavonia had regarded itself as the
southern extremity of central Europe, living under the civilizing influ
ence of Viennese hegemony. Those who came from further south were
from lands that had been, for cenruries, under the yoke of the

:r

dSnye

LIGHTING THE FUSE

THE DESCENT INTO WAR

Tw? weeks o heightned tension followed. Kir rurned his family

home mto a fortified police command station. He knew that his co
mitment 10 negotiate with the Serbs, to try to defuse tension Wh _
.
ever new barncades appeared, had put his life in danger from Croati
extremists. A permanent police guard was stationed at his house. e
took to sleeping in his uniform and boots, night after night.
SW'ak's jaut had lit a slow fuse. Then, on the night of 1 May, came
the event which, arguably more than any other, set Croatia irrevoca_
bly on the path to open war. Four Croat policemen, from Osijek,
learned that a farm road into Borovo Selo had been left unguarded.
There was a single barricade on the road - a few agricuhural vehicles
blocking the way - but it had been left unmanned.
The first of May was the traditional workers' holiday. The villagers
of Borovo Selo had put out flags, Yugoslav flags, carrying the
Communist five-pointed star. The four Osijek policemen drove into
the village in the dead of night, past the unmanned barricade, deter
mined to remove the Yugoslav flag in the centre of Borovo Selo and
replace it \vith the Croatian flag, carrying the symbol the Serbs hated
- the red-and-white checkerboard shield, the iaho'l.micQ.
It backfired tragically. The Serbs of Borovo Selo had not left the
village unguarded at night. The Croat policemen ran into a hail of
gunfire. Two were wounded, and nvo escaped. The wounded men
were taken prisoner.
Discipline had broken down in Tudjman's police force. The influx
of so many young Croats, promoted to positions of authority which
their age and experience did not warrant, had weakened chains of
command and accountability. In Osijek. Croatia's third city and capi
tal of eastern Siavonia, Kir had lost control ofhis own force. Hardline
HDZ officials had gained the upper hand in both the police and the
civil adminismtion. Precisely who gave the fateful order for what
came next, on the morning of 2 May, has never been properly estab
lished. But it ended in tragedy.
The nvo policemen who had escaped returned to Osijek and
described what had happened to their colleagues. In the morning, a
bus-load of Croatian policemen assembled at Vinkovci and set off for
Borovo Selo, determined to rescue the wounded men. They drove
straight into a massacre. The incursion the previous night had put the
entire viUage on alert. Serb militiamen were waiting in force. They
were stationed throughout the village, guarding road intersection"
and covering the main streets from roof tOps. Between 10 a.m. and 11
a.m., when the Croatian police bus entered the village, the waiting

..
opened fire. Twelve Croats were killed and more [han
Serb miiiflamen
ndedl4.
twenty wou
caused a sea-change in .Croatian public opinion. The
Selo
Borova
zed beyond all reason. The
within' was now demoOl
.
Serb '.enemy
pandered to the worst
that
campaign
a
launched
.
Croanan media
C
h
b
'
Rad10 and te eVlslOn
roatlan
0
!a.
'Serbop
ian
.
excesses of Croat
'1
. _' or, uec.
as 'chetOl
o
avoOla
s
r
S
b

51
h
e
t
to
er
ref
to
inely,
n, rout
.
.
of
hs
bod
the
photograp
begatly 'terrorists'. Zagreb teleVISIon carned
uen
that they had been
evidence
autopsy
claiming
men,
twelve
le f the
d to death, and subsequently mutilated. The newspapers did
to
ofthe vocabulary of horror. They said the police
oot stint in their use
eyes had been
en had died at the 'bestial hands' of chetniks. Their
been
had
th
cut. ne
r
e
roats
t
and
died
they
uged out before
.
the
that
t
roatlan
clear
s
h
It
lte
q
t
absurdly,
rted,

Zagreb daily rp
.
the
police,
ex-secret
notOriouS
RomaOlas
of
VlCtlmS
l were
poice
to
escape
punish
country
own
their
from
away
Running
Securitate.
ment, numerous agents of the Securitare crossed the Danube and
found shelter in the Serbian state secret police. Thirty of them were
killed in 80rovo Selo. They were professional mercenaries and their
bodies were taken to the Danube and thrown into the river'15.
The extreme Serbian nationalist, Vojislav Seklj, appeared on
Belgrade television boasting that his 'chetniks' had taken part in the
Borovo Selo events. Radmilo BogdanoviC. a close associate ofMiloevit,
and until March 1991 Serbian Interior Minister, later admitted that the
Borovo Selo Serbs had been armed by Serbia. Goading the Scrbian
opposition, BogdanoviC asked:'Where was Ihe opposition [then]? Ifwe
had not equipped our Serbs, who knov.'5 how they would have fared in
the attack by the Croatian National Guard on 80ro\'0 Selo?'
In Zagreb, Tudjman's ministers gathered in a state of shock, for an
emer
gec}' session of the State Council. None had been prepared for
loss oflife on such a scale. Their mood reflected public opinion. Many
began to push Tudjman for an immediate declaration of sovereignty
.
te Croatian
Parliament. Tudjman resisted. But the idea, to which
r. dJm n had dung for months, of reconstirulin Yugoslavia
g
as a con

cratlOn of sovereign states had lost the confidence of his ministers,

.
ho now behevcd
that Serbia - and not just the Serbs in Croatia determi ed to block, by bloodshed if
necessary, Croatia's progress

fuu sovereignty
.
In the early hours 3 M
? 1 ay, rUdJ1nan made a public address, broadcast b Croat!an
. radIO.
Its tone was both solemn and alarming. For
.
the fiIrst
Y time
he was aIemng
the people to the likelihood of war:

:
H

'54

;
:'

'55

UGHTING mE FUSE

THE DESCENT INTO WAR

Wo! havo! o!xptrimwl tho! most tragic day in the short hiltory oftho!
nroJ dem()(ratic outhoritits, a year cifitr thr victory of young
dtmofrary in Croatia. Wto artjacing, I may say, tht btginning of
optn warfarr agains/ /ht Republic ofCroatia.

He identified the enemy: dogmatic Communism in the JNA had

united with Greater Serbian imperialists to defeat democracy and

establish 'Serboslavia'. He blamed the Government ofSerbia for send

ing its officials into Croatia to ann and prepare the republic's Serb

call

minority for military insurrection. He sounded a cautionary note,

ing on the Croatian people to be patient and not to answer the calla
of those [extremist Croats] who want spontaneous resistance'. But he

acknowledged the radicalizing effect that Borovo Selo had had on

public opinion with a final call to arms, promising that if all Other
means of securing Croatia's freedom were to fail, then Croatia would
mobilize to defend 'every inch' of its territory:

Ifthat nud arim, ifone will have to stand up with arms in ones
hands and difend tho!freedom and sovereignty ofthe Rtpublit of
Croatia, thm we shall do so. We shall embark on this only wlun
t'Wry othtr avtnue is closed. But we will not shy awayfrom sac
rifiul ifnud be. Rut assured that the Croatian govtrnmtnt, tht
Croatian Asumbly and I personally, will lakt all tht mtaJUTtS
ntussaryfor difending thtfreedom, dem()(racy, inttgrity andS(J1J
",ignty ofllu Repllbli( ofCroatia.
With the precedents of both Pakrac and Plitvice already "",bl;sh..i
the Army moved into Borovo Selo. By the afternoon of 3 May,

formed an rmoured ring around the village, guarding, in particular.

the approach road from Vukovar.

The Serbian Government responded tersely and swiftly to

Tudjman's open accusation that it was fomenting insurrection

plotting war. 'All responsibility for the bloodshed in Borovo Selo liel

with the competent bodies of the Republic of Croatia, in particuIat

reasoD
the Croatian Ministry for Internal Affairs, which without
.
carried out an organized attack on Borovo Sdo.' The
Government was attacking not just individuals, it added darkly. but

'the entire Serb nation', Serb leaders grew increasingly critical of

federal authorities - in particular the Army - for failing to defend
Serbs outside Serbia.
The Federal Presidency met on 4 May, under pressure from
'56

.r.er snt'ak e r,
:ut

.
ent and on Serbian television. It
In the Serbian Parliam
e the twO 51'des 'In d'tsputes
separat
to
ne
interve
to

'.' -ed the JNA

there were many such conflins.
5erbs and Croats. And
w

I...
t een
, IOns 0r
"Iay, Scarcdy a day passed without further intImat

g hout JV
ro u
'"
.
ll
'
e
h
bomb
a
:
mont
owmg
the 10
t was ," ,"gulf Siavonla
,h, waf t a
l
V
OVC'I
nk
from
a
owner
cafe
of a house in Lipik;
ront
dcstrO}'Cd rhe r
0r
;
a
ga
block
at
road

mn
ked
.
by unidenrift.e mas.
was shot dead
Jek
I
S
O
ncar
g
d
m
b
Erdut,
U
m
l
ation
l
-' , police administr
forry anackcu
'
.
were drowned out by those prophesymg
tion
modera
of
Vi
had
worked
who
ir,
ss.
Reihl-K
readine
y
militar
doo I: d counselling
trust between Serbs and Croats began
, mon,hs to promote mutual
.
lor
Ie was
. He grcw convmccd at h'IS li'
hopeless
was
task
to see that his
a
transler
I'
lor
ovac
M"
B
k
'
, to
J
0
lruster
Pohce
asked
He
, dWger.
In
'
,
save me. l kn.ow the situation
'Please
vac:
Boljko
begged
He
Zagreb.

We are lOSing control down

hfe.
my
lose
to
going
am
I
well.
very
here
.
them, Kir told
here.' Hardline HDZ activists had taken over, among
Boljkovac, Gojko Sm:ak. They had consistentl undern.ed his effors
to find a rapprochement with the Serbs. BolJkovac Intnally told Kir

aurhonz

"

h
t

not to be 'childish', then, in late June, finally recognizing the threat to

Kir's life, he agreed to withdraw him to the Croatian capital. But it
July, a day
was too late. Kir was murdered by HDZ extremists on
before he was due to leave Slavonia. It is a striking commentary on the
direction in which Croatia was moving during those crucial weeks
leading to the outbreak of full-scale war, that Kir's moderation, his
conciliatory approaches to the Serbs, had cost him
life, while

his

Sak's activities, stoking tension and provoking conflict, were to win

him one of the most prominl!nt places in Tudjman's government. As
Minister of Defenc. he became one of the mOSt powerful figures in
the republic.

The events of spring

were a watershed. After MilokviC's secret
March meeting with Tudjman at Karadjordjev both leaders decided
o,
that Yugoslavia was finished,
and that three, or more, successor states
would emerge. Where
the Serb and Croat leaders differed was on the
question of which
territories would fall to which new state. Croatia's
war of independence,
when it came, was not about the Croats' right to
that had already been acknow
ledged by Miloevic. lt was about
w Ic h territo
Croatla
nes
' would be allowed to take out of YugoslavIa.
,
10
W
t
ar of
was to be a land-grab berween two mutually, though
ac y, recogr
uzed new states.
Both presidents
pIayed a double-game, saying
for pubhc,
'
,
'
one thlllg

1991

"'hcde;

191

'57

THE DESCENT INTO

LIGHTING THE FUSE

and especially international, consumption; and doing the op

.
Tudjman repatedly S!rssed the inviolability of the repubJjc
.
?ers, deandmg recogmtlOn of Cratian sovereignty within its exist
l g frontlers; but he secretly conspired throughout to deny the
right o BosniaHerzcgovina. Milokvic, similarly, argued that
rcpubhc sought to defend the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia

'

whole; but he was already pursuing a plan to let the Croats as

Slovenes go, but to keep Croatia's Serbmajority areas

Yugoslavia - and by force if necessary. By March, Miloevic was

loncr for Yugoslavia; he was for what amounted to a Greater Serb'
as h1s man on the Federal Presidency, Borisav Jovie, was later to admi

Miltlfroic and I decided we would limit our military activities to

thost territories in Croatia where the Serbs wanted to remain
with us. We wouldprottct thl'mfrom the Croatian authorities and
from the Croatianparamilitary units. We knew we would have to
withdraw the Army from those parts which obviously couldn't
remain in Yugoslavia, and to close our eye.! asfar Q1 the arming of
the Serbs was concerned.

But Plitvicc was a turning-point of sorts, one that the Croatian

leadership still did not see, or, if it did, did not admit to. According to
Jovic:

Tlu arm>: slarttd 'honng its opinion. It realiud that tlu only
role that 1/ had, at that lime, WQS toprettct thatport ofYugosllltJ;a
wlure tm people saw it as their (lV.1n army, where they did not
haw tofight with thepeople. Basically, that iJ tmline ofthe Serb
erritory in Croatia. From that time onwards. we startedprepar
Ing for the duision [of the Federal Presidency) thaI was to be
dopte.in May - the decision to Ust tht army 10 protert the Serbs
ifJer betWl'en the Croat and the Serb
III Krajlna, and to act as a bl
sidn.
In Knin, the cradle of the rebellion, the intervention of the Army
was, at last, a sign that the Serbs would get the support they needed
from Belgrade. Milan Martie could now prepare for a war in the
knowledge that the ]NA, under the guise of defending Yugoslavia, or
of separating the two warring national factions, would protect hit
rebel territories from the legally-constiruted authorities of the
Croatian Republic. The mutual suspicion that had existed \)<lweeD
'58

WAR

n to evaporate. Martie admitted

L _Is and the JNA bega
'
h J{r.oJ..lOa reI.)<;
.
ed:
c
, ,
relationship With the JNA hang

er Pli(VIce,
that, aft

his

thejNA at that limt, but IpeNonal/y

There were COlitacts with
' ;11:.
!uerent to what
waJ prrtty md
rt;cipat( in that. Thl'jNA
1 n '!
d'd
the JNA
among
lJ
. '<7 a""rtfi'
patrio
Srrb
a ftw
om
.
'.
wasgef
was ml
L ppmmo r
C
roafla
thai
saw
evu
Mtlof
when
.

.IT.
.
.,.
..
OpI un. {But}

tnlltary
Krajl1la, ht rmstd hIS VOIU Ihm, and m
toward.!
'f)(
ssi
a
r<7urt
ling
. .o..
our dt.tenu.
J saw .It
.
r.
s ga'l.lt /IS support, wiapollS fior
v
..,
(ertam wa
/e In
peop
so
a
'
d
'd
an
t,
II
.
our
on
wert
thai
nnel
TSo
pl'
A
""
commg.. p"
prtpaefor war. It ment we would be
po/ice ,;rcles, gOl signolJ 10
logutl: .and matenal htJp. [t (.ame
getting weapons, and other
m mtllttlry offiurs ho wert nIh"
jromjNAgarrisons neabY,fro
htlp we art la//l.Ing about came
The
Yugoslavs or Serb patriots.
Serbia as many would like to
from
not
,
nearby
jromjNA barracks
ses
nearby.
ehou
war
many
put ;t. There were

among Belgrade's foreign corre

It had become a standing joke
in the English language, to
spondents that there were too tew ways,
that Yugoslavia had
say 'pulled back from the brink'. It had seemed
e and pulling back.
precipic
spent more than a year approaching the
Yugoslavia so fre
rom
f
es
despatch
The phrase had turncd up in news

quently that, on newsdesks all over the world, editors began to suspect
their correspondents in the field of crying wolf. But, by the end of
May, as the country entered the full heat of high summer, there was
little to joke about. And there would soon be no more pulling back.

1 Serbs WC: forty-six r cent ofthe popub.tion, CrootS thiny-six r cent.

2 Vuiljcvic

was furious and s(:r:lmed accusations at Mesic; MesiC

screamed back, enjoying, for once, the upr hand. 'I am your Suprcnlc
Commander: he ydled, citing, to Vasiljevic's irritation, his membership of the
Fe?er.U Presidency, 'and I order you (0 sit down'. The two then sat down and
Joyed a m.a1 of beans together, along with the Federal Interior Ministcr
.
u
t
Gallln and the Croatian Interior r-,'! ioister Josip Boljkovac . Before
eallng BolJkov-ac hastily swapped plates with Granin, explaining to Mesic as
they rove together back to Zagreb afterwards: "They might have been trying
lson me!: 'What if they were trying to poison me?' Mesic asked him.
oac replied: 'Well, Stipe, there Olre casualties in every war!'
FinanCIal Timts, 27 Jun e, 1991
.
4 It
was the stntegy of Croatia's Interior Ministry to extend and strellj.,tthen
.
il

network of
. particularly
1:
.
.III Scrbpouce
across tIIe republIC,
stallOns
.
.
popUIated areas Th
{ be StaI
esc WOIl I I
.
le d b\' rhc officcrs recrUIted smce the
.
cJe t ons,
..
.
(l
as part afTUd" ffians campaIgn to de-Scrbl:lm1.e the CrOOltlan pollee
J

01IT

'59

LIGHTING THE FUSE

force. It explains why so many of the conflicts, in the months thu led to
outbreak of full-scale war, a:ntred on the control of poia:
l stations.
5 Croatian Deputy Interior Minister Ivan B rezak, on Croatian

30 March, 1991.

Degoricija had replaced Joot as one of the deputy interior

isters. Jurie \ViS sacked, blamw for the ca.suallies at Plirvice.
7 See Chapter Seven ofthis book 'The Remnants ofa SI''"gh"",,1 "''"PI.:
8 Belgrade Radio, 31 March, 1991.
9 This was much to Milokvi('s fUr)" who later told Babic: '
dismiss that fool [Martie]?' Martie was, however, later t0 t', ,
loyal lieutenant in an internal battle between MilokviC and
Mi1ev, trying to asse" contTol over Knjina, changed alliances
times.
6 Slavko

,:, ,:1,,:!,

Radio, 2 April, 1991.

Northern Ireland, whi h is not mainland Europe, or the
Colonels' coup, whi ch was not a war, or the SOlliet invasions

10 Zagreb

11 Excluding

Greek
Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
12 Zlatko Kramarie, Mayor nf Osijek.
13 One ofSuhk's companions on that night B ranimir Glavu later boast-
ed that Subk had given him a good thick flack jacket as a reward for his
ticipation. Suak himself, though never publicly admitting his role
affair especially after becoming a minister in Tudjman s ?"'m'""",
it obliquely in 1992 when, during an election rally, he demonstrated hit
nationalist credentials by boasting that he had fIred the first shell against the
'aggressors'in eastern Slallonia.
14 The figures were announced by President Tudjman. Both the Belgrade
and Zagreb press initially reported inaccurate figures; no two newspapen
agreed on a death toU.
15 ViUl1ik, 7 May, 1991. The claim is ridiculous, and not supported by IIIIJ
evidence. But it is typical, in tone and content, of the reporting wl'i;"h'"
dominate the Croatian news media and inflame opinion by spreading temx.

to

11

,o''''''i

'

,",'":d

OF TH E DEAF
CONVERSATIONS

andered
The Last Chance Squ
MarjulIt 1991

ug
Thm

and summer the leaders of Yugoslavia's

.
hout that spring
"
"
to try to resoIvc theu
Id a series of meetings
.
republics hc
.
presof
ing
cucus
travell
A
the furore of the country.
"
erences aboUt
"a
'dcocy met to
.
"
=
to the road. The Federal Pres
took
"
S
t
mmi
u
.
" s
"d nnal
C
. ... - the republics prcsidents, and foreIgn and delcnce
.
cxtended seSSJQ..
0
n at
ers.
b
mem
offiCIO
ex
eight
the
as
well
s "In attendance as
.
. .
minIster
" "
C
the
k
a
nom
ers
!Ong
decls
leadm
the
all
ions,
occas

least half-a-dozen
.
"
10 one room, to
ace,
face-to-f
together,
gathered
were
.
enore country
the
via. Each time, the main players used
"
'doISCUSS'the fumre ofYugosla
"
.
pOSitIOns
elf
grievances and reassert th
opportuIII"ty to reiterate their
.
progress
no
d-take,
no gIve-an
There was no negotiatIOn to speak
ed
r
e
high-p
the
ismissed
?
Croatia's President, Franj Tucijman,
the deaf . They were Yugoslavtas last
gatherings as 'conver:ations
and missed opportuntty to aVOId war.
The rock on which the discussions foundered, ttme and agam, was
'

'

of;

the stark contradiction that quickly emerged beMeen twO central arti
cles of the Helsinki Final Act: the commitment to the self-determi

m.tion of nations; and the principle of the inviolability of borders.

Unity is the holy grail of modem Serb nationalismj all Serbs in a
single state. Milovie did not dispute the right of the Croats or the
Slovenes to secede. But he insisted that the Serbs of Croatia had the
same right to secede, in turn, from Croatial, and that the break-up of
Yugoslavia would necessitatc a redrawing of the bordcrs1. The inter
nal borders ofYugoslavia had been drawn in
Despite the failure of the presidential roadshow to find common

1945.

ond, Slovenia, closely followed by Croatia, strengthened its nego

t1.atl.ng position by forging ahead with independence preparations. Its
fe ndum, in December 1990, had
produced an overwhelming vote
r:
for IOdependence. On 19 May, in the highly-charged emotional
atmosphere of the
aftermath of Borovo Se\o, Croatia held its referen
dum. The result
was a foregone conclusion
more than ninety per
ent for what amounted
to outri ght secession). But Croatia had prob
ms that were nOT
shared by Slovenia, and problems which made the
roats
take the road to independence
with more caution, and less

re

,6,

S OFTHE DEAF
CONVERSATION

LIGHTING THE FUSE

haste: the Krajina Serbs boycotted Croatia's referendum; there

polling stations in the territories they controlled.
As Serb and Croat leaders spent the months of
summer articulating mutually-incompatible visions,
future to each other, it was clear to the leaders of the c n
nationalities that, if Slovenia and Croatia seceded, they would he
as marginal peoples in a rump Yugoslavia in which the Serbs
enjoy an ovenvhelming numerical superiority, In the summer
Bosnia's President, Alija Izetbegovic, and his Macedonian
part, Kiro Cligorov, breathed temporary new life into the
presidential summits. They proposed what became known
'asymmetrical federation' as a modd for the counrry's <on"i""...O:
This formula envisaged Serbia and Montenegro as the hean
Yugoslav federation (or confederation); Bosnia and Macedonia
semi-detached, but constituent republics; and Croatia an
exercising as much sovereignty and autonomy inside the o
tion as they saw fit. In this way, Izetbegovic and Gligorov
both the Serbs' desire for a single state, and Croat and Slovene
rations to sovereignty could be accommodated. When the
presidential summit rolled into Sarajevo in early June, the
gained the temporary support ofboth Miloevi and T djman.
u
But its terms were obscure. It was a constitutional plan
that wu
things to all republics. That was both its appeal and its d
Slovenes played their pari in the scuppering of the plan by
in the Ljubljana Parliament on 12 June, less than a week after
lzetbegovic-Gligorov plan had ignited a flicker of hope that the
stitutional stalemate might break, that their preparations fo, in,d,p"':
dence would be completed by the end of the month. Tudjman
already declared that, if Slovenia seceded, Croatia would not stay
day longer' in Yugoslavia,
On the same day, 12 June, the presidellts of Serbia, Croatia
Bosnia gathered in Croatia's second city, the ancient port
the Dalmatian coast, at a meeting thaI had bee
and the purpose of which was to discuss the
!
'
plan, But by the time the meeting took place, neither
,
more powerful neighbours wanted to discuss his proposal.
Slovenes, Tudjman and Miloevic were already tOO far down the
they had mapped out for themselves. Despite an official Tanjug
of the meeting, which recorded that the maximum degree ofop,,,,,,..'
and goodwill was evident in the talks', hetbegovic later admitted
he had had to keep 'forcing' the other two to address themselves to

!;:;

;:
""",lliDJ

;;

\:;; :

when, all along, all Tudjman and

confo'd"'rion plan
rical
ia.
met
ation of Bosn
...,."
-,..d'scU
.
I SS as the cantoniz
'c wanted to
zant
cogni
y
fuU
yet
not
but
ted,
MiloV1
dejec
baCk 'O S",,)'evo
' the word 'canton' had not
l:z.etbegoVi' c went
to t,ake place, He said
out
was ab
' d that the ethhe admltte
but
of what
nce
prese
st not m his
lea
at
,
d
use
been
been presem 'between the Imes', In
r h'Is republic had
o
n
"
d
.
io
. ns,
IV
nle
iS
l Ud'Jman delegatlo
vic and
d'Iscusse.d, by the Miloe
fact, \.t had been
lines but behind his back.
not between the
'
.
presidential caravan was the public face ofthe illW
h
ile the uaveiiing
the

C YugosIaVla,
itutional furure lor
m ' '" .'gree a const
aimed
talks
ofbi-lateral
fated atte P ave
l
;
series
a
held
e
Croats alld SI n...,, n priva '
,
These had
e from the federatIOn.
escap
'oint
)
their
ng
.l:
nat
l
_
at CO_OIUJ
d cautl. n.
selle
coun
hs,
mont
early
the
in
had,
begun in 1990. Croatia
the
Croatian
e
becam
later
who
i,
Biland
' advisor Duan
.
l1udJmans
g, at
h
sue
meetin
one
d
bere
remem
de,
Belgra
in
deputy representative
on a
ang
'H
.
to
d
h
walt,
e
nee
t
Kucan
upon
ss
impre
to
which he tried
rest
the
stage,
stage by
b. Bilandtit told Kucan, 'lf you take it slowly,
.
roatla,
C
as
U
we
of us can come along - Bosnia and Macedonia, as
s;
Slovene
the
for
easy
Wait for an anti-Milosev1 coalition.' But it was
plain
it
made
dy
a1re
had
t

they had no Serb population, and Milokvi

.
that Serbia would not fight to keep the Slovenes In YugoslaVia. In
April, Slovenia and Croatia signed a joint defence agreement, promis
ing murual assistance and the sharing of intelligenceS, Tudjman was to
renege on the agreement the day that the JNA rolled across his terri
tory and into Slovenia.
The Slovenes had left the Croats far behind in almost every
respect. Mter their December referendum, the Slovene Government
had embarked on a six-month plan to prepare the legislation and the
executive orders that would enable the country to implement full
independence by the summer of 1991. By J\me, they were ready. On
5 jun:, three days after the Tudjrnan-Milosevit-lzetbegovic meeting
1Il Split, the Slovenian and Croatian leaders met. The meering
revealed to the Slovenes just how unteady the Croats were. According
to Bavr=ar:

'

'

Ths
i muting was orgalliud 10 (o-ordinal( all the thingslor Ihe
26th ifjllne, At thaI moment
we decided that we will do if
together on the
25th or 26th, We got to Banski Dvori, alld
Tudjman was there, and his
m illisters, We told him what we
woulddo with the (Ustoms,
the folia, airports, boulldaries. Thty

E DEAF
CONVERSATIONS OF TH

LIGHTING THE FUSE

wru slmelltd to Stt the lewl ofour organization.

The Croats, whose referendum had been held only the
month, had not even begun their preparations for full "'"b...
Tudjman, embarrassed by the disparity, pompously tried to
his republic's unreadiness. Rupel remembered Tudjman, even at
late stage, still bluffing his way through the meeting.
Wr rxp!ainrd to Tudjman tat wr had our nrw laws ready, and
.
hat wr would Idlt to co-ordmatr the datesfor our dularatiolU uf
mdrpendena, hrcallJe TlIdjman saidthat they 'WIlnted tf) go out at
the Jame time as us. This waJ a more or len suret agrummt. Tiu
deadline 'WIlS 26 june. We decided to do it on 25 junr, and
Tudjman said that wr should do it on the same day at the same
time. Thr Slovenr ddrcation was surprised ahout thtfoet that tIN
Croatian government did not have anything ready. There war
olmos! a conflict brtwun Tuqjman and ont of his ministers,
.
FranJo Gregurit, breause Tudjman said 'Wt have roerything
rtady too, all thr laws, rotrything is pupared'. And Grtgurii said
'No Mr Pusident, this is not trur'o
The (wo sides agreed to co-ordinate thdr declarations or;o"
dence. But the Slovenes left the meeting convinced that the
head
d wi 'h
couJd not be trusted. Slovenia would press a
\
unilaterally, regardless ofCroatia's readiness, and \
:
,: ,; u
ramifications their secession would have on the rest ofYugoslavia.

:::;;:::

On 2 1 June, four days before Croatia and Slovenia were to

their independence, the US Secretary of State, James Baker occupied with the need to deliver his promise to bring peace to
Middle East in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm through Belgrade. The GulfWar, in the words of the ,h,'n-p.,.a
George Bush, had established the United States as the 'respected
undisputed leader of the free world'. All sides in Yugoslavia'S
set great store on Baker's visit; all sides wanted to see him. He
eleven separate meetings in a single day: one \vith each of
republics' presidents, and a series with the Federal Government,
whom the international community were still putting great faith.
l was
common with the governments ofwestern Europe, US poicy
the unity and integrity ofYugosJavia should be preserved.
The content ofBaker's meetings remain a matter of great

give the respective leaders about what

What signals did he
ers
y
contrO 'states would tolerate? According to Baker's own recoUec-L
rh, Ull1ted
CJean' st about 'Its
eady d-c
United States was au
day, the
.
..
oon5 of rhe
prevennng war
chances of
.
I should go and try andput down a
The qutS,Ion was whether
I Ihtrt was
thought would happm if
we
at
o/wh
"u will,
, 1
I y"
"er,
mar
but wefilt
nal'lJ(
rnt
We
wrr
k.
brea
t/III
p((lc
'a
anry.'thing other thaI
t even
ed
ofno
a((us
d
be
woul
we
t
r
rffo
the
make
h , ifWt didn't
littlt
had
wry
wr
that
willing to try. So knowing/lI11 wdl
ort.
rff
wrnt and made thr
(honer ofsu((ttding, wr

n;

Kocan in Belgrade, and asked him

Baker met the Slovene President
up the idea of independence. He
give
whether Slovenia was ready to
recognized onlypeaceful self
Act
Final
ki
warned him that the Helsin
He said the United States
force.
by
on
sec:essi
not
detennination, and
of independence. Kui::an
tions
declara
ral
unilate
ize
would nor recogn
and that it was not pos
far,
too
gone
had
things
that
told him frankly
been.
had
it
as
ia
lav
Yugos
e
preserv
to
sible
When he met the Serb leadership, he told them that the US would
continue to press the Slovenes and Croats not to go ahead with inde
pendence, but that, equally, the US wouJd not countenance the use of
foree to prevent declarations of independence. These were the same
mixed signals that the US Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren
Zimmermann, had been issuing for months. United States policy on
leCession, during the crucial months that led to war, was neither one
thing nor the other: support for Yugoslav unity, yes; use of force to
preserve tht urity, no. And to the Slovenes and Croats: support for
Ielf-determlOatlon, yes; unilateral declarations of independence
mould negotiations fail, no.
Baker's meeting with the Montenegrin leader, Momir Bulatovit,
must ave made him yearn for the familiar and relatively simple
dynamics ofthe conflict in the Middle Easl. Bulatovic said Baker was,
.
ac the ourset of the
meetmg, 0bvlOusly
'
confused about who he was
talk.ifig to and why.
Wn lme tM rBa"er
L
I Salt' I 'll
J. e me what YOII want/rom fill.
He, "'
I (onfused about hI)'W to starf the fOllvrrsation with me,
lin I they brought h'
book. l lookrd into it to sa
1m h'IS brh
' ,'.llllg
r.
.
whot It
. about Mon
'
.
sard
tel/rgro. [ peekrd mto
It alld there Wl'rt
jllst ...
.._ 1mel:

'""'"
'

ONS OFTHE
CONVERSATI

LIGHTING THE FUSE

- tIN Jmallm rtpublic in YugoJla'/.lia.

- a poJsibtefifth '/.I01rfor Mesic.
Milosevic's pJacemen on the Federal Presidency had blocked
automatic Succession of Croatia's representative Stipe Mesic as
dent of the country's eight-member collective-head-of-state
.
the constitution Mesic should have become Yugoslavia's p

May. By the time of Baker's visit, technically the c

already been without a president for six weeks. It is a measure

15

.,

little Baker understood abouT the distance Yugoslavia had

travelled that he still thought mat securing me succession of
would somehow defuse the crisis. Bulatovii: continued:

I said I'd be happy ifMr MesiC gell t1eclrd bUI I'm not going to

'/.Iolrfor him. Bak.er Jaid ifwe didn't '/.Iotefor Meric, there 'WOuld
be agreat (risi! and war would flart. [ agreed with him thai war
would Jlar!, bill I didn't expect Merit's t1tC1ion would SlOp it.

Baker's meeting with Federal Prime Minister Ante M"k<>l

remains me most difficult to fathom. According to me
Defence Minister, Admiral Branko Mamula, who was
Kadijevii:'s most trusted advisor throughout the crisis that 11 to
war, Baker told MarkoviC to 'wrap the Slovenes gently on the
les'. Markovic has been silent about his role in the run-up to
ten-day war; neither man has confirmed that the phrase was
Baker's visit took place five days before the outbreak of war.
that day, two ofTudjman's closest ministers discovered,
sonal contacts in Belgrade, which neither ever divulged
the Federal Army had decided to respond to Slovenia's
declaration by force. Duan Bilandzic remained in Belgrade after
Baker meeting. An old friend, whose identity he has never
warned him of the invasion plan. Bilandzii: went back to
immediately. and wokc Tudjman shortly after midnight on the
ing of 22 June. Bilandtic says he raid Tudjman that the Anny
planning to attack Slovenia in five days time. Tudjman, according

si,';';;;;
used.

BilandziC. laughed and said: 'Oh, DuSko, don't worry so. I have
agreement with Kadijevic and Milosevic. TIley won't break it.
impossible. Kadijc\jc has promised that the Army won't intervene
politics.' Bilandtic then told Tudjman the name of his source
Belgrade, an officer 'very high up' in the]NA. Tudjman
luuugh
to believe him. Stipe l'vlesic, party to the conversation ;

DEAF

left him despondent.

d an's complace1]cy

lence. Tu .
._...A by in si
a lifetime in the
J
ter Martin Spegelj, after.
.
ffUUU . an's Defence M ml
nt"'rsonal contacts In Belgnde. He,
.
1'udJrn
retamed cIandestine r

" :
' VISit
JNA. had also
s on the day 0fBakers
the Army', plan
of
rned
toO, lea

H
' Rn
l eW lhejJV
fAl was goillg
Belgrade, some 0).them were Sabs.
intelligmer sourus ill

to (I/I(lck.jive days before independence.

[had
n then phoned Tudjman and
ents, and Kilto
yed Ihe s,()'I)

.
fi'
i
.
I not
:r'
1 111)m
. r. u.1'7'
d' an sat'd
euJedJ1re Y' " ol g fojoin us 111 (ommOTl dIJen
" was 'II is 1I0t in Ihe Croatian interest fo
,,g"
. ,
.
ju
'i.
M.
.
nta lind SerbIa.
Sl()'IJ(
een
hetw
W(lr
a
m
.

re
t1je
mt
.

the two presid.ents had come

the agreement
'ous that
.
.
.
'
n
Kufan was fu
rated at theu meeting In
re-Ite
and
r
earlie
onths
m
.
t
.
wO
to only ,
'
! less than a week
. ns Presidential palace at Banski Dvor
I UdJma

C
'
roatlan prest' dent. '] raId h'1m
, was now being flouted by the.
ler,
earI
Kl i:an said later.
this was very shortsighted,' l

replied thai
Sooner or later IheJNA would OPPOlt Croatia. But he
t opening
inwl'/.l
uld
w
it
if1i(/
(o

if Croalia Joined an armet!

nol ready
were
tINy
saId
He
.
lamory
own
armed (onflict in their
J11d
Bul
e.
r
t
all
iJ
whirl,
armJ
enough
ha'/.lt
didn't
jorwarand
u..
him thai helping S/O'/.Itnia is the SlInle thmg os deftndmg Crootla.

to the
in
stages
closing
adviee of his Defence Minister, Spegelj. It was the
bitter
in
resign
to
soon
the dispute between the two. Spegelj was
protest against a president whom he blamed for blindly leading his

On the very eve of war, Tudjman was still paying no heed

country into a war without first preparing an adequate defence.

1 Though, of course, MilokVic never conceded the same right of national

self-determination to thc Albanians of KosO\'O or the Muslims of Serbia's

i sue of Serb rights to

Sandtak region. l\'lilokviC had risen to powcr on the s
rule KosovO's Albanians, even though Albanians comprised more than ninety
per cent of the province's populatio
n.
.
livc2 !hIS, despite the f:I.Ct that only about 200 CKXI of the Serbs in Croatia
d In the Serb-majority
.
reas, about a quarter of Croatia's total Serb minor
'ty. Most of Croatia's Serbs
.
lived in Croat-majority areas that Miloevic had
.
no lnte t1on
of 'defending'.

mety-thrce per cent of those voting supported turning Croatia into a

e lg and .
tndependent country, with guaranteed cultural autOnomy for
'
the er
and members of olher nationalities in Croatia'. To a second

,6,

UGHTING THE FUSE

question, asking whether Croatia should remain part of a federal Yu,,,,,...

,
92 per cent voted 'No', The rum-out was 82 per nt,
4 In August 1990, the Krajina Serbs had held a referendum of
in which more than ninety-nine per cent, according to the o".";
to stay in Yugoslavia,
5 According to the Croatian Defence Minister Martin Spegelj, who
tiated the agrtement vith his Slovene coumerpaT(Janez Jarga.

",..;:

pART THREE:

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

12

EUROPE HAS DAWN ED'

'THE HOUR OF
july 1991
Slovenia's Phoney War, jUlieous vote ofits
. declared ifselfindependent by a near unanim
.
lovenia
I. :
rally maJUng
1991,
umlate
June,
25
of
evening
" amenf 0n the
.
Puu
' I
... to the international borders 0f Europc Since y_;uta .
C ang"s
t h
l
me fi
dence that day.
all>V declared indepen
.
Cman.a _._' ecesslOn2.
es had pre?ared weII lor
Sloven
the
,
Croats
Unlike the
,
.
indpendence leglslalon with executive orders,
They ha,.l backed their
would, on the 26
that
bodle

creating and staffing the Independent

c, and the port
traffi
air
the
,
June assume control of the borders
and
Hungary, they
Austria
Italy,
with
s
authrities. At the frontier
and replaced
rds,
and
flags
noticeboa
symbols,
removed the Yugoslav
Republic of Slovenia.
nt
independe
new
the
of
heraldry
them with the
They ordered federal police and customs officials off the premises.
They also began to place border posts along the 6oo-kilometres fron
tier with neighbouring Croatia, an act that the Federal Government
had, the previous day, declared illegal.
At the formal celebrations the next day, Colonel Milan
AWntijevicJ was, by his own account 'in no mood to drink
Champagne'. Conspicuously, he had been one of the few member of
Parliament" to vote against the declaration, and, though the other MPs
Ircpt handing him brimming glasses, and Slovene TV crews tried to
atch him sipping discreetly, he was the only member not celebrating.
It was to be Yugoslavia's last day of formal peace, Aksentijevic knew U did the Slovene leaders
- that the Army had been placed on alert.
Belgrade pre-empted Ljubljana. On the same day as the independ
ence ,declaration, the Federal
Parliament met, and agreed not to re
e Slovenia's secession5. Milokvic was playing a double game.
lZ
one hand he was encouraging Slovenia to secede on the other
han Belgrade was
accusing it of unilateral secession'. The Federal
,
rnment, headed by Prime Minister Ante Marko also met and
vic
lIIued a deeree 0f en
. "
orcement,
fi
the
purpose
the
of
which
has been
_.L.'
Jeet of flerce
MIO
.
.
controvers
y
ever
SlOce.
Without
The
a
was
JNA
.
Supreme
.
Commander and the state without a preSident
because
Serbia had block.ed
the normal rotation of Croatia's Stipe Mesic to the

'"

OPE HAS OAVVNED'

EUR
'THE HOUR OF

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

head of the Presidency on the grounds that he had publicly declared

himself against Yugoslavia. The decree's terms were clear enough. .
It,
ed
. the Defence Ministr and th Imerior Minister to 'dep .
empower
.
the frontIer unitS of the JNA wIth the aim of safeguarding tho s
... te
>
firontIer:
t the border-crossings _'6. ?at is less clear is what

Markovtc Imended by the decree. He inSIsted, almost immediately

.
when fighting broke our, that the decree had never been intended to
authorize the Federal Army to use force against the Slovenes.
whatever MarkoviC's motivation - almost certainly pressure from

lr we had a daily orrven

strange hlll ;n 10 r/aJI ofWl
e stafflhat ltd the oper
h
T
.
Army
ion w;lh the .
l comunicat
hourry
"f{ed to each
W
e IISl1aI

f
us.
wah
t
(onl(lc
Iy taI
>
, 'n comtant
.
atlons we" I
the operae
h
0111
a
phon
the
(nKr
g
talkm
ultimatllms:
olberWUI>ng
011.
gomg
while they were

11 ma'Ysollld

Army - two of his most senior ministers used it as the <onst;tutio,,..

authority on which to send in the tanks.
The Federal Interior Minister, Petar Gratanin, sent a request to
JNA's Fifth Army District in Zagreb7. He tOld the commander
General Konrad Kolkk (who was, incidentally, a Slovene) to p,mide
troops and transport to accompany federal police units,
barracks in Slovenia, and, from there, to the border posts to
they were assigned. Throughout that day and into the night,
.
Ko!ek, and hls deputy, General Andrija Reta, worked out
plan to bring back into federal control thirty-fives land
ings, one airport (Ljubljana's Brnik airport), and one seaport
From the beginning, Belgrade adopted a determinedly
approach to the Slovene crisis. For six months, the Federal
Minister, Veljko Kadijevic, had wanted JNA action to
together. But he did not want the JNA accused of staging a
coup. He had exercised restraint precisely because he did not want
act outside the constitution. He acted now in a way which
ered consistent with that constraint, and consistent with c
tional rule. He sought, and. he believed, he had received,
constirutjonal authority he needed for what he intended to be a
ited military intervemion in Slovenia. The orders and decrees
f h
by Belgrade on the 25 June carrie,;'h
:
':;
;
;
O
'
'
Minister. They were published in the
: fthe
l So(ialist J
by being lodged in the Official Gazette
o
ofYlIgotiavia. They were due to come into effect one day
publication therein. The Slovenes, thus, had at least <w,nrv-f",d",'"
notice that the JNA had been ordered to act.
In Elct, they had more precise information even chan
Throughout the ten-day period that Slovene leaders were
claim as their war of independence, they were in constant
Contact with the JNA commanders they were fighting
According to Igor Bavl'ar:

h"':,:

":;:::

'70

lions

>

Ihe Generals did not regard it as >a war. They

he beuin
"'. ning.
At t
> d poIICiOg actIon. A.nd, as
rced it - as a I>Imlte
ded it - and resou
Sloene authoities in advance f wht they
they informed the
mg the
accordmg to theJNA, dlsclos
- includmg,
>
.
were planning to do
rprepa
lS
at
th
lorce
'
e.
A
ta
to
k
were
precse routes that the Army Units
Slovenes
the
(as
country'
ring
neighbou
a
occupy
m o 'invade and
release its invasion plans the day before D-Day.
not
does
)
tested
p
plan that was in the event put into
That at least was Plan A, the
Plan B: the entire Fifth Military
a
had
also
effect. But the jNA
move against Slovenia. The elite
to
ready
by,
g
standin
District was
in southern Serbia, had been
Ni
rom
f
,
brigade
e
Airborn
63rd
with a military
deployed at Slovenia's Cerklje airforce base along
to take
positions
whieh
police battalion; they had precise phns about
well
TO
was
Slovene
the
that
and whom to arrest. They knew
f
invasion
the
or
provided
B
Plan
large.
and
ed
equipped, well-organiz
of Slovenia, the military defeat of the Slovene TOs, the arrest and
imprisonment of Slovene leaders and the imposition of martial law on

:
!

the republic. Plan B was never to be implemenled.

As his independence celebrations were getting under way,
President Kocan spoke to General Koek in Zagreb, and asked him
not to undertake any jNA operations in Slovenia on that day. Kutan
feared it would enrage the people at the height of their celebrations.
Kokek was able to reassure him that no action would be undertaken
that day. In fact, the plan had been laid to re-take control of the bor
der-crossings and the airport in the early hours of the following day.
On the 25 and 26 june, Plan A beg-an. A force of 400 federal police
nd 270 federal customs officers were taken to Cerklje air force base
Slovenia and, from there, by helicopters, to the various barracks in
.
ovema and Croatia, from which they were
to be desp;ttchcd> Fewer
than 2000 JNA
troops were deployed to accompany them. It was
scarcely the assembling of
an invasion force9.
>
>
Early on 27 June, the JNA began the oper,wons
whLch the
SIOvenes were late '
.
.
.
.
r .0 cI
. as the IIwaSlOn
.
occuand torelgn
.
. laractcnze
pabon of theIr
newIy independent country. The. JNA ofhccrs
.
in command of t
h e operation believed
the whole thing would be over m

'7'

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

EUROPE HAS DAWNED'

'THE HOUR OF

hours. They did not expect the Slovene territorial defence to try to
oppose them by force; and they were not equipped, or sufficiently
armed, to light a war against the Slovenes.
An anti-aircraft unit from Karlovac, in northwestern Croatia, lclt
its barracks at 1.30 a.m., tasked to reach the Slovene border by 3 a.m.
Its movement was spotted by Croatian police, who informed their
counterparts in Slovenia.
President Kocan was getting ready for bed when, by his accOunt of
the affair, he found out that JNA troops were on the move. He
been working late, on a speech.

trucks, mostly - but had not

mma deered articulated
vehicles.and cO
In
.
d them some areas, JNA armoured
orden> 0 defenthe
yet recelved .
shed blmicades as!'de and carne' d on. Tank.
I
vehicles ha ::P:a
frcks ncar Ljubljana and could be heard heading
had left Vr a.r o t Jana said he had already spoken to the second
s the l he Vrhnika barracks, General Vidmar. 'General
tow
. coardrnman
d0
then sal'd 'It was not someth'mg he
for a while, and
:
Ill
waS
r
Vidma rO1 0qr'uiet
the tanks were
k
Jana said. '1 as ed. him"Bthen' k"where
,
,
had cont
aIrport
)'. Jan,a then,
(
rm
d
after a silence, he rephe
headl. n, and' hi
ne)
Presidency
(Slove
the
that . 'II
account, said
.
,
aceordIng to ' s own
iOn
.
reSS
agg
thiS
resistance to
.
.
shou1d order armedmain
the
graVIty f the declof
aware
fuUy
rs,
playe
the
of
each
To
g seemed to last an eterOit)'. In fact,
, they h,d to take' the meetinmost
$Ion
' SI'Ience.
othese were passe{l m
and
es,
it lasted only a few minutrcm rks by saylllg
alter=
there
w.ere
at
th
bief
s

Janb concluded hi.

. ce the hlstonvo
. sacnfi
op
c
domg,
so
and,
In,
give
to
.por ,
natives: either
tJves,
aterna
twO
the
re
ese
'T
resist.
to
or
,
ndence
h
indepe
?
runity for
to deCide bcause
he said, 'now it's up to you the (Slovene) PreSIdencythere
was SIlence.
you the Supreme Commander.' And then
According to Kutan:

1 was having a shower when the phone rang. II was my chiifof

(abinet. He told me lhe tanks had left Vrhnil:a barracks {in

Slovenia} and said the war had slarted. 1 immediately mild

Gmeral Kolfek in Zagreb. but couldn'l get him. J asked to speal: to

anybodyfrom the Zagreb command, but nobody answered. J called

Ante Markovif in Belgrade. woke him up. told him what it was

about and told him he was responsiblefor the order which was
released then by Cenerol Kodijevic.

MarkoviC expressed surprise and appeared not to know what wu

happening, even though, that day, his own Covernmenl had issued the
decrees on which Kadijevic and Gratanin, as Defence and Interior
Ministers, were now acting. MarkoviC contacted the Fifth Military
Command in Zagreb and told them to speak to Kuean. The V"put)'
Commander, Andrija Reta, called the Slovene President. '
you so annoyed?' he asked Ku/::an. 'The troopS that have left the
racks are not even armed. Calm down and go back to sleeplO.' Kufan
exploded. He shouted down the phone mat he regarded the JNA inter
vention as a declaration of war against Slovenia. Rareta tried to rellSSUft:
Kocan that the Army had a limited mission - to secure the border
crossings and me airpon and no more. lftheJNA had intended to wage
war against Slm'enia, he told Kocan. it would have acted in a wholly
different way - by mobilizing all the units from Croatia and Slovenia.
Kutan went to his office. He caUed the Slovene leadership together.
and, at live in the morning, convened what must rank as one of the
most decisive sessions, and certainly the least loquacious, in Yugoslav
political history. He asked Jama, as Defence Minister, to give an
account of what was going on. Janh's report was brief. He spoke in
short dramatic sentences. The 13th (Rijeka) Corps of the JNA was 00
its way, he said. TIle Slovene TO had erected barricades - agricultural
'7'

III

are

1 b/jeve that l"IJerybody was conscious 0/how important th( deci

sion was, fflerybody had ill mind the viaims claime.d by war,
because nobody knew at that slage what kind ofwar it would be.
and/or Ixrw long it would /osl. Everybody war occupied with
fIMir own thoughts. It was a long silenet. I interrupted it by say

ing 'Does anybody want to speak?' There was silenet again. Then

1 said 'Then 1'1! speak. I suggest

war:

we

/ace thefoct that we are at

There was silence again. 'Do I take it from your silence,' Kuean
asked, 'that we have reached a consensus on this?' And that was it. The
order went out to the territorial defence units to begin resisting the
JNA. Kocan made a television address in which he announced that his
republic would 'respond with measures to this act of aggression'.
The Territorial defence unitsallhad,
said, been ordered (0 'use
weapons to .defend the sovereignty ofhe
Slove
nia'.
uslavla, after almost year of teetering
preCIpice, had, at last, plunged headlong into war.on the edge of the
Siovene temtOrt<u
' '-' dcree nce forces moved to surround the JNA bases '
a

III

'73

OPE HAS DAWNED'

'THE HOUR OF EUR

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

Sovenia. Electricity and water supplies were cut. Telephone lines Weft

dlsconneted. Igor Bavcar telephoned General Ra!:eta in Zagreb

and
, arned him not to t to resupply the barracks by helicopter. Rakta
.
did not take the Implied threat eriously. In the afternoon of27 June.

ry

Slovene forces sh?t down a helicopter over central Ljubljanal2. The

.
p l ot and mecamc on board were killed. Aksentijevic, trapped, with
.
.
h
iS troops, inSide his barracks, was stunned by an escalation he had
not expected:

I realiud that this was not a rl'lJO/t or a po/iti(Q/ demonstration,

out that it was war. I think that was the momtnt whtn we
(radltd within. We rea/iudthat they wonted to kill us, to shoot us,
that there waJ no Yugoslavia and that there was 1/0 more lift
together with them.
The shooting down of the helicopter was a rurning point in
Slovene public opinion, too, the moment when most Slovenes realized

the enormity of what their Government had decided on their

and that there was now no turning back. Slovenia declared war on

not the other way around. Slovene television 'milked' the

fliet for every ounce of propaganda value. ThroughoUT that first day, .

JNA,

dramatic pictures of the 1968 Soviet invasion

Czechoslovakia, to complement Kucan's explicit call to arms.
and Reta exchanged an angry telephone call, Ra!:eta, near to
carried

shouting at Bavcar his disbelief that the Slovenes had dared to

fire on a target so exposed and unthreatening as a low-flying
unarmed helicopter. To Reta's disgust, Bavea! appeared, as
General put it, 'triumphalist'.

The United States, after James Baker's half-hearted efforts

Belgrade the previous week, made it clear that it regarded Yugo,u..
, :
as Europe's probl em. Europe happily rose to the challenge.
1991, was a bright confident age: the twelve countries ohhe EU'"I"'.
Community were soon to become the European Union. The

European market was due to come into effect the following year
word's biest single unrestricted trading block. Integrationists
.
talkmg posItIvely about a common foreign policy, and a
. '
security policy; mechanisms were already being devised. The
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the most celebrated opponent

omnn,""c

further European integration, had been deposed less than a

earlier, her downfall this very issue. Yugoslavia, the first

'74

,,,noa "onw

age, presented the historic challenge that

ost-Cold War
of the p
a phrase that
purpose.
10 prove its singleness of
Eu
roP needed . J ques Poos, Luxembourg's Foreign Minister,
'
ac
aunt him
would h
Europe has dawned'.
of
age
e
'Th
de ared
Commun!ty ha .stated its position the previous
e uropean
ForeIgn MinIsters had agreed, on 23 June,
k. A meeti ng ofEC
dy after
unilateral declarati.ons of. idepende nce. he
d
reiterate
John
Major,
r,
.
Mmlste
Pnme
British
the
fi ht1g erupted,
ration together in
e
d
e
f
the
hold
to
is
e
z
pri
first
.
me VIew. 'The
The Twelve thn Isued a second draft statement,
Yugoslavia,' he said.
ion of consnrunonal order and respect for the
calling for the restorat
the country. The JNA, of course, had sent the
itorial integrity of
t rr
these twO objectives. The
in precisely, as it saw it, to achieve
of
Europe's Ieaders began to
Some
crack.
unity ofthe Twelve bean to .
.
. ,
as UOlty, they had
or
f
ort
p
ugoslavl
p
Y
u
s
lT
the
m
see that, inadvertently,
to use force.
given a green light to the Yugoslav Generals
of the EC troika, the
members
three
the
of
one
was
Jacques Poos

1n

e
: recognize

not

t:nks

group of foreign ministers which consists of the last, the current and
the next presidents of the cornmunityl3. He and his Dutch and Italian
counterparts, Hans van den Brock and Gianni de Michelis, sailed into
the Yugoslav maelstrom the day after war broke out. From the begin
ning, international mediators - and this was a pattern which, with few
exceptions, was to characterize their efforts for many months behaved as though the war had no underlying strucrural causes at all.

They came - in the phrase of many a subsequent mediator - to 'bang

heads rogether', as though the conflict was caused by no more than
some ill-defined, but frequently alluded to, Balkan temperament, a
south Slavic predisposition - either cultural or genetic - toward frat

ricie. They behaved as though aU they had to do was to persuade the

lligt:rems of the folly ofwar. They failed to reco nize that, in some
g
clf'Ctmstances, the resort to war was far from irrational. It was, for
PresIdent Kucans
- , Government on that fateful night a profoundly
.
ratIOnal, a d indeed the only, wa to
achieve what the wanted.
y

The trOika arrived in Belgrade on

28 June. Their first instinct was
to preserve the JfafliS qllo.. 51
. .
must revokC Its
ovema
IOdepcndence dec.
I
aratlo n'' Belln'
.,- ade must send the JNA back to barracks. The Serbs
. .,
.
must. also be pe!Suaded to agree
to MeSIC s assumptIOn of the
P"B
sldency f the Fede
ral Presidency.

.
y the tIme the
trol k
a a mve (
I 10
,Zagreb, to meet the Croat and
SIovene leade
.
rs' It
. was aIrea(
Iy late In the eve ning. President Kutan
d
.
rOVe across the
mOUntalO tracks, the m;lin highway being blocked,

tJ:

'75

OPE HAS DAWNED

'THE HOUR OF" EUR

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

mostly Y his own forces. At Tudjman's presidential palace, Bans

ki
Dvon, dinner was served at two a.m. Vasil Tupurkovski, Maced
Onia"
repsentative on te Federal Presidency, who had spent most of
the
. trying to find terms
dy In Sioveflia
for a ceasefire, arrived after mid
flight to find a room . full of between twenty and thirty Croats
.
Slovenes and EC offiCials. There was no structured discussion
ordered negtiatio. The troika had asked Kutan and Jama to re
the declaration of Independence. The Slovenes, sensing that the 'war'
was going their \fly, refused.
The troika left ncxt morning believing they had secured a three
point ceasefire agreement: the Slovenes and Croats would put their
independence on hold for three months; the JNA would return to bar
racks; and Mesic would be elected to take his turn as President of the
Presidency, thus giving the Army a Supreme Commander, and the
couny a Head of State. But the Slovenes had not really agreed to
.
anything, ad were .certamly
not ready to give up now, just as they
ensed
the
tide
turning
favourably
in their direction. The agreement,

In any case, left unresolved the question at the heart of the conflict:
that ofwho should control the border-crossings and the airport? Jan!a
.
said the results of the first troika-intervention were so disappointing
that they were not made public in Slovenia for fear that they would
damage morale, claiming that the people there had placed great f.Uth
in the idea of Europe.

TJu troika dmlandtd that wefruu all measum ofindepmdLnu

f!r ?O days, a"d to rrooM tlu proclamation ofindepmdmu tJun.
Thu was IlI/a(uplablefor us, buausL WL hadpractically 'WOn tlu
war by tlun. IfWL had a(upttd we would have 10 giw baCk all
the apons (onfiualtdfrom the INA, andgive ba(k tht airport
and everything Lise we took O'Wr.

The troika learned their first cruel lesson in Balkan realities: agree
me".ts arc not what they seem. The fighting did not stop.
.I hat weekend, international public opinion did, indeed. rum.
''c1evisin pictures, beamed around the world, suggested a plucky
little nation - in the tradition of Czechoslovakia - westward-leaning,
democratically-inclined and struggling to liberate itself from a
reactionary unreconstructed Communist monolith which, twO years
after the fall of The Berlin Wall, was still ready to use force to impose .
its will.
Markovit now distanced himself from the Army's actions in
,,6

force would be
.
e l'n th""... Government expected that
.
Slovenla. 'N. o-on development of events goes far beyond the deCl,
The
d.
ion at the
the sintat
'
"
"""d h'e sal r
rnment on. reguIatmg
e
'
r
h
ederal Gove
of
s
g that the l"Umy
L
, \0
' the
Sion
statin
was
ovic
Mark
.
' tication'
.
. own authonty.
borders.' BY Imp
'
ItS
on
acting
was
ncy,
PreSide
ctioning
absence 0f a fu
JNA's
the
of
er
a
,
memb
anovit
Negov
Marko
or lace
On 29 June, enera1
' ' e ml'Ic 'deClslv
cease hostilltIes
cr, warned Slovenia to
__I sta
,
.... . ll
....ne,
" 1 war.
a
,
f
0
CIVl
b
g
"
country. he said, was at the eglOnm
Inry' acnon. The compounded the grow' ing "ImpreSSIOn 0f an fU
L
my
' e1Y remarks
, nm
His
'
.orelgn
r
h
"
B
e
ntis
even
th
ay,
d
trained. The next
oIfth, 1-h and unres
statesean
of
s
Europ
cauTIou
most
one ofthe
5ecretary Douglas Hurd,
'
" . The time
' s 'm 51oveOia
' action
Ie er.l
mn cd
conde
to
lled
compe
felt
men,
a
keep
'
could
you
ons,
when
Comm
of
House
,
has p" sed,' he told the. . . .
S.
C1tIZ
Its
g

.
.
st2te together by shooun
Serbia finally with
On 30 June day three ofSloveOias ten-day war,
hold federal Yugoslavia
drew its supprt for the JNA's attempt to
of the constitu
defence
the
for
council
the
of
session
a
At
together.
tion, Borisav Jovie, on Miloevic's behalf, pulled the rug from under
the feet of the Yugoslav generals.
General Kadijevic told the session that Plan A (a limited action to
l ed. There were now two options
recover the border crossing) had fai
of Slovene secession; or
recognition
implication
withdrawal and by
of the Slovene rebellion,
crushing
the
and
invasion
scale
full
B:
Plan
joviC, to Kadijevic's astonishment, in effect vetoed Plan B.
JoviC recalled:

'

I remembu " thai day b((aust it was a day whm I first

announced our new policy. It was wry dear 10 mL thai Sll1'/.Ienia
had seceded, ond thai it 'WOuld bL useless to wagt: war thert:. ThL
ollly thing I thought which wt: Ihould do was to difmd thL Sub
populated territories in Croatia buame thry wanled 10 stay in
Yugoslavia. Concerning SIO'Wnia, J said thaI wt: could not use a
war option in SIQ'/.Inlia.
Ilaid we should allow SIIJ'/.Imia to leaw Yugoslavia andpull the
jNA ouf. I proposed that the Federal assemhly should recogniu
SIO'lJme seussion, and agru to a division ofasuts with SIO'IJl!1Iia,
and a territ()rial delineation.
Thert: war no diJcusrion about my proposal hecause everybody
was ahsolutely conjimd and stunned. They thol/ghl it inconuiv
a/t that ally Presidency "umber (ould talk ahout the disintegra
tIon o[Yugoslavia.
'77

EUROPE HAS DAWNED'

'THE HOUR OF

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

MileviC knew that to get the withdrawal from Slovenia that he

-..vanted, the Army had to be brought back under civilian COntrol. The
Federal Presidency, out of action since 15 May, would have to be recon
stituted. MilooeviC told JoviC to stop blocking the election of Mes as
President of the Presidency. When the EC troika flew back into
Belgrade later that day, MiloS'eviC, ever the master tactician, was able to
present this as an important concession. He told JoviC to 'pose SOme
conditions ... so that it won't appear that we accepted this so easily.'
Late into the everung, the troika sat with Miloevic in the Federal
Presidency, painstakingly trying to extract from him a 'concession' he
had already decided to make. Meanwhile the Federal Presidency
members were assembling in the same building, a few doors down the
corridor, and preparing, finally, to elect Mesic as President. Mes
himself had come to Belgrade on the understanding that his election
would now go ahead. Finally, close to midnight, the Federal
Presidency met formally, in the presence of the three EC foreign min
isters. Jovic made great show of opposing the election of Mesic. 'How
can you force us to vote for a man who has openly said he wants the
break-up of Yugoslavia?' he demanded. He asked for a formal guaran
tee that Europe would respect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.
and demanded that the troika press Mesic, as President, to work to
restore the constinnional order, including the rerum of Slovene bor
der-crossings to the Yugoslav federal authorities. His position could
not have been more disingenuous. Only hours earlier he had
announced, in the dosed session ofthe Council for the Defence of the
Constirution, that Serbia was now in favour of Slovene secession.
Every Yugoslav in the room knew it. Only the hapless troika seemed
oblivious to what was going on.
When midnight struck, the Presidency of the European
Community changed hands. A domineering van den Brock forced an
obviously reluctant Miloevic to clink glasses with him. Jacques Poos
handed over to Hans van den Broek. 'You see,' said van den Brodt,
'this is how democracy works. I will chair the meeting now because I
have taken over. Similarly, you should elect MesiC.' In return, he
promised: .... and I will make a public statement saying that Europe
supports the unity of Yugoslavia.' With a great demonstration of
reluctance, the Serb members agreed. In the small hours of 1 July.
Mesic was finally elected Head of State ofa country which, in the eyes
of those who elected him, no longer existed. A comprehensively out
manoeuvred, but determinedly optimistic EC troika declared that
further progress had been made.
'78

Slovenia before
to regain control of
.
A made one last attempt
JN
y could be
denc
PreSi
ral
Fede
The: .
ed
the newly-constitut
the wil of . t. On 2 July twenty-four hours after the electio. n
.Imposed upon I
'
had been camped III
.,
JNA armoured unit, which
a
C
MeSI
[
' d to
' , tne
o
' h Croatla
WI[
d
er
b
'
or
nias
Siove
C
10rest near.
the Koko'vski
. ts position, Just before dawn. It came under a barragc
move from l
units tying in wait. The JNA sent
ue by Slovene TO
of rocket fi
" rce. It ran 'IOtO a
' to relOlo
y C roafla
red column from nearb
on armou
d
soon as it crossed [he border. The JNA ordere
hail 0[ fiIre a
non
JNA
fled.
A
then
ne forces, who
, strikes against Slove
atr1.. wh0 had
.
lined up severa_Il "JUOlor ranM
later
officer
d
'
comrnlSslone
'
from thelr
'
a
,
'
InSigni
h
e
t
d
pe
rip
venes and
refused to fight the Slo
' d'ISguS," .
.
uniforms III
l BlagoJe AdzLC, J.NA Chle of
But hostilities had resumed. G.cnera
.
boss, the Defence MIOlster VelJko
Staff emerged briefly to eclipse hiS
lavia's armed intervention in Slovenia. He
Kadi e:vic, as leader ofYugos
ion and said the JN .",,-,ould wage war
televis
de
Belgra
appeared on
wrlclzed th federal
until it had regained control of the country. He
ill make
ew
authorities for trying to restrain his forces, and said: 'W
'.
possible
as
shott
as
is
us
sure that the war that has been forced upon
Belgrade
left
vehicles
d
armoure
A column of 180 tanks and other
heading north, cheered on by Serb villagers as it passed. The convoy
never reached Slovenia, nor was it ever intended to. Its real mission
was to take up positions near the Croatian border with Serbia for the
coming war against the Croats.
The: JNA lost the international public relations campaign. Hans
Dietrich Genscher, Germany's Foreign Minister, had chosen that day
to visit the Slovene capital; Kutan and he had been in regular tele
phone contact throughout. He boarded a train at Graz in Austria.
News ofthe fighting reached him as it crossed the frontier. According
to Bavcar:
.

Ctmcherl visit was of utmost importantt in tht senst of moral

spport btlause a"y contaa or commu1lication with majorpoliti
CIansfrom other countries meant r((ognition, giving legitimacy to
us. As regards Cmscher, thert was an incidmt whm they (Tosud
tIN tUn1lel, an alarm was soundtd a1ld tht train puIJd back to tht
Austrian side.
Our poliu in order to calm down GeflSchtrs escort, showed him
the arsmalofanti-aircraft missiles on the train. IIWa1 moughfor
them to ordn the train to tllrn back and htadfor Austria again.
'79

OF
'THE HOUR

THE EXPLOSION OFWAR

Gensehcr acsed the JNA of '.runing amok' in Slovenia. It had

order to retain its position of
forsaken all political control, he said,
power and to preserve old strucrures. Douglas Hurd joined the refrai.
He told Parliament the JNA had hastened the disintegration f
Yugoslavia. Italy said it would 'act in solidarity' (whatever that meant)
with. Croatia. a.nd Sloenia, unless the JNA respected the cease6re.
to this mternatiOnai gallery, and consciously casting himselfin
Playmg
the role of the leader of a small nation brutally crushed by a militari
tic Communist monolith, President Kutan appealed to the intern: _
tional community, saying that he expected a 'brutal attack, any time
now'.. In the Un.ited Stats, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Calborne Pell, urgc President Bsh to sup
port Slovene and Croatian .mdependence f
I Yugoslavias 'renegade
army does not cease its wanton aggression'. The Republican leader,
Bob Dole, went further, calling on Bush to 'compel' Belgrade to 'halt
its violent crackdown on democracy and human rights.'
Within two days, the Federal Presidency had reasserted control
over a humiliated JNA. On 4 July, as part of a ceasefire package, the
Presidency ordered Slovenia to hand over control of the border-cross
in to the ]NA, and to withdraw Slovene forces to barracks. It was
what the EC troika had wanted - the restoration of constitutional
authority throughout Yugoslavia. But federal Yugoslavia had ceased to
exist. The Slovenes did neither. They took advantage of the ceasefin:
to strengthen their barricades. In Ljubljana, the buses and trucks that
had actd as makeshift defences were replaced by tank traps made
from cms-crossed iron girders, and surrounded by barbed wire. It
din:t matter. e. Slovenes knew that they had international public
opinion on their Side. More importantly, they knew that Milokvif's
men on the Federal Presidency would now block further JNA inter
vention. Indeed, that day, MilmeviC's party, the SPS, formally recog
nized Slovenia's right to peaceful secession. Menacingly for Zagreb.
. was not, of course, extended to Croatia.
the same nght
m

The secession of Slovenia was, in effect, formalized at a summit meet

ing on the island of Brioni, Tito's idyllic retreat in the Adriatic, on 8
July. By the time the delegates assembled that morning, the alliance
that had been born between Serb and Slovene leaders on 24 January.
whn Miloevic and Kuhn had first agreed on the rights of the
nations to secede, now came to maturity. It was not difficult for van
den Brock, who presided, to flOd a formula on which the main play
ers could agree. At lunchtime he sent a handwritten note to the

EUR01'E HAS DAWNED'

. joint-control of the borders, a withdrawal of

Slovenes roposgand a three-month cooling off period. The three
to
ia.
ment were to be the EC, Yugoslavia, and Sloventhe
trOOpess to :

that
d
him
parn , lt amounted to tacit recognition. It .please
.
For K.
document commuOicated to his newlyonal
i
at
intern
(S
t
fi
stOfiC
a handwritten note scrawled by the Dutch
mdependet .count.rvJ was
Foreign MJIlIster.
a session of all .the e1ees at eight p.m.
Van den Broek convene
point proposal, sa)'lng: This what the EC
H resented the four-itI5'.
Only Ante Markovit, who saw dearly that
or leave
ba Take itspe
d
en ?f Yugoslavia and the death of his own
the pposal ir theher,
ted. Van den Brock, exasperated, called
efforts to hold it toget objec
ovic and Kocan together. Markovic spelt out
a break. He brought Mark
Van den Broek asked Kuan hether
his objections to the plan. table
to the Slovenes. Kocan said they
MarkoviC's ideas were accep
go back to the orig
were not. 'Very well,' said van den Brock, 'wed,will
Broek stormed
van
inal proposal.' When Markovic again objecte ng den
'What a
Kocan:
to
accordi
,
English
out of the room muttering, in
people! What a country!'
Van den Brock brokered an agreement between the Slovenes and
the Federal Presidency, under which Slovene police were granted con
trol of the border-crossings, provided all customs revenue was rurned
over to the Yugoslav federal reservesi the JNA were withdrawn to bar
I1lcksi and the Slovene forces were 'de-activated' and withdrawn to
base. The agreement imposed a three-month moratorium on the
imp/mrntQtion of Slovene (and Croatian) independence, but not on
the declarations of independence themselves. Markovic was isolated.
He had little choice but to accept the agreement and place his faith in
the three-month cooling off period and the talks which, the agree
ent stipulated, would begin on 1 August to resolve the outstanding
ISSUes between Slovenia and the federation. Markovic had been out
manoeuvred by a tacit alliance between MilokvK: and Kucan' by
whO
ICh Slovenia would be allowed to secede so that the JNA could
concentrate its efforts in Croatia and later Bosnia.
. .
" representative on the Federal
Preo.un.ng the BnOn! talks, Slovenia's
c
siden y, Janez Drnoek, approached Borislav Jovie, his opposite
. awal of
number from S rb'la, and oposed .lOform IlY a total W\thd

' .
. )
'
theJNAfrom SoveOia.
OVIC was sympathetiC. Neither man raised the
.
'
.
.
qUestIOn In the formal seSSions. '!'hcy knew that It' would never Win
the agr
eement .of the Federal Government since it amounted to
comp!ete
secesSlon, and "Its '"troduction, at this delicate stage in the

IS

,8,

EUROPE HAS DAWNED'

'THE HOUR OF

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

neotiations, could scupper the whole Brioni accord, Dmoviek

Jovu: agreed to leave the question ofJNA withdrawal for larer.
The Federal Presidency met ten days later on 18 July, and
that the Army should withdraw within three months. The four

bers under MiloeviC's control were certain to vote for this, D,

...
,",
,.
agreed to resume his place on the Presidency to guarantee the

fifth vot. It was not necssary. Ne ther the Bosnian nor the
.
.
Macedon an represe tatle raised bJectlons
to the withdrawal whco
the word temporary was Illserted III the resolution. But they all

that it was not a temporary withdrawal, and that the departure

!NA meant tha Slovenia had seceded from Yugoslavia, and - alarm.

Illgly for Croatia - hd seceded alone. Within a day, the JNA had
.
":Ithdrawn the troops It had sent to Slovenia during the ","-(1., ","::
fhct. A full JNA demobilization followed. Slovenia, as its P",,;,I...
had been sure it would be, was, after all, free to go.

But not Croatia. The only member of the Federal P"";,I,",,

vote against the withdrawal of the JNA from Slovenia was

Mesic. He knew the implications for his own country if the SI,,,,,, ,,,

gained their independence and the

Croats did

not. It was in order

avoid being left behind that the Croats had rushed through
indepen e ce declaration months before they were ready to act on

The BnOll! Accord dealt the fatal blow to Croatia's alliance

Slovenia. There was no love lost. The Slovenes said it was no

than the Croats deserved for having failed to enter the war when the

JNA had sent the tCOOps into Slovenia two weeks earlier. According to
Dimitrij Rupel:

Thrrt wtrt two fluorits abouttlu conntctions betwttn thef

o
r
mer
YugoslO'U rtpublits. One was that SIO'Utnia and Croatia were the
Siamm twins, that thry belonged together. I think that this was
also the 'lJi('W oJthe Valican and the Germans. Hit didn't ohjtct to
Ihis 'lJiew btcauJt wt' knrw that on our own, we could not haw
(onstilllli!d the rritical mass to be able to leave on our own. But
with Croatia, we were almost half0/the country.
But the other theory, which I think ;J much more true, ;s that
Croatia and Strbia are the Siamese twins. Thry had the same lan
guage, and they had the same heart, which is Bosnia
Herzegovi1/a. They are bou1/d together by Bomia.

he

Brioni Agreement was hailed as a triumph of Euro

d
iplomacy. It was nothing of the sort. It left every important item of
,8,

th cooling off period: it

nending the three-mon
.
.
. ,
.
tiOn u nresOlved, r
U1 d not
ten
eignty; It ..l'
<on
question 0f Slovemas sover
(h,
ess
r
oId not ad d
d
hOIllg on
t
put
y
every
I
la; It Simp
ofthe JNA in S10veO
fu
th
e
an who
and
Kue
C
SS
kvi
addr
to Milo
!
atic triumph belonged
I
tiOn at
edera
f
the
from
hold. The
rure
depar
nia's
Slove
ed
e
,.,.,..
Pt
hem, t)'
h
January,
,d berween
began, arguably, III Belgrade on
n""
i
t
e
b- that
me
f
.
0
s wefe
._,
.
Issue
ial
a senes
oe
CruC
....
1
on.
sessi
cy
the 18 July Presiden
.
wde nded \vith
Iayers
y
h
t
p
n,
e
b
dO
latiO
me
I
na
nano
inter
t the benefit of
resolved \vithou
red - and,
oeuv
man
had
outn
Ku(:a
and
ic
Sev
.
_,ves. United, Milo
themsg
eral Yugo laV1a. .
fed
yed
. ,
tro
des
in effect,
l led dUfing Slove la ten- ay con
soldiers wee ki
JNA
.
our
y-f
Fort
teens,
i III thelf
vast majonty were conSCripts, stll
flict of whom the
d.
s
taske
selve
mission with which they found them
be dered at the
end,
the
by
nes
held
of federal prisoners the Slove
Of the thousands
deserted or given themselves up without a
either
had
the majority
hty-seven. JN members wefe wounded.
struggle. A hundred and eig.
were III slllgle figures, most of them
Casualties on the Slovene Side
h, unaware of what was taking
throug
g
foreign lorry-drivers passin
.
-fire
cross
place and caught in the
at a11 - was crucial
Slovenia's waf - to the extent that it was a war
and Bosnia. It was
ly different to the two that followed it, in Croatia
not a war between Serbs and Slovenes, but rather a war between
Slovenes and a federal system that was already in its death throes,
killed off by a nationalism that had taken hold first in Serbia and -

i ::

24

wil

later - in Croatia and Slovenia. Serb and Slovene leaders were, by the
end ofJune 1991, indeed, well before it, united in their central objec
tives, and in their opposition to the federal strucrures by which they
both felt consrrained. Kuean and Milokvit were, in an important

sense, in cahoots; it was the JNA generals who were outside the loop.
They th ught they were defending the territorial integrity of

YugoslaVia. They did not know that that integrity had already been

fraIly trayed, and by the very man who, publicly, continued to cast
himself III the role of its principal defender. The Slovene experience

tore e heart out of the JNA. It emerged from the ten-day conflict
hated at home and abroad, vilified by the entire democratic
i
hum
world. And, crucially, when the JNA went to war in Croatia in the

weeks that followed, its withdrawal from Slovenia meant that it was
no longer able to do so in the conviction or even the pretence that it
'.
.
'
,
was defending Y
ugosIaV!as
' " IOtegnty. The JNAs metamorphoSIS, Illto
t e
y o the Serbs, progressed apace
.
V;ugoslaVl
a was al!>O rearing the heart out of the proud, confident,

h Ann

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

new Europe. Two weeks after declaring its support for the
territorial
integrity of Yugoslavia, and warning that the use of force would
bring
no reward, the Community had rurned about-face. When
Kocan's
Presidency, in the small hours of 27 June, opted for war,
it W2s
gambling that the old Yugoslav federation had no fight left in
it. The
g'.tmble paid off. Slovenia had opted for force and had won a
great
prize. It had t'.tught Europe a lesson that the peace mediators
never
once took on board - that war is sometimes not only a profoundl
y
rational path to take, especially when you know you can win,
but is
also sometimes the only way to get what you want. Despite
this,
successive peace-makers continued to dose their eyes to the balance
of
forces in former Yugoslavia and behaved as though all that was
nec
essary for peace to prevail was to persuade the belligerents of the
folly
of war. The Slovenes had demonstrated that war was not always
folly.
Belgrade knew this, too, and was to act on it in both Croatia and Bosnia..

