Milosevic (29 page)

With the protests ended, Milosevic pressed his advantage. Serbia's leader addressed his nation again. He declared that special reservists and militia units would be mobilised. He announced the de facto departure of Serbia from Yugoslavia. ‘Yugoslavia has entered into its final phase of agony. The Republic of Serbia will no longer recognise a single decision reached by the [Federal] Presidency under existing circumstances, because it would be illegal.'
¹²

This was not true, but together with Borisav Jovic Milosevic was simply driving a tank through the constitution. All of Serbia's mayors were summoned by dawn telephone calls to a meeting in Belgrade, where they were addressed by Milosevic. Slovenia and Croatia wanted to secede from Yugoslavia, he told them, but the Muslims did not have any reason to leave. He added: ‘If we have to, we'll fight. I hope they won't be so crazy as to fight against us. Because if we don't know how to work and do business, at least we know how to fight.'
¹³
A very clear line had now been drawn.

Soon after, Milosevic met with a group of 200 students and teachers at Belgrade University. If his first meeting with his staunchest opponents had been uncomfortable, this was even worse. It is surprising that Milosevic, who usually planned precisely every public appearance, agreed to such an event, where he would face a hostile audience who controlled the meeting's agenda. But these were some of the weakest days of his rule in very uncertain times. Milosevic had opponents not just on the streets but in the other republics, the federal administration and the JNA. All of those could be dismissed as ‘separatists', or ‘anti-Serbian' or whatever invective Milosevic chose. The students though were harder to dismiss. Although they had not voted for him, they were the children of the people who had voted him into power. They were not Slovenes or Croats, but Serbs, who represented Serbia's future.

None the less, the students were given the same message as the mayors. Any country could leave Yugoslavia, but they would not take the Serbs living there with them. Milosevic said:

It has not occurred to us to dispute the right of the Croatian nation to secede from Yugoslavia, if that nation decides of its own free will in referendum . . . but I want to make it completely clear that
it should not occur to anyone that a part of the Serbian nation will be allowed to go with them. Because the history of the Serbian nation in the Independent State of Croatia [NDH] is too tragic to risk such a fate again.
¹⁴

Milosevic had misjudged his audience. These were not mayors of remote provincial cities, loyal party hacks whose only concern was to keep the privileges they had accumulated under Communism. This was the Belgrade generation that had holidayed on the Adriatic coast, had Croatian friends and mocked nationalism as much as they laughed at Communism. They read
Time
and
Newsweek
and listened to the BBC. They had travelled abroad. They listened to rap music, the Sex Pistols and the Clash as well as Yugoslav rock groups such as Electric Orgasm and Fish Soup. In fact Milosevic's two hundred inquisitors were virtually indistinguishable – apart perhaps from the number of cigarettes they smoked – from their counterparts in Berlin, London or New York.

They spoke English, they wore American jeans, and they departed for new lives in the West. That war triggered waves of refugees from the killing fields of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo is extensively documented. But Serbia's own great emigration is less well known. Milosevic's policies caused a mass exodus of the young and the educated, of liberals and moderates, of simply ordinary people, all the best of the old Yugoslavia. Tens of thousands, perhaps more than 100,000 young Serbs left, most never to return. The country could ill afford such a massive loss.

But Milosevic did not object. It seemed he had not misjudged his student audience at all. He had spelt out his vision of Yugoslavia's future to the core of his natural opposition. Their reply was to regroup across the world, in London and Johannesburg, Berlin and Paris, Toronto and New York. From there they watched the march of wars across their homeland live on CNN. Bitter and disillusioned, they telephoned home. But they were no longer demonstrating on the streets of Belgrade.

Wars are often waged by those who know each other well, at the expense of those who have never met.

Stipe Mesic, President of Croatia.
¹

Two men chatted animatedly as they strolled through the landscaped gardens of the Karadjordjevo hunting lodge. 25 March 1991 was a beautiful spring day. Verdant ivy climbed up the walls of the villa; red and purple flowers blossomed on the terrace. Only the ring of security men around the villa indicated that something out of the ordinary was happening at one of Tito's favourite retreats.

Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman were quite at ease in each other's company, each holding a glass of fruit brandy. Film of the meeting shows Milosevic dressed in a dark-blue suit, with a white shirt and purple tie. Tudjman is dressed in grey. His silver hair, metal-framed glasses and febrile manner give him the air of a tyrannical university professor or a company chairman who has hung on too long. The two leaders lean towards each other confidentially as they walk through the grounds. Milosevic gesticulates with his arms wide open, while Tudjman nods and occasionally taps him on the shoulder. Milosevic, it is clear, is the boss.

How could the two leaders find so much to talk about, in such agreeable circumstances, when their countries were on the eve of all-out war? Fighting had already erupted between rebel Serbs and Croats in the Croatian town of Pakrac. While their troops exchanged fire, Milosevic and Tudjman exchanged pleasantries and ideas. They agreed that Yugoslavia was dead. They agreed that war seemed inevitable. But most of all they agreed that Bosnia had no right to exist, and should be divided up between them.

The Karadjordjevo meeting was the opening summit of the secret diplomatic line that, throughout the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, ran from Zagreb to Belgrade. Tudjman and Milosevic agreed on much more than Bosnia. The signals exchanged at the clandestine diplomatic meetings eventually decided the fate of Milosevic's rebel Serb protégés within Croatia itself. Tudjman and Milosevic believed in each other, said Stipe Mesic. ‘One of them wanted a Greater Serbia and the other wanted a Greater Croatia. They trusted each other and they kept negotiating throughout the war. When Rudolf Hess landed in Scotland not even a non-commissioned officer wanted to see him. For several years Milosevic and Tudjman's chiefs of cabinet held negotiations and talked to each other.'
²

Some argued that, even before war had started, there was a cynical community of interest between the two men. This thesis was based on the premise that Tudjman arguably wanted a struggle of ‘national liberation' to forge his new Croatian nation-state. War and the threat of an external enemy would bind the Croat people together and legitimise the new regime. It is an old technique, but no less effective for its age. Milosevic was happy to provide the necessary conflict.

Certainly by the end of 1991 many questions about Tudjman's role in Slovenia and Croatia remained unanswered. Until Slovenia declared independence in June 1991, the Slovene leader Milan Kucan and Franjo Tudjman had worked together. The neighbouring northern republics were natural allies. But at the crucial moment, Tudjman backtracked. ‘In the fateful times of preparation for the plebiscite and the declaration of independence we worked together closely,' said Kucan. ‘But when the war started against Slovenia we did not receive the assistance we expected. When the Yugoslav tanks rolled out from the barracks in Croatia, I telephoned Tudjman, asking for help. The idea was for him to assist the people who were blockading the Yugoslav army barracks and so prevent the JNA tanks driving from Croatia into Slovenia. Tudjman's answer was that he would not let tanks get involved in a war in Croatia just because of Slovenia.'
³

Kucan had been working closely with a Croat former JNA general, Martin Spegelj, who became Tudjman's minister of defence. When the war started in Croatia General Spegelj proposed that the Croat forces follow the successful Slovene strategy of blockading JNA army bases to hold the troops and vehicles hostage. ‘General Spegelj was correct. He was thinking along the right lines as a soldier,' said Kucan. Tudjman rejected this outright, and humiliated General Spegelj in a cabinet meeting. He then resigned, and was advised to leave the country for a while.

Events in Zagreb certainly suggest some kind of understanding between Milosevic and Tudjman. While the city came under sporadic attack, the JNA made no serious attempt to take over the city and topple Tudjman's government. The presidential palace was bombed, but only once. Zagreb was never subjected to the rain of sniper- and shell-fire that came down on Sarajevo. Only one Serbian city – Sid, near Vukovar – was briefly shelled by Croat forces.

