Milosevic and Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic

Milosevic and Yugoslavia

Slobodan Milosevic had a major role to play in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Many would not want to believe it and least of all Milosevic himself but it is generally agreed that fall of Yugoslavia was caused by a brutal army and Milosevic had become very sympathetic to that army during his reign. Before Milosevic came to power in 1986, he was never keenly interested in the army. And the army itself never really paid any attention to him. He was more or less a colorless and rather ignored communist. But once he came to power, he realized how powerful the army was and soon started favoring army in subtle ways. Having begun his play for power, however, he realized that success would depend on having the army on his side. To this end, he opted for the subtle tactics of a discreet courtship. He avoided voicing any criticism of the army himself and discouraged it among his staff, associates, and the Serbian media. That was not all.

During 1987 and 1988, Milosevic also made favorable public comments about the minister of defense, Admiral Branko Mamula; Milosevic also carefully echoed the army position on all issues afflicting the Yugoslav community in deep crisis. Gradually with these small gestures, he inched towards his goal of getting the army on his side and once that was established, he had army's complete support for his ambitions.

Milosevic made a huge impact on the Serbs when he came to power in 1986. She succeeded Ivan Stambolic as the head of the Serbian League of Communists and soon found himself amid the Kosovo crisis. Kosovo had hardly been of any interest to Milosevic and he had little idea what was happening in that region. But after taking charge as Serbian League of Communists, on April 24, 1987, he went for the first time to Kosovo to attend a Serbian rally. Ivan Stambolic who had himself been the chief once wanted Milosevic tried to calm the rally.

As people started shouting and screaming their desire to have freedom. Milosevic was so taken aback by the crowd and by the plea of an old man who said "They are beating us, President! Don't let them beat us" that he looked out of the window and cried out to the mob: "Nobody must ever again dare to beat you!" That was a night to remember for the Serbs and for Milosevic's political career. To Albanian nationalists he categorically said that he will not tolerate any tyranny. To the Serbs who had gathered outside he promised efficient and speedy relief. He ordered mass departures of Serbs from Kosovo "the last tragic exodus of European people." "Yugoslavia and Serbia will not give up Kosovo," he said. "All Yugoslavia is with you."

Sloba's ours," was what people were chanting aloud after the rally all across Kosovo. Milosevic's triumph at Kosovo turned him instantly into the foremost Serbian hero. The silence enshrouding the crisis in Kosovo seemed to have been finally broken. To the over-sensitized Serbian public, bewildered and frustrated by the apparent apathetic attitude of the regime to the fate of the Kosovo Serbs, Milosevic appeared to be the only politician who was unashamed of his people and was not burdened by guilt. The long pent-up "people's movement" for the protection of human rights finally seemed to be taking shape.

But the movement was as futile as one could have been. The changes that Milosevic had promised never materialized because everything became highly political in nature. Milosevic was too busy making his own image and creating a new stronger identity for himself that he often ignored the genuine sentiments of people. From that day on, Milosevic would have all rallies doctored in some way. Everything was preselected from the place of the rallies to the participants; even genuine workers with complaints would be turned down and ignored. "They come as workers, and leave as Serbs," is how Slavoljub Djukic put it.

The role of the media cannot be ignored in this regard. Television and the daily Politika were pivotal in constructing Milosevic's image and furthering his program. The three main components of his program were constitutional reform to reintegrate Serbia's autonomous provinces; warnings to those who anticipated Yugoslavia's disintegration; and a word of caution to Croatian and Bosnian Serbs should they find themselves removed from Serbia. with the passage of time, it became increasingly clear that there was a possibility of an armed conflict.

The first test of his ability to manipulate the army presented itself in the beginning of 1989, when the Albanian majority in Kosovo, demanding autonomy, organized demonstrations throughout the province. Milosevic, and the army, diagnosed the upheaval as a "counterrevolution." "Chop it off at the grassroots!" was the command. In the spring of 1989, tanks were sent to Kosovo. When twenty-two young Albanians and two young Serbian policemen were killed in the armed confrontation that followed, a senior army officer was heard saying, "What of it -- two of ours were killed, but we got rid of twenty-two of theirs." None of the other high-ranking officers present disagreed. In an interview with Time magazine, Milosevic explained his stance on war: "All my speeches up to '89 were published in my book. You can see that there was no nationalism in those speeches. We were explaining why we think it is good to preserve Yugoslavia for all Serbs, all Croats, all Muslims and all Slovenians as our joint country. Nothing else."