1 Except for the reunification of Germany. The declaration envisaged few

immediate changes. There wer to be no new passports, and no immediate:
introduction of a Slovene currency. Twenty thousand federal troops, stationed
in Slovenia, were given until the end of 1993 to withdraw from the rcpublic'.
terotory. The legislation established a Slovene central bank. and transferred
customs and air-traffic control to Slovene competence. Fixed property
belonging TO theJNA was to be transferrcd to Slovene state ownership by the
end of 1993.
2 Neith er Slovenia nor Croatia called their actions 'secession'. They prc
ferred the term 'disassociation', on the grounds that Yugoslavia had been

founded as a voluntary union of nations.

3 Later promoted to General, .Aksentijcvic was to have what must rank a5
one ofthe unhappiest wars in the entirc JNA officer corps. He was no narion
alist. He believed passionately in a multi-national Yugoslavia. But, despite:
asking permission to rcrire after the withdrawal from Slovenia, he went on to
serve in both Croatia and Bosnia. He was thus present - indeed a pivotal
member of the JNA command - at the outbreak of war on three separate
occasions, in three republics; surely a unique record of service to an army tlat
WllS, by the time he left it, exclusively Serb, the antithesis ofwhat
he had spent
a distinguish ed military career promoting. His wife and family arc: Slovene,
and continue to live there - in a republic where he is still formally considered
a war criminal.
4 Aksemijevic was the MP representing the Army, which had its own rep
resentatives in each of the republics' parliaments.
5 Iem 4 of its conclusions declined to recognize the legitimacy of Slovene

secessIOn:

The Federal Government and all the Yugoslav institutions, including the
security agencies and the JNA need to continually take steps and measures
forced upon them by the unilateral acts, in prevention of the alteration of

'THE HOUR OF EUROPE HAS DAWNED'

on the frontiers of
rs, d!sruption of the border regime
.
Iav borde
.
bl'IC, ones, approrepu
the Yugos
mto
customs
lav
gos
.
nverSIOn 0r the Yu
the SFR)' co
' and to
to YugosIaVla,
belonging
'
rtv
.
....
pro
"d
/
r
'"
Uti
d
.
'
, n 0r customs
"
1
_
d
_
po'auo
u
eCISIOnS,
;
optIOns
t
umlater
a
b
m
o
c
to
I devices
_11 Iega
rsc to .;,w
mike recou
.
her partIes
'
splTl' ng to impose ones will on ot,fl'
.
e'h
.. aV!'our a
and ....
' M mtary
'"
m S'
.()'tJema,
l
mdCoI'j'lct
"" Th<Trufh abolJttINAr

rod
6 .Arrnija, Na
papc, House Belgrade, 1991, and containing the full
N
d
an
mg
'
l ewS
Pubhsh
nt orders and decreeS.
" and Federal Governme
I'l am<o nt
ar
P
I
dera
.
e
F
textS ar the.
most 0rcroan' a, and
Slovema,
of
all
co\'cced
District
'
M'I
y
7 The Fifth I Ilta:

Idisagreement about how many land border-crossings

part of northern !
8 There was

territory. At the time, the most frequently reporte?

there: werc on Slovene
e comes. from the JNAs
,n
" . TIle figure of thirty,-fiv
sev
.
...... r was twenty
num'-Ighly restncted scope' 0r'Its
nt ofwhat it called the h
u
o
c
'al
ffi
!C

u
en
subseq
Tht Truth ahout thtArmd Conflict il'l S/(J'()(nia.
27 June m sslon 10 ovenia
Ve rleased by the JNA in T/x Truth ah()ut thr Armtd
,h""'
are
es
ugur
The
9
.
(Aflfl
.
.
"jct in S!l'Iia
'
tllS
It
. h D_
' ' K""'"an's account ofthl: conversation. It IS consIstent W
10 Th1515
,
'
mterventlOn
h
JNA
'
e
"
d
t
oonSI
er
not
dId
he
that
insists
he
h
h'
account, 10 W IC
"
I Iy to c;u
- ,m h'1m,
a
n>lthmg more than a policing action. I was ttymg acrna
.
'
I ' hat therc
1' m ., the President of Slovema and trymg to exp am t
..ssmg h
adw
'r
h
_C pIans
I we ad OUIer
her pl.ns but to control the border, because

re no ot
.
'
'
d
-c
action
a
I
me
n
e
lov
an
S
to
Croatla
from
units
thc
all
moved
ave
h
we would
'
(D_
'
.
would have been completed in a totally diffnent way. lY'>eta )
.
11 The accounts of this meeting, given by Kocan, Jama, and Bavtar, wh.lle
broadly consistent, differ in one telling respect. Kan and JanSa both .clalm
the credit for first insisting on the use of armed reSIStanCe. Bav::r say .It was
France Bocar who fust broke thc silence and apparent nervous mdecision of
_

L ,

the gathering.
.
12 The JNA said the helicopter wa carrymg bread. although Geral
s
R.aJeta later admitted that it had lx:en ordered to take off to check oondl\lons
on the road between Vrhnika barracks and the airport.
13 The European Community, like Yugoslavia, had a rotating Presidency,
each country holding the office for six months, from 1 January to 30 June. The
Presidency rotates alphabetically, each country being listed acording to he
name it has in its own language, which makes the rules govemmg th.e rolanon
more impenetrable than those governing the Yugoslav Federal PreSidency.

14AP, 2 July. 1991.

15 According to Ku::an's account of the session.

AND DJRTI WAR'

'AN UNDECLARED

13
'AN UNDECLARED AND DIRTY WAR'
TheJNA in Croatia
Ju'rDeumber 1991
t the 18 July Presidency session which ordered the JNA to with.
draw fro?, Slovenia, Spe MesK, Crotia's representative, $Cnsed
.
disaster for his own republic. The vote stnpped away any vestige of

pretence that the JNA was engaged in the defence of Yugoslavia. It

was, now, openly and incontrovertibly, fighting for territory for the
Serbs outside Serbia.
Zgreb saw Slovenia's phoney war for precisely what it was: a
Serbian-Slovene pact to facilitate the secession ofSlovc:nia, humiliate

the jNA, and destroy what was left of MarkoviC's Federal

Government. It had succeeded in all three respects. The JNA - no
longer, in any sense of the term, a genuinely Yugoslav Army - was now

free to turn its attention to the growing tension in Croatia. And, after
the Slovene fiasco, it badly needed a morale booster.

J?e JNA intervention in Slovenia brought Croatia's President

FranJo Tudjman into conJlict with his increasingly dissatisfied

Defence Minister Martin Spegelj, for the last time. Spegelj agllin
.
presse TudJman to declare war on the JNA:: At a meeting of the state
council, the day the Slovene

war

erupted, Spegelj urged Tudjman to

order the Croatian National Guard to surround the federal barracks in

Croatia and arrest leading members of the military. This time

Tudjman's ministers were with Spegelj.

Ewrything walpupared 1 wasjust waiting/or the signal In the

state council muting, Tudjman spokeJor 95 minuttS andsaid that
I had dangerous inttntions. Mesic backed me up 100 per (tnt... He
Anew rotrything because he was living in Belgrade. He saw tm
war coming. About ttn otherpeople spoke and thry either said they
werefor me or that they didn't ha'Vt a view because they wtre not
experts. Only one other person supported Tul/jman. At 5 a.m.,
Tudjman had had mough. He collected his things and he wanted
to leave without a decision. But I insisted that he make a duuion.
He was afraid to reject theplan and rom more afraid to acupt it.
He wanted to decide in semt, by himstlf J wouldn't leaw it at
that and I offord my resigT/ation.
,86

Croatian radio. and television

ned hours later.

- In
- robust
ns'. Spege1J,
5 gel)' reslg
retired 'for health reaso
.L
O
. k'
wat he had
Pun
1- eu
c
old bolsheVIst tnc to cover up po ItI. . ..1 I' , as a
.
anno

'good

dismlsseu
hea.lth,
.
"
.
'
_I division ,
_
a was not In a posItion to take
,

on was that C roan

'
1,0
CU
.,
ca.t
.
s
ud)' man
h d dne fro the
. He placed hiS faith, .as h
JNA militarily
e
ng mternatlonal
wmm
In
on
.
military readiness but
ng, not on
ru
n
d
endence. not
10
Its
wm
uld
Croatia wo
. He believed
.
....t>
mternatlonal
gh
throu
only
but
over the JNA
military victory
thro u
ed
g. .
the world
want
he
,
table
inevi
e
.
Even when war becam
.
recognJllon.
n It.
chose
had
not
tia
Croa
that
e,
wledg
ackno
to
d
to see, an
F - r
' d- n d1-d eve.,
ung he
"
u
summer of 1991, ranJo u ma
Throughout the
war.
.
.
.
could to avoid all-out

right of hiS own Party thiS looked like weak

the
To his critics on
ose.
purp
of
eness
of Serb strength and singl
ness in the face
August, MartC:s frces steadily extended the
and
July
TIu-oughout
One mumclpallty after another fell to the
territories they controlled.
forces of the Krajina Republic) dur
Marticevci (the territorial defence
between Serbia and Croatia:
ing that summer of undeclared war
each of these occasions, the
On
Dalj.
and
ni
Glina, Kostajnica, Okufa
ready to step in and 'sepa
itaries
l
parami
Serb
the
JNA stood behind
of the Dalmatian coast
resorts
tourist
The
factions'.
warring
the
rate
were filling up with legions of the dispossessed: CroatS who had been
.

'

forcibly removed from their homes or who had fled the Serb advance.
Whole communities decamped overnight, carrying what could be car
ried, and leaving everything else behind to be looted, or destroyed.
Martie's officers began to claim the best properties for themselves. In

villages abandoned by Croat civilians, the names of Serb paramilitary

commanders could be seen scrawled above the door: their handwrit
kn claim of right to the spoils ofwar.
Croatia's forces were no match. The Croatian National Guard,

which Tudjman had formed from the ranks of his police reservists in

May, was badly organized and poorly equipped, though there was no
shortage ofvolunteers. In contrast to the armoured vehicles and heavy

ea that was increasingly available to the Serb paramilitaries,

n s forces found themselves running around the battle zones in
udJrna
m
mandeered grocery vans and customized tourist buses. The two

$I es were hopelessly mism

atched.
O 1 August, Tudjman's
critics moved to try to unseat him. In the
.
Croatlan parliament, ng
ht-wlng
deputles
from his own Party propose
d a declara,
- future
Ion
0fwar. Tud- argued that Croatia's
Jman agam

R'
ARED AND D1RTI' WA

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

'AN UNDECL

deended not o n.defeating the Serbs militarily, but on winning inte

r.
.
.
national recogmtlOn; a declaration of war would bring universal
demnation from the democratic world; it would be suicide fo

fledgling state.

He rned t opposition members for support. Fearing a coup

.
rlght-wmg natiOnalists, they gave it. A coalition of li,be'>!"
democrats and former communists, was hastily formed and

swore in a Government of National Unity under Prime

Franjo Gregurie, who belonged to the liberal wing of
HDZ. The hard-right nationalists were isolated, and - in

ifnot on the battlefield - brought to heel.

But the Krajina Serbs, and the INA, were to force Tudjman
war whether he wanted it or not. The INA began a series "( __

movements through Bosnia-Herzegovina in preparation for an

on those territories which the Serbian leadership in Belgrade consid

ered rightfully Serb. A day later, the day of the abortive coup againat
the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachevl , Milan Martie issued an ulti
marum to the Croatian police at Kijevo, near Knin: leave the

within forty-eight hours or face attack. The Croats refused.

Kijcvo was a Croat village surrounded by Serb-held territory.

March, the day of the battle at Plitvice, the villagers of Kijevo

barricaded themselves in. Martie had come to regard Kijevo "' ", irri

tating anomaly - a Croat village in the 'Serbian Republic of Krajina'.

It was also a security risk.. It made communication between Knin and

the Serb villages that lay beyond Kijevo dangerous, sometimes impot'"
sible. It meant that those villages could not be properly secured for the

coming war against Croatia. Kijevo would have to be wiped off the
map. The unforrunate distinction it enjoys now, is that it was the

victim of a process that came to characterize the wars in Yugoslavia:

lillmjt ttuna, the 'cleansing' of the ground.

For the Croats, Kijevo became a symbol of resistance. Tens ofthou

sa.ds of Croats had already lost their homes; what distinguished

KiJevo was the level at which the dispossession was planned and exe
cuted. On 20 August, the day that MartiC's forty-eight hours' u1tima
rum to the Kijevo police was due to expire, Milan Babit announced

that the Martieevci were now an integral part of the defence forces of

federal Yugoslavia. Martie himself told the Belgrade daily, Borba, that
his men were now acting in full co-operation with the JNA. He con

fidently announced their intention to seize the Croatian port city of

Zadar. 'The interests of the Army and of the Serbs coincide,' he said.
'We both need a harbour2.'
,88

new unity of purpose was a young

. .
I yer in this
iSlV
dec
The
P recently arrived in Knin. Ratko Mladie was a
C e
ant
ten
south-eastern Bosnia. In the
Lieu
0
of BoZinoviCi ' in
the
om
fr
Pritina to Knin, where he
b
from
Ser
he was posted
rner f
early sum . 0 Staffof [he Knin Corps of the JNA. Immediately on
ef f
rs. The instant
becaJ1l Chi rna
act with the Krajina Serb leade
he 0 de cont
l
a
v
arn
distrust

mmg
rema
any
s
ve
d

hi
remo
i
ieevc
Mart
with the
port h s e . k
the JNA. Ratko Mladic
trU and the Knin garrison of
npween Marne
bet
le-Iong
..
mentaIIty. He was a li'
the KraJlna Serb
understoad
ding
defen
from
his allegiance
.
.
who now switched. .
CommuOist
'.
st
'
agam
s
S
b
er
the
ctlOg
,.
he saw It, of prote
.
to the task as

.
I
aVia
gos
Yu
n,
ratiO
hiS
gene
of
many
so
Mladlc, like
nt Croatian faSCism.
nd :-"orld War. Whe.n he as two yers
Seco
the
by
d
n shape
king part o a PartISan raid on the VIIkilled while ta
old his hther was
village of the Ust.rle leader
dentaHy the home,
Iage 0f Bradina, coinci
uttIe outS!de the
meant 1:
name
s
MI
d'
a
Ie
DOW,
for
.
Ante Pavelie. Though,
would later achieve
he
d,
move
he
which
in
circles
Ii 'ted military
the Commander of the Serb Army in
in mational notoriety as
was his remarkable ability to
Bosnia. His strength as Commander
So enthusiastically did he
inspire loyalty among those he commanded.
trust, even the adora
the
take up their cause that he quickly earned

:lJ
1;91

:
:

tion, of the Krajina Serbs.

On 26 August, one week after Martie's ultimarum to the Kijevo
police, he and Mladie, acting together, Struck.. In a twelve-hour
bombardment, the village of Kijevo was levelled. Martie was filmed by
a Belgrade television crew while his troops ripped down a sign post
- in Latin script, of course - at the entrance to the village and

triumph.antly taking command of the area. Martie's subsequent

account of the cleansing of Kijevo was chilling in its clinical matter
of-factness:

1/ was ajoint action belwun tht poliu alld Iht army and in two

days Wt liberated KijM1O. The army prO'lJidtd tht htavy weapom

Qnd1prO'lJidedthe infalltry. Wh(1j Colonel Mladif camt to Knin,
Wt saw that we could trust the Army. From thm on we suggtsltd
thatptople [who camtforward 10 vo/rmt(erfor military urviuj
should volunteer in fht army and not the police. That arrangt
mtnt then existed through the wholt war.
To bt honest we sumed to be superior 10 the Croatiam. They
wtr running away. We didn't care about the victims. We wanltd
to hhtrate our blocked villages.
Of(ourll thert Wtrl aftw burnt
,8,

'AN UNDECLA

RED AND DIRTI' WAR'

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

hl)UstS, thal:r Iht way il s in Ihut aclil)ns with artillny. We

thl)ughl ;1 Wf}uldn'I lasl ll)ng and Wt Wfft right.

The action had the full backing of Belgrade. With the C""''''

and Slovene representatives now a1ways absent from sessions

Federal Presidency, Yugoslavia's collective Head of State W2S
under Milooevic's control. In MesiC's absence, the Vice
assumed the Presidency. The Montenegrin representative,

Kostic, became Yugoslavia's acting Head of State and S;;;:;:

Commander of the JNA:

Wi had in Knin, thi Knin corps, om of Iht strongm and best

tquippd army unils Ihn-t, and it is not an txaggtration to say
that in thmfirst day! oftht war fhiJNAprouad the Serhsfrom
physicolliquidation and prrotnud a maJfivt exodus.
Objtetivtly sptaking, ifWi had not encouragd thisjNA corps in
Knin, tht Croatian po/iu, with their arms and roerything, could
havt takm it tasily.

Kijevo set the pattern for the rest of the war in Croatia: JNA
supporting an infantry that was part conscript and part
recruited Serb volunteers. It was the very alliance that Tudjman
warned against in his late-night address to the nation after

Selo. As he saw it, Communist militarism had joined forces

Greater Serbian hegemonists. He still hoped to avoid war against

JNA; a war he knew he could not win. But that hardly mattered
In its cleansing of fGjevo, the JNA had declared war on him.

Franjo Greguric convened a late-night session of the G'w

m
n

The pressure to act was now too great. Tudjman's reluctance to

dragged into open w;u could no longer be sustained. On the
Kijevo was cleansed, the Croatian Government announced a
mobilization and declared a 'war ofliberation'.

Though Kijevo captured the headlines, it had coincided with

assault in Eastern Siavonia. On Croatia's border with Serbia, the
of Vukovar came under sustained artillery and mortar fire: for the
time3. Vukovar's crisis headquarters, established in the: 'o',,"-"'"'

hospital comple:x at the beginning of the month, now moved to

basement, as did most of the sick and wounded being treated there.
Croatia's counter-offensive took two weeks to prepare. On
September, the Croatian National Guard laid siege to JNA
and installations across the republic. Electricity, food and water

nected. The Zagreb

one lines were discon
.
.
' ....
-'. .
he caplt
0f t
elence
0
'
rISe
d
ro
\
s
all d on all citizen
city Iluthontles
were
in
barbed
wire,
ed
wrapp
and
s
' on ,"rder
'f "
.
0'e o
,_ _ ,
p' mad
across the 5ava
aa....-tra ' ma. '\0tersections of the roads. Bndges
T
.
_ I A......! at the . lO
- II but one 0fthe
pa-Barricades were erected blocking .....
RjYer were mlOcd
s
sandbagged.
were
Window
s.
highway
the aJ'or
' __
'es on
...
wreaking
'
ed low over the City,
scream
r-jets
fighte
JNA
ena . gI
here of
d.
atmosp
An
mpose
M r.o Y'.ght-rime black-out was i
tenO
.
mnists
in
of
th-colu
fif
reportS
ru
. tense paranOia ,ook hold. There were
IR
there
was
ugh
l?o
corner.
evc
nd
aro

building, sniper nests

.
or injUry by smper-fire wlthm the confines
death
,"'orded
I
r
e
,
"
.-y
not a smg
,
900 000 citizens began to walk the stree "m lear lor
ofZagreb city, its
a
el
t,
on
was
conflic
low-lev
of
s
month
after
last,
at
their lives. Croatia,
.
ing
t
republic-wide war foo
arc, fro Gospic in the south,
Fighting erupted across a broad
.
Itself, and then eastward
capital
the
of
south
just
Karlovac,
rth to
to yukovar in eastern Siavonia.
maUy,
f
and,
ni
a
Oku1::
Pakrac,
:rough
.
.
.
at all III
To the extent that the line of confrontation established Itself
those early days, it ran roughly - though with important exceptions
and teleph
cut OU,
plit:S we _
,
. .

Iiong the line that Miloevic and Jovic had identified in May, when
they issued their instruction, through the Federal Presidency, to
the JNA to start protecting the Serbs of Croatia. The JNA was
POW openly fighting to establish new borders for a Yugoslavia without

the Croats.
Serb forces, together with the JNA, now controUed between a
that
quarter and a third of the republic's territory. The front-ine
l

emerged on 14 September gave them three disparate blocks of terri1Or}', linked to each other only by territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the
&nt, and most established of these, was the territory around Knin; the
ICCOnd was in central Croatia, around the town ofGlina, from which
the Croats had been driven in July and August; and the third was in
eastern Slavonia, and Baranja which shares
a frontier with Serbia.
.
Beh
lOd Se:rb lines the JNA was free to group and regroup as the
:ands ofbattle required. Behind
Croat lines it was immobilized. In
if. ::;:
ery mportant town in the republic, the JNA was trapped in
cks, Its guns trained outward, surrounded
by the Croatian
N ' al Guard, guns
C:;
trained inward, in an explosive stand-off. In
southern Croatia, the stand-off
quickly erupted into a battle
tha destroy
'
ed much of the town. The JNA
.
garrison there tried to
Its way out,
while reinforcements grouped outside the town
monar and
art!'Ucry support. The result was a three-day

.,..:

'9'

R'
ARED AND DIR'IT WA

'AN UNDECL

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

exchange of fire that left scarcely a building in Gospic habit,bll" ;,.

the fall of the barracks. Two hundred JNA men, mostly 'ru'"''''
taken prisoner, and the barrack's commander was killed:

Croatian Guard officers said he shot himself in full view ofrus

the forecoun of the town hospital; Belgrade Radio said. mOre

vincingly, that he had been murdered.
The caprure of Gospic was a strategic blow to the ambitions

Krajina Serbs. 1t halted the expansion, westwards, of their territory.

prevented them pushing west, towards the coast, at
therefore, dealt a mortal blow to Martie's

tion to take Zadar, the Adriatic port city that was, in the eyes
nationalists, the western-most point of the Serb lands, and the

outlet to the sea. Gospic was also a great morale boost to the
It sent a shiver down the spine of every besieged JNA :?,n""',do. 1
the republic, who wondered whether he, too, would suffer the fate
the unfortunate Gospic general.
The Croats retaliated. In several cities there was a systematic
paign of terror as Croatia began to lose the war. One night in
September Croatian mi
l itia rounded up and killed twenty
professors, judges in Gospic - loyal Serbs who had decided to

Croatia. There were also incidents in Zagreb, Sisa

k ' "d
'
But many struck local deals. In Osijek, in eastern i :
did not wait for the barracks to fall. It pulled out on 17 :
withdrew to new positions to the south and east of

city.

where, for the three months that followed, it played a vital role
bombardment of Osijek. The Commander at Vinkovci did

,"?'

week later. At Jastrebarsko, south-west of Zagreb, where m"J" .

stationed one ofthe largest single deployments oftanks, the

Commander, Radovan Taic, struck a deal with the local

warning him that: 'It would be a great pity ifyou were to b,ii" woo
yourself the destruction of your beautiful town'. His meaning was
lost on the National Guardsmen besieging his barracks. Tdit

after weeks of negotiation, allowed to leave, taking his 600

(again, mostly conscripts) and his heavy weapons with him4.
people watched ruefully as a huge column of 160 tanks, dozens
armoured vehicles, surface-to-air missiles, and anti-tank ,",lanri"'

craft batteries, trundled out of their barracks and south

Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the knowledge that the hardware would
be put to good use elsewhere in Croatia.

Circumstances deeper in Croatian-held territory were more

cult. The Commander, Vlado Trifunovic, at Varaldin, nea!

'9'

. The
to Belgrade for help, but got none
der, appealed
bor
t.
He
an
pmen
.
.
h
equI
IS
an
.
dung
" to let him out Wit
Po
nnmed "'ot
re dete
d
d.
en
ere
we
surr
He
nt.
eme
forc
ats
Cro
lines to expect rein
from Serb
far
to
ed
and
releas
rms
toO
unifo
JNA
was
d of their
I
:ppe
'
..
.
S"
men were
n clothes. By handing over dozens
His 200 .
civilia
in
home
own way
novic had averted
make thCJr
d vehicles [0 the Croats, Trifu
and arm
of many of the
lives
the
cost
have
1
ndoubtedly
ofunks that wou
.
' s
an
d. H'15 action
cornm
Lottie
hIS
under
ripts
lem consc
U
Of _L
n,
_ _ most
treaso
'
' d lor
was tne
o' de, he
n h,'s return to BclOTa
.avtd their lives. 0
e
years
to
twelv
nced
dure, sente
exhaustive appeals proce
and,
19
,
Kafkaesque trial horrified liberal
95
The
.
,
.Ul J'ail Ifl anu_
summer of 19, th Belgrad.e regim had
ders. But in the
that It had
which to base the mlhtary IflterventlOn
a text on
king hIS
stn
was

novll:
fu
as
T
Tl
even
was,
y
.'-_, ordered and which
'
1funovlc
r
fT
d
re
'
0
requI
d
h
a
de
Belgr
its way.
.
.
.
deal with the Croats, on
to JustIfy JNA mterventlOn. He
heroic and suicidal last-stand
his men up as sacrificial lambs to
:. punished for failing to offer

h'

'

r an]

..1

"

the slaughter.

.
.
s proVIded the JNA Wlth a
None the less, the siege of the barrack
whose
a
pretcrt of sorts. Belgrade ordered a sharp escalation of war
whose
but
garrisons,
..ted purpose, now, was the relief of the JNA
a
build
to
which
on
territory
over-riding war aim was to secure the
and
tanks
9
of
columns
t\yo
September
1
On
Serb state in Croatia.

armoured vehicles left the federal capital, Belgrade, and trundled

down the Brotherhood and Unity motorway towards the Croatian

border. Foreign journalists, roused from their beds to foUow the col
wnn, reponed that it stretched for more than six mil!:s, and contained

at least a hundred tanks. mostlyT-55s and M-84s, as weU as armoured

penonnel carriers and trucks towing heavy artiUery piecesS. Like the
fOn:e which had taken the same route, two months earlier, towards

Slovenia (only to be turned back) the column was again cheered by

Serbs who lined the route, throwing food and cigarettes to the

bewildered conscripts and mostly reservists in the passing trucks6

b paramtes and the JNA had already secured a triangle of
W:n
e oil-neh fertile comer of north-eastern Croatia From
.
s.r-a.:.
It stretched west, to the outskirts of Osijek, and south, to
e
Bor
'gh! Selo, a suburb of Vukovar. The towns of Vukovar and its
nel bour Vink
'
ovCI,
. now stood 'In the way 0f further expansIOn
Into
.
eas
Slavoa. They, and
not the besieged barracks, were the target
of thi
",m
S 1atest
Impresslve
dep Dyment. The JNA surrounded Vukovar,
,
ug In for the
start of what was to become a two-month
,

lnd d '

'93

'AN UNDECL

ARED AND DIRTY WAR'

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

bombardment that would tum a pretty Danubian town into

symbol of Croatia's struggle for national liberation. Stipe Mestf
Vukovar would be 'Croatia's 5talingrad'.
Serbs loyal to the 5DS rebels had, to some extent, begun a
of 'self-cleansing' as early as the spring of that year. The Serb

of Vukovar, Slavko Dokmanovic, said he had stopped coming to

city long before the war had begun because he feared for his
Barricades had been erected months earlier by the inhabitants
Serb villages on the outskirts of the town. Mortar attacks on

urb ofBorovo Naselje had begun in early July; the city centre
jected to sporadic bombardment from early August onwards. By
end ofAugust, only 15 000 of the town's original population of50

were still there. Those who were left retained the ethnic mixture
had characterized the town before the war7. Serbs and C,v.t" ,uJlr..,
alike in the bombardment that followed.
On 14 September, the day the Croatian National Guard had

siege to the JNA barracks, Serb paramilitaries had launched a

assault on the southwest ofVukovar from the dii,""i",n ofN"I!'.Ja",
Two thousand residents had fled their homes and, sought refuge '
city centre. They had reported that some eighty civilians had
killed. Bodies had piled up in the streets. The dead had been
by the advancing Serb forces, and buried in mass graves in
meadow land at Negoslavci. Croatia had not heard atrocity

this. The war had entered a new phase. On each of the fifteen

that followed, between sixteen and eighty wounded were brought

the hospital. On average, three-quarters of them were civilians8
.
4 October brought the fiercest single attack to date. It

d:';PJ:'

artillery, mortar, and air assault. Two bombs were

on the hospital. One destroyed the Department ,
Operating Theatre, though much of its equipment

;:rr,:

moved to the basement. The other feU through several floors,

explode, and landed on the foot of the bed of a wounded man,
survived. Ninety-two wounded people were brought into the
on that day alone.

The Serb-JNA attack brought territorial gains. The road

. .
Vukovar to the village of Bogdanovci fell.JNA units took up
along it, depriving the town of its last landroute out of the

foo'!]>,"

siege was now complete, save for a dangerously exposed

which was overlooked by Serb gun positions in nearby woods.
.
Vukovar crisis committee claimed that at least thirty
route to try to flee the town, were killed by snipers.
'94

le ofVukovar began living in

. '
f October the peop
g
UlJO
bc:gU
crisis commit
0
At the
housin up to 700 people. The
lters,
sh
-p oof bunker
camrno?
erating from a nuclear m
Itself
ch
whi
nbutlOn of food,
ized the dist
tee,
hospital ' oTu:ln
. .
etOwn-cen,r..
the
h
l)'<;r
at
the numL_
mum
to a mlm
.
hene
I supPI-,cs thus keeping
.
medica
'
as
I
s
ter,
h
e
on
comm
water and
at any one time. Each
.
on thc scree's
d
ne
aSSlg
one
nurse
of C-IV!-lians
and
r
onc docto
OSSI'ble' h d at least
d
arme
r.r as waS
.
with
er
each
shelt
ded
provi
Guard
Croatlan N tiOnal
to it. The
protection.
writ large: the JNA
attack was that of Kijevo
The pattern f
- , 5erb
rt to the IOCal
suppo
ny
infan
and
e hcavy weapons
Og th
roVld
J
5erb'la proper. But a
P
,ogether \v1th volunteers from
iii.
r::t.
m ranes,
....
.r.
firepower
overwheimlng
.
r
"'m.'g
... ed the failure, despite
re ...
.
.
striking Ieatu
attack on
The
ss.
.ke commensurate terntonal progre.
su....
-. nonty, to m
ugosIaVla
fy
tIOn
0
'
-'d ,he shambles to which the dissolu
.
o
var reveal...
Vuk
f
1
leve
The
.
g
force
ry's once-proud fightm
had reduced the count
.
pts,
was
conscn
and
s
officer
.
l-On, particularly among non-Serb
.
w;;_se
r,
1e,
lace 0fbart
to which the conscripts, m the C
5o was the deOTee
.
g
h
o
hi
elr
t
h

get
t
Id
'
n
cou
they
tha
ed
mplain
co
s

disobeyed orders. JNA officer

.
as
mped
sl
JNA
the
In
Morale
s.
vehicle
ed

boys to leave their armour

Incapable
weeks went by and Europe's fourth-largest Army proved
red and
beleague
of
handful
a
with
town
small
a
ering
overpow
of
ilI- equipped Croatian defenders.
In October, with the JNA's assault on Slavonia hopelessly delayed
by the surprising resilience of Vukovr, the acting Defence Minister
8lagoje Adzic, appointed General Zivota Panic to command the

;::

Vukovar operation. Zivota Panic was Commander of the First Army

District, and he was now charged with finishing the Vukovar opera
tion off. Panic and Adzic went to the Vukovar front together to assess

why the operation had stalled so badly. They were appalled by what
they found there. There was no clear chain-of-command, and no
demarcation of tasks between the various units deployed. There was,

hy Panic's own account, 'chaos'. Many soldiers appeared not to know

who their Commanding Officer was. There was desertion from the

ranks, particularly among reservists who had been mobilized and sent
to the front with no
clear idea of why they were there and no notion
of what they wer
e trying to achieve.
Tens of thousands of
Serbs were mobilized to fight in a war that
was undeclared. Throughout the republic - in particular in Belgrade m n Were hiding
or fleeing the country. One reservist could not decide
W ether to join a
group ofdeserters or remain with his unit so he shot

'95

'AN UNDECLA

lliE EXPLOSION OF WAR

RED AND DIRTY WAR'

himself. Another took a tank from the front and drove it aU

the
to the Federal Parliament.

When Panic assumed command of the operation, he integrated

paramilitary groups into the command structure of the
Volunteers were recruited to replace those who had been m
"b!i,.
i od
unwillingly. A single command strucrure was put in place.
unwilling to submit themselves to it were removed from the th,,,._ ..
operations.

On 3 November, the headquarters of the Army's First

Guard Brigade announced that the ' final operation' to drive

forces out of Vukovar had begun. The next day, the Federal
carried out sixty-five sorties against Croatian positions in Vukovar

elsewhere9 Ground troops advanced to within a few hundred yard.

the town cemre.

On th: same day, fifteen artillery rounds landed on the ".rn;...

town of Sid, in Vojvodina. on Croatia's frontier with

where some of the artiUery attacking Vukovar had been d,plc'l".d.

one was injured. But the outraged Serbian Minister
O<.f"..;
General Tomislav Simovic, none the less felt compelled to call

the international community to condemn the attack. As

g
i norant ofwhat JNA forces were doing in Vukovar even as h'
he addressed the Serbian Parliamem to denounce the attack on

,pOlo"

ported to

'

dies, embittered against both Zagreb and the international commuruty,

who had continued to try to talk Belgrade into finding a 'negotiated

This attack is part of tIN fasrish' policy. Tht attituda of tlx

Croatian armdflrus au such that whmt'Utr 'LW' ha'W spolm
about ptau and truu thty how acid in tht worst way... Thtu
will probably bt blackmail in The Hogut today regarding the
blockades of Vuko'Uar and DubrQ'/.mik by the Yugoslav People's
Army. Thty may tvm make theforther course ofthe talks condi
tional upon liberation or withdrawal of theflrus that art Jur
rounding thue two towns.

lettlement' as their town had been reduced to rubble. Something of

their mood transmitted itself to the Croatian population generaUy.
The commanders of Vukovar's defence conceded defeat. The JNA
representative in Zagreb agreed to surrender talks. Both sides agreed
to an evacuation of the town's civilian population, and the 700 sick

He then vowed not to submit to international blackmail.

With Panic now in command of a disciplined operation, the si
tion in Vukovar grew desperate. The town's defenders rurned their bit
terness against their own side. They accused Zagreb of deliben.tel,
sacrificing Vukovar in the interests ofwinning international sympathy.;
The town's military commander, Mi
l e Dedakovic, went to Zagreb to

appeal to Tudjman. He told him that Croatia's willingness to agree

ing this war,' he is reState: 'I am runn

'
..
t and Head of

en
d
sl
.d 'a d hen J order that mlhtary operatIOns around
... Pre
al
S
have
, ;
a millimetrelO: for
e you will not move even
'VukoVU should stop.
tability, diplo
respec
al
ation
intern
as tiU chasing
Tudjman, who
ities.
ry
prior
milita
eigh
outw
ed to
.
.
'deraoons Scontinu
ed. On lO
foUow
mg
ftght
mane conSt
and
-to-h
hand
. .
r, twO weeks of
In Vkava
fMI
1ovo Brdo. The
0
ict
distr
re
-cent
town
U
JNA t k the
Nmber,
.
fall of Vukovar, long predicted. was
d in darray The
Croa re
the JNA captured the suburb of
mber,
Nove
16
nomment. 0n the
ast precarious access
.
ed Vukovar 0r Its
Je. Th,t d'priv
NaseI
G_-,",
....v
.
pu
cornfields. There was now no
e f, tpath through the
rout along th
she\ukovar. In terror, 700 civilians now left their
...y an or out f
bystreeted'
ra
'''be
u
be'
.
mg
n

the hospital complex

... and fled into
s.
proces
10
the
yed
destro
also
was
use, Vukovar
.
street and house-by-ho
ce,
reSistan
f
pockets
few
a
for
save
town
entire
.
.
Byl7 NQVembe,, ,h,
III Serb-JNA hands. The
al lcself,
. was '
most notably that of the hosplt
y-brokered repubduring Croatia's thirteenth JOternatlOnall
d
al Guardsmen
Nation
n
Croatia
Those
fell.
r
Vukova
wi;:'ceasefire,

the fall of Borovo

who had not smuggled themselves out before
which to risk a
Nue1je were now trapped. They had ont': night left in
Serb lines,
through
death-defying dash, under cover of darkness,
Vinkovci.
of
town
ring
ICJ'OSS the cornfields and into the neighbou
hd
exhausted
small
in
day
next
the
Many did so, and gathered there

to

internationally-brokered ceaseflres was losing Vukovar the war.

Tudjman exploded with rage, and told Dedakovic to remember who

and-wounded from the hospital. It would be supervised by the EC

monitors and representatives of the International Red Cross.

In the three months of the siege and bombardment that ended on

20 November, the hospital treated 1850 wounded people, most of

them civilians. This figure represents serious injury only, and therefore
understes the true figure. Those
with light wounds were encouraged
t to fISk the journey
but to Stay at home. In the same period, the
ukovar police had
rtgistered 520 dead bodies for transportation to
the only
available burial ground. Of these, 156 had been Croatian
.
N
onaJ. uardsmen
, and twenty-four, policemen. The rest had been
.
ans, IRcludi. ng eight
children. These figures do not include the
'97

'AN UNDECLAR

ED AND D1Rn' WAR'

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

hundreds of bodies that remained uncollected during the last

the siege, when the intensity of the bombardment, and the pO"""'
"
of advancing erb ad JNA forces, made movement through

streets .almost Impossible. In the three months since the lNA

.
begun Its attack on the town m earnest, Vukovar received one

.
of international aid. It was allowed to deliver medicine to the he,...
and to evacuate 1 1 4 of the wounded.
n 19 November, at eleve':! o'clock in the morning, as voko...
.
C(lSIS headquarters tried, unsuccessfully, to make contact with

<?

side wori , the JNA entered the hospital complex, the last bastion
Croat reSistance. To the terror of those inside, they arrived
the international monitors who were to supervise the evacuation.
IeRC truck, carrying medicine for the sick, arrived at six in

::

evening. By then, theJNA had begun to evacuate the civilians

sick-and-wounded, without international supervision, and in

vention of the previous day's agreement. In the centr Of

JNA officer arrogantly replied to the protesting ICRC

that this was Yugoslavia, his country, and if the ICRC

was welcome to leave. The unsupervised evacuation proceeded.

o,:"" ands of heavily-armed Serb men, many wearing

mSlgma, fresh from the battlefield, were roaming the streets
Vukovar unchecked, as weeping ashen figures with dark rings

7.,:

their eyes made their way out of the shelters. Many had been
ground for three months, while the battle had gone on over
heads. On 18 November, they saw a different vUk0

people and animals littered the streets. Grisly skeletons

still burned, barely a square inch had escaped damage.
teers, wild-eyed, roared down the streets, their pockets full of IN_
tresures. One group grabbed a Croatian man and banged his

agamst the wall accusing him of fighting with the enemy. He

that he had not fought at all. The JNA began to separate the
from the women and children. The latter were asked to

whether thcy wanted to be evacuated to Serbia or Croatia. Those

chose Serbia were allowed to leave, or were given transport out
ton.
ose who asked to go to Croatia were taken, by bus,
VOJvodma, where they spent the night in schools and sports halls.

'!'h

next day they were handed over to the Croatian authorities.

The men were not handed over; and many of them - more
three years later, at the time of writing - arc p
nd
later Serb militia refused access to all but ha
, ful

:; .'f:;;.>::':;

suspected mass-grave site at Oveara, outside Vukovar. Among

reporter from Croatian

" a thirty-one-year-old
.

GlavaSeVlC
ua.ome the vOICe
. 'Ja
in Croatia, had L..
... SitU
di whose voice,

VukOvartu ::Onicling the destruction of his home-town

d
is Iie doubt at
, y de!' Cte and exhausted tones. There
k
of. Vu
I
ng notonery
pondi
corres
the
n
and
a,
I g a"P ed in Croati
,

Jbdio's
in

me
which

statuS

lev
he
var s tormentors, cost
.
n him among Vuko
hJs work wo

his life.

m
1

ed out for execution were taken to a

. "
who were not singl
. )
a

0n thelr
Those men
nva
r
odmao
.
Sremska Mitrovica 10 vOJv
at
centre
.I--n
..., ... tlon
carrying was
.
and any property they were
.
stnpni'd
r - naked
....
IOto
overcrowded
-1.., were
"
ed
herd
were beaten. They were
confi,scatcd Many
slept on the
they
wed,
follo
.
" for the weeks that
_l1S whee
.
nriwn CCJ.L
tiOns. Some
roga
ted
mter
repea
to
cted
subje
were
y
Man
floors.
of reward for informing on the others.
ered the inducement
were
y
in Januar 1992.
They were released
var's hospital, Dr Vesna Bosanac, whse
The director of Vuko
done so much to keep th p ace gOIg
had
courageous example
.
e so ethmg of a herom III Croatia.
throughout the siege, had becom .
CIty Itself now stood for In the m
She time to personifY what the
quently, she was vili
tality that war fashioned in many Croats. Conse
the 'Dr Mengele of
her
Sed by the Serbs. Belgrade television called
d Serb civil
wounde
to
nt
treatme
Yugoslavia', accusing her of refusing
When
them.
on
ents
experim
medical
and of carrying out

tans,

Vukovar fell, many Croats feared for her life. For a week, nothing
heard of her. She was not on the convoy of women and children
that reached Croatia after Vukovar's fall. The International Red Cross
made urgent appeals in Belgrade. The hated doctor was spared
the t..te that Sinia Glavakvit suffered. She was released after a

was

month in detention.

It ook the EC monitors three days to organize the evacuation of

tbt: Sick and wounded. Several times they were loaded into JNA

ambulances only to learn that the hand-over to Croatian authorities

been postponed because of continued fighting on the road.
ally, the two convoys - one JNA, the other Croatian Government
m
- rendezvoused in north-eastern Bosnia. Five hundred wounded,

rna;;y of them barely conscious, were stretchered out of their JNA

ulances and transferred to the waiting Croatian vehicles. An
crowd of lotal Serbs turned out to scream abuse at the 'Ustafia

m erees'
am

as the wounded were carried past

'

ali er passions had been inflamed by a badly judged piece ofjourn

sm

y a reputable news agency. On the day Vukovar had fallen,

'99

R'
ARED AND DIRTY WA
'AN UNDECL

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

Reuter's Belgrade bureau had reported that Croatian

Guardsmen had slaughtered forty-one Serb children in ",.,....
,
-,
b
they fled the city. The news spread like wild-fire across me '
..
ulated areas of Croatia and neighbouring Bosnia. Western new,

;-;

nizarions, anxious for some 'balance' to include in their "':0""'

what otherwise seemed an impossibly one-sided sequence of

also gave the claim undue prominence. The story turned OUt to
nonsense. The claim had been made by an unnamed JNA Co,)",.. ,

:::

a Belgrade photographer. Reuters issued an unqualified

nventy-four hours later. But the damage had been done. f

now screamed for the blood of the injured of Vukovar, as the

hand-over of the wounded took place. A single line of JNA
held them back. Even now, the JNA could presem itself to the

television cameras as an impartial force intervening to separate

'warring factions'.
The bodies of Vukovar's dead were barely cold before the
organized, for the Belgrade press corps, what it must have

was a public relations triumph. On 21 November two bu,;)",""

reporters were taken, as guests of the JNA, on a tour of the

town. 'We'll give them lunch right here,' said Colonel Milan
JNA spokesman and future Deputy Commander of the Bosnian
forces, as he paraded through the bombed-out remains of the
6
"
Dunav, setting the Army a challenge to which it ro"
Marc Champion of the
evem in his despatch:

lndpendent

;'::a

captured the a

'Massacred civi/ianJ this 'Way said the army offim; waving his
arm in the dimtion of a court yard opposiu Vukovars ravagd
hOlpital. DounJ ifjournalists wae alnady huddld in the gau
wayfora look at Exhibit 2 ifa lourorganiudby thefldn-alarmy
in an altempt, rangingjrom the grotsqll 10 the obscene, to gif)(
its vmion ofthe siege ofVukovar.
1 don't su why nothing is being said abOIl! the neddaus being
made of children'sfingers, or the forty children killed near /xrt'
{said Col GwroJ
Insidr the (ourtyard.. 'Wtrt 33 corpsts. Next door wn-e mofY
than SO, lined up in rows and open to thepOllring rain. 'Thtytrrr
Serbs who were massacred in the struts, ' laid Col Miodrag
Startrvit, authoritatively. Many had mdical tags tid to their
ton identifying them aspatients who had died in hospital-As/ted
how hr kntw they were Serbs, he shruggtdll.

a souvenir of
.
given JNA ballpoint pens as
rnalistS were
jou
1'he
visit.

their

ovnik from Montenegro for the

attacked Dubr
l
.
.
ober, theJNA
r of the pretexts that the
On 1 Oct
Neithe
.
e h,d ",pected It.
o-on
N
.
(int ume .
ction of Serb populaprote
the
ia
) where in Croat
.
was USJDg e. se
' D ubroVnJ k.
,Ied ID
_
.
1
app
c/U>
barra
A
edJN
esieg
fofb
.
.
)
rele
e
h
t
and
s,
bOn
town had no JNA gamliving therel1 and the
,.
Serbs
w
le
.
1'hett wert
c:
king. )t Sits
. on
was a sitting target, npe lor the ta
. But Dubrovnik .
.
the southern extremity 0f
.
at
land
l
coasta
of
Strip
.
a thin
.
.
.n!
the far tip 0f
)
'
B
'd
e
oSnJa
a few miles ! and, les IDSI
. )ts h
Interland, ,ust
tia
Croa .
ntenegro.
Herz.egovina and Mo
a land-blockade rom Mntenegro t t C': port
sed
impo
The AImy
.
strip of coast whICh IS BosmaHe!"'l.egovmas only
ofN eum, that nny
' announce
d that
ad10
ing, Belgrade R
_.et to the sea. Early next morn
ouu
'
b
'
d thIS
aroun
s
ues
at
today
of
aim
the
is
'the surrender of enemy for.ces
they
were,
as
such
forces,
Croatian
,
October
toWn'. On 2 and 3
off
tapers
that
territory
n
Croatia
of
strip
us
precario
defending that
JNA
lming
an
of
overwhe
face
the
in
rout
a
suffered
egro,
into Monten
assault. The handful of Croatian National Guardsmen protecting
Dubrovnik's himerland turned on their heels and fled. There was no

JNA

other course of action available to them. As the Federal Army

marched through the prosperous region of Konavle it destroyed
almost everything in sight. In village after village, every house was flIst
looted and then put to the torch.
On 15 October, the Federal Army entered the resort town of
Cavtat, south of Dubrovnik. They met no resistance. The people of
Cavtat resigned themselves to what amounted to occupation of their

town. Though this meam that Cavtat lost all contact with the rest of

roatia, the JNA did not allow its Montenegrin reservists to run riot

III the way that they had done in Konavle. Cavtat was neimer looted
nor burned.

.
CIty
of Dubrovnik itself. Be(;ause Croatia had not expected the Army
The Army spent the next nvo weeks preparing its assault on the

an:ack, the city was left practically undefended. A handful of

ro
aban National Guardsmen, equipped
with a few fu:ld guns and
:ortar launchers,
now found themselves charged with the defence of
e . anCient city.
Dubrovnik is a city built to withstand a siege. Its
:;c
t ortified walls were
again called into service. They were almost
. .
.

t Its Citizens had by

way of defence.
O n 2 7 0Ct
OL
ucr, alt
.f"er a SIX
. day bombardment, the JNA had brought
'0'

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

'AN UNDECLAR

ED AND DIRTY WAR'

their gun positions to the very edge of the city. As though to go.ld.1.O
trapped citizens below, a Yugoslav federal flag was
Zarkovic hill, a few hundred yards from the Hotel Argentina,
the EC monitors and foreign journalists gathered each night in
basement restaurant and bar. The Hotel Argentina quickly .
itself as one of those extraordinary war-zone hotels whose
ment and staff take pride in maintaining normal service despite
collapse ofall normality around them. From the ,,,,,,,.d te",,;, ,of,i;
Hotel Argcntina, shielded from federal positions by the hotel
and exposed only to the occasional federal gunboat gliding
past, the journalists, and the white-uniformed EC
follow the progress of individual artillery rounds frred from
as they screamed low over the hotel, and then, in a low
red roofs of the old town, before slamming into targets into the
bour area, particularly at night, when the shells would glow a
orange, the colour offm: in the night sky. The EC monitors, y'u _;
down in their hotel, would pass the time teaching journalists to
ogni:ze the subtle differences in the sound of ordnance artillery (outgoing) here; SO-millimetre mortar round (;0,<01";''1111
therell.
On the day of the Yugoslav federal flag's menacing 'PI=""''''
Zarkovic hill, Federal Commander, General Pavle Strugar, issued
ultimatum to the Croat defenders: he demanded that the Croats
over their weapons, and that all military personnel should leave
city. He guaranteed a safe passage out, adding that he expetted
response by eight p.m., that day.
The]NA had Dubrovnik in the palm of its h",d,Z'gn,b Inn;d<odl
It seemed certain that Dubrovnik would fall, even though
recognized that a land-assault down the rocky inclines that
rounded the city on all sides would be costly. Stipe Mesic called
owners of small boats, up and down the Dalmatian coast, to join
in a convoy to break the ]NA's naval blockade. As stunts go, it
bold and imaginative. But it was a stunt none the less. For twO
the world watched as Mesit, in the commandeered at-ferry, SIA"'J''''
inched his way south from Split, followed by dozens of. smaller
The flotilla was halted by ]NA gun-boats in the channd
ordered to turn around. Mesic, on the bridge of '
contact with theJNA. The guns ofthe naval patrol were trained In.
direction. S/ovijo 1 was full of Croatian dignitaries, including
Prime Minister, the wife of the Foreign Minister and a popular
dle-of-the-road singer Tere:za Kesovija - a lcind of Croatian
arc,

.
..

,0111

'0'

yed in the JNA

le had beenb destro
ome in Konav
uf.l' whoswhoe hcoul
I'
lid
' WLt' h he
arLty
so
LC
sym
ldusk
claim
e
efor
_..a._nce andd MeslC" todIdtherthe JNA Naval Commander. that he 10au"
esse .
er repILed that he had
disposs
. The. Command
.
-' to procee to Dubrovnik
Acu
wo..u1d
a
Lf the flotill moved on, hS'eIO'UIjO
Is pass and that,respo
let noavesse
to
J
h
er
worUlt,
In
ot
nd.
act and
tile
os
h
.....! uus
was
H
e
'U
Sf!
ante.
the
upped
""
Mesic
of the watcr. Presid
. and thcreLd be bIownenout tfthe
oslavta
ency
ofYug
l
Federa
'd
_z-- aU, PresL
had
of the. armed forces, althoughIavheArmy
fore Cornmande, in-Chief
the
Y
ugos
over
l
contro
hLs
that
than once, l over the F'mllls rumy. 'J am your
' d, moresame
tdnurte
h
t
aboute m'mandeasr'hishe contro
to the JNA gun-boat,0 'and 1
radioed back
.
.
Supreme 0sink my shi' .' The
on board -many f them
1
bntLes

defy you to
the shLp s bar - clapped and cheered. The
fedi g bold after hours m
of his crew and passen, responsible for the safe passage
lJupscap
rain
eyes.
d'
h
t
109
was now comman e sh'LP,GodroUed h'LS Only
nd unsure who
knows.
'Only
wearily,
replied,
t who was in charge, he
God knows'.
contact with Admiral Stane Brovet,
Mesit fmaUy established radio
ordered that the JNA conduct a
Brover
Minister.
Defence
the Deputy
that no arms
search of each vessel and, once it had been established
pass
were. being smuggled to Dubrovnik, it should be allowed 1 broke
unhindered. On 30 October, after thirty hours at sea, S/ovijo
the naval blockade and docked in Dubrovnik, bringing goodwill, and
ftcious little else. Mesic left twelve hours later, the plight of
PDubrovnik
unchanged.
MesiC's antics at sea served a purpose. Drawing attention to the
plight of Dubrovnik worked wonders for the international reputation
oftheJNA. Whatever had motivated the JNA Command in ordering
the attack on Dubrovnik in the first place, there seemed little doubt
that straightforward malice played an important part in motivating
the
troops. Day after day, the men on the hills fired artillery and tank
rounds
into prosperous tourist hotels that lined Dubrovnik's mod
em seafront.theThey
dropped mortar rounds into hotel forecourtS and
tched,
with
impunity,
as the fire, ignited by the explosions,jumped
;:
Ian ear to car destroying evcrything in its path. leaving a charred
sca of twisted metal and broken glass. The refugees who had
ured
IOtO Dubrovnik, fleeing the advance meanwhile cowered in
!;;
. basements,
first bombed out of their hoes, now bombed from
m Ir Piaces of refuge. There seemed little or nO military rationale to
h ofthe bombardment inflicted on Dubrovnik. It was the revenge
0

-p:;:I
....
.-1
"'
__
_

-._..

__
.

U
'

,-

as

__

' h '-

wtS

_L. :

ro

Uc

'3

THE EXPLOSION or WAR

RED AND DIRTY WAR'

'AN UNDECLA

of the poor ys from the mountains on one of the richest,

westward-Ieamng parts of former Yugoslavia. It oulmin,,,,,
i
November, on the systematic destruction, by wire-guided

every last yacht in the harbour of the old town14. The e"
"""\ 1
i
Byron had characterized as the pearl of the Adriatic, was the'
setting for such an orgy of vengeance. The nc
'm
,,jJly-'n
"';'
;;;

Tdegraph - surely the most cautious O

f

B
' it"
:

i:n'
:
',1
:

5
splashed a front-page headline that read: Like the
Advancing an Rome, the Federal Farces
General Milan Gvero, the JNA spokesman and the man who
minded the grotesque media tour of 'liberated' Vukovar, tli,.....

reports of Dubrovnik's destruction throughout. The Croats wen:

ting fire to piles of burning car tyres, he claimed. And, ,b,""d1:,. g;"

the abundant evidence to the contrary, 'Not a single speck of

dust has fallen on Dubrovnik'll!o.

The Federal Army did not succeed in forcing the surrender

Dubrovnik's defenders. After November's riot of destruction,
siege-lines acquired a semi-permanence, and the battle settled
seemingly endless low-level stand-off. Events in the Hague

Belgrade overtook the ambitions of the Monrenegrins, and, in

1992, with the truce in Croatia now fIve months old, the
reached agreement with the ]NA.

,d ''''. '' "'' ria

Th. JNA wirndrnwru from Dubm'mi\,', hint<d...
overshadowed by the eruption of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Anny's reasons for so doing have never been fmnly established.
by now, Serb-Croat enmity had cooled. The agreement to widuln

from the .last of Croatia's coastline was brokered by Tudjman

Dobrica Cosic, President of the remnants of Yugoslavia, on
September 1992. In the war in Bosnia, the interests of the fonner

coincided. Serh and Croat leaders were now meeting in secret to

the partition, between them, of Bosnia-Herzegovina. When
Federal Anny withdrew from its siege-lines around Dubrovnik.
observers believed that it was part of a Serb-Croat deal in which

Croatian

quidpro quo was

a commitment to withdraw

;rom:

Brod in northern Bosnia, thus facilitating that town's

the Serbs. Certainly Brod was of much greater strategic

the Serbs than Dubrovnik's hinterland, guarding, as it

east-west land-corridor that linked Serb-held territories in

Bosnia to Serbia proper. Concomitantly. Croatia was much

interested in de-blocking Dubrovnik and liberating Croatian

ries around it than in holding Brod. This remains the most pb,.....

ation, after six months of block.

rovnik's final liber
on ofDub
was also an early pointer to the
.
It
t.
.panan
rdmen
t bomba
interrrurten
L_ and Croats
which the Ser
in
war
a
.. and
ia:
Bosn
e a in
of Bosniaon
foe
...... of th w tn"t'
f - at effect against the comm
d to t>.
'
rate
.
....
..
e.
,ltl-ethntc stat
0< ' single mu
f{erzCgOVlna ...,
0

rendered all of eastern Siavonia vulnerable.

fall f Vukovar
villages of Ernestinovo
0
'(be .
the Army had moved on. The
h
ithin a week
W

ad swet Vukovar aSIde.

fell to the juggernaut that
aDd Laslovo
a? mtense mbard
began
and
nded
surro.u
Serb forces
.

fedcraI and
ofTenjski Antunovac. The CIty of OSIJek took a
ment of the village
.ng from JNA artillery and morrar-flre, day after day.
ba
single conclusion. Laslovo protected the
e rationale pointed to a
the Croatian town ofDjakovo, a vital supply route
road from Osijek to
population. <?sijek was Croati's third largest
to Osijek's beleaguered
lt
certam to suffer the
city and the capital of eastern Siavonta. seemed
citizens now
Osijek's
of
thousands
of
Tens
aarnc fate as Vukovar.
and
ith
w
belongings
packed
cars
their
ic,
pan
in
city
poured out of the
as
before
town
home
their
escaping
west,
road
main
jamming the

they believed inevitable - it had been completely surrounded.

At the same time, President Tudjman, under international pressure,

agreed to the dc-blocking of the JNA's Marshal Tito barracks in
Zagreb. Tudjman's critics were furious. They accused him of playing

into the hands of the enemy in his bid to win international

bility. As the Federal Army was making its next push deeper
mto eastern Slavonia, Tudjman was handing over hundreds of tanks,
armoured vehicles and artillery pieces that, in Croat hands, could have
been mobilized in the defence of Croatian territory. Tudjman again
faced a threat from the right. Croatia buzzed ith rumours of a coup.
.
w
udJma had two of his most prominent critics arrested and
ed WIthout trial - Mile Dedakovic, Commander of Vukovar's
and Dobrosav Paraga, leader of the extreme nationalist
a
of g t. Paraga had claimed, implausibly, to have

. .
10
rmed men 10 hIS HDS mIlitia.
He boasted that his men had
bo
the
brunt
his
of Croatia's defence. Neither claim was true. When
ty called, a few days later, for a mass demonstra
tion in Zagreb
to protest
.
against Paragas
, detennon, the rally that they claimed would
topple 'Iiud'
DeVe
. Jman attracted only a couple of hundred activists Paraga
r enjoyed the
.
. '
.
popul
r suppOrt In Croatla that hIS
oppoSIte number
III Serb
,.
ia, YoOJIS
I
. av "eeIJ ' was to w,on.
'
'"
r
Cderal troops
and Serb paramilitaries penetrated the outskirts of

: Party

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

'AN UNDECLARED AND

Osijek. Arkan, the feared leader of the Tigers and police

entered the provincial capital and afterwards threatened to
town. Panic, still in command of the operation, had orders
Commander, General Blagoje Adzic the Army Chief of
continue. Panic recalled the day:

Tht mom(1/1 Vukovarfoil. Croalia losl tht war. Buauu ,"" ",,,,,,
how marchd to Zagrtb wilhoul any probitms. Osijek. was
10ntd. Wt mUred Osijek. W( had ordm 10 take Osijelt a"j
ZlIpanja Ihe mommt VukovarfoIl, and 10 march towards Za
with two coillmm. along Ihe Drava and the Sava rivas.And
(ould haw a((omplishtd thai in two days. But thm I was (tT
10 go back.. I lalked 10 jovi{, and Koslic. And I also tallced to
Pmidenl Mi/ofevit. It was his dtCirion, Milo/rod's decision 11M
it was approvtd by tht rump prtSidency. He simply said 'we htnJe
nojob thert ill Croalpopulald areM. We hO'Ut toprolicl the W
areas', andthat was the line. AndI toldhim ijthe tMIl was topro.
tecl Yugosltl'Uia we shDuld goforthtr. Btcause it would h4w Iwn
.
emy. The Croals hadjld Vink.O'IXi, Zupanja. and Osijek.. WIn
Vuk/XIarfoIl, Croatiafoil too. And we could have marchd ellSily
on. But Presidenl Milafevit said, among olhtT thinp, lhat tilt
must stop. Alld that was the ordtT.from tht dtftnu minisltT aruiI
juS! obeyed. We prolected fht Serb artas, and that's whtTe the liru
is Jxre today.

Ad1it, the Yugoslav General who had pressed for the use
whelming force to keep Slovenia in the federation, was still
keep something resembling the old Yugoslavia together. He was
ed again by MiloieviC, now firmly in control of the rump

Presidency. By now, [he collective Head of State consisted

its members - three from Serbia, the fourrh from M,mt'n' ',

On 24 November, one week after the fall of Vukovar,

addressed a panicstricken Croatian nation on television. He

Croatia had succeeded in 'internationalising' the conflict and that

war was not, despite the claims of those who were plotting a
.
he
overthrow the Croatian Government, a lost
begun the war against the largest Communist Army in

virtually nothing, and had succeeded in building strong

while. at the same time, pursuing successful diplomatic
In fact, two things had happened during the
First. Croatia, having begun the war largely
,o6

DIRTY WAR'

had appointed General Antun Tus to take

ugus" Tudjman
.,.ny. In A
Tus had been dismissed
. As a Croat,
orces
f
ed
'
,-m
.
f Croanas
In three momhs, he
May.
In
Force
Air
Federal
the
derof
C mman
of volunteers and reserve
assembly
chaotic
g-b'g
a ra
.
L ...1 tumed"
"...
disciplined fighting force. When he had taken commto
men
'
. d of a Nationa
_Iice
l Guard of
.
,...,.
Croatian armed forces conSiste
e
th
d,
n
.
ma
By
orce.
f
police
October,
reserve
large
wgetber with a
.
(our bngades,
'
e
a
system
f
Into
thury-fiv
a
orces
f
available
.
'mbled all
.
. '
Tus had ass
B
D
y
function.
ecember,
he
It
l
mi
specific
ary
. des, each with a
briga
.
' ed, across
000 fighting men under arms, orgamz
claimed to have 250
.
ades
brig
y
.
,
.
.
the republic, in sixt
.
ractlc, mhented from TudJrnans former
At the slime time, th
of blockading barracks, had yielded
Defence Minister Marrin Spegclj,
reward. In September, the surrender of the Varazdin garrison had pro
vided Tus with the hardware to form his first tank brigade. Soon,]NA

_
..

prrisons were falling to Croatian forces like dominoes. At the end of

September, Tudjman had claimed that seventy JNA installations ranging from full garrisons to arms and ammunition stores - had
&Den to his forces. The evidence, despite PaniC's confident llsserrion
that he could have been in Zagreb in forty-eight hours, is that
Mil<KcvK: called a halt to the war when the Serbs, backed by theJNA,

bad won all theywere capable ofwinning ,vithout an endlessly bloody

and costly conl.ict.
At the same time, there were importantJNA victories that gave ter
ritorial cohesion to the new Serb emity in Croatia. In September, the
JNA took Petrinja, a town that had had a population that was half
Serb and halfCroat before the war. The fall of Petrinja redrew
the
.
nher
of.the S rbian Krajina along the natural barrier of the Kupa
River, and Just t
hlftyfive miles from Zagreb. (Serb forces then turned
.
guns, unsuccessfully, on the neighbouring
and larger town of
Sisak, which the Croats manag
ed to hold throughout the war) And
ha owed by the fall of
Vukovar, the JNA pushed the Cr ats ou
.
the un), thus forgmg what proved to be a vital
landbridge between
largest Serb enclaves in Croatia - that of Knin Knjin
a and the
-tory around Glina in
central Croatia.
secondly
"
' cIaIm
'
l ' Tud'Jmans
to have 'InternationalIzed the war was
just
i
6 d n ate
Novem r, MiloS"evic agreed to [he deployme
nt of
lntem
na peacekeepmg
troops in Croatia. He did this largely
because e
: o s were to be deployed on his terms
, in a way that was
consistent
ntral ar aim, which was the partiti

on of Croatia
lnto Serb.
d. oat entities,
the redrawing of borders between

lt

:;;

:ti

:
: :

THE EXPLOSION OF'WAR

Croatia and Yugoslavia, and the eventual secession, by the S,rl>-_

14

ulated territories in Croatia, to the rump Yugoslav federation.

i
end of the year, Tudjman had won his country's ndependence.

1 The twO events might, indeed, be connected. There is

that Kadijevic's secret trip to Moscow in Marh h 'd ih
;m ,o

would only be silf"e for the JNA to launch a :

:
Yugoslavia, ona Gorbachev had been deposed a nd ,
the Kremlin who would block any western attempt to oppose
2 AP, 20 August, 1991.
3 Although Vukovar had been subjected to sporadic shelling since J
4 Although weeks of protraCted local negotiations had taken place,
relations had been relatively Wolrm, Taic finally left under the auspices
EC-brokered ceasefire deal that applied to the republic as a whole.
Chapter Fourteen of this book: Yugoslavia a fa writ.
S AP, 19 September, 1991.
6 Many had no idea where they were going. AP quoted one
when asked where the tanks were going, replied 'I don't know '
beat the Croats',
7 According to the 1991 census,. V,dro= WI" ,,3.;' P''' " m C,""" .,d37
per cent Serb,
S The records were kept by the hospital d l
=
o' V' ' " '

; :
credible because of their dispassionate precise
they are modest claims given the inrensity and
.
They also conflict sharply with the dramatic and exaggerated accountl
ported by Croatian television.
9 Tanjug, S November, 1991.
10 The account of Tudjman's encounter with Dedakovit is recalled

':;' Z

2:3:::

Mesic, to whom Dedakovic also spoke.

11 The Indrpendent, 22 November, 1991.
12 Dubrovnik was 82.5 per ant Croat, and 6.7 per cent Serb.
13 For a graphic account oflife under siege in Dubrovnik, see Mec
PfYjudiu and Plum Brandy, Michael Joseph, umdon, 1993.
14 The destruction of the harbour area provided some of

graphic television oovera of the war in Croatia. It was captured by

respondent, Paul Davis, and his Colmeraman, Nigel Thomson. It did
shift the climate of international public opinion against the Yugoslav

and the Serb leadership,

15 Daily Tdrgraph, 13 November, 1991
16 Gvero said Ihis 10 Michael Montgomery, a reporter then with the

Telegraph,

17 The Macedonian representative, Vasil Tupurkovski, slOppc:d

Federal Presidency sessions during the Croatian war, as did Bog;t
the member for Bosnia Herzegovina.

A LA

CARTE
Plan
on's
ingt
Carr
Lord
September 1991-Januory 1992

yUGOSLAVIA

was a victory that was far from complete. The war had left a
his country under occupation. And it had almost cut Croatia in

Carrington took on the task of brnging pece

hen ord
Councli of ForeIgn
to Yugoslavia, the President of the EC
work
towards a compreto
him
. . rs, Hans van den Brock, told
Min
iste
.
'
h
accepted
C
'
arrmgton
.
s
mont
two
.
settlement 'withlD
benslve pc,ce
B roek's
en
that
remark
van
to
later
d
was
terms, and
the ' b n those
be
ould
tion
disinte
via's
Yugosla
of

at the problemS
.
.
, retrospect, ,ab olutel nd,cul
sl
a
os
ID
was,
y
n

RIOlved so quickl
,
It
be
gOlDg
t
to
was
difficul
how
of
t
ignoran
tty
e
r
p
that 'we were all
a
ith
aristocrat
w
English
likeable
and
urbane
an
is
Carrington
to whom, in dass
man
a
him,
behind
career
ic
diplomat
hed
distinguis
conscious Britain, the word 'statesman' naturally attaches itself.

beli

He had been Mrs Thatcher's first Foreign Secretary and had taken
most of the credit for steering the former British colony of Rhodesia
out of civil war and into independence as Zimbabwe in 1980.
Two years later, he took personal responsibility for failing to prevent
the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands and resigned

&om the Cabinet, relinquishing, on a point of principle, the job,

which, for most of his life, he had most coveted. The political
obituaries of the day declared him a man of unimpeachable integrity.
He went on to serve a term as Secretary General of NATO an d
'WU now enjoying semi-retirement as
Chairman of Christie's, the
don auction house. From the beginning, Carrington's involvement
1ft th Yugoslav conflict
had about it the feci of the part-time amateur;
he. did no ve up his day-job. In
keeping with van den Brock's
RllVe con
Vlc:r
lon that a constirutional future for Yugoslavia could be
,
rd w
It
h
in the time-frame of his own six-momh Presidency of

:mmnity. Lord

Carrington divided his time between the

_
Ufo
Pltal. and the gilded opulence of Christie's West End
on rooms.

win

arringto convened
his first session at the Hague on 7 September.
. cn.mon
ious gathering, He recognized, after his first meet
;,
u
man and Miloevic,
that, in the absence of an internationa
.
lly-brOr..t:red
,
.
_.I.l
constirutlOna
1
agreement,
the two largest nations
.
"""IU try
to 1mpose a so1utlon
.
on the rest ofYugoslavia by force:

It
i
ng

"'9

CARTE
YUGOSLAVIA A LA

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

Whm Ifir!! talked to PwidmlJ Tudjman and Milofroit il

. ....
.
ih
qUltl (lIar 10 ml Ihal both oj thlm had a solulion whc
mUlual1y salisfactory, which 'Wa.s thai thlY Wtrl going 10
up hltwun fhlm. Thty W(fl going to corot Bosnia up. The
[arIas] wouldgo to Strbia, tlu Croat [arttu] 10 Croalia. And IINy
weren't worrild 100 much, lilhtr ofIhem, about whal was goin
10 happtn 10 Ihl MUllims. And Ihty didn't rtally mind aho

corw

s:.

SIO'f)(nia.

Slovenia already had d,/aclo independence; neither the Serbs

the Croats were concerned about the consequences of
Carrington knew what that meant: to try to put Yugoslavia
together again would be, by now, to shut the stahle door after
horse had bolted. So. he began from the assumption that
had already broken apart. But. very early, he also saw the
of immediate recognition of Siovenian and Croatian
He insisted that independence should not be
Yugoslav-wide constimtional settlement had been
acceptable to all the repuhli. In this single respect
for all that he appeared semi-detached and only
to the project, came closer to producing a constitutional
which might have facilitated the peaceful dissolution of
- or at least a less bloody dissolution - than any of those
after him.
Carrington picked up where the failed hetbegovic-Gligorov
had left off: he recognized the six republics as the constiment units
each
the former federal state, and produced a Plan that would
them as much sovereignty as it wanted. It was, as
it, an attempt to draw up
foreign policy, economic affairs, a common currency, defence,
on. Each republic would choose which institutions it would
pate in.

It ulmtd to ml that Ihl right way to do it was to aI/ow lhou who

wanltd to bl indlpmdml to bl indlptndtn/, and to lIJJociPlt
themsl/wS wilh a unlral organization asfar as lhey wanttd 10.
Thosl who didn't wanl 10 bl indepmdmt, wdl, Ihry could Sla]
within whal had been Yugoslavia. In othtr words you could do ii,
so to .speak, a la carte.

But what became known as the Carrington Plan failed for the

that
- .
It.

the

ov Plan failed: Miloevic was

ligor
Zetbegovic-G
1

achieved what he thought was a breakbe Carrington

and Milovic together, a10ng .",?th the
.. .
ro ght Tudjm
y agreed to diVde the
ister VelJk KadlJeVic. The
Defence Min twO working groups: the first, and more .'Imporfedetalcomreren,....e into
.
-a:
ry;
0
work on the constitutIOnal future f the count
would
,
ese
a;d
r-t of th
g aboUI an end to the
b
nngm
on
ntrate
conce
.
d Would
.-:I the seeon
nng, had esca
.
a which since .the 7 September gathe
.
Croati
tn
g
.
bn
meetmg, all preseO[ agreed three pOlnt 0f
clrtmarically. At that
proceed. According
. . 1
which the peace conference would
pPl!op e, from .
.
.
minutes, these we
.
CO the session
alliance of sovere.ign or mdependent
or
tion
associa
loose
a
n
O 4.

'

A.

..pui>fi".
be made for the protection of comB. adequate arrangements to
guarantees and possibly scial sta
rights
human
munities, including
s.
area
ain
lUI for cert
C. no unilateral changes in borders.
It seemed that MilokviC had at last, under international pressure,
.greed that the republi, and not the nations, were the legitimate
Q)QItiruent units of federal Yugoslavia.
Four days later, the working groups went into session. The task of
Ihe working group on institutional relations was to find areas of com
mon interest, around which pan-Yugoslav institutions could be built.
The di$CUssion immediately reverted to the sterile exchanges that had
dominated the Presidential summits of the spring and summer of that
JICU. 1!'e minute of that session recorded: 'The basic position of
Sloverua was ro accept only very limited common institutional
urangement'. Croatia was prepared to co-operate in many areas, but
.
only on lOtr-governmemai basis - in other words, provided such
ratJon did not compromise its independence. Both these posi
e uncompromising. But they were not, in themselves, incon
t With Lord Carrington's a la carte design for Yugoslavia. Serbia's
.
poIItlon was. The mmut
es recorded the following:

SnbiQ could nt QC(t fhI

.L
groups contmumg " proc((d
wofl
<lng
.
.
.
.
0lltlN blJ.flJ0#"
thI /,OWISt common J
Ul
nom,nator 0j,dtntir,ld
.
' inttrals and mslit
u
. t
JOllaI arrangemllll.s. The con/trIne( should try "
;J /
'"111
;.1
;
k, glnumI common .
mtertsts which could bl del(lIded in a
common State
.
. It was essential
_ , for all Serbs to ;I.'
.
live in one
Itllte, not
ln a number 0f In
dependem republics bound by

THE EXPLOSION or WAR

little more than

interstate

relations. If this was n"

;::
:

tht othrr rtpublics, tht right (ourst would bt to rl:

rtpuhlics wishing it [indtptndtnct), after having settled

question of the succession of Yugoslavia and after

agreed on border changes. (Emphasis,

predominated; it also wanted to be considered the sole

successor state to the old federal republic. Agreeing to a volun'

"

Carrington none the less persevered. By the middI" ,fl:Jc,oI.."

war in Croatia was now unrestrained (see previous

Carrington was under growing criticism for his eagerness to

:;:': I:i;.:

the destruction of Vukovar and the sige and

Dubrovnik. On 16 October, Carrington distributed to the
leaders a detailed seven-page proposal entitled A'7ang"m'h

Grntral Settltmrnt.

..
The Carrington Plan was overshadowed by the unfoldi"g .,f '
Bosnia and the intervention of the United Nations. But

greater recognition for what it tried to achieve, not least

stands as testimony to the extent to which the international

nity and the other republics were prepared to go to meet Serb

.
eties and aspirations. The Plan guaranteed a ,vide
cultural and political rights to the Serbs outside

Croatia and Bosnia where they formed a majority, the Serbs

under the Hague proposal, entitled to use the national emblems

lags of their choice, the right to a second nationality,jointly hdd

that of the republic to which they belonged, and an education
..
,h,,,. ,
which 'respects the values and needs' of the Serbs.

granted the right to their own parliament, their

:Xt

ownn

structure, including a regional police force, and their

orher words. Serbia not only wanted to annex those

Croatia (and, by implication, Bosnia-Herzegovina)

In

mon ground with those who had ordered

.
.
lg the first and most fundamental
...as reJectil
a
that Serbi
Plan.
..
gton
...... f the Carnn
October and 18 October to make
berwC(:n
d
ene
ha
clue to his thinking came from the
One
ppge his mind?
. cha
n
.
Rupel, who observed that the
rij
Dimit
nister
I
I!'--te Foreign M'
tiro Serb'Ia ""' not the
ssion of the dlcgates . .
.
. _
orreatest . obse
, but the natJonal mmontles Withm thelr own
.. of
..
....
o--Croana at all
.
.
...K
The
,ticular, the status of the Albamans ill osovo.
' a
nd, m p a
.
e
fut
laVia
ugos
Y
ugho
thro
equally
.
on Plan applied
.
ia
also,
of
III
Croat
w
erbs
S
the
to
d
g autonomy grante
.
g
of
group
the
workin
one
g
Dunn
ians.
...,. granted to the Alban
.-.
republics' Foreign Ministers, Rupel had,
_ons,
II." onded by the
.
' one
I n't concern SIovema
f since It dOd
mischie
of
largely for the sake
. :
tion
vo
ques
Koso
the
d
raise
r,
wq or the othe

by authon.)

solution would thwart both ambitions.

YUGOSLAVIA A LA CARTE

0'

It did not satisfy Milokvi. When the Presidents of

reconvened in the Hague on 18 October, Carrington began by

each of the republics' Presidents in turn whether they accepted

.
graph one ofArrangemtntsfor a General Stttlemtnt. Miloevi .
did not. Lord Carrington asked whether this meant that Serbia
changed its position since the meeting twO weeks earlier.

MiloeviC had agreed to the three points of principle. Mil"'''

. Th

Tht only thing that really bothtr'td the Sers n Tht Hagut was
tlx queltion ifKosovo. I" olle ifthe (om mISSIOns they ltarttd to
ts/I. about how to regulaff theprOblem ofminoritiel, the Srrbian
".in/wity in Croatia -at that time it was only Croatia under dis
nwion -andhowpain/ul it waJfor them, tIN Strbs, to /iw under
Croatian rolt. Thm, 1said, we should delign in thil new arrange
mtnt tqual rightsfor all millori/i(l, inclllding tht Albanians, ha.
J()f)QnO'lJit [the Serbian foreign Miniurrj really got mad, that
W/U rrally somahing I lhouldn't haw laid. It was the end of
OIJrfriendship.

Milokvit had risen to power by exploiting the plight of the KO$oVO

; he had cemented his power by centralizing the state, and abol

iIbing the autonomy that the

constitution gave to Kosovo. By
.
ctendig to the Albanians the same
rights that Mila;eviC was
cleJmndlllg for the Serbs of Croatia, the Carringto
n Plan struck at the
undations ofMila;cviC's power
base. He could not accept it, and,
fOr . ng that the price of doing so was growing international isolation
;s public, Mi
l a;evi stood alone against the Carrington Plan.
loyale h d not expected to
be alone. He had counted on the slavish
Serbia's
ally Montenegro. The surprise of the 18 October
on Was the poSltJon
. .
adopted by Montenegrin President Momir
D... OVi.
utUat
c. The sesSI' n had bccn
delayed by more than an hour

beca o
f h'IS lat arnV'.I.I: he had
been
attending an all-night session

oftho Montene
'"
'
". m ParIlament
- of the
, convened to d
iSCUSS the merits
Camngton Plan. The ",pI- P..... lament had deCI-ded not to take a poslhon

1974

=
:
_ty

"3

YUGOSLAVIA A LA CARTE

THE EXPLOslON OF WAR

on the Carrington Plan, but rather to leave the decision in the

f Bulatovic personally2. When his rum to speak came,
including Carrington and Miloevic, expected Bulatovic ,iom"lYl;':
low the Milokvic line: Montenegro had been reduced to
than a satellite of Serbia since MiloseviC's 'antibureaucratic
tion' had installed Bu1atoviC's pro-Belgrade regime in power
Bu1atovic dropped a bombshell. He said simply: 'I accept the
of the Hague proposal.'
Mi1oeviC's claim that the Serbs formed the legitimate
state to federal Yugoslavia rested on the assumption that a
eration would survive the secession of those republics which
leave. He had taken for granted the loyalty of Montenegro,
public opinion was known to be strongly pro-MileviC.
Montenegro, Serbia's claim to be the sole legitimate successor
could not be sustained; there could, by defmition, be no nunp r..llo
Yugoslavia unless there was at least a second republic with
federate. Bulatovit's rebellion left Miloevic and Serbia
Bulatovic's support for the Carrington Plan shocked and angered
equally, it shocked and delighted the other Presidents around
table. Bu1atovic said the Carrington Plan represented the ""'<ella
of ending the war and of redeeming his republic's damaged
tional reputation:
w thought thplan was quite enough. It made itpossiblefor us ttl
realiu ourown intemft andto have the intereSll ofthe othm .
takm into account. It was an excdltnt means toput an md to lbe
war, a war which afficted us also in Montenegro, because 10 per
unl of our population was mobiliudfor that war. I had hem
under enormous pressure. During a visit to the Unittd States, t'!?
had treated me there as a savage who is this person whose n/J
uns are attack.ing and deitroying Dubrovnikf Wt never IIUdtti
Dubrovnik. ami, really, we could 110 longer allow ourselves to haw
.
our people die in 'tIain, to have Montenegro acqUIre Il1I
unftlVDurahle international uputation.

Bulatovic had, in fact, been tempted away from the Bel.

by the lure of EC money. The lralian Foreign Minister, laruu
Michdis had once asked Stipe Mesic. Croatia's representanve
Federal Presidency, how Montenegro could be coaxed away
..
loyalty to Belgrade? 'Buy them! Buy them!' Mesit had
lchdit
won't cost much they have nothing down there.' De M

W;

latoviC an EC development-package amount

sed . h B
it and
oUars. De Michclis sat between Milosv
millions 0 S
. But
good
speaks
Enghsh
ic
MiloSev
r;
18 Octobe
s:
hcli
De
Mic
to
ing
ord
Acc
.
JuIttoYit speales 1talian
enct I aslud to mut Bulat()'tlit briifly,
'J'r
0; fix (onl'e
a..r.- lhe start ,r
o,r
. U I insisted thai Montentgro a.dopt a posttton J
rY,
Id
UIC
ed q
A
al
-_ t
t
e
,
d
h
h
e
at
was
mterest
told mt that he
J and Bulatavic
;a (11Jn
egro
that
was
me
Monten
did. He told
'd tf,O IhaI Andso ht
. r011 the other halld he was VJ'nI interested
and
a"
...
_,
In
d
'-.1
. flTtJtt
,.
rtlations with the Europtan Commumty.
'evtlo"mmt
0 d
r
in tttmOnltts no/ural channel to Europt.
He considered Italy Montrntgro
tions for the proxr:amme of
ntgolia
wert
AI lhal time theu
M
(ln
y
Ital
i
belWttn
n/negro. . An 'm.porlanl
on
(tt-of"tlt
m varIOUS proJects, for
IlTt
,oll
bill
40
Dr
30
about
mme,
Montenegro, a country of600 000 inhabitanlS.
0

Carrington was warned by many not to set much store on

....toVit's rebellion against Milokvic. 'Bulatovic will have his throat
cut for this', someone in the hall commented. Henri Wejnaendts. the
Ducd1 ambassador to France. who was Carrington's aide, later claimed
110 haw: had a conversation with Miloevit in a gents' toilet where
Milolevic had contemptuously dismissed Bulatovit's rebellion.
'Bulatovic,' he told Wejnaendts. 'will not stay President of
Montenegro for longl.'
The next day, Bulatovic came under a volley of political nre. The
Belgrade press accused him of treachery. Serbian newspapers were full
ofaitical headlines - a warning that MilokviC would not spare even
Montenegrin brethren. Opinion in Montenegro, as far as it could be
appeared to turn sharply against him. There were demonstra1iOnI In Podgorica.
MilokviC's travelling 'Anti-Bureaucratic revolution'
to the road again. Bulatov
ic was summoned to Belgrade for a
tenes of meetings
designed to break his will to resist.

A ofenormous attach
came on my htad tifter I accepted the
CArrington plan.
Te was a series ofunp
leasant meetings ill Belgrade. Tht enlire
J'rels n Belgrade label
led me a traitor. And some [ofMilafevii:S
men Would directl
y ask me whether I was a spy, wheth I had
.
er
'WtI1Jed monryfiom a fiomgn
country. The next days were very
.
e:rplOS/tie. TIN media 'WOuld
say I stabbed MilofMlir in the back.

CARTE
YUGOSLAVIA A U

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

Bulatovic was finally forced to agree to a referendum On

He knew he was bound to lose. Montenegro, brow-beaten
mission by a Serb bandwagon that would certainly have COSt

his job, had he continued to resist,joined Serbia in backing an

ment w the Carrington Plan that rccognized [he ,,"""0;' of

imate successor state, consisting of those territories which

choose secession.
On 30 October, Serbia and Montenegro sent their ,m"ndn..

the Hague, insisting that a clause be inserted in paragraph

ing that the federal republic of Yugoslavia continue to exist

who did not wish to secede. The Serb-Montenegrin om,,tIoi
amounted to an outright rejection. Jt \'VaS strengthened by the
Montenegro's referendum, at the end of October. In responac
question asking whether Montenegro should stay in Yugoslavia

\'VaS,

predictably, an overwhdming vote in favour.

Carrington declared that the amendment was 'totally

able'. He saw in it MiloseviC's ambition to carve out a new

entity, comprised of Serb-populated areas in Croatia and
He said:

!'h::a'

[ think it all tame down as usual to

hadtome to the conclusion that Grrater

.h';::

was important, and that ifhe agreed to (hapter

which was Croatia grtting their independence, and Bosnia '

::r:

wing impatience and irriration with the

. whose gro
disguise. Vance, a former US Secretary
;
,
longer
;
o

her th,n aganst, LO d

ide, ratffi
alon
work
I
promised to
Id
somethmg to 0 er that camngton d
va ce had
But "n
O
O
O't
,"--on
force.
peace-keeping
a
international troops to be deployed
for
.
ed
appeal
..-h d
wanted 'lue hemets' deployed along
he beginning.. It
, as always, played a
with Serbia and Bosma. Serbia

CroIbl,5 bo d n
of hand he very
out
te
reje
men
iC's

publiC, Miloev
.
I
was an mtemal
nslsted
they
what
in
on
ign interventi
.
f
ent could be
oreign
deploym
f
that
saw
they
atter. In private,
. It was a question of choosing the right
advantage
their
med Cf!Us Vaoe to Belgrade and, in ovember,
moment. They welco
in the mternatiOnal peace process shifted from
gravity
of
the centre
to the UN.
Milokvit had decided the previous month to admit UN troops.
'Ihe right moment came at the end ofNovember. MiloeviC's calcula
tioa was two-fold: that the JNA had achieved most of its

'''''''oN
croa:; :
m
: ;0

I m
:d
.. EC

alituy objective in
IIoriAv Jo';',

At thtJt point the war in Croatia was undtr (ontrol in the sen1/'
thou all the Serb territorin were under our (ontro/' all, Ihat is,
etpt wltral Siavonia. Slobodan and I after many conversations
tkriJed now was the time to get the UN troops into Croatia to
protret the Serbs there. WI' saw the danger - when Croatia would
In rreogniud, which we realiud would happen, the JNA would

wanted it, t/xn thil would not be pOlliblefor him. Ol);""";" /

don think thrrt was any conuivable reason bnauJe none
arguments about the rrtenlion o/"Yugos/avia made Jtnse.

IN regamtd as Qforeign army invading anothrr country.

IMd betterget the UN troops in early to protect the Serbs.

The peace process never got beyond that fundamental

block. Gradually, imernational public opinion turned against

Though Milosevic was not yet widely seen as the instigator of,

guiding hand in, the war, he was now identified as the main

to peace. On 8 November, an EC summit in Rome ""","om'"

trade sanctions against Yugoslavia, including an oil embargo.
the Foreign Ministers were determinedly even-handed: EC
would apply to the whole country and all sides but they were

;<:::;

be lifted for all republics except for Serbia and

cnd of November, international dissatisfaction with Lord
progress had produced a muhi-track peace process that

could tum to his advantage: Cyrus Vance entered tbe fray " rho
sponsored peace-maker, appointed by Secretary General
,,6

Croatia; and that international recognition of

Croatia's independence was now a maner ofweeks away. According to

So we

, Inmational mediatio
n was now moving in three distinct direc
Carrinon's Hague conference, to which aU parties were
JIfthen . Y commItted, and which stressed the importance of a com
d p slv::'
ttleent for all p ts of the country;
Cyrus Vance's plan
.

"'
.
ps III Croatia wh
'" e Ioy.
ich enVIsaged a UN-mediated solution
Ctoalla alone
and wh'IC
h dOd
I not address the other republics; and
"':-1
-u, COm. mg from
, n...w and 0Illcn::asmg
0 Iy confident player on the
llti
lterna O al tage Chancellor Helmut Kohl of recently-reunified
y. , s
to borrow Lord Carrington's own meraphor,
_
onil! med
i
ation a. la (arte. Each of the
parties to the conflict

,,?-s

"7

yUGOSLAVIA A U CARTE

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

was presented \vith a menu of peace processes from whi ch to

Bosnia and Macedonia continued to place their faith
in
Carrington; Serbia favoured the United Nations and its envoy,
Vance; Croatia was under the wing of Germany.
In early December the pace of events shifted up a gear.
visited Bonn and met both Kohl and Germany's Foreign
Hans Dietrich Genscher. Public opinion in Germany had
strongly anti-Serbian from the beginning. The German news
had given prominence to the Yugoslav conflict throughout.
considered itself the European country most intimately
,vith Yugoslavia. It had a large Yugo.;I'" g,u""h"il' ")m'muru,
powerful Croatian lobby. Tudjrnan returned to Zagreb
",
.... ,
vinced that Germany was his country's saviour. He told C"
vision that Germany 'has no hesitation about its decision to
Croatian independence'4.
Two days later, Vance's work in Belgrade bore fruit. The
announced, had agreed the basis on which a
could be prepared. Croatia, buoyed by Germany's a:
nent recognition, had dropped its demand for UN troops
deployed along its borders; Serbia had dropped its oPIp"'itiol
foreign intervention. Both sides had agreed to what Vance
'ink-spot' deployment - UN troops taking control of a nu,nb" ,.
puted territories to be agreed by both sides. MileviC ,oJ,rub"
with good reason - that a UN-protected ceaseHre would
existing lines ofconfrontation, which would, in ,i,ne, ,"m,,o,1b
selves naturally into new, defacto, international borders. But
had to persuade Croatia's Serbs to accept it.

UN":;:;:7:

Germany had been pushing for recognition ofCroatian ,n'"''''''

independence for months. This fuelled Serb paranoia bout
ambitions in the region. Veljko Kadijevic, Branko Kosc and
JoviC all talked menacingly about the rise of a Fourth K:i
German drag narh OJltn. There is no evidence that the
more calculating Milovic shared their anxieties. But he
them whenever it suited his purposes.
By the end of November, the destruction of Vukovar, the
.
ment of half-a-million Croats and 230 000 Serbs from thelf
the occupation of almost a third of Croatian territory by Serb
lars and the lNA, and the apparently pointless vindictive
bombardment of Dubrovnik, pushed German public opinion
edge. To Bonn, Lord Carrington's peace efforts - stalemated

:p::;

rMitoevic's intransigence - began to look like

ntn because 0
y
100
m " ,""
.01
r: r m
. ac..";on. The arms embargo Imposed b the UN
screen lo
. had
ia
former
YugoslaV
all
against
er
.,.okeSeptemb
it on 26
&oc:wit)' ounc
military superiority. (Bosnia was
to preserve their huge
,,- _1 ..--1 them
' )
n even more than eroana.
resolutio
this
of
ffects
DPt"""': o the e
tD luffe! fr rn
for
international
policy.
a
dilemma
pose
would
bargo
1 ..- this. em
........
I the West was not ready
rnment would argue that 'r
gove
man
.
Bos
.
-. ' , then they should at least allow them to get arms.
.J- fend BOSOIa
h'l
'
CO gil:' S
ed in favour of lifting the embargo, w. I e EU countries
1'be U
other
agamst.
When
were
ground,
the
on
Ia, th trOOps
.. RUSS
WI
notably Britain and the United States - argued that premost
IIIlC$
' _ I opinIon
'cion would de-rail the peace process, poli t1Ciil
....nm: recogOl
co
was
m
te
ous. Bonn
partles,
mam
three
all

PI Gcnnany, across

d
de-rae
had
dy - by
rea
iU
been
process
peace
the
that
.
Genscher was convinced that recognition would halt
;s military advance through Croatia, and t at Miloevic was
.
continuing to take part in a peace process c h no IOtentlOo ofhon
task.
Three
years
in order to buy time to complete hiS ffi l
hta
ry
t:
unrepentan
Genscher was

-zued
BeIgrad
BeIgrad

ouring
liter

This was obvious rightfrom Ihe starl. II was obvio/l.S lhat they
WQnltd to use the nego/jations only to mhanu their situation hy
",iiitaryforus. I rame to this opinion '/)try quickly the Serh lead
mhip wanud to gain time, in order to conlinue their military
IUliom, and to alhiroe their military goals... It hecame more and
more rlear that afurther delay ofrecognition would (onstitute an
mrouragemmt to (ontinut the war.

Germany resolved to force the issue at the forthcoming EC

gn Ministers meeting in Brussels on 15 and 16 December
.
<?mscher made it clear that if the
EC did not move towards recogni
bOn, then Germany would
break ranks and recognize unilaterally. It
.
.... a bitter blow to
the spirit of Maastricht. Britain vehemently
tion. Hans van den Brock ofthe Netherlands had also
.
a me IOtI
y acquainted with the complexities of the Yugoslav
nmatel
onBi du . ng
his time as President of the Council Ministe Hc,

rs.
of
be eved prematur
e recognition would be disastrous. But neither
Britaj nor the
1IDo.
Netherlands was prepared to put the Yugoslav peace
S before
EC unity. To oppose Germ
any would be to destroy the
hopes tha
the EC still nurtured to build a common security,
and foreign polic
y structure. Britain - to Lord Carrington's

rogni

I'rocesn

"9

yUGOSLAVIA A fA CARTE

THE EXPLOSION OF' WAR

astonishment and irritation - did not even send its senior

Minister Douglas Hurd to the summit. His deputy, Douglas
went in his place. It was a signal that Britain had decided not
up more man a token fight.
Lord Carrington also attended the summit. He warned <h. ._
Ministers mat recognition now would - as he put it - "to pedo'
peace process. Paragraph One of his draft General Stttlemtnt
the prospect of independence, and recognition, to any
public that wanted it, but only after a comprehensive 'Old".,,;' I
been reached; only after the seceding republics had agreed their
tionship with those from whom they were seceding. Carrington
the Foreign Ministers that it would be impossible to continue
peace process if recognition were granted:
c

I said vrry strongly lhal Ifilt that the timing ofthis was wrong.
Ipoinltd out that tarly recognition would torpedo the conftrmcl.

There was no way in which the conftrence would continue aJttr

that, It would make no ume af all. And that ifthey recognized
Croatia and Sll)'I)Cn;a then they would have to ask all tIM othm
WMther they wanltd their independence. And that if they aslwl
the Bosnians wlMtlMr tlMy wanted their independence, lhey
inroitahly wouldhave to sayyes, andthat this would mean a civil
war [in Bosnia]. And Ipllt this as strongly as Ipossihly cOllld

The meeting lasted most of the night, with Germany buUd<";"

the other eleven members towards recognition. In the end
mise was reached that swept away what was left of Lord
peace conference and the carefully laid legalisti plans that
been drawing up to consider applications for independence, On
morning of17 December, the eleven succumbed to ::t:>O,7
: all :;:':
an ultimarum from Germany and agreed to invite
republics who wanted to apply for recognition to do so within
applications had to be submitted by 24 December. These would
be considered by a five-member Arbitration Commission, under
chairmanship of Judge Robert Badinter of Fl1lnce. The, :::
Commission, as it became known, had been appointed in l'I
to draw up a set of conditions which each republic would have to
isty before being granted EC recognition. The Commission Wall
report its findings on 15 January.
Even this compromise did not satisty Genscher. Croatla. was
means certain to quality for recognition under the Badinter
c

seeking
indepenostceminly demand that republics
. ..
_ . romontl
'
,..bich would alm
c national
cs, and
lor
n
protectio
e
have adequat of its own frontiers. So Genscher made
should
te control
. 0f the Bad"mterit
delTlonstranY
fmdmgs
the
regard
.,wd
not
ould
errn " v
cIieaI' that. G
g, and that Germany intended to proceed, uni0n
'SSI as bmdI
I
ComITl
'th recog", tion, whatever the outcome. Genscher seemed
, _lIy W1
Croatian independence a jatt. accomp'" by
JIlQ- i.' ed to make
he had driven a coach-and-horses through the

ChristmOas. T<0 d0 so'.,ocess

, and rendered the .deliberations of the
.......;ngton peace p of little more than academiC
value. He got what
"""':" r Commission
sing
a
new
song:
Danlu
Deul!lhland. In
lO
_.J Croats began
,.m
wanteu.
be
. a popu
Cale
e
on the 0Id City
quays!
"d
"
ar
1
'
"
Split,
of
city
me Adriatic port
.
Chancll
Kohl
Genscher
r
Cafe
to
name
its

waterfront changed
.
declared it a 'great triumph for German foreign policy . Lord
Carrington was furious:
t

me that there was no point in continuing with the

a
fter
that. When two cOllntnes had got their indepen
crmference
dence, lhey had nofurther interest in the proceedings, and I don't
mppost tIM Srrhs had mll(h inumt in it eithrr. The only incentive
tot' had to get anybod
y fo agrll' to anything was the ultimau
rteognition oftluir indepmdtnce. Otherwise there was no carrot.
Youjust threw it away,just liRe thai.
II seemtd to

Two days.later a defeated Lord Carrington took to the road again,

visiting each of the main capitals in the country. Bosnia, which had
consistently cautioned against early recognition of Croatia and
Slcwenia,
now caught in the dilemma it had most feared: its
choice was now to join Slovenia and Croatia in seeking
independence
and, by so dOing, risk provoking civil war against its own Serbs, or to
*>'

,.

was

tn51de a rump
ia dominated by Serbia and, by so doing,
the same fate,Yugoslav
ultimate
ly, as Kosovo, Vojvodina and Montenegro
which had been brought under
the
te control of Belgrade.
J.I!:.
rep. ublics applied - Sloveniacomple
,
Croatia
, Macedonia and Bosnia
_ a. en the Badinter Commission
;.;;c.cguvtn
submitted its report in
.
new year, It did ,"deed
impose
conditi
Croatia could not
ons
that
!be,et 1t recomme
nded
that
only
Slove
.
nia
Mac
and
edon
ia be granted
.

t!n. !he EC ignored it. Croatia got its indepe

ndence.
orua did not. Its
recog
nition
was
vetoe
d
Gree
by
who
ob
ce
to th: ame of the country on the groun that
ritorw amb
ds
iplie
it
ter
d
itIOn towards Greece's northern province of the same
own

yUGOSLAVIA A LA CARTE

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

name. Thus the EC's first confident experiment in common

policy-making ended in shambles, the Com unity's own
formulated legal and diplomatic mechanisms shot down
by
fashioned political expediency.

The United States did not join the EC in

Scowcrofr and Lawrence Eaglcburger,

.
had not done more to restrain German
abortive mission to Belgrade, six months earlier, the

and that it should be left to the Europeans who had, in any

to the challenge with enthusiasm and naive optimism.

MiloeviC agreed to the deployment of UN troops in

because he saw, in it, a way of achieving what he wanted solidation of his military gains in Croatia. He now ;
unexpected obstacle - a rebellion from within the

:;

Krajina Serbs, a leadership which he had nurtured a

nd
which now, for the first time that mattered, refused to do h
is

The Vance Plan, which had been unveiled during the last

weeks of 1991, called for the setting up of three areas to be

United Nations Protected Areas - or UNPAs. These woul

roughly with the three chunks of territory held by Serb =,j."
forces. Upwards of 10 000 UN troops would be deployed
UNPAs, for the protection of the people there. In return, the
'
would withdraw entirely from Croatia, and the Serb
would be disbanded and disarmed, surrendering their weapons
to the JNA before withdrawal, or, if they preferred, to the UN

who would store them, inract, at locations inside the UNPAs.

sides would agree to a ceasefire that would, in effect, freeze the

ing from-lines. The United Nations Protection Force (or
FOR, as it was to be known) would therefore form a thin blue
separating the Serb-held areas from the rest of the republiC. The
also contained a provision for the rerum of all refugees to
The leader of the Krajina Serbs, Milan Babic, set his face

the Vance Plan from the beginning. He now found himself in

conflict with Miloevic. For Babic, the war had been waged
the right of the Serbs in Krajina to stay in Yugoslavia. The
the single most visible symbol, and most potent guarantor,
sovereignty in Krajina, Withdrawal of the JNA looked to him

tlY\dg

James Baker, had determined that this was not an American

aim.

ys

Jlrelide}ncy
NA,.;:';

Croatia. President Bush's leading foreign

betrayal of his most fundamental war

.
the peace', Babic argued that
h war and lose
to 'Wln t e
to repeat the pattern.
.
to force the Krajina Serbs
. waS t
'Y'ng
Babic. Babic was
break
to
Y, Miloevic resolved.
nua'
nd ofJ a
lav Federal
At the e
the
Yugos
with
g
Beigrade for a meetin
,
oned to
High
the
Command
en),
placem
loyal Mjloevic
all
,..rnrn
eviC's men
MilOS:
Serbs.
an
Bosni
the
of
leaders
(
" the
the rump
on
ent
tive
repres
's
Serbia
Jovic

to reassure.
III the event of a
that
guarantee
a
Babit
IIeP'
.-I PreSI ency _ gave
_-=a.by
...
...... .to defend the
the JNA would redeploy
,
anack 0n I("J'ina,
rian
.
cr
-passed a resolutIOn to thiS eueet.
ncy
Preside
l
Federa
The
h
if
that
Bosnia seceded
not budge. He argued, in turn,
i
y announced
had
recentl
as the Bosnian Government
",," Y"gosIavia
v
.

Irect
th no d
s
S
b
er
WI
lOa
J
l'U
<l
do, this would leave the
.
it otten ell
fJNA
tees
s,
guaran
stance
those Circum
IaPd Ii k 10 Serbia proper. In
Krapna territ ry.
on were worthless unles the }NA stayed on

n
- which
comdor
norther
of
the
tion
ques
the
he ftrst time
It wu t
to dominate so much of the fighting and strategic planning in

:::;:!

In the Serb n:

minds t, it had been the historic misfonune of the warrior

td
.

d> '0

came

Bomia's war later that year - was raised as a vital issue.

It 2ppeared to }ovic that the Krajina Serbs were afraid of an

Yugoslavia
iadependent Bosnia and that theywould be cut off
the Bosnian
that
aDd vulnen.ble to a Croat attack. So Jovit made clear
Sat. were committed to doing the same thing as the Croatian
Serbs, so would never be cut off. In other words, the corridor would

from

Ilways exist.

The leaders ofthe Bosnian Serbs

Radovan KaradZit and Biljana

PIavIit - were called in to reassure Babic that they had no intention of

IIIowing what they considered the Serb territories of Bosnia to leave
via. Should Bosnia go ahead with its independence ecl a
tiOn, th y would follow the precedent set by Babic himself and wage

WI;f to redraw Bosnia's borders

ar

. In the north-western Bosnian city of

BanJ2 Luka, Serbs were the dominant national
group. They depended
e northern corrid r as much as the
Krajina
Serbs. The role of the
?
:an er leaders In the breaking of Babic provides a small but
IOslght: Bosnia was already locked into Belgrade's strategic
_-,- .
about the redrawn borders of what
would become a greater
'ilaDl8J} Srate.

;:,.

=ng
ng
e meeting
- .... .au

dragge

d on for seventy hours, Babit being required to

.
.
most of I' t, -.u
- ,most Wit
hout a break. HIS supporters accused

m....- e'S men of

Milo&evi
applying

old-fashioned sleepdeprivation tech--,-... to break

'"
BabIC
1
. After one short interval, Babic kept
reso
ve
the Belgra.d
e leadership waitin
g for two hours. When he fmally
"3

THE EXPLOSION OF WAR

arrived, the JNA Chief of Staff, General Blagoje AdUc, ''''p

"",
fury. Tempers frayed. Branko KostiC, acting President
Yugoslavia, who was chairing the session, takes up the story:
Babic's minisfrrfor rrligious affairs 1 can't rtmtmbn- his
but he had a long long beard - told Adi:ii {who for somt
-

loathed him} 'Shill up. Mr Babic is a Pmidtnt, and (an

when ht turns up'. Athit who is Iwo metrts tall and """"/"

up andfaud this littlt ministerfor religion who was

beard and mid' 'Shut up or 1 will strang/Y
Y'u
Rligion Jaid 'OK (omt and Jtranglr m: , i

fIIf

;; :::';:
:!:.

towards him andhad10 br slopptd At lhispo,n/ /

. II.. u"ht i
,,
";;;
.

10 (all a brtak.

Jovic then tried intimidation. He told Bahic: 'If you doo't

this, we will be forced to get Tid ofyou.' Babic knew that ,h,. y....;
secret service was not beyond the occasional tactical

";::''':.;

thought struck him - with good reason - that his

Milosevic might cost him his ife.
l
Babic - according to JoviC
pale and said: 'What do you mean?' 'Oh, don't worry,' Jom
'We'll do it legally - through the Parliament:
Where persuasion and intimidation failed, a combination
ieal guile and brute-force succeeded. MiloeviC's men played
in the Krajina Serh leadership. Babit had brought only his

ministers to Belgrade. Milan Martie - the Police Chief

Commander of the Krajina Armed Forces - was known to be
to the JNA position. Mile Paspalj, the Speaker of the
Parliament, was also loyal to Belgrade. Behind BabiC's back
Jovic that he endorsed the plan. Acting on instruction, he
meeting of the Krajina Parliament in the middle of ".,i
Crucially, it was ro take place not in Babit's stronghold "f
in Glina. JNA troops mounted roadblocks around the town.
refused to recognize the legitimacy of the session, and did not
The Parliament voted to dismiss Babic from office and replace

with Goran Hadtic, the secretary of the Vukovar branch of the

It also voted to endorse the Vance Plan.
Babic declared the Session invalid. But it was tOO late. He
successfully marginalized, and had now lost the support
Belgrade patron. Milokvic publicly denounced Babic in an
rer to the mass circulation daily, Vdernje N()'/)o$li. It was a
attack on his former ally and the first of many occasions on

I SerbillI'Dlitt <rUsh 'Ihi( Albani"n "..,,,omlml;om i" Pri,tin". KowlJO 011 21i Mllrch,
1989, 1MdIly tlx new &rbia" romtiflll;," "'s adopted. Duri"g . "lip o/prolrm

...

twmty-fWDAlb""i",1S ",," I'WI)polim",."

'wert ki/ld.

<I T
he BDsrfUJIf &rb lead" Radot'all K"",d:oi,. (,mire) and (he IrtUi(r olfh Cr(JlliliitI S,'rb,
)_" &J!.,.,jt (liff) a/ a/,bra/ioll'for "fi/o,,",,lr) (righl) ,,-dralan IIi S,rbi"" Pm;d""I,

RdXrad,', ).m,,,,,y 1091,

AfNA,Id;" tm;",

bi, aWl-ai.r,,,,}:. u'rapOlt all Dllb,,,,,,,ik,

,W/"II'" f99f.

IJ

7 Srr"i"" Jo/dirrs rsrorli"g "'/,llImi CrMti"" prisowrs f'Wwr "firr th'fofl of

Vi';'I"'r. Nrx.'",n!>,r 191.

Cynu V"nrr, UN Iprm"

""VO)', dis(Usus pro,pUII/arp,.,(l v.:irh JUifa]roii,

Ip'in, 199.1_

11 BDJnian Serb ,oldim with t",,lilion,,! Serb (liPS, i/l II" positiomfrom whi,I, Ihq !'a'Vr
bDmbardtdSarajl'VOfar th",>'t!lIrs. spring 199-1.

II r:lhni( d"IIII,iug in Hijdji"", IIpn"

1992. IId:"n, Snhparamililaryjighfm ilSUJlJf tl

MIIS!i", mllll. 1)(J'Villg Ihrot"" him 0111 oIIljirst-:/loor 'window.

yUGOSLAVIA A LA CARTE
" WOu1d u><
VI\.

public condemnation to destroy those who dared

.
.
lenge him
uary, all obstacles noW removed, Cyrus Vance formally
Febr
12
On
General the deployment 012 000
to the UN Secretary
recorrIlTl ded
_keepers. Two days later, UN Security Council Resolution
F
1J1'I
3
", , proposal to send the second largest international
74 endo d

e an "I mtl 1 pcrt' od 0f one year..

ng force ever deployed,lor
eepi
_k
.
.
to supervise the ccasefire and begm dlsarmmg the Serb
thdrawal of the JNA. On 8 March, forces from
and oversee the
.r
more than thi
ty nations began to deploy under the Command of
10 ch:U

was

tia.

Is

mili

General Saush Nambiar of I?dia in four sectrs of the republic. For

reasons that, even at the time, seemed ludicrous, he set up his
Command Headquarters in the very eye of the coming storm - at
Sarajevo. In less then a month, the new stOrm broke, over Bosnia.

1 Arrangementsfor II Gmeflll Srt/lement, paragraph 2.5.

2 The Serbian parliament. in a dosed session, rejected [he Carrington

Pkn,
3 Henri Wejnaendts says in his book L'Engrenag( ChroniqufS YougoJlaves:
jlliJ/d 1991-Aout 1992 (Editions Deno;:\. Paris, 1993) that the brief conver
Iltion took place in a gems' toilet. Miloevic denied it, as did other members
ol the Serb dcleg1lrion.
'" AP, 6 December, 1991.

/6 (RiXht) K<lraJil "nd

R<llko ..H/lldi!. ,h,

romm/md., oflh" Homill"

SrhP,',,s. rrl'i"u;i,W ,hr;'-

11,(1,,1111<'1 in Op'(ltitn
Gom!:.lf. lip,i/ J'I4

BEFORE THE DELUGE

s
Whelmingly backed by Muslim and Croats. As

PART FOUR: BOSNIA

.
.
ch was over
staged their own
, Vih'I
who four months earlier had
5,
b
er
5
the
This formally confirmed what
-._
''':
-'
ed the poU en masJ(.

15

teady, boaycott
of a huge gulf between Bosnia's
pare t. the existence

BEFORE THE DELUGE

July 199G-March 1992
The march to war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was a terrible
procession. It gathered speed when war erupted in n::::::
Croatia, bur might have been prevented if the European
had not recognized Croatia as an independent state in January,

Bosnia's President Alij a lzetbegovic then faced a stark choice _

to seck recognition or remain in Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. The

d ::
forged ahead and the US reluctantly f
'dl :! :': . :

:
:
i
that recognition would mean peace. For the B
;: t ::

war. Their leader, Radovan Karadzic had threatened that if

were recognized as an independent state, it would be stillborn

survive a single day. The Serbs moved and war erupted. The
predictions were fulfilled.
Their eyes burned out of holes in black ski masks.

stretched over flattened faces. The Serb gunmen looked

ragged

haphazard, but their barricades went up with military precision.

half-day later, [he Muslims blocked off Sarajevo from the ,"" d" "

put them in a sandwich - the Chetnik barricades - because

more numerous; said Sefer Halilovlc, an ex-JNA officer and
Chief of the Bosnian Army, who also complained that his

we

leadership was slow in approving the counter barricades.

Roads were blocked, neighbourhoods cut off from each other.

dawn on 2 March, 1992, Sarajevo had been transformed into a

"

acing labyrinth. Serb leaders claimed th" b,,,,i,,d,,, w'" 'f,?" '
C
erected in retaliation for a g:mgland-sryle attack on a Serb
party, in which the groom's father-in-law was shot dead and
Orthodox priest wounded. 'This shot,' said

who was Speaker of the Bosnian Parliament, 'was a

aimed at the Serb people.' Muslims accused rhe
provocatively brandishing Serb flags in the city's old
Rascarsija.

;::,r

Serb leaders uscd the wedding attack as justification for the

cades. In fu.Cf, they were an early precursor of the calamity
,
follow. They came at the end of a weekend referendum on

,,6

. % independence referendum was one of the conp,ttes.

.... aIrt mum
,
. . C
com
'
B
by the Badinter CommiSSion lOr osnta to receive
. U1ated
SI
.,n
on5
diti
P
to bring the sides closer
ition. It was not designed
n
recog
. .
.a:..JnmaflC
uent
recognition.
subseq
ize
to legitim
but
t,
emen
u
lID . sc;.
b
'
L. at B'IStrl'k, had d
IsapkanJ'ac, in his city-centre arrac
_.
.. Ku
Cenero
. g to use the JNA orces
refusin
by
s
leader
Serb
.
, ted the Bosnian
,
to partition Sarajevo, H called Izet?VJc and
:;:,his command
disaster. Karadzl refused
JCarad!ic together in a final attem to avert
to go to the Holiday Inn.
refused
Izctbegovlc
cy.
Presiden
the
togo t0
statIOn,
,
,
eaeh man
at t e Ie eVlSlon
1bey evenrually agtted to meet
It was a
armed
militia.
twenty
some
of
.:companied by a bodyguard
no
but
exchange,
agreement,
heated
a
recalled
waste oftime. Kukanjac

-r-..-I

i '

IJIlid 10 Ihtm wry roughly: that thty wtreplaying with ptOplts

IMs,

that Ihry should Iii down and talk and that wt had had
mough oflhat nationalist;c bthaviour. Sitdown, talk. (omt 10 an
IIgrttmtnt. 1fnof in your infertlt then in fht interest offhtople.
They wtrt shaking thtirfists In each others/aces. 'You did Ihis!
You did that!' until I had to in/ervttlt. lutbeg()f)ic blamed
Karadi:.itfor tht barricadtI of 1 March, and said fhl! Strbi were
trying to takt control ofSarajroo. He was a/so alleging that there
fJJn't troop mO'lHmtnts/rom Pale to Sarajrvo. Karath:ii, for his
part, blamed ]ufbeg()f)jifor the plot that was to be implnnented
lhat night in Sarajevo, alld thy
e exchanged accusatiom as to who
.
rUUlvtd whom, when find how. There wtre other peoplt in that
room, fbert was thick Imokt and fM argummt wos rtally
Ixated

,eir bodyguards
mingled in the corridor outside. A month later
"
-, were at wac with
each Other.
reed to set up joint patrols, comprised of Bosnian police
-, "
A
, who persuaded Serbs and Muslims to take
down their
. .
L
-.ru:aae s The enslS
was averted, but the events of that week
end had
been a d' ss
,
Strb
re ,hearsal , It seems,' said Izetbegovic, speaking of the
leaders,
at they were not qui
te ready for war.'

arwt.ley

In Bosnia,

Musli

ms, Serbs and Croa

ts, the three main communities
CiICb form .
!;\I
.J sepa

had
rate polit'Ical panics . th
m e run-up to the republic's first

"7

BEFORE THE DELUGE

BOSNIA

free elections on 9 November, 1990. The victory of nationali t

in the elections in Croatia and Slovenia, the previous sp
souded arm bells ong Bosnia's Communists. It
playmg wIth Yugoslavlas borders would lead to civil war, and
cized Serbian and Croatian leaders for engendering fear
Bosnia's inhabitantsl. This was more than a scare tactic aimed
serving power, "or the next year, the balance of fear helped to
pone a war which all the national leaders warned would lene
republic soaked in rivers of blood.
The Muslims wert: first, establishing the Party of Demo",
Action (SOA) in Sarajevo on May 26, 1990, as a 'political
Yugoslav citizens belonging to Muslim cultural and historical
tions'2. A prominent Muslim intellectual and lawyer by
lzetbegovic, with dear blue eyes and broad cheek bones,
parry's flI'Sf leader. Of the six Presidents who came to
Yugoslavia's fIrSt multi-party elections in the
was the only one who had never been a Co:nmunist.
Communists had done their utmost to make him a martyr.
Second World War, Tito's partisans had cracked down on
and national groups, lzetbegovic was arrested [0<' Ix'n.
nationalist group, called Mladi Muslimani (Young
served three years in prison, a light sentence
executions that took place a year later when the
to join forces with fellow activists in Mostar.
broken and lzetbegovic was under constant police
next forty years.
In 1983, along with a dozen Muslim intellectuals, I::'
jailed again, this time for plotting to overthrow the state,
rity men came to arrest him at his family flat, seizing scores
leners and photographs which, it was claimed, proved his role
conspiracyl. During the trial, Izetbegovic was a compelling
his keen mind instilling respect, and silence falling over the
whenever he spoke. But he was convicted of <o';nl""-,,,oluon
conspiring to create a Muslim state, and was sentenced to
years in jail. The renowned Yugoslav defence lawyer,
who represented ofthe accused Muslims, called the <01"', '".,
culmination of political show-trials in Bosnia-HerzegoVlna.
authorities had concocted false information, he said, and exaeted
fessions through physical and psychological to "u,,
Bosnia had long since acquired a reputation
most repressive of all the Communist regimes in

':':;.

':;.;r;i

two

,,8

'::I;:
I

three communities in
ped down on each of Bosnia's
cla
followed by a case
be
often
p litical trial would
',u lim
,j
","''';l
M
,
A
e
,
else in Yugoslavia
e
anywher
than
More
Croat
....
a S erb or a
" dly emorce
-, d '
' was ng..
_-hO
....
-.. ng , e 0[ Brotherhood and Unlty
'
um
'
'
B
nctlons
.L.o. .J
d
fu
osma
were
an
_
lIU's
institution
All
,
,
..
oVln
rzeg
. _He
rotation
of
h
nat
the
Ona
(key)
kljut
l
the
to
ording
e
cl
y
ac
,
JIoon"stne
fiJled
' g PorLt1
' at cnSI
" , the umber 0f
death and the ensum
After Tito's
tned to susregIme
oSOJan
B
d
wounde
the
as
d
__1 trials increase

,
-";.,
n.
repressio
rough
'pelfth
Ddl
only served five years of his fourteen-year sentence. In
releas,ed and,' ,t\vo years ater, h,e was t,he
November 1988, he was
His danty of vIsion made him an Impressive
Preside t of the SDA.
war came, his stature diminished visibly.
when
figure. But,
tired and bmbli?g, ill,-equjped to deal
appeared
Within a year, he
around hun , HIS rapid deehne seemed
raged
ich
wh
ct
i
wiIb the confl
n ideal.
10 minor the destruction of the Bosnia
Serb and Croat nationalists point to the Islamic Declaration, an eso
document penned by Izetbegovic, in 1973, as proof that
&cmegovic planned to create a Muslim state, In fact, it was a work of
ICbolanhip, not politics, intended to promote philosophical discourse
*DOng Muslims. In it, he excluded the 'use ofviolence in the creation
tJi. Muslim state, because it defiles the beauty of the name of Islam'4,
A more significant indicator of IzetbegoviC's orientation was lilam
Immr Eau and West, first published in the United States in 1984,
then n
i Yugoslavia after his release from prison four years later,
'I'biI book mapped au[ his vision of an Islamic state in the modem
lftIddS. ln it he charts a course between Islamic values and material
" arguing that the benefits of secular western civilization are
t meanng unlss they are accompanied by the spiritual values
--.u predomlllanc:ly LO Islam
ic societies.
and Croat nationalists were
able to play on the widdy-held
on. that Muslims had nevcr been
a separate ethnic community
w:re Simply Serbs or Croats who, in the
course of five centuries of
"'"'
w-man domination, had SUccumue
L
. d to pressure or temptatIO
' n and
_d to Islam" They saw t\em
,
1
LO
ellect,
as
Serbs
Croats
'
or
who

b.d _.
L

"
io&UC() away theIr
tN,e 'Identity
_
'
and
adopte
d
the
trappin
of
an
gs
eari-I.
.
.
"
-"'r <I.l.len culture
' translat mto
.
Th s comempt was easily
ed
yet
nale
aaotber rano
. , m.
Serb'Ian and eroatlan ternto expanSlOnls
Tito'sItionaJ In"1974 COfor
tI
nStltutlon granted the' Muslimsnal
,
, the third biggest
...:...:.. _
. ooup In y
avia, the status [ a separate nationality, Their
--mne was to ugos[
.
1.uc
.. the onl
Y natlonaI'Ity , Yugoslavia without
III

"

"

10

'

govit

poIiti

"

"

10

an

BOSNIA

BEFORE THE DELUGE

undisputed claim to a separate republic6. Izetbegovic saw 0.",,,,, .

homeland for Muslims, but one which also included
Croats. The Muslims, he said two years before the
war, did yet not comprise a big enough majority to make
Muslim state.

We are not on the road to a I/ational state, our only way out is
towards afree civic ullioll. This is thefuture.
Some people may want Ihal (to make Bosnia a Muslim state) hut
this is 1/01 a r(alistic wish. EVI!II though the Muslims art Ihl! tnOSl
IInmerom nalioll in Ihl! repuhlic, lhere au not tnough oj11m"
... they would have 10 (ompriu ahoul levenly ptr unl of lIN
poplilation7.

National dreams - the emergence of ethnic parties and

did not reflect ancient hatreds as was claimed later by the fru....
international community while it struggled to comprehend the
But the popularity of exclusively ethnic parties did serve to
the weakness of republican institutions when confronted by
national idemities. They also illustrated a tradition of separate
munities growing up side-by-side. while preserving - at least in
their distinct idemities. A fundamental difference among the
national groups was the coUective perception of their historica1
rience. The Serbs, for example, regarded the Ottoman p,,,oo<h,,,o, ,
of occupation. For the Muslims it was an era which saw the
and subsequent prosperity of their own particular elite. For
these contradictory perceptions had co-existed, but, by
of Serbian nationalism had turned history into the purveyor
Nearly two months after the creation of the Muslim SDA.
Serbs established the Serbian Democratic Party (SOS), a

fdl"", ".,.III

the Knin party of the charismatic Jovan Raskovic. A

rrist, Radovan Kar-aM.ic. heavy-boned ,vith a huge mop
elected SDS president. Kara&ic was a poet and I
- ' .
.
Dobrica Cosie, the father of contemporary Serbian
Sarajevo society never accepted him as a member of the urba n
But he was bright and witty. He was an outsider, born and
.
l he
Montenegro, before mov!ng to Sarajevo as a teenager. Nor d

: ::

himself as a leader until Cosic encouraged him TO turn to

.
the SDS's inauguration, at which both Raskovic and IzetbeoVlt
guests-of-honour, Karadzic tOld the audience that Serbs 10
must have equal rights - cultural. religious and economic. He
'10

against the Serbs must be redressed and he

llttcd
wrongs com n
freedom of political organization, elections and

pev

to res
. "
o years later his Party's troops would expel hun
_shanng

.
of people and destroy mosques and other relics in
of thousands
m.--I
es of a MusI-un presence III Bosm3.
toerase all vestig
ff
o
rt
.. ,
lorm[0llowed SUlt,
- ,
SDS was bunched , the eroats '
Soon :u,ter the
Z
L-k
1 e the SerbS, hc Croats were
.
HD
the
of
braoch
.
.
Bosman
announced tn S eptember that the SDA
.
ted when Izetbcgovic
parity, and that the next government
the rinciplc of national
f,
ed on the basis of one-man one-vote. lzetbegovic was
. 0to pl'y the same game in Bosnia that MiloeviC had in
IftCIIlpong
. 'I
- - dUal
- hts were ecu ed
_. fig
s (I'll and -IndIVI

miDd (or Yugoslavia. Ule

guarantee
Serb dommatlon
would
vote
majority
mrough instirucions,
mroughout the country. In Bosnia, the same principle would give the
Mutlims - the republic's largest ethnic group with forty-four per cent
olthe 4.35 million population - the greatest authority. A key difference
... that Miloo:vic was striving for changes which subverted the very
piDciples on which Yugoslava was found, wheras Izetbegovit's
.
proposals applied only to Bosma. The republic s constitutIOn, however,
.... each of its three groups constituent nations, which meant that no
.;or decision could be carried out without concensus.
Despite the growing tensions, the three national parties, meeting
behind closed-doors in Sarajevo, agreed to form a united front against
their main opponent - the Communists. For its part, the reformed
Communist Party was trying - with no success - to cool nationalist
feftn. It warned that tensions in Croatia were spilling over into the
border regions of Bosnia and condemned the formatio
n of village
puda by the Bosnian Serbs9.
Thre was still hope that an electio
n in Bosnia might reflect the
ctmuri.es of o-existenc
e among the main communities. An attempt
eral Pn e Mnister Mark
ovic to launch his own civic party, and
n:a
e natonaJjsts, seemed a ration
al choice. The indefatigable
remalOed henomenally
popular despite the constant obs
'p
tide.
by Serbia. Croatia
and Slovenia. Opinion polls said most
QIrbed
wOd vo e for his
Federal Government. which had already

taIfid yper-I
atlon and made the dina
r convertible. But his sucL.....
economlc proOT
mme and contag-iOus oprimism never transaI '. a
.." into
"
.
r
' c VlSlon. HIS
attempts to compete in elections in
.
IIoenia
an Serbla
.......
mercly In
fu
- d Scrb nauo
nate
..... he had
hsts,
- na
who argued
S not stood .10
elections in Croatia and Slov
.
enia' allowing
ts tO WIO
.
there. At The same time,
the obstreperous republics

:;i
::::be

:!':

;;S

'1'

BOSNIA

BEFORE THE DELUGE

blocked his efforts to caU elections at the federal levd. On

a rally in the Kozara mountains in north-western Bosn
ia
thousands of Serbs had been murdered by the Ustak
Second World War, Markov
iC announced the creation of'an
of reformist forces to build a new and prosperous Yugoslavia'.

thousands of people turned out to cheer for Ante Markovic. On

same spot, two years later, Serbs would carry out unspeakable .
against their Muslim countrymen. Three ofthe most notorious

tion camps were built in the Kozara region. Muslims were ,",,",led
and their homes razed to the ground.
The elections were a test, not only for MarkoviC but also

Bosnia-Herzegovina's future stability. They failed on both

Despite vocal suppOrt from some of Bosnia's most pul" m'",'"

actors and writers, Markovic lost. Of the 240 seats ' the
Parliament, Markovic's League of Reform Forces won just

:;:

His only allies, the (reformed) Communists of Nijaz

a further eighteen. Ominously, most of Bosnia's electorate

ethnic lines: Muslims rallied behind the SDA; Serbs, with

per cent of the population, solidly supported the SDS;
seventeen per cent, voted for the Bosnian branch of the

two rounds of elections, the SDA won eighty-seven seats, the

seventy-one, and the HDZ forty-four. Thc nationalists had

show, taking neady ninety per cent of the seats. They were

,:: :i:r!;

in the coumryside, with reformists and

the cities. Despite public rivalry, the nat

ionalist leaders
band together against the Communists in the event of a
effect, the elections constituted another Bosnian census. The

of these national options laid the ground for the war that foll..
The three national panics had secretly agreed before the

to form a coalition government - bur even they were surprised

magnirudc of their victory.

Fashioned after Yugoslavia's inefficient
Bosnian model had two places each for Muslims, Serbs and

rotating Pn";;'j,,,!,

and one for a Yugoslav. The SDA candidates captured the most

Fikrct Abdic, a local hero in the far north-western comer

received I 010 618 votes, compared to 847 386 for

I:':;;=

and rotund, Abdic was adored by Muslims in the d

region of Cazinska Krajina, which he had enriched

from Agrokomerc, the huge state agro-industrial combie.

fortunes had plummeted in 1987, when he was jailed for ;"u;"g '

million dollars in unbackcd promissory notes. His supporters

framed by jealous rivals in the ruling

cal scapcgoat
C eI '
lJI:_ lore
d re SI?A, shorti e
III
. When he joine
.
lSt
a
ugoslavlas
sed
hll
dlsl
Crillcs
CcJIIU1u
1 n

.
a ear boost.
.
ti
rec
did won
s
)all
stint
iO
Abdlc
but
PartY
al,
crimin
uar
..
'te-c
hi
nw
by 1990, had crosS(:d ethnic lines. In
__
ularity, which,
hiS
for
...
allure for Serbs and Croats.
little
vic held
.
CSJIltraSl, Iut
, who did not have enough support
Abdic
,
deal
alOed
S"
I
. .
c:xp
un
In an
I , as H.ead of . he
traded his righ1 POSltlO
SDA,
the
, .
.
hp
man,
A
Delimustafic, as
hiS
tTt' for naming
han0xc
,
n.....-.: ... ncy In e
1.... ' . b'Iggest
I
'lCtocgovlcs
ecome
d
b
woul

u:
. ster. L,ter, Abdit
j
V
uRi
n
r
---.
ka KraJ..la 'JOdpcnent f the r:st of
_ declaring Cazins
.
_;nt
a Muslim natlonalist, EJup GaOlc was
being
. Despite
.
..,..tom 8osma.
I pna PIal.C.
Yugoslav ticket. The SDS'S 8'1'
'" elected on the
---'-d
.
.
.
'
..
..
'
S.t]epan
elected the Serb representatives.
mel Nikola Koljevic were
seats. Both HDZ candidates,
1(1;",
J",
I and FrnnJ'o Boras won thc. Croat
IUJ..I
' I
' a WhI' le Boras
8
Ierzegovtn
OSOJapreservmg
to
dedicated
Kljujic was
tia11.
Croa
ter
Grea
a
of
ed
dream
Jzetbegovic became President, th.e Serb KraJIOIk waS appolted
Speaker of Parliament, and Jure Pe\Jvan, a Croat, was named Pnme

politi
"'" a .

C{:tIO,

..

Minister.
The uneasy coalition would last just over a year.

In Croatia and Serbia nationalism reigned. The fires were being

IlIIJbd and would soon spread to Bosnia. No-one made any effort to

UIIIlpromise. Serbs clung to their right to remain in Yugoslavia,

Croats to leave what was left of the federation, and Musims
to sover
l
eipty. On 27 February, 1991, Izetbegovic told Parliament he was pre
J*ed to fight to secure Bosnia's sovereignty. 'I would sacrifice peace

.. .

sov r jgn Bosn

ia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia
Iiaugovina would not sacrifice sovereigmy
.'To the Serbs, this was
war cry. At that same session,
Serb deputies refused to discuss a dedan.tion of 8osruas
"
sovereign
, ty, which had been proposed by the
SDA andHDZ.
OSlavi.a descended
into war in the Spring: of t99t, AJija
.
- 1If'hose c a
d hiS Macedonian count
erpart. the wily Kiro Gligorov
ul"VJ.va1 through four decade
s
of Communism had earned
him the ntckname
'the ox, - scrambled to put forward a propos for
al
the futu sh
ape of the Yugoslav
D
rc
federation which would satisfy evcryO e Th
. e chan
ces of SUccess,
'
aIrcady shm
'
grew remote after
auue
evit '

TUdj man's March 1991

meeting in Karadjordjevo.
.
n received word
of what the scheme had 'cooked' up at

Lf:I.

: ::'

>11

BEFORE THE DELUGE

BOSNIA

Tito's old hunting lodge: not only did the Serbian and C'o"''''
10
of Ante Markovic, but they had " ''''''0
t:rs plan to get
Bosnia as well. Izetbegovic implored the Croatian I"d".hi,
"
him exactly what was in store for his republic. Stipe """'.ICn
laughed and ""g "n
Presiden
representative
"ld
song by the name of 'There is no more Alija.'
After repeated armed incidents in Cro ti , the SDA and the
declared meir full spport for Zagreb in its battIe against the
rebels. At the same tIme, the 5DS condemned C o tia's assault
breakawdY Serbs. Throughout Bosnia, villagers began to stand
at night, often armed with hunting rifles or old guns, and
identity pape s.
,,
In Western Herzegovina, adjacent to Croatia and o",,,h,,lm;,;
Croat, the HDZ announced that its members would come
of their kith-and-kin in Croatia The red-and-white
checkerboard banner was already flying. Bosnian flags were
Allegia nces had never been in question here. Even before the
nationalism, Croats from Western Herzegovina were the
extreme. After the Second World War, Serbs would say ,h,,, '"",,
grows in western Herzegovina except rocks, snakes and Ustak',
Each community raised the stakes, pushi ng the other '0.",,, i
abyss of war. 'Th oughout 1991, even in the beginning of 1992,
side thought the other wouldn't dare. And there was that terrible
political game. Until fmally we found ourselves at the point
rerum..' said Koljevic, a grey-haired professor of English W")., '"
quoting Shakespeare in an Oxford accent was
chant
trast to the crude and violem politics of tegime he
Indeed, the presence of a psychiatrist and twO professors
Bosnian Serb leadership did not prevent it from espousing ,,,, oil
most destructive notions to stalk the political stage of late
century Europe.
The SDS began to undermine Government instirutions,
staging a boycott of Parliament. The Party repeatedly declared
Izetbegovic was not entitled to p eside over the Serbian
his leadership Bosnia-Herzegovina supported
because
and Croatia in their wars against Yugoslavia. This policy, they
would leave the Serbs scattered across several separate stateS,

rid

cy,

on the Federal

aa

ra

i,:::

for

under

t cxtermination, said a

nation would be vulnerable o

11 Julyl2. The SDS deputies said

Party

"'''t.",

their boycott prec uded them

respecting any decision taken by the Parliament, which was noW
p ised of only twO nations - the Muslims and Croats.

'J4

ming
b
f contcntion was Izetbegovic's losso
alics,
Bosni
av
l
repub
os
Yug
world. Of the
l'i
h
It

move
d
Igne
Al
onW
N
h
e
t
in
active
---.dS
_ 1_adY the most
GUP--- . a W2S ;w"
.
O

T
k
ey
In
to
lur
t
I
S
I
n
V
a
e.
figur
r
. had been a majo

TIto
and was about
over 'In 51ovema
nearly
_t, .U1 which n h
t e war was
.
1 - whe .
ns 0fIndepen
aratlo
199
I
t:c
d

h
elr
t
mg
follow
.
......
JI1 Croatia
III earnest
.
.
0f ISIamlc
0
the
'oin
J
IO -o,n
l1<'goVl" c asked to
.
- IzetL._
Id
wou
rely
knew
su
he
h
whic
srurc
=
h
s
i
...,. .
: .
It was a fool
,"m
I'<_
. es.

e hIS Serb and Croat opponents. The

goniz
"
an
to
e
rv
_ --I se
. In Belgr c, Radovan
p:I y was immediate and predictable
request as proof that ,-even our glmlest forecasts,
[Ook the
a-Herzegovina to become an
t Izetbegovic wants Bosm
say

thc secessionist aspira

Despire
are being fulfilled'. .
_"Ic repu lic,
h
s would not reIInqUls
b
er
5
n
a
B
m
os
d,
.
t e Muslims, he warne .
0f h
bOnI
13
in YugoslaVia .
..
their right [0 rem ain
rengthen the coailtlOn between
st
to
Serb obstruction seemed
tactical - they were usu
Muslims and Croats. Yet their alliance was
unnerved by SuspICIOns
ly
consmnt
was
Sarajevo
goals.
iag different
its back. A scandal
behind
scheming
were
Zagreb
and
Belgrade
that
wu c:aused when Tudjman, unable to keep quiet. admitted that he and
Mi&oJevit agreed that a t\o-way partition of Bosnia was the best way
110 resolve the Yugoslav crisis. The Bosnian Presidency warned that
this woUld cause civil war and urged the JNA to protect the central
Yugoslav republic. Othenvise, it said, Bosnia would h ve to unde ake
measures to defend itself, by building-up the republic's police.
The alliances seemed set, bur, behind each other's backs, the part
DCl'I were scheming - trying to see whether they could get a better
deal. While Serbs and the Croats discussed dividing Bosnia between
ethnic kinsmcn fought each other in C o ti ,
them, and
Belgrade at the same time tried to strike a deal with the Muslims. In
the lUmr of 1991, Serbia launched a surprising move get Bosnia
to
to retnam Ln a new Yugoslavia - one without the Croats and Slovenes.
1bcy argued that the Belgrade Initiative, as it was called, was the only
prevent war in Bosnia, because
if the Muslims were to secede
YulaYla, the republic would have to be divided. Serbs and
" s hv
MUlum
.
ed cheek bY JOW
.
I - any d IVISlon would me an war.
'.
.
'
..-. .Y
1-..1.
'lSV
-'''''
l
"'
. C' at first, mdlcated to Serb leaders that the idea was worth
'
..1denng.
.
But he soon
IIIert
Milo!evic's attempt to divide complal11ed that the prop osal was
Bosnia's Muslim leadership and thereby
h's o COnt ol

over
Bos
nia. Further, Izetbegovic accused the.
Serb. O
[tyIng to d
Ictate who ruled the Muslims.
e bone
AJtOther hug

n.

.
.
rgamzatlon

"L;

th

raa

their

::nto

rt

'JS

BOSNIA

BEFORE THE DELUGE

Indeed, there were prominent Muslims who believed

the
extricating themselves from Belgrade would be far
Miloievit's next move was to try to side-line

leadership by making a deal with a wealthy Muslim

.
ZulfikarpaSic, whom he saw as an alternative leader

made his fortune in Switzerland after the Second World

returned to Bosnia for multi-party elections, funding the 0'->'" ''''''
fell out with Izetbegovic and formed his own tiny splinter

Muslim Bonjak Party (MBO). Serbia gave the Belgrade

high profile. Bosnian Serb and Muslim leaders appeared for an

Serbian state*television. Banner headlines trumpeted a dcaJ.

ZulfikarpaSic as a great victory. Bosnia would remain in
they declared. A crisis had been averted. But the b'i>no"

n''';

substitute for Izetbcgovic. He was an outsider, completely

mass support, and the fanfare in Belgrade could not mask the

MilooeviC's scheme. Had it worked, the B; :::'

:: ;;:f;: :

postponed the war for a while, although probably

i.
I nott
gether. Moreover the Muslims would have been consigned to an

tain fate as second-class citizens under a Serbian nationalist

That was Belgrade's last overt attempt to seize the

poiti,,]
l

rive. Mterwards, with each passing day, the preparations

became more determined. Serbs in Bosnia began declaring

Serbian autonomous regions (SAO). At first, these SAOs

laughable. The idea, for example, of proclaiming an SAO, or

scopic stateler, out of Romanjia, the exquisitely beautiful mo,un'"

.
region east of Sarajevo, seemed ridiculous.
SAOs, but checkpoints manned by Serb gunmen drove

serious the Serbs were.

The war in Croatia had made the pattern familiar. The Serb

ership insisted on the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina into

::::

regions as the best way to avoid an all-out civil and

absurdity of this proposal was obvious - any partition
certain recipe for war.

In September, Ihe SDA accused the SDS of violating the

agreement by declaring the autonomous Serb lands. 'The

Serbian autonomous areas in Bosnia-Herz.cgovina, prevented the

.

tioning of the republican Government and, at the same

attack on joint rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina,' an

SDA insisted that the Serb leaders either denounce the '

barricades and autonomous regions or admit they

party policy. Izctbcgovie's party hinted that the Muslims

_ 1 ated. On 14 October, 1991, the Serbs shattered

>
(words eSCiU
r
o
..,.
'ept the fractlous
-.
which had somehow k
cons.ensuS
.
>
1
e
'
. - {ragI
>
SDS
> ...
During a stormy overmght seSSion,
funenorung.
ent
h
SDA
e
.
t
b
.
an
.
d
.e
th
orward
f
put

' led a inst proposals

, position
es
WIthin
BosOJas
and
sovereignty
ga
b raJ e
publie's
th
HDZ o
Ur spread that a bomb had been planted in the
rurnO
A
YugoslaVIa.
building.
'
.a_ mbly
C
,..th at mght,' sal>d
lorget
c
tten many events' but I II never
lorgo
have
'I
L ,r, 1991 ,
14 and 15 0f 0[[Ol.)l.;
the
en
betwe
night
'c 'The
peo
uslim
le: The
issued a death sentence to the
.....
the
of the
WIll
senously
monished the Muslims. to take
Sab leade r ad
Vla:
osla
people to remain in Yug
>

d1it

Sabian

YOII wonl to taki Bomia-Hrrugovina down. tht lam( higay of

lng. Do
btU and luffiring that Slovmia and roalla are ta'l/e/

Into
hdl,
rz,:gO'1Jtna
IMd
nol
Bosma-He
will
you
that
1IDf think.
lInd do not think. thatyOIl will flOt perhaps lead the Muslim peo
ple info annihilation, btrawe !he Mwlims cannot deftnd then

uIws ifthae s
i war - How willyOIl prromt roeryonefrom brIng

WId in Bosnia-Hrrzrg()'lJina

Iutbegovit was shocked by KaradziC's words. 'At that moment

I hid the feeling that the gates to hell had opened and we were
III burned by the flames of the inferno.' Izetbcgovic addressed
me A.cmbly:

H words ad manners illwtrate why others rejilJe to stay in

this Yugorla'IJla. Nobody elsr wants the kind of Yugoslavia that

Mr KaradZii wants any morro Nobody

exceptperhaps the Serbs.
.
17m YugoslQ'l/ia and the manllm of Karadi.
;t are simply hatrd
eoplrr of Yu 0slovia, by SIQ'l/mrs, Croaff, Maud
onians,
f,
am, Hunganam, MUllims, b
y Europe and the world.
J nt fo tell the
ci/iuns of Bosl1ill-Her:ugovina not to be
afraid, because. Ihm willbe no war. . Thrr
ejorr, slup prau/lll ly.
.
, As Prtsrde
l1f (oj tht pmidrncy) of BomiaH
r
r:uu
I am sor
6()'lJina,
,."
' Ih'H SlllIall
JItopl
'.1 thaI m
.
.on I mllsl talk for the Muslim
H. e. I soemnly
stair that Ihe Muslims will not atta
ck. anyone.
otut'tler, Just
as solemn/
>
y J stille Ih{II the Muslmu will
.
dl'
erend
,h,mU/'llts
>
>
wah rrr
..eat delerl/1l11alu
e
m alld survive. They will I/ot
tIisa'Pprar as Ka
.
radi...
IC sal'd lne
" y callnot dimppear.

'1:/

>

'37

DELUGE
BEFORE THE

BOSNIA

In his scathing denunciation of the Serbs, lzetbegovic also

t.actical manoeuVfC. He praised the 'stabilizing effect' ofINA
units in Bosnia. The Army was rapidly rurning into an .u-S."b
l and Croat youths ignored their call-up orders.
as Musim
singled out JNA reservists for wreaking havoc in the
were frequent incidents involving reservists from
siege 10 nearby Oubrovn.ik. Ten days after the clash in
mosque was damaged by a bomb in the south-western """" ofTn.!;
in the hinterland verlooking ubro The pa of military
had been drawn, mterwoven wIth eplsocles of political violence.
At two o'clock in the morning of the fifteenth, Kraji!nik
adjourn the session. The Serbs walked out leaving SDA and
deputies to continue their deliberations. Those who
favour of Bosnian sovereignty and also rejected the
Belgrade Initiative. Under the menacing pall of KaradfiC's
was a false victory. The next day General KadijeviC ':
Sarajevo, and agreed with the Bosnian leadership to set u\ j
and army patrols throughout the republic. As the men
Izetbegovic told Kadijevic: 'I leave Bosnia to your heart
Ten days later, the Serbs declared their own Parliament,
remain part of Yugoslavia. Any illusion that the nationalist
was still functioning had been destroyed.

":;:.;:

The slide to war in Bosnia gained momenrum. The Serbs

first separate plebiscite on 9-10 November. Izetbegovic
Serbs oftrying to destabili7 Bosnia even further by
posed republic-wide referendum. 'It was a one-party
course, the result was a triumph - the
per cent - I can't help thinking it was
On 30 November, an SOA congress re-elected
President. The Party urged the international
i
diplomatic recognition to all six Yugoslav republics,
Bosnia would not remain in a Yugoslavia dominated by the
order to keep Bosnia secure, the SOA called for the despatch
keepers [Q areas patrolled by Serb gunmen. In his closing
Izetbegovic said he and the leadership had rediscovered the
the Muslim people, characterized by tolerance towards eV"'Y',hi''I! '
every human being.
In December, the European Community, under pressure
Germany - which was championing Croatian independence
each ofthe six republics recognition if they pledged to adopt the
>38

Croatia smouldering, Izetbegovic was

. s. With
eW state
n
- n. He was afral-d
0f protectio
to secure a promise
- ..---=-ria
r
lor Bosma
the
US would hc1p
that
ve
tc
belie
oslav my,and appeared to
.
. . g
d evcr glVm
yug
dellie
has
n
ingto
Wash
-Lcbe
.
even though
(
ma
Bos
r
ato be recogOlzed, tranSlorm
- cIefend
.,
W'Ith Croatia about
ion.
of
the
quest
out
was
usly
obvio
n
tees). Iav federatio
_ guan.n
e. The Bosnian
..... of c
choice but to seek indcpendenc
V1t: ha n:1 said they would declare their own state if they
te
Serbe had reve:a y Y lavia. He was apprehcnsive. He said he would
ugos
ill
stay
_ 1..1 not
- h
_
German Foreign M100ster Hans D-Letnc
the
e
a
d
persu
to
en
h
,
w
b
ut
ovcma
ory
Croati. a and SI
,0 recognize
.
Gentcher not
f

"
to
d
he
even
a.ue
mber
Nove
e ill
vic met Genscher face-to-fac

the
obsta
last
onc
of
d
cleare
ps
. t. His silence perha
the subjec

.
I.
.
.
del to recogrutlon
meeting the two speCial EC rcpresenta
On }9 December, after
.
"in's Lord Carrington and the Porruguese Ambassador Jose
...
aves, Bfl.
Pr sidency) who had. rraveUe(I
Cutileiro (Porrugal was holding the EC
plan, IzetbegoVlc went to
their
present
to
capitals
s
round the republic'
c to tell him that
Djurdjeva
Vojislav
er
command
sector
JNA
1bc local
be had decided to seek independence. The grey-haired General
lookEd at him, and asked if Alija intended to declare a civil war. For
DjurdjCV3C - independence was a declaration of war. The JNA seemed
10 believe that lzetbegovic might change his mind. Top generals made
ICWCtal trips trying to threaten - and cajole - him into keeping Bosnia
in Yugoslavia. lzetbegovic had not given up on the JNA. Even long
Ifcer th:.u meeting with Ojurdjevac, hctbcgoviC nursed hopes that at
Icast the JNA would defend Bosnia.
. t the next day, the Bosnian Presidency voted to seck EC recog
mtto:".
two Serb reprcsent"dtives voted against the decision. On
television, Izetbegovic explained that for Bosnia there was no
ce but in.dependence. It was eifher that, he said, or being part of
n.:;:m Serbia. There s no more Yugoslavia, he said. He expressed
\'a
hope for a cantollised Bosnia- Herzegovina becausc the demo.
paphic elitn'butlon would
leave huge parts of 'each national group
.
living
m n:ut5lde Its designated cantons. On the main news bullctin, in
re a
dressed to the Serbs, Izetbegovic said, except for the
Sec:ond orld
War, Bosnia's ethnic communities had lived together
quite acefully

for centuries. The equality of nations should still be

.
r
Of
I

YUfs

The

L. Bosnia,
the SerbS had a great
advantage over the Muslims and
>39

BEFORE THE DELUGE

BOSNIA
Croats: the JNA. By e ly
Army had witheln
"'"
Slovenia and Croatia, mostly moving to Bosnia, where the
military industry was based. With the withdrawal, a vast

ar 1992, the

military hardware was concentated in Bosnia According to

:
.
theory of defence agatnst foreign arrack, cultnrated since .

The mountainous ccntraJ republic was

with Stalin in
the safest place for the JNA's backbone.
dtic went to Belgrade to request that all Bosnian Sem.
.
109 10 the JNA throughout Yugoslavia be transferred to

1948.

K:ara

order to transform the TO into an army. Borisav Jovic,

right-hand man, said the Army would stay put until a
tion had been found. Karadzic told us:

lti:

The entire Serb population WQl behind the Army and they wtrr
lounting on the Army to deftnd Yugoslavia.
The Serbian regime secretly carried out a plan which ,n,kil'"
Bosnian recognition.
In January

1992, Miloevic issued a secret order to "" tt"".r.

all JNA officers who had been born in Bosnia back to their

republic. By the time the JNA made its formal withdrawal

Bosnia in May
the vast majority of the officers who

1992,

there were actually Bosnian Serbs. They wen: nOt ci,i""..

Yugoslavia, which, by then, was another country. Belgrade

planned ahead for the moment when Bosnia would be ceoogm
;,
said JOvlC:.

Milafroif and I 'Wtre talking about it. We did not talk '
''
mJ....
elu. IV, instruttd the Gmeral Staff to udeploy troops ,' . ..
tranftr all thou bom in Bomia to Bomia and withdraw
born il/ Serbia and Montenegro to Serbia and Montmegra.
Ten days later they told liS it had been done very efficient"
although the Army was very rductant to acupt something IhtII
clashed with its internal rules. We did not waitfor the intl!rn4lional recognition ofBomia to redeploy the troops in Bosnia.
the time ofrecognitionJ out of 90 000 trooPJ in Bosnia, I
eighty-fiveper emt ofthem werefrom Bosnia.

!I'

Backed in this way by the military, the Bosnian Serb

took steps to pre-empt international recognition and

Bosnia-wide referendum. On 9 January, they declared

0f Bosnia-H

erzegovina, proclaiming it part of the

said it was the only possible
leadership
The Serb
Serbian R eran
.
.
cu I on.
1v f
a
0f Its self-styled republIC
borders
.
The
.
'Yug05ce agalDst the Muslims
.
aces where t
hey
_&.o...
.....
autonomous regIOns and even p1
sed th
to, they
Serbs
wanted
the
if
out,
pointed
.
ic
KaradZ
CIJCO p onty ut
.
a mln
sixty-six per ccnt 0f Bosma.
t:Lke conrml in
ubl'

aware that there .was going 10 be war Nmuse

would not leaw YugoslaVIa.
'fXTJ well that Ihe Srrb Iwllon
ieJ had to be difined As
ve.
err;lor
T
le
o e (ouldjor(t Ihem to
ow.
to
foll
ul
had
nobody resptcted thiJ, a conft

IwaJ (onstantly

was swinging toards recognition, te

Aware that the pendulum
.
war
noisier,
Lng that B.osm would be . aw.ash Ln
Bosnian Serbs grew
l oevic, by contrast, dId not consIder It such a slgmficant
blood. Mi
the demented Roman Emperor
event. He joked to Karadzic that
Caligula had declared his hOrse a senator, bu hat it had ever beome
.
one. He said the same apphed to Izerbegovlc, who had LnternatJOnal
recognition but no statc. Using rhe same rationale he would use often
in the future, Milosevic explained that it would mean nothing. He had
corre<:t1y calculated that the international community would not
defend what it had recognized as a state.

&. the Lisbon talks on Bosnia's furure blueprint opened, 'canton'

becamc the new catchword. Every Serb and Croa[ politician in Bosnia
teemed to have

a copy of the Swiss constinnion in his office. The talks

ed a week before the referendum on independence. All the
DI.o
al leaders - even the Serbs who opposed it - knew that the
mantywould vote for Bosnian independence. This meant that inter
tlonal recognition would follow soon. Each side warned of the

:renng doom - but made no arremp! to compromise - despite

tone to the

contrary.

Un<!er pressure from the EC mediators, the three leaders agreed to

recogn
i
ze th
' .
external borders of Bosnia. They also endorsed
. e CXlstlDg
the f,ormatIOn of national
territorial units within Bosnia. The first rep because .It comby the Serb and eroat parties
mi.
..ed t
hem to the preservatlO
.
n 0f a B OSDlan state. The second agreemetlt
remarkabe . 1t was a complete turnaround for Alija
betbe
gtlVIC ,ho unttl then, had rejected any division along
L K
aradi.lc and h'IS C
roat counterpart, Mate Boban' enthusiasti
'
. "e1comed
]
Iz
.e ,begoVl' C" s concession.
resented a compm .
mIse

>UteS.

Wa.

ethnic

'4'

BOSNIA

BEFO RE THE

No sooner had he given the go-ahead, than Izetbego ic

v
his mind, When he returned to Sarajevo, the Bosnian Presid
ent
to row back on the agreement. He sought to broaden its base

ethnic to geographic and economic. The SDA

denounced it, because they saw it as a parrition of Uo,,,,;,,
despite his reluctant 'yes', Izetbegovic, too, was
any division of Bosnia.
opposed

to

Of all the international efforts to prevent the war,

,ann"dl ::::
,

a settlement, the Lisbon Agreement has been the most

Disappointed envoys, Serb and Croat nationalists, harp on it as

moment when Izetbegovic and the Muslims cast away the
for peace. There is scant reason to consider seriously the
claims that a partition could have been executed without

A precise territorial breakdown had not been agreed in detail. Later

would become clear that for every claim to a town by one

munity, there was more often than not a counter-claim by another.

Stories instantly sprang up about why the Bosnian leader
changed his mind. This behaviour, possibly the result of a decade
prison, was, however, typical of him: lzetl;legovic was as

by one argument as he was by another. There were later

that \arren Zimmermann, the US ambassador to
him to abandon the agreement. But Zimmermann, a

of human rights, was under instructions to support

.
reached by the three sides. He said that he had

that if the Bosnian President had made a commitment he

uphold it. Zimmermann, who left Yugoslavia three months later

western embassies recaUed their ambassadors, later resigned from
State Department partly in protest against US policy in Bosnia.
Just two days after the Lisbon Agreement, the Serbs and

they had the fIrst

February,
pulled out their maps. On
eral secret meetings in the south Austrian town of Graz. Both

26

1992,

im'
later defended the talks, denying any conspiracy against the M"l
saying that the EC mediators had (Old them to hold bilateral
ings. Karadzic told Josip Manolic, one ofTudjman's most trusted
sors, who was representing the Bosnian Croats, that the Serbs

;:

have ::t land-corridor across northern Bosnia. 'Without the

any solution is out of the question.' According (0 Karactl:ic,
talked extensively in terms of population transfers. 'He proposed
the Croats living in Serbia go (0 Croatia, and that the Ser b ,
Krajina, Zagreb and Itjeka go to Serbia. He suggested that on,,,,.,.

could be exerted to make them leave,' KaradZic said.