Some Yugoslav and foreign analysts predicted that war would break out first in Kosovo and that the fighting would start with an armed uprising by the Albanians. This might well have happened had Kosovo's Albanian community not wisely sidelined its extremist nationalists and opted for a policy of civil disobedience in response to Milosevic's policy of force. With dignity, the community has maintained a life of its own below the surface of Serbian occupation and in contravention of that occupation.

Slovene and Croatian media were the first to ask why the army leaders went along with the dangerous approach Milosevic had chosen for Kosovo. The army leaders, for their part, insisted repeatedly on the inherent danger of "nationalism." They made it clear, however, that they found the Slovenian and Croatian nationalism particularly irritating. With Serbs vastly overrepresented in its officer corps, the army was inclined to look the other way in case of Milosevic.

In 1988, Veljko Kadijevic, whose father was a Serb and mother a Croat, was named minister of defense. He was considered one of the army's most highly educated generals and was respected for his modest lifestyle. Kadijevic also openly supported the antinationalist program of Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Markovic. Nevertheless, without showing signs of disagreement, Kadijevic allowed Milosevic to gradually spread his influence in the army. The signs of the growing closeness between the army and the Serbian president provoked the media throughout Yugoslavia (with the exception of Serbia's official media) to cry out in dismay: "Whose army, for God's sake, is this?" Kadijevic never responded to this outcry, directly or indirectly.

After the collapse of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia on January 22, 1990, the Yugoslav crisis entered its final stage. The idea of a military solution then became a virtual obsession of the hard-liners of the general staff, who had advocated since the mid-1980s that the army should take the deteriorating situation in hand. Three events that took place in March 1991 polarized the positions among the higher army echelons and pushed the army further into Milosevic's camp.

A major event took place in March 1991 when like the Croats, Slovenians also declared they no longer had the intention of sending their conscripts to serve in the YPA. There was no room left for negotiations. Slovenia was also importing military equipment from abroad and intensively training its own territorial defense units. Sparks of open conflict spread fast into Slovenia to the north. When in June 1991 the army rolled its tanks into the city of Maribor, its people poured into the streets in protest. In the general chaos one civilian was killed under the wheels of an armored car. All of Slovenia was in an uproar.

The event accelerated the tempo of developments in both Croatia and Slovenia. On June 25, 1991, the Croatian parliament in Zagreb, and a little later in the day, the Slovenian parliament in Ljubljana, adopted declarations of independence for their states. The Slovenes immediately put words into action and established customs and security control over what they now proclaimed as their state borders with Austria and Italy, forcing federal officials to abandon their border posts.

With independence celebrations in Slovenia at their peak, armored army units moved out toward international border crossings and Slovenia's largest international airport, Brnik. General Blagoje Adzic, speaking for the general staff, made a public statement claiming that the decision to move into Slovenia had been taken by the federal government to ensure that the federal customs services might resume their obligations at the border crossings.

Customs collection was one of the most important sources of revenue for the federal budget, on which the army was deeply dependent. But the goal was probably more ambitious than that. Some army commanders had hoped to return Slovenia by force to the Yugoslav fold, counting on a show of force to be sufficient to accomplish the task and, in addition, to stop the process leading to secession that had already begun in Croatia. However, the YPA did not use the entire military power at their immediate disposal, but only a few armored units with neither infantry nor air support. Out of twenty thousand YPA troops stationed at the time in Slovenia, only one-tenth was used for the operation. This odd strategy prompted many analysts to assume that a deal had been struck beforehand between the Slovenian presidency and Slobodan Milosevic that Slovenia would be let loose. If that was the case, YPA simply went along and simulated an attack.

Other analysts insisted that the army simply fell short of performing a professional job. Kadijevic himself later stated that he could have reduced Slovenia to ruin but that the toll in human life would have been too high. The fact is that the humiliating defeat of the YPA was carried out by the best organized and most disciplined territorial defense units in the entire former Yugoslavia, whose combat readiness proved to be superior to that of the army.