DELUGE

n in the excitement and confusion

ks were forgotte
The Lisbon tal
Serb barricades which paraland the subsequent
erendum
the fi
almost a hundred per cent ure that

(ftet

Serbs were
e o. 'The
. Yugoslavia. The Croats and the Muslims were
,sed Saraj v
st y
wanted to 3 m
that they wanted to Jeave. lt was dear
IbeY
d per cent sure
unclre
h
a
h knew that the
' ..
",Jo
.
ive ' said KaraU4
almost
surv
not
Bosa cou1d
that
new Serb
then
An outragd Serb deputy told the
rawlllg near.
d
was
.
astar
d on the
.
he b'Irth 0f a Mus['1m b
..,.,
e are witnessmg t
:
nt"w
iarne
l
r
'
r- .
lathers.
grand e
h iand of our
terntory f t
first serious incident of fighting
the
lic,
repub
the
' 0f
In the nO IU
'
the war In
'
(Own ofBosanski B rod. D unng
' eIy erupted in the
lat
itnrned

an
euort
'
10
,
od
r
B
rom
e
,
.
ac.-:.
I
t
d
at
h
e
had already launc
.
.
Croati,a, the JNA
'UTOd , the tWlO Clty acro"
in SIaVo"'ki B
acks
barr
ged
besie
.
to defend the
referendum, S erb VI agers set up bamcades.
the
After
ver.
Ri
the Sava
trans'
block uoops and weapons from bemg
. ,
They were seeking (0
' our
In
'd
b
ge
ast
I
n
c
h
t
was
It
ia,
Croat
from
ported over the bridge

ia with the rest 0f th worId,' al'd Asm

hands. It connected Bosn
. committee which
the Brad CflSlS
Pohara a journalist who established
'The bridges at Brtko and
town.
the
of
defence
the
of
charge
took
Gradika was in Serb
Sarnac were already destroyed, the bridge in
One day before te
closer,
got
hands, also at Novi. Each day the Serbs
moved the barn
they
case
in
that
Wllt started we made the decision
fire.'
to
going
were
we
that
bridge,
the
to
cades any closer
Pohara went to the Croatian army in Siavonski Brod and asked for

wa

moce arms to defend the city. 'I said war was inevitable, we had 300

weapons and I asked for more. We got some 50 rifles morc and about
200 hand-grenades, which was funny. We got a couplc of thousand

bullets. For us i t was a lot. Thc war started in Bosanslci Brad, and I
iU agrce.' The Croatian Army had moved
am sure the historians w
on Brod.
Unnoticed, the war had begun.
.

1 AP, 26 June 1990_

2 SDA does not include a national

illegal at the time.

attribute such as Muslim because it was

i.,5anilOvit, Raj.o, Upotreha NepT/jardjn: Po/ititkn SIIdjenjn u jugoslnviji

d:a?1), AenCIJa Valjcvac, aljevo 1993, p. 1 6 1 - 7 1 .

(I

Jl, Srccko M., Bosmn I Bafll

jll(i U hrvarskOIll politkom diskurSll,
Ens mus,.p. 33 (Pro .
slIlac 1994).
a Srccko ., Bomin i Bomjrei U hrvtlfJJ:om
politJ:olII diskurSll, pp.
33_ 1 J ,
rasmus (Prosmac 199
4)
6 Ethnic Alb
amans, the "ourth biggest group in Yugoslavia, were nevn

BOSNIA

granted the statuS of nation on the grounds they had a home-state In

'
bouring A1banill.. They remained 11. nationality minority.
7 Start, 7 July, 1990, p. 34.
8 Tanjug 17 July, 1990.
9 SWB: 4 OCtober, 1990.
10 Osloboclje nje, 1 1 November, 1990.
I I GlI.nit (680 783 ''Otes); Pla\'ic (557 2 1 8) and Koljevic (541
K1jujic, (464 174) and Boras (408 750).
12 TlI.njug, l 1 July, 1991.
1 3 Tanjug, 1 8 July, 1991.
14 Warren Zimmermann, Fon:ign Affairs (MarchlApril l995), p.16.

16
THE GATES OF HELL
The Olltbreak of War in Bosnia
1-IOApri!, 1992

ith exhaustion.
was creased w
'k Police Chief's face
for the unseen
of
waiting
vigil,
r night of holding
ht
earlier
forry of his
ortnig
f
a
than
n their toll. Less
enemy, had tae
s and cars,
weapon
talkies,
walkietaken
had
_ _11 Serbs

<011_"
warOlng,
no
was
ere
'rh
k
.
r
Z
f
v

Ol

a
out
and
,
ion
stat
the
of
out
walked
One day they Just left. Now, for sure, they
said, no explanation.

h Z
Nlght

YO;

he

.
.
were coming back.
.. ,
mIlitiamen from SerbIa proper walted to
I the station cell, four
twO in the morning sneak
their fate. They had been arrested at
found armed ,;ith automatic
ing around town. They had een
.
for strangulatIon. The Pohce
used
weapons, knives and a metal cham
Chiefwanted to get them out of town, and safely. He phoned the JNA

counter-intelligence for help. His greatest fear was that their presence
here, in Zvomik, would provide a pretext for Serb paramilitaries to
attack. It was 8 April, 1992, two days after Bosnia's independence had
been recognized by the European Community.
A police scout came into the station. Two thousand armed Serbs
_roe massing outside the town and were on the way. he said. 'The

future ofZvomik is nO[ decided here,' the Police Chief said. The town
had less than a day left before its majoriry Muslim popuJation would
be driven out.
The Serb paramilitaries and JNA units massing outside Zvomik
.
not nee a pretext. On 8 April, they began shelling from the other
side of the river - from inside Serbia proper. Thousands began to flee
- two thousand alone heading
across the bridge to Mali Zvornik. The

:: d.ay, Ar, commander ofthe feared paramilitary unit, known as

TIgers, Issued an ultimatum

to the Muslims of Zvornik - who
e p sixty per cent
of the town's population - to surrender. When
led to respond
feU f:
a
I
to the surrender call, Arkan moved in. Zvornik
on 10 April.

JOIl Maria Mend

'
.

I I'

!
h UNHCR' most
officw/ mfor;:; \IiugoslaV1Q,. WQI
visiting MiloJl'vit
Bdgrade. 'Milofrvit
I 11((",

me,

as

umor

/1/

hI' dId throughout the conjl

ict, that he didn 't have any
'<S

THE GATES OF HELL

BOSNIA

(onlrol.over Ihe BO T ia71 Srr, but he wold try to use his mor
al
.
f

aUfhorlly. .. HIS ojjt(lalporlf/On was that i Bosnia was indtptn_

dmt, thm the FderalArmy would move out. Ohviously what he
didn', /(/1 me... was that a gret port 0/ the command of tIN
.
.
Federal Army s gom? to stay m olma as a Bosnian army. AI
that mommt thIS wasnt as cI(or QS It was lafl'r in utrospeu. '

Mendiluce left Belgrade with a promise that Milos:eviC Would

everything in his power (which, of course, was limited to.

;:;

moral influence he could exert) to support the UNHCR's IT

Bosnia. To return to Sarajevo, Mendiluce had to pass
Zvornik. He chose the wrong day.

'Whm I arrived at the bridge {over the Drina which uparatts

Strbiafrom Bowia] I could h(Or explosions 0/artillery and mor
'arjir(. Tha( was great agitation on th( Sahi(ln side. Almost a
kilomelre/rom the bridge thae wer( militiamm andJNA soldiers,
all along th( river. The whole area was militariud. I insisted on
hemg allowed to cross Ih( bridg(. They let me pass at my own risk..
I W(1lt over 10 the Bomia side. Thae was a big artillery hom
bard1l1m/ {o1l1ingjrom the Serbian lide 0/the Drina. I even saw
f1l10lu (oming r01l1 the {{Innons on the Srrhian side. '
f

to

The Serb and JNA forces who held that part of town were

find an outsider bearing witness to their storming of the town.

'1 was detain({1for two hours. I rtaliud I wal at urious ris!. I
could Set trucnfull 0/dtad bodin. I could Stt mi/itiamtn taRing
mou corpus 0/(hildrm, women and oldpeopltfrom tlu;r houses
and pUffing tbr!m on truch. I saw at leostfour orfivt: truchfoil
o/corpus. Whm I arrived the cleansing had bun done. ThtTt wert
110 people, 1/0-01/ on the SlrNtl. II WaJ allfinished They wtrt
lootillg. (haTling lip the cily after the maJsacre. I WaJ (onvinetd
they wtre going to I<ill l1Ie. '

not kill hltn They let him go When he crossed the

at 140 kilometres an hour mto Bosnian-held t",i''''
Thcfl! he found the victims of the cleansing. Five thousand
sheltering: in a narrow valley.
Thl!y did

line he did so

'When Iarrived ill the car I war surrounded by 1000peaplt. Thty

246

usi" with such dtspu;r

hegging Save usf Save
tr
O'11
all
to calm them dowrt.. There

all hour tryiTw

0
d Im:ref,ior
",
I
I
.
t
llded childr(ll on fh(floor lookmg fer.',
tlJa I or
tadpeorl., wou
Io "'"d
lird artd w could br!ar tlu lourtd of1II0rwen ts OJo/uft/ tt"i'J'
rijitd -ohs
.
mg.
fire approach

tar

Serbi: paramilitaries and JNA

m
pression that both
"
.l
Mend.i
m t
ik is corroborated by the
Zvorn
of
e
captur
the
.
I
in
p
ng
. were
\
aJU
ar
.
I'
" Iav >
....u
,:,dCj,
VOJIS
:umh tary leader "
r
a
p
a.list
nation
ex.
"'me
,
. " Th
8CCOUflt 0f the
_
e
:
' 'l:L
Ued Its
llucratlOn
shortly after what he ca
wbo went to Zvornik
.
d
e, he sal
,' .
ned III Belgrad"
k operation was plan
Z..., rru
'

took pari in .it. lIt the Itcial units and

Ihls SIde [Serbl' al Thtu were
L helt (ombat units (fillle from
oe
t
r
. / Il1Ilt ,0; the Ser. Ian
j - spUta
ret
"
pcliet units - thno-calledRul
fo a small
td
Infmor Ministry if&Igmde. Tht army (IIgag ItUIj
degru - itgave artillery support u:here it was mtde. The pera
,
lion had bun preparulfor a IOllg tllne. lt waS1l t carrurl out In any
kind 0/ nervous fashion. Everything was well-organiud tlnd
impltmmld
form
The Bosnian Scrb

Arum's 'tigers', bloodied by their experience of eastern Slavonia the

pRVious year, in which they had pioneered the technique of ethnic
cleansing by terror, had moved into Bijeljina, in nOrlh-eastern Bosnia,
on 1 April Bijeljina and Zvornik were ofvital strategic importance to
the Serb war effort. Together, they represented a hinge of lerritory
that linked the two main chunks of Bosnian land that the Serb
Rltionalists considered theirs - in the nOrlh-west, Bosnian Krnjina,
around Banja Lukaj and in (he east, the west bank of the Orina, south

Zvornik and down the eastern and southern flanks of Sarajevo to

JOIn

eastern Henegovina. Eastern Bosnia was most important to

Belgrade because it bordered on Serbia.
Arka odered a campaign of harassment against the Muslim

latlOn

III Bijeljina. His ' ti

gers' took up sniper positions around
to",:n, patrolled the streets
and fired bursts of machine-gun
,
rounds Lnto the aLT.
. They h
I down Ivlusllm
leaders, and earned
unte<
'
OUt summary
,
' crushed a token resIstance.
exeCutLon
' s. l'hcy eaSIly
S
d' slr.eet-battles left at
least two-dozen dead. Pictures
raJevo and, for the first time,
&ras
President Alija Izctbegovic

d t e scale and nature

of the crisis that was closing in on
untry:

re':cS

his ::

BOSNIA

THE GATES OF HELL

It WOJ unhtlitvohlt almoit. Thr civi/iam bring kil/d, pic/u

Jhowtd dMd bodiu ofthe women in the .truU. 1 thought it 'W4Jrts
photo-montage, 1 (ouldn't beliror my tyn, I couldn't btlitw
"
'Ll
WOJ pomfJlt.

Izctbcgovii: was undr growing prssur to act decisively.

though completely unaware of the role that the JNA had played
almost a year in Croatia and was about [0 start playing his
republic - Izetbegovii: rurned 1O the genera1s for help. It was, as
later admitted, likc putting thc fox in charge of the chicken
With Izetbcgovii:'s naive blessing, the JNA rolled in on 3,
by three o'clock in the afternoon, occupied the town. The c
terror continued, with JNA complicity. It would result in the
almost all B ijelj ina's non-Serb population. Yet again, under
of separating the 'warring ethnic parties', tbe JNA had ,u,eod..:! i
occupying a chunk of territory which, under its protecti oo, '0'". ""
be incorporated into a separate Serb state.
Izetbegovic also sent a joint delegation to Bijcljina [0 inv..'
alleged atrocities there. Fikret Abdii: and Bi
l jana Pla\1ii: were,
tively, Muslim and Serb representatives on the republic's .011ec"
Presidency. Jerko Doko was Bosnia's Defence Mini ster, and a
Their enquiry led nowhere. According to Abdic:

in

;!

Bijeljina WOJ practically empty, 1 met with thr local authorities.

they told me whnt hod happened, hut thae warn't a JingleMuslim
there, JO we couldn't dimIJS the probll'm OJ a whole. MUJlimJ
didn't anroxr our appeal. They Wl'T"I' too Jcared to come out, and
Jpl'Cially Jcard to talk ahout it 01/.

Plavii: didn't hide her own interpretation of eve ts.

greeted Arkan with a kiss. A few weeks later, a senior
.
Department official, Ralph Johnson drew a blank when he

Miloevic about Arkan. MilocviC looked him in the eyes

had never heard of him . After a six-hour war of neIVes, M"ot...

admitted that he had heard

Bi ljana Plaic's bodyguard.

the name before

this man

'Atkan'

On 4 April, Izetbegovic bowed to pressure from the Croat

scntativcs on the Presidency, and from Ejup Ganic, the man
.
establishing himself as hetbegovic's dl' ji:uto deputy.
.
alarmed at the flight of Muslims from north-eastern Bosma,
President issued a general mobilization of the Bosnian

something should be done,' Ganic said

cIear then that
place, and had aiready been transthe
over
all
e
1dCI". '
anny. The exodus from eastern Bosnia had
O .
Int

.
ere committed" and we said we hav to defend our...-..I atfQCInesw
.
we had.
. .
......' th the resources
"
1IDl
.SlOn
the Bosnian-Serb leaders, who mSlsted that
ted
ia
'nfur
I
'
WI.
deo
.aws
'"-.
d he
b'I"
I lzatlon call . They
. . ,
and Croats would hee t " mo
-,
d
e a d'Irect appe;.u:
1c
rna
Kara<i1
war.
of
n
' as a declaratio
_, , ted It
iDlCfPrt

. 1t W3.S

IN:C::nik

_
_

_Iv M uslims

i; had iJSutd a genl'ral mobiliza

.
that Jzetheu()'IJ
6
."n/
..
Wlxn we oe
thu
would
that
we
knew
and
liS
.
for
l
Jh(){k.
a
e
'"
.
IJDrl ,aI, It waJ a 6
'
"
I.
nease, WIthdraw
IZI'thegovf( 1md Sat'd, 'nl
kad a war. Iphoned
'
You kntlW the SerbJ will notjoin your troops. He sa d he
tlx
madl
pllhlle, to
had alrrad! hun
could not do it became the ({III
,la
form
f
kInd
o
d
Jom
; to mall
which I rtplild that he Jhouldfin
ft.
do
would
1101
he
Bllt
latl'.
it DetaUJe it waJ nrorr too

,:;1.

Krajjjnik, with whom izetbegovic enjoyed a warmer personal rela

tionship, also contacted Izetbegovic.
'I IUked him whether he knew whal thh mrant. Thr Serbs were
still serving in thl' Army, hulthe MIIJlims and Croatr no longer
did. Now he W(lnted to organize a territorial deftn(/'. Who did he
think would serve in thiJ II'rritorial Ileftn(/" /Igairut whom7
Af4imt lhe Sabs' I beggrd him to rmind thiJ dl'eiJion. I told him
this may lead to war. luthl'g()f)ii told me he waJ Jorry hut there
'WIllS nothing IN could do. Ifolt he W(lJ undrr a grlat pUHurl. '

Koljevic and PlavSii: immediately resigned from the Presidency and

declared the rump Presidency illegitimate. That night, (rom his head
.
10 the city-ce ntre
Holiday Inn, KaradZic, looked out across a
Cd)' at he knew he was at war
with. He began 10 fed trapped.

l:s"

he atmosphere in Sarajevo wa
s Ihat of terror. Tht JlreetJ wae
M. d and, from our oj}im
ill
the Holida /1m, we (ould see
us;1m Grun Beret mipm plaad 011 topy
if high bllildings.
.
Ethlng waJ blo(ke
d and we (ould 1I0t lell'ue the hotel. So we
.
Walled 1 1/ the mor .
ntllg to Jee whal would l)(Ippm. '
1

.
'Ibc
_dnext smonlOg, Serb paramilitaries
laid siege 10 and then
'h
, e araJevo porIce aca
'
demy on the outhern
;]49

edge of the city.

BOSNIA

THE GATES OF HELL

o"'>di

The compound sat high above the city and enjoyed a ,o'n
strategic position. It also housed a large stockpile of arms and
nition. The military priority of the Serb forces was to move

from their positions on Vraca hill and enter the city from the
from where they would cross the river near the parliament
and cut Sarajevo in half at its narrowest point. With the pOlli" "'_
emy in Bosnian hands, they would have a well-armed enemy at
backs. It had to be dealt with first. It now became the first POint
conflictin Sarajevo.
Unfil S April, most of Sarajevo's citizens - Muslims, Serbs,
Jews, Yugoslavs alike - had clung to the complacent conviction
war could never happen In their city. They regarded Kara's
warnings of impending disaster as the ravings of a
unrepresentative fanatic. There was a strong element of

urbane middle-class Sarajevo's dismissal of Karadzic. Many

were fond ofreminding each other that Karad1ie was not one

he was not even Bosnian. He was an urbanized peasant

Montenegro, the first in generations of his family to be ,d,""'te

Sarajevans who had known him as a young man would ,. "1<""

youth unfamiliar with city ways. They would say he had

the city 'still wearing peasant's pointy shoes'. On 5 April, they
to take him seriously.

The previous day's mobilization call shook Sarajevo out ofia;

placency. A small crowd gathered in the west of the city and
march down the main highway towards the city centre. As they
gressed, the crowd swelled, thousands of Sarajevo citizens

nationalities joining the throng 10 protest against the madness

nic division and conflict in a city in which the nationalities were

intermingled and whose proudest boast ,vas that, for centuries, it
been a model of co-existence and mutual tolerance. Serbs, C,','" It
Muslims alike carried Yugoslav flags and portraits of Tito.
Korie. a (wenry-seven-year-old accountant, was among them.

years later, working as a journalist for Reuter's news agency,

remembered the atmosphere of the day:

Wt 'WeTt thn"t bause'I.IN thollght tlxrr was stilltime

minds, to save Sarajroo and Bosnia Qj aplact Wherl MUJlims, Str6s
and Croats could live togethtr as they hadfor 500 years.
lAte in the morning several thousand ojUf decided to make au:
way 10 one of 1m barricades on the otmr sidl of the VrbanJII
bridge, behind the parliamtnt tower.

to dxmglptopk

The ,0(0 was

to (TOSI fhl' bridge to Grbovica, to show that the

to the ptople - a/1 lhe ptopIe.
0d
stl'/1 bet0nv
.

city

Parliament fore. , gathering. in the

of the procession
der
,
As the 1ea
Salvation Comm\ttce , the demonstrators
nal
'Natio
Iared a
. .
,.... dec
'
UnWltrlOg1y, they
'
Grbav\ca.
bridge, and Into
g.oou" nht, 0ver the
.-ung
p the hill towards the besieged police academy and into
.
wen: movtng u
at thc head 0f the processIOn
ns. Shots rang out. A man
S rb
foot. The crowd carricd on. T ose at the front could
s c n the
men moving abot beyond th.e 1.IOC of th tces. They
tee uniformed
ldlOg. More
ries runmng from bUildlOg to bUi
paramilita
me Serb
crowd
The
panicked
de.
and dis
hand-grena
a
threw
someone
Unknown to most of the demonstrators - for whom the

= :.u ft
::u.
persed.

prospect ofopen war still seemed preposters - Sarajevo had suffered

ia tint casualties of war. Suada Ollberovlc, a twenty-one-year-old

medical student from Oubrovnik, was the first to die. She was shot in
Ihe chest as she crossed Vrbanja Bridge and was dead on arrival at
ICotevo hospitaL Samir Korie had been with her at the start of the

aonstration. but lost track of her as the crowd moved towards

Grbavica. His memories of the day are worth recording in full. They
are a minder ofhow ill-prepared Sarajevo, where the nationalist par
ties luad polled badly, was for what was about to befall it; and they give
me lie to the idea that the war ,vas fuelled by 'ancient ethnic feuds'.

Manypeople will te/!YOII now that they saw the war coming then,
but I didn't and 1 dOIl't think SlIat/a did either. For Slim/a, a
Mw/imfrom the 10'f)I!/y city ofDllbrO'l.lnik on Croatia's Adriatic
CDast, tbe USU( was more than abstra
ct.
Htr parents had bun Irapped in DubrO'l.lnik
since Oaober oj
1991 when Serbs laid siege to the
city
during
thelT war with
.
"a. Refugers in Iheir own town, they had
hun drivenfrom
I rhome by rdentlm
St'Th shelling and were livillg in an hotel.
.
A Q medIcal
student schedu/ed 10 graduate in M
av SlIadtl could
etlslly have lIayed away
. "
rom the demomtmlroll that day. She
fi
Warnt
' J'v
/;."m Sarajevo
. She wasn't even Bomiall. But myfrirnd
.. traged by tJu ' "
-"O/l
.
dIVuton oII.!rn (/ty
she had come to 11II(J1J) and
low
years ojschooling. Anti herfomily was alrl'a
ti
dy r/
"a"ino
.
r
"ce for tbe /::III
. d D.I
,r ethfile hatred that lay behind the
'-"icades.
It Was not an an
l'rV ...
1. I renumber Suada standillg there that
Iftorrri"v . h L0 -' "VUJU
o fJJl/ lKr blonde haIT
' all(/ spt
lT
K/
' mg bit/( ryes, laughing.

7:.five

'5'

BOSNIA

THE GATES OF HELL

Tht ptopft around UJ, most ofthtm young, Wert: good-humoured

and tag" 10 mai:t Ihtirpainl in aptaceful way.
I was aboul fifty melm .from Ihe bridge whtn a ftw sholJ maybefiw or six - rang out. Ewrybody hegan to run.
Once 'Wt got 10 t()'/)(r bthind a building I was incredibly angry.
It had nrotr ()(tu"ed 10 me lhal Jomtone would Optn jirt on a
group ofunarmed demonstrators.
SlTangt to say, war slilldidn't seem inevitable. It was only aftw
days lat" that thtre stemed no turning batR, that we began to
sptak ofSuada as thefirstpuson killed in tht Bomian war.
What had seemed a random aci of violtnte, a great ptrsonal
tragedy, slowly took shape i" our minds as Ihefirst incidtnt in a
for grealer drama: Europe's worst war infiftyyears. J

pie and injuring dozens more. Bosnian militiamen stormed the build
ing. Frightened hotel staff and guests cowered in the lobby as shots
ricocheted off the walls. Six men were arrested and dragged off to an
uncertain fate. But KaradZic, his daughter Sonja, and his headquarters
staff had long gone.
Did IzetbegoviC's mobilization call cause the war, as the Serb lead
ers insisted? Far from it. KaradZic and Krajnik had never hidden
their determination not to live in an independent Bosnian state. They
knew they had the suppon of the Belgrade regime. and of a
Serbianized JNA. They knew, too, that ifthe partition of Bosnia could
not be negotiated, it could be achieved by force. They gave lzetbegovic
the choice MiloSevic had given all his enemies: you can have peace,
but only on our tenns. A few days later, Mom610 Krajinik, now
President of the Parliament of the self-declared Serbian Republic
risked his life by driving into Sarajevo for a last meeting with
lzetbegovic. They met at Krajinik's old office in the Parliament build
ing where the massacre of peaceful unarmed demonstrators had taken
place. It was late in the day and already dark. The air resounded with
the pounding of artillery and mortar rounds echoing off the sur
rounding hills. The bombardment of Sarajevo had begun.
Krajnik arrived first. He found the building locked. He rang the
bell. No-one answered. He waited in his car. The streets of the city
were deserted. Finally lzetbegovic arrived with his bodyguard, who
were carrying automatic weapons fitted with silencers.
'We had been sort of friends,' Izetbegovic recalled. 'We had served
together in the parliament after the 1990 elections:
Krajnjk, conscious that he was on enemy terrirory, and that news
of a meeting \vith the Muslim leader would be received badly on his
own side, asked hetbegovic to kC(:p the mC(:ting a secret. Iutbcgovic
agreed. KrajiSnik then told him that he could avoid war by doing a
deal on Sarajevo.

At the Parliament, the National Salvation Committee continued to

address those demonstrators who had ignored the volley of sniper-fire
from Vraca earlier in the day. Speaker after speaker emerged from the
crowd to call for the dismantling of the barricades and to denounce
the leadership of all three ethnic parties, and to call for a new round
of elections. The event was broadcast late into the night on Sarajevo
television. General Lewis MacKenzie, who had arrived in Sarajevo
less than a month earlier as the UN Force Commander there, noted,
as he drove back to his residence that night, the pools of blood that
still lay in the street where the victims of Serb gunners had fallen.
That night, under the combined cover of darkness and artillery bom
bardment, the JNA seized control of Sarajevo airport, and placed
tanks and armoured vehicles at the terminal building and on the
approach roads.
Karadiic had warned that if Bosnia-Herzegovina won inter
national recognition as an independent Slate, it would not last a single
day. It would, as he put it, be still-born. On the afternoon of 6 April,
the European Community recognized Bosnia. (The United States fol
lowed suit the next day.) KaradZic kept his word. He proclaimed the
independent 'Serbian Republic of Bosnia and HerLegovina', later to be
renamed Republika Srpska, and announced that it would come into
existence that night at midnight, wi th Sarajevo as its capital (current
ly under enemy occupation) and himself as Head of State. Bosnia, he
said, had disintegrated the day it was recognized.
The People's Ass embly and National Salvation Committee were
still meeting in the forecourt of the Parliament. From the upper floors
of the Holiday Inn, Serb gunmen opened fire, killing at least six peo'9

W, always had at th, back ofour minds th, div;r;on of Sarajruo

.0 Ihe StrbJ could have thtir parI and Ihl.' Muslims Ihl.'irs. Thi.
if no ucret. We considered that SarajtVO sho/lld be rplil into two
cifill -twins. 1101d1utbegovif that the war (ouldItop ifWI.' could
coml.' to an agrecml.'1lt on Samjl.'Vo.
-

lzetbegovic refused. Krajisnik gave the President a pen, a souvenir,

as a token of goodwill. hctbegovic accepted it. Krajinik rurned the

key in his offICe door, and, without clearing his desk. left. As they said
'53

BOSNIA
goodbye, they agreed to meet again in a day or two.
through the blacked-out streets to the Presidency.

;:

17
T I S KJDNAPPED
THE PRESIDEN
May 2-3, 1992

west, to the Serb-held suburb of llidZa. A burst of

narrowly missed his car. He resolved not to return to "
"i'''''
after the war. The two men never met again until Lord
them around the same table in Geneva eight months later.
they were sworn enemies.

Bosnia that day, obscuring President

law bla
nketOf cloud covered .
:
' dow 0f the
view of hiS country ITom
the Will
. . IzetbegoviC's
from
back
him
three days of
carrying
AliJ3. pr p light aircraft
.
" twin- . o
"._
-nervous,
al1Xlous
to be
already
was
He
';ons in Lisbon.
c negoua"
L.:.td
Rome,
an
lor
in
'
h
dan
our-an
refuel
to
--H'ISPlane had stopped
kJGIe
d
h'
IS Dcputy Pr' me M"100st:r ZIatko
an
Sabina,

j
he, his daughter
.
.
dfj' had tried to telephone the PreSidency budding In
lines to the city were down .. He did not know that there
morning, the greatest Single bombrdent to date,
that
bid begun,
deliberate targeting of many government bU!ldmgs and the

1 Reuter, 4 April, 1994.

a-btIi

die

cllmucrion, by sabotage from within, of the city's cetra! post office

.. cdephone exchange. Forty th.ousand phone hnes had been
"IIIocked out, including all those servmg the City centre where govern
buildings were located. It was 2 May, 1992. Unwittingly, the
was flying into the eye of the storm. He was about to be

:;:

- 1

not back to the scat of his Government, but into the hands

afhis enemy.

A few minutes into the flight, the captain announced that permis
to

land at Sarajevo had been refused, be<:ause of heavy fighting

the city. The plane was to be redirected to Belgrade,
Graz. The captain asked the President where he wanted to

was out of the question. Gmz was tOO far. He chose

plane banked steeply to the left and headed northward.
the flight-deck received new instruc
tions. Air-traffic control
cleared the plane to land at Samje
\'o. There was still heavy fighr
But the President was
free to land there at his own risk. The pilot
the message to
the
President and asked him, again, to choose
.

is friend said
that his years as a political prisoner in the

ha ored 10
lzetbegovic the habit of consulting no-o
ne but
FIC w
h this
H
dilemma he indulged in this habit again For
.
mtnutes he sat '
In nervous SI'1cnec, alonc
with his thoughts. He
.
nett
, her his daugh'
.
er, nor Lagumd-"
z.IJ\\, nor the flight crew.
"y h, ,," 'saraJcvo'.
.
"';"0 ';"'o;
, was under JNA
control. Though conflict had comc

'54

'55

BOSNIA

T KlDNAPPED
THE PRESIDEN IS

to the city four weeks earlier there were still no clear

lines of
frontation. Naively, given what is now known
.
tions theJNA had made for war against Bosnia,

',:,;:,: ;

:::!

still regarded the Yugoslav Army as a neurral force that.

standing berween the Serb militiamen and the people tJ

drive from their homes. The second ofMay destroyed that

General MacKenzie had sent an UNPROFOR armour

ed
nelcarrier to the airport to escort the President and his party
the Presidency building. Its Swedish Commander waited for an
andahalf beyond the scheduled arrival time and then. in,"Pi
io
reTUrned to UNPROFOR headquarters in the city. By
MacKenzie's own admission, noone at UNPROFOR knew
the President was, or whether he was due to reTUrn to s...
day. When the plane landed, lzetbegoviC's eye scanned

,;i;b

expanse of tarmac for the distinctive whitepainted vd'ide.

force. He saw only the distinctive green vehicles of the JNA
began to set in. He feared not only for his own security but
that of his daughter, his Deputy Prime Minister, and his
Nurudin Imamovit. As the President's party stepped on to
they were surrounded by thirty men bearing JNA insignia.

instinctively drew his gun, which was immediately taken

The party was ordered into the terminal building.

The second of May had seen a serious escalation of the war

in Sarajevo but elsewhere in Bosnia. It was the day that Serb
consolidated their hold on Bko and Doboj in the
lic, driving the majority Musim
l
population from theif
securing the vital east-west corridor from Serbia to the

lands in Bosnia and Croatia. It was also the day that Karad1it's
tried to implement, by military might, his plan to divide the
separate Muslim and Serb quarters.

Karadfic always made plain his ambition to partition S.",j,..,

had a vision of a city divided into Serb, Croat and Muslim

was sharply a t odds with Sarajevo's centuries-long tradition

ful co-existenc and cthnic intermingling. Without shame, he
advocate to journaliSlS and diplomats alik the need to build

.
through the heart of the city. He wanted a Berlin Wall through

in which every district, every neighbourhood, every stre 't'

," ,dq''''''
ment block was ethnically mixed!.
his mountain n
Pale, KaradZic would happily spread out his maps ofthe city

In

anyone who was interested the route that his proposed wall

I ' City, the narrow winding streets of the

tl
'
me east O f
The eXtre
h the broad boulevards of the nelghit
v
together \
...
,
wn
(O
Ims
'
l usI
rs, were for the M
Och old
;;'-i
.-y Habsburg quarte
' 111
1
. net..._ nthcentur
...
'
'
most
109
.
dvor IOCIud
n
MartJI
of
west
0 m
L_.ft
....
. flil
the
htng to
' _ 1 ' IOIl-"'St
c.._ rUC
ts. Eve"",
_--I Croa ,
'J : th-cenNry industrial and commerCiAl
.
cnTle
"
"
'
s ,.,
city
d exc1ub
Ite
h
....
a
.
to be 10
of the
residential capacity - was
most of its
nd
that the
s
a
.
ground
_
..ided on the
d"""
L. ' ThIs was
5etl>'>
y
UI
b
'It was
n
by
ee
b
had
.
city
n
tiwd
es on which the moder
. .
I..
d and VIllag mosdy by rural Serb commuOltleS
. Ka
raUl..
lated
.
popu
y
"
, ,n
the vast
.
C d,vising ' plan whICh wouId cram
.... :w apologtes lor
. ,
..,.de no
0f
d
sector
crowde
most
st
smalle
the
into
.
.
fthe clt}' s peopJc
. '
' way,' h'5 deputy,
ma)Ontyo .
h
t
IS
III
hve
to
lims
1
Mus
the habit of the
me fC)WO. t s
like to live on top of
once memorably declared. 'They
,
PlaJ(:
,
t:t:....na
..
...,.
space.
need
Vve
Serbs
culture.
s their
It'
h
r.
anot
.
"s
_
-1.0.'1C
L'ISbon, KaraUl..
c:
ic was returntng lrom
On 2 May, as 1z,th<gov
e
e
h
t
d
occupl
'
they had
, d to cut the city in half For weeks
.
fOrces trle
h
d
.
ey
1OtO
t
move
Now
und, encircling the city from all Sides.
the raca and
itself. From the south, hcy moved o,:n from
ca. O e
f
CrbaVl
dlstnct

Tn:bcvit mountains into the cIty-centre

Ja
Skenden
at
e
g
bnd
narrow
the
colum ofarmoured vehicles crossed
.
Its
ing
build
cy
Presiden
the
of
yards
and c me within a hundred
.
progress was covered by artillery and mortar fire from the surroundtng
-

I)Teposterous

'.

;:.

heigh". Artillery- and tankrounds slammed into the red-brick facade

of the city municipal headquarters. Further west, a second armoured
column moved in from Serb-occupied territory near the
airpon, apparently closing in on the district housing the
lCltion and the distinctive twin-towered headquarters of SaraJevos
daily newspaper Oslobodjtnje.

telesio

In Croatia, Serb and JNA forces had proved themselves almost

of capturing urban tcrritory without first reducing it to
le. They enjoyed overwhelming firepower superiority; but they
not have the infantry 10 follow up artillery attacks. The pattern

iocapable

did

repeated itself in Sarajevo. Both armourcd columns were halted

by a relatively small number of Patriotic League, the recently-formed

now

armed wing of the SDA2

and Bosnian territorial defence members
wit!:: nothing more than shoulder-launchd anti-tank
llUssiles. At Skenderija
, they immobilized the lead vehicle in a street
., narrow that it
blocked the passage of the rest of the column, which
Was then forced
to retreat. The second column also dispersed in dis
IIhy at the fir
st sign of resistance.
It was a half-h
eaned effort, but it was not wholly unsuccessful. FOf

rped

'57

BOSNIA

IS KIDNAPPED
THE PRESIDENT

the first time it brought the Serb front line into the h,ut 0""'_
It gave KaradfiC's forces control of Grbavica and part of the
bouring district of Hrasno. Further west, they now'
urbs of NedzariCi and Mojmilo, as well as a strip

::.,;'!;;

tory near the airport. Furthermore, me suburb of Dobrinja,

city's most prosperous districts which had been built 'p'cifi

oolly
the 1984 winter Olympic Games, and which had attracted
Sarajevo's young professional people, was now entirely '",T"'moI"

Serb forces, cut off from the rest of the city - a siege within a
The inner-city front lines established by the Serbs' bungled .
on 2 May held firm for the rest of the war, and formed me
dt /a(/o partition of Sarajevo: thus Grbavica and NedbriCi
from now on, find themselves part of the self-declared '
Republic

of

Bosnia-Herzegovina',

separated

Government controlled districts by a Beirut-style

from

which rival armies (and former neighbours) faced ""h .,of',, ;n

stant, and often deadly, stand-off. It was a tine that divided
cohesive inner- city communities, and separated parents from
children, a wholly artificial and arbitrary military barrier
overnight, became, in effect, a new frontier between enemy

But there was another reason why the attempt to cut the
had failed. The JNA in Bosnia was not yet acting wholly on

side. Many of the old Yugo-centric officer corps remained

Serb nationalism and would not take orders from Karadfit.

cipal culprit, from KaradziC's point of view, was General

Kulunjac, the Commander of the Second Military District

JNA and the most senior Army officer in Bosnia. In April,

had asked Kulunjac to place his forces under the command

Bosnian Serb leaders, and to help cut the city in two.

J insisttd, in late April, that KURanjac reltase aI/ the .""J".

pa,,:;':t':;.;:,:;;:;_

tht army, and, ifnot, to dividt SarajtvO into two

fighting in the (ity itsrlf Kukanjac JOidhi! (ould n
a military optration which, ht said, did nol corwpond to
he JaW I1J the army's role as a buffir between the Serbs
tht Mmlims.
Throughout most of the republic the JNA had been

,""ceo,,!

convened into a Serb nationalist force. The transition

.
hapless Kukanjac by. He did not know the script, nor the .
was expected to play in it. He now found himself trapped, In his
>58

, with the 400 officers and men of his headt 'k

cks at B-1Sn
hlovlc, the Cammander
t lines. Sefer Ha
mmen
_ d gove
n
_ """
behi
._ . - s
rs,os . TO now ordered his mcn to 1ay Siege [0 KunJac
the
military
hospital
at
ffi
J the B man
o cers club, and
n b
e
negotiat
ing
phased
;ecks,
..(he ea
ac

nj had, for \
. now determmed that
MariJlndvor.
dovlc
l
the CIty. Ha
rom
f
JNA
e
m
f
0 would only be allowed to leave if they surrendered
1fitbdnwal
n.JA forces
n TO.
. ns to the Bosnia
the J .....
we2pO
1heir
descended into chaos. Shells
n
f downtow Sarajevo had
random. The town hall, the
at
apparently
and
quendY
.

j'M

laJ

Th

ffirbce rcraft attacked the television transmitter on the summit of

attempted armoured .invsion had brought the
Mount H:m. The
League, the terntonal dcfence, allan to th

.ere

nearby apartment blocks were on

the Hotel Evropa and

Green berets, the Patriotic

under the COotfO] of a senes of mdependent

.ueets. The city was now
.

Bomian militias not answerable to a Single command structure, some

well organized paramilitary units, others no more than armed gangs of
pre-war criminals.
.
.
At his Command Headquarters In the extreme west of the City,
Genenl Lewis MacKenzie was not aware of what was going on
downtoWn. In his diary for 2 May, he wrote: 'a relatively quiet day.
Only a couple of hundred rounds of heavy machine-gun fire in and
out of the old city. But the firing continued all night so t wasn't able
to get to a colleague's flat to ,vatch the Spanish Formula One Grand

PriL It was just as well - the flat ,vas parrially destroyed by artillery
_ during the afternoo n'. MacKenzie was expecting the delivery of a

pdr;age from Canada, which he had been told would arrive at me post

aSia: that day. He sent an administrative assistant into town to col

lect it.When me officer rerurned he told his commander: 'I have good

DeWs and bad news'. 'What's

the good news?' the General asked. 'I

bmd the post office.' 'And the bad?' 'It's

been blown up'.

Tho
P"
,d
I ent s plane had flown into the middle
kukan'
of the chaos, and

J c had seized the

opporrunity that it presented. From his
a;'
b
barracks, he ordered the
airport commander General
Thevac t? detain the President 'for his own safe
ty'.
tIDdr: e PreSident'S
party were now in the airport director's office
the
d a
rd. lzetbegovic insisted on being allowe to return to
d
' 1u
rd
Jevac
refused. He told the President that he had been
tld
ldc:ft
s
13ke him
Lukavica,toa erb-heJd and his delegation to the JNA barracks at
' age on the southern edge of the city, about
VI
il

'59

BOSNIA

niE PRESIDE1\'T

ten-minutes drive from the airport. Djurdjevac said General

had n
i sisted on a meeting with the President rhr're,

:::;t

hertgrMh.ii

'I said that can mut, hut only in tm pmjdr ry,

Kukanjac insists WI' go to Lukaviea. I said thur is no
go to Lukavica and ta/k.. They saidI had to go to ;
them whelhrr I was thrir hoslagr. I laid Ihem I was "0' go"'"
Lukav;f(J unless I was bring/arced. He s(Jid, thrn, you b",,, J. ,, '

Izetbegovic had asked to be allowed to telephone the Pn.ut...

tell his staff where he was. Djurdjevac refused, telling him
telephone ines
l
were dov,,". Then the phone on the airport
desk rang. It was a woman calling from the city to find out
the plane her daughter had been booked on earlier that day
'
By chance, she had called the director's direct line. I
up, walked across the room to the director's deskand s ,
telephone'. According to Lagumdzija:

Tm Pmidrnf fook tm telephone, m said "G,.,j '''''ng M'ad..,

Ihis isAlija Iutbl'f!"lJje, 1m Pmidrnt ofBosnia on fmphrme:
Thm was a briefptluse. She was confused. HI' said 'Yts,
Th(Jts right, Alija Izttbegovic, the President ofBosnia. C""'"J'"
please hI' so kind, I am hI''' at the airporl, silting in tht
'iffict, and 1m Army won'l lrt us go. Wt art ktpt herr. C"'-}"O
please fall Iht Pmidrnry and Irll Imm lhalyou 1(Jlhd to
I (Jm htrr, al tht airport, and ifyou ran'l reach thr P,u'lm.,
pleast (01/ Radio and TVand inform thrm. Thry insist
muting wilh Grnrra/ Kukanjac, at Lukavica. Yel,
Kukanjaf, yd. Thr WfJman couldn't hrlirvr hrr roN.
Pmidrnl said 'Thank you wry much, yrs, yes, thank YOI4
thank you Madam:
The woman was as good as her word. She rang Sarajevo
and told them her improbable tale. And that's how the city
that its President had been arrested.
Meanwhile, Kukanjac w:lS on me phone to Belgrade. He
Army Chief of Staff, General Blagoje Adtic, that his mcn
port had hetbegovic and asked for instructions. Ad!it
President of the rump Yugoslavia, Branko Kostic. Kostic was
that Adzic had admitted, on an unprotected phone linc, that the
had arrested the legal Head of State.

IS KlDNAPPED

tively and raid, "B/agoje,you know Ihal Ihry didni

arrjllsl looking aftrr him for hsi own pmonal
",.rrSI h':
1 dZii said Wo, no, tMY ormud him!.-Hr did nol
..
/)(r slow to puk up what I WQj Irymg 10 soy... I
ft;'Y . _
1Il
_,Ie oc WOJ rat
t
' to lift
fter
I IhI'
"Look a him well, bui llU Ih'If opportunlly
'J'.
"'d
L. "
f(J
barra(
Plotlnde ofthe
. .n(
'1 ""Cltd. mst

dt.it

us

President's captivity as a bargaining chip

auth rity to use the
JNA barracks in Sarajevo came
ti tions to de-blockade [he
slavishly
pro-Milokvic Kostic of
the
ccing Head of State,

;:

Montenegro.
President nd his daughte were ordered into
At the airport, the
.
lmamovlc the bodyguard lOra a second. They
and
a
oae cu LagumdZij
a tank behind, and driven
wue rted by a tank in front and
he now considered himself
that
protesting
Izetbegovic
,
tID Lukavica
age.
host
,
Scud HadZifejzoviC, the Sarajevo television news anchorman, was
.bout to end the evening news bulletin with the closing headlines
when his producer barked inra his car-piece that the programme was
being extended. 'President Izetbegovic is on the line,' he said.
1ntuview him.'
The news had reached the television station that the President was
being held by the JNA at the airport. There had begun a frantic round
of'telephone calls to try to trace what had happened to him. The tele
'lilian station is in the far west of the city, and its phone lines had not
been affected by the destruction of the post office. It also had a direct
&ae to the Presidency, which was nor routed through
the post office.
The
y functioning phone-line our of the Presidency was the one
the building to the television station. The only way
5 fellow Presidency members could communicate with
es,dent, and with the outside
world in general, was on live
tIeJnis Ion.
There began an evening of what must
rank as one of the
aordinary pieces of current-affai
ext
broadcasting in the his
f t
rs
.
_, 0 the medi
u
m
For the first
minutes, HaW:lTeJzovu,: \vas not clear what was
.1. ''' '
..,;_ on. He asked
9""-"6
.
th.c PreSI'dent a lew
C open questions while he colh
'
' thughrs questions about the talks in Lisbon, the events
the Ci th
at day. Then he said:
' __
'Mr President, where are you'.
' Lukavic
-.. In
a.'

CIODnectlo ,

l:
':
::'

Ieaed

f '

,6,

BOSNIA

NAPPED
THE PRESIDENT IS KID

Hadzifej20vic was stunned. Everyone in the city

Lukavica was a Serb stronghold, one ofthe main bases from wn....
attacks on the city were being commanded.
'And what is your status in Lukavica?'
'1 think I have been kidnapped.'
A panic-stricken Ejup Ganic was called to the phone in
Presidency, and put through to the studio so that he could talk to
President. lzetbegovic immediately told him that, in his h"",,,,,G.
would be acting President. HadZifejz.oviC, by chance, knew
Djurdjevac well. He had served his national service under' '
d
::
.
been a journalist on the Army newspaper. 'He was a very t
,
dier, the Russian type, you know always shouting. But I
I knew he liked me, so I saw my chance,' HadZifejzovit h
asked the President to put General Djurdjevac on the line and the
vision anchorman began to negotiate the President's release.

::.:::'

'During thm /a/Iu, Djurdjevac ignored Gani,. He

-I'm not talking /0 you, I'm talking /0 Hadiijejzcvit". 1,,,,,,;,/;;
gjV<! him lome/hing 10 I told him that he wal knO'Wn IU lilt
honourahlr loldier. And J alked him to guarantee the P,"lml)
security. He laid he 'UJ(}uld, and that he would allo prote{1
Presidmtj daughler, and Lagumdi.ija and the bodyguard. '

To Hadzifejzovic's astonishment, an unexpected

;
;;
' i;l;"'
the studio - Fikret Abdit, a Muslim member of the r
the north-western Cazinska Krajina and a rival oflzetbegovit.
made his way, that day, by car, from Split on the Croatian
through central Bosnia, to Zenica and from there to
understood how he had made the journey: he had had to pass
Bosnian, Croat and Serb checkpoints. Abdit was known to be
the Bosnian Serbs, their Croat counterpans and the INA, and to
little interest in an independent Bosnian state. In the
Presidency, Ganic, and the HDZ representative Stjepan
regarded AbdiC's arrival with alarm. It was, they conclded,
that an attempted coup was under way. Abdit had arrived to
Izetbegovic and install a quisling regime that would take
Herzegovina back into Yugoslavia. Ganic co
'
d '
o,
nv'n
;
:
:
:
;

:
:

Cabinet Ministers who were already in the P i ,;

man,
Dclimustafit, the Interior Minister and AbdiC's
for a change ofleadership. Bosnia must not be allowed rod"
.
open war with the INA for the sake of one man he Slid.

"'.

,6,

had been
" tho previous eight or nine months,
. .
h
:Wh0, 10
')lIth"",,,':ead. g figures in the establishment 0f the Patrlotlc League
the J in , , "ge. He accused Delimustafic of attempting
-_ of . , ..
""'oded WI h
la 1
osn
'
B
hmutehaJlc
I a
'"
ect, of treason. M
...
e at, and, in eff
a (OUp d'l
of
being
an
agent
0
.. ..,g<
[JNA
staflc
counter
ed Delimu
. .
10ng suspect
'"
.L..
. ce KOS. His insistence now on udcrmlmg lzetbegovlcs
passmg
h
thro
In
success
S
rb
us
miracul
Abdic's

.
_ .
IDtdJigcP and
m MahmutcehaJlcs mmd
firmly
conviction
Jooden't
the
Ianted
..L_l.nn mts p
...,;:..
th e L
c:
gmmng
taken place had been planned Irom
d
a
h
'
what
..--.
,
..,t
de.
.
and one that still holds curltls an attractive conspiracy theory,
. S
" was to be
IIftCY among government circles tn . araJevo. Izetbegovlc
h
me
to
be killed 'm
bot
were
nJac;
Kuka
for
exchanged

and
pped
.....
.
ls
would
pr
operation.
Th
Vlde
a
pret

t .for the
bungled exchange
.
JNA and Bosnian Serb forces to mvade the City and cut It In half.
Abdit: was despatched to Srajev and give clearance to pass throu?
.
.
Serb checkpoints despite betng a leadl figure tn lzetbegovlcs
.
tDA. He would make his way to the telcvlslOn station and stand by
tID announce his assumption of the functions of President. AJija
Delimustafii:, meanwhile, would prepare the ground for a new gov
'tmment. According to other government ministen; he had been brief
ill his staff to expect a change of leadership all morning.
The idea that this was an attempt to replace him, had also struck
heIbegovii:.1t explains why he immediately appointed Ganic to dep
.me for him; he was pre-empting any attempt by Abdic to assume
f"Wa'. The Defence Minister, Jcrko Doko, a Bosnian Croat, was
&.patched to the television station with instructions to keep an eye
... Abdii: and stop him from making any public announc
ement that
wuu1d. undermine hetbegovic. Abdit later
denied that he had any
bon of usurping the President.
But he was furious that the
nt ha appointed Ganic. who officially '"VaS not even a mem
he ru
ling party. Abdii: spent the evening in the
television sta
fIoa
t, cowed, made no publi
c contribution. If this was a coup
.
It had failed for a variet
y of reasons: a chance and bizarre
call to the duecto
'
.
'
r 0[ the airpor
t that was Intercepted by the
Iabn' the failure of the armoured colu
mns to cut the city in half
llim.e:facr s determi
nation to save his own skin and his refusal to offe;
....n __ up as a sacrificial lamb;
. to
and Mahmu'tcehajic's cabinet room

Deh.mustafit3.
1

night, in his
room

.
at LuItaVlca,

the PreSIden
' t did
not sleep. In

BOSNIA

THE PRESJDENT IS KIDNAPPED

the Presidency, neither did Ganic. The next morning, hi,.W,.,"""

and afraid, he made his way along the street that was now
sniper alley w the headquarters of the UN and into
MacKenzie's billet. He pleaded with the UN Commander to
vene. He said lzetbegovic was the only leader who carried the
authority to control the militias in the city. They had su,,,o"';;
, i.d

JNA barracks, and without strong leadership the situation

to get out of control.

MacKenzie drove to Lukavica with the EC representuivt

city, Calm Doyle, a major in the Irish Arm. He found an
.
crowd besieging the gates of LukaVica dema
nd
mg that
handed over to them. What happened next reveals

I",tb",,';

MacKenzie understood of the conflict in which he had

embroiled. Having found an English speaker in the

Canadian Serb, he stood on the hood of his vehicle and ,d<he_

mob through translation. He understood the crowd to be:
Muslims demanding the release of their President. They w..... ia
angry Serbs baying for his blood. He reassured them he was

try to negotiate lzetbegovic's safe release. The bemused

the less gave way.

Djurdjevac kept MacKenzie waiting for twO hours.

answer questions about the President's whereabouts or

Finally, exasperated, MacKenzie stood up and mae for

Djurdjevac relented and led the
Commande mto an

"'
rIht road. Ln
wt o.J
Qtrt "Wtrt
o.J vthicln silting 011 Iht nil-d
N()Wn ouI .r
.
ked 'IlI.l
hty wtTe JUnmng
-'
inf
ortloo
I
r
lhtmm
the
o
y
'J
les, mon
' been pt.o(d on Ihltr
who hal
'
people
h
'
-h
ao
:.
Wtrl
Wit
T
here
'1.
.
chest andplied hktjirtwood along Ihe
their
on
crossed
d,
n
"
"
"""
Ihitr Q

I mean, II. was droasla/lOn

and surrea,-ISllr
if tht road. So
id o
imokt
and
wim
s
parki
oil.
ng
on
Iht f/rut. A
j;h bla(k douds 0/
.
lot ofJutl and oil spill all O'/Jtr tht pIau. And II wos a Vt')' Vtry

Itrtdl

rlMSty $lene.

This was not, however, the deal as it was understood by the

in Sarajevo, far less by the Bosnian militias on

Presidency members

the ground. What Ganic thought had been agreed was a simple one
fDr-one swap - Kukanjac for lzetbegovic. Ganic, having been

!IppOinted acting President by Izetbegovic the evening before, had cer

IIinly not agreed to the evacuation ofthe entire headquarters. Nor had

lie been informed that the President himselfhad given it his approval.

When MacKenzie led a convoy ofJNA trucks into Kukanjac's bar

-.. it struck the Bosnian militiamen laying siege to Kukanjac that
by had been tricked. The Bosnian territorial defence was desper
..,. undeNquipped. On front-line positions around the city.
TO

_ were defending barricades often

\vith no more than one AK47
'*-tat three. It quickly became characteristic of Bosn

room. A dishevelled exhausted PreSident IzetbegoViC was

phone. He was talking to General Kukanjac, who, like the

was held captive behind enemy lines. The solution seemed
The President replaced the hand-set and said that he and

had agreed a swap - one-for-one.

Almost immediately Kukanjac called back, to change the

.
the deal. lzetbegovic and his party would be swapped for
barracks - 400 men, their vehicles, weapons and
MacKenzie told the President it was impossible for the l
:',;it
"
a handful of vehicles and officers in the city, to supervise

voy and guarantee its security. lzetbegovic said he wod

sibility, and pass the order down to his militia in the City

JNA convoy safe passage out of Sarajevo.

.
MacKenzie agreed. They assembled the vehicles at
the President's party made the journey into the

Kukanjac's Bistrik barracks.

was on that journey hat day:
realized how seriously the war had escalated the prevIOUS

It

a couple of days tarlitr, bUI now llu (ily and llu

rd httn Iwe
bloclud Theri wtrt lanlts burning, Ihtrt wtrt enginlS
Wlrt

ia's war that

wbile the Serbs enjoyed an overw
helming superiority in military hard
b\1t lacked the men, the Bosn
ian forces had men but no guns.
.
voluntee,: complained
having to wait until their comIn-arms fell In battle befo
re getting their hands on a gun of their
They were not now prep
ared to sit back and watch a huge con
ent of weapons and
ammunition drive calmly out of the
.
city,
...,. to find Its y into
the hands
the Serbian forces against whom
figmng an uphiU
battle.
l
pqcKenzie's
convoy - carr}'l.ng
the preSide
. nt, h
. daughter and
iS
a ( he bodyguard
Ima
mov

ic
had
)
agre
ed to stay behind as
u
r
re
ached Kukanpe
' '5 barracks. He f
-.
ound the General in an
d
"nking coffee withJusufPuina,
.
n
a Deputy Minister in
Government
who had responsibility for
policing. This
Ma K z. e,
.l who took it as a sign that the two sides were co
ro..,. . u
l

.
>InFc told M
aeKenzlc he needed
three hours to load
MacK
enzle
'
'
told
h1m he had one hour. The
r a""",, _
plan was that
now numbe
ring some seventy
trucks - would leave the

::;n

..
.
. t

::;;:;.:'

of

of

BOSNIA

APPED
THE I'RESIDENT IS KIDN

barracks and drive to the city-centre front line near

Izetbegovic and Kukanjac would travel in the same UN

JNA trucks carrying 400 men, their weapons, equipment and
:'
. i":
'o ,
nition, would follow. Before crossing the front lin

ritory, the convoy would divide. Izetbegovil: and :

h :; ::;:

another vehicle and be driven to the Presidency. Vc'",,,l

and his seventy trucks would then proceed to Lukavica.
Serb territory.
Mter an hour, MacKenzie, Kukanjac and lzetbegovie

into the courtyard of the barracks. The ground was strewn

carded equipment for which there was no room in the trucks.
"
' :
were clambering aboard the convoy, bristling with arm
:,:
:
, :
tion. The vehicles lined up and prepared to move. At d

!:

MacKenzie's walkie-talkie crackled into life. His office at

quarters told him it had just received a message from
President Ganic: the deal was off. Only Kukanjac was obe ",:bo
for the President, as originally agreed. Everything e
lse their trucks, arms, ammunition and equipment - must stay,

evacuation negotiated separately.

MacKenzie walked across the courtyard to the

lzetbegovic countermanded GaniC's order, and insisted the
srill on. Pwina, the Police Minister, said he would gu"''''

convoy's safe passage. MacKenzie resolved to go

back to his headquarters, instructing them to infoml Ganie
President himself had pulled rank on him, and had given the
The convoy inched its way, painstakingly slowly, out

barrack gates and into the narrow twisting side streets

;:;

MacKenzie's small armoured car in the lead,

Kukanjac in the APe behind. It had got about 500

minutes when the shooting started.

M2cKenzie stopped the convoy and ran back to a po
,
i
a...

where he could sec the ambush site. Bosnian militiamen

until the President's vehicle was out of sight, and then hui
convoy in half. Its tail end - 2bout a third of the vehicles
inside the Bistrik compound. Paramilitaries were looting the
gunpoint. MacKenzie's eye scanned the

dead bodies, a Volkswagen Golf straining under the 102d

of AK47s piled into it. MacKenzie found a Bosnian TO
spoke English and said that President lzetbcgovie h2d
convoy's passage. The TO officer replied: 'My President c

rize anything. He's either dead or kidnapped:

,66

.!::

.
back to the President's vehicle. Sarajevo television
.
Zie ran
,..
.acKen
..
.
g, on ftlm, the chaos there.Jovan OIVJak, the
Clprurin
was
_man
of the territorial defence, had arrived to try to
.
Commandef
.
President was even m the vehicle. The
1)epU
the
ther
he

lIne
ed him to stop the ambush, and allow the convoy to
denr
iljak was powerless. He screamed into his radio hand
ClDfttlllue. ut
nders
further down the line. Disembodied voices
., at comma
.,
' d: '
pemste
l eII them to Iet the convoy
egovlc
d back. Izetb
tOmorrow.'
'Tell the President that
talks
further
,....
ere will be
.
.
'
h
.
.
e
anonymous
question,
.
t
of
the
VOice cracklI;U
out
....
.. are
.
.
_ tomo..
."
....
_
.
,
t
d
d.
PreSiden
emande
the
that?
is
hell
IIIck. 'Who the
MacKenzie asked Izetbegovie to show himself, to prove to his
He opened the hatch in the roof of the
own militias that he was safe.

re
-TIt

APC and Izetbegovic emerge. It's a bad anal0sr: MacKenzie said

.... 'but it was like some kind of second commg. It had a very
aiming effect: Bosnian militiamen clambered onto the APC to
welcome their President home, oblivious to the fact that General

ICubnj2C was also inside.

In a matter ofminutes, it was over. SixJNA soldiers were dead, and
teIa'Il orhen wounded. Bosnian militiamen had made off with ran
lICked weapons and ammunition. More than a hundred JNA men
WItt still trapped in the barracks, their evacuation to
be negotiated
IIpIrately. Mter twenty-four hours as a captive of his enemy,
hetbegovei was free, home, and furious. He stormed into the
n builing where he refused to shake the
hand of Ejup
Omit, hiS appomted deputy. 'Was it really worth nearly getting me
Idled: for the sake of grabbing forty
rifles?' he demanded.
Who gave the order to attack
the convoy? The JNA blamed Gallic,
t
ey had already characterized
as a Muslim extremist. There is
&bJyevtdence to support the claim
. The command is much more
to have come from
Sefer Halilovic, who W2S almost certainly
ODe of the urn'dent!
I
-ti
d
e
VOICe
s at the other end of General Diak's
wallci: ki.e: To some
lewd
extent the question is academic. Given the
JIRvious aruaety and
tension that had seized the city durin
g the
_ twenty-four hour
s, the prospects ofthe convoy making out
it

, were almost
.
.
ne
gr
Igible MaKenZle f
a
iled to grasp the IOtenslty
CIf'-nat had
taken p lce the
prevIOUS day, or the effect it had had on
the tnood of th
. .
e mlittlas patrolling
. .
the streets.
lnCIdent Sour
ed rcIatIOns
'
.
u.;:twe
en the Bosnian Government
1...

Mac
Ke
.
"" ' who recorded in his diary for 3 May' 'this
,
,,
,,,,, d,"
h2s been
.: ."
y 0fmy
.
..
life'. An Operation
0f wh
Ich he was In charge had

;::n

;U

'"

BOSNIA

18

d-;';

narly cost the lives of a Head of Stat and a JNA Genra1.

officers had dicd. MacKenzie blamed the Bosnian P';;i
deliberately sabotaging the convoy. He never forgave Bosnia's

CLEANSING
The Summer of1992

THE

This was also the day lzetbegovic finally understood the

the enemy that was rangd against him. It represented the end

delusion that the JNA was a neutral force. Kukanjac, who

laboured under that iUusion, was sacked within days, and
officers who knew whose side they were supposed to be
Kostic inelegantly put it: 'It was Monday. I was in Belgrade
General Adzic UNA Chief of Staff] called me in the
saw from his tone... he said that this arse-hole in Sarajevo

blew it all. Alija escaped, the column was cut in two parts,

casualties there... We sacked Kukanjac because we had to restore

dence in the Army so that the people in Yugoslavia would
t
,,, th,
,)
were sending their children to people who knew w
,,..
Kukanjac was not the only casualty. On 8 May,
last

<ioii

Yugoslav Generals - thirty-eight in all - were removed in a

the Army which completed the transition which had begun

earner. Under intense international pressure, Blgrade ordered

JNA to withdraw from Bosnia later that month. But the pwU-o",'
cosmetic because by now most ofthe soldjrs stationed in Bo.ni. ,.
nativcs. They did not withdraw. Belgrade had transformed them

P"',""UlIy:i

a Bosnian Serb army 80 OOO-strong. They inheited the U1DI

ammunition the JNA left on 'withdrawal'. The JNA
moved key factories (such as SOKO aircraft in Mostar to

which it feared would fall under Muslim or Croat control.

was replaced by a General who had proved his mettle in the
Croatia: Ratko Mladic.

1 San.jevo in 1992, did not have distinct Serb, Muslim, or

bourhoods. There was one exception. The old Turkish quarter, B
almost exclusively populated by Muslims Elsewhere, the 0'
majority of the city's population lived cheek+by-jowl without

were m.'"d'ifr":",::;'
,

nationality.
2 When war uuptcd in Bosnia, the re
tion to the JNA. there was the Bosnian TO, t
he
Bosnian Serb MUP, the Patrioric League, the Grn Berets, the
terior ministry forees (MUP), Croatian MUP, Bosnian Croat
,
Croatian army, Serbian paramilitaries such as Arkan's 'Tigers,
Chetniks, the White Eagles, the Ye!1ow Wa ps, etc..
.
He
.
3 De
hmustafic
soon afterwards left the City III d
is grace and fear.
e
th
out the reSt of the war in Austria and never spoke publicly about
2 and 3 May.

n:

kiIlin

arrived in Croatia by the thousand with tales which, at first,

world did not bdieve: tales ofhrassmet and torture, of mass

and deportations, of the burnmg of villages and towns, of
sadistic, gratuitous cruelty so base that they found themselves

' of fabrication to iscredit h.eir enemy. Then, in May, a new

tc:nn entered the internatiOnal political vocabulary, a term that has

proved the enduring Ixicographicallcgacy of.the Yugoslav war: etni(o

iJIlnrje,

ethnic deansmg. It had been practJsed the year before

ero.tia; in Bosnia it became the defining characteristic of the conflict.

The columns of refugecs that spilled into Croatia in April and May

1992 wefe not fleeing the war zones. They had been driven from their

bomes on the grounds oftheir nationality. They were not the tragic bi
product ofa civil war; their expulsion was thc whole point of the war.

In a systematic campaign, Serb paramilitary hit-squads swept

through northern and eastern Bosnia in the spring and summer
d, municipality by municipality, seized control of the region
without, m most places, encountering real military opposition.
Somtimes the cleansing was orderly and achieved without
resort to
open conflict. The village of Oraac, just south of Bihat
in north-east+
em
a, was one such example. Serb paramilitaries
first surrounded
the Yillagc and then closed in on
it. There was token resistance from a
of armed Muslims. Five were killed in gun
battles and the
ell in less than twenty-fou
r hours. Two hundred Serb paracs enteRd the village while other
.
s blocked the entrances and
House by house
they ordered the people out into the main
street.
_ _men were
separated from the women
and children' and the
--n
-= and children
'.
aft
er be'109 robbed 0r thclT
money and JC':wcliery,
1Itrt'
L...... allOWed to go
free - north, towards Biha
c town - whi
l e their
Wr looted
' blown up or bumed
.
The
men
- 180 of them "at "-C
... 1..n
to the vi
lIa
ry sc

h001, and held there for two days.

OK. the seco d d y ge pnma
a a Serb officer, whom non
e of [he village men kne
IIriwed
w'
..a...-.. .with"a liSt of
six nameso 0ne man D
- ubravko HandZic - was
_ " rando
.
m and given the
lisf. I[ contamed the names ofpromi:..... local M
Usli s. Han
dZiC was ordered to point them
out. They weR
'"",to
,",, d
m the Rst. The
ir fate was never discovered.

ths

fi

n:-

'

BOSNIA

THE CLEANSING

A common characteristic of the cleansing operation was this

tematic elimination of community leaden; - prominent J>>pl., U
.
lectuals, members of the SOA, the wealthy. The existence
of names was in itself an instrument of cleansing. The
instilled in neighbouring communities, once news of the
spread, encouraged many of those who feared they might be
to flee even before they were attacked It was the conscious
tlOn of an articulate oppositIOn, and of pohtical moderation.
also the destruction of a community from the top down.
After twO days. the men of Orasac were separnted into
groups. About seventy of them were inteed in a disused
repair plant in the neighbouring village of Ripaf. They were
open-sided storage depots with sheet-metal roofs and slept

bare concrete floor. They were SUbj 't to t 'ndom

caprors, some ofwhom were fonner : :
he
until they could be safely moved ro one of t
the existence of which was eventually revealea
crew in early August.
Elsewhere, the cleansing was violent and accompanied by
killing. On 20 July, the village of Biscani was singled out for a
ing sweep. Here the paramilitaries entered and began a
that left dozens dead. More than a hundred more were
and marched out of town. The paramilitaries argued amongst
selves about whether to kill, or detain, the survivon. Two men
shot dead in cold blood. The others were beaten with clubs
butts before being driven to the detention camp at Tmopolje.
Humiliation. terror and mental cruelty were almost
deployed. Captured men would be told that they were to
the following day. At dawn they would be taken out, connced
they were to be killed, only to be thrown imo a new
.
They were forced to sing Serb nationalist songs to entertain
ing tormentors, and to avoid being beaten. Thy wre told that
wives had been raped and then killed. that theIr children were
Frequently. they were forced, on pain of death, to perfonn
against each other - mutilation, pysical and sexual. and, o
ual killing. They were forced to dig mass graves and cllect
the bodies of their families and neighbours. Sometimes,
grave detail would themselves be killed and thrown on .,,' nl","
'",
".,
" ...
ies they hadjust delivered. The technique had a clear porI,
of the
that went far beyond the sadistic
beyond, even, the desire to send

::t;5

ft

jpg. It
designed to render the territory ethnically pure, and to
was' by instilling a harred and fear that would endure, that
.
n,
_.".. ccrtat
li
.

ld

Serbs could never agatn ve togethcr.

K:2ind
C had founded his ne independent .state at midnight on 6

. Ethnic cleansing was the Instrument whIch gave tat state ter
.
were two areas where the campaIgn was most
a1 definition. There
ntrated: north-western Bosnia, around he city of Banja Luka,
. In northern BosOJa there were 700 000
and 'n the Drina valley
valley the Muslims formed an absolute
Drina
the
M ms; in most of
Clearly
population.
ethnic cleansing could not be
rity of the
t.
overnigh
.dUeved
..
The cleansing of the tOwns and CIties of northem Bosnia pre
ICIlted a different challenge to that of the counrryside. Here, whole
communities could not be rounded up so easily, because the three
.bonalities tended to Jive side by side, as in Sarajevo. Here, the lives
of the non-Serbs were rendered unliveable. They were sacked from
their jobs. They were harassed in the street. Their homes were
attacked and their businesses blown up at night. In some areas, rigid
mttictions, that were hauntingly reminiscent of the early Nazi curbs
on the activities ofJews. were imposed on the freedom of movement
of non-Serbs. At Celinac, near Prijedor, Musims
l were forbidden, by
decree issued by the Mayor
's office, to drive or travel by car, or to
make phone calls other than from the post office.
They were forbid
den to assemble in groups larger than threel
, or to leave without the
pamissio.n of the authorites. By August, Musli
m households began
110 Oy white flags from theIr balconies: it
was a signal that they were
prepared to go quietly and make no trou
ble.
In is way, wholesale robbery
became an organized part of ethnic
ng. Every major population centr
e in northern Bosnia acquired
...w..- hese months a
'Bureau for Population Exchange'. It was

-r ...mlsm. They
.
.
laCI, the agents of thiS
,
'
. were, . m
form of ethnic
..1- _ _lOg
-u
- et
h
n
Ie cIeansmg by eventual
consent. Most Muslims and
Croa
ts
rtoderin
t allo"."ed to leave without first sign
ing documents sur
peopk
Nre nghts lo their property. Hun
dreds of thousands of
.
I ve up ther omes, cars, business
premises, money.
'
for thm Itves at the hands of
idea and the
Serb
local2uthor
p
tary terror squads. Frequently,
the privilege
they
even
paid for
of b lng ro?bcd. The
y would, as a final indignity. be
.
a fee go
for LOg
drtvcn out of town, robbed, and
Ia Croatia or
sent into exile
vemment-held areas
of Bosnia
'l'here Were two
.
main routes through whi
ch the refugees fled or

';

we
Jm
goodgIe

ar:?

THE CLEANS1NG

BOSN1A
uring Croatia.
were driven. The flTst of these was into neighbo
through
walked
the m"u"tU
ds
thousan
of
tens
,
Vegrad
and
Foca
t
of safety. Some died
place
a
found
they
until
end,
on
days
for
often
in organized <on",'YI
the way, toO weak to carry on. Others arrived
commandeered tourist buses. One such convoy left Sarajevo in
by Arkan's Tigers in
only to be detained for forry-eight hours
The
.
robbed
then
Serb-held suburb ofllidZa, and
Split after a
of
ty
port-ci
ian
on board arrived in the Croat
mountain tracks,
twisting
narrow
across
twelve-hour journey
elves
thems
"<o,mn""j,,oej i
fmd
to
only
,
atiud
hauste<! and traum
villages
erected by
tented
in
or
siums,
gymna
or
sportS halls
R, was
,
UNHC
agency
refugee
UN
The
scouts.
boy
Croatian
in S,I" field
officers

two
had
it
May
In
.
exodus
the
by
off guard
in the
Austrian and an Ethiopian - sharing a tiny office
en them.
district with one phone and one fax line betwe
to sealed trains a.t
on
From northern Bosnia, many were packed
an capital
Croati
the
to
railway town of Doboj and driven
e them because
modat
accom
to
unable
where they found the city
the p",';ow.
from
people
million
a
half
Croatia's own displaced
er,
Minist
Prime
y
Deput
a's
Croati
At the end of July,
a, with a
Croati
more.
no
take
could
y
countr
his
that
announced
home to
ularion of just five million, was now also
refugee camp.
million refugees, and was turning into a giant
twelve
The
more.
appealed to western nations to start taking
.
in
ence
confer
ay
of the EC, chaired by Britain, held a one-d
with 200 000
aimed principally at fund-raising. Germany,
e
as refuge'
them
of
many
s,
Yugoslavs living within its border
'
nu.obc,
agreed
an
ing
accept
y
countr
each
for a quota system,
to accommodate
refugees according to its size, and ability
as
Britain's Baroness Chalker, Minister of Ovene
of the
t
suppor
the
won
and
idea,
the
t
agains
the charge
as dose as
refugees, she said, should be accommodated
all the mre
made
their homes, so that their return could be
speaking
said,
she
was,
once the fighting had died down. She
.
mterests
the
10
but
,
payer
tax
the interest of the British or EC

':;::

;::!:

?'::'::;
.,;bilf

refugees themselves.
to return
But to assume that the refugees would be able
the war,
of
point
whole
the
miss
to
was
fighting had ended
would never
being waged deliberately to ensure that they
s that
Baroness Chalker, in Geneva, would not addres
ence
she said, was a maner for the London confer
'7'

Fol

s Hurd had scheduled for the following

Seaerat}' Dougla

rIn the meantime, the world ad a humanitarian, not a politi

:iS on its hands, and it called for a humanitarian, not a political

.
response.
'
C nd themselvcs the unwitting
al aid agencies lou
The internation
July, havin been assured by the
In
ing.
c1ea
to ethnic

lICComplices
these Muslims were leaving vol
t
t
rmes
auth
Scrb

local Bosnian
elsewhere, UNPROFOR troops
amilies
f
With
reunited
unnrily, to be
of the cleansed from north
7000
escorted
rs
id-worke
a
CR
and UNH
western Bosnia across the Serb-controlled UN Protected Area to the
ciry of Karlovac. Only on arrival at Karlovac did the UN
workers realize the scale of the terror from which the refugees were

Croatian

fleeing. The refugees, now no longer cowed into silence, spoke

openly about their ordeal. They had been forced, thcy said, to sign
documents surrendering theiT homes and property. UN officials
c:xprused outrage. 'We're becoming collaborators,' one worker said.

1t', blackmail. The choice we facc is either to become agents of

ethnie cleansing, or to leave tens of thousands of people to continue

Imng their nightmare.'

8y August, the demands of the Bosnian-Serb authorities had

puwn more brazen. The Mayors of Bosansk.i Novi, Sanski Most,

Bosanska

pa and Bosanska Kostajnica, drew up a list of more than

20 Muslim and Croat names, took it to Topusko in Serb-held

Croaha and presented it to the UN Civil Affairs Co-ord

inator with a
d that the UN lay on a fleet ofbuses to take those
listed out of
IIe.L The people had been encouraged to gather
each
day in the
1IDWn &quares .10 antiCipatI.
On afUN transport. They were waiting there
n ' the erb delegation
said. The Civil Main Co-ordinator
..&.__
_k s head 10 despair.
'1 know these mcn personally. I work with
UICln every day I've
_-, to tell them that what they arc doing
t
n. <;u
.
conIIitutes a Crime against
.
hmantty,

a war crime. But it doesn't get

.
Iiuough.
Wi. Th
cc:y e aCllng With complete
impunity.'
cn roatla slam
.
.
med the doar on refugees, circum
stances deterion.ted furth
""nil
." 80 . e Str. for the desperate
Muslims still trapped in
SElIa. nCIf escape
;.
roUte now Ied south IOto
Govemmentcentral B
OSElla.
' Columns 0f t
.
hOSC ucclO
" . g the cleansmg
would
to the rno
untalO
' roads. Those .
h
W
it veh
Ies soon lost them to pil
IC
.
Serb rn:"
Jtlamen at chec
u
kpomt
' s <lIong
the way. They were
_,
and intimd
.
l ated as they marc
...
.... ...
led south, carrying whatever
I
"'" th....
-J. 1'1
ad the strength ,
. h them.
0 bnng

wa
They were shot
SOrne were
.
killed. By me
time they crossed into

: ;:v

"

'

3
'7

BOSNIA

THE CLEANSING

Government terriwry at the from-line village ofTurbe, juSt

Travnik, they had often been walking for days. There they .
legions of those who had come before them. Travnik, once a
Bosnian city, and the former seat of the Ottoman Turkish
Bosnia, had been home to all three nationalities. The summer
turned this beautiful ancient town into a vast refugee e;
delicate ethnic-and-social mix torn apart by the influx of
sessed and the gradual exodus of local Serbs and Croats2
So much for the women, children and the elderly. For the
was worse still. Rumours that the Serbs had several mass
camps in northern Bosnia had been in the air for weeks. But
the news media was preoccupied with the siege and bomk
..
"
\.,,,,,
Sarajevo. Then, on 9 July, the journalist Roy Gutman, of the
York paper Ne'Wlday, put a call through to a Musim
l \",d" hd,oda
in Banja Luka the previous year. 'Please try to come here,' the
pleaded. 'There is a lot of killing. They are shipping Muslim
through Banja Luka in cattle cars. Last night there were
train wagons for cattle crowded with women, the elderly and
They were so frightened. You could see their hands through the
.
ings. We were not allowed to come close. Can you '
It's like Jews being sent to Auschwitz. In the name
please come.)'
Recent military advances by the Serbs had succeeded in
land-corridor, running east to wesr"\ linking Banja Lub to
Gutman was the first journalist to take advantage of the. new
His flfSt report was on 3 July, his detailed series
a trail that would rouse international public opinion about the
of Bosnia's war. On 19 July, Newsday published Gutman's first
about the camps. He had been allowed to visit Manjoca.

l;':;

rw'Cfit'f"

Heads bowed and hands dalped behind their back, tM MwJjm

prilonm lined up bifOrl their Serb (aptorJ. One by one tINy lat tnI
the metalltoal and thm knelt to ha'Vl' their heam lhawd
An ord" walgiven that (auld not be heardfrom 200yartiJ away.
and each group 0/twenty Ihm retllrned all the double to 1M shds

ill which tho!y lived ill near darkness. Guardl at the entry JWunl
their rubber truncheons as if in anticipation 0/bo!atingr 10 cottle.

; :;

:
Gutman was refused permission to enter the 'h d
' _
Muslim men who had been released as part of a i
programme. They told him of the random beatings they had
'74

al deaths that they had witnessed. Th BosnianSrb

.
;:
anjata a prisoner-ofwar amp. But <?utman . said it

... the

testimony ofthe eight hand-pIcked prISoners

AIftIy
even from the
' ,
'
... dear'
interview under the constant lOtlml'datlOg
to
ed
allow
een
... hod h
guards, that many of th men detained there were
-.e of the pn. son
' d arms; others sal'd
.-- bar n t
S Some said they had never carne
a
fles but had registered and surrendered them when
DOl'
ri
e
o
...." h'
",i1it ries had entered their neighbourhood and issued
.....
b pa
a
the
atum.
the surrender ultim
unleashed a media frnzy just as Karadfic and
G
n's report
for EC-sponsored talks (Britain now held
.
London
in
anged on he advice of
idency). Allhough this was ater
.
y at mat urne to make
their media spin-doctors, It vas theIr polic
.
1benuelves as available as poSSIble to the mternatlOnal press. At a press
conference, they angrily denied the existence of concentration camps.
'J'here were, they admitted, prisonerof-war camps, as was normal
practice in any conflict. In at least four live telcvision and radio inter
YicwI, Karad1ic, fluent in English, challenged his interlocutor to come
personally to Bosnia and see for himself that there were no concen
Inrion camps on Serb territory. He invited any journalist who want
ed access [0 the alleged camps to visit them. It sounded like rhetoric.
But ITN and the Guardian had the wit to take him at his word. In
doing so they scooped the world. Roy Gutman, meanwhile, upped the
IDle. On 2 August, Newlday carried a story under a front-pag
e ban
Da' headline in two-inch letters that read
THE DEATH CAMPS
OF
For the first time, the Serbs were accused not just of
mua detentIOn, bur of organized
extermination:

co

Ser

U7:.ere

BOSNA.

The Se b conqu"orJ ofnorthern

Bosnia have utablished two COll

untratlon camps in which more
than a thouland civiliam have
IHnr ecuttd or ltarwd and
thollsandl more are being held until
aording to two riuntly uleaudpriso
nen infertliewed

':'Ndu,

J ewsday.
TIN test
i
m
on"
J "l
,rtlu

.
two IUNJlWn appeared to be thejim eye
.
.
or
:1 What Intern
al/anal hllman rights agenCluftar
"
'"ay k systematIC. slaught
er conducted on a huge scaleS.
Wftnru aounts

G
.
rska camp. lOting the
f a J.Xty-[hree
-year old man whom he called only 'Meh

Gub. n::YdOeSC(
o'
"
lbed how
Utman then d
.
'-tim
o
escn'bed condi. tions
at Oma

PIiIoncrs

more t
han a thousand Muslim and Croat
ere held in m,,
- ' e'K" w,',hou, ,n
" " e,',.
-.u
"'" 0'
' ,'" ,,'on , '""

'75

BOSNIA

THE CLEANSING

adequate food . It contained the entire cultural and poo"" ,

l ] "
town of Prijedor, east of Banja Lub. The camp was loca
ted In
'
mer iron-mining complex. 'Meho' had been held there for
a week 'in an ore loader inside a cage roughly 700 square feet
other men'. The cages were stacked four high and separated
'There were no toilets and the prisoners had to live in their
which dripped through the grates.' The International Red
been trying for two weeks to visit Omarsb, but had been
access by the Bosnian-Serb authorities.
Four days later, on 6 August, Penny Marshall of ITN

::
i:::

what was probably the most memorable single piece,

the entire conflict. She went to Omarska with some E
including Ed Vulliamy of the

Guardian who wrote:

;:!ii,fz:f::::
(J::::

The men are at vari "

'
bones oftheir dbows
from thepencil thin stal
h to
their arms
There is nothing quite like the sight of the prisoner d"p.'OI,' to',
lalk andto convey some trrrib/e truth that ''' ''' ".,y,"
who dares not. Their stares burn, they speak only w"b ,Ib,,, I'm.- J
fied silence, and eyes inflamed with the articulation ojs/ark,
luted, desolatefear-without-hopt!'.
There were, it rurned out, four large detention camps that
international nOToriety. Trnopolje and Manjafa were tnlnSit

where inmates lived in appalling conditions and were subject to

dom heatings and the sadistic whim of their guards. But in
and Keraterm (a former ceramics factory on me outskirts of
there was evidence that the prisoners were separated into
based on interrogation. They were intimidated into giving
against each other. Mter this screening process, mey were

'h, ...

one of three categories - A, B, or C. Into category A went

..
were judged to have been leaders of the Muslim community, or

!,!,

unteers for one of the Bosnian militias or the territorial dd'n,,,:

of these were killed. Category B consisted of men who were
into the territorial defence. And category C was all me rest."''' ...

transferred to Trnopolje or elsewhere where they were held

could be 'exchanged' for Serbs taken prisoner by the Go'."""
forces, or for Serbs living on Government-held territory who
to cross to the Serb side.
There were, in addition, countless smaller, more temporary,

,,6

er
these will
that at Ripa. The total numb of
such as
leadefanS
erb
'
Bosm
. .:- c(:nt:res,
the
er
wheth
l
d I-t is doubtfu
__
known an
to any
less
come
ar
f
all,
them
of
n
io
t
loca
_ '" have kn0\YTl the
.
d killed In each.
an
ed
detam
e
peopl
,. '"old
of
n mber
.....
en of the
ommlttee
RelatIOns
..,essrn
t the US Senate Foreign
ts had
On 18
accoun
ted that detailed
epOlt which sugges
. d a S"['
.lU r
to the
and
world
receive . able to the Governments of the western
Its
ive.
y's
exclus
Vulliam
.
all's and
''aUons long before Marsh
_ ''''N
.
.lng campaig
a
stanh
d
b
U'"ted
n
'
su
c-cleans
... that the ethm
.
. findings wore
' abnow existed an exclUSIvely Serb-mh
there
als
go
_
."
d

-" au
.
'
ueve h
IilD
r
y per
g
sevent
covenn
and
,
Serbia
to
uous
J contig
ieed regton, 'm territonl
.
L
ad
a
accom
h
!,Ken
ThIS
vma.
erzego
ma-H
ofBos
ofthe terrirory
e
selectiv
and
'random
g
includin
rocities
t
a
bY Wl' despread

.
meu
aSSOClll
to
the
th
ea
d
believe
e
W
...
es
massacr
ed
IciIli gs and organiz
of the Muslim village population far
:h forcible removal
bombardment of cities'. In the camps,
the
from
toll
death
the
Most damning of all
ed killings were 'recreational and sadistic'.
;
i
me report concluded that:

.rs ,

'

-C

;:

The United Nations did not respond in a timely manner to early

reportsfrom thefield about a/rocitin in the prison ramps. The US
state department also had early reports ojR.illings assMiated with
theforcible trunsftr ofpopuia/iollS but did not follow up on the
uports. Thefailure to respond rif/((fl systematic defects in the way
the international community and the Uniud States monitor
human rights crises. Had the world (ommunitY/Mused tarlier on
the alT(!(;ties in Bosnia-Herugovina, many lives might have
been saved.

When did the international community know about the scale and
nature of the refugee crisis? As early as May 1992, a Bosnian

Government agency called 'Save Humanity' was coUecting eye-wit

. testimony from those who had fled the cleansed regions. A

SaraJcv -based lawyer, Zlatko Hurtic, began to collect evidence

almost Immediately. By
June he was distributing dossiers of eye-wit
account to journalists,
aid agencies, diplomats, almost anybody

uN wo.uld listen. Mohammed Sacirbey, Bosnia's Ambassador to the

, claImed to have told
Boutros Boutros-Ghali personally about the
Utnps as early as
the middle of May.

In lattApril 'We

Jlarted giving information to the UN, including

'77

BOSNIA

THE CLEANSING

BoulroJ BoutraJ-Chali thaI thut 'tOtrt concentration ca",/'S.

Thtrt was a metting with tht Strrtlary Cmtral around 15 May.
We wert worritd about doing thiJ atfirst because 'lOt thought li"u
thty would rtact by Joying 'lOt wert scart-mong"ing. All we had
wtre tyt-witnm rtports. But 'lOr oursrHJtJ had no idta how bad
these camps wrre. But Boutros Boutros-Chali and tht othm
didn't laRt us strious/y at the time. In july we submitted a more
precUt lisl ofcamp loeations.

JeIlSC

On 3 July, the UNHCR circulated a report to the IeRC, lJ)\IP1O

FOR and the EC-monitoring missions, concerning abuses at
camps. On 27 July, it also circulated a report, specifically
Omarska. George Kenny, the US State Department official
resigned in protest at American policy in Bosnia, later accused
of :J. coverup. The State Department policy at the time, he
amounted to 'Let's pretend this is not happening'.
The question is important because it reveals a recurring <h,,,,,,,!
istic of the foreign policy-making of the main western powen
regard to Bosnia: that it was driven subst?-ntially by television
;
:
:
age. Warnings about camps issued by Zlatko Hurnc, P
Izctbegovic, Mohammed Sacirbey, the UNHCR and Roy (
no matter how persuasive their evidence, did not have a fraction
impact of those devastating television picrures.
KaradZic agreed, under international pressure, to order th";, ,,,...
ation, under the supervision of the ICRC, on condition that
detainees were removed from the combat area. The agreement
KaradZiC's purpose: he had been seen to grant an i
.
and could portray himself, on the international stage, as working
to reign in the worst excesses of his own more extreme
white at the same time achieving his central war aim of
Muslims from the territory mapped out for his new Serbian state.
At the end ofApril 1992, there were 286 000 refugees from .
Most ofthem had gone to Croatia. By the beginning ofJune
ure had risen to threequarters of a million; to 1.1 million by
By the end of the year, almost [\VO million Bosnians - nearly
population - had lost their homes'.

summer months 0f 1992, while everythmg

(i r d ring the
: in
his chapter was takig place, the world's media concn
exclusively on the siege and bombardment of the City,
cIcso'l
t al ost
.. I ro h much more decisive battles and campaigns were being
.
even thoug
a problem partly of access.. partly o LOforma.,.ged elsewhere. It wasSerb
.
leaders very well. Nlkola Koljevlc once
.
But it suited the
to a group of jounalists that the focusig of international
capital had allowed us to get on With what we had to
-"tion on the
OSnI:J..
B
"
rn
.
do in northe
Carnngron
went to SanlJevo and met PreSident
Lord
April,
On 23
}zetbegovic. He was biefed by th l!N Commander there, Gener
MacKenzie, who, by IllS own admiSSion and through no fault of hi S
own. knew virtually nothing about what was happening outside the
c:tpitaI. He saw only the relative microcosm of repeated failed cease
fiR agreements. He had grown exasperated with both sides, and
would, eventually, though not yet, come to regard the Serb side as
much more flexible in its approach8. He now offered this advice:

:ined

I told Carrington th(lt we [Iht UNPROFOR commanders)

thought lIN Bosnian pruidency was committed 10 coercing the
inlernational community into intervming mililarily, and was
therefort in no mood to honour a crasifrrt - We recommended that
Corrington advise the pmidmt thai he would not rtceive mili
I,",! interwntion and conuquently should ntgofiate a solulion
Wfth Dr Kamdi;it and the Bosnian Serbs.

li':t::

Carrington was blunt with Izetbegovic.

The beleaguered President
recalled what the peace env
oy had said:

,: advised me to slart to IItgotiafe 10find fht Jolulion

:'e
tlJelforus wert attacking us.
Iloidhim Ihal it was im""s.

Before the war, there was a saying in Bosnia, 'Goodbye Bo'n;

going to Sarajevo', that referred to the sense of separateness thai'
capital enjoyed from its rural hinterland. Sanljevo is
sides by high ground, and there is something in the

,u;:::;1;

,,8

capital's peculiar
looking, self-contained. The
i
t ,lS 'nward.
.

ilia
the rest of the republic now had an adverse
pIo of
sepan,enesS from
"

Ca ing/ n

rTheIr demand, thor

' 0b'leellv
' , e was fo destroy Bosnia as a
lOUnt
ry He aiked me 'Wh
at WI'/1you do?, 1 told him we wo1i1d
fi.h lk. Carrington paused. He
looked me in the
and said'
Q
at maus ""U thO
k you (an .Ir.lg
r
m
.
hl
bacH
Do
you
know
what
u art talk
r
mg aboIIt, Mr l'Utbegovltr
.
Do
'
you
know
what
(Ire
you
Ii. hling againstr
told
Do YOII know what weapon
Ihl'1J
hav
ry
e?'
1
1m 'tUt' had no
-J
0ther ('
' but tofi.
JL
Vue
g
hl
back
or
ca",j
10
/
u
laU.
If"" ,
,
,,,
art/
1 e, 'tUt'
r
' U,at
WI'll ell
' her be captured or killed. Wt have no
S
w
,
e.

, ,.'

eye

'79

BOSNIA

THE CLEANSING

(hoiu, no altrrnative. He laid me 'You, Mr IUlbegOfJif, are

lUll
aware who you are dealing with:

MacKenzie was right in his central conclusion. lzetbegoviC's

egy was to try to force international military intervention. He
that the logical consequences of Serb and Croat territorial
was that Hosnia should be wiped off the map, and that the
two-million Muslims should make up their minds whether
Serbs or Croats of Islamic faith and, inevitably, second-class
in a state defined by ethnic identity. By the end of the
Izetbegovic was calling for an international policy that became
as 'lift and strike' - the lifting of the arms embargo against " co..
try, and the use of NATO airpower to compensate for the Serbs'
whelming firepower superiority and the entrenched positions
forces now enjoyed as a result.
None of the major powers thought it desirable. Western
obfuscated with talk of ancient ethnic hatreds, Balkan savagery,
'warring factions'. When it came to ceasefire violations 'all sides
guilty'. This was true. Bur it was hardly the point. In this
ceasefire around Sarajevo could only assist KaradziC's forces in
implementation of the plan that is described in t :
'
was more likely to remove the Bosnia story from the,:;;o::=
of the Western world.
Serb and Western interests converged again on the issue
Sarajevo airport. The major governments of the Western world
agreed on the need to mount a huge humanitarian response to
:
ate the suffering of the dispossesst=d. By the beginning otf
;:
became clear that if Sarajevo were not relieved soon, large n':
people wou.ld start starving to death. Although there was food
the city, its acquisition and sale were rigidly controlled by
marketeers who had organized a cabal among themselves to
prices high. On 8 June, the UN Security Council approved a
take control of Sarajevo airport and begin an airlift
aid. At his own request - and with huge enthusias:m
,: - ' O
. ' RJF
was
relieved
of
his
post
as
Chief
to
u
MacKenzie
of Staff TU
(Croatia) and made Commander, Sector Sarajevo, his task. noW,
take control of the airport from the Bosnian Serbs.
At the time, the BosnianSerb leadership protested ,;,,,",
Men had died defending the airport. It was sovereign Serb
they argued.To leave it undefended except by a battalion of'bluc !oj
mets' would be to render it vulnerable to a 'Muslim' takeover,
"

,80

ee In fact in private, both KaradZic and Koljevic

more co'en to reach n'gotiations to ach'leve It, than th Bosman
'
'.
hel.
.ve III t

_
ie,
to
idea
the
to
opel"lt1
MacKenz
According
be
to
.
out
I"" _ ment turned originated Wit' h KaraULIC
.
h'
t
VV'rn
""
If
'l
l
d
hat
carne
Imse
over
rt
the
htnd ad proposed to New York that the Serbs open the air
that the UN take over the w?le city with a "green line" run
Dr K
"! But KaradZLC w.as as .concerned as anybody
ga;own the middle.
further
ng the starvation o .SaraJevo: It ,vould
. haveMargaret
.
pU1 t Preventi
mcludmg
leaders
oppoSitIOn
d c:ills by prominem
intervention. Would the world

.....teher and Bob Dole - for military

_ . s arve to dcath'. Kara=IC
. aJ
,,"
capl
opean
Eur
a
watch

Idllystand by and
. a major
. con
.
he
makin
look
It
alrpor,
thc
vacate
to

,
planned happily
cession and throwing the burden of responSible behaVIOur back on to
the Bosnian Government.
On the evening of 27 June, with his ancmpts to open the airport
sral1ed because of the failure of repeated ceasefire agreements to last
than a few hours, MacKenzie received a bizarre phone call. The
Praident of France, Fran\ois Mitterand, was on his way to Sarajevo,
due to land at Sarajevo airport that evening, and had requested a UN
into the city.
It was madness. An airport landing strip is, by its very nature, the
most exposed of terrain Nothing had landed at Sarajevo for weeks.
.
There were no runway lights; the control tower ,vas out of action. The
Itrip covered in shards of shrapnel - and, if the plane were not
shot down by one side or the other in the belief that it was coming to
raupply their enemy - its tyres would blow out on landing. The air
port road
the most dangerous road in the world - sniper alley
eva-yon called it. To drive along it in broad daylight was to take a
nsk; to do so after dark was suicidal. MacKenzie advised the
' ht to Iand elsewhere, break for the night, and come the
l;R5ideor' flIg
DQt day. It did.
twenty-ighth of June is St Vitus's Day - the anniversary of
the
s d.efeatJng the Turks at Kosovo in 1389. In 1914, Archduke
Fi
erdlnan
d of Austria had come to Sarajevo on this very day as

Bosru rate geSfUre of dcfiance to Bosnia's Serbs who wanted to take

etC'.
ut Ofth Habsburg monarchy and into a 'union with the Serbs
.;JC,ula. The hiSto nca..L
. _ . resonances were powerful.
.
M
I tterand Intend
ed to VISit
. . only the Head of State. MacKenzie was

never considered that the President

. 'I'd
of France would visit
and talk with only one side
in the conflict.' MacKenzie
.
. .
c:GUId not pOSSI'bly ,OT
agreement on the aJrport, and were much
,

eICOn

was

was

THE CLEANSING

BOSNIA
impressed on Mitterand the importance of also seeing the
ers. 'I could juSt imagine the Serbs' reaction' if Mitterand sa.
'Thy would take their fury
Izctbegovit, he wrot in his

ary.

the only permanent International med

iator present in " caj,,,,, _ .
Mitterand agreed to shake hands with Karadzic at the

before his departure. MacKenzie informed Pale. Ka

K
oljevic turned up together at the appointed hour a
nd

::b
accosted the French President on the apron ofthe airstrip.n
hands and exchanged a few words. As always, Mitterand's

didn't alter. His eyes showed no flicker of recognition or '

m""
...
gave the impression that he scarcely knew who they were.

MacKenzie had predicted, shots rang out. A tank at the .'''''" '
of the runway began to blast round after round into the

al.ready

,,,
tered Bosnian Government-held suburb of Dobrinja.TI
,,, .
,ou"
Serb soldiers suddenly appeared, displaying light wounds to
MacKenzie, exasperated, dismissed the whole show as
Someone fetched an over-sized flack jacket and dropped it

Mitterand's diminutive frame. He did not flinch, but, for the fmt
that day, he looked his age. He was anxious to be off. He had

unimpressed by his hasty encounter with Karadzic, and, while

battle lasted, stood stoically in the lee of the tenninal bui]d;
ended after a few minutes. He boarded his plane, and took off,

:::;:

His mission was successfuJ in that he appeared to d:

the world that a milituy intervention was not necessary

ity and progress to Bosnia's chaos. A bold and heroic gesture

type Mitterand had self-promotingly made appeared sufficient.
It created the momentum MacKenzie wanted. The next

promised, the Serbs lined their tanks and =nou",d IPe<.,(,,"",

up on the runway and left the airport. MacKenzie ran up

Within days a Canadian battalion had arrived, diverted from

keeping duties in Croati:!., and began to secure the airport. The

began and was soon transporting more than 150 tonnes of food
medical supplies a day. The international community

collective sigh of relief. The crisis at Sarajevo, international

opinion seemed to feel, was over.
The opening of Sarajevo airport marked another central

istic of the West's response to the Bosnian war. It was, almost

beginning, treated as a humanitarian crisis. Western
dealt with the war as though it were a flood or an

siastically addressing the symptoms of the conflict, '

.
any real effort to challenge its causes. Mitterand's visit, and hiS

ter With

and ingratiating Radovan Karadfic, was a

a grateful

g o e
lims were herded int a
tkfinin , June, more than 200 Mus. .
,
gh
ru
t
at PnJedor. a few hours drive
'{ba
K
rm detention camp
.
ernte
t
ma
Therwere beaten for hours. The other pnsoners heard
daY roo
J'evo
l!2
S
.
Then they were machlOe-gunned.
fiofP
iOto the night.
.
amS ate
her pns.
.
thelt
among the dead. The ot
lay
wounded
mOfOlng, the
least
150
at
ed
that
'{'be next
estimat
They
bodies.
e of their
.
had to dispas
r
'-d
d out. lU
__
I bY then, It
before the world loun
s
month
was
died. It
"

bid

.. roo

late.

summer, Serb forces had under their control

nd 0f 'hat fateful.
. ,
...
, the e
hat they
of the republic s terruory, and most 0f w
_thirds
ou
the vital
for
the
north,
ab e fiercest battles ha been fought in
wan
eld ter
re,
Serb-h
therefo
(and,
wes, !orridor linking Banp Luka
.

Th
e corn'
la
r.
h
b
er
S
prope
Wit
. western Bosnia and Croatia)
ntor}'
l0
,
.
'y

lOant
o
d
h
was
pre
a,
IC
h
w
Posavm
of

dot passed through the region

ed south, deep lOto ter
Croat. Twice. Croatian forces had penetrat
necessity.
ritory the' Serbs needed. But the corridor wa.s a strategic
Serb
unbroken
s,
contiguou
no
be
could
thcre
corridor,
Without the
laritorial unit. 'The corridor is the very air we breathe. It is our life as
nation,' the Banja Luka Serbs said. They threw their best units at it.

Serbs only consolidated their hold on the corridor after

IeCret wks with the Croats. But it remained vulnerable. At BItko it
.. only five kilometres wide. It is the Serb state's Achilles heel.

Ia fact, the

The second main area of conflict was in the south-west, in Mostar.

Kand!iC's early ambition had been to draw the border of his state

along the Neretva river, and down towards the coast. The most ambi
tious Greater Serb nationalists asserted that under this plan, even
Dubrovnik would be incorpornted into the future Serbian state. This

plan woul have partitioned Mostar along the river: east Mostar
;:Wd be 10 Republika Srpska. But in May the JNA withdrew from
r east back of Mostar, and on 17 June Croatian forces drove the
Se bs off the east
bank and Out of Mostar altogether.
.JUt there remained
four vital areas where the initial Serb onslaught
suceeded, due to the
unexpectedly effective resistance of the
lo
a
t:!osman
defence forces in the early days of the battle. In eastern
.
80s
thi majority Muslim
population retained control of
ca, . e
a and Gorazde. These became islands of enemy terri
d .c
P w;.;hlO what the Serbs considered their country. As winter
e ended,
.
eezlOg the front lines,
it became clear that these three

a,.

BOSNIA

'enclaves', as they became known, would be the Serb mili... ""

for the spring offensive. They had to be neutralized as a
threat, and finally cleansed as unwelcome ethnic stains on
wise pure Serb tableau. The fourth area was the unfin'i'h'd b;;'::
Sarajevo itself. Karadi.ic remained resolved to partition the
negotiation if possible. by force if necessary. But that could
the end.
lzetbegovlC's dilemma was now acute. The only dten...';
defeat by the Serbs was 'liberation' by the Croats. He was
foundly distrustful of his 'ally' in Zagreb - and with sound
1 The ban on public gathering was l ast imposed against K",,>
Albanians in 1989.
2 For a graphic evocation ofthe horror and despair that K<"re'..
,"l i

long marches into ile, see Ed Vulliamy SaJom in Htll, Simon

London, 1994.
3 Gutman, Roy, Witnus to Gm()(id, Shaftesbury: Element
1993.
4 Fighting for control of this corridor caused some of the
of the war, cost thousands of lives, and frequently dominated p.""dhi

the Geneva peace talks.

5 Nrwsday, 2 August, 1992.
6 Vulliamy, Sasom in Htll, London, 1994.
7 Figures supplied by UNHCR, Geneva.

8 See MacKenzie's memoir Ptaultupr, Douglas Mcintyre,

1993, for his growing disenchantment with the Bosnian Government
particular, his animosity towards Ejup GaniC.
9 Paultup", p. 2 1 1.

19
'WE ARETHEW1NNER
nce
The London Confere
2
199
ber
um
De
Mar

S'

.
ment and
.
the British Govern
by
n(erence, hosted
.
. .
Loodon C0
on
B osm3
it
summ
UIona
mtern
the most ambitious
organizations. joined in .calling for the
r
w')' countries and
L n by
u_ !bon u
and the restora on 0 tern.tory taKe
.
of ethnic cleansing

wake of revclations auvut deteniOn camps m

--Hdd in the
Serb aggresSiOn. Under the
..er after speaker condemned
_I
:
.
JIoInia, speaJ\
to save
ke action
.
would ta
unity
comm
.
l
ationa
the intern
illusion that
h
could afford to take the mor01 h'Ig ground.
Bosnia, the participants
the confere?ce as a breakthruh. A (me
Western powers hailed
to deal wah the Yugoslav CrISIS. The tIde of
work h d been established
ability to
been turned and confidence restored in the West's
resolve,
ti
nal
inerna
of
display

de leadership. Despite this new

.
London
VlctOry
10
a
scored
had
toO,
Serb leaders believed that they,
b

ce
f
would
it
that
advance
in
knew
ip

The Belgrade leadersh

.
COSIC.
DobrLc
la,
YugoslaV
new
the
of
President
The
ism.
... ofcritic
tIM:: nationalist writer, who had taken office (our months earlier. had
bcc:n told by 3 British minister that Milovlc would be called
to account.
But MiloviC was jovial on the flight to London. Turning to his
hdOnnation Minister. he asked: 'Do you know why we're travelling
to London? Because we afe the \vinning party: The Minister was
confused. 'But we've got sanctions, petrol is rationed. The economy is
'
mess. 'Forget the queues. we are the winners,' Miloevil: said. turn109 round to continue his conversation with the Montenegrin
President, Momir Bulatovie.
?ncc in London. Milvic seemed more interested in settling
scor s with the newly-appointed Yugoslav Prime Minister,
Panic, than in the Conference itself. They argued publicly and
. d
the senes, Miloevie even threatened to punch him. Milokvic
n.d -PlCke both Panic, the Belgrade-born millionaire (rom
ta
C i
al or ma, and COSle, seen
as the spirirual father of Serbs. His plan
.... to let the Unlikely
pair
nav
igate while he waited for the storm to
.
Erlier that year, he had approached COSIC, who exerted consid
e Influence behind
the scenes, and asked him to head the
,

T;

the ;..
1

C2.I
:::m
:i

'WE ARE THE WINNERS'

BOSNIA

;J1l:::

unrecognized Yugoslav state, which

Montenegro, and had been formally (and
April, 1992. 'Together we can save me nat
ion,

27

It was an ofrer osie could't resist. In Ju

ne, the writer rode
.
. .
battered taxt to his own presldennaJ Inauguration. His hean
healing the divisi?ns among Serbs and securing a place in Serbian

tory. the elderly Cosie wanted to appear above political struggle..

would not dare to risk a direct challenge to Milokvic. Serbia
Montenegro were facing increased isolation. On 30 May, 0"''''I!<d
Serbian atrocities in Bosnia, the UN Security Council had
draconian economic and political sanctions.
After the imposition of sanctions, Miloevic came under
tense pressure ro resign. For the

first time instirutions

in
the Orthodox Church, the university and even factories

Panit was

political establishment in Washington, he

to end Yugoslavia's quarantine. But if Miloevic believed that

political novice would simply follow orders, he was

Surrounded by a team of his own American advisors, Panic tried

run Yugoslavia the way he ran his California-based ph",!

'
company. At one point MiloeviC even aed to consider

proposal that he (MilmeviC) should take a job in the US

politics. It is remarkable that MilokYit:
even tempted to assume a new life in the US. But he soon
his mind, and a simmering feud between the ebullient mi
Dio""!'
and the arrogant politician finally erupted in public during
London Conference.

bizarre

retire altogether from

:
:
: :
With his signarure glass of Coca-Cola, Panic was a"
air in marked COntrast to the dour authoritarian politician
s f

Milo!eviC's men, but not enough to satisfY th Serbian President.

also included several of Cosie's appointees, and a

couple of'

dent and genuinely qualified ministers, for sensitive ";,moh-" ",,10 I

justice and minority rights.
Panic took the premier's

job out of an unshakeable

could succeed in the monumental task of ending the

impressed foreign dignitaries with his message of co-existence
Balkan communities - but, in fact, revealed only the vaguest
edge of what was

-' ra
B CJg

lephone
erb "'gc
'_... '
He
(rom ' ad ed
elf
.aae, Panlt :ed y help. 'Just men,' answcre a voicc . thrgh the
,.bether h ndo
that YugoslaVia was still aLcllOg the
not seem to realize . .
. : Planlt 1d\vith
ma/tnd.
mcn and
bs
1JoIIU&fI 5er

the British Prime Minister John Major

the C nference.
.
g
ia's fatc, already under UN sanctions. If
ofSerb
...
,
n m pI .....
Operu
ted a gn
ught, they would condemn themonsla
their
hah
=Serbs failed to
.

,..
"

If'Wl do notget co-ope:atioll, tepressure will. inexorably increase.

Milan
selected as the man who would deliver
left of Yugoslavia from the Balkan wasteland. Through his

His Cabinet was a strange mix. Under pressure, Panic picked

tcfyes to complete isolation

against him.

tions with the

de, he was informed that the Serb assault Hone

n " " ,n _ UI"ng d"pitc his pledges to the contrary.

.ru
..
..
ntlO
,
was co
the town, completely unaware that 11
.
tc
s
hi atde to
1
1
cut
ete
y
for three months and was comp
51
nder 5
u
,
"ue_u
" m li
. Reaching the town via
t rary w;o.
\
orld
IIId n the outs'd
...
l e
n
5
er
d
omma
e
b
er
'
"
1
d
aske a OCiIJ
.
himself.

happening on the ground in Bosnia. On 'J J'P '

In the way ofagreeCondemnation, iso/alum. Partlts who stand

more rigorously
tvtn
s,
sanction
tven tougher
mnrt (an eX"ecf

. .
reco
a
ern(ltio
ill
No
TIIl/on or roIe.
po/iud No trade. No .a d.

Lonomic, (ultural, poizl/cal and diplomatIC uolatlon.

..

At the Conference, Panic made a strong impression - clownish,

enuic, but committed to ending the war. At one point, Miloevic

liked to speak. Panii: scribbled something on a piece paper and held
It up in fr nt of the Serbian President. It said 'shut up' in English.
r.nK: then show
the paper to the Acting Secretary of State,

of

ed

L.wrence Eagleburger, former ambassador to Yugoslavia and once a

6iend
bodan Milaievic. Panic went a step funher.
his heavily

ofSlo

also

In
- he

rusty
told the
ICIt'ented English - his Seri)()-Croat was
Conference that Milos iC was not authorized to speak.
On the second day, the EC by the Dutch - put forward a

ev

urged
resolution, lambasting the Serbs. The Serbs saw the draft and
IIbreatened to abandon the Conference. The British worried that if the
doc:um
draft

ent were not proposed, the Bosnians and the Dutch would
out. I
it went ahea,
Russian
leave instea.
.
.
MlO
lste r Andrei Kozyrcv, and his deputy, Vltaiy Churkin,
per fect
man r endeared him to
media ri d
to calm down the Serbs and keep t m
!Iizabe
withdrew to their separate rooms at t Qieen
1'h
Centre.
was a hu e row.
Miloscvic insisted on leaving. Panic wanted

The

the Serbs would

t e English and relaxed

ce. The Serbs
t ll
ere
g

ne

he

he

the
at the

WE ARE THE WlNNERS'

BOSNIA

to stay. Finally, MiloSevic agreed to stay, but only if Pa

w:
C
to shut up. Panic tried to tough it out: 'It might be best
us go back to the Conference and others don't: he said.
middle of this exchange, no-one noticed that Kozyrev had
the room to propose a compromise: Major would read the
aloud, but the Conference would end without debating it. 1hc
reluctantly agreed.
Major hailed the Conference a success for providing a
sive framework for the first time since the conflict erupted.
know what needs to be done; he said, 'how it needs to be
whom it needs to be done.' The participants had agreed to
sanctions against Belgrade and station monitors along Serbia'.
tional frontiers, including the Danube River though not on
frontier \vith Bosnia which was controlled by Serbs on both
Lawrence Eagleburger announced they had secured an
from the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadlic, to allow
monitor all heavy weapons around the towns of Sarajevo,
Gordde, and Jajce within a week. The Bosnian Serbs had also
to withdraw from 'a substantial' - but as yet undefined land they controlled.
The UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
plans to deploy thousands more peace-keepers to protect
voys for Bosnia's civilians. The fmit winter of the war was
ing, and more than 1.3 million people were expected to ro" .."
side supplies of food, clothing and shelter for survival.
agreed that a peace-keeping force could be cre t'd bY th,
.
Council to maintain the ceasefire and control
14 September, Security Council Resolution 776
Bosnia. France, as the single largest troop contributor, took
of UNPROFOR II, as it was to be called, while Britain " tho ...
largest held the post of chief-of-staff. The participants
work towards a ban on military flights. In October, the
Bosnian air space a 'no-fly' zone.
The warring parties agreed [hat a settlement must
[ion of Bosnia-Herzegovina by all the former Yugoslav
respect for the integrity of present frontiers unless
al agreement. The declaration also called on parties to:

:;:

also,-"c.-._,

- dose Ib" ,,,b'>m'nl' d"''''';'"",a",p' ",d!r,"nl ;mm"d,"

; ,""
10 lhe inlemational community.
. ....
- rejm as inhuman and illq,al the expuiJion ofci'Vilian ,,,
,88

ordtr to a/ler Ihe efhni, character 0/any

tli/llSJ'
righl ifreturn.
n fion and Ihe
Co
am( workfor peace la/h. ;l1 Geneva, ;ncllldig the
'?
Ifill.
- eltDhs
as Ihe sucaSSlO7/ of
j"king groups (on JUch Wiles
war.
.

""lIon .OJr 'a'Vf0/I and examine Iheproposal'jiora warcnmes

Inl
Yuga
eT
fo""
.
..,ttal.
.
me,s.
lontlI l.reatltS.a d
.
;
rtJpt'1 all inldTIal
ou
rm t?Unlnes
'g
wl
m
/
h
othtr
I
rtJ/ort trade and
f
,::
s
righls oDser'l.ierS. 10 AOS01JO. erlJlas O1JtrWbeIm_ aespalcb human

rr
.
sO/lthern pro'IJlce; POj'IJOdma, Ibe 1I0rlh. ern
1 AIDanian
ittg.
m;
h" , elhnic patchwork mcludes 346 000 Hungarta
.
rlnu w
a
wllh
negro
and
Monte
straddling Serbta
inui SondiPi, a rtgion
/6rge Moslem population.

.'

L"lr bomtS in
"
I"rn m 1

ra S:

_
-

despatch of interatio?al media

Milevit repeatedly refused the
the et .lc Albantans I Kosov?:
o
starus
future
... to negotiate the

r
.
us. Pall1c
Serblas Illternai affa
III
e
interferenc
tIping it constituted
and
e
Security
on
Conferenc
the
rom
f
monitors
of
despatch
IIIc:bd the
Co-operation in Europe to Kosovo. A year later MiloSevic would
.,a them.
In their final declaration, the Conference participants urged the
-.ring parties to lay down their arms, or risk lasting isolation.
If. .. Serbia andMontmegro do illtelld10fulfillhese oDligalions in

dud as well as word they will mllme a mperted position in the

i"ttnlalional commllnity. .
If they do no! comply the SeCllrity Council will be invited to
i
."uy stringenl sanetiom leading to their lotal international so.
""ion.

1'1le text was harsh. World powers were threatening to completely

leIl offSerbia from the outside world.
For the Serbian President how
tier. e Outcome was
bener than expected. The declaration did not
the use of force to punish the warring parties. This was an
. .
1IIDuId nt omiSSion and a victory for Serbia. Stinging words alone
not penalize the Serbs.
At
London Conference, the Bosnian Serbs - and particularly
" R
dovan Karadit - emerged from under the coat-tails of
", '
at. ,po <" III Belgrade. This clearly
worked in MiloeviC's favour.
"';'.,he alone
had
had
to
bear
the
brunt of the international
...
. .. ; "
wrath. As Karadzic willingly basked
in the attention of

::;:::;

,8,

'WE

BOSNIA
the media, the burden of responsibility shifted, almostt i
",,,,,
..
on to his broad shoulders. MiloseviC's close ally
recalled:

Looking at it cynically, thr London

altthr tfficts ojtIN war... Until tlNn,
bring slruck offtIN agmda twrywhtrr...
was at thr ron/amu tablr as the prrsidrnt
Panii was that m primr minister.. You """"H''"
Conftrrnu rndd with John Major saying r..d A.'.
Ponil/or a /Narrfol solution to the problrm
therr - with all the cards in his poe/ut. :d ::'
;
;t:
thl Bosnian Slrbs with Karadt,i, applarrd,;' ; t :
..
.
ojfhl c0nftrmu, but thlrr anyway

::

At thc very end of the Conference, thc former Labour

Secretary and SOP leader, Lord Owen, was apPointc
'd
d
:

:
Carrington. At first the Serbs were extremely upset. P
!
had called for the use of air strikes tl? stop thc
Ultimately, he would build an extraordinarily warm rel>tionlhi "
p
Milosevic, winning his total confidence.
But as the Conferencc wound up, MiloseviC was o
foolish antics of Panic, who had had the temerity to ask70
to be sent to the borders between Serbia and Bosnia: Two

- when he had finally tircd of Karadzic

Milokvic

...J.d

watered-down version of the same thing, and was ,.,

partial easing of sanctions. None of MiloSeviC's coterie could
that Panic had dared to propose murual recognition between

and Yugoslavia in a twelvepoint peace plan he presented

Conference (the plan also included the recognition of all

Yugoslav republics within their original frontiers. and the

talks with ethnic Albanian leaders).
..
MiloseviC stormed off to the airport, leaving for B,J,..
KaradZiC's plane. The Bosnian Serb delegation was forced
ride with Panic to Serbia the following day. It was the nnll....' ..
home. Asked if he would allow KaradZic and his colleagues

plane, Panic turned to an aide and said: 'Who are they?' He

agreed, but forced the delegation to sit in the rear of the
he and his team travelled first class.
After the London Conference, MilocviC's henchmen took

ARE THE WINNERS'

They were

upset by Panic's tendency to say whatever

,
ofPe. d
days after returning from London, a no
. Just three
hea
int
ifs devotees, the MP
O his
bled. AI; onc of MiloS"ev
t

t: 'We have embarked on

l
e Federal Pariamen
' vo
::ii.kc,,,
eVl.C'
man. Ifwe place f rther confidence

th an i'rresponsible
, u
ade W!
on an even greater one.
p 'll
g
kin
bar
em
: we be
.. biJn
. office thanks to support from the
m
ID
an ged ro stay
d
h
c
Federal Parliament. Arriving in Belgrade
Paru

e es ro (he
emerged as the
months later, Panic had
.
a",m,n' six
s p1P,
oJeviC
Mil
,

magnate OppoSition. Even the West

' pharmaceuticals
t-ot- ofSerblas
' . s magnate.
. pharmaeeutlc;,u
y '.n d hopes on the eccentnc
p n
ed to the
vic,
appeal
Miloe
clashed with
\,..05 1 c:' wh0 ad also
-"
il
M
d,
ret;wate
'
oS"eVlI.
.
.
1
ectlon
,
t not to stand for re-e
Sablan Presl'den
was
OSIC
"
'
C
1
h
("
ater,
s
mont
lew
A
political casualty.
PaniC the first

J,fonte?
-e

ber, Television Belgrade,

n-up to elections on 20 Decem
, unleashed a ,:ave of propaga da
n
weapo

)tilokvi't s most important

lan
er
the
for
se
ra
l.
genera
in
sition
l
op'p
e
.
tpinst Panic and th.
?
ed iloseV1c
bolster
PaRlc,
on
attacks
VICIOUS
wlth
President. coupled
.l.ng to
CIA agent, eoplf
IDd spread the notion that his rival was a
ln rare telVJslon llltr
Kosov
."ay
a
gi
and
ons
sancti
UN
,
?
tishtcn
.

n
'fiew. MiloeviC sa.J.d that Panic s helmsma was In Washington. With
coaaiderable electoral manipulation and gross abuse of the media, the

Sc:rblan President took fifty-six per cent of the vote. Panic. running on
slogan 'Now or Never' took thirty-four per centl.
The distoned a d isolated political landscape of Serbia provided
n
inik ground for the smear campaign, which encompassed not only
Panic but the West as well. By December, there was almost noone
left in Serbia who was not angry that the West had imposed sanctions
lad afraid ofwhat it would do next. Instructed by Belgrade Television,
fI:abs believed that their kinsmen in Bosnia were fighting for the sur

iYaI. oftheir nation; it was not a landgrab. By contrast, 'Muslim fun

lllunentalists' and 'Croat fascists' were waging a war of aggression.
Scenes of Muslims being expelled from their homes were never
. It was easy to build on collective memories of Serb suffering
the UstaSe in thc Secon World
d
War.
ter, w henbloodshed
and destruction rendered the prospects of a

.
_.
-b-hethn
. IC OSllLa much more remote, another of Belgrade's dark
.r"" '"t' eSles
was fulfilled.

:::

1 Of the
250-sea

'"
' ,
t PaT\'lament, M 'l
Ioevlc s Soclalists
won 101 seats, and,
'9'

BOSNIA
together with their ultranationalist saTellites, the Serbian
73, they had a comfortable majority.
main opposition
headed by Vuk Drakovic, took 49 seats, the centrist
7; the bulk of the remaining seats went to smaller parties

The

Muslims.

20
THE HOTTEST CORNER

and the UN Soft Areas

The Fall ofSrebreArlica.
pnl 1 993

'

in a remote wing
Efindic climbs the three flightsinofthestairs
heart of Sarajevo and

A e osnian Presidency building

.
VJ.
.1
e
d attic room. He teases a barely audible shortwav
eac
.
...

cn a cramr -

'e
'''
', and
_ 'mto Ul
c
aml>1>lar vOice 0f
1y the l
'Sara One, Sara One,. 5udden
ign
s
... call
.

'

J'umping from waveband to waveband, he Issues

Jbnhim Betirevic, the Srebrenca

toWn's

ra io oprator, answers his call. e

thiS, twice a day, for more than SIX
like
speaking
en have been
from his bunker in Srebrenica,
Ibrahim,
p.m.,
3
and
.
m.,
s at 9 a
military plight of the
precarious
the
about
message
coded
i g
defences. It has been surrounded by Serb forces for almost a

CWO

>

)'til. for months, the local Muslim defenders have been fighting a 10s

iDs blttle as the Bosnian Serb Army ha moved in to close the nooe

tighter around the town. It 15 mldMarch, and, through thiS

tircle
__

tenuous radio link, the military commanders in Srebrenica

iDfOnn Sarajevo in code that they have run out of ammunition. They

annot hold out much longer. It is the start of a devastating series of

CftII,ts that will humiliate the UN Protection

Force,

destroy the

Vma:..()wen Peace Plan, fatally undermine the credibility of the UN

Security Council, and threaten to split the NATO alliance.

Sn;tnnia\

l two-hour's drive from Sarajevo in bener days, sits in

Drina Valley, surrounded, like so many Bosnian [Owns, by high
It was built on the site of a silver mine2 - the Romans called

JiIOUnd.

ntium. When war broke out, in April 1992, the town's Muslim

.
had tried
hid
to make an agreement with local Serbs, and, at first,
SerbIUc
cecd .
eir negotiations had been disrupted by the arrival of

T?
;
es fro Ser ia itself - the very men who had
.

IJelJlOa and ZvorOLk now

moved further up river. Naser
yong policema
n and former body-guard to Slobodan
-1.UOIeVtC r3.lsed a m'1>ltia
>
and staged an uprising at the end of April,
t
tion. l the Serb forces Out of Srebrenica after three
a
week occupa
t Was one of
the few places where the Serbs suffered a defeat in
of the war. The battle cost
hundreds of lives and left
territorial defence forces
in control of an island of

Orit, l
Ul,-_ .

'93

THE HOTTEST CORNER

BOSNIA
territory in the heart of the 'Serbian republic'. This,
and t"O
enclaves, were proving a military and security .
On 7 January (the Orthodox Christmas)
forces
surprise attack on Serb positions to the north, killing
Serb
and burning their villages. The Serbs rounded on Srebre
ruc
ing rugh h neighbouring Bsnian-held villages of
Ce
KonjeVlt PolJe In February and, In March, closing in on
the
itself Thousands of Muslim villagers, many already refugees.
hinterland fled as their villages succumbed to the onslaUg
ht

poured into Srebrenica town seeking refuge, but the town was
crowded, the most recent arrivals had to sleep in the open air.
At the same time, the Serbs imposed a ban on the already
quent aid convoys entering the enclave3 By March, they were

ing small windows in their front line, through which trails

were fleeing to the Government-held town of Tuzla in

They brought tales of intense suffering and hunger. The
called this 'ethnic cleansing by starvation'.

In February, a group of Srebrenica citizens arrived in

They had smuggled themselves out, through Serb lines. under
of darkness, and, at great mortal risk, had trekked across the
tains on foot, and into the capital. They demanded a meeting
.
Government. Their bitterness shocked Deputy '

LagumdZija. They told him that while the world's attentioa

focused on Sarajevo, the plight of the eastern enclaves, where

tions were much worse, was being ignored. They demanded

every Muslim who died in eastern Bosnia, one Serb should

rested in Sarajevo and executed. Lagumdzija was no n;

was genuinely committed to a multi-ethnic society. He

":;:::

them for their demand that innocent people should be

for the crimes of others, but promised more resolute support for

200 000 Musims

l
under siege in the three eastern enclaves.
Lagumd1ija, in an attempt to tie the fate of Saraje
vo to th." .l,
enclaves, announced that Sarajevo would receive no ;",>"' d.'"....
aid, until the eastern enclaves had received at least one delivery.
airlift was being suspended, and road convoys would be turn
He was putting the whole city, in effect, on hunger strike to

the plight of eastern Bosnia.

In March, after hearing the news that the Srebrenica defendett
run out of ammunition, the Commander of the Bosnian army.
Halilovic, warned the UN Force Commander Phillipe Morillon
a Serb offensive was about to begin, and the Muslims in

'94

O.. n

same time, a
to defend their territory. At the

."eIC in no P SltlOrking for the World Health Organization, had

:- doetor wo
"C
uormed Morillon
the encIave,
. and lJ
Bri ' O
he mountains .into
.L I......I ver t
hat the
h
c
over. and t
no
Wit
street
the
10
living
.
- ands were
thous

cbtt
to die from hunger. Morillon now began a
-

ning

begin
t we that first disturbed, and then infuriated, his bosses in
n
'(5 of acno s

go to 5rebrem" ca h"Imse1.
ric h resolved to
New
a convoy of the vehicles across forested
took
he
M ch,
n
. traCks, beyond the Serb front hne at Bratunac, and later
O
IIICJUfltalO
memoir of the war:
recorded in his
,en

Yl :C

and, after a (ouple oj hOUrI, I

WI mplforward though Ihe trm,
wilh the UNflag so thal lhe
car
d
d to get on 10 Ihe armoure
d
:a
who we were. When we
land
misunderI
B ians would not
thm Bosnians appeared
valley,
the
deftnding
a little hill
did you gel throught
'How
there.
were
we
that
king amazed
Ihe path - we were
down
miner
the
laid
y
l
personal
'J
one asked.
ifferent direction.
exptingyoufrom a d
At that moment a large explosion signalled the lorry had hit a
mine andhad turned OVo'r into the ditch.

:d
700

'

Morillon's party crept into Srebrenica in the dead of night. They

bmd hundreds of people living in the street, and dozens still pouring

iato toWn. It was cold. There was no wood left in town. People were
iluming plastic bottles for a little warmth and the smell clung in the
CIOId night air.

The next day, Morillon met Orit. He told him he would do every

thing possible to secure a ceasefire, and get humanitarian aid through.

He en got into his vehicle to head out of town. Oric had other plans
h him. Efenruc, back in SaT2jevo, had sent Orit a coded message:

'Whare:'er happens, prevent Morillon from leaving Srebrenica until

be: pnmdes security for
the people there. Do it in a civilised way. Use
"Ornen and children'.
M rilln now found
his path blocked by hundreds of women and
.
they n SlttlOg in the middle of
the road. He was now as trapped as
He tried to negotiate his passage out. Oric would not
lirlIked mally, Morillon, trying to win the confIdence of the people,
n to the balc ny and made the public promise that was to
?
?
blunt

/n. the followmg weeks: 'I will never abandon you'. One
be
hLS party, the Belgian aid worker Muriel Comeis,
l then
lritb M , recalled

..::
;

BOSNIA

TIlE HOlTEST CORNER

We 'Were in the hospital, ad 'We heard the crackle ojthe louQ...

ipeaker, and wmt to the wmdow and thue was Morillrm: 'y.
are now under theprotation ofthe Unitd NahOllJ. Wejust b 011
out laughing - it was JO absurd with him standing there and
the feop/e watching. Branko the in!(preter could not keep II
straight[au. Up went the UNflag. Ene. OUT doctor, said 'This it
it. Wt are in big shit:
there ofhis own

ility to help them, to save their lives. I

t is my responsib
ted, I
or theoretical
debate now. We just have
ophical
.
r ,or philos
.
_at ente
d
d twenty trucks a day,
sen
planne
to
iluce
Mend
'
lives.
ve their
.. ..
between
I()(X)
and 1500 people on
evacuate
to
empty
'
IPO't OI them

later, Morillon, becoming. in te view f his advisers.

.
ed with the fate ofSrebrentca, and hiS own pronuse
obsess
ngerously
dl
abandon it, set off again. He had been horrified by reports of
elling. He annouced tht he was going.to. Srebrenica with
voy offive vehicles, With or Without the pemnsslOn of the Serbs.
pea.cekeeping convetion is to act 0r.Uy th the consent of all
cs to a conflict. Morillon was breaching It. The gesture was to

;Pdays

of the ordinary had taken place. He made himself scarce. He

sh

vehicles to arrive. But he had been spoued. The vehicles did

come. At four a.m., he walked back into [Own to see 11.
refugees, hundreds-strong, gathering in the town centre. The

:: out to be the most flamboyant gesture to date of the impotence

of"the UN force in the face of Serb intransigence.

Anxious to create the impression that he

was

tion and not as a hostage, Morillon behaved as though nOfrung ,

sleep asking to be woken at [\vo a.m. He then tried to sneak
left on foot, undetected, and waited at a pre-arranged place

tion was becoming farcical. On 13 March he was finally allowed

leave, after promising to go to Belgrade to demand an end to

assault.
Morillon succeeded in persuading the Serbs to let an ';,1 """ay;
But the convoy leaders were not ready for the reception

-.ff-Ik,;;a;

receive. When the food and medical supplies had been

;::

there was pandemonium as hundreds of desperate women and

dren stormed aboard the trucks, piling one on top o ;

efforts to leave the besieged town. Six people died from

on the drive to Tuzla. The UN again found itself assisting w>1'"''

cleansing. The bombardment of the town did not let up.

At the beginning of April, the Serbs issued a surrender

through the UNHCR. The Bosnian Army was given a lotry-oil
hour ultimatum. The most senior UNHCR official in

Yugoslavia, Jose Maria Mendiluce, anended talks

the

was; ;;=
in

Bratunac, from where the assault on Srebreniea

'Either they surrender and you get all the Muslims out a .
the Serb Commander, 11ie, told him, 'or we take the town In
Mendiluce started making plans for the evacuation of a
60 000 people. It was to be the biggest single act of ethruc
the
since che conflict began, and it \V3S to be carried out by.
With
Mendiluce made no effort to hide the moral repugnance
)' out.
he approached che task he was now expected to carr
n
whe
denounce ethnic cleansing worldwide,' he said. 'But
rat
despe
thousands of wotnen and children at risk who want

>;;

'96

:;r

Morillon got twenty-fIVe miles from his base in Sarajevo, to the

tIJIIm ofSokolac, where the local commanders detained him for seven

boun. They turned back three of his vehicles. Morillon soldiered on

wiIb two. Further up the road, a[ Zvomik, his progress was halted
.

- this rime by hundreds of women and children blocking his

They clambered aboard his two white UN vehicles and ripped

aerials and jerry cans. They sprayed [hem multi-coloured with
His humiliation was complete. H e limped back to the
t.""nIT"n't-heid Tuzla by nightfall, a blue-helmeted Don Qyixore.
workers there said he was grief stricken. Like many of them, he
been to Srebrenica, knew the condition of the people, and felt
responsibility. His closest colleagues began to worry
.
his state of mind.

Ilfficials in New York and Belgrade began to worry, too.

had saddled them with a responsibility they

did not want
know how [0 respond to. It was clear Srebren
ica was going
be I:kfeued. UNPRO
FOR, through MoriUon's well-intentioned
was revealed as a paper
tiger. The UN now found itself in
- even conflict - with important sectors of inter.
.
pUbhc opinlon,

most notably the Amencan State

.

C )R

cOuld do n thing to stop the

Serb offensive; so its
?
.
a ublic relations
campaign to take the heat out of
was puhc outrage. As the Serb
advance continued General
mVited to Bel
,
. '
gade for
ceasefire talks With General

'
and UNPR
ORs
most senior civilian official. Cedric
F

...
"Y. a d
...
IStmg
\
ushed and highly regar
ded Irish lawyer who had

'm

'97

THE HOTTEST CORNER

BOSNIA
.

19705.

. The UN Security Council, responding to internarion a1

about Srebrenica, had mandated UNPROFOR to deploy a
of Canadian trOOpS - about 120 men - to go to Srebrenica

regular deliveries of aid. General Mladic would not let them

To Thornberry's acute embarrassment, Mladic, the Bosni
an
commander, never hid his intentions. The Canadians would
allowed to go to Srebrenica when his Army's m
:

?;::;

plished. The US State Department was again ;

f
or
,a
the arms embargo. Thornberry was under pressure to produce

Dr ofMidicine, KaradZit, the Profwo oflittraturt, Koe:vjt, the

Biologst,
i Mrs Plamif, and te geo/g/St, Prssor LukIc. And 1
.
womitr, will they condemn thIS atroCIty? Or wtll they bttray theIr
MiIIlalion and condont il? And I thollght ofthe many Serbs that I
hlow around this country. and I wonderui: do they want the his
ttIry ofthe Serb nation to include this chapttr, a (hapter in which
tJNjrarmy dTO'fJe innocent peoplefrom vil/agt to village to tlillage
_tilfinally they are cortlered in Subrt1lica, a pIaufrom which
IlNTe is no acape, and where theirfote is to be transported out like
Cllltle, or slaughtered like sheep?

schoolchildren playing on a football pitch. Louis Gentile was

UNHCR official in the town. He telexed his head office in

that day:

':::::::

General Mladic had issued an instruction that no new

w
personnel were to be allowed in. Those already there "
stay, because they knew that if they left they would not be

They used their vehicles as ambulances during the rm",-""'

ftrestorm. Gentile's telex described their behaviour under
danger as 'inspirational'.
Larry Hollingworth, the British UNHCR field officer, wI,""
'98

s
the front page

k
p1IS
dJi/dml and the crlu ofthtlr mothm. My thIrd thought wasfor

On 12 April, news reached Sarajevo of a short. intense

attack that killed f1ftysix in less than an hour. Some of them

intention had been to rotate personnel on a two-week shift

because of the stress of working under constant bombardment.

the

wasfor tIN commander who gaw the order to

M fint thought
1 hope he burns III the hotlut (onltr of hell. My ucond
dJDu. ht wasfor the soldiers who loaded tht breachts andfirtd tht
Ihaft their sleep jsfoeverpunctuated bl tht scrtams ofthe

::,

There were sixteen international personnel in the town

gone in with Morillon on his first jaunt a month earlier. The

Bosnia

, ....' 01 racti
he chose words that
PI a careful measured fOne ofVOice,that
world
the
around
broadcast
..:: w! be ofevery newspaper the next: day and printed
...
.

reporters in Belgrade that General Mladic had expressed his

for and cooperation with' attempts to deploy a Ca
f)adi,
'
n
Srebrenica. Minutes later Mladic talked to the same '"
Canadians, he said, would go to Srebrenica 'over my dead

Four/un dead hodirs wv(found in the school

and humanfluh dung to the schoolyordfmce. TI.:'g",und';";, IiH
unIty soakd with blood. One child, about six ytON of age.
bun duopila/td 1Jaw two ox-carts (fI'/J(Ttd with badia. Idid 1IfI
lookforwardto dosing my ryes 01 nightf
rfoar
o
lIN images. J will nMltr he ahlt to convey the horror.

'progress'. His public information officer, Shannon

those of my family'.

famous

in
as
Io ng beard had made him
hair and. .. of the most hazardous and difficult convoy
nee
.
.
'
' . ble good humour m
" tl' plO wn for his panen!
, Indelatlga
III ...
a1 kno
"" ,0eIenring obstrucrion. He, too, departed from the 1aou
nr
_II USd by UN 0ffio;us,
L._ of

' -'
sness no;,wy
merry and blameles
blame
all
can
you
sld
until
any
blame
to

ce is never

made his reputation as a civil rights lawyer in Belfast in the

1lais was the last thing UNPROFOR wanted to hear. It was grist
.. the mill ofthose in the Clinton administration who were urging the

f M' to press for military intervention in Bosnia, to which

;

.:;;

was implacably opposed.

1 4 April, Srebrenica's local authorities summoned Gentile, and

. to

1a1
W

m e. smuggle out a message to UNPROFOR's headquarters

Il
ld
C:Cmander told me that they had decided to surrender.

ClIelQlduwas n0t Hmp)'

.
' I the $hel/'Ing m
the centu ofthe town but
.o.L . l,Jf:lr
L.' d
-l
fittished. er.
:}ensl'lJe I'mes had collapsed. They looktd desperate and

nder request was

too sensitive to make on the radio. It
L
na
Ve !}Cen .
Intercepted by the Serbs
.
and been a green light for
'99

THE HOTTEST CORNER

BOSNIA

a final devastating push. Gentile took the

to
That night, Serb forces pushed through the
south and east of the town. They stormed the village

!:

on the southern edge of town. The Bosnian defen

iv<
"
s

as they were, collapsed. The push brought the Serb ri

very edge of the town. From their hill-top positions,

almoet

street was visible. Ibrahim Bei:irevic radioed to Sarajevo

coded messages - that the town was hours, rather
lapse. The

..dio
r

'''.by., 6.,.

ell
room in the Sarajevo Presidency f

sileO!. Bctirevic was the thirty-year-old father oftw" young <bi

His voice was that of a trapped animal, waiting for
approach. 'What has happened to the sixteen Canadian
Efendic asked BeCirevic. 'I don't know. We are all under

>E'en"""111

metallic crackly voice answered back. And then, as an

said of the Canadian soldiers: 'Whatever happens here,

sure they are all right.' It was a moment of extraordinary

generosity from a man who felt his own chances of survival
ing by the hour.
UNPROFOR had been talking up the prospects of a
days, despite all the evidence that General MJadic had not

:=

est intention of halting his advance until Srebrenica was n

a military threat. The surrender request was a bolt from t

threw UNPROFOR's officials in both Belgrade and S.,ajo,., .

tail-spin. No-one knew what to do.

::

UNPROFOR's dilemma was acute. For two reasons, the

implications of a surrender were immense. First, for the,
the peace process, which UNPROFOR supported: the E

the Croats had agreed to the Vance-Owen Plan which wu

show in town' and the Serbs were rejecting it; the

i':G::

n
put Srebrenica and the territory around it in a Bosma
or Muslim, canton. How could the UN on the ground
administering a surrender that in effect handed the ,,,ri",'1
Serb control, even if the town itself remained populated by

about the arms embargo, how could UNPROFOR, while

was debating whether to arm the Bosnians, justify actively .
them on the ground? UNPROFOR's concern was that It

inevitably fue! demands for military intervention. Officials '

ately began working on a way out of the mess.
For now, though, they were agreed on one thing, the n.", m,
reach the ears of the press. A British aid worker who had

,,!

......"g.
th roan;
i

:m :C

lt

talks at Sarajevo airport. General Mladic. and his Bosnian

CDWlterpart Sefer Halilovic met face to face. Both men referred

apenly to what had taken place as a surrender, as did the official radio

of both sides. Only the UN persisted with the fiction that

... talks represented some kind of'breakthrough' towards 'disarma
Dent'. Mladit was an hour and a half late. When he arrived he told
Morinon there was nothing to discuss except the trms of surrender
citbe Bosnian Army, which he was now prepared to dictate. Because

nian Serb Army was a very humane fighting OUtfit, he said,

chilians - that is to say women, children and the elderly - would all

be a1lowed to leave Srebrenica and go to 'Muslim territory'. He would

to a helicopter evacuation of the 500-or-so wounded. Men

lID

And, secondly: wi th the Americans pushing for a debate at

billeted at the UN headr and was now

.
month earlie
that
..
1:sts
h
a group 0fJoum_....
.
Wlt
inner
d
.,I>r<"'" Sara '"
was having
than
J
that
rather
them
inform
to
base
1
I
""
0ned his
ot1
""
.
.
Be teeph
I, t e HOu
"day
would check Into the press hote h
he
,
auf<e
table, he said casu
dinner
the
to
.
ed
return
he
When
. Srebrenica has surrendered.
jan. {or
a blind panic up there
1be
'
After a moment of stunned silence, the
.,.
ws what to do.'
te telephones. The news was out.

bled for their satelli

rs
scram I
headquarters in New York.
a so paniC in UN
There was
Iatest
IS
Ia. Th
spin-doctors took a day to fiInd a fiormu
UNPROFOR's of events would be presented to the world not as a
n
..corrunate rur
,
ament agreement .
as
but a 'disarm
ing got what e wanted, finally
April, General Mladic, hav
On
go to Srebrcmca. It set off.the
ny
compa
let the Canadian
.

.
in route because It was gomg,
lty
difficu
no
d2 and experienced
task was ?ot to secure the safe
ng.
esse e, to do MladiC's biddi
to receIVe te surrender ?f
begin
to
but
s,
convoy
piIIIgC of aid
spokesman m
BoInian guns, and, in the words of UNPROFORs
to secure the
and
&.njevo, Barry Frewer, 'to assi.st with evation,
.
lintrip so that medical evacuatIOns can begin
.
On the same day Cedric Thornberry and General Monllon con

tJ.ng age, on the other hand, were combatants, and would have
consid red prisoners of war. They
would be the subject of sepa
.
natJ.ons. These were his terms, he said, there was little else to

on advised Halilovic to accept MladiC's terms, since the sit

_
-.m was 'hopeI
ess' and there was an urgent need to begin the evac
::
BUt the previous
night, the United Nations Security Council

Srebrenica a
'United Nations Safe Area' (see page 303),

ER
THE HOTfEST CORN

BOSNIA
and, although noone in Sarajevo knew what that mea
nt
. .
rnade It ImpoSSI'ble lor
" Its UNPROFOR to broker an
meant emptying the place of its Muslim population
..
lasted from midday until two o'clock the noct marrung.
ten-paragraph 'dIsarmament' agreement was signed para
'
whieh providd for the freezing of existing front li
nes:
were not required to pull back from their achieved lines.

be

'l!'"""",,

was agreed, with effect from 5 a.m., that day. The

the Bosnian Government forces, and provided for

140 Canadian troops to collect the weapons. 1lUs had to
within seventy-two hours of their arrival, and would be ""'''''''
Bosnian Serb liaison officers. The Serbs had agreed to allow

copter evacuation of 500 wounded. But these would be

UNPROFOR in the presence of two doctors from each side

vent what General Mladic called 'war criminals' - in other "

u."

"
of military age - using the med-evac as an escape route.
copters would be required to stop for inspection at the ',,'b-I,.I,h.

.
:" :

of Zvornik, regardless of the condition ofthe evacuees.

Thornberry and Morillon had been
news coverage from the Sarajevo press

ticular. to the prominent use of the term

n
. ' ' .J Of 'h'
,

:
!,

mation officer, Barry Frewer, an intelligent and likeable

;'

(;,

from the Canadian Army, had been admonished by them for

get across the words 'disarmament' and 'ceasefire'. Frewer, in

uncharacteristically, shown his irritation with the penistena:

journalists in reporting a surrender. Thornberry and Morillon

indulged in a skilful piece of news management of their own.

The airport talks broke up at 2 a.m - 8 p.m., in New York.

Sarajevo journalists - conftned, by the curfew, to their hotd -..... ..

informed of the outcome until after 5 a.m. -just too late for

York Times and the Washington Post to squeeze th

editions. The United Nations press corps, on th other h" d "'... ..

"
nished with fulland-detai[ed briefings as the ",,,i"g pn>g<"
complete with quots from General Morillon, radioed,

his armoured vehicle at (.e airport, to the UN h",d'lu,"'''''

Sarajevo, and relayed, from there, to the UN in New York.
the Sarajevo correspondents had called their newsdesks to
agreement, the New York correspondents had already
despatches about this remarkable UNPROFOR-brokered

through in Bosnia. The unfortunate word 'surrender' did not

prominently, not, in fact, at all.
JO'

OR, international public

efforts of UNPROF

sified as the evacuations

i the
and the outrage inten
desp te outrag
' " few days. Aid workers described how the
.
.......t
was ver the n

people clamounng
0 .
wen: mobbed by .desperate.
helicopters
-"
lUI 0f
W
d a vast
nbe
offiCial desc
One UNHCR
e the
on beard
wher
s
field
sport
the
down the hillside to
,,
h bb!Jng
y
Itrar
b
ar
an
m
ake
o
'
d
had
ha
told of how h:
O
.
landed, and
e
go,
to
som
:
wire
d
be
f
bar
0
r side of a COil
from the othe
to pluck
he said, who had lost an eye, offered
,
man
ne
. n illght.
......" '''J. O
uatio
th
evac
rd
. I..
aboa
gt
d
ifit meant he coul
cbe 0ther eye
d the world, and con'inued to be broadcast aroun
.
con
scenes
a. The Amencans
.
agend
news
ional
at
intern
the
'"
omiO
to d
ure.
up their press
after the surrendr of Srbrnic, the UN
16 April, the day
e of Intense tnternatlOnal out
l met in an atmospher
.;.f)' Counei
.

__
' d
' a a Umte
819, whIch declared Srebremc
It passed Resolution
the
Plan
n
-Owe
Vanc.e
the
se of
'safe area'. (Aftcr the collap
t
man
term
:'
the
t
.)
Wha
areas
other
was later extendcd to five
the
ed
in
avoid
usly
studio
was
'
left vague. The term 'safe haven
Resolution, since this had a precise defmition
::h;
who
law and implied immunity from attack for all
i
that
iately
immed
saw
s
official
s
Nation
United
refuge there.
that
ation
organiz
an
for
dangers
hidden
d
containe
819
'"
ju,;,
...
.
Tharoor
.. resolutely, wanted to take no side in the war. Shashi

:::::::

:
:

" II'"'

' t:!:::j.

DDO:d that

Tht difficulty with tlx soft arMS conrtpt al thai point in llu
Bosnian situation was that it lookta as if tht atdaration O[lOft
."as would tHtnlially htntjit only ont sidr in tht ronflict, and
wollid rtquirt mtans - and Ihis is a very important point - thaI
.u.-'tttpn"s do nol have. Tht saft artn uSO/lltion tlNrtjort, to us,
CIIrrua tht risk that il would ht unimplrmmt(lhlt.

Srebrenica and, later. Sarajevo, Tuzia, Bihae, Zepa and

' wer declared 'safe'. But there was never any intention, in
tenns, to render them safe, since this would have involved

:::7:.
mt d .Nations abandoning its position of neutrality. The tcrm
:ea (like 'protection force') quickly became a cruel misnomer.

areas were among the mOST profoundly unsafe places in the

.
Creation of thc 'sare
L areas' represented an 'Important pOlOt
0f
JOJ

BOSNIA

THE HOTfEST CORNER

departure for UN involvement which, until then, had

bt-en
solely to the provision of humanitarian aid and the pn"",,;,,,
.
olTlces' for a negotiated settlement. For the first rime the '
al community had committed itself - morally. if not in
an
practical sense - to the protection of one side in the war Y
other. The safe areas declaration mixed <
eI,''m'n"
with elements ofpeace-enforcement that p
:

:;:;:;

:o::f,:::,:;'I:

000, of whom
"","''"DO 37 Serb.

"1! r:-".,,,:; ;:::',

con\'oy

seventy-five per celli wer Muslim and

v
word for sil er.
s ince t he waT began had only emered in NO\'embc:r

worlds: it failed to provide the protection ' appeared to

the same time it aligned the UN, symbolically, with one
conflict. It was also the biggest single step to date down

which Western statesmen had vowed at the begi,min.

fliet, that they would not take - the path by
drawn into the conflict in a series of unplanned, unth"u,1hi
incremental steps.

In seeking a short-term 'solution' to defuse a long-term

United Nations saddled itselfwith a responsibility it was not

to honour. Boutros Boutros-Ghali called for the deployment

additional troops to police the 'safe areas', but member

contributed 7000. The night after the Srebrenica 'di"",.,.
agreement was signed at Sarajevo airport, General Morillon
commanding officer, Lars-Eric Wahlgren, gave a news co,nr...
UN headquarters in the Bosnian capital. Asked what
between the people of Srebrenica and the guns of their
General Wahlgren replied that Srebrenica was

'p"o""d I

blue flag of the United Nations'. General Morillon added

further attack by the Serbs on the people ofSrebrenica

)::: :!i;

tute 'a declaration of war against the entire world'.

The 'disarmament' plan was never fully implemented.

remained in control of an organized defi n' c "O "' in

though armed only with small arms a

nd

with the Serb heavy armour, proved a c

onsta
, nt
besieging forces. In July 1995, the Serbs completed the taSk .
begun in 1993. They captured the town and its 40 000

It was the first of the six safe areas to fall completely to Serb
The UN's inability to prevent the capture of the town, and
of one of its own safe areas brought closer than ever the
a full UN withdrawal from Bosnia, and the lifting of the arms
go against the Bosnian Government. UNPROFOR called te
of Srebrcnica 'totally unacceptable', and demanded Serb
;
di
The Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadtit replied: 'W;th
What withdrawal? How can we withdraw from our own
304

305

LAST-CHANCE cArt

21

p:.utition of their country. They said the Plan

' the ethnic
, it
m
.
Lord Owen b'merIy
ng - an accusatIOn
e h 'c cleansi
lzerbegovit,
unde
r intense diplomatic
gh,
hou
h t
By
the Plan changed
u
r

,
press
,
il
iwy
'
..
I
I
d
an
,
h'
y
part
IS
b
y,
own
a mlsapprova
.
onal
...
mternati
'
to
Id never accept It
that the 5erbs WOll
confIdent
felt
--'eo...,,,," he
c
oe it would never be imple ented.
.
therel"
leader,
loved the Plan. Mate Hoban, the Bosma

0;;,.",1
'-;.I
rt

LAST-CHANCE CAFE
i
The Rse

and Fall ofthe Vanu-Owm Plan

JanuarrMay 1993

cou

'l ]hen Lord Owen returned to Belgrade on 23 April he

V V the Srebrenica crisis had given him a new weapon in
paign to persuade the Serbs to accept the Vance-Owen

aftermath of the rout of Srebrenica, the Security Council

a resolution which tightened already existing sanction even
abrainst rump Yugoslavia. B l
de's assets abroad were to be

s
e gra
and transhipments through Serbia and Montenegro banned

comprehensive set of mandatory sanctions yet imposed in UN

The plan to divide - or, as Lord Owen insis e , to
Bosma in ten provinces was first proposed in Geneva

td

recognized Bosnia within its

f ontiers but granted substantially devolved powers to each
r

provinces which were defined, primarily, on ethnic grounds:

the provinces would have a Serb majority, two Croat m'jo,ilJl '
a Muslim, and one mixed Croat Muslim. The tenth

Sarajevo - would retain power-sharing between all three

groups. The republic would retain a central government.

powers would be minimal.

The Serbs rejected the Plan because of the distribution

ritory. It envisaged the handing back of huge swathes ofland

the

had taken by force in

months of
war, which
Muslim majorities but which had been 'cleansed'. Most nr.I., 1l

valley and large parts of north-western Bosnia were to b

'Muslim' sovereignty under the Plan. It denied the Serbs the
unbroken land mass they had fought rhe war to create.
that under the Plan the Serbs would be forced to live in isob,d p

ets of territory with no secure landlink either between each

to Serbia proper. Vancc and Owcn argued that that the
to ensure that Serbs continue to live as part of a muln-ethlUC
since interdepen dence, under the Plan, would be unavoidable.
The Bosnian Government, initially, also rejected the Plan.
.

J 6

be

d '

Croat
map.

h gave the
conceal his glee when he saw the
what they \vanted: their provinces formed large, blocks
to Coatia proper and stretching into the very heart
They signed up to the Plan i mediately. Their

rri,00"1, ,,",,a
r ..

:':::;': :
I

f
' ' 'he Geneva peace conference gave rise to the joke that
O
;
, Bosnian Croat defence force,
nOw stood for
nc
you,
Thank
n'
Owe
ance
V
only the Serbs needed convincing. Owen met
Cosit in a state villa on Botiteva street, in a leafY

'

.I

three

grounds that the powers alloned to the ccntral government

so weak that the ethnic provinces would, in effect,

";;;';i;

HVO,
Va e Owen!'

' ::i: and

Vance and Owen had worked on the plan for four

senting it to the
sides. It

the early

his position and accepted

of Belgrade just Sleps away from Tito's

grave.

Miloevit,

According

Bulatovit, 'the meeting went like this - Lord Owen presented

Plan, he knew what we wanted,

our interests were, and
.,..."h,o.;ng us thaI the Plan did not clash with our interests. After
hours,

what

Miloevit said: "Okay, I'll go along with the Plan.

have convinced us. We'll invite the Bosnian Serbs to listen to

brought about this remarkable change of heart?

Lord Owen insisted that Miloevic had been moved by the interthat was lining up against him. He knew how

dam

the new package of sanctions would be to an economy already

by the cost of waging war, which had,
for the most part, been
y inflationary funding. 'This
clear econo i decision,'
Id
'He
not want fmaneial sanctions. We should have
fianclal santions months, even years earlier.'
ooCV\c had, unnl now,
trusted the Russians to veto a financial
.
.
Russia had asked the Americans not to force h
at the Secur
ity Council unti
l after the referendum on Russia's
to
place on 27 April, since a perceived anri
Would fue! support for Yeltsin's national
ist opponents.

Mil

late.

was a

did

mc

te

take

to shore up Yeltsin's power-base, had

tt
.
f O pursue it.
that, in the meantime, Srebrenica
o' OO dan
" 'Id..
P ,,',,

erously close to tailing. On 16 April, Owen

,
h
dM
ilokvit
told him: 'Look, you simply have got to
ftot

and

J07

BOSNIA

LAST-CHANCE CAFE

stop Srebrenica being taken'. Miloevic told Owen that he

Muslim Commander there (Oric had en Miloevit's
before the war) and that he knew that the local Serbs were
by the battles they had lost to OriC's forces the previous Y"", '"
hundreds of Serb lives had been lost. Mi]ooeviC told Owen
Serbs entered Srebrenica there would be havoc. 'I have no
he intervened with Mladic to stop them taking Srebrenica,'
There is also no doubt that the financial "io"L,,,,,o, lutio.1i
powerful impact. The Federal President, Dobrica
plained that they placed rump Yugoslavia 'in a kind of,,,,, ,...
camp whose borders are guarded by the NATO airforce and
the international policel.'
There was a second reason for Milooevifs decision to
Vance-Owen Plan. At their meeting on 24 April, Milok\<if
Owen for 'clarification' on three key areas of the Plan. The
these was on the status of the northern corridor, linking Bo";", 1
territories in the north-west of the republic, with Serbia
confirmed that part of this corridor would, according to the
through the province of Posavina, which would have a
majority. Milosevic asked what kind of protection would be
to police this corridor. Owen reassured him that a serious
would be deployed. (Owen later secured from the Russians a
to deploy Russian troops along the northern corridor. This
Miloevic on this key point of concern.)
The second 'clarification' he demanded was
interim constitution provided for in the Vance-Owen "Om '...
collective Head of State, a multi-member Presidency, with
ration for all three nations. Milokvic asked whether
be taken by majority vote, or by consensus'. A system
would always allow a coalition of Muslims and Croats
Serbs. 'Consensus', on the other hand, would give each
effect, a veto. The Serbs would, therefore, have the power.t
body unworkable. Owen reassured Miloevit that d:ClSlns
Bosnian Presidency would be reached 'by consensus . Smcc
Vance was not present, Miloevic demanded to know
the view of both co-chairmen of the peace conference. Herb
Vance's right-hand man, who was with Owen,
confirmed that he and Owen were at one on the issue:
decisions would have to be arrived at by consensus. 'It was
ing that they [the Serbs] couldn't have anything thrust .
throats during me interim constitution that hadn't got theu
..

..

:;
""
,

lained later. 'So they effectively had a veto - a pretty

""",', f, me:rgovernmen[, incidentally, I have to say. But that was
,, that was on otTer.'
concern was tcrritory which had been conquered
third area 0fsed
of their Muslim and Croat populations, but
Serbs' clean surrendered [0 Croat or Bosman
' Government
be
wauld have to
Plan:
this
amounted
the
to more than a
under
gnty
il
) so
""'m
:::[Ory the Serbs controUed2 ccording to Milokvit,
of
Government forces
<urance that Croat and Bosman
.
.
()wen gave an
only
UN forces which
terrltones;
those
police
to
allowed
be
not
'IfICIUId
safety, the safety of property and the security
wiD guarantee personal
yed in those areas,' he sal'd'.
deplo
be
can
.
tbe: citizens
c nnce that the Vanc-Owen Plan roVlded
MiIokvit was thus
of a
WID with a way of achleVlng hiS central war aim - the creation
hold
to
even
out
It
appeared
territory.
Bosnian
on
tW* Serbian state
paper,
practice
on
not
consist
if
in
would,
state
that
the prospect that
tI.. single unbroken territorial entity - even though, in theory, the
\IiDce-Owen map gave the Serbs three distinct chunks of territory
label only by UN-protected through-routes. MiloeviC's cclation
that the Serbs could sign the Plan, and then obstruct us Imple
_tion, much as they had done in Croatia the year before. In &'ct,
be tttliud that the Plan would never even reach that stage.
Owen remained at the villa and waited for the call. He hoped that
MiIoievi would be able to tel! him that the Bosnian Serbs had been
penuaded. That, in turn, would enable Owen to signal to New York
_ 10 go ahead with implementing the financial sanctions' resolution.
MilokYit called in Karadtic, Koljevic and Krajinik. He told them
" Owen had given crucial 'clarifICations' which meant, bluntly, that
die s could sign the Plan without having to
implement it. The
Serbs.were shocked and disappointed that Miloevic was try
!"tS to p ressuflze them into signing
the Plan. 'His main argument,'
admitted later, \vas that the Plan would be impossible to
ent. But thi. S was tOo risky for us, and I could not accept it
I knew
hat the international community needed only 10 000
and the Posavi corridor to neutralize the Serbs.'
too, distrusted Milevic'snajudgem

ent that, once the Plan was

!
' .. d"u . Would be no pressure
from
international community
the
It was PUt into practice in its entiret
y:
.

s
a

i Zvormk
..

}..fi/o(ttJj( COunted
on Ihtfiact that fhe Vanu-Owen Plan (ouidn.r
" i",'Pl
.
.
tme1/lt!d in th

( way It was drolsed and Ihal fix Serbs gol

BOSNIA

LAST-CHANCE CAFE

enough ofa political chance, so to speak.jorfurther o"'""""A

thefurther drvelopmenl of that pnxm. He rather looud
Vance-Owtn Plan as thefirst positive ltep, rather thUn
form ofit. And, ofcourse, he wanttd to get rid OJ"bo" ',0",60.. ;
soon OJpOSJihlr,

giv(!l that... units of the Croats Defince

orantees wereMuslim lorus cannot enter the areas, OUIJI'de
.
or
.
/J .I (HVO)
. t"
whICh
Serbs
Itw. Only UNforus whICh
CD"""
....
..
"m
,
in
'
i
'
"
an
Srrb,
.
.1.
-perw/{/I s0ftty, Ihe softly ofproperty and tlK srcu.,;Jlgua;ant;'zens (an bl deployd in those arias... II is certain
l
rity .o..fthe''d"allgr o'JFthe Serhian people heing uparated and divid
t/Jllt
.
elimllla,,'d:
ttl hal been
expect thllt the pr()(edure envisaged by
<1<
1 words, we do 1I0t
/,, 01.1._
" h'Ighi)l
be lised to pals de(lSIons
W()lIld
Plan
J
,an tl-Owen I
.
tilt ("
thIS
not
wOI1d be
becouse
merely
inttreslJ
Serbian
J,trimentnllO
the
under
procedllre
envuaged
becollre
a/so
but
air
f
IIl1
iIIl) i(a/ and
Plan, all dttisiom would be pasred by consensus of :he
bJ
SIrMan side, and b((a1J( without the agreement if I.he Serbian
silk Bosnia-Herugovma would not he able tofintlOn at. al':..
right y1I topan d((/Slom ojslgnij
Wtfle/ entitledto tIN Jflm.e
nllllOn
and mmt thatYOIl heed ollr categor
ittl,,(efor the Serbian
Plall.
the
iuJ stand and acupt
This s
i an iHlle ofeither war or pea(e and we are opting for
fN'e... an honourable peact with guarantees ojYOlir equality and
frdom. TIN o/lxr option is an IInneussary war which, now that
tbt Serbian natjon in BOJnia-Herugovina has gained its equali
Iy andfreedom and has the chance ofretaining most ofits ttrrito
Fin, will bring nothing rlse bill adversity, suffiring and violence
myou and otws.
G

Owen was candid about the implications of the ''''rio""...

had given Miloevic: '} think Mi
l okvic had just come to
sion that effectively the Serb interests have betn protected in
Herzegovina. There would be a Republic of Srpska. 1t would
in Bosnia, but the Serb way of life would be protected'.
was not at all the Plan the Bosnian Government thought

ht

signed. It was in the nature of the VanceOwen Plan,

.
leant itself to radically different - even
1t left - deliberately - many

three sides once peace had been secured and UN

For most of that day, Mi1oevic tried to cajole
into accepting the Plan, The Bosnian Serbs resisted. By six

;!

:;2

the evening, they appeared to be wavering. and "

they insisted that the maner would have to be

Serb Assembly, which was meeting that evening in

eastern Bosnia) about two hours dtive from Belgrade.

Milosevic, Cosic and Bulatovic met in the same

Boticeva street, in Belgrade, and drafted a long d,,,dy:''K'1OIl

nearly 2000 words long, to try to persuade the Bosnian

::::

to accept the Vance-Owen Plan. The centre-piece ofi""

that the Vance-Owen Plan was consistent with the S

aim - which was a state of their own. By implication, mOlt

the Plan which appeared to divide Serb territory would,
never have to be implemented. It was written in a hurry
later regretted its high-handed tone. It read:

i ;

h igh im
N
=
'time
"
nght
ar
a'courageolls,
"
'j
t
';

;
'i
'
'

'
'
'
Y,u
fi
:
;
"

:
"

'i
:i
'
he
betaUJe
mer
elyf
10 {)()() {)()()
of t
:
he
han t
ing open ;sslies which are iffar 1m importance t
achieved so far. We simply wish to tell YOIl that you
measured in YOllr demands.
During our talks [with Lord Owen] we re(tiwd'fIt'J
o:planalions and dejinitiom:
]'0

his Foreign Minister Jovanovic and told him to go

to the Bosnian Serb Assembly.
got a hostile reception. The Bosnian Serbs resented the
that they were being big-footed into accepting the Plan
n teUing theif people fOf months meant death for the
.
In Bosnia. Biljana Plaic took the lead. 'Who is this
"". thun.dered. 'Who is this Milosevic, this
Bulatovic, this
Id thiS nation elect them? No
it didn't. President KaradZic,
ha
elected Presidcnt by this parliam
ent. You can't decide.
t? our constitu
tion, the parliament decides these issues.'
rejected the plea in rhe early hours of the o
m m
told Serbian radio:
'The deputies said that they would
able to
return to their cons
tituencies if they accepted the
pn LO
, Its present
shape. We hope that the entire Serb
mobilize all
'
0f ItS
' ,
fOrces to survIve'.
.
the fi
I
rst time,
Lord Owen realized that Milo
kvic had lost
I

and read the letter

.

"'"'
D"

"';ngen
.:

.:K:! .:'::t;'

!'

JU

BOSNIA

LAST-CHANCE CAFE

control of the war in Bosnia. The Vance-Owen Plan, t....t

the finacial sactions' package, had succeeded in splitting
The mternatlonal temperature rose. A few days earlier

suggested to the Greek Prime Minister, Konstantin M

i"",,Jo.
Athens should host a summit to try to persuade the Serbs
Plan. Mitsotakis now called Miloevic and invited him t

".,d

conference was scheduled for the weekend of 1 - 2 May.

and Cyrus Vance clung to the hope that the Bij e
l
jinap.
Ili,
...
rejected the Plan outright because it had been sprung on
quickly. The Bosnian Serbs had been fed a constant diet
ganda that was hostile to the Plan, and had even demanded
resignation. Owen took the view that if public opinion had

..

pared in advance - even a few days in advance - then it

been far easier to persuade the Bosnian Serb parliament to

jump that Miloevic had made. Owen and
and Tudjman that there was good reason to hope that the

Serbs were flexible; and all agreed to anend the Athens summit.
When the Bosnian Serb leadership arrived in Athens

pected just another round of talks. It soon dawned on them

had been - as Nikola Koljevic put it - led into a trap.

had signed up to the Vance-Owen Plan, except them.

purpose of the summit became clear: they were to be

into signing up to the Plan against the explicit instructions

parliament.
The Bosnian Serbs had walked into a pressure cooker.

summoned to Dobrica CosiC's suite in the conference hoed.

they confronted Cosic, Milevic and Bulatovil:. Owen and
mostly kept to their distance, but Mitsotalcis came an wenl
the course of the evening. From six in the evemng
harangued the Bosnian Serbs. He said he had received secret

gence reports that Serb positions in both Bosnia and

bombed by NATO unless Karadzic signed, and that ,hi. ",",.
within hours ofthe break-up ofthe summit. He returned
mcnt that the Plan would never have to be implemented. He
out that the hostilities that had recently broken o" '
( o
"
" ", ,. J>
Croats and Muslims in central Bosnia made the .\
re
even more unworkable. According to Karadiic the pressu
' pot
after
'
great that even the walters
,
Wh 0 were bnngmg
III
.
S,rbt, to
into the suite wefe trying to persuade the Bosman
wen
Karamic argued that a signature on the VanceO
Serbs
recognize the legitimacy of the Bosnian state. The

fcc

entity. They had declared the independence of

a y such
n blic n....elve hours before the Bosnian state came into
awn
independen country. .M.om610 Krajinik was even
H
:. He as reduced to tears
KarndzlC. and KoIJcv
than
,.t-line
.,;
iot<
"'
h"
nrde r ing pressure from Miloevic and Cosic, whom he had
u
If die
aryd affectionate regard. At one point in the
held n great
and Cosic onfronted each other on the balcony.
ik
ra
jiJ1
K
PreSident you know best that I respect you
told Cosic: 'Mr
lrljilruch but I have to be honest with you. I would ratherjump from
"'
to that stone ground than acept this Plan.'
-floor balcony on
...
until four in the morning. Cosic, who was
on
dragged
Tbe eering
had
two heart bypass operations, began to
had
and
ies
venr
.

"",
i
'"

::

ID his :

.... They agreed to resume early in the morning. The plenary sessin
with lzetbegovic, Tudjman and Mate Bohan - was due to begm
. lO a.ro.
They snatched a few hours sleep. The next morning, according to

'Vance suddenly tells them straight out that this is the last
cafe, that the US air lorce is all prepared to turn Bosnia and

into a wasteland'. The three Bosnian Serbs retreated to a cor

... .. ,h. suite. There, they realized that they were not going to be
to leave: Athens until they had agreed to sign. They decided

if necessary, Karadzic should sign the Plan, on condition that

: Owen and Vance agreed that the signature would only be

subsequently
ratified by the Bosnian Serb 'parliament'.

clock was ticking. The plenary had already been delayed.

and lzetbl=govic announced that unless the Serb delegati
on
by one o'clock, they would leave Athens and return to their
capitals.
, Bulatovic and MilaScvic went
over to the Bosnian Serb
and told them that their
time was up. Karadzic then said he
:""' '''gn, BuJatovic desc
ribed what happened next:

Ii

that moment Mitsoftlk.is appears on thl lune.from

t k.s Qut his pen, (/nd invite
s
lNr' a

(/ pholQgraphr from
tIItotK.
f{
r
Q hQ WdI standing thm: ready
to

..n",""'
OdtIC slgnmg fhe dowment. Imm
ediately after that
whl who,,/(/,d
' n'f bti'It"IJt

taRe a photograph

hal had happened.

1Il1ai.".,< it turned ou, was so af 'd

ral

WI

'
that Karad2lc would chang'
on t
he way IOtO
'
the pIcnary session that
,.. .rqn.
he had had a copy
,"d a photogr
apher standing by. Ow
en entered the room
'

3'3

BOSNIA

LAST-CHANCE CAFE

limf'. J law lhal ptople wantd thil agrummt

T/os
I
/f beJigntd

to find 'a very very shaken KaradtiC' who had

beating'. The plenary session was hurriedly called
again, this time in the presence of his enemies.
An excited Mitsotakis broke the news to the assembled
.
shortly before one o'clock.. Owen declared that it was 'a C " '-
day in the Balkans'. (He was right only in the literal
plan to build a state within a state was, he said, 'dead and
KaradZic left Athens rumpled and exhausted, but defiant,
state was not dead and buried, merely postponed. O n , in

we

and radio interviews that afternoon, was triumphant, When

pointed out to him that Karadzic's signarure would have to be

by the Bosnian Serb 'parliament' he was contemptuous in

missal. 'You might choose to dignify that body with the tam'M
'
ment' ... said, 'but I do not... I'm telling you ,' he went on, and,
me I have been in politics a long time, I know that M'il...,;.

board and that is what counts.'

Cyrus Vance bowed out that day. He had a1redy '""0''''''
decision to retire from his post as UN representattve, and his

sor, Thorvald Stoltenberg, a former Norwgian Foreign Mi'';'",

already been appointed. Owen was delighted that his old

. (t
lItf'eJ nn

ve even faster after they crossed the River Drina into

c:US d
. I was the fmt time any of these politicians had seen
fO
.
Bosma. t
, sa'd
l
of war. 'Everythmg was empty and devastated
.
.
under
Serb
control,
you
kn
ew
that
If
a
vIIterritory
'In the
.
it must have been
uslim.,
bad been destroyed then
snaked up MountJahorma, above the former
th gI aming fleet
Karadiic stood on the terrace of the
Radovan
Pale,
- o
otel, flanked by the rest of the Bosnian Serb lead

'fhe

;;","';1

:.i;::;::;'H

,;

and Mitsotakis headed for the receiving line. The

President extended his hand [0 Biljana PlavSic, who left

i sit by a
was a comic formality about this: the very fltSt v
Premier to this rogue state. Even if Milosevic had come to
_"'oe "h,m to endorse the Vance-Owen Plan they so passionately
the Bosnian Serb leaders were keen to parley the visit into an
of their mini-state. The guests, who included Yugoslav

and a slew of Serbian officials, reviewed the guard of

a Serbian song of resistance against the Turks

going out on a high, 'There is no doubt we were buoyed up

.. '

I dtlcribtd ii, ralhtr u rtunate

nfo
!y,,:",
happy day. I mean, we had spilled G
And Ijustfllt tremendously pltaJtd.

;'u';.;;:'n,:,;:;::
I looktd badt.

goodbye, and there wal Cy Vance sitting by Ihl

looking yean younger, and Ijust thought t mulj. what II
derfol way togo oul. And somehow we let It slip awayjrom
the nextfew weeks.

The next stop was the Bosnian Serb mountain stronghold

long motorcade of sleek black, Mercedes limousines
Belgrade. The mood was pbeat. President Milokvit and

n':t'h;'

international ally, Mitsotakis of Greece, were cnfide

presence would sway the 'Parliament' vote. Or, If not,
easily convince the Bosnian Serbs to vote 'ye' and aban on
sian to hold a referendum on the Plan. PreSident Mornif

Montenegro was part of the huge pilgrimage to Pale:

On our way 10 Pale we passed Ihrough m'';

,,
'.
C;
plOp/l stood on Ihl roadJide, waving 10 us. J
3'4

}",j,,,,b> '"

American squarebashing tune. Swooping low over the

:::,;, F-16 fighterjet seemed to heraJd what lay in stOre for

Serbs if they opposed the West. Just a few miles away

the mountain from Pale, Serb artillery had been
bombarding
for the past year.
lOOn as the debate began, any optimism the
visiting dignitaries
have fclt about their mission
disappeared. The Pale leadership
a mood of defiance, which went hand-in-glov
e with
fear about the Plan. Without
question Vance-Owen
be VOted down in
a referendum. On the eve of the Pale session,
.
the best-known Bosni
an Serb journalist, appeared to
TV ews. He

looked at a blank piece of paper, signe it,

d
OUt PIS[OI n
.
d shot himself. Wiping the stage-blood off his
Jogo SaId the
Serbian people would not commit suici

de.
: was dearS.
III
th,: Ka
radzic - under extrem
e pressure - had initialled the
.
A ens, h
IS recommendallon
'
was halfhearted at best. He
the
i ca tastrophic, but stressed
the possible conse
"iOCton., The
deputies dismissed threats from the West
Plan itself was
more dangerous. The assembly was

Diogo,

::-:

BOSNIA

LAST-CHANCE CAFE

a motley collection of deputies from the old Bosnian

priests in long black robes, officers in battledress and a
war-profiteers in shiny cheap suits.
In the first of his speeches, a confident Milokv1t. told
that a 'decision in favour of peace is in the interest of the
Serbs and of the entire Serbian nation'. He proclaimed
granted the Serbs equality and libeny. His speech recalled the
the old days, of the Communist chiefs whose authority WII
lenged and unimpeachable. fu the night wore on, Mil
the kid gloves. He grew angry and hinted that he cou1d
Bosnian Serbs.
His threats had litde effect. The deputies boasted that
wou1d never flOd their target through the fog cloaking
kingdom. They even derided Miloevic, the man who had
power on a pledge to defend
Serbs,. for his .attem'ps to
further imposition of economIC sanctIOns. Miloev:!c s ,ori"",
sanctions was contemptible, they said, pledging to fight
world if necessary.

,h,,',,";;;

The decisive speaker was General Ratko MladiC, the

Commander. In a blustering speech, he used a series of maps
trate how much land would have to be handed over to their
foes. When the stocky General took out the
Bulatovit were concerned. Mladic was no
could see that the General's strictly military

map showed the military situation on the grou

nd.
the demographic distribution of the Serbs. But the
.
...
was a transparency of the Vance-Owen pnces, wh''', M
n
imposed on the map showing th fro li
.
'
Bosnian Serbs have to hand over huge
"'
"'
Serb population would be left in
isolated
and
:

;
!

i
:
[
exposed the dangers implicit in the
.
ther and boasted that his men were not afraid ofWestem
The session went on deep into the night. Suicide was
as
invoked, by those who argued for acceptance as well
wert
s
favoured rejection. A slew of different amendment
One deputy even called for another condition to be
a
tance - that he get three cartons of cigarettes. It was
persu
to
s
of
argument
Mitoevic employed all manner
.
d,
wg they
The Serbs could not afford to gamble everyth
only to lose it all 'like a drunken poker player'. He w
"
"ll_lk,,,'"
ring to KaradZic, whose fondness for roulette was w

NO'OnIy

]'6

called Bosnia a 'monstrous creation', reassured the

wh0 had
Serbs
had won. His vision was what he called the
. .
that the
ltlon 0f t he 8-ill'kans ' - the fig
'remmpos
. ht to
al
d politic
If_determination. For the Balkans that meant a Gater
Croatia and Greater AJbania. Alija lzetbegovic would
Gre
am
s Muslim state. Never mind Vance-Owen, he advised
. ho
-t ic Bosnia had been destroyed.
fIluln-'-

:::;aR;"

prf)'lJinm and Bomia Hffugo,(JI'na is hiSlor

77It tntirtprojl!ft of
.
. stau dots not
Alyo's
od SlStt,
Brothen
txisl.
-"y umporary.
A" b/ami( slaU no longr tXU/. It.1l ()WT'. Wt MW 10 u"deslad
.
;to Aftdrration will exut, whl(h Il not yet tqmlablt
hut II WIll
II. In tIN plaus where a Strbian huJe and Serbian land txist
."J whm the S<'rbian language If spoken, there will be a
Serbian state.

effect, Cosie was urging the Bosnian Serbs to accept the Plan
he, like Milosevic, knew could never be implemented
. hand.
one point, Milosevic seemed to have gained the upper
sacrifice for one', nation everything except the nation itself,
don't accept the Vance-Owen Plan you are going to sacri
people.' The Serbian President sat next to Karad1ic, urging
to persuade the assembly.
that the deputies had started to have doubts, the
hard-line
.
the assembly speaker, nicknamed Mr No, called

can

7Irt 'Wholt timt [filt (1 grtatpoinfrom with

in, btcaUJt wt knrw
Plan mtant dtslructron for
our jXoplt. That's why at tht
wtrt wry dtUrmintd fo Jet that it was not ratifitd.
nu II would
not solw any probltms.

"
_
ho
"'ly

Bosnian Serb
d
,-pu,.les went to thelT
club room, preventmg
'",
fi,

, >m on,,, on the grounds

that only members of the Serbian
ill.
pa
f lo& .
rtywere allowed in. It
... ,,;.oo
was a slap in the face. Milokvic

for ours, while

his erstwhile proteges persuaded the

.
I'><!,nh'p " m.
Ieast .tne
d to keep

up the appearance of recomthe

bu th.lr spee
ches
alwa
ys ended with calls for stoic
Nikol:'K
lJelc, th prof

essor
ial
'vice president', reminded
th
of e
erblan epIC hero
Mi
l oS ObiEt, the br,l.vest fighter

Pia

3'7

BOSNIA

LAST-CHANCE CAFE

at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Obilit had said there

of beating the Turks - they were far too numerous, was
nuned into salt there wouldn't be enough to seaSOn
a 'w
'kUb .
Obilie told his comrades before leading them into b
,ttk.
drew a parallel. 'It wouJdn't be enough fot Clinton's boys
_

not risk a desperate battle with the biggest SUper power.'

Out of sixty-five votes C2st, fifty-one deputies voted
to
erendum on the Plan.
An alarmed Cosit told the assembly he had received

;::::\

and t h
in the face of possible retaliation,
e vulnerable
uld
hardly appeared convinced of its wisdom, But he
self
h'
' d his client, Clinton, wanted the policy, But the
a
seem to have anticipated the resistance of
.ci,, did not
'
"
,;,;
.
were trying desperately [0 avoid intervention
allie
s who
Serb leaders would back the VanceBosnian
hopin that

hr

the West would launch air-strikes that very n'

faced and exhausted, he called the decision

_
is country.'
what the next night and day will bring to th
He rumed [0 Plaic, asking how they could avoid the

,:

Serbs with bombardment.'

Miloevic was visibly agitated. 'He was not normal, This

seen on his face and on his hands; said Plaic. The S"b;.. P,
never brooked any opposition. Opponents were there to

vented, removed or otherwise overcome. 'Later the ,,,.rr,bl) d

very loudly, He didn't know how to behave himself in

beeaue he never attended parliamentary sessions.'

Silent and glowering, accompanied by an exhausted

MilokviC boarded his car for the long ride home.

His response was swift. Belgrade announced it was

supplies except food and medicine to Republika Srpsn.

Miloevic forget Plawit's snub. She was prevented from
frontier into Serbia, The embargo was short-lived, but
\vas done. The Pale meeting \vas Milosevifs first publiC
he had become the undisputed leader of all Serbs, It was
he had failed to out-manoeuvre his political challengers.

The vote in Pale came just as the American

Christopher was trying - and failing - to sell

'lift and strike' to Europe. In talks with the leaders of ten
nse
countries and Russia, Christopher met a very cool respo

which caJled for the supply of weapons to the

]'8

:::::;;.,:;:;,,

return, Washington tried to gloss over trans

C istopher's
differences. Another ke mOment in a shift of US policy was
,
.
ary read parts of Balkan
PYesident Clinton and his wife Hill
by Robert Kaplan, which describes the violent past of the

uagedy. The iron-willed biology professor, who was 'dlon'" I!>J.

for her willingness to shrug off Western pressure, looked
blankly, and said:

'What kind of a tragedy? It would be a tragedy ifwe ",,,,!,,,,

And then he said: 'They are going to bomb tit
h'

:
;
And she said: 'Let them bomb the bridges. 1

ic air-strikes at Bosnian Serb targets,

g of strateg

ul1chin
the la
UK objected because they had troops on the ground

For some reason the book had an enormous impact on

convincing him that the inhabitants of the Balkans were

to violence6 Within days the Clinton Administration had

twO contradictory plans. It backed otT Vance-Owen and

strike',
was never a more comprehensive plan than Vance-Owen,

despite criticism 10 the contrary, did preserve a mwti-ethnic

within its internationally recognized borders. Once Vance
rejected by the Serbs however, the US lost no time ditch
It was cast aside ostensibly because of the Bosnian
...
" m ", complaints, but also because of fears that it was unen
.
fact that it would have required at least SO 000 groundof which the US had already pledged half - was probably the

"'

embittered Lord Owen, on an American television

as a 'delusion' the proposal to end the war by
' .
"
. You w
ill not solve the problem at 10 000 f
eet,' he said
OUt that the US could
help by contributing troops to the UN
but not by bombing.
llapsc of the Vance-Owen Plan had taken the wind out of
_ :. and Chr
-.u;
',stopher had already switched tack. He wanted to
"' 100
;", and swccp B
osrua under the carpet as quickly and e
a
HecII poss
e. In, congressiona
I'bl
80s
.
l
testim
Chr
ony.
istoph
er said the
in
O " was a problem from

hell'. He signalled that the US

'
n
, ;t; NATO allies
!
by taking unilateral action on 'lift and
II
alone in taking actions in the
former Yugoslavia.'
:U:

eve
' h er. On 18 May, he said it was essen
to deal
tially up to
,
Wit anCIent
hatreds'. These were not the words of a

::

3'9

BOSNIA

LAST-CHANCE CAFE

cuntry n::'ious t get involved. He ten launched the

idea
tamment . We will do what we can m concert with our
friends to respond to the violence and contain the conflict'
unconvincingly, to insist that Washington was not
Muslims. He said that the US was not bowing out 'o'
p'l"dy
believed in lifting the arms embargo against the Bosn
ian
and limited 'compensatory air action' in order to allow tilt:
fight the Serbs on 'a level playing fteld.'
At this crucial juncture, Christopher was uO'wittin,gly
"
Andrei Kozyrev, his Russian counterpart who '
Minister's meeting of the UN Security Counci to
d
the protection of the newly-created 'safe areas'. The US
State deflected attention from Washington's own policy
pouring cold water on the Russian initiative to deploy
announced that the meeting had been postponed h...; tbe ,
to implement the Vance-Owen Plan was by engaging
against the Bosnian Serbs. He reiterated that the United
prepared to commit troops when the parties agreed on a
He put a damper on engagement on any side, po"nt"n!: 0""
atrocities on all sides'.
On 22 May, the Joint Action Plan was put forward by
Russia, France, the UK and Spain. Billed as a recipe for
it was, in fact, the closest thing yet to US acceptance
state of play in Bosnia. The ceremony was like the
clothes' because there was no action in the Plan.
Administration announced that it would send a ,""ti"gent ,,.

; :

::

to Macedonia and traced the same line as President

warning that the US would not tolerate war i
it must not be allowed to become the fulcrum of .
because that could drag in Albania and, in all
.
allies, Greece and Turkey. Britain and France pushed It
no-one had considered its implication.
It called for the scaling of Bosnia's borders to P
military support from Serbia and Croatia, and ;,
six Muslim 'safe areas'. The agreement was hailed by an
alist Serbian leader as the 'first sober public statement
The Joint-Action Plan put the flOal nail in the
formulating the embryo for the next stage of peace talks:
partition whose terms wen dictated by the Serbs and
mediated by Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg of
replaced Vance as the UN's envoy.

:I:;

)'0

Clinton had done a complete rurnaround. He was

<ring his hands about the plight of the Bosnian
w
nn!>.
ing theIr state. He announced that he was looking
and.salvag
would give 'reasonable land for the Muslims',
deal Vi,,!<i hI h
",,,
t P ised Clinron for coming to his senses. Izetbegovic
for abandoning Bosnia-Herzegovina to a carveout at the US
"
Ieft us 'NIt
' h many chOlCes,
he compIalOe
' d,
not
has
rid
longer
g
ive
time
to
futile
no
negotiations.
would
he
t t
leaguered President failed to see was that the stage was
for a new round of negotiations when the Serbs and Croats
iali di,"u.' the terms.
the US, tried to distance i.tself complete.ly from a commitment
unified Bosnia-HenegoYlOa, the Sarajevo Government was
with being left with nothing. It was time to investigate the
Clinton made it dear {at least for the time being} there was
,..,cu, fo' the Bosnians. '1VIy preference was for a multi-ethnic state
Bu t if the parties themselves, including the Bosnian
f
; ";,, genuinely and honesdy agree to a different solution,

the Un
ited States would have to look at it very seriously.'

the week. end

':

::::;

IUdio, 30 April, 1993.

envisaged a demilitarized :wne around a UN-monitored
corridor. It prohibited the transport of troops or military
n
i this and ten other 'blue routes' which link ethnic provinces.
and Croat troops would not be allowed to return to provinces
their ethnic groups where there are Serb communities. Instead,
.policed.by UN troops. While Aelgrade heralded this last-minute
, .m ract It only applied
10 areas designated as Muslim where the
In full control - province five, the area alon the strategic Drilla
g

troops to be drawn
the US. and possibly Russia.
in each of the ten provinces within eighteen
UN
protect the minorities at least until then.
SCI to be dem
ilitarized under the plan.
to the UN's failure to demilitarize Serb param
ilitary troops
retu of refugees. But the
plans success hinges on the ClItent
'.''--G'werernready
to give \Jp their idea of uniting Serb-held territ
Serbi, and whether Croatia would Olliow the indep
en.roat-deslgnated territOry.
a
table for peace
::
".<:.",," Cotime
uncil approves the :
plan
endos Ih
:
:..:
based on a C llnpIemenl3t1on of the plan and le\"els of monrepon by Secrc!;lry Gcncnl Boutros llout
ros-Ghali .

,' troPo S

.::rc',cer

3U

BOSNIA

Within 72 hours: wuring pani es dec are troops and "

'" ""
location of from lines and minefield and prepare for
Ccasefirc: put in place and remains effective.
Within five days: Heavy weapons to be: withdnwn from
>U"d '
under UN supervision.
Within 15 days : All other
sion. All forces separate from frontIli
itored by the UN.
Within 45 days: All forces return 10 their designated province. 10
'
nlltion with an agreed demobilization.
ReSlOrlltion of infrastructure: electricity, gas, ,
Establishment of 'free passage routes' to and from
movement fOT civilians goods a.nd humanit:.ui.a.n aid.
Establishment of a UN-guaranteed corridor inking
l
northern
trolled areas with Serbia.
Establishment of an interim centnll government in
three members each from the truee ethnic groups, with the
ing every four months among the three parties.
Establishment of interim provincial governments on the basis
nic composition in each province with provision that none of ,h. du..
can be Icft unrepresented in any province.
3 From the text of a letter, signed by MiloeviC, 8,1".",., ",d ::"';,j
i
mcmbers of the Bosnian Serb 'parliament'.
4 Though the Vance plan that brought 14' OOO UN:
' 7'
.
vided for the return of all refugees, and me d, li; ,
o
'
fact neither took place. Ethnic cleansing of Croats from
Areas continued well after UNPROFOR
. not a
was able 10 return; and, in many areas, me
Krajina Serb army exchanging their military
'police' uniforms. Military vehicles were not, as the plan .
but, instead, were pai nted blue instead ofgreen, llnd
to the police.
S Risto Djogo was known for his sense of humoUl" and
to the Serbs nationalist cause. In lime more than a year
COSt him his
He was murdered soon afrer Milokvit
against the Bosnian Serbs while in
folk star Ceca, perhaps by her future
the Serbian secret police. Djogo apparently knew too
documents about what he and his leadership had done
ordination with Miloevic.
6 Elizabeth Drew, On thr Edge, The Clinton Pmidtnry, Simon lit

,.po":":':':h:::::
l

i:

i;:;;-:::;

life.

New York, 1994.

22
YOU R FRIEND A HUNDRED-FOLD
SEWARE The Mmlim-CTOQ/ Conflict,
1992-1994

enters the beautiful city of Mostar, its broad

til Neretva River
steepen and rise until it cuts
anksheart
of the

II

narrow rocky canyon

medieval Turkish town. At the narrowest

:_. ..'.h, river, in 1566, the Turkish Sultan had ordered the build
shi ing whit cobalt. 'It is one
bridge: - a singl broad span of
.
most beautiful bndges 1fi the world, the novelist Rebecca West
A. slender arch between twO round towers, its parapets bent in
the

c-, _

'

angle at the centre. I know of no country - not even Italy or

shows such invariable taste and such pleasing results.'

keepers of the bridge became known as the Mostari

the

111>
;" ';' word for bridge is most. From them, the town that grew
0-(
-

around the bridge took its name. The bridge - and Mostar itself

;.., tt"ymklOli" the very idea ofBosnia-Henegovina, a place where

,...
__

Orthodox and Muslim peoples lived distinctively, but

and in mutual tolerance. It was despised by many Croat
:
?c

,(:
rn

OUgh not by the Croats of Mostar} for whom it repre

reminder ofTurkish influence in what they viewed as

land. It survived the fail of the Ottoman Empire. It
two World Wars. But on 9 Nove mber, 1993 (four years to the
the tearing down of the Berlin Wall) under a sustained
battering by Bosnian Croat forces. its beautifuJ
arch coUapsed
<k<J>-blue river pool below. In a war in which multi-ethnicity
'' '_,If .L: en
my, the destruction of the bridge appeared to mirror
the u1t:1-ethnic ideal of Bosnill II place almost defined by
- between commun
ities, between nationalities,
.
.
r
Ialths
BOSOians there was no stronge image
r
of the coun' .
to build.The Bosnian Government declare
d a day

' ''>un'wni ".trymg

"o
r a Muslim-Croat
conflict in Bosnia were clear long
.
Serbs launched
.
.
thel( attack agams
' t both of them to Apnl
1991 ' s hiS
' own republic was falling under the hamm
,
er of
Cro,
'
" ,tl
a
, s President TUd'J man put out lee ers, via the CrOats

Ootb<g<w;

CI

Government, to try
to gauge whether hetbegovic
3'3

YOUR FRIEND A HUNDRED-FOLD

BEWARE

BOSNIA
could be persuaded to bring the Bosnian territori
al defienc:e
to open a second front against the Serbs. In

war,

few days after (he Croatian national guard had laid

barracks across the republic, Bosnia's Defence ,",,,,,,
Croat, proposed that the Bosnian TO be mobilized.
But the Interior Minister, Alija Delimustafic, a Musli
m
Belgrade orientation was already well known, had
already
Bosnian TO on the opposite course. He had agreed to
to use northern and western Bosnian as a base from
against the Croatian national guard could be

1.,,ii

resourced. According to Col Aleksander Vasiljevic, the

counter-intelligence:

Hr [DrlimllStalli] agrerd to estab/i;h joint Bomian pa.i;" -JN

patrols and checkpoints. on railways and roads to "'U"" ,_
and prf!'fJent armrd mO'Uements by,
prO'Uidefor realJNA movements. P
nudd to get through to Kninfrom Srrbia
war thm. Ifthry had not got through we would
able tofight. Bosnia was our corridor to Krajina.

;;
C;:':;;
'::'::::;1:

Tudjman had come full circle: when Slovenia had 'PI""Icd.

in June 1991, to enter the war to prevent the

Ljubljiana, Tudjman had refused to drag his republic into the

now he, in turn, appealed to lzetbegovii: to bring Bosnia into

to help defend Croatia. Izctbegovit, similarly, refused. But,
three western republics had the foresight to act in unison,

said that Wt' wen

IJqWn (omistrncy in this rtsput. Hit
and indpenden' Bomia-Herzegovina, ifit ucures
comtitutiw nation in Bomia-HerugO'Uinafor the
,p" thert. {lzetbegO'Uifj pro(udsfrom the thesis that
other hand hepro
be pacified .. and.on the
.
.
SerhIan P lobk can
eru
gtJ'Vtna,
a
l
f
It
Mus,.1m Balma,
.
r
80s",ahat tM rest of
t
,-s .
nitary state. The representatives ofthe Croatian people
,.",wm a. u
they 'A:now
a cannot agree to thIS, hecauu
H
.
. Bomla_ erugovm
,.
'l
Lr rep.
ruIe... t
to
1)ect
)orlty
su
e
ma
'
Jh
h

a
ul
wo
hty as a minority
ina
ion
in
Bosnia-Herztgov
populat
Croatian
the
.
.
"'" " ti'lltl 01"
-"
a
e
d
111
,{"
.
.
ls
stat
lIatlon
constltlltlv
0;
guaralltu
a
sting
fJKr"t reque
:
Croatliln people there1.
thr
for
ina
gov
nia_Heru
/kIs
"" ba I .

:;::;;';;

:::.W"i.'h,,

,,
cteristicallY inconsistent. While demanding

:: for Croatia within its existing boundaries, he

Bosnia's territorial integrity. And while (he
to
republic
denied the Serbian minority the stahis
own
of
..
of 'constituent nation' he none the less demanded this for the

tin.ri,,"

of Bosnia.
Croats of Bosnia fall into two distinct camps, geographically
politically. One-third of the Bosnian Croats lived in western

"'
1"
0
"
", , notorious hot-bed of extreme right-wing nationalism,

.... C,.", formed dose to a hundred per cent of the population

in the countryside1. Many western Herzegovinians had fought
the Croatian war, and, in 1992, returned bloodied by their
'"0< and ready for the war in Bosnia. But the majority of
Croats lived in central and northern Bosnia, in towns and

....

role in the Croatian war, accusing many of staying in

throughout 1991 and well into 1992. Croatian propaganda

three nationalities lived. These cenrral Bosnian

by tradition, much less nationalistic and much more
ic Bosnian state than to seek its parti

'' ''d
''
; ", '_mul
ti-ethn
i
;''
'
, ,
.
lly pu
units.
Of
two
representatives on the Bosnian Presidency,

active part in the destruction of Vukovar!.

Tudjman, in any case, had never accepted the long-term .
Bosnia as a state. He made no secret of his view that Bosrul.
artificial creation of the Yugoslav state, with no historical

::;;::::out,

of the war might have been different. As it was, the JNA

take them on one at a time.

The Croats harboured deep suspicions about the Bosnian

the Commander of the Bosnian TO, Sefer Halilovit, of

From the beginning he promoted what he called '

among Bosnia's Croats, who made up seventeen per cent of the
lic's population. On the very morning that Bosnia
.
open war, 6 April, 1992, Tudjman told a news conference m
3'4

ras belonged to the

Herzegovina tradition; and Stjepan

"" the pro-Bosnian tendency. Tudjman, from the beginn

ing,
d the former.

th

a
nd

the Croats of Herzegovina were already orgaby Croatia. The first substantial military

e
encountered was in Herzegovina,
th
ree months'
Croats '
her across the
laced eaeh ot
Riv The
Serbs occupied the east bank the Croats
the west,
'
, ..Otiti
';
i
'i
thC City
. of Mostar itself. It had long been part of
3'5

BEWARE YOUR FRlEND A HUNDRED-FOLD

BOSNIA

JNA strategic planning to regard the Neretva as the natural.

a new Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia. The more
nationalists had even thought of Oubrovnik as the natu
ral

omb"';';

future enlarged Serbian republic of

:":'':

On 17 June, the Bosnian Croats, fter the

,
altogether and
]NA, pushed the Serbs out of Mostar
swathe of Herzegovinian territory along the east bank of the
was the first serious defeat the Serbs had suffered since th,. .... 1
The HVO now consolidated its hold on the territories
trolled. Arms and other supplies were channelled, from
through the Herzegovina HDZ. A former clothing store
called Mate Boban, emerged, through Tudjman's patronage, U
leader of the Bosnian Croats, quickly eclipsing the elected

tives, Kljujit and Boras.

Boban founded his own state in western
'Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna' - with its own
own armed forces. He imposed Croatia's system ofloca!
Croatian schooling, and 'Croatian' became the 'official

flag

the
Herceg-Bosna came to mirror, in almost every
tdiJ;",,,,,,
,po"'
Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, with one im
Muslims and Croats were, formally, partners in a military

::

signed between Tudjman and Izetbegovic in June.

On the east bank ofthe NereM, in the heart
o
the Turkish House, a museum depicting a typical (
home from some unspecified period of Bosnia's past. On
the main living-room hung an elaborately inscribed print
verse from the Koran in both Arabic and Serbo-Croat. It

Beware YOllr tnenty, bill hrwort' your friend a hun,"d

Bt'latlJe ifyourfritnd huonles your tntnly he mn hurtyou
mOTto htmUJt he knO'Ws the tunnels to your heart.

By late summer, Mostar's Muslims were beginning to

their Croat 'friends'. The HVO had made no effort. after
trol of Mostar, to follow up thc victory by helping the
to liberate Sarajevo, as many had expected it would.

r:''.
;

missed almost all Muslims from positions of ,::"

life, and replaced them with HDZ placemen. He
]'6

>:,-

l
tbCYre

to Croatia, was more explicit. He set up his

town of Novi Travnik. The central Bosnian towns

Vitez, Jablanica, Konjic were all, he said, part of Herceg0.._0" 1,,,," of these areas had a Muslim majority. Muslims, Kordic

..,ted, did not constitute a separate nation. They were Croats of

Jalamic faith.

Croatian dinar had already, in 1991, replaced the

(Bosnia - no more than a leopard-spot collection of
ries by the late summer of 1992 - still had no c\lJttncy

, .mtO a one-parry, ethnic state. The Mostar studio of Bosnian

'
- was sub'1ect t frcquem harassI to SaraJcvo
.
which was 10
and was, from time to tlme, closed down.
police,
aTian
Cro
b
-"t
ted road-blocks around the city; Muslims found that
ce moun
.
po not allowed to come and go freely
His
about
what
he
considered
explicit
the boundaries
an was never
central
Bosnia,
Dario
Kordic,
a cocksure
in
te His
_ his t2 .
with an unshakeable conviction that

E'
S
:

'

:::-"p:ro:
II

of 1992, two parallel armies co-existed on the same

the HVO and the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A great
refugees, 'cleansed' by the Serbs, further exacerbated
ding Boban with fears to play on - fears that the

l
dispossessed.
: would be 'swamped' by the Musim
What was to become a conflict as bitter as that with the Serbs
on 25 October in the central Bosnian town of Prozor. It began
dispute between rival mafiosi over who should take delivery of a

of petrol. This gangland squabble quickly acquired the

'ethnic' dispute, as each ofthe two anniesjumped to
ofits own people. Muslim men, driven OUt ofProzor, took
though most returned a few days later when tensions subBut the dispute had all the characteristics of
open warfare,
.
....Mfu,. shelling
from outside the town, and gun-battles in the
a few days the centre of Prozor was burneda
and-shatwreck of a place. Only
Croat businesses were trading. Conflict
.
In Novi Travnik, to the north.
But SaraJevo radio 10y,1
.
'
Izerbe
. Govemment,
fasc. goVlC
would, from now on, say that
Ism first entered Bosni
an through the prozor (window).
.
. an immediate military disaster. A
I COperation between the HVO
and the Bosnian Army,
With
.
Intense mutuaI SUSpiCion,
Ied both to desert their
" the town of),
Jce, to the non I-we
I
st 0fTravruk.
JaJce
' had
by Serb forces sincc
the beginning of the war and

SOme Shellin

.
.
g. Th ..." '"
htest In
, ... ,.vas not the SI19
dIcatiOn at
of Oct0
ber, however,
that
it
was
about to fall. Then, on 29
it did,
not becausc of
a Serh OllcnSlve,

.
but because of chaos
'

:::':,

1'7

BOSNIA

FRiEND A HUNDRED-FOLD
BEWARE YOUR

in the Bosnian and Croat defences. The Serbs walked into

40 000 Muslim and Croat citizens of Jajce poured down
towards Travnik.
At the London conference twO months earlier, the
had agreed to concentrate their heavy weapons around f(
submit them to United Nations' monitoring. Jajce was one
tmvns. When the Serbs marched in, no weapons had betn
trated, and no UN monitors had been deployed. Few ofthose
did so by mechanized vehicle, since fuel supplies
had
spasmodic. Their exodus, during 30 Onober and 1 N<w""b""
bled something from a pre-mechanized age: a great "''''n -- "....
as far as the eye could see, until the road disappeared into
ested hills to the nonh - of weary people trudging
aurumn mist, some on foot, others crammed on to
drawn carts. It took most of them two or three days to
seventy kilometres to the south, and, as they fled, the Serb
continued until the Bosnian Serb Army occupied the .

::::
.

above the road down which they were fleeing. Anything

like a military vehicle became a target. The refugees had to
barrage of shelling and machine-gun flte as they fled. It was
painful illustration of how Muslim-Croat enmity would
Serbs. General Mladit was later to comment: 'I will
destroy each other and then I will push them both into the
Serbs could not contain their glee.
As Bosnia descended into its first winter of war, the
hardened. There was now no area of the country where
Serb and Bosnian Croat armies had a territorial
other. But, both, on the other hand, had unfinished
Bosnian army. An informal tacit alliance began to take
Kiseljak, a Croat town on the western edge of Sarajevo,
nationalists, loyal to the Herzegovina Croats, took control
with
government and the HVO. They had been
besieging Sarajevo, as well as with Muslim
Sarajevo. For months, Kiseljak became a haven of peace,
locked. Bosnian Casablanca, as the Croats there took
advantage of their position 'in between' Muslims and
Croats would buy from the Serbs and sell to Muslim
who were. by now, operating a cartel system that kept
black-market goods in Sarajevo artificially high. The result
export of hard currency from Sarajevo, money that had betO
.
and saved, over years, by ordinary Sacajevans. Muslim

d'':::

"""-I""

3'8

and Scrb suppliers, all took their cut i a extortion

.
. d!emcn
.
fOld
acroSS military Imes and 10 which the J(jselJak Croats
that cut
players.
the crucial
'" .
for Sarajevo, J(jsclJak stood at the western gates of
tely
n
LJnfo
Serb
ring-of-armour around Sarajevo was
the
where
e ace
attempt
to smash through the siege from
Any
le.
lnerab
f
rom
that direction. By the winter of
come
have
l
y
ld on
Croat forces there had sound fmancial, as well cynical
reasons for ensuring the continuation of the siege. The
although formally still allies of the Bosnian Government,
in effect. partners with the Serbs in the perpetuation of the

:\
!

coe

April 1993, the winter sl'.lOd-offberween Muslims and Croats

into all-out war. News of the defeat at Srebrenica sent a
nf n"mou, flying around central Bosnia that tens of thousands
" 'ug" ' ,. ,,, dUC to arrive within days. In Kiseljak and
: : i ; : :,: pockers north and west of Sarajevo, Croat
':
: J to take preventive action. They entered the Muslim
of AhmiCi, which \vas surrounded by Croatian-populated vil
murdered dozens of civilians, including women, children
in their homes. They then set fire to the houses.
of the atrocity was discovered by British troops of the
Nations Protection Force, and by international aid workers, on
- a day after the signing of the Srebrenica surrender agreeIt had happened less than a mile from the British base.
The
Comander, Colonel Bob Stewart, almost
in tears with rage
that he had known nothing about it when it was hap
demanded access to the village In front
of the world's tclevi
.
he screamed at an HVO checkpoint comma
nder, who
.
tum whether he had permi
ssion to enter the village: 'I don't
of the bloody HVO - I'm the United Nations!
I
that this is an Rbsolute disgrace.
Whole families have
IIlassacred here. Who
's responsible for this?' The HVO militia
drove off.
a wave of forced evicti
ons, murders, and rapes.
fled v'Itez and
headed for T'ravnik or Zenica claiming that
tokilers had give
.
n them three hours to
leave 1O\ n or be killed.
Or two Musr1m
dOCtors, who had been travelling from
to VIte
z, were foun
.
d On thc roadSide,
shot at close range

..:..
::::
: ! :
: :

?'"

;,:,S:;,

3'9

BOSNIA

BEWARE YOUR FRIEND A HUNDRED-FOLD

In Tmvnik, the HVO demanded that the Bosnian

and disband. It said the Vancc-Owen Plan - which the
Bosnian sides had, by now, both agreed to - placed '''_'L
Croatian province, and required the withdrawal of all
forces from the province. The Vance-Owen Plan was not the

, the rejecio by the Serbs f the Vance-Owen

national commumty S subsequent failure to cnforce the
nter
1'be h
finally, the outbreak of the Muslim-Croat war: all occurred
weeks in April and May 1993. Together they forced the
.
f
e
w
.
2 Government and Army to confront the new reality. A polit
military sea-change followed: the Muslims began to fight

:n,1

otherwise have hcked4

Travnik was now overwhelmingly a Muslim town,

=
"t

swamped by Muslims who had been driven from their

northern Bosnia by Serb ethnic cleansing. These men,

had been interned in the detention camps that had so

world the previous year - radicalized and embinered by
ence - determined not to go through me same thlng at

the Croats. Within days they had driven all HVO units
Tmvnik, although thousands of Croat civilians continued to
Tmvnik and were not subjected to the virulent campaigns
cleansing that the Croats were soon to inflict on Muslim

living in their midst. In Zenica, a stronghold ofh,,,b<,,;e.

and the town where the Bosnian Army had its strongest
between the Muslim Mayor and the local HVO c:o
n"
, '

had been aimed at restoring calm, broke up when HV

O
surrounding hills shelled the town centre. As in Travnik, the

were driven aU[.

Muslim central Bosnia was now surrounded on all "O" 'OY'
forces - a land-.1ocked island of territory, cut off from the
Sarajevo and from the outside world. In addition, it had

:.e

with th c Croat-occupied enclaves - Novi Travnik,

Kiseljak - in its midst. These constituted sieges within the

these, Vitez was the most problematical, since it lay on the

between Zenica and Travnik. In effect, the territory
of Izetbegovic's Government had now been reduc
[0 a

'k

:'
:
:C
smattering of isolated enclaves - around T
"'
r ;v
. ' ',,
.

Bihae, Sarajevo, and the three eastern enclaves 0

and Zepa. None of these enclaves was viable without the
life-support of international aid. Access to and from each was
by the besieging Serb or Croat forces . The military and

wa;r

ity facing Bosnia in the sring nd early summer of1993

country was gradually bemg Wiped off the map of Europe
increasingly likcly that the only future for what the Serbs
J]O

()otO,ati

gradually be absorbed into one or other of the

ki ng shape around them.
that were ta
states
an
Serbi
and

enC

fall of Srebrenica

the Muslim-Croat fighting in central Bosnia; the conflict

the publication of the Plan. But, in the spring of 1993, the
Bosnian Croat territorial demands a stamp of legitimacy

t called former Bosnia-Herzegovina was that each of

'; g
;n,,,, n,'
",
Iave

Smjevo psychiatrist, called Ljiljana Orue, kept her sense of

throughout the siege. In the summer of 1993 she described
capital as one vast psychiatric laboratory. Sarajevans had
, ....I!o<
'-nian

,l=!'

she said, from a collective psychotic delusion - me delusion

world would, eventually, rescue them and their country. This
persisted, she continued, despite all the objective evidence to
contrary. It was, therefore, a kind of inverse paranoia: a persistent
that everything is going to turn out all right in the end even
..,ogt> by aU rational judgement, it clearly is not. 'This collective psy
'Dr Omt insisted, 'in May 1993. After that, we knew we
our own:
1be fight-back began in central Bosnia. The third corps of the

ArmyS formed two new brigades consisting mainly of men

'cleansed' from northern and eastern Bosnia. Many of them
hardened by their experience at the hands of the Serb
forces;
had been through the concentration camps.
In Travnik they
the Seventeenth 'Ksajika' Brigad
e, under the command of
Mehmet AJagic, himself a
victim
of
ethnic cleansing from the
.
reg.on of northern Bosnia
. In Zenica, the heartland ofMuslim
a ew force altogether
Olppcared - the Seventh Muslim
n
us was explicitly Muslim, rather
than Bosnian, in its orien
I
fficers were hostile ro Westerners, wore Islami
c insignia,
' and greeted
each other with the Ambic 'al-sallam
,
(peace be with you)
. Their families attended Islamic educa
'cIo,,,,
nd their wives
daughters, increasingly wore
and
veils in
,
For
.
" f
, t n.me, a strident, xenophobic Musli
m nationalism
' ,
In Bosnia: the
politics of multi-ethnic tolerance,
S '' 'nt enth
Muslim Brigade argued, had led to the
c
".
f
l
;; people. It was time for Muslims to
I
_ '<h '
take mat
the
If OWn hands,
not as Bosnians, but, explicitly, as Mus
lims.

r::;;

i:::::

J]'

BOSNIA

BEWARE YOUR FRIEND A HUNDRED-FOLD

f,' :;:,

'1.' 'Listm Sfip, I'm lIIrprisul, I wasjusl in HaugO'/./ina

brolhir Ihm). TINy ha",! (amps own Ihm. Thty look
He
.
Ibt m
Nazi timn rom worst thty don I getfood and water,
the
/iXt
.

Conveniently for those. in the Wf:$t. who argued

ing on the side of the Bosnian Government. this

dence to the argument - frequently voiced in defence

policy - that 'all sides are equally guilty'. Bur this new
cared nothing for international public opinion; courting

the capitals of the Western world. its officers and

'art abuJ(d.

J: '
Ihepeop/t in the camps were, and he said they were
I oj e who
and tOWnJ, and their
:uhbollr!' from Ihe same viI/ages
form(/' n ,,o
.
.
were
MIII/l1ns.
Ihey
Another
bIg grollp there
Ihat
(mIyfiall/1 was
.
.
Mlll/im HVO soldIers dIlamltd O'/.I(rmgh1 and senl there.
esperially by the trralmenl Ihere.
I wry surpriud,
, this information, alld fold Tudjman. He answad thaI
IIx othm had camps aS 1mll
IITI

brought nothing to the Muslims except military defeat,

and hand-wringing declarations of sympathy from
",
they argued, had learned that patient negotiations in G...

;:::

Hague and London brought catastrophe; and that. in this

tory would fall not to the just, but to the strong.

There was nothing of the multi-ethnic ideal among that

They no longer spoke of Serbs and Croats. but ofChetniks

In mid-August the International. Red Cross finally gained acces to

647" detainees in 51 camps - ofwhICh 4400 were held by the Bosman

In Zenica, from time to time, the Seventh Muslim

to the streets, smashing shops that sold alcohol and

CIoats (a figure the Bosnian Government claimed was far too low),

and destroying the carcasses. They became, during the

autumn months, a law unto themselves. frequently in

1400 by the Muslims and 674 by the Serbs.

Muslim former prisoners held in Dretelj, a notorious camp south
Mostar, said they were beatcn and woken in the middle of the

civilian police and increasingly feared by the civilian population.

The military strategy of the Third Corps was to carve out

gle of territory in central Bosnia stretching from Tuzla in the

east, to Sarajevo in the south-east. and Mostar in the
immediate priority was to secure lines of communication

leopard-spot territories. The heavily populated Vitez pocket

about 60 000 Croats lived - was too daunting a target. So

Anny began to sweep through Croatian villages in the hill, 'boII

valley that Vitez sat in. They burned and looted as th

the tactic which their Serb foes had proved so rewardtng
previous twelve months. By early summer, the y had
.
road of sons. around the back of the Vitez pocket linking
Zenica and, beyond to Tuzla6.

:: ::
-:;
The Muslim Croat fault-line ran through the town

Throughout the summer and winter of 1993, this tc

troops had based a company of men to provide a

logistic base for aid convoys running from Split. to

hands so frequently, as the tide of military fortune
flowed, that by the end of the year there was hardly a house
left habitable.
Over the summer grisly reports of maltreatment and
.
Muslims in Croat camps emerged. In Zagreb. Stipe
recalled that he was first told of the camps by }020
HDZ activist.
J1'

:'0

and forced to sing songs insulting to the Muslims and

:
They were deprived of food and water. Many told of havtheir own urine f'dther than die of thirst.
. ..
statement from {he UN Security Council on 15 September
' " ' 'h, 'revulSion and condemnation' felt among {he internation
:

:
:when the existence of the Serb camps was revealed the

and urged the Croats to close theirs.

lilustrated the tragedy of the Muslim-Croat conflict more
e central Bosnian town Yard.
an unlovely mining and quarry
m a pretty valley
running north-south on the road from Sarajevo
Yard was on the very edge of the Muslim
-Croat war zone.
the war.its population
had been evenly split between Muslims
C ats. w
.,::
a
h a sizeable Serb minority. The
Serbs had fled, or
n mOved our,
at the start of the war. The local Croats and
worked hard, through the summ
er of 1993, not to become
by the conflict
that was tearing the two communities apart
to
of them.
V:Ue could n
.
ot stay Immun
.
e. '-he con.
fl
lct so polarIZed central
.
t
h deSplt
t
e
best

efforts of thc local leadership, Yard soon

. :::
g, ehnlc hnes.

But it provides an illuminating insig

ht into
0 ethnic
conflict. VareS became

a microcosm of the
Ilways
' the fi
I
l'St tensions
came from outsidc - the arrival of

aJ

llJ

BOSNIA

BEWARE YOUR FRIEND A HUNDRED-FOLD

thousands of angry and traumatiu:d Croats who had been

from, or led in terror, from their homes in Visoko, Breza.
Zenica which themselves had received floods'
angry and traumatized Muslim refugees during an earlier
refugees brought with them an accumulated resentment
fcar of, the group that had driven them out. In Yard the
many Croat refugees not only crowded the town - it tipped
cate ecllOic balance. The local Croat leadership, h",."",.

towns

co-operate with the local Muslim leaders; and this soon b

sations from the incoming Croat refugees that they v.
;
with the 'enemy' that had driven them from their
opened up among the Croats. Then, in October, an armed
arrived from Kiseljak, the hard-line Croat nationalist,

'";:C

caUy anti-Muslim stronghold to the south. The local

and Poice
l Chiefwere briefly jailed, then ovenhrown. An

installed as Mayor. Muslim men were rounded u;

were raided and looted. Within days, almost the :,::!:

munity had fled to the village of Dabravina to the south,

waited and planned their reruro.

In fact, Vard could not be defended by the Croats. AJmost

as they had secured control of it, they prepared to evacuate
were twO escape routes - both led across Serb territory.
Kise1jak Croats were on such good terms with the Serbs, this:

of
present a difficulty. But the existence of the
mile from the edge ofVares, did. It was a Muslim v<lJ,,,,. "om,.

ulation of250. It lay on the southern escape route. On

October, after a day of unrelenting bombardment ofSrupni

militiamen wearing balac1ava masks, or with their faces

entered the village and dynamited, or torched,
lagers unable to flee were shot, or had their throan cut.
burned alive in their homes; others were gunned down " ,h.y .

flee through the woods. Some bodies were thrown on to

the gardens of the homes in which they fell. By the end of the
spree, the viUage lay littered with bodies and every house
flames. Most of the viUagers fled. Scores of people were

of the bodies were never recovered.

For days Croat militiamen rampaged through

.
homes that had been abandoned by the fleeing Muslims.
Muslims still trapped in the town begged the Swedish UN

Vare

':':d.!.d

lcted there to escort them safely to Bosnian-held

did not ha\le the trucks to do it. Instead, the Swedes

JJ4

up and down the length of the tow n's main street,

","o vthides
...
l women and children camped
nd nights on cnd, Musim

tpd, for days

:he proximity of UN forces their only protection. Then,

of 3 Nov:mbcr, he Croat Myor we from house
:C;;; 'hours
jill the 5 with a loud-hailer iOstructiOg all Croatian families to assem
to e strcet, and prepare to be evacuated before dawn. The
h
he told them, was closing in on the town from the

m Army.
."m west and south.
th n 10 000 fled in a . singl night. For a. day the to"';1 lay
Then the Seventh Muslim Brigade walked iO without fmng a
:rr
The Mslim civilians returned to their homes. Within weeks the
that the Croats had abandoned were occupied by Muslim F.am

Mre

.. from towns

villages occuied by the Serbs. The entire town

.
hcrn B snJa, haVlng
bcn uprooted by Serb
in
non
Rijeka,
ciCma
.
elbnic cleansing. rcsetded Itse
lf iO Croat homes m Vard.
That is how Yard came to illustrate two key elements of the

and

)Iuslim-Croat war: firstly, the ability of radicalized outsiders to sow

tile: seeds of ethnic conflict in a community in which Croats and

M"',m, had been content to live together; secondly, the fact that
ethnic cleansing had crammed more and more Muslims and

a smaller and smaller territory, causing resentment among

, ..
'" Ip'o'pl" that evenruaUy spilled over into ethnic tension.

into

H.lil",,,
denied it.

: 9 April. 1992.
important exception is j\lostar, which Herzegovina Croats consid'h and which had a typically Bosnian
of
Croats,
nationalities.
Vance-Owen Plan, were drawn so large in
Croats would
form the largest proportion
ld none the
large Ser and Muslim
t here wou
Th
_.. , c e CXtensi n ss of the Croat pro\linces was thus intended,
.:::'''''. to act as a check on the u:ercise ofCroat power inside these
Zagreb's prompting, interpreted it as (art("'an(1x to
'"""'''," rul. n Muslim and Serb townS and re ions.
BtH consisted at that time of
corps - in Sarajevo,
"t:;: , ,od Central
Bosnia.
:

;I
t
;:.: war never s read as far nonh
. :
as Tuzla. Here,
p
100 small 11
minority, and too distant from Henegovina, to
f the Bosnian
even if their commanders had
.
i
. alliance
the conflict
Units
lncorpor-at d into
Bosnian Anny.

_Om"

odol,
,
:
; ::;;::Iothe
ve e
:;,

mix Serbs,

lessstillbe

by

fiveg

In

were

Armyout
held
through
e the
JJS

the
until, eventual y,

THE HMS INVISIBLE

be like walnuts in a Serbo-Croat nutcracker,' he

. ) re going to
the
world
was recognizing that the Serbs had won
)4US
S b'elieved
,pd
ne
.

23
THE HMS INVISIBLE

de

Tallu at Sea

Summer 1993

ar from the bloodshed, the three paties - the Muslims,

.
Croats - met for a summer of talks In Geneva.

ing leaders slept in the swankiest hotels perched on ,h,,,.,o,,,, x

Loman; by day, they argued over the futu e frontiers of
Herzegovina. In late September they flew to the Adriatic
British aircraft carrier HMS Invincible to settle the Muslim

warserbs' relish was paralleled by IzetbegoviC's anguish. 'I feel,' he

. kc a thirsty man scnt to find water in the desert.'The Bosnian

d.
nder considerable pressure. Washington had puUed the
,.i ' ent \.VaS u
ftcSld from under him. He still clung to the idea of a unified Bosnia
ut
Muslims. Bur this priority had slipped from
rug
meland for the
.
He reluctantly admitted that a tripartute paragendas.
eSTern
.
.
blc.
meVlfa
was
pon of Bosnia

ThiJ division willgiw Muslims a Bomian stall!. For Ihl! moment

lhe idta ofn mulli-l!lhni( Bosnia is dl!ad. Future gtntratir)ns (an
haftforsuch a slatt. Bul only nlhr thry havt soberl!d up.from tlNir
stalt ofdrunkennl!!s.

for access to the Adriatic. It was the perfect setting for a

Summoning Bosnia's main protagonists for another round

first since the collapse of the Vance-Owen Plan, the m"d;,,,on

Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg said: 'the destruction

and

now taking place in Bosnia - makes us both shudder for the

your country'. The appeal was dramatic. But, from the

atan were anxious to distance themselves from the Plan 00"""
a new reality.

After Washington had announced the 'Joint-Action

Bosnian Government was reeling. Suddenly they were advised

the hand dealt to them or risk being left with nothing. ""'. _

and shrewd. and his affable partner Stoltenberg, prodded

main protagonists towards an agreement, whose terms were

by the Serbs and Croats. Owen maintained he was trying to

'painful compromise' not a partition. Despite the efforts to
the Plan, the main adversaries knew the proposed Union

republics would d
isappear as soon as, or even before. the
The Bosnian Croat leader, Mare Boban, called the Plan, the
It is uncertain whether he had misunderstood the name of the
aircraft carrier or was referring to the vanishing Bosnian union.
On 30 July, a breakthrough was announced. All three

'!:

the Bosnian Government, had backed a constitutional

a Union of republics in Bosnia-Herzegovina - in other
tition along ethnic lines. In remarkably similar statements.
and Croats hailed the agreement as a compromise which
nt
an end to the war. MiloS-evil announced that the agreeme

:;:':

plcteIy affirms Republika Srpska.' For a member of the B

delegation it was simple. The Turks (derogatory f

Izetbegovic had been backed into a corner. In June, frustrated by

his intransigence, the mediators had taken steps to weaken him - in

1be conviction that this would hasten the peace process. They re

ilmnted the Bosnian Presidency, and reduced Izetbegovic to his pre

constitutional role as The fITSt among equals. At their invitation,

Flkret Abelic, the canny survivor, emerged from a long silcnce in the
aorth-westem Cazinska Krajina or as it came to be known during the
.... the Bihae enclave to challenge Iz.etbegovic for the leadership of
Boaua's Muslims. The mediators believed that Abdic would cut a dea1
.ab the Serbs and Croats on partition. They were right. He was ready
. do the job and joined a multi-ethnic Bosnian Presidency delegat
ion
tD Geneva to begin talks on
the carve-up.
A month later, dnving through
the arches of the Palais des Nations,
. delegation looked defeated and divided. Iz.etbegovic sat,
hiS bodyguards, in a black Mercede provided
by the Swiss
s
:ent. The rest o the delegati
on
arrived
battered
Honda,
in
a
611k.we by
the rotund Silver-haired Abdic
taxi. This was in stark
in
a
.
.

..
n
. ot to the
ImpreSSIOn of co-ordinated strength and brash conflA.
ded by the Serb
delegation which raced to the Palais.
t>fu Progt"essed the fighting
1

n
:

':i
on the ground intensified. The
'
to take what they could
before the fmal carve-up. The
Mount Igman, ,",:,hich from the south-wes
t overlooks
"J .""j.,Th
" e W,est threatened au-str
ikes as Serb political and mili
layed cat-andmouse with the intcrnational community
their p edge
to withdraw from the
strategic peak... While the
__

G:::IY
_

;:"

137

BOSNIA

THE HMS INVISIBLE

;::'5

entire international community waited to see whether Serb

" ',:;:-,
promised, had pulled out of Mount Igrnan, Karad1i
at 1 p.m. in Geneva, exhausted after a night of g

casino.
Yet he out-smarted the West, or, at least, gave the world
an
:;' ,:
for refraining from military intervention. In fiery b:

warned against air-strikes. 'If a single bomb hits a Serb

will be no more talks. Vve would have an all-out war
He played on the fears of NATO countries which had

Bosnia. And even went so far as to threaten that, in the event

strikes, he would lose control of his Army, with the
Bosnian Serbs would retaliate against the UN troops from

'::

triesl. It was a strange reversal - suddenly the international

nity was hoping that KaradZic would remain in command.

Against the background of KaradZiC's ominous warnings.

Izetbegovic openly advocated military intervention 'in the
peace'. He said that the future of the negotiations, and the entire

process, rested on air-strikes.

The international community took no action. There were
strikes. Less than a month later, an announcement was m"d,tbo
three sides had agreed on the fur ore borders of their ethnic

In its final version reached on HMS InfJincihlt, at sea in tn, "'...

the plan gave fifty-three per cent of Bosnian (contiguous)

the Serbs, seventeen per cent to the Croats, divided into two

and left the Muslims with the remainder.

The Bosnia which emerged from this plan would be '""d-''''

Through special routes. the Plan granted the Muslims access

sea at Neum, Bosnia's outlet on the sea, but is unsuitable as a
They were also offered Bosnia's only coastline, the use of the
seapon of Plod: and the border town of Metkovic which is
mouth of the Neretva. They would also have a tenuous oud

River Sava to the north. The Bosnian Government wanted

try [0 cover all of the republic - shon of that, it wanted land

ing to every frontier. Eastern Bosnia - almost completely

by the Serbs - although it was mostly Muslim before the

remained a major bone of contention. The Serbs, including .
were not prepared to hand over any part of eastern Bosrua
Muslims - this was MiloeviC's bare minimum, which he

the security of Serbia.

.
llS
Just one glance at the map, and it was clear that tl
shaped and geographically disjointed state would have only a
JJ8

val Sarajevo would be placed under UN administration

of surVl.
tri m period, and Mostar under provisional E C con
I;'e n offered to build a tunncl leading out of Sarajevo,
fal '
. Kana . '5 inhabitants could travel to other parts of the state.
to rhat the City
ent also caJled for demilitarization of the Union, but
The agrcem
disarm Croatia and Serbia, whose armies were
n Jan to
;h conflict. Stoltenberg went off to the UN, in New York,

c
iIro'Olv
already on the ground.
trOOpS in addition to the
.. ",k
and
misplaced
optimism
that a settlement
talks
of
mmer
Af
t
er a sU
.
"lc rejected
plan
drawn
the
up on the
hetbegoV
d be reached,
,
con:inced
were
isappointed
d
Stoltenberg
and
i
Owen
Inwnchk
before.
GIVen a
agreement
an
near
so
been
never
..t t y had
"
h"
b
rmg
J" INet
1m "Into the game, '"to
attempts
ational
boost by intern
.
state, the Autonomous Province of Western
own
his
declared
Abdie
from the Bosnian Government Presiency.
Bosnia and was expelled
.
and war erupted between Mushms 10 the
emerged.
ine
front-l
her
Anot
'

twO-y

W;
;000

10 000

;;She

Bihae enclave.

Whenever the Serb and Croat leaders resumed their poisonous

courtship, it sounded the death-knell for the Muslims. Their conspir
'Cf defied

logic. but had its own strange dynamic. These sworn ene

mies killed each other on the battlefield while their leaders sipped
whisky together. It began in March 1991, in Karadjordjevo. when
Milokvlc and Tudjman discussed the partition of Bosnia. They estab
IiIhed a secret commission, comprised of their confidants, to redraw

Yugoslavia's borders. The problem of Serb and Croat nationalists was

DOt how the two communities could live together, but how they could
e
leparate. Th y agreed on something else. Bosnia-Herzegovina should
be ed-up, then they could have their cake and eat it, too: Greater
Serbia and Greater Croatia.
he tightest secrecy, the two rivals had a host of meetings. 1n
C oa 'aber .1 991 (the war had neither st'Mted in Bosnia nor ended in

r ti ) '
Croa
kola Koljevic sat in a Sarajevo cafe with Franjo Boras, his

1he t nationalist counterpart in the Bosnian Presidency. Lamenting

sta
.... . -of-war between the Serbs and the Croats, Borns announced
t
1Ibo Id not av to be that way. After all, there were plenty of Serbs
ilion: d mrned
mto his family and they got along just fmc. What's
e. a,d, pcrhap
the two men could prevent a war if the two
;:n''es started
talks. He suggested that Koljevic go to Zagreb to
1'h r
e esldentTudjman.
Croatian and
Serbian Presidents had already discussed the

COm

JJ9

THE HMS INVISIBLE

BOSNIA

""hW",

division of Bosrua. By December 1991, MilmeviC had a

gaining chip: Krajina. MiloviC was not attached to "n; ,,"OIl
even said mat Knin, the capital of me self-styled Serb

::,,

State,

belonged in Croatia - that it had nothing in comm n

O with
With Knin, Miloevic believed he would always get the

secure in the knowledge that he had something that ',o'na ""

survive without, a third of its territory.

Tudjman believed that population transfers - getting rid

Serbs - would solve Croatia's problems. Karad1ic agreed
Knin's Serbs should be moved, but not to Serbia - to the

of eastern Slavorua to Serb-held parts of eastern Croatia. The

Serb patriot, was remarbbly
who claimed to be a

great

about the fate of his Serb kith-and-kin in Croatia.

said they were used to moving. Mter all, they had

't

With a

region, escaping the Turks centuries ago. His deputy,

lished a rapport with Tudjman. President Tudjman proposed

sion on resettlement of the population, believing [hat this
about an ethnically homogenous state. Now, there was not
ment because, obviously, resettling, even if it's peaceful, does

a final solution and [hen that was not the main issue ","CO"", ,tho
issue was, and still is, the territories.
Koljevic and Boras had already devised a plan. An 0..,,'"

Zagreb meeting, Stipe Mesic, then head of the HDZ. first

phrase the 'humanitarian movement of population'.

The talk. was about creating ethnically clean areas, in other

theproblem ofMuslims had to be solved, since it was
Boros and Koljevii had already agreed on borders a.,,,, 1'"".
selves.
....
Tudjman had three goals,-first he wanted ruognition ,{en
possible, and the support ofthe ,..""..",,,,,/ " mm,'."y;
he wanted to dividr Bosnia-Herzegovina, '/ ""''"'" ."",
sion, and third in order 10 do thil, he had to k.eep '''.m''......
with Milafevii.
The first meeting was a success. Tudjman told Mesit he

pleased with the talks. He even met Koljevic on his.own. '

said Mesic, 'they communicated with ease, and both sides
at war:
But Koljevic knew that the seeds of the new alliance
time to take root.

. u
hll! to how one muting with the Croatian leaderi
I
J
the already exitling coa/jton in BOlnla haute,
/p
s lt a . e theMuslim leadm and Croaltan leadm already had
iy t/)at /l '('
es' theirflags tied into k.nots, showing that they
",ade pub I ralli
wert logether.

ln:1TOJ

x months - even after war had erupted in Bosnia,

()ver the next si
leaders me: in Mostar, Banj Luka and Graz. 0n 6

Serb
.
.
ooa[. and
estine meeting at the Graz aIrport, Kara&lc made It
land
a
C
n
l
u_
L
h northern Bosnta
" In
illoug
insisted on a com'dor t
that the Serbs
valley.
River
Sava
JWtvina, the

;'

Iftbey wanted war instead ofa negotiating table, let's lee what
WfJuld happm thm. And so we liberated almost a/ ofPO.f(l'Uina
except Oralje. I told them repated that o solutIOn would be
.
tI((eptabie without t1 broad cOrrIdor In POiavIa. We beheved
then
tlnd we belive now that the bm boundary If the om naturally
formtd by the Sava river.
Karad1it and Boban agreed on some of the maps, but they also left
questions open. The Croats asked for BItko - which according
1991 census was Muslim, Serb, and Croat. 'The Serbs refused
they built it and it was completely Serb: said KaraclUC.

In this war for control of the rivers, Karadfic proposed the Neretva
which runs through Hcrzegovina as a boundary. But Boban
Mostar's main street, Marshal Tito. They pledged to take
composition of territory and agreed to accept EC

- if they could nOt work it out between themselves - for

western region round Kupres and to the north for seven tOwns in
Posavina3.
For
adzic, the first meeting with Boban was very useful, because
he recogmztd .
"He
hImself: a fellow nationalist in his Croat counterpart.
more .Cr at than Catholic. His idea was [0 concentrate the
o.
. PO tJon IO one part of Bosnia, so that they could protect
ethntClty and not Catho
licism:
.,.T"h
.
re
' were constant contacts between Zagreb and Belgrade. In

Croa

:: what
;;:';:alIiac.and

1 94, they agreed to open diplomatic offices in each other's

ut
was more important were the visits of Croatian
to S rbia
even Pale. It was a competition between the

Croatia continued to pursue two separate and

poliCies, their secrt!t collusion with the Serbs and their

J41

BOSNIA

24

formal allianc with th

uslims. Th fust gav the two
nations me power to determm the fat of the Muslims, but
that Croatia would always be the weaker partner in that ol!;....
th second was backed by the United States. In early

A QUESTION OF CONTROL
Square Bomb and the NATO Ultimatum
The Marlut

axes seemed mutually exclusive. By the summer - and the

between Miloevic and his brethren 10 Bosnia - the dynarnic:t

February 1994

once again shifted.

1 UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spilin,

France.

2 The agrec:menl for Mostar was actually carried OUI. Hans

former Mayor of Brehmen, bC'eame the firsl EC Mayor of Ihe
in 1994.
3 According to parlicipants from both sides.
should ge the western ha,!k of Mostar and
mo,
s Neum,Capljina, Ljubuk.i,Siroki Brijeg, PO" "J,."L;.
a

H::::o;, ;;:

even Kupres, which was fifty-one r-:r cent Serb

not contest Krdevo, Kiseljak, Fojnic;l., Busovata,
Serbs in October 1992), Travnik, Novi Travnik, and
no word oftht Muslims.

it knew all there was to know about incom

'evo thought that
no-one
thought a single mortar round could
But
nce.
ordna
in an instant. The bomb that dropped out ofthe sJ...-y
ife,
l

SJ
much

p.m. on Saturday, 5 February, turned a bustling

city-centre

12.37

t place, in the shad w of Sarajevo's Catholic Cathdral, into a

?
.

JIIanaO abattoir. It killed slXty-OIne, and left more than 200 woundd.

Why had it sown such havoc? Som survivors said they thought it

W strU k an overhead plastic canopy on the way down and exploded

jolt above head height, showering the market with thousands of red

IP shards of metal. It was all the more devastating for having been
&led n an othrwise pcacful day. It was one of the great tragic
aoaies
that, frequently, more people were killed on quiet

1;

of Sarajevo

than on days when the shelling of civilian areas was intense. This
on quiet days people came out on to the streets. The fifth

sunlit, spring

was a bright,
day. The market was packed.
dropped Without warning.
Raction was immediate. President Izetbegovic called a news con
within hours and said it W'd.S a 'black and trrib[e day. We
.,-_." feel condemned to death. Every government which supports
arms embargo against this country is
an accomplice to acts of

...

as

mo,,',udch t?is'. The offtce of Prime Minister Haris Silajdfic,

Amen an television

"" fa,. w exclUSive face-to-f

ace interview

news anchorman Peter Jennings, of

. Izetbegovic and Silajd1ic
s,bly shaken by the scale
of the markt square massacre t afternoon, using
the
it presented to argue that
now being
pressurized by the intrnational community
hn a Serb-Croat
'peace agreement' which had
the EU, that was tamamount to complete capiru

tb;
ac::;.
g
.

opportunity
authored

of the Bosnian state, and the dispossession

.
two mi
l. lIOn Muslims.
.
was equally quick off the mark. He denied
(a5 he always
did when civilians were killed in large
and S3J'd e
had ordered his forces to block all humanita
Convoys untl
UNPROFOR publicly exoner
ated the
of

34"

Serbs

J43

BOSN1A

blame. Only later did he develop

A QUEST10N OF CONTROL

:;r,: :
.

a series o

had been planted by'the Muslim side' or fl :

:
or, more bizarrely still, that the bodies that were rushed from

ket square to the city morgue in the immediate aftermath

bombing were old bodies that had been planted there for
of the television cameras.
",
KaradiiC's denials always bore fruit. General Le
<

::':,

first given credence to the idea that the Bosnian l

of a strategy to bring the international community into the

side, had taken to bombing its own people. He had

in May 1992, when a mortar bomb crashed intO Vase

in the city centre where a queue of civilians were

Twenty-rwo people had been killed by that bomb.

was in Belgrade at the time, because UNPROFOR
relocated from Sarajevo to the Serbian capital, gave great

the view that agents of the Bosnian Government had

bomb, though no-one ever produced a scrap of evidence
the contention. Throughout the war, those who opposed

intervention and the lifting of the arms embargo conducted

<>ci,,;,,j

pering campaign to spread the notion that the worst ,

:::

committed by the Bosnians against their own people. The

was never made publicly, because this would have

If there was any evidence, it never came to light. The

ever, succeeded in sowing seeds of doubt among
have been more resolute in their condemnation of the bomlOlll

of Sarajevo.
No-one has ever proved who fired the market
.
UNPROFOR crater analysis of the impact site was
trajectory ofthe missile had been diverted by its

.
to
head canopy; and, in any case, it is almost
single impact the dire,-'tion of fire and the distance traveJkd.
analysis is only accurate when several rounds have been fired

same position, since then margins of error can be narrowed.

would say only that the round came from the north-east,

both sides had positions in that direction. The commn

vation that if you fire a million-and-more mortar,
rounds into a small city over rwenty-two months (as

,,,ill.,,y '!

Serbs did) - many of these mndomly lobbed into civilian areas

somewhere where crowds are

swept away in the ensuing row. A walk down any
safe
Sarajevo provides visible evidence that nowhere was

or later one will land

344

mortar: the city's streets are

pockmarked

everywhere with

, ive splatter of the mortar impact point. The local people

randm.
dJc: di
stln t

. nrs '5araJevo

roses' - the coIour 0f bloo. By

" J these impn
barely
walk
more than a few metres Without
1994, you could
february
.
.
i
ng one.
ftASS
,.......

interesting tha the stenle debate about who fired

What is more
the uses to which the UN were able to put the con
d
is
rogue roun
die y. So great was the anti-air-strikes culture in UNPROFOR
h
neW commander in Bosnia, General Sir Mic ael Rose,

=7he

rked without a break for the fifteen days that foUowed to produce

ment that would, as he saw it, make air-strikes unnecessary. If

had been the slightest piece of evidence that the Bosnians had
COIJunitted the market square atrocity, the world would surely have
tcttle
WO

liard all about it. There would have been no surer way to counter the
llJUffients ofthose (mostly in the US) who pushed for military action
iD the aftermath of 5 February.

The most plausible explanation of the market square bombing was

Dt whoever fired it did not deliberately try to kill scores of people by
lIDding it slap in rhe middle of the most crowded place in town.
t.fortm are not direct-fire weapons. They are not accurate enough to
a direct hit first time. They have to be 'walked' toward their tar
p. ln any case, the 5 February massacre was different only In scale
hm what Sarajevo had sutfered almost every day for twenty-two
Dlnths. Irs significance lay in its symbolic impact. Nearly 10 000
had died in Sarajevo as the undisputed victims of Serb bom

;""'" most of them civilians, and many of them children. The

I
in which most of them were buried in rows that wer
e of
"",;ity, se i d became the most
potent symbol of Sarajevo's ag ny
,:
,
City s lost promise: it lay in the shadow of the show- iece
p
sports stadium, built for
the 1984 Winter Olympic Games.
Was no controversy
about who had killed them. The market
bomb, desplte

t
h
e
rnuddymg of the waters by KaraclziC's
.

...
'hibl' cla l m that the l'Iluslims had done
it to themselves, finally
t e w,estern
world say ' Enough'.

wh'ICI1 the Western world said 'Enough' that

Lard Owen
.
Th
_ " m every \'v
ere were l:<WS
AIestern capital

for
,

p ;, I i I
, the skies above Bosnia
to act to deter a repeat
sqarc tragedy. The
Americans were pushing hard for
interveorlOn.
.
They argued that the
legal authonty to act
existed In
' tl
I e current UN Secu
rity Council resolutions. The

the manner In
'

":::?,:",
III

ii

J4S

BOSNIA

A QUESTION OF CONTROL

French, too - uncharacteristically in Owen's view - were

a more interventiOnist role for NATO. Even the ""ri"..
foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd - always the first to PUt the
on international intervention -was now bowing to wt,,, ,,,,,,,oi
whelming pressure.
Owen's concern was with the Russians. He believed K ,>zy
...
already shown great flexibility in allowing NATO to police
zone. The Russians had agreed to this only because the
being done under the amhority of the UN, NATO was,
ation, carrying out the UNs' bidding. The Atlantic alliance
acting independently. The Russians had gone still further:
agreed that the UN Commander in Bosnia should be '"'.... .1
in close air support in defence of his own international !o',,"" 1
they be attacked. Again, the Russians had conceded this
NATO only because NATO was able to guarantee that it
only within the limits set by the UN. Owen knew that
Russians would not accept was NATO acting outside the
the UN, Yeltsin would not be able to sell that to his own

'

It says somethingfor their pragmatism that K(lZ.yrro. y,/,',i. ..

Churkin had all acupted that thtTe was a Itimate
NATO in helping the UN. So tllfomment ofthe "
,
thefirst thing. They were ready to acupt this, as long as ,
UN (ontrols. Then we (arne into the question ojdolt air
whtTe the UN (ommandtT(ould (allup a NATOplant
troops were under allack. The Russians bought that. So
we (auld carry the Russ;(l1/s with us on NATO h,/pi", ,'''' 1/.1
What thty would ntver agru to was that the
control ojths
i procedllre.

;;::;;;:

Owen believed that independent NATO action would

international community down an cast-west fault line: th
would be forced to come to the aid of the Serbs. Much IS
Russia's historic alliance and cultural affinity with the S
fact, for Moscow it ,vas a question of slrategic and political
Russia refused to allow Washington (and to a lesser exre?t
dictate the new terms of conflict resolution and determllle

t further still: he became convinced of the potential for

'cc wen
_ 1 conmct,
'Make no m'lstake,' he Sal' d, 'the great
'"
nite a glob;u
"
__lI.a'to Ig
fII"I
la.
B
___
OSn
r
ove
aligning
Foreign Secretary, Owen immediately began a
are
.
A IOnner British
" III what he thought was a
e, to try to rem
exerCIs
tion
limita
toward
military
intervention.
The day after the
entum
mom

us Sarajevo was beginning to bury the first of its dead,

as
boIn
to Rome and picked up Thorvald Stoltenberg. From there,
()wren
flew to Belgrade. They drove across the Drina into north
twOBosnia, to the shattered town of Zvornik, for a meeting with
.-em n KaradZic. On the way, Owen heard General Rose speaking
BBC World Service, giving the impression that the possibility
Ibat me bomb had not been ftred by the Serbs had not even crossed
""nind. '} thought to myselfBlimey, e better be told a few things,
.
lsrryofDefence... I hope the
.-I I made a quick phone call to the Mm
message got across.' Kar.l.dfic used the meeting in Zvornik to deny
IIIP"nsibility and to stress that the Serbs would respond negatively to
., anempt to use force against them, Owen left convinced that any
IiDd ofu1timatum would be, as he put it, a 'red rag to a bull'.
The next day he: flew to Brussels to a meeting of the European
Uoion Foreign Ministers where he advised caution, There he argued
that NATO should not adopt an independent stance - that it
...... '''"'' no independent ultimatums, but rather continue to offer'
to back up UN initiatives. Owen saw this as the only way of
.."",,,,, the Russians in the peace process.
a flurry of diplomatic exchanges. General Rose went ro
and returned to Sarajevo determined to get the Serbs and
i Government to agree to a ceasefire and a weapons with
plan. NATO ambassadors gathered in Brussels for a meeting
Noh Atlantic Council, scheduled for Wednesday, 9 February.
Amenea s and the French arrived both pushing for a NATO

n'm aLnst the Serbs, The night before the scheduled session,
,
tned to have the discussion cancelled, by informing their
that General Rose was working on a demilitarization
and was on the verge of clinching it. A NATO ultimatum
,
argud, would only derail [he agreement by infuriating the
d sh g [hem
lll
into defiance.
NI 0 Secreta
ry
General Manfred Woerner consulted the
.amb
. assadors, and found that the British were isolated in their
to NATO action.
As one Western diplomat recalled: 'The
reprentafve
I sald theTe was no need to hold the meeting

IW

:::

,","
"!'

347

A QUESTION OF CONTROL

BOSNIA

because General Rose had an agreement. We checked t/,"",.

independent sources and fo n that this was not so. It wa.
that a head of steam was bUlldmg up. At the meeting itself.
British attempt to have it cancelled, we were presented with
ing paragraphs [for a draft NATO communique]. The
up with a version that said to the Serbs, in effect, ;Pl;;;
:
selves, without any threat to enforce this. The British wanted
everything to the UN.'
On 9 February, two crucial meetings took place in
Sarajevo airport, the commanders of the two armies were
together by General Rose; and in Brussels, despite the
Britain, the NATO council meeting went ahead as scheduled.
General Rose had been working on the
airport
for days. He had drawn up a Four-Point
sent to them as, in effect, a non-negotiablefoil accompli: first
diate ceasefire; second, the ....nthdrawal of heavy weapons to
t\venty kilometres from Sarajevo, or their surrender to UN
third, the interpositioning of UN troopS between the two
at key locations; and fourth the setting up of a joint 0.'",,';'
meet daily to agree the details of the Plan's implementation.
It was not easy. The Serbs initially opposed the Plan. In
ings with them, in the days running up to 9 February, K>nldlil
Rose that the Serbs would agree to placing their weapons
inspection, but not UN control. He argued that the B......
superior manpower (which was true) and that the Serbs
superior fire power to prevent their front-line p"";ti, ,;: "
by Bosnian infantry. 'I told him to get lost,' ,- claimed
them they were now operating in completely changed
cumstances, and that inspection was not enough.' olonl :

eighth, Rose met the Serb Chief of Staff Manojlo l\
agreed to Rose's Four Point Plan, and agreed to otttend the
meeting the following day.
Later that evening he met Jovan Divjak, the Deputy
of the Bosnian army. Divjak was a flamboyant and popar
he was not as influential as his rank suggested. The Bosan
two Deput}' Commanders - Divjak, a Serb, and StJepan
Croat. Their appointments reflected the desire of the
Government to maintain at least the appearance of
the High Command. Divjak rolled out the red ca t
put it, 'to show him that the members of the Bosnian
itarily, intellectually and culturally on his level beeause we

1::

an

;;i:

eliStinguishe
that evening and had a very relaxed conversation. I think
... 'di ner
jDt}' n had a bottle of wine'. Rose told Divjak that the Serbs had

d military figure in the UK. We offered him a mil

their hea,,! wea.pns outsie a twenty kilometres'

ev;:o withdraw
the City. D"'pk promised that the Bosnian
around
duS. zone

D I:ould attend the meeting at the airport the following day.

k was. getting above .imself. He was acting beyond his
t Divjaauthon
ty. Izetbegovlc had already decided that his
.,e

leg! 'mate

the meeting. lzetbegovic took the view

ent would notSerbsattend
alone to take action: why

should the pres

chat it was up to the
the Boslian Government be required, w.hen all the onus was
! The market square bombmg had created an
Side?
011 the Serb
entirdy new international climate. The Bosnian Government sensed
closer than ever to winning international military inter
tbat it
_tion. lzetbegovic feared that Rose was concocting a plan that
would undennine NATO's new resolve and produce a compromise
1bat would obviate the necessity for air-strikes. He was right.
Rose waited at the airpon. The Serbs arrived, the Bosnians did not.
Rote was furious. He was under intense pressure to produce an agree
.au mat would allow the anti-intervention lobby in NATO to argue
1Mt me threat of air-strikes alone was enough, and that therefore no
rum was necessary. NATO ambassadors were meeting that very
.., I Brussels, and Rose knew that this was his only real chance of
J.ding what he thought would be a disaster - the bombing of
lab positions by NATO warplanes while the UN forces under
his
were eU wthin range of Serb guns that would be, he
, used In r
etahation.
stormed into town. He went to Divjak's office and demanded
W?y the Bosnian Army had not honoured Divjak's promise
r!::V10US night.
Divjak told him the President had over-ridden
e
mande
d
that
Divjak take him to the President immedi
.
PresI em
lzetbegovic was in the middle of a television interview
which he said: 'I think that a combination of talks
only solution - talks alone cannot bring results,
'
'' n
"",eed' here Simult
aneous pressure on the aggressor which
'
Llllg ne tn
to use force
r
. If there IS. enough pressure from the
th. en t
hey will hand
back territory.'
. 0,. ,'"".d
, .pted the CNN meeting and told lzetbegovic that if he
,"
, IS a::my COmmand
to the airport immediately he would
the Bosman
1 Gvemment bee
lore the entne
. world. Accord.mg
'he (ROse said he
would inform the international public
eDCt: of

was

=
:::'

;
' ;d.:;;::"

349

A QUESTION OF' CONTROL

BOSNIA

that the Bosnian Government and Army did not want

and that we would be responsible for the continuation of the
and that the Serb side had agreed to negotiate and that
refused'. Menacingly, Rose also hinted that there was no
the Serbs had fired the market square bomb. He said the wodd ..
not forgive the Bosnians for failing to seize this chance for
lzetbegovic, chastened and intimidated by the British G,
,,,,
his delegation to the airport and issued a grovelling apology
'misunderstanding'.
Within an hour. Rose had the verbal agreement of both
Nothing was written down, nothing signed. Rose said he
that in the Balkans, signatures were, in any case, wonhless.
menr was communicated to Brussels.
The NATO ambassadors, meanwhile, were drawing up
matum. Britain's reluctance was swept aside by the <o", "".
the other members. The United States and France led the
the end of the day, NATO had issued a lengthy ulrimanun
Serbs: they were to withdraw their heavy weapons to a
twenty kilometres from the city centre, or place them unde. ...
trol of the United Nations. A tenday deadline was set to
Any weapons still in place after the expiry of the deadline
subject to airstrikes by NATO warplanes. The ultimatum
referred to the United Nations.
Rose now began a race against the clock. He had ten chys
ment the Plan, in order to head off air-strikes. From day
Serbs responded to the ultimatum defiantly. KaradZiC said
shoot down as many planes as possible - up to forty per cent
first wave, he said. For days, not a single weapon was wi,M
IIIi
placed under UN controL A handful of ancient artillery
dragged into Lukavica barracks and unarmed U N military
were allowed to go and look at them. It was a farcical piece
relations by the Serbs, which did nothing ro meet the
the NATO ultimatum, or of the airport agreement. But
Rose's spokesmen appeared daily to declare that progress was
.
made.
Two days into the ultimatum period, on 12 February, the
inserted a new condition: in return for their withdrawal of
weapons, the Bosnian Army should withdraw its infantry

,.j.

n.

":';::I

frontline positions. Again this was quite outside the

matum and the airport agreement. The Serbs were
with NATO. Despite General Rose's implausible op'cimj,",
]50

....
..

be hurtling towards the first combat action in its history.

led up with international television crews expecting a
$IJIJevo
Desert Storm bombing of Baghdad in 1991.
at f he
repe
the scenes Rose's staffhad entered into intense negotiations
Be
.
Serb leadership. T \eir priority was to persuade .the Serbs to
,"til
convince NATO that the terms of the ultimatum had
do enou h to
s first demand was that the heavy weapons of both
Rose'
.
.
been me .
I ' terntory 10 the
ra
iy 'neut
.des hould be concentrated on the on
i
5
t
at Sarajevo airport which was controlled by UNPROFOR.
rbS rejected rhis. General Rose then proposed five locations,
considered and then turned down. Finally, as the
wbi h the Serbs
the Serbs were allowed to choose the locations
closer,
line grew
.
were to be concentrated and placed under UN
weapons
their
which
trol'. They chose eight - five outside the city and three inside. This
jafuriated the Bosnian Government, who said the Serbs had chosen
the very strategic heights from which the city had been subjected to
bombardment for lWentytwo months. Ejup Ganic thumped the table
with rage when he saw the map of the locations, and angrily
denounced UNPROFOR for colluding with the Serb side to come up
with a scheme that would block airSlTikes without changing the
IttItegic reality of the siege of Sarajevo.
The tenday ultimatum period brought the UN into a bitter public
4ispure with NATO over the definition of the word 'control'. On 9
ftbruary, there seemed little doubt about what 'control' meant. It did
DDt mean supt!rvision, or monitoring. It meant that UN forces, and
DDt the Serbs, would wmmand usc of the weapons. The Serb finger
would not only be off the trigger; the trigger would be under UN lock
and key. Bur, early in the ultimatum period, the UN interpretation of
t constituted control began to slip. Soon General Rose's staff were
.
IDIlstlOg hat the UN did nor have
to have physical possession of the
10 order to exercise
effective control over them. 'There are
t methods of control,' Lieutenam Colonel Simon Shadboh
IUd
. . u can observe them, yOll know where they arc, you can react
.
lIIlmedlate1y. Wc are
qUltc con fiIdcnt that they WII! be under our con
bQI ' Th'IS, to the Bosnian
Government, sounded like the deliberate
down of the NATO ultimatum
by the UN on the ground.
through the NATO ultimatum period, not a single Serb
&un had een handed
over to the UN . On 15 February, UNPROiOR Stopp
'

, ed ISSumg daily progress reports. 'We arc no longer in the

-..,,uer
,- s gam '
e, the.lf spokesma said.
'\hat matters is the overall
n
BUt thc
Overall trend was clear. The Serbs had no intention

. :_
1f'P"-

n:;:

:.n

ns

_ .

li
7Y

3Y

BOSNIA

A QUESTION OF CONTROL

of complying. They were going to take NATO to the wire.

Four days before the ultimatum expired, John Major
Moscow to see Russian President Boris Yehsin. Mter their
Yehsin made public his fury with the US. He said that the Wesl
take no decision in the Balkans without Russia's consent,
expressed his satisfaction that Major agreed with him.
The crucial intervention came the very next day. On 17
Yeltsin scnt a letter to the Bosnian Serbian leadership. [J"lM... l
his envoy Churkin, the letter appcaled to the Serbs to
heavy weapons. Yeltsin guaranteed rhat he would send l{u""," ''''
to areas from where Bosnian Serbs had withdrawn. Mter
negotiations, Karadiic and Mladic accepted his offer and, in
complied with the NATO ultimatum. Within hours, the
mititary vehicles were moving across Serb-held territory
weapons either to be ,vithdrawn altogether or placed
centration points where the UN could inspect them. Four
Russian troops were moved immediately from their base in
Slavonia where they had been deployed as part of the
UNPROFOR force in Croatia in 1992. For Karadiic, it was a
of sorts: 'It was very important that Russian troops were de;pold
and that no important moves could be made without
Yehsin.' For the Russians, it was a clear diplomatic triumph.
had earlier been asked to send Russian troops to Bosnia,
repeatedly refused. He agreed now when the stakes wen
"'
they had ever been, thus gaining maximum diplomatic a,
establishing Russia as a key player in international efforts
war. When the Russians arrived in Pale, they were greeted by
of cheering Serb civilians as though they were a liberating
General Rose was not consulted on the deployment of
troops. 'h's news to me,' he said, 'but I welcome good rroopI
whichever country they come.' Hours before the expiry of the
line, as his officers hurried around the Bosnian
checking sites where rogue tanks and artillery
deployed or 'stuck in the snow', Rose declared that, as
passed, he fully expected to be in bed, sound asleep. The
would, he said, be 'just another Monday'.
d rO
The NATO ultimatum was routinely referred
!
ten-day period as an ultimatum 'to lift the siege 0; ;
ell
f
it was nothing of the sort. Even as the Serb guns
became dear that the siege would remain as tight as ever. !he
positioning of UN troops along the front line, particularly 10

;,!::

brought the eventual partition of Sarajevo - a key Serb war aim

embryonic green line appeared, policed by interna
e doser. An
a orces. \-Yhcn asked whether the UN was not, in effect, divid
on Sarajevo in the way they had divided Cyprus three decades
pokesman, Petr MacFarlane, 5jd, without a
lier, UNPROFO
only an .mtenm measure, pendmg an overall
thiS
IS
'But
. of iron)':
cment' . So. of course, was the original UN deployment in Cyprus
'ntcrim measure which had become a pennanent state of affairs.
an
us did Radovan Karaclzic play a bad hand very well. He had been
teen, by the international community, to compromise on weapons
withdrawal. His guns had fallen silent; me killing in Sarajevo stopped.
The partition he so badly wanted was beginning to take real shape,
and he did not even have to supply troops to defend the urban fron
tier of his state - the UN were doing it for him. The Bosnian
Government fdt out-manoeuvred and humiliated. Karad1ic, incredi
bJc though it seemed, had emerged as the principaJ beneficiary of the
NATO ultimatum to use force against him.
But the bombardment did stop. The atmosphere in Sarajevo light
ened immensely. People took to the streets again. The trams started to
run. Businesses re-opened. UNPROFOR opened me new 'blue-route'
ICrOSS the airport so that small quantities of commercial goods could
come into the city. Prices began to fall. For a time it was possible to
eve that the city's agony was ending. It was an illusion. Osloborijenj
editor, Gordana Knezcvic. summed up the bewildered mood of the
city in this period. 'It is as though,' she said, 'our death
sentence has
been commuted to life imprisonment. It is hard to feel
happy. But we
do al least feel relieved, for now
.'
centre,

Th

th:'o::'
!;:!

35'

J5J

GAINING MORAL GROUND

25

GAINING MORAL GROUND

The Washington Agrument
February 1994

S policy towards Bosnia ha run hot nd cold since Clinton

office. In reality, there was httle Washmgton could do. The
the Muslims and th" C...
had seized seventy per cent of Bosnia and
had been drawn ine
l
A
rest.
the
for
other
were killing each
and
NATO countries
,
Bosnia
into
trOOpS
send
to
ing
was unwill
(at best) about the use
alent
ambiv
were
d
groun
the
on
S
trOOp
fo nding the war was
power. After VanccOwen, any proposal
o. The move to
ply a disguised version of a Serb-Croat partltl
m-Croat f"
a
Mush
create
. ".
the Muslim-Croat alliance - and
d
the
thene
streng
and
dshed
put an cnd to their mutual bl
Government. It came as a surpnse.
'
was an i
The establishment of the joint federation
diplomatic
in particular because it was a graceful
_
,
one of the
by
rmed
perfo
rs
dance
ootcd
flat-f
morass of
thc
and
ed
United States. If this fragile creation surviv
lifelinc. It would
new
a
get
would
ims
Musl
the
small
to isolated Muslim
the delivery of humanitarian assistance
attrace to Sanevo,
more
holds, and perhaps what was even .
.
Ammlstranon, It
on
Chnt
the
pro-intcrventionists within
Bosman Government
enable the delivery of weapons to the
off half of an arms
Croatia would no longer block or skim
kin in Bosia. The
only for this 'taxation' to be repeated by its
tied up fightmg the
Government Army would no longer be
on the heels of the
but free to face its Serb foes. It came
major problem of
EU action plan - in theory it solved the

a more nonn
them
gave
to the sea for the Muslims and

:::

disjointed state.
.
cd at
formally maugurat .
Months before the federation was
most
but
Bosnian,
White House on 2 March, 1994, Croatian,
d the scenes
behin
ing
work
were
mats
diplo
tandy American
.
st 1.
as early s Au
deal together. The idea was on the table
an, Clmto s
night over dinner in Zagreb Charles Redm
.
and
e Mmlster,
Prim
sat flanked by Haris SiJajdiit, Bosnian
the
an was struck by
Granic, his Croatian counterpart. Redm

354

were interested in making a deal. But he said 'neither was

h sides
the tough steps to make it happen'.
take
ng to
months of efforts there was no breakthrough. The
next
For the
Croats and Muslims just got worse and the two sides
n
etwee
fighting b
more entrenche. 'Bot? sides always had good excUSes. There
beCame
.
y of provocatlons. Ihere were plenty of broken promises,'
lent
were p
recalled Redman.
Washington began to exert pressure on Zagreb to Stop its forces
the Muslims in Bosnia. In everal meetings with
6ghting against
,
.
Redman, Chntons speCial envoy, and Peter
Charles
Tudjman,
Galbraith, US Ambassador to Croatia, stressed that the Americans
were committed to the independence and territorial integrity of

six

Croatia. They made it clear that support for a state's territorial integ

rity was a universal concept which couJd not be allowed to be applied

to one country of former Yugoslavia and not to another. If Croatia

wanted to grab its chunk of Bosnia, then it couJd forget Washington's

backing for Zagreb's quest to assert authority over the nearly one

third of the country under Serb control. By visiting Serb-held parts of

Croatia, Galbraith said he 'made the point that we understood the
narure ofthe suffenng of the Croatian people'.
The turning point came in January. Redman had lunch with some
one he called a 'sen
ior Croat' who explained how Tudjman saw him
self .In erms of Croatian history. If the president couJd be persuaded
that t
h
iS agreement would confirm his role in history, then he might
uch a step. Redman played on Tudjman's sense of destiny.
an asked: where is Croatia going? The implication was dear.
.
.
Croatla
was bemg
threatened with sanctions.
Thc Croatian Army had about 30 000 soldiers
Io d
in Bosnia. Redman
i down the Iine, C'
reb behaved or it could end up isolated
Ither Z
ag
iR1 '1tw counterpart Serbia
. Next came the phone calls.
'
n?t, by any stretch, a flurry of telephone
calls or high-level
...:
saId Redman. 'It was enough to know that this
die
initiative had
__
"g f the President of the United States as well as the
U
mon. l rnanaged to arrange a lew
1:
calls or messages to be
c:
nOm key Europeans,' he added, apparently referring
to
f""! _ _
.
any whiCh, from the stan m

1991, had taken on Croatia as

a
dient.
e US streS
'
. .
sed
I. tS concern about ongomg
'
atrOCItIes committed
-_
'Ilinst the MUSll
msby th,Sosn an Croats, wh0 - they aga. stressed
m

backed b
Zagreb. Galbraith secretly scnt
,...
someone to visit sevn er-tegov'
.
mao 'w.e got a pICture
of absolutely appalling

bachl

upean
ddivtred

"'""" ; HY

35S

GAlNING MORAL GROUND

BOSNIA
kept without belin. r....
conditions in which prisoners were being
were
hcatings,
there
which
in
,
shelter
SO
uate
inadeq
with
c
He suggested that the ase cold be war imes, and that
be considered war on"';...
responsible for the atroCities might .
the camps. The
He went public with his condemnatIOn of
clear.
rnment ",,,i,,,dl
US efforts to persuade the Croatian Gove
fears that
were
there
b
Zagrc
In
from within Croatia itself.
rn
Weste
that
shots
the
calling
his henchmen were
shock
ne
genui
also
was
taken control. There
the Serbs.
were seen to be behaving like their foes,
that Zagreb was upset.

was

The Croatian Government undersloodfirst Ihal lhis sorlofactitr

ily waJ inhumane and wong, an1 ucond, thaI il WIlS vuy CO!tIy
.
.
.
to Croatia in lerms of lIs InternatIOnal reputatIon, to lis rtlah01U
with Europe and tht Uniled Slates.. .
. .
. .
.
. . . thert's a strongfuHng hert that CroatIa IS a vlthm ojetm
cleansing and a victim ofwar crimes.
.
The (onduct ofthe people that the Gnmmt was spporhltf
in Bosnia was vtry dangerous Jor CroatIa. It was losmg mtmll
ground in this owrall conflicl.
politician,
For Ivo Komic, a long-time Bosnian Croat
im-Croat
Musl
a
on
of the Croats' future in Bosnia hung
ina. the
Posav
from
s
Croat
His Plan was supported by the
that
kn
they
se
becau
a,
Bosni
l
Sava River Valley, and centra
an
Croatl
ate
a
sear
d
create
which
ia
nic partition of Bosn
.
e ItS borde. In fact,
in Herzegovina would leave them outSid
d the frontiers of
,
two-thirds of Bosnia's Croats lived beyon
with it at all.
fy
identi
not
id
d
and
state
minial
nation
t, Muslim and Serb
which included an equal number of Croa
had been
who
s
cantons, offered hope to those Croat
Croats from
even
and
their homes (by Serbs, Muslims
was
It
war.
the
of
Herzegovina) at the beginning
Catholic Church.
l state. An
The Plan envisaged a decentralized federa
.
lim
14 September, 1993, to create this Croat-Mus
to
and then a confederation with Croatia, failed
, ...
.. n
was eve
who
ic
Gran
Mate
ter
Minis
n
, ,
Foreig
p
';
,"
the
II
;
.
n
,
adversaries as constructive and patient - and

th" ...

ister Silajdzic would reach an agreement, bu then it imPrime Min

f
ell apart. Throughout te autumn, Galbraith saw that
1
ediatc y
efforts, the bloodshed, destruction and suffering
ite their feverish
.
been
immense. There was not yet any support for
war had
p s neW
. !hi
'"
among
the
power-brokers on the ground.
ent
the agreem

:s

Throughout thn period, as they wert trying 10 reach agreemmt,

Ihet( would be Jome new atrocity: a Bosnian Muslim viI/age was
Jaughttrtd by the HVO or renegade HVOjactions. This would
thm bring Iheir efforls to build afideration and lonfidtralion 10
a l(ruching halt.

But it showed the Clinton Administration that there was room for

m:rnocuvre. It was enough to convince diplomats that with sufficient

pressure - which the US could also exert on the Muslims - a confed

f
irst step was for the Croatian Government
to get rid of Boban and his allies. 'It was in December of 1993,' said
Galbraith, 'that I was informed that Mate Boban would be taking, as
it was put to me, a long vacation.'
For the US diplomats, making it public that Boban and his cronies
did not enjoy the support of mOSt Bosnian Croats was an important
dement in garnering public support in Croatia. Within Bosnia, how
r, ate Boban and his crew held the power. Komic tried to under
m.me It, by constantly meeting with Tudjman - fostering his
relations
With Zagreb. In early February, Korns;, presented his Plan to
a Sabor
assebly of eminent Croats from the diaspora
and forme;
ugos
laVla ',"'ho gathered in Sarajevo. Distressed by the disastrous
.
ltate of aftairs 10
Bosnia-Herzegovina (and the fact that if the war
.
U
ed there would be no Croats
left anywhere but Western
.
::
oVlna), the Sabor approved the Plan.
the NATO ultimatum - after the
Market square bombing
an 5 e rua y
Sara'
r - for the Serbs to withdraw their artillery from around
' cU
i ni red States was trying to push together Muslims
and
t f
C
0, r the time being at least,
were sworn enemies. Another
hI one from the
United Nations, was aimed at bringing
Czoatia
O
r.
3 February, the Security Council set a two-week
dead.une
_",,0< TOatla
to pull out its regular Army troops or face the
.
-'-:-'i ces. The 1m
prICit
' th
reat was that Croatia would J'oin Serbia
.
.
...... UN sanctions and worI .
d Isolation.
'" 'pparent SUcce
ss 0f the NA1"O uItimatum
round Sarajevo had

the int
.
ernatlonal commu .
nity new resolve. On 16 February,

eration was possible. The

D
ng

:
1IItuna:
:'
e.

JS7

BOSNIA

GAINING MORAL GROUND

Redman and Galbraith urged Tudjman to abandon the idea of a

statdet in Bosnia. They asked him to reconsider the proposal

ate a federation - and finally a confederation. In return, the

promised to help (and hasten) Croatia's ecoomic, P."liticai and

racy integration into the West. They also remmded him that ">, 01..
native was grim.

By coincidence that night, Galraith had already been ,c1

,od,uIcd ,
.
.
message : Croatia
give a speech to the general public.
choice of joining the West economically and politically or

!"lIS

;::i.:1:::

nd
Serbia's destiny - isolation, economic coua " ' .

warfare. Croatia could not expect international

drawal from Croatia' when its Army

in
Herzegovina. The world c?mmuity wou1 no longe expend
resources to uphold Croatia 5 frontiers when It seeks to Vlolate

anomer country't.

mn
...
The Croatian Foreign Ministry lost no time in ,"
Galbraith. The leadership had been considering the proposals

ward by Ambassador Redman. Negotiations could begin. It

breakthrough everyone was seeking.

ia ....
n
The entire agreement remained in the air until the pa
,
iS was
Washington. 'I flOally decided that the best way to do th

It waS not entire!y convincing, but as long as it

remained
tvluslirns.
ther it would be an Import'.lnt element of any settlement the Muslims even ifthe federation did
not function as
(I'Cngthcning
srog<
I.. one-year anniversary
tILe
By
- celebrated in WaShington
visaged.
e t c spicuous absence of
Izetbegovic - few of the major
Wl h he on
eJe
Feder
ation
(and
none
the
ofthe Confederation) had yet
of
nts
been
plemented. There was, however, no ghti between the two sides
.
and there had even been a handful ofJOint mlhtary operations against
the Serbs. The Muslims had used [he four-month ccascflre from New
Year's Day, 1995, to get arms. Croatia, and by virrue of this, the
Bosnian Croats , let weapons through. The agreement continued
to
depend on the suppOrt of Washington and its ability to
persist in
.
exerting pressure on both Sides, so [hat they could see the bene
fits of
rbe alliance.

;
:

I It wurants mentioning that, striaiy speaking,

the stated aim ofthe inter
IIlrional community was not to secure Serb withd
nwal from Croatia and that
Ibe UN force
not been originally dployd to upho
ld Croatia's frontirs.

had

all of the parties and focus them on what was at stake. The

tions were carried out in a different way - it was very in'''n,i.'.

Redman. In Washington, there was not a single fac-to-face

between the twO delegations. Redman and Galbrnth would

the document with the Croats, then join Victor

Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the Bosnian d,
.
the next room. For the US, said Galbraith, once the parnes

i,!!

even if in separate rooms, it was important ro keep them

thoy <ompleted the job.

' said
It was an unlikely victory for
Prime Minister. 'Mr Redman and his
This was the way the things wen:: sorted out - quite .
really surprised by the speed in which Americn
was
stood that this was a good idea and that the
Over the next four days, they negotiated
on KomiC's proposal to create cantons. With a stroke

Muslim and Croat mini-states virtually disappeared.

In the next year Tudjman exerted pressure on rus p['OXle5.

height of absurdity. Those very politicians who had

up Bosnia now spoke out in favour of a common

358

359

TO THE MOGADISHU LINE

26

TOTHE MOGADISHU UNE

The Battlefor Goraide

April 1994

:;li:

In the aftermath
pring 1994 brought unexpected new hope.
'
;
;,E
had
'
NATO ultimatum that
the
ol
peace
contr
took
them
US and Russia between
ring
the
broke
in
ss
succe
their
of
US, on the back
off the deal that
pulling
after
Russia
ment;
Agree
Washington
ns in the capital un....
suaded Karad1ic to place his heavy weapo
adrift since their
berg,
Stolten
ald
Thorv
and
Owen
Lord
control.
were now ,i,j,-linl.l
ible,
invinc
HMS
board
on
vours
endea
less
e the coding of the
great powers of a world that was sriIl, despit
.
a.
f
OV
d
: Bosm The
War, stubbornly hi-polar, had aligne
is
h
an
an,
.
envoy, Ambassador Charles Redm
.
urut.e n their
Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly Churkin,
iVISIon
est d
tion not to let Bosnia create a new east-w
were
kin
Chur
and
an
Redm
h,
Marc
By the end of
n
withi
was
ment
setde
peace
comprehensive
to th", pulbli< a
they could extend the Sarajevo model
troopS; '
sation of hostilities; the interpositioning
ions ofbotb
posit
the
heavy weapons. They were convinced that
take
to
ade
Belgr
to
were converging. Churkin rerurned
ment
agree
n
ingto
Wash
the
the momenrum for peace that
.
d
create
NATO ultimarum had

elsewhere. They had been a constant source of dan

upplied than
Serbs, launhing raids from inside the pocket well
osnian
the B
:afir or
r Serb territory and, from nme to time, inflicting heavv
. I losses on
lfltO
iegers.
beS
the Serb
also by far the most strategically important of the
Gor:d:de was
the m n road between two large Serb-held towns
led
stradd
. II
thfee
.
segrad and Foca. Both had had Muslim
the Orina valley - Vi

'

;::

in
Thr big goalfor mr whtn I returnrd to Belgrade
tte
(l crasrjirr, bUI a (ompl
just
7101
gr.
arran
10
Iry
was 10
bun
ad
ofhostilities, somtthing along thr lines ofwhat
in Croatia, the msation ofhostilitiel, and the
UN troops. I think we really did have a chance.
got to Belgrade things started to go wrong.
t.
was on the phon
embassy ill Belgrade, Ambassador Redman
told me that Gorazde hadjust been bombrd.

,]:""': I!::':

was
Of the three eastern enclavesl, Goraide
. It was by far
crack
to
Serbs
the
for
nut
toughest
city had been
three, and the Bosnian defenders of the

ajoritieS before 1992, but had been 'cleansed' with efficiency and lit
de military effon at the start of the war. In Gorazde the local Muslims

had held

out. The enclave now separated twO chunks of Serb-held

communication between them difficult, dangerous,

territory making
Il\d sometimes impossible without crossing into neighbouring

Montenegro. Furthermore, Serbs had identified Gorafde as the link

through which Sarajevo would forge a land-bridge to Sandzik, a
Muslim-populated region of southern Serbia and Montenegro, and,

&om there, to Turkey. The 'green transversal' as the ideologues of

greater Serbia called it. would be the landlink through which Muslims

would push an IslamiC arrowhead into the heart of Europe.

Nor had the enc ave been completely cut off from the rest of gov

ernment-held Bosma. For the first fifteen months of the war, Bosnian
troops - and thousands of civilians - had been able to move in and out
of the town by walking, over the mountains, under cover of darkness,
through Serb lines. It was a dangerous journey. But it was undertaken
&tquently.
roughout 1992 and part of 1993, a regular mule train
bad been d
nven III nd out of the enclave from a base camp at Grebak,

near Tmovo. Soldiers

ad civilians carried food, medical supplies,
.
arms and ammunltlon
along this route and, though the risk was
11ft ,
t the enclave alive1. When the Serb assault on Gorazde
III early A
pril, UNPROFOR officials played it down dismiss.
.
.
lrIg u asa d
verslOnary [actlC
I
to pull Bosman trOOpS away from other
.
IDore I mportan
t battle areas. Lord Owen thought differently;

..w:

ep

'

in private discunio,1J with KrajiInik. and Koljroic in

r
om 'When 'f W(lJ bU l',
'
d11Ig

up and we wert urlder no

.
1& Strbs were Jl'flOIlS
about taking Goraide. And I nroa
'"ou td Ihat
they were J
a
t
er Goraide. II was a urategic imper,r,
at1tJ1! aI
most,

for them.

1'he battle for Cor.

had be

the.
If

illusion that

az
-de began over tbe bUll
dIIlg of a by-pass. Bosnian
constructing a new road to make communications
Isparate chunks of territory safer. The construction work

BOSNIA

TO THE MOGADISHU LlNE

had been hampered by Bosnian Army raids from inside the

Ironically it may have been the speed at wruch the peace
moving that encouraged General Mladic to actwhen he
.
uncharacteristically, taken his eye off the ball after the suici
de.
Belgrade, of his only daughter. When he returned to Pale

P '''',.. '.

funeral, he learned that a comprehensive settlement that would

frozen existing lines of confrontation, appeared imminent. The

standing question of Goratde would have to be settled before

happened.

: ;

::

'

During the frrst week in April the Ser"b

::
;

first it looked like a re-run of me defeat (

.
earlier - Serb forces closing the noose around me town,

'gfrom ou,d,;
closer by the day, sending thousands of refugees fl,,,i',
there
But
itself.
wert:
tOwn
the
in
shelter
two
seek
to
villages
'
tant differences. First, Goratde, unlike Srehrenica a year '.""". ..

in name at least - a 'United Nations Safe ruea' and cOulOd

tection under successive UN resolutions. And second, the F,, :=
Sarajevo had shown how effective the threat of air-strikes could

General Rose was against air-strikes. He mought them '

tent wim his role as Commander of a peace-keeping force. H" I"
that frequent resort to air-strikes would push UNPROFOR
peace-keeping, to peace-enforcement. Peace-enforcement
aligning oneselfwith one side in the conflict..

::;:i;;::::

strict neutrality. It was not the job of a F

intervene to alter the course ofthe war in favour of one

use of air-strikes would turn NATO, in effect, into the
Air Force and fatally compromise UNPROFOR's neutrality.
cannot ' he was fond of saying, 'fight a war from white-painted

des.' He was frequently at pains to point out that he did no'' '....
military intervention in principle: as a soldier he took no posi.""
it. But he insisted that if the international communiry opted
out
the war on the Bosnian side, it should pull UNPROFOR

replace it with a force capable of fighting a war. His s

that NATO had a supply of green camouflage paint

.
the
the day when the mandate would change. He called
wl,i."
between peace-keeping and peace-enforcement, been
US
dIsastro
des and green, the 'Mogadishu Line', after the
peace
quenccs of United States's efforts to impose a
he
Somalia. In April, under immense international pressure,
crossed it.
Rose played down the seriousness of the Serb attack on

)6,

was that the Bosnian Serbs were purting pres

wn judgement
level
and had no serious intention of taking the
al
tactic
a the
spokesmen,
in early April, gave daily press brief
His
said.
he
JUfCk t'
ned to take the alarm out of Bosnian Government claims of
e;ig
UIgs
an imminent humanitarian disaster. Rose did not
ns dead and
doZ what he considered a little local difficulty derailing a peace plan

poe

?ch he believed was closer than ever to achieving a lasting solution.

But his own UN military observers in Gorafde, together with their
'Our

VI

revolted. On 7 April, a leaked document

UNHCR colleagues,
revealed that the accounts they had been sending to Rose's headquar
ters were sharply at odds with the account Rose was prenting to the

publiC. US Chief-of-Staff. General John Shalikashvili had publicly

ruled out a repeat of a Sarajevo-style ultimatum, arguing that the

weaponry around Gorazde could not be located with sufficient accu

racy to make air-strikes practical. General Mladic behaved as though

this were the green light he had been waiting for. The Serb bombard
ment and advance sharply escalated. The UN monitors sent an urgent
appeal to Sarajevo. 'The deam toll continues to rise and serious losses

of territory are occurring. If this is not serious", as UNPROFOR

teems to say in radio reports, I hope I don't see a serious situation
develop,' one monitor reponed. 'The situation today is again very seri
ous. We have repeated that our assessment of the situation is serious
Ind that the continucd potential for loss of civilian life is very high,'
the report went on.
If is 'Very disquieting to hear radio reportlfrom the intematjona!
medja that the situation if not urjous. From the BBG World
SrnJiu ntws oj5 April we heard :An UNPROFOR asussment
wid that it was a mmor attati. into a limited area '. W
e again do
not oncurwith thatposition. It is agrave
situation. It needs to he
rea"Z:d that the city emtre of Gorai.de
isjust over 3kmfrom the
Bosman Srrb armyfront line. l....oiok
ng at a small!and mass on the
SOuth ellsl ,orner a d

IS
Il mmor

n saytng
L mto
'
It
,
a
tt
llc
K
Il limit
ed
.
arta IS a blld assessm
ent, incorrect andSbO'Wl abso!utely no under
standing of
What is gomg on hert.

The UNH
CR, who also had representatives in the town, reponed
_
.a
.
"
!at a ten-day Scrb
"
assault had killed sIXty-seven people and wounded
325 mOSt
'
of'hem
"I
lians.
CIY
So unconc
erned was General Rose
about the consequences of the
e assauJ
t that, on 1 0 April, he was
on his way [0 Brussels to
I

Coraid

BOSNIA

TOTHE

address a NATO meeting. 'When I heard in Split that in

attack had been launched with tanks from three differeni:
into the Gora2:de pocket, of course, I flew straight back:

di'''<1in

Rose warned MJadic, by phone and by fax, to stop the attacks

Gorntde, or face NATO action. The attacks continued. Af;" ...

and being granted approval from the UN Secretary General's

envoy, Yusushi Akashi, Rose stepped on to the balcony of rus
floor office in the Sarajevo Delegates' Club, and, through an
window overlooking a communications cabin one floor below, he

....:

::::

the order that led to the first NATO ground assault in th" f""J'-
year history ofthe organization. At 1622 GMT, two
Force F16s dropped three bombs on a Serb artillery C I

The attacks continued as though nothing had happened. The

day, Rose ordered a second wave of air-strikes. At 1224
Monday 11 April, twO US Marine Corp F/A-18 Hornets
three more bombs on a group of tanks and Armoured
Carriers that had been firing directly into

Gorazde.Thr
Ji:::e ' !:
..t;:;,I

a truck were destroyed. Both sets of air-strikes were d'

forward air controllers whom Rose

ground by eight British

to Gorafde under the guise of United Nations

They were, in fact, all men of the British Special Air

What were the air-strikes meant to achieve? Rose justified
action on the grounds that Security Council resolution 836

action to deter further attack, rnther than to defend a <e,rri'to, t I

tect its citizens.

There was mormous preuure in the international (ommuni'l

.
indulge in air-sfriRll rather than in the sort ofdeturm,t aclivil1
that Wl were mgagtd in. This was oj (ourSt somethmg I UIIf

rllisting strongly because that would bring us in a slaft

.
here with the Bosnian Serb Army whm we were {met hm",
ing to stop thefighting, stabi/iu the situation.

But the air-strikes did not deter. The guns stopped m"moall
But NATO's pin-prick assaults did nothing to diminish the
muscle at Mladic's disposal. It left his army intact and
his resolve to continue the assault. rvIladic telephoned
that
screamed down the line for twenty minutes,

official would leave Serb territory alive. Mladic then

plan he had prepared the previous August when air
threatened against Serb forces seizing Mount 19man on the

MOGADISHU LINE

f Sarajevo: he rounded up
edge 0 while his forces in the

UN personnel and held them

north of the republic launched a
and mortar attack against the Government-held city
Karn
d1ic visited Mladic on the front line at Gorafde and,
va.
their forces grouped to continue hcir assault, the twO men,
ostcntanusly plaed cess. lf It had been Rose's intenton
undeterred.
nk
es he could scarcely have carned
it the very Idea of 3.J.r-st
to discred
. ff mote effectively. Around the world those who had cautioned
military intervention from the beginning uttered a satisfied:
,
'We told you so
The Russians, who had not been consulted, now set out to make
IIUfC that NATO would not act independently again. To them, air
IIb'ikes, however minimal, threatened to broaden the conflict. Vitaly
150

reJltJo5
r,S 'artiJ1ery
!a

Sl

Churkin made his way to Pale.

If was a very dangerous thing. IfNATO had reatted in the way

that they were urged to by the Bosnian Government, ifthey went
into somt massive bombing in the Gortride area, or ofthe Bosnian
Serb pOlitlom. fh,.re would have been all-out war with the UN
and NATO participating in it. And ojCOUTU I WOJ also worrying
aiJout reaction back home. which could have gone the wrong way
and Ihm would have had an international crisis on our hallds.
I newT' thought we were about to go into World War Thru liter
ally. but into major polifical strains, and a political crisis with
long-term adverse repercuslions.
Churkin believed thai if the western

.
alliance entered the war on the

of the Bosnian Government, calls

among Russian nationalists to
o the defence of
the Serbs would become unanswerable. Bosnia
ened to plunge the world

into a new east-west global stand-off.

ditknc 15 April the Serbs began their final assault. The Bosnian
es collapsed so
quickly that twO British SAS men found them
SUddenly on the
front line. Both were injured, one seriously.
collc:agues
informed Rose in Sarajevo, and requested
an urgent
Rose called for close air support, which UN
.
Council resolut
ions authorized in defence of UN personnel.
had to be authorized by Yasush
i Akashi. who was in
Karad1:iC. Rose telephoned
Pale and found Akashi setlunch with KaradZic. Their
conversation was taped
ll1ade publi
c.
need air
suppOTt now, Gener
'
al Rose told him.

" ti;',

BOSNIA

TO THE MOGADISHU UNE

'How about Dr KaradZic ordering an immediate ceasefire

immediate evacuation of our people?' Akashi replied.
'By the rime the message gets to the units on the ground

heard thaI something like thirty NATO airrraft were

not but we
c/
Gcmdde and that they were about to do a lot of
round
ar ing a
bombing.
The qUi'Stion I had in my mind was what {an 1 do? 1 had some
ry vigorolls conversations -u:ith Milafevu, and with the mosl
seniorperson among lhe Bosman Serbs here, Mr KrajiJnik. 1 was
also on the phone with Mr Alwshi in SarajNXJ and there was an
arranglmen! which was worked out by which the plann would be
ordered awayfrom Goraide, and there will be no bombing.

all be either dead or captured: an exasperated Rose responded.

got casualties, we've got to use Blue Sword [dose air support]

them out. Otherwise they'll all be killed.'

Akashi asked KaradZic what was going on at the Cora1de
Karadzic contacted Mladic on another line. Mladit said that
British soldiers had been injured they must have

bli,,,,,, th';;"
from

stated positions. 'Mr President: Mladic said. 'Do yo'"

not me? I am telling you the truth and they are

highly agitated, turned to Akashi and said 'They were on the
line! What were they doing on the front line? They are not
to be there.' Akashi over-ruled Rose's request for dose air
The wounded men had nOt strayed from their declared

They had simply been overtaken by the pace of the

later learned: 'The line collapsed so fast that they found

right there. The front line went past them without them
On

16

April, the Serbs announced that they had

mategic heights around Gomule.

As they had done

'f.

a year earlier, they now held Gorazde in the palm of,h"i,h.>d.

wcre at the very gates of the town, and their attack ,0.,""...<1.1
afternoon, Rose again requested dose air support. lbis

agreed. NATO aircraft took to thc skies. But the weather

They had to make more than one pass before they could
idenrify their targets. A British Sea Harrier jet was ,"'
>ok. by . .

to-air missile. The pilot ejected safely, and the plane

The mission was abandoned.

Churkin persuaded Akashi to call off the airstrikes. In return,

Krajinik promisd three things: . to stop the shelling; to pull back
Serb forces to a distance of three kilometres from the town centre' and
or so personnel who had been taken ho tage
to release the
.
e agrement was reached in the early
after the first air-Strikes.
.
everung, and was due to take Immediate effect. Talks would resume in
the morning.
None of the proises was honoured. The next morning, KaradZi
c
mumed from Banp Luka. Yasushi Akashi returned to Pale
from
Sarajevo. Vitaly Churki now found himself mediating not between
Ihe Serbs and the Bo ruan Government, but, bizarre

ly, between the

.
Serbs and the mternatlona! community. It was
a measure of the extent
. the
United Nations and NATO were identified
in Karad1iC's
8Und Wlth support for the 'Muslim
side'.
Karad1iC's behaviour infuriated Chur
kin, who later recalled:

lO

1D.whle

Theygaw me thispromise iflhree things they

'fJ)(Julddo. They had
Ifot released anybody.
They had notpulled bacR a single inchfrom
where th were standing.
?
And the shtfling continued.
'
.
Koradtli wasprfXrastmatm
g. After about two or three hours it
k(arne dear to
me thaifor reasons if his own he
didn't wan to
lome to an k'
.
0 agreement. So I told hIm
tlJnl Y .md ,r
ofthe opportun itieJ
thaI

lifi bel1lg missed, induding tlu ()""

nr
tunity to have sanc..ons I ttd
r
rand J waI
"ed oul ofthe muting.
"

In Pale, Churkin grew increasingly alarmed at the ,scola,,,

represented. Karadzit had disappeared; he had gone to
which was twelve hours away by road, and 'md "d>< ,
phone. The most senior Bosnian Serb leadr in town
.
Kraji"nik, the Speaker of Parliament. Churkin said

..:,!

t:::k;'

reluctant to take responsibility for anything. C

MiloeviC in despair. 'Do ] have to take on the job f
Republika Srpska personally?' he asked the Serbian
Churkin's concern was that NATO would respond to the
the British jet with further air-strikes.

When the shooting down ()/fhe British aircraft

hpp,,",J"":

rejMrl1 started coming in... 1 don't know whether

Akashi, on
.

the other hand,

was more accommodating. He was
at an! Straw that he could present as a sign of
Cf"'kin Contmues:

4"d M.r

. Akashi said ' W ,

" WhY cant we 01 I"asl have medic
Q
.!
al
,....,.0" tiolf" and Karadtic wry

eagerly said 'Oh yes, oh yes, let's

BOSNIA

TO THE MOGADISHU LINE

make that announctmtnt!' He undeTJtood that somethingpos

nuded to he announctdand he wallud to the waitingprlJt
and Dr Karadiif inviud me also tojoin them. But I didn't 'UIQftt
tojoin them. And after their little prw conjerenct somejour7l4l_
ists came ovrr to mt and asked me some questions and I didn't
mean to say this, bllt 1did. . . 1said Iwas very disappointed blCauu
in one weekend than I INd
i
I had heard more hrokm promsts
have bun auomplished.
should
more
Milch
lift.
my
all
heard in

;:of/e, hut they have remained only emptyphrases. Neitheryou nor

ptnonnd ha1Jl done any/hint. to use lhe mandate ofall those
lIr
tsolutiom to protect the people ofGoraide and the credibility of
r
Nations. The result is obviously tragic. Semtory
the United
people hold yOIl respomible for this situation. This
my
Gentrlll,
and there is not milch roomfor diplomatic hes
blading,
is
cOllntry
oraide
f
alls, I think that a seme ofmoral mpomibil
n.
l
fG
itatio
you
to leave theport ofUN Secretary General.
command
wol/ld
iry
you
can
do.
leaft
the
is
This

It was vintage Akashi. He told the waiting journalists:

Pmidrnt Karadtic and 1 agreed that all sides should rlSfrrlUI

themselves to thr maximum from all ojJtnsj1Jl activities. In t.
meantime we shall rNJif!'W the lalb and try to sign an
as soon as possible in order to stabilize the situation.
Karadiif agreed 10 an IIrgent evacuation of humanitarian pw
sonnelandpoplilalionfrom Goraide. UNPROFOR is ready to .
so tomorrow morning at 0800.

':::::

That day, Bosnian Serb troops and armoured v :' :

, The
occupied the town on the right bank of the Drina.
tinued unabated.
General Rose secretly ordered his SAS men to leave the
foot, undetected, in the middle of the night. The air-strikes
their cover. The Bosnian Serbs knew their true identity,. not
because the Americans had released video tape of the
television networks on which the voice of the forward air
could be heard, in unmistakable south of England "'''nn, ....M
the attacks. The international aid workers woke the next
find themselves - as they saw it - 'abandoned' by R.ose's
.
Mayor of Goraide, Ismet Briga, is said [Q have burst iOtoaid
he learned that the SAS men had gone. The international
were later evacuated by helicopter with, ofcou,
ation of the Bosnian Serbs_ Gorazde was being left to S
In desperation, President lzetbegovic wrote to Boutra
Ghali holding him personally responsible for the fate of the

in

place
The so-called soft arla has buome the most nsafe
world. The organization which you are headmg
almosl year
free territory of Goraide a UN protected area
to IhlS
refer
836
Suurity COllncil Resolutions 824 and
J68

Under intense pressure from the Americans and from the NATO
General Manfred Woerner, Boutros Boutros-Ghali asked
NATO to use its air power to deter further anack. The NATO
Council met in Brussels_ It was almost paralysed by internal division,
with the Americans pushing for air-strikes and the British arguing
tII:!.t this was incompatible with the existing UNPROFOR mandate.
US diplomats were contemptuous of the British position - which one
US diplomat privately described as 'really wet'. The British chided the
Americans for lacking the courage to put troops on the ground. The
North Atlantic alliance - not to mention the so-called 'Special
Relationship' between Britain and the US -was under strain as never
befOrt. The Council announced that it would take 'some days' before
response could be made to Boutros Boutros-Ghali's request.
On 19 April a gang of about fifty Bosnian Serbs stormed a UN
controlled weapons collection point inside the Sarajevo exclusion
2OOe, at Lukavica barracks. It was one of the locations designated by
the. 9 February Sarajevo ceasefire agreement. They seized eighteen
inti-air. craft guns while United Nations monitors under whose 'control'tIl
. e weapons had been placed as part ofthe implementation of the
S
:
:ceasfirc age.e n:ent, looked on helplessly. Mladic seemed to
be
n humli iating and defying te entire Western world.
. to mternatlOn
. ai
By 20. Apnl, the death toU, accordmg
bad
aid workers
nsen to 313
with morc than a thousand wounded, in less tha
;::eks, though Bosnian Government sources put the figure
DlUeh
g0" PreSident Clinton again demanded more resolute action
NAT
NAl'O reache
.
_ . com romise,
d an Internal
.
L _ , infu
nonethe
p . but one whICh,
...
n' ated the SntiS
"
"
.
h
I
t
issued
ultimatum
an
to
the
Serbs
"arning th
&bed th
that they would face further air-strikes unless they ful.
.. ree condit'Ions: an Imme
d"late ceasefire; a pull-back of troops
A distanCeof
"
three ki]ometres Irom
C
the town centre by the morOing
Secretary

'

In

by

CT.

COl

J"

BOSNIA

TOTHE MOGADISHU UNE

of Sarurday 23 April; and a withdrawal of heavy w"'p<>"",

distance of tvVenty kilometres by the evening ofTuesday
British bowed to presure in the interests of NATO unity;
protested that the ultlmarum set a dangerous precedent that
beyond even that concerning Sarajevo in February. It required,
first time, action only by the Serbs; it was directed, explicitly,

one side. The Sarajevo ultimatum, issued on 9

had

both sides to submit their heavy weapons to

the British, who had from the beginning treated all sides
regardless of the role each side was playing in the war, this

marum was, for the first time. singling the Serbs out as the
strained Anglo-American relations still further.
As the bombardment of Gora1de continued, Yasushi ru
",

to Belgrade detennined. once again. to 'announce somethin

g
;
", u...
to prevent NATO carrying out its threat. The United N"ri,
Secretary Shashi Tharoor went with him:

Wi were ofcourse crmsciouJ ofa great amount ofpruJUre on

part of((rta;n NATO member ftaW and ofcouru oftIN MITD'I
Secrt'fary General. 10 Set air action. Our concun was in =.!ir'
tht'judgement as 10 whtthtr that was nt'((ssary, whether .
there was a ptactful way out..

On Saturday 23, NATO southern Europe Commander,

Leighton Smith, contacted Akashi to ask him to authorize

on the grounds that the Serbs had not met condition one
NATO ultimatum - there was no ceasefire. Akashi refused

grounds that there was evidence that the Serbs had begun
ment condition two, the pull-back of heavy weapons (even

deadline by which this should have been completed had

passed). Akashi told Smith to give the Serbs more time.

same time, general Rose despatched a company of 150

to Gora1de.
Smith reported this to \"'oerner, who, fur ous that the =rubi!iti
ve
"
n'd
.
Y
NATO had been so compromised, inter
.
;:
: r.
edly called Akashi in Belgrade. Akashi, in n t
had made himself unavailable to come to the p hone. The
announced that the Bosnian Serbs had agreed to a ceasefi

: ::;

Sarajevo. and a pull-back of troops to a distance of thre'

i
ffi'od1'f
The Ukrainian troops made it into Gorai-de without d
were due 10 be followed by a company from each of the
37"

attalions. As they lined up on the tarmac at Sarajevo ai rport

. 'sh b
Bnn
the French, who were supposed to command the
to depart,
rctdy .
suddenly ordered to turn around and go back to bar
were
".
rano..

Over the head of the UN Force Commander they had been

;::So d by the French Defence Ministry, meeting in Paris, not to pro
General Rose appeared not even to be in command of his own
al force.
ulti-nation
III 'The B ritish and Ukrainians administered an agreement similar to
been carried out in Srebrenica the year before: demilita
that that had
pocket, ceasefire monitoring and the interpositioning
the
of
. tion
trOOpS between the Serb front line and the battered town.
A peace of sons descended, though. again, only after General
"'1" -

:;rUN

MladiC had substantially achieved what he wanted. It is questionable

whether he ever intended to take the town itself - with the single
exception of a munitions factory on the East bank of the River Drina

which despite Mladic's efforts remained in Muslim hands. Urban

infantry had always proved costly and drawn out for any side in the
Yugoslav wars. From his point of view it was sufficient to have the

e claves cllmcied and, by and large, tamed. They could be traded

in the future, as pan of some ove rall settlement.

The end (for now) ofthe Goratde affair left unresolved the dispute
that had so nearly torn the NATO alliance down the middle. The
British and French announced that if the Americans continued to
push for the policy known as 'lift and strike', they would withdraw
their ground troops. They spent the months that followed persuading

the Americans that they were serious, by drawing up detailed contin

pcy plans for an emergency withdrawal.

. The whole sorry episode no only pointed up divisions

t
within the
IOlemational community. It isolated
the Bosnian Serbs from their nat

: alli:s the Russians: and from their original patrons in Belgrade.

. evlc, who had, before the attacks on Gorazde began, 'sensed that
Russian help he was on the verge of clinching
a deal that would
Mil le to the lifting of sanctions, was furious with KaradfiC.
tt: Ok
. told Churkin that Karadfic had kept him in the dark about
10 Gora
1de. Lord Owen said later that [he Gorazde crisis had
the two rival Serb
leaders further apart than ever:

ts

For mt the mom th'IlIg about Gora:i;de was Ihe

tolalptrfidy ofthe
B . Serbs
toward Churkin andMilofevil. [believe that rela' onl bet'!JJren Karadi:.if
and Milofevil were never the samt aft
COratdt'.
'J'er
7"ty wert sh(}'lJ)1/
up 10 he hare-foud liars. all the time

/srllan

37'

BOSNIA

27

Jaying tlxy wtren't after Gorai:de when they were.

They lost the Jupport of the Runionsfor quite a while aftu tha t.
Which they dmrved. It WOJ outrogeoUl what happtned ow..
Gorai:de.

The Bosnian Government drew a lesson too. Air ,,il ,, die h

grail of Sarajevo's war policy - had come and gone with no

d o.
the course ofthe war. lzctbegovic was, by now resigne t
thing', he told a crowd in
all or
'We too will
the he ght of the GoraZde crisis. 'We have learnd our lesson.
.
only
the lesson is: we have to be strong bcxause In this world

no

go for

is respected.'

the Po
The other Sr brcn a andZepa, had been defeated
1993,
of
r
summe
the
in
e
offensiv
Serb
2 Trnovo fell to a
1

mule train into

twO,

..

Goratde ceased.

'A DAGGER IN THE BACK'

The Serbian Split
June 1994

an embargo
t first when Belgrade
nserb \caders, i seemed anot er Mach avel ian
by
.
rn
c
the
.
ty
i
uO
lOternatlQnal
hoodwlOk
to
Miloevic
Looking into the future Miloevic realized he had ittle
l
choice but
years of isolation
to endorse a new international Peace Plan. After
and rising economic deprivations, Serbia was paying a steep price for

announced

against Bosnian
manoeuvre

o m

two

its support of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. By bac

Milooevic hoped he could secure the lifting

king the Plan,

of sanctions

and end

Serbia's isolation. It would also give momentum to his efforts to get

rid of Radovan Karadiic.
For a year, since Karadzic had re ected the Vance-Owen Plan,

MiMevic had been quietly preparing the gr und for a split with his

o
n

brethren in Bosnia. Under MiloeviC's tight co trol, the Serbian media

began to cast Karadzic in a different ight. Less often was he depicted

as a Serbian patriot, instead there were hints that he was involved in
money-laundering and war-profiteer g.
Milooevic was abandoning his nationalist rhetoric which had made

in

him the most powerful leader across former Yugoslavia. The Bosnian

Serb leaders now stood for everything MUokvic no longer did - the
Serbian Orthodox Church, the Chetniks. and the other trappings of
ian nationalism. Serbia began to observe forgotten Communist
holidays whi!e 'RepubJika Srpska' celebrated tradi tional ones.
By trying
get rid of his rival. MiloeviC wanted
a scape
wh could be blamed for the murder and destruction, the

goat

to

to find

poverty and uncertainty. Otherwise he realized, his rule could be

CUt

short.

ultimatum to the warring parties to accept the Plan pu

by the Contact Group (comprised of the United Kingdom,
Fra ce, Germany and the United States) came a bit too early
ha
;o evlc. I":Ie ended up hng to ruh the ob; he would rathe
ve s
ly engineered Karadzlc s fall behind the scenes. Afte all, he
did n
lrho ?t wan.t Serbs to see him as the executioner of Radovan Karadzit,
.
IO thelr eyes was I
a )ero. He wanted to expose Karadbc as a
PDwer-hUngry
b oodthirsty gambler, and then make him disappear

Rus .
for

M:'t

37'

373

A DAGGER IN THE BACK

BOSNIA
from the political scene. In a land obsessed by its past, M'1o <",, dI

not want to be seen as a traitor in Serbian epics.

This rime it would radically differ from May 1993, When
Serb leaders spurned MiloeviC's efforts to promote the v",,,-O,,,,
Plan. At that time the embargo he had threatened then was
doned within days of being announced. The fi";' 1,"'l'i"""'ni"g

on 7 June from the President of the remnants of Yugoslavia,

Lilie, whose remarks carried weight since he took his " "
""'...

'i

from Miloevjc. It was only a hint ofwhat lay in store for the
Serbs. He said: 'ten million citizens of Yugoslavia cannot be
hostage to any leader who came from the territory of YU'goolaoi
neither Republika Srpska nor Republika Srpska Krajina,' in
to the Bosnian Serb 'state' and its counterpart in Croatia. ]n
l oevK.
words, Karadzic had no right to call the shots - only Mi
The Serbian President was convinced that it would take just
days for the Bosnian Serbs to come to their senses. He boasted
diplomats, 'Those who ha-.. confronted me have not long
But they did, so day by day, month by month, Belgrade turned
heat trying to break the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs.
Milokvifs influence over the Bosnian Serb leaders had e.p"""
his tics with the military remained dose, at the very least
Bosnian Serb officers were still on Belgrade's payrolls. Even
KaradfiC's regime grew increasingly paranoid and isolated, a year
he remained in power, the first Miloevic opponent to do so.
In the aftermath of the Gora,,".de crisis, the international
process, after more than a year, was revived, appearing in a

guise called the Contact Group. Owen, the EU m"di,uo,. ,,;il m.

formation was necessary to involve all the interested foreign
in particular Russia and the US. Otherwise a settlement
be reached, much less implemented. 'You had to find a ""y ,,"'
;mw
Americans were involved in the niny-gritty of n"go"i,,
then
in dirtying their hands in a settlement which they
and support.' He was right. The main protagonists had
- the
exploited divisions within the 'international community'
to
reticence
UK's
the
on
or
banked
card,
played the Russian
ian
Bosn
im-led
Musl
the
whereas
embargo,
arms
.
Its
Ollt for a better deal in the conviction that time was on
_

:r

particular because of American support.

.
in,,,,,,",h-";",,:
The Contact Group was reminiscent of n
":
he
t
Power politics. The five nations gathered to dictate
..
",."
former Yugoslavia - seeming to believe that the war-torn
374

ers and not botherin to conceal their wish that the

froTll their bord.

would Just go away. ]ts faltenng start laid bare the post-Cold
rob1em
ess - the lak of leadersip and political vision. Talb on
ar emptin
.
more exercIe s 10. regulatlOg relaions among the Contact
Bosnia were
.
embers and posltlomng themselves In the new political order
Group m
the regon r is inhabitants.
about
than
of diSUnity, It was an attempt to co-ordinate divergent
time
a
At
present one imemational face to the warring parties.
then
and
eWS

W
vi

This proved difficuJt and, at times, impossible. In the months after the
Plan was crafted, divisions within the Group were so deep that what
eVer steps were announced usually represented the minimum common
denominator, packaged as a new initiative. Meeting after meeting, the

Contact Group issued statements boasting that its unity was preserved.
Bosnia's main protagonists all complained about this new 'second

rate' creation. The Bosnian Serbs wondered aloud why they shouJd lis
ten to lowly clerks, or bow to the will of this 'world-wide mafia'. Ejup
Ganic of the Bosnian Government was taken aback by their lack of
knowledge about the region.
We sat with the new people from the Contact Group over the map.

Some of them were trying to find Banja Luka in Romania. They had
started from scratch and did not know anything. They did not know
who lived where ... First we talked with the foreign ministers, then to
their assistants and finally to their minions.
But the US envoy Redman and his Russian opposite number,
.
Churkin, were old hands. They called the shots. The Group immedi
ately started hammering out the new details of a Peace
Plan, which
prcscrved Bosnia-Herzegovina within its internationally
recognised
.
frontiers. It earmarked fifty-one per cent of Bosnia
for the Muslim
oat federation and the rest for the Serbs.
Thc Serbs wouJd have to
d Over about a third of the seventy per
cent of land they currently
ntolle d . The Muslim-Croat
federAtion made it possible to give
ara
Jev a better deal.lnis Plan envisaged bigger chunks of comigu
OU temtory unde
r the Federation's Control.
late June, the
!aps were finished. But they were kept under
tigh
The parties were not allowed to see them Karad1ic,
prr
.
.. ry a

out IVht punishment Miloev

iC had dreamed up for him
o
""" unced he'woold
endorse the maps ifthey were in the slightest bit
lCcep
.., table, OUt oflove for our brothers in Serbia
and Monteneuro But
<he
.
. 1:> .
'
..., n Condit"Ion that sanctIOns on Belgrade were lifted.'
ThiS became
ew Serb
.
a.td
. cI
l OTUS: sanctions first, and then peace. By contrast, the
iators .
InSiSted firt on peace thcn
the lifting of sanctions. On 30

?PS.

375

"A DAGGER IN THE BACK'

BOSNIA

ksei Nikiforov, brought the maps to B"lg.,..

June, Russian envoy, Ale

By then MiloSeviC had already made up his mind.

In Geneva, the Contact Group unveiled the maps and gave
warring sides fifteen days to 'take-it or leave-it'. After he saw
proposal, a grinning Karadfic went off to see Lord Owen. 'I
the maps would present a problem But there is no p",bl',m.
won't be a single Serb who would accept this.' The
Serbs to surrender thirteen towns, power stations, and factories,
they had seized during the war. It whitded down their northem
ridor - a route that had become so important that it was the
of nationalist folk songs. Karadfic was 'too cocky in those
.

observed Owen. Karadfic dismissed as 'humiliating' the maps

said were 'drawn so the Serbs would reject them and be blamed
the continuation of the war.'
The maps showed tw"o spidery states, with thousands ofkil"m...
of proposed borders . The front-lines underscored that,
war, the communities remained intertwined. The three
enclaves in eastern Bosnia would be part of the Muslim Croat
tion. Two of them -Zepa and Srebrenica - would be joined
and by a tenuous link, to Gorazde, which would
road link to Sarajevo. The Bosnian capital was to be placed
provisional UN administration until its statuS was detennined.
The Bosnian Prime Minister, Haris Silajdfic, criticised the
for consolidating Serb military gains. 'They rewarded geocide
ethnic cleansing ... the solurion especially in eastern Bosma .has
ous deficiencies and some genocide areas like Prijedor
controlled by those who committed those crimes,' he said m "'....
to towns, which were mostly Muslim before the war but were
under Serb control, entire communities expelled.
Karadtic called the maps an 'American diktal in remarks
frncturing the united m.nce - painstakingly put together
he

who looked out for

Contact Group. For some
interests of the Serbs (in the same way that the US
the Muslims), did not put up a 6ght and
ow d t e
he
corridor to be virtually cut. When Owen saw the maps
,h"u1i b
]
n
r
h
Serbs would not accept them.
But be
s
"
on.
negotiati
played, really a slightly tougher roIe i the
so fed up with them that he just said let them stew.'
re oic d at how easy it was to rum
While the

reason Churkin,

all e h
Owen said: 'He IC u ki
n

Bosnian Serbs j e

the maps, Miloevit began to publicly side with the

on 6
powerful antidote to the Bosnian Serbs. In Belgrade,
J76

to d the Russian Foreign Ministc, Andrei Kozyrev,

Serbian President
.
anve o a Serbian
r
n
a
lt
e
yes to the Plan .
no
'fhere is
.
lomauc
shuttle
was
d
lp
d
laundu
i
e
.. "<I. The G7 industrial
A frenz
1
n
e
d
by
Russia,
held
a
summit
in
Naples,
and gave the go
joi
nations ,
Contact
Group
P
la
n
the
d
e
s
p
a
t
c
h
i
n
g
British Foreign
to
ahead
Hurd
and
his
French
Douglas
counterpart,
Alain Juppe, to
er
t
Minis
an
d
Sarajevo.
D
e
s
i
te
this
a
pp
ea
Pale
a
n
ce
of decisiveness,
r
e
d
p
ra
Belg
Group was torn down the middle. Europe was outraged
act
Cont
the
by threats from the US that it would unilaterally abandon the UN
arms embargo. Hurd and Juppe, who remained resolutely opposed to
the lifting of the arms embargo, tried [0 the convey the impression to
the Bosnian Serbs that if they rejected the Plan, Europe would be
forced to cave in to US demands and allow the Muslims to get
weapons. Milosevic took what they were saying on board. In any case,
he had already made up his mind to break with the Bosnian Serbs .

if they did not obey him. Lilic's earlier remarks had been only hint
ofwhat was to come . Yet Ka adtic did not appear to take seriously
of the warnings - from Belgrade or the EU. Instead, he rambled on

any

about 600 years of hi tory, infuriating Hurd. The Briti h Foreign

Minister, said Nikola Koljevic, tried to persuade them to back the
plan. 'You cannot say "no". A d please do not say yes, but . But you

can say yes, and

. This was
something you don't like.'

their

neat formula of how to respond to

Milovic summoned his Bosnian Serb proteges, including the

anny and police chiefs, to Dobanovci, the military compound outside
8e1de for a meeting of the country's top leaders. They
set about
deVlsmg a formula that would be acceptable to the Contact
Group but
convey their demands to negoti ate part of the package. 'The most
lrtlportant discussion with President Miloevit in Dobanovci was
to
ke hO\
we could give our answer to the Contact group so that it may
SOund li ke "yes, and sai d ol
'
K jevic.
",

'w,. Wt're talking around the r/(}{k ,' Pmidtnt Blliatovil:

of
":1ontenegro later remembered. "] spmt more time with Karadii
t
In hatperiod than with my wift and
(hildren. It was the derisive

pamt.

W adviut/

10

10

Zii acupl the Plan, say that this

a;or VictoryKarad
for the Serhs ill Homia - hut Karadzit wmlis toa

eneva alld thati when he said

that the Plan was disastrollS.
.
Alall o/Ir ml'etmgs,fr0111 27jUlie to Allg/lst
4
whw we dmded
a break air
.
'
.
V (,(Moml( motIOns,
L
.
we "ept
repeatlflg
I '
that ifthtl [the
.

377

BOSNIA

'A DAGGER INTHE BACK'

Bosnian Strbs} rejut the propolal and decide to wage war agai1lS1
thi tnlire world, Wt' would not allow them to take us with the""
to drag UI down, too.

lime il Wf.Irk.ing against UI, that war is deltroying all theprospects

o/sllch (1 multinationalBosnia that peau could save it. ThaI s why
WI' drcidtd to acceptpeace t'Vm though in termI Wt'rt nolfair.

The Serbian President and his Montenegrin ally repeated the

warnings they had used the year befre for the Vance-Owen Ptaa.
Miloevit, who had vowed that SerbIa would never bend to lntl:f
national will, was now carrying out its bidding. He told the Bosniaa
Serbs that he understood their objections, but there was no choice.

MiloeviC told Karadzic: ' 1 thought Krajinik was the tOU"

nut to crack, but 1 was wrong, you are much tougher than he ia,"
That night, trying to persuade them, Miloevic made
comment, the meaning ofwhich Koljevic understood only 10
if you don't want to talk this way we'll talk through the n

ann,,:
:
;:::

Koljevic thought this meant an end to their private all-nig

ht .
He was wrong.
By five o'clock in the morning, according to Bulatovic, they

Meanwhile in Pale, it was the Vance-Owen assembly revisited.

pointed to the grim consequences if the Plan was rejected.
Karad1;ii:
'The nation has to be prepared, for tears and hunger, if it rejects

the Plan.' However once again, he did not try to sell it, insisting
l
that the Plan envisaged - a life in Bosnia-Hertegovina under Musim

authority.
Shrugging off threats from Belgrade, the Bosnian Serbs switched
tack. At the end of the closed session of the Pale assembly the Bosnian
Serbs wrote their response to the Contact Group Plan on a piece of

agreed what to tell the Contact Group: 'Republika Srpska'

accept the Contact Group Plan as the basis fo ngoti'tion '
,
':,
""'
"" "ti
disputable issues such as the exchange f terntones, II
. .
.
guarantees for the frontiers, and the poSSIbility f coederal ties
Yugoslavia. In utmost secrecy, British and RUSSIan diplomats ''''''I'
ated by the desire to thwart US effortS to lift the arms ,.
helped make certain that the wording would be. accetabe to
ng It a
ill calli
international mediators, who, at that point, were st
it or leave-it' Plan.
Krajinik [Ook out his notebook and told his
'This is our agreement and we'll write the conclusin.
'When we read the conclusions the next day, not a smgle
responded to what we had discussed and agreed during
As the Bosnian Serb Icadersrup left Belgrade for an

paper which they placed in a sealed pink envelope. A spokesman

announced that the envelope would be sent to Geneva and only there

would its contents be made public two days later. But it waS clear
from the defiant mood of the assembly members that their response

had fallen well short of the unqualified yes that the Contact Group
had demanded.
Nevertheless Milosevic still believed that he could convince his
disobedient proteges. On 27 July, the heavy hitters from Russia arrived

n
i Belgrade: the Russian Defence Minister, General Pavel Grachev

and Vital)' Churkin. Milokvii: told the Russians that he held out hope
the Bosnian Serbs would change their minds at their second assembly
meeting. The Russians then met the Bosnian Serbs, and urged them
to endorse the Plan.
In the eyes of the Bosnian Serbs, General Grachev commanded
considerable respect in contrast to Yeltsin and his other ministers,
whom the Bosman Serbs saw as weak and vulnerable to Western pres

SUcc. According to Karadzic, Grachev prodded him, 'You must accept

meetjng in Pale, the parliaments of Bosnia and the

"
federation met in Sarajevo to endorse the maps. lzetgoVlc
they
an 'unjust and unfair peace offer' and openly admitted
that
.
certain
were
they
accepting the Plan only because
.
t we .
reject it. 'We should accept the Plan because by refuslO I
. explaaned:
do a favour to Karadzic and Milooevlc.' Later, IzetbegoVlc

alt

the
Thats why we acupted Ihis bad option (onJiderillg all
t
accepled
we
nalivtr being worJt. So its nol with delight thai
thai
ed
realiz
We
...
Plan, /leither are we delighld with it /lOW

the Plan because if they attack you we will have

to defend you, which
Would cause problems for us.' It would
mean, he said, a new political
and, possibly, military confrontation in the Balkans, and a dangerous

Stand-off between Russia

and the West. Without changing his mind

Karndzic said he left the meeting confident the 'Russian Army w"
'"pportlng us. 'I'Ve knew that bef
ore, but now it was clear that the
.
RUSsa
n Army had a sympathetic ear for the Serbs.' At the assembly
meeting th
.
e next day there was no change. The Bosman
Serbs, as
u
Were in a defiant move. Miloevic prepared for war against his
ow former proxies.
For the first
time, unequivocally, the Serbian President publicly
.

b;'

379

'A DAGGER IN THE BACK'

lashed our at the Pale ledership: ' obody has the right to reject peac
e
in the name of the SerbIan people.
Public opinion in Serbia was confused by the venom unleashed
on
the people who had been previously portrayed as martyrs and victims.
In a letter to the Bosnian Serb assembly, the Serbian Governme
nt
warned: 'If you reject the proposed Plan you are on the best rOUte to
carrying out a crime against your own people. You do not have the

Thty rtjttl />tau in a moment when Rtpublika Srpska has ban

granted half tht ttTTitory offl"!ltr Bomia-Htrugovina and
when, by accepting peact, thty would lift sanctions.from thou,
without whom tmy 'WOuld not e:xisl ...
7Mir duiJion 10 rejutpeact cannot bt according to any real cri
feria in tht interm oftht peoplt but onlyfor tht benifit aJ war
PTojilUTI and thouople who howguilty conscimus. Thou who
fiar tht timt when peact will comt and all the crimts will bt
revealed . .
Countlrn timts thry gaw us a rtaJon to sron- tv")' /ink wilh
them. Thty did nol kap a singlt ont of thtir promiser: from
Sarajevo to Athtm; .from Athens to Gorault;from GoraUt to
Parliamenl;from Parliamtnt to tbis last riftrtndum, which Ihty
had told us w(mld not be htld ..

right to the lives of the citizens ofYugoslavia.'

The Bosnian Serbs seemed deaf to [he thunderous condemnatioa
from Belgrade. On 3 August the assembly rejected the Contact
Group Plan for the third time and called a referendum to be held

three weeks later.

The reaction was immediate. That night Bulatovic was enjoying l

fish dinner in the Montenegrin coastal town of Herceg Novi. He got

a message to ring Milmevic. Their conversation was brie

'Unfortunately they rejutd the Plan, Wt' mustput intoJom thaI

duision 10 dost tht bordtr. Do you agra?' Milolrou aJJud. I said
yts. Ht an/werd, 'They made their decision, our duision s
i taking
tjject tomorr()'w. '

The Federal Government announced MiloeviC's decision. On ..

cept
August a blockade went into force. raffic came to a halt.
a handful oflines. telephone connections were cut. The Serblan media

The pitce-de-rlsistanct was unleashing Lilit, who, in a wide ranging

n
i terview, blamed the Bosnian Serbs for everything. MiloeviC's hand

was plain to sec. His former proteges had become the universal SC2pe
goats. But it was not so easy to wash his hands of them.
Lili{: painted the Bosnian Serbs as the architects ofwar in Sarajevo
and blamed them for a senseless attack on GoraZde2.

cri

exploded with claims that the Bosnian Serb leaders were

ere IS DD
and war profiteers. "They are against peace, now when
.
JOu
regime
the
of
alternative to peace' became the new slogan
alisD

who for yean; had sowed the seeds of hatred, whipping up

.
, .
hysteria, insisting that there was no alternative to the war fOIsted

the Serbs'.
. .
The blockade was complete. Biljana PlaV5ic was the fust VlctlJl'l
the new rules. The year before, she had also been first to be
from crossing the frontier to Serbia. Even the steely
aback by the slap in the face from her former protectors.

'Tht only thing wt hadn't epe(ted was that t would li to

Serbia impose sanctions agamst us. No one saId that. No ontcouf,
ha'lJt e:xputed lIlch a dagger in the back. '

'::

The dagger plunged deep. Under MiloeviC smear

i
nging
become an art form. His statement led a host of st
380

am

How many times have they promistd Ihat they would nof shtll
Sarajevo, and perpetuate the agony of civilians in this city?
How many timts haw tmy promistd to arrtit the bands and
aromi/itary IInits which are terrorising civilians and besmirch
tng the honour oftht Serbs? - Thty wtnl bacll on their word
oj
honvtlT that tmy would halt tIM insane allaek on Gorault,
which
led to many people being killed and resu/ttd in the N
ATO ulti
mall/m and tht (SerbJ'l withdrawal to a distance of20kilomtlres
.

e Bosnian Serbs behaved as if the embargo were an embarrassing

lly quarrel, which they

did not quiTe seem to believe was real.
a , th y claimed. itwas a secret deal
beMeen the two !eaderships.

..
dZlc
tned TO use the split to his advantage; refraining
from direct
on Mi!oevic, :Ind expressing pity. The
poor Serbian President,
W. Unng under
the strain of economic hardship, was caving in to
s n pressure
. They were implying that Miloevic had weakened
an
en under the thumb of the
W(:st. By contrast, the Bosnian
Serb e
W n:: Stong and uncompromising - the people of Serbian
myth.
e Bosm
an Serbs went ahead with the referendum. Despit
e a

K:::
I

w:c
e:u
Th

3&

/\ DAGGER IN THE BACK'

BOSNIA

fierce campaign waged by the Belgrade media

whelmingly rejected the Plan.

machine,

they over.

In Sarajevo, the Bosnian Govern,?ent ted for a Westttn

.
response. There was none. Bosman Pnme Mmlster, SilaJdtic, corn.
plained that even though the Serbs had rejected the Plan, the Contact
Group had remained silent. 'They should have said if the Bosnian

Serbs do ot accept the Pece Plan, t en this would happen: tighterung

the sanctIons agamst SerbIa. expandmg the safe zones and lifting the
arms embargo.' But the divided Contact Group could not agree what

to do. They chose the path of least resistance, imposing complete

isolation against the Bosnian Serb leaders, who, they said, would be
excluded from the peace process until they had accepted the

Pum.

MiloSevic, too, rook steps to enforce their quarantine. He then

gave the go-ahead to a real border between Yugoslavia and Bosrua
Herzegovina; but real only in the sense that he was sending a message

to the politicians and, as importandy, to the West. There is strong

evidence that the border remained porous. The Bosnian Serbs still
received essential military supplies from the Yugoslav Army as weU ..
their salaries from Belgrade. The central point was that MiJOeyjf
wanted to see a political and not a military defeat.
While Belgrade carried oul its verbal blitzkrieg against the Bosnian
Serbs, intemational mediators - Owen, Swltenberg. and Akashi

negotiated the despatch of moniwrs along Serbia's and Montenegro',

frontiers with Bosnia. MiloSevic finally consented to what the

ebullient Panii: had called for at the London Conference two yean
earlier. In return, he got certain sanctions suspended - the ban OIl
international air traffic, sportS and cultural exchanges.

For the West, increasingly frustrated by the successive failures ofall

peace initiatives, ironically, MiloSevic became their linchpin Cot
achieving peace and stability in the region.

At least for the time being, perhaps just to get rid of his ""lici'"
anus belli, the

rivals, MiiosevlC took away the Serb

unified Serbian state on the ruins of Yugoslavia.

Without the guiding light of a Greater Serb

ngt:';=

confused. When they went to war against their

believed Milosevic knew where he was taking them.
.
their sacrifices were in the name of Serb unity. It was me pnce
MiioSeviC's promise 'all Serbs in one state'.

By breaking with his kin in Bosnia, Milokvic had b,,,,,y,d

slogan known to every Serb ramo sloga Jrbina spalava

ny saves a Serb. All that remained ofthis harmony, and the ;'''",....
-

J8,

with which the Serbs had as a united forced embarked

of purpose
were rhe four ls scrawled in red paint or charcoal on
war,
upon the
.
.
houses
and nllned villages throughout Bosnia and Croatia.
t
burnt-ou

I The G-7, the seven countries with the largest economies in the world,
the US. Germany, Japan, France, haly, the UK and Canada.
2 I.ili( also blamed Karadzic for being involved in the kidnapping and
suspected murder of twenty men from Serbia - nineteen of whom were
Muslims. in an effort to spread th war to Yugoslavia. Three years after they
.
\\'Cre drgged from a tram at Strpcl - despite Milokvic's promises, the fami
those men never found out what haplXned to their loved ones that
night 011 27 Febro:uy, 1993.

liei of

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION
in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
A t the time of writing war is still raginglon
gest lasting siege in
the
fiS arajevo is still under siege
tia's territor
,

y remains
er of Croa
twentieth century Europe. A quart
rising
comp
Serbia
lavia
Yugos
and
under Serb control, and rump
In
all
six
re.
rep
s,
s
b
u
pariah
lic
al
n
o
i
t
a
rn
r.a
Montenegro - is still an inteduring those CruCial
d
hs
mont
in
g
ur
the
the men who held power
e1d the destiy of the country in
spring and summer of 1991, who
te the calamity that has behllen
despi
ice,
off
in
n
their hands, remai
"
.
their peoples.
rums of Commumst Yugoslavta.
the
from
ed
emerg
states
new
Five
.
response to MiloevlC"
Of these. Slovenia has fared best Its leaders, in
, steered their republic
slavia
authoritarian attempts to centralise Yugo
the connivance of the:
with
and
ulty
to independence with little diffic
mre to do th
t
tha
war
brief
. had
. n
Serbian regime. They waged a
two millio
1995,
mldBy
lines.
ront
f
television screens than with of living much ?igher thaIts? that
th
people, enjoying a standarddeveloped a genuinely multi-partyofparlia

former countrymen, had

U-:U
opean
at the doors of the E
mentary culrure. It now stood
polib
into the economIC and from
fully
n
draw
be
o
t
ready, almost,
Its
away
d
turne
mainstream of the Western world, its back
southern neighbours. slav republic, Macedonia, escaped the
The southernmost Yugo ast, a which threat ned -and sriIl

that many Cassandras had forec

ct outside the fronners of former
threatens - to carry the confli
even !ukey, thus
Yugoslavia by pulling in Albania, Greece, and
a
Mac
.
other
each
st
again
current NATO allies remains haunted byedom
spectreS of
the
and
s
bour
predatory neigh
. Greece
rred
e
f
e
settled but d
solved conflicts. It is a conflictisnotexclu
'
i
"
'
l
l
l
o
sively He;
;:: X:;,:;; j:
that the very name Macedonia
t(
es
republic impli
its useby the former Yugoslav
. ce, that most Balkan
own northern province of the same name Gree
'
region, imposed.a
the
in
d
frien
countries, and Belgrade s onlyeffec
t paralysed Europ,can l!mo",,"vily ''''
against Macedonia, and in
. Belgrade, meanwhile, relies .h t
making in the southern BalktheansUN
embargo. But Preslrrysen
Macedonia circumvent his countratrydethrou
Gligorov has so far steered by the presence ofgh.UNHis coun
stability has been bolstered
first case of prevent ve deployment in UN history.
-

\vaI'

IS

to

J84

Four ye s ter dlaring independence, Croatia had yet to gain

control ofItS. mternatIOnally
recognized frontiers, A quarter of its
territory remamed under the control of the Krajina Serbs. The Vance
Plan, which envisaged the rerum of these territories to Croatian
sovereignty, had not been implemented, It had, instead, frozen front
them into what the Krajina Serbs regarded as the
lines and turned
l
frontiers
of meir new state'. The Plan had required the
t
ion
interna
JNA withdraw from Croatia, and me Serb paramilitaries to disarm.
This was never achieved.
As in Bosnia later, the JNA withdrawal from Croatia was fonnal
real. It left behind a Krajina Serb Army which it had
ath
r atered,than
cre equipped and armed. Although in 1994 some communication
and transport links were restored with the Serb-held lands, Zagreb
grew increasingly frustrated with the pace of change and embittered
with the failure ofUNPROFOR to implement the terms of the Vance
Plan. After earlier major incursions across UN lines into Serb
held land in May 1995, the Croatian Army launched a successful
offensive to overrun Serb-held western Slavonia. Croatia, despite the
anns embargo against all sides in the former Yugoslavia, had, by then,
buil.t a powerful army that was pitted now not against the JNA but
agalOst the much weaker Krajina Serb forces.
In Zagreb the resort to military means was applauded. It boosted
President Tudjman's flagging popularity and fuelled speculation that
Croatia would soon launch another offensive to recaprure the heart
land of the rebel Serbs' 'state'. It demonstrated, again, that, in the
ug?slav conflicts. might, rather than reason, brings rewards.
TdJman remained obsessed with the symbols of statehood, and was
dlven by an almost Messianic sense of destiny that it had fallen to
him to deliver the freedom his people had - in his eyes - dreamed. of
for a thousand years But he proved himself much less enamoured of
the eelltial tenets of democracy which he claimed to have brought to
Crua
. He has stifled a once diverse and impressive independent
:Ia, .silecin.g all puil c issent .and he has failed to win over the
mlnonty In Croatia WIth credIble guarantees of human rights et half of Croatia's
Serbs, uncertain of their fate under Tudjman'
ave left the republic over the past fIVe years.
The Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia remains unrecognized and
.
180lated
'fbe ' '. compnsmg S, erb'la and Montenegro in a sham federation.
Oior arter enJoys as much autonomy as Miloevic allows. The
fiISt. ashpomt
road to disaster Kosovo - continued
to Simmer Th InKoYugoslavia's
sovo Albamans
were the first to be brought under
'
a

to

1'\.\10

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION

MileviC's heel. By 1995 the visual symbols of repression had gone

there were no longer tanks on the streets. But the province remains
a
police state. Kosovo's Serbs remain disgruntled and nervous. Although
they control all positions of power in the province they claim that
Miloevic did not fulfil his pledge to defend them and to make

which, they believed, would not stand by and watch a European

country so recently admitted as a sovereign member of the United
Nations be wiped off the map. As the realization dawned that
the Western world would not come to Bosnia's rescue, the republic's
political and military leaders dug in for a long war to redeem lost
territory. Leaders who, in 1992, could not believe that war had come
to their land began to plan for military campaigns this year, next year,
the year after that. Though starved of weapons by the UN arms
embargo, the Bosnian Army had no shortage of foot soldiers. It

Kosovo Serbian. Minorities make up a third of the population of

rump Yugoslavia. There is no sign that Belgrade is ready to make any
concessions in their direction.
Years of waging war in Croatia and Bosnia have taken a huge toU
on the country. Miloevic paid for the war by inflationary funding.

printing money that was not backed by real state resources. He

unleashed a hyperinflationary spiral that won for his country the
dubious honour of holding the world record inflation rate
three
-

hundred and thirteen million per cent per month - surpassing the

previous record holders, Weimar Germany and post-World War

Two Hungary. The economic ruin destroyed the wealth-base of
Yugoslavia's once strong and highly developed professional middle
class, and at the same time gave rise to a powerful new Clife - those

who got rich through war-profiteering and sanctions busting. While

Serbian society was criminalised, tens of thousands of educated

people (Jed the country - escaping mobilisation or searching for a way

to make a living. With Yugoslavia'S destruction, the Serbs lost the one
land where they could live together.

The fate of Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most tr...gic. The moun

tains and valleys of this beautifu l republic were scarred with the
charred and battered towns and villages from which at least half the
population had either fled, or been driven, or been killed. The S
still laid siege to a host of villages and towns, as well as. he capital
.
Sarajevo. The Muslim-Croat federation ?ave new vlaility to the
territories on which Muslims and Croats lived, or to which they had
fled. That apart, the territory under effective Bosnian Governmnt
control remained a leopard spot state of disparate, disconnected uruts.

a Balkan Bophuthatswana.
.
and
Serb forces still held seventy per cent of Bosman terTlwry .
maJo:
t
where they held sway they had not only driven out the
of the non-Serb population, they had also erased any ViSUal sym
d
that the land had once been inhabited by Muslims as weU asortho
multi
other
many
and
Sarajevo
of
spirit
tolerant
Christians. The
'

cultural towns and cities was all but obliterated by Ser guns.
'rJiSastrously illThe Bosnian Government had entered the war d
commutU
prepared. They placed their faith in an international

J86

drew its infantry from the legions of the dispossessed, many of them
embittered and humiliated with nothing left to lose, and everything to
fight for. After the Washingron-brokered Muslim-Croat federation

agreement, military supplies did, at last, begin to reach this refugee

anny and though, by 1995, it was still too weak to threaten Serb posi

tions, it was preparing to fight another day.

November 1994 brought a false dawn in this fight-back. When the

Bosnian Army Fifth Corps broke out of the Muslim-populated Bihac

pocket it scored its greatest single victory of the war, pushing Serb

forces back from an area of 250 square kilometres. In Sarajevo the

people began to talk excitedly about a decisive tum around. This, they
said, was Bosnia's Tet offensive. Their optimism was hopelessly
misplaced. It took the Serbs JUSt two weeks to launch a counter

offensive and, when they did, it was unforgiving. The Bosnian Serb
Army, supported by the Serbs in neighbouring Croatia, and for the
first time 5000 rebel Muslims loyal to the renegade Muslim leader
Filaet Abdic, rounded on Bihac as it had rounded on Srebrenica and
Gorafde before it. The United Nations again asked NATO to use air
strikes to defend one of its declared 'safe areas'; again the air-strikes
did nothing to halt the Serb offensive. The Bihac counter-offensive
rther widened an increasingly unbridgeable divide in the interna
Ilonal community: when, over Thanksgiving Weekend at the end of
ovember the United States pressed NATO to escalate its action by

bombing strategic installations, the British and French finally broke

nks. They told the US that a move to strategic intervention would
pit the UN against NATO. Faced with the choice, the Europeans said
they would back the UN. In other words, Britain and France were

Warning that a further escalation would break the North Atlantic

alliance. The US decided that the unity of NATO was more impor
ant than the safety of the Bihac pocket. The Bosnian Serbs had again
aced down the might of the entire Western world.
But it was a viCTory that disguised the underlying trend.

CONCLUSION

Abandoned by Belgrade, the Serb statelets in both Croatia and Bosnia

were proving themselves increasingly unviable, corroding from
v.rithin, garrison societies with little or no economic infrastructure and
in which every adult male is pressed into service as a soldier, called
upon to defend thousands of kilometres of impossibly extended front
lines, against an enemy that had been weak but could only grow
in strength.
By 1995 there existed two Serbian states, one to the eaSt, the other
to the west of the Orina River, which, in Serb mythology, is the spine
of the Serbian nation and not, as was the case now, a border dividing
it. These two states are led by men who represent wholly different
traditions v.rithin the Serb national identity: Miloevic the authorit
arian strong man willing to use nationalism when it suits him, and
Karaclfic the true believer, the romantic, national hero of the Serb
epic. Karadz.ic was the first Serb leader to challenge MilokviC's
supremacy and survive. The two were, by mid-1995, locked in a
battle for the loyalty - the very identity - of the Serb nation.
The war had come full circle. The Serbs, who had launched it with
a singleness of purpose that had allowed them to slice through their
enemies like a knife through butter, were now divided. Miloev1C:, who
had led them into battle with an apparent clarity of vision that
had brought all Serbs together under a single banner, had lost
way. Miloevic, the instigator of Yugoslavia's bloody disintegration.
and the guiding hand behind the Yugoslav wars, proved himself
no nationalist at all. He now wanted peace, and, to get it, would sell
short the very war aims with which he had led his people into banle
in the first place.
By contrast, both Croatia and Bosnia knew precisely where they

his

were going. Tudjman wants to drive the Serbs out of his republic
altogether; Izetbegovic is preparing for a war ofliberation. & the Serb
'states' which are their respective enemies weaken from within. both
former underdogs sense that time, now, is on their side. And they have
learned - and are applying - the great lesson of the Yugoslav wars.
a lesson the Serbs demonstrated in the days of their
supremacy: that in the post-Cold War world there is no collecnve
security, no international will to protect the weak against the s
the lesson that to win freedom and security for one's people uuet
neither a sound argument nor a good cause but a big army. VICtory,
in former Yugoslavia, will fall not to the JUSt, but to the strong.

mili

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
his book accompanies a five-hour television documentary series
made by Norma Percy, Paul Mitchell and Angus Macqueen of
Brian Lapping Associates in London. Their eye for detail and corrob

oration has helped unveil, at every stage of the narrative, truths about
Yugoslavia's destruction that had not, hitherto, been known. It is based
on hundreds ofinrerviews, lasting thousands of hours, conducted over

eighteen months with all those who played a part - some great, some

small - in Yugoslavia's tragedy. Brian Lapping has elevated the art of

also to
historical documentary making to new heights. Our

thanks

Michael Simkin for his relentless search through archives in London,

Washington, Belgrade, Zagreb and - in the most diffIcult of circum

stances - in Sarajevo; to the extraordinary effons of Bonnie Boskovie

and Lisa Gartside without whose patience and persistence in keeping

track of, and co-ordinating our efforts to deliver the manuscript, this

c"erything that has befallen the region is always some

one else's fau
lt
except one's own side. Te war wiped out any habit
of self-scrutin
tat Sers, Croats, Muslims. Slovenes might once have
possessed.
beh natIon has embraced a separate onhodoxy in whic
h it is unique
ly the victim and never the perpetrator.
Many, but by no means all, of the interviewe
es who contributed to
the series, and the book, were speaking from an unsha
keable convic
.
tio n that theIr nation is blameless, or their actions ,vitho
ut fault. To
.
wflle ny contemporary account of the Yugoslav
wars is to navigate
te qUIck waters, not so mu h of deliberate disho
nesty, but of a con

.
.
trived self-deceIt. This
applies not oo1y to many of the comb
atants,
but also, sadly, to those ho ame with good inten
tions to try to make
,,:,

peace . We have been navlgatlOg these waters,

between us, for well over
a decade. Eventually the aments grow famil
iar; but rhey are still
treacherous. Any errors of judgement
this book contains as a result
are, of course, our own.

bookwould not have appeared; and TO Paul Adams. Walter Erdelitsch.

Nina

Selma Latif,,':, Azra Nuhefendic, Danja Silovic, Milo VasK,

Vlahovic, Dina Hamzic and Bojan Zec whose assistance and advice
was invaluable. Chris Wyld at the BBC and Qyentin Peel at the

Finantial Timl!S weTe generous in their indulgence of our obsession

both in the writing of the book and in encouraging our efforts to

report the war itself. Our sincere gratirude to them. Finally to Dusan
Kneuvic and Sheena McDonald, whose belief in the importance of
telling the tale was a constant incentive, at every stage of the writi
It is a truism that war brings out the best as well as the worst in

people. We owe an immense personal debt to the countless colleagues

whose courage, dedication and determination to tell the tale as they

saw it, regardless of the immense difficulties that stood in their '/t

were never less than inspiring. Some have become friends for
There is no need to list them by name. They know who they are,

PICTURE CREDITS

Greek Government 15; Antoine Gyori, Sygma 9;

Srdjan I1i'e 1, 3 , 7, B, 10, 13, 14, 16; Cary Knight 12;

Tomislav Paternek 2, 4; Vreme 5, 6.

:!i

what they have contributed to this book.

To work in former Yugoslavia s
i to enter a world of parallel trUthI.
Wherever you go, you encounter the same resolute conviction

J9'

INDEX

Abdit, Fimc >.i. 232-3. 248.262.263. ]37,

J\c:oOtn.y ofScicnt nd Ans. Scrl>i. 29, 30,

)39,387

1I

Boban. I... xii. 241. 307. 326, 327, 336. 341.

&gda,......;c Rodmilo Iii. Ill.138. ISS

m

Bogim'iC, Bogit xii. 121. 125. \31, 136. 137,

Al"n;.;. &snia 329

Boljlwn<.Josip xii, 91. 119. 12(}; and Knio

AJwhi.ya....hi 364, 365-6. 367-8. 370

Alucnlijt'-it. lil'll Iii. 52, 58, 169. 114.

Borov<> Sclo. Sbvonia 153, IS4. 154-S,IS6,

8m';tn<r, h.,.o iii. 54-5, 57

Albani.n. 24n.6; KotQm 33, 3 Sn.7, 37. 77,

213, 2S9, 385-6: .nd An,i-Bure-uo",,;'

Bounki. Brod, Boini. 204. 243

Adbf, Bbgo)c ii. 131. 137. 179. 195.206,

224.260-1.268

.i.-wikcs 319, 337-8, 345, 362, 387; ., b.nk

f"r Gonidt 364. 366-7. 370

184n.3-4

Al.git. M.hm.. 331

",helli"" 10S-<>. 107. 109, IS7

Bo..... rranjo xii, 233, 325, 339, 340

'"

Boun.<. Vna xiii, 199

Bosni nd lI".ni.n, ""iv, 85. 92, 143. 162,

201, 204-5, 38&-8; po..ibiliry of_rion

221, 223-4, 239; background to .nd dccl

ReV(lly,ion 65-6. &7, 72

Andjetkovi<'. Radmib .ii . 42

ion' 227-33, even" leading to waf 233-43;

. 245-54; kidn.p of
ou,h.k of ....
,
"

lzetbcgovit 255-6, 2590-68; ethnic cleon.i",

'An,i-Buruuc"uic R.,,,,\ul;on' 60-72

"ron (Ztljko R.n.'ovK) >:ix. 91. 206, 245,

269-78; war 219. 256--1,1 278-9.283-4;

London confer.n", 285, 287; S",bmtica.

247.2"8

f .us' 303-4: and

293-303, J{}.l; UN ...
V.nc.-Ow<:n Plan 30&-18; 'lif. and sttib

nOli embargo 219. 280, 298, 320

348-'1. 354, 387. Itt IJ. TO-. Cro.tian 207,

24), 355, 385, IN .IJD Cro..i.n National

A'm:

BOIni,n 327, 330, 331. 332. 335".6,

JI8-19;join' Action Pbn 320, 336;

Mu,lim-C..,.t. conllict 326-35; Summer

1993 pe= .oJlu 336-7. )38-9; Mme.

G"ud: Yuphv > JNA

Squ:rn: bomb, S>r:I.je''O )4)-5; NATO and

Auoci.,ion ofSerbn Iunicip.hties 104, 105

-..}mrm,rial rcdt:n'ion' ']<j, 81. 162. 111H 1

A"" Summ;' 312-14

B.bit, Milan xii. '8-9. 100-1. 101; and Knin

",hellion 10+-5.107. 109-10. ]\0-11, 146;
and ..., in Cm.u. 188; "f'PO'i"on to V.nct
Pl.n 223-5

S.dinl., Comm,osi"" 22&-1. 221. 227

B.jnmovit, Sejdo ii. 1-10. 14Sn.7

B.kr. j.me....i, I6-H>, 222

Ihnjo Lulu, Bosni. 224. 247. 271. 2&3

346-8; and Four-Poin. Pbn ).48-50;

Muolim-Crm! Fcdcnnon 354-9; banlc: for

Gorilik 360-72; and C""DCt G"",p plan

374-6. 378, 382. IN .I_ Croats, Bo6ni1n;
0.0.",.,,; Scm.., Booniln
"'uslim
Boutr05-Ghili, Bootr05 xiii. 216-11, 2n4.
288.30-1.3 68,369
Botani<', Bosko 149. 150

Bltko. BO$ni 256, 283. 341

S,"r, lK'" xii, 51>. 57.58. 114-15, 163. 174

Birc. lb...i'" 293. 300
Bclgmle 39. 129-37

Brioni Ae<:o,d 180-3

Bnlain 137, 387; Ir><! rewgninon of
2117, 288;
219-;>0; nd London Conf.",nce
.ndjoi 1 Action Plan 320; Ind calls (
NATO int."""ntion 346, 341-8. 350' "d

B.nko"' Cre,.ti. 108

mllot. Bo.ni. 288, 303. 330, 337. 339, 387

and s,nk' 319, 371

Bro".I, SlOne xiii, \37, 203

Bdg"'<K Initi.t;'.., 235. 231>. 238

Bdg....!. TV Itt Tole"" ,,,,, 8dg..dc
lIijcljin., BUlni. 247-8
Biiandlit, DuUn xii. 16J. 1M
Ilitfani. limni. 270

bml. for GOf1Mc 369.370, 371: ond

Broz.JO$ip ,,,Tito
Rutin, N.nw xiii. 136, 138
i
Rudimiro..;c. Bos
ko xii.33. 34

39'

95-<>,101-2: Knin ",beDion 10+-11. 139;

a"".rmnt f"'Ogl'lImn>< and drecu 115-22.

lIuj... Anre 105

INDEX

'lift

H"b,"";':, Ko.," xiii. 33. 48n_1

lIubl"''iC. Momi, xiii.M. 86. 165-6. 21l-16;
..,.I VlI",e-Ow<:n P1= 307. 310. 312.

123-7; Tudjm.n and M;[ok I

W
... talks
143-4. 157-8.213-4,139-40; Knin ",hel
lion Iprcads 146-51; tcceuion 161-2
163-4, 165. 161ft.3, 16\1; .nd S\oovc cri,i.

3 1-15. 316

":

C.nIwjev Dom lWIy 68.69

.-.n"",i...tion 239. 241

F'l>n 210, 211; ."d Germany 218; inre....ri""i1 recognition ofindopc:ndcnce 218,
182. 186; war 187-208. 217;:and Hag

(."mg'''''' Loo-d 1\",,, xiii. 209, 239. 290; Ind

H.gue Pbn 209-11, 212, 214, 215, 216,

217.218-1\1; and r=ognition of

219,22&-1.221. 222;."d Vance PI.n 217.

218,222,225; and ",fugees from BoW.
212;.nd Booni. 204. 243. 323-4; talks with

C...,. Croa".101
(."n.b Knjin &.nio 232, 233, 337
220. 221; S:u-.jcvu visit 279-80

Serbs 3-10-2; Muo/im-Croal Fedor.ni""

355-9. IN "'U Serb.. Cm.li.n

Croati.n Democratic Union IN HDZ

Croari.n N.na.... Gu.rd 116; lenin ",hellion
l
149. 150-1, 154-5; w;lr in Cm.!i 187, 190.

Celin". IJ.osni. 271

C.ntral Comminces '" Communist Partin

CaIk<r, B.ronco. 272-3

Ch.mp,,,n. Marc 200

Ch.tnib (Serb munarchim) 76, 155

191-2,194, 195, 197, 201, 207

Bosni.n 230, 231. 324-5; .Ie.ion. 232,

HOin;. 234.
235,241, 242.243; and outbn:u of
249, 250'. luff.r <thnic d.ansing 271; .nd
war in RO'Ini. 283. 325-<>; and V.n",-Oweh

Crm",

Ch,j.ri1\ D.mO<:f01I 94

233; hefa,.., oulb,..,.k of"". in

Chrill"ph.., W.rrtn 'iii, 318-19, 319-20

Churkin, Vi,oJy xiii, 287. 352. 360. 365. 366-8;

",d Conlact Group plan 374, 376. 379

Ckr<hiC. D",ln xi ii. 34, 47. 64

Plan 307.:J.OI!; H.",eg-Bo,n. 326;

Muslim-Cmu <onl1iet 32&-35; Summer

'clun.mg' 188. 194, 340; in Bosni. 246-7.

Clmto". DiU 319, 321. ,169

269-78.283. 294.296-7

1993 pe= t.lko 336; t.11<o wilh Serbo

341-2; Muslim-Croat (cdc"""", 354-9'

CoaIi""n o( "'''onoJ Understlnding 96

Cocnmine'< ofSerbs .nd Montenegrin. 33

375,316,378, 386
C"",kowit,J""",n ;ii. 140, 141

Communi>! Parties 31. 50; &.ni. 228-9,231.

j" T</qrttpb 2().t

232; Croati. 87, 88-9; Kosoyo 65. 67;

Montcnexm 64; Serbi. 32. 4+-7. bOo 83,

De M;chclis. Gianni ';ii, 175.214-15

I. Mik-j..t",b xiii, 196. 205

13; S\oovcni. 50.53.54.56.80, 81-2, 93;

rugoWv

%X>',

xxvi, JO, 39, 53. S6, 64. 82,

o..gorici;'. Sl.ko >:1I

i. 104. Illn,6. 1"9
D
..limu>uflt. Alij. xiv, 233, 262, 263, 268n.3,

e'enn""

"""'<nu.bon camps 27-1-6. IN til_ d

8-H>

'"

COI1uiruuon xxvi. 32-3. 35n_6, 72; SI"""n.

."'.nd ....
,,'" n-8O; Boon;"" under V."cco..-.:n I....n 308; Inba .svmmettical
="

(.u.r.'>On; ll.u. Plan

Con,

Ci<' 1)"b,K.

DEMOS roiIi.ion 93. 94

"", f""" JNA 175

dc'tntinn comJK 199.210.274-8, 3n, 356

l)ilhe<O\'1t. Su.d. 251-2

Oi-.j.k.joyon xi". 267. 348-9

'

.., G,,,,,p rI." 373. 374-80. 382

<on-do, (Scrbi." Roon
i. to Serbi.) 214, 2&3,
18n.4. JOB, 341

Oi.d....vit,
.
lUifxiv, 67, 70. 71

xiii, 3(}-1. 340.04, 101,20-1; and

"""" 33. 3-1. 35n,7; Yug<><l.. l'n:"dc:nt

285-(' ,291; .nd

V.nce-O...on Pl.n J08'

310. 312, 313,

3 17. 318

C"'.ti. 'nd Crom xxvi. 30. 47, 87

-9. 9

l8S. 388; em'grees

87 9()-I' ond Ko<ovo
. '
l'f; 'Un"c
""
_n 51"''Cn''
82, 86,d...

2-3.

ion, 89,

war

I.ljogo. Ris'o 315. 322n,5

Djurtije>'K, Voji.bv xiv. 239, 259, 260, 262.

Djultit. SlJ)bod.n xiv. 140. 141

'"

/)nt',mi,l (n."",I"'p"') 31. 53

Doboj. l!oIni. 256, 272

Dolto.Jerk<> xiv, 248, 263. J2

Drall"",it, Vuk .iv. 34. 129-30. 132. 138

nrctc!j comp 333

JOJ

INDEX

Orin. volky 171. 293. J06. 361

c;.,nlil LoW. 298, 299-300

2:ro-1,239

D.k.J""..iv. 79.S2. Il]. 125. 135.138.

Germany 117. 2IS19. 22()-I. 238. 212. 373

GI... Sini..

1)9.18]-2

GLgor"". Kiro iv. 162.233, 384

Glina. Cro1t;a 187. 19]. 207
G"...l:de. Bosni. 283. 288, 303, 33O,,

Dubrovnik 201-5

k<:Jo;;t . Niju xiv. 85. 232

Du ...

E.glebu"<. L:I...,enc. X;". 112. 287. 288

Eas'ern Sl..-oni. _ Sla>'OO'

;

c"mji V.kuf, II.osnia 332

Goir... Croana 191-2

p"'nl....n'
.
_ ."denl Govtm....n'
.
Gra....nin, P<'>.rxi... 62. 67-8. 70. 71. 72. 107.

economy S3. 386

I::ftnd. Munt 293. 295. 300

ekctiom 74; II.osni. 227-33; Croan. 89. 95.

Cro.ti. 197. 199. 202: .""cti"n. >g<.i""

Yup",u 216: and rcwgnition of

,ion, 2112. 238-9; I\ooni. 241. 251; and

I I.:r.likwit. Scfcr xv. 226. 259. 267, 294, 301.

Herco:g-Bosn. 326. 327

He=govina 92, n5. 326, 356

Ilun!, Douglasxv, 177, ISO. 213. 346.3n

155-6. 259-61. 2U. 267, and ...., in BGsni.

268. 115

IIVO (Cro11 C"",ncil o(Oc

f ...,.) 326. 327.
318.319.330

Imam<>Vir!, ;\u/'Udin 256. 161. 265

int.Uccru.ls 30. 49. SO. 88. 142

In'ern>lion;o.! Red CTOfS (JCRC) 197.198,

Fre.... H.rry 301. 302

/ncinnMt, HMS talks 336-1.138-9

199. 276. 218. J33

Italy ISO

1'1'1\ 276

c;.,....he. I I"", I);elri.h "; 179-SO. 218. 219.

228. 129. 23O. 2.n.

Ietbe. Aloja
beromes Hosni.n """ iden' ll3;

194

n'.

Karadtio'. lUdovon xvi. 144".3. ]49. 223.

230-1. 282. 388;bcf"", ollfb",:o.Ir. ofW:lr in

Bosni. 226. 227. 235. 237. 240. 241. 242,

243; and ""tlm.k ofwo. 249. 250. 252.

253; .nd S.
...
je"" 156-7. 258. 281; .nd
ethnic dunoing 275. 278; .nd London

JB8;

Confe",,,,,,, 288, 2 .nd V.nce-O...cn

Pl.n 309. 310. 311. 312-14. 315, 311; warnl

"8.i"O{ .i...."ikes
.
ll8; lo1ks with

C"'a" 340-1; ",.clion '0 Morke, So,u.ft

bomb 343-4. 347;.nd Fou.--Poin, Plan

Crolli. 95, \17-19. 120.122. ]24--5, 147;

'n,1 ,he ...'tnts ofMarch (1991) 131. 132.

withd,-,wo.! from C"""il 385; in Bosni.

before ,he ..... m.239. 240; and ouob",:o.Ir.

Hurti.'. Zinko 277

Foor-i'oinf PI.n 348-50. 351

Fn" 1J7. 288, 3lO, 371. 387; nll for NATO
in .......nfion 346. 347. 351). "d 'lif, .nd
mikt' 319. 371

136.137. 138. 141;.nd Slovene moi, ]66,

170. 177, and Hague Plan 211: and

Knm ",btll;"" 108. lOll. II()-Il, ""d

Helsinki F,nal ",-, ]61. ]65

Hollingworth. Larry 298-9

liSP (I'uty of Right) lI1n.l. 205

Field ofBt:.ckbirds 75. 76

Croatia 95. 117. 120. 122. 123. 125--6. 141.

151:.nd events ofMarch (1991) 131. 135.

Basni. 238

135. 136. 137. 139, 142: .",l 'pad of lenin

237.238

eri.i, 170. 178. ISO. 18]. IS2; and WH in

Croot;. 190; and Krojiru Serbs 223

tion. 94; .nd TO diQ,rrntrncn, lIS; and

amendments 79. 8()-1; .nd SI""ene elec

jog
... Vladimir xv. 118. 1120. 126

HDZ (Cro.,i.n Dc""",,,..i. Union) 87, 88,

120; Congmt (1'190) 91. 92--3: .nd
Cr".,i.n election. 95. 96; and Sbvoni. 153,
157, Boo.ni.n br.nch 231. 232, 233. 2).4,

156-7; nocnts ofMarch (1991) HI-2.

135-7. 138-9, 139-40. HI-1. 143: I...
dunn: '0 a'.,;d wa. 161. 166; and Slovene

ruction '" M:ui<c, Squuc b 343: .nd

Fnu..--Poin' ?In 349; .nd Gor.lde 368-9:
.nd COO""" Group plan 378-9

123. 12'n.l: .nd S\oovcni. 5()-1. 51-9'

n
d
'Yogurt R.mlut;"n 62, .nd Slo<ocn. co""i
"" hm"\ amendments 80. 81. 82; .nd
Sln,,,ni. 4--5, 113-15. 125, 127n_2: and

Hafne Vinlw xv. 65

Hogue Pl.n lO'r16. 211, 218-19

79. 8O;.nd
.
con,liru'iono.l .m.nd....n'.
Croa,i. U()-I. 125-6. HS. 149-50. 153,

52-3. 54. 55, 57; and Sl"""ne ro...rirution.:r.l

IN..\ (Yugool.v 1\opIe'. Army) 51, 86. I 13,

H.dlifejuMt. Sen.d xv. 261-2

286-8.290-1
F.de".l p..
, identy 66: response ro Slo"ene

307.312. 313; .nd Joint Acrion Plan 312,

j.....barsko. Cro
..i. 192
Je", (,9, 73",8

II.dbC. Goran xv. 1$2. 225

7-H. 78. 86. 142. 143: and Slovenia 82-3.

169-70. 172. 171r-7. 181; and w:u;n
Cro1ua 193; Panr .. Prim. Mini....

Kacin.Jdko ..... 1I5

KoJjjevi.'. Veljko ..... 54. SO. 86; ond Sioveni.

336: Summer 1993 peace t.II" 337. 339'.

J.nh,J....1 xv, 55. 56-7, 114. 115, 172-3. ]76

J..hari, K.,o!a n. 65

Gft.... Mibn JC\'. 200. 20-1

Fedo.,,] Go-ocrnmeD' (lklgrode) D'<'i. 64-5. 67.

I. 164; M1rkoovit Prime Min;!!e,

259-67. 268; Carrin8ton ,,;,il 279-8O; .nd

'hit .nd "rikt' 280-. nd Val\Ce--O.,.n
.., Plan

Grb.";e. Sarajevu 251. 257. 258

Gutman. Roy 274. 275

Hosn;.n refugees 272: :ond London

Confe'enct 2'87. in 8!J" Bri" ;n; Fronn::
G.rm.ny
Europnn Union 377

1600.6

J.,t.",. Bo>ni. 288.327-8

Gre<: 221-2
Gtegurit. fnnjo iv. 11!8. 19()

m.i< 174-fl. 178. 1(1)-1, moni'ol' in

Jupp<. Ala;n xv. 377

Junt, Pc""" xv. 105. ]06. 108. 126, 146-7.

234--5, 237-8. 239. 2]. 242, .nd "",brnlt

of-.1' 247-9. 253-4: kidnapped 255-6,

Grache... P.vel )?9

GraniC. M..'e iv. 272. 354. 356

"nd,,'co 284. 33(1-1. 360

ethnic .k.n.ing _'cbnoing'
Europe.n Communi,), 214. 347; .nd 51O>'ene

.)'mm.triul federation plan 162-3. 233:

bc QUtlm:o.lr. of..... in Boon.io 227. 233.

j><k,,,,;';I >, Vic,,,,, xv. 358

153. 170

101-2; 5]",..,ni. 93-4

266.267

199

37()-2.376

EC .'" Europe.n Com,nunity

G.!br.i,h. Pcter ,,"v. 355. 355-6. 357. 358

G",,;t. Ejup xi". 233. 248, 35]. 375; .nd
kidnap of12CI 262. 263. 21>'. 265,

INDEX

348; and NATO ultima",m 3S0. 352. 353;

and ba"1e fOr Gonl:de 365, 366, 367. 368.

371; .plit wilh SerlH. 371-1. 373--4. 381;

and ComlCl Group plan 375. 376. 377. 37S.

rebelLon 149-50. 151. 156.157. 158-9; and

Skwen. ori". 166-7. 17G-4. 116-7. 179-80,

Kav:r.j B.n.n rYi. 67

12. 181, .nd war in C"",Ii. 181. 188. ]89.

19()-8. 199. 200-, 105, 207, 217, 223. 324;

K""terrn de..nrion nmp 276. 283

Ken." Mih,.\j xvi. 62. 73n.3

Kijc.... C..,.ri. 151. 188. 189

of,." ill Bos1l;' 227. 245. 246-7. 248. 249.

2.51. 258-9; and kidn.p oflulbegovit

Ki.e1j.k, HO$ni. 328-9. 330

Kljujr. Sljepan xvi. 233. 262. 325

Knin 100.151. t9(). ]91,207.34{l

Knin ...bellion 104-11. 13; Iprtad of 146-57,

,loin, AClion Plan 320. 336

Joka".wiC. tulru
xv, 134

158-9
Kohl. H<lmut 217. 218. 221

ioal
orm ,,,, <u p.....

KoIjevit, Nikob xvi. 233. 29. 279. 181. 282:

J"",noVlC. Vhdi,lav XV
311

""""'.1301';..,. ...., 75,a

:m ri.. ofMi44.

43. 70, it: .nd Slovene

conotirurioruo./
<mend""'n!> 78-9. SO, SI;:ond C..,.lia
107
121 2. ]23. 115.
147. 149;.nd ,he event>
March 099]) 130. 131. 135. 136-7. 138-9;

<>r

.";. 158, and Slovene

",," 177. 178. ]81-2; .nd ..ar in Cro.li.

and d,...ion ofYu

;" "<I Kr.jina Serbo 223. 224 .nd Basnia

;

.nd V.nc""'O..n Plan 309-10. 317-18;

talks wi,h Sem. 339. 340

Kolkk, Konrad ni. ]70. 171

Komlit. l\'o ni, 356. 357

Kordi<'. D.rio rYi. 327

Koren..... C",.ti. 104. 148. 150
Korit. S:unir l5{)..1 . 251-2

Kosovo xn
i. 29. 32. 33-4. 35n_7-9. 2!!9.

195

385-6; Milosovic I';';' and efl"M' 36-7. 38.

39.40-1.44; Anti-Bureaucratic Rc""lu'ion

INDEX

INDEX
(X_ (Om.) 65--6, 67-8, 69. 70--2; Sf Virus
<by (1989) 75, 76-7; nd the Hogue Pbn
213, Hi /", Sullo, Kooovo

Kosrit,Jugod.o.v xv, 136, 138

i
Kozp". And.Ti xvi, 287, 288, 320,]46

KoniC, Br.lfllro xvi, 64. 190. 224. 1fb-l. 268

Knjin. ]00. lSI J 1J(J Serl, Knjina

Knjlinil<, Mom<'iIo )<Vi, 2]3. 238; .nd omb",ok

of"",r in Bosnia 226,249, 2S3-I; and

V.nce-Owen Pbn 309, 313, 317;.nd batde

for Go...td< )66, 367; .nd Con.... G.oup

pI.n 378

KruniC. &.tiro xvi, 61-2

Krimn. I"," m, 80

49. 50, 51, 53, 5S, 56, 58; .nd Kooovo 66,

Klbn, Milan m;.nd Slow:nc potiriution

68. 69. 70--1;.nd Slovene COl1.tiNtionol

.mendm.nrs 79-80, 8], 81-2. 93; .nd <Icc'

tio1'IS 83 'N,95; andJNA diJotmamcnl pro-

gnmrr>< 11-1, 1]5; .nd su.i<m 122, 1St

M.nj>t. <k.<nnon camp 274-5. 276

MmoIit,jooip xvii, 242

l\I;ukovit, Ante mi. 74-5, 78, 86, 142, 14J;

ond Slov<ni. 79. 82-3, 166; and 51"""",,

lW'orm Fottto 231-2

l\lorkoviC, MiJj.". xvii. 36. 4]-2, 43, 48n.5, 10
enh' 169-70. 172. 176-7, ]81; League of

l\1utit, Milan xYii, 224; and IWn ",bellion

M.ntwl, I'I:nny 276

105, 106. 107, 108-9. ]]1;.nd .prnd of

",bellio" 146, 148. 149. IS1.158; .nd """

hrtivci, the 187, 188. 189

in Croari. 187. 188. 189

l\b.pok movement 87. 89, 97n.\

mcd;. 130. 155 ="'- prt:SS; .lnUion
musgn_ 198--9,270

'Mwings cfTruth 60. 83, 148

Memorandum of .hf Serbi.n Acadtmy of

ScicnS and Am N--30. 31-2, l4n.l

Mendiluc<,josc' M.rio xvii. 245-7, 296-7

M"'. S,ip" xvii. lIS, 120, 121, ]22; Ind

172-3,175-6. ]80. 181

eventS ofMarch (1991) 135, 136, 138, 1)9,

kidn.p of1...,.begoviC 259. 260, 264, 265,

SkIY<ne 5C<e"ion 166-7. ]82: Yupltv

163, 165, 167, 183; .nd Slne enii. 171,

Knbnj.c, Mi
l u.in >C\'i, 221, 25H. 268; .nd
266.267
L.@." mdtij lJ..lroxvi, 255.26O,261.265.

Loiboch (m",in! group) 49

LOZir, T.ot 75--6
m

Lc;ogu<= ofRcfonn Fottto 231-2

ag\lC of Communi... ,u Communi.t P.rties

liMral Democ"''' 94

'lift and ltn!a:'policy 280. 318-19

l.>.bon Agrttrmnt 241-2

Lilit, Zoran Mi, 374, 381

Ljublj.n. Foor 57, 58

London Conf.",,,,,, 285, 2S7-90

Lobr. Sonj. xvii, 85

...
nch 259-60. 264, 369
Lub';ca b

Mucdoni.a and fol"""doni.n, u., 59n.3, 162.

22]-2,384

M.rK.nic. Lewis xvi

i. 252, 259, 3#, ,nd

kidn>p oflutbcgoviC 256, 264-7. 267-8;

and Carringt<>n ."i, 279; Comm.ndo.
Sec,or Sarajevo 280, 18], 281-2

M.hmurtth.jic. Rusmir xvii. 263

Major,john 175.287,288.352
l\hmula, 8rmko :mi. 55. 'IS, ]37-8; and
SI""""i. 50--1, 52. S3

141;.nd Croatia 147, ]53, 15%.2;...d

Prc<idcn. ]66, 169-70. ]76. 178, 190; and

Mihajlovit. Kosta 340.]

ocigc ofOubr<n'tlilr. lO2-3

Mi.l, Siobodan 1Mi. xxiii"",,;v. 41-2,

73".9,386. 3!18; and =Ml of&mi.an
n.tionalism 31-2, 60; rue to JlO"'" (1987)
36-47, 63, 76-7; .nd Slni. SJ-4, 79, 84',
.nd Vojvodin. 60. 61. 62: and CommuniJl
P=y .nd governmen. 64-5, 66-1, 74. 75;
and KOJOVO 65, 66. 67, 68. 70-2, n, 289; II
Fou"ecmh Potty Congre.. 85, 86: and
Croatia 107. 112n.10' 121, 122, 123, ll;
.nd YUgoflav unity 122-3, 127, 161; oDd
events ofMotch (1991) 129, n0--1. 132-4,
\38,139. 140-1. ]42-3; <",t tolb with

Tudjm.n 14}-4, ]57-8, 233-1, 23S. J4O;

ond ymm.tric.ol fi:derarion plan 162; ond

Slow:nc cri,i. 169, 177. 178, 180, 183; con

trol ofJ'rujdenrv 190; and ..... in Croon.
206,207, 217; I H.gue Plan 209-10,

211. 212-13, 214. 215.2]6: .nd Vonce

Plan 217, 218, 219; and G.muny 218; -'
Knjin. Serb. 222, 223. 225; and Boonia
wII
r... 235. 236, 240, 241; ond
before ,h. ....
n
in ni. 245--6, 248. 286; .nd Londo
Conf.",,,,,, 285, 288, 289, 290: and !'&nO!
Pba
285, 287-8, 29Il-l: .nd V.ncn

p<1lC<: ,a.I'" 336. 338: and Contact Group

pUn 376. 3n, 3n-8, 379; and 'pli, wi.h
IWfni.n Serbs 31B. 371-2, 373-4. 379-8],

J()7-15. 3]6, 317, 318; and Summ.. 1993

Obrovoc, Cro.ri. 104, ]08

3"

Om....k.o detention <amp 275--6

Odbor (Commin
for the Dofence ofHmoo
Ri,:hlS) 57, 58, 68

Opabl',jo,,"n xvii
i . 10], 107
O...sac, Bosni. 269, 270

!>li...:Mt. Zi"",...d 42

:-'lilovanOiC. M.nojlo 348

Orit, N.ser xviii, 293, 295, 304

OM, Ljilj.n. xviii, 331

Mitc\'.t. Dus.n mi, 32, 48n.2, 85; .nd rise of

Mllokvit 38, 43. 45, 47;.nd

O.ijck, 51....i .
., 154, 192, lO5, 206

Anri-BurDucnric Revolution 62, 69-70;

0","", gn....itt 198-9

Mi.so..ki Kon...ntin n';i, 312. 3]4, 3]8

.nd even!> ofM.",h (]99]) 133, 138

Owen. Lord Ihvid xviii, 290, 36]; and

I,"<",nd. Fnncoi,28]-2

V.no;c-()wtn PI.n 306. 307-8, 308-9, 310,

31]-12, 3B, 3]4, 319; and Summtr 1993

!l1I.di<. R>lk" xvii. 18<}, 328, 352: and

talks 336, 339'. and reaction 10 Market

V.nce-Owcn I'lan 316; and b>.nIc for

S",brc"ic. 297, 198, 300, 301-2; .nd

Squo", bomb 345, 346, 347; and Con""t

Gordde 362, 363, 364. 365, 366. 37]

,'HIJ'nQ (m.gain.) 51-2, 53, 54-5
llion!Cncp<> !\1on'ncgrim 60, 6)-4, 66.

Group pion 374, 376

P.kr.c, Westtrn SI.voru. 146-7

Panit, Zivo.. xviii, 195, 1%,206

Pani<, Mit.n xviii, 285, 286-8, 289, 19O-1

162,213--]6,286.385

""

Morillon. Phillil'" xvii, 29, 297. 301, 302,

Porag>., Oobros.vxviii. 205

Mo.t". Bo.nia 28), 323. 335n.3, 339, 342n.1

Pmy ofo.mocra'ic Action Me SDA

Muslims. Bosni.n niY. 92. 227-30. 23]; <1

Party of Democmic Chang<' (5DP)89, 102.

tion. 232, 233; befo", outb",.k of ""'. 226,

]04,148

23"-', 237. 242, 243; outb",... of"""

P,ny ofRignt (HSP) 1110.1,205

3()]-2, 304; UId Voncc-Owtn Pl.n 306.

Pucli.C, Anle niii, 90, 99

27...R 248. 249. .250; wffcr ethnic cle.nsing

Pupolj, Mc xvii
i . 22....5

Pmioric k.gu< 257.259.263

256.257. 269-78.283; in Sreb"'nico 293--4,

JOiI; .nd 1....\1 Action Plan 320--1; .nd war

Pavlovit, Dngisa mii, 31. 32, 40-1. 42. 44, 45,

P.,,]., P..ri..h 133

326-35; 5umm.. I993 1"" ral'" 336. 337:

pc....k.eping force. 207, 217. 222-3, 225.

GoraMe 361-9, 370-2

Pioneer Pork rolly. Belgrade 39

in C''''''i. 324: Mu.lim-<:...,.. conAiet

"

Ftkret AIx!;c 337, 339; Mutlim-CwlI fed

....ion 35H, 375, 376, 378, 386; b>.nlc for

N.mbiiU. S.tish xvii, 225
N.tionl! Sil....ti<>n C<>mmitr 251, 252
"""on.lill" xxi,'. 74: erooti.n 87, 88, 89. 92;
MuiJim 331; Serb 29-30, ]]. 34, 35n.8. 39.

NATO 318. 346. 362. 387; c.lls fOf ito int...

60. 98. 142, 161; S]"" 50

''<ntion 2SQ, 345-6. 347-8; "lrim'Nm

"",nd SMlljcvo 350-3, 357;.nd hattk fot

N
, ..... 5lovcru.n Ar, mo",,n
,,, ' 49
"'nc.J"Y 274. 1i5
N....., Rrooj (journa.l) 50 53
'

GO'dd. 36-1, 365. 366-7. 369-7Q

No.; S.d 60. 62

0\,;].... M,Ios 317-18

l'I:"!'k. Army, YupI.v

288.362

Hi

jNA

!'I.die. Bjano mii, 223. 233, 248. 249, 2S7,

38O;UId V'n Plan 311.315.318

Pohara, Armin xviii. 243

Ptvic N.tiona.l ""rk 104, 148, ISO

""'jra.. (f>Cwsf"'p<rl ]2, 42, 7l. 83

IWitil. lAs,... (""wsf"'f'<r) 2

].....vin Booini.a 2SJ. 308. 356

I'oo.,j.oque. xviii, 175, 178

Presidency /u Federal p""idency

l'roljak, Siobodan mi;, 93

prc>'I 31, 60, 215: in'em.tionol 200. 202, 274.

302.376

Prow" Bosni. 327

Prijcdor, Booni. 276, 283

F'ucnil<,jou xYi
ii. 94

Pulin. jusuf265. 266

397

INDEX
INDEX
89,
an, I;ca mii, 39, 82, 8-', 116,

in Croon.
233-4. 339--40: and rebdlion
. 165; and
22
1
ion.
...
oec
and
149, 156;
....n.
177, 183;.00 waf in C
Slm'Cne
PLon 210, 211-12,
195--6;.nd ,lit Hogue
Plan 217, 218;
21, 216: ....<1 Vlon:
'00 _, in
BclgrKk Ir.iti.ali,,, 235. 236;

95, %,

crisi.

8
1Wok<wit, Alckiandar 33, 35n.
102

j. mii, 170, 172. 17.

Ruel" AOOri
2, 10N, I\ 1n .;.nd
,J",..... "",,1011l0. 147
Knin rebeLlion lOS, 107,
n
Arb
<
o
Zo:ljk
.;t
,
\l:Iln.,..
355, 358, 360. 374
RWmo.n, Chul.. xix, 354,
334
...fug.... 269, 271-2, 278,
154. 157
Rcihl-iGr,Josip Ii:<, 153,
258, )10, 336, 373
IUpubllIY Srp$lu 241, 252.
341, 362;
Roo<, Sir Michael xilt, 345,
50, 351, 352; .nd
Four-Poin' Ptan 348, 349-3, 363-4, 365-6.
2
36
w
C<>n
for
bank
36S.371

Rugow,lbn.hitn xix, 77
RUJXI. Dimi"ij xix, 213

31S.
Runi. 131, 307, lOS,
)73; st. II# Sovie' Union

320, 346. 352, 365.

on 245, 2-17, 269, 286; .nd London

Bo;"
SrrbKnica 293;
",, ! 287, 189-, .nd
..
u
f
on
C
307; .pIi. with
Pl>n
w<n
v:ancr-O
.n<!
3

80, 382Boonion 371. 373, 379' (SAO) 146, 149,

Setbian :&II""",m'''''
Itt SD5
Serbi.n D<moc",ti< Pury
'"

n' (SI'O) 130, 149

Seroi.n R.ne.....! Moveme
i.-Htru-g<Mn. <
S.,bi.n Republic of80sn
Republih SrI"'"
387-8; .nd poIiIII
Serb.. Bosni.n 230-1. 386,
223-4. 226: .l
bili<y of Bo.nian >cee..ion
of"'Of in
232,233; before outbreak

217Soci,bey, Moh.mtned m.

...r. lrell' 301, 30.}-4, 320.

S, ViM', day 75
375, 382
"'<Ktions 216, 307, 308,
139-40
136,
xix,
Riu
u.
rud'li
S.pu
272. 329, 330. 339.
SIn.VO 226-7, 268n .1.
6. 280-3, l48: .nd
376; .i,pon 252, 255253, 256-9: .;.
oulb....k of""" 249-52,
384: and pligh' of
3.
352288,
280,
9,
278.rullak are. 303:
e..,em Booni. 294; ool
3, 344-5
M.,I,.,SquIre bo>mb 34
Swwcrof', 8...n' :We.li2
C Action) 228, 232.
SDA (P.ny ofOcmo:lh
,251
242
,
,
238
2)4, 236, 237
lic Clungt) 89. 102,
SOl' (P.uty of IXmOO'n.
362. 387

102.
Ocmocn.ri< Party) 96, 101,

SDS (Serb,.n
104. lOS. 153;
23O;.nd Knin ..bellion
233,234,
8osni." lI...nch 149,230,232,
104. 148

236. 237, 238

3B4, 385. 386:
Se,b.. wd Serb! """, JDO'i,
n.tionalism
Wo,ld Wu !1 68-9 ,90, 9':1;
39, 60, 69, . 161;
29-30, 31. 34, 35n,8,
69: :ond Milokvi<'
.nd Koaovo 33, 010, 60,
2; S, Vi", d.y
69-7
r-.de
ilclg
in
63; n.Uy
,
,<spon.. to
(1989) 75,76-7; 51", <n.
1; .nd Slov.ne
incr.... in S.,b pow" 77-8
8.:1-4: .nd
oovereign lute d.cbmion
84--6; events of
F""".en!II I'"y Cungre"'

138 ,13'f-40. 142-3:

Marth (1991) 129-37,

14.:1-4. 157-8,
ICCf'CI ,11k. ",i,h C,o.ti.

,ion'

239-41,

8.
Bosni. 233, 234. 235, 236wa' 226-7, 245,
242-3; .nd "u,bre.k of
de.n.ing' 256,
247, 249. 250; carry out
airport
27J-7, 283; .nd S....jco
269-71.

4,
in Bosni. 251, 258, 283-

280-2; and w"u

on Confe...""" 288,
325--6,327-8; and Lond
nic. 293-4, 296--7,
289-90. 328; and S...b...
and
f!. 300. 301, 302. 304:

18;.
.--O n PI:on 306, 308, 309v:mc._
me, 1993 pea<><
'Iift .nd ,trike' 319; Sum
mon 337-11; ISIIu
!2lb 336-7; nkc Mountlg
-Point Pl>n
with C""',. 34()-1; and Four
....
Ind NATO ultim."'
297-

,.d

3-18. )49, 350, 351;

e for Gon.lde
round S=jc\O> 350-3; h.m
2, 373-',
)60-72; opIil wi,h Serbi. 371..p plan 315, 376,
...
G
'",,1
Con
.nd
;
80-1
3

2, 9;,
Serbs. Croati.n 29, 91Kroji
M< ..I,. Sem.,
377-80, )82

102-3, 191, 213.

, 386-,
Scm., Kosavo 29, 33. 60-1

and M

36-7. 38.39,46.213
101. \27, 3010, 385:
Serb>. Knj;n. 99-100.

11; .pread of
Knin rebellion 104. 104",r.rendum 162:
on
hoyc
57;
14&on
...belli
194,
"';. 187, 188, 189, 192,

.nd _r in c,"

198. 205, W7. 919;

.nd lhgue Plan 2\2;

, 223opposi,;on '0 Vanee Pion 222

247
Sdclj. Vojid.v xi:<, 155,
de 331, 332, 335
Scvtnth ]l.1u.lim Brigo

Shalih.hvli.john 363

Shulrria. Ali 67

Sid, C,oori. 196

Sil.jdtit, H.ti. ><ix, 343. 354, 357, 358, 376,

'SO

Sim",-ic.TomiILovl%
SkoIji, Jotc .n, 69

Sb,'Orti. 152-5, 157,190-1.192,193-6,

196-9,205,385

nd S1ovenc< 31. 47. 384; poIilici"

ni
..
S""
"lion 49-50, 51-2. 57, ondJNA 50-1,
Cankarjcv Dom Rally 68-9; propooc

ronstiNrion2l. .mendmc:nt. 77-82; dcchtc

_.",ign".tt 82-3, ond Fou"co:nlh P>m'
Cong..... 84-6; .kaions 93-4; :arnt.mcn;
51-9;

ow
161. 162, 163-5, 169, 180, 182; "",r foll
m ..co,..ion 169-74, 17S-SO; and H.gu.

1""Ilr.rnlmc 1l3-15: sccession 122-3,1 51,

Pl.n 111; in..tn.tional recognition of inde

penderK. 221. 222

Tcmlorial Dofcnc.: fore.. '" TO

Thuoor, Shuhi)O<, 303, 370

Thornberry, C.dric "", 297-8, 301, 302

Trgnt (pallmilitoty) 245, 27, 272
Ti,o xiii.)O(\', JDO'i, 30, 45, 87, 90

TO (T.rriroria1 lXn fOfCCS) 113, 127n,l;

HOIni.n 240, 248-9, 257, 259, 265, 266.
293-1, 324: St..:-no 113-15, 171, 172-3,

Tn._nik 214, 327, )2S, 330, 331

Trepr. minel"$ 65, 61,68, 69, 73n.7
T'gO\te..;.o;. Ljubinb "", 45, 46, 76

Trifunovit, Vlado:a, 192-3

Trnopoljc dc,(nbon camp 270, 216

Tudjmln, Franjo xx. )O<i, 88, 89-90, 91-2, 385,

388;.nd oleCOonl 89, 91, 96; .nd IWkoYi<
102-4; .nd Knin rebellian 105. 111; .nd
.ff.cIS of Croll';," ..m.me'" liS. 123-4,

125, 126; ..c..., ,.11:. with MiloOc 143-4'

370
'
Smi,h. Leighon
5o<;,li" P.n(SPS) 134. 149, ISO
5<>ci.li" you,h org.nimion. Slovenia 49, 50,

157-8, 233-4. 235: .nd Ipreod o( Knin

,bcl1ioo 146, 17, 150. 15;; .nd

Cro.';.n ..ce..;on 151. 162, 164; .nd
51""00. ....ion 163. 166-7; aCII '0 .void

"

Solevi<'. Miro,I... xix. 33. 36, 38, 39, W-l

$ovid U"ion. 124, 137 ,,,ah. Russi.

war 186-S; .nd wor in Croll" 190 196-7,

204,205,206,207; .ndH.iI". Pt..

Spegolj. M'rlin xix, 95-6, 124, 126; and

Cro..i.n Nltional G"",d 116"-17; and JNA

209-J(), 211; ulkt in ComlJny 218; .nd

1 1 7-18, 119-20, 167; resign.tion 167,

,,...,

SI'O (S.rbi.n Ren""..! m"""ment) 129-30,

'"

Srcbn:ni.:-a 283, 293-303, 304, 308, 330, 376

Sttm.IY MitroYin detention a.mp \99
Sumoobt. Jvon.n, 31. 31, 40; on<! rue of

SI'S (Social.i." P.ny) 13-1, 149, 180

:'>liI...rn. 31-8,39-40,42-4, 44-6, 47

SU""'"T1ik. J.ncz D, 57-8, 82

SUnliit,Jovico 73n_3

S,<W
.... Bob 329

B<>Ini. 2(}4, 312. 323, 324-5; talkt wj!h

Setbs 340-, .nd ;\lullim-CI01' Federation
355,357,358

TUI"',kovoki, VaI "", 125, 1)1, \35, 136, 139,

14\-2,176

Tu" An",n xx,207

Tuua, Boonia 294, 303. 330, 365

UN (Uni,.d N.,ionl) 218. 280, 333, 350, 363;

"''''' embargo 219; V.occ Pl... 216-11,

uf.

218,222-3, 125: and Londoo Confcrenu:

a"'''' 301, 303-4, 320, 362. 387,
288;
and NATO ulhm.nrm )50: uitim.nrm '0

S,,,lttnbcrg. Thor>'aldxx. 314, 336, 339,347

f.tU<kn.. 132-3, 134. 138. \42-3

Stupm Do, nooni. 334
Suklje. Boru' XJI, 56

SIli.k. Gojlw "", 153, 157, 356

S",... Slip< xx. 47, 64. 71. 1600.13

T",<. D."'d "". 57

T..it. R,""'.n 192

.. 365; Jd,J,. UNHCR:

Croo"a 357; bos .g

S,mg", P.vlc 202

USHCR 246, 363; .nd ethnic dn,ing 272,

273. 218. 294, 296-7

UNPROFOR

Uni,ed Kingdom st/ ll,;..io

Unil.d S""I of Am.rica 121. 307, 31S-20.
387; ,nd 51",'.". c,i.i. 164-5. ISO; rc<o

ni'ion nf "CCIsion. 222; .nd B",ni. 239.

252; ."d ..hnk dun,ing 277. 21S; ond
arm n,b"g" 219. 29S, 320. 377; coil, fo,

'.I'''',i<>" 480.2, 131. 261-2. 278

TeI"i.i"n Ilclgro& 38. 45, 47. 125, 130, 138,

NATO in,er"",;"n 35--6, 347, 3S()-, .nd

Mu,lint-C",.. f.<le...,io" 354-5, 355--6,

T."zijc fOfUm 132-3, 135,138

1440.1.291

399

INDEX
.nd .,riko:
(NATO ,""I.) )57-S, .nd 'Ii"
Go"'1<J<, 369
for

Inl
nd
371,
19.
318Ptmrion
UNPROFOR (Uni,ed N.rloo.
353, .nd
Foc) 223. 225. 256. 28S. 329.

5",bn:nic. 297-S.
,hnic d.n.ing 27),.nd
",
..
Mar\lo.o Sq,
'
$liga
in""
,
3().1
m. 300-3.
;
2
)51m
,,,
him,
..
bomb 34-1,.nd t-:ATO
.ri.n Fucim) 117.
.....,rality 362, UllIe (Cro

90, 91. 99

....1I,Jen B..,.k.lhnPD', 175.

'"

178. 180-1. 209.

225; ....d
Va""'. Crru5 lOC. 216-17. 218.
3]2. )]3. 314
V.ncc-O_n l'LIn 306. lOS.
3. 225. 38S
V.nce Plan 2]7. 2]8. 222.2. 330.
'en Pt.n 306-]S. 319. 32\n
Vnc.-o"

335n.4

V.,.Win garrifOn 192-3.207

V."'S. BOllli 333-5

.nd S]""en;' 52. 55.

V..iljevi<!. Al.knnd.1 lXi;
20. ]5'10.2.
118,;.
C",,
.nd
55-6. 57;
,
29. 147. 225
"'m.j,N..,.II; (""" 'pope')
4811.2
lC<i.
m;,
Ro,o
Viro.
147-8

Vidm... Tonc ""i. 173

VinkoYci. Croatia ]92. 193. 197

Vi..,jiC. 5""'0",,, 53
Vi..,1. Bosni. 319.330. 3}2
44. 45, 65. 67. 68,
Vlb,i. Azoom "n. 36. 37. 38.
72
. 196. 199
VojYodin. avi. 32. 44. bO-3
l90. 193-6. 196-201, 206,
..
....'u
Vuktn....
.C
'"

Wahlgren. t.=-ric J04

W<jn..nd... Henri xxi. 215

Western Boom., Autonomous

356
Westem Herzcgm"in. 234.
369. 370
W""""" , h"f,ed 347.

!'J<win of339

Ydt';n.lIori.351
'Yogurt Revolution' 60-3
Yugosl.v Pl:opli. Army !N JNA

Z.gn:b. ero.ti. I'll. 205

58. 59
Z.vrl. F",nci xxi. 52. 54, 55, 57.
Zenic-.8"",i. 330.331.332
?...cp., Bo.n;. 283. 303. 330, 376
121, 165, 242
Zimmmn.nn, W..",n xxi. n.
rm 93
ZSK-Porty of Ikmo<:",tic Ikfu
Z"lfik>.rp:liii. Adil xxi, 236
297
Z."rnik, Bosni. 245, 246-7,