There was also the strange episode of the Hungarian arms smuggling operation. In October 1990 General Spegelj went on a clandestine arms-buying mission to Budapest. Hungary agreed to sell 30,000 Kalashnikovs at DM280 a piece, less than half the going rate. Spegelj also bought mines, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft systems. The first two consignments crossed the border into Yugoslavia a few days later, monitored by agents of KOS, Yugoslav military counter-intelligence. At this time Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia, yet no order came from Belgrade to stop the arms smuggling. While in Budapest General Spegelj had also negotiated secretly with JNA officers, to persuade them to hand over weapons. His mission had been filmed by KOS agents with a camera concealed in a television. Milosevic ordered an edited version of the film broadcast repeatedly on Belgrade television. War hysteria erupted.

The siege and fall of Vukovar raised the most questions. The once-pretty Danube town was pounded into rubble by JNA guns during a three-month siege in which hundreds were killed. Vukovar became known as Croatia's Stalingrad. Not just in terms of destruction, but as a symbol of Croatian patriotism. Vukovar surrendered to the JNA on 18 November 1991. Two hundred and sixty Croat prisoners were then taken away under JNA supervision, shot and bulldozed into a mass grave. Just over a month later, on 23 December, Germany unilaterally recognised Croatia. Understandably, Vukovar triggered substantial international sympathy for Croatia, diverting attention from unwelcome matters such as the human rights of Croatia's Serb minority, who were also being ethnically cleansed, but by Croat extremists.

Vukovar's defenders accused Tudjman of cynically abandoning the city for political gain. Its commander, Milan Dedakovic, known as ‘the Hawk', said that his fighters could have held out.

I asked for two or three brigades and an armoured battalion, but they never arrived. Croatia had the resources and could spare fifty tanks
which is what we needed. But Tudjman and the political leadership are more concerned with policy-making than with the war. I feel absolutely betrayed and so do all the people of Vukovar . . . I fought fiercely for Croatia and when both Tudjman and Milosevic saw Vukovar could be defended by such a small group it did not suit either.
⁴

A furore had erupted after a busload of Croat policemen entered the Serb village of Borovo Selo on 2 May, to be met by a hail of bullets that left twelve dead and twenty wounded. The background to this was that the previous month Gojko Susak, an extreme émigré Croat nationalist from Ottowa and Tudjman's defence minister, had taken a night trip to the outskirts of the village. Accompanied by the local police chief, Josip Reihl-Kir, Susak, a former pizza parlour owner, had fired three rockets into the village. Susak's version of home delivery could not have benefited Milosevic more if he had ordered it himself. One of the unexploded shells was shown on Belgrade television as indisputable proof of Croat aggression. Reihl-Kir was horrified at the attack, which he described as a ‘lunatic' action. The police chief was a brave and honourable man who spent months trying to defuse local tensions. Soon after this incident he was shot eighteen times by one of his own colleagues.

Milosevic and Tudjman were partners in a common project, said the Belgrade military analyst Milos Vasic. ‘Whenever there was some sort of truce or easing in the field, either Milosevic or Tudjman would produce an incident, a little massacre here or there, to start it all up again. They have been collaborating together since the beginning.'
⁵

Sometimes Milosevic and Tudjman communicated through the staging of incidents, and sometimes they spoke to each other directly, using ‘ti' rather than the more formal ‘vi'. But mostly the deals were cut through a man called Hrvoje Sarinic, one of the few Croatian officials at the March 1991 Karadjordjevo meeting. He recalled: ‘I was together with Tudjman and Milosevic for just fifteen minutes. Then they went out from the house and went for a walk. There was speculation that they discussed Bosnia. I don't think this was speculation. It was an unavoidable subject between them. This project of partitioning Bosnia was both of theirs, and finally they agreed that Bosnia historically has no right to exist.'
⁶

Tudjman sent Sarinic to Belgrade thirteen times. A technocrat, who
was fluent in English and French, with extensive international business experience and good intelligence contacts, he proved the perfect envoy. Sarinic's secret mission was launched on 9 November 1993, when he was summoned to Tudjman's rooms. The President was lying on his bed, covered with a blanket, listening to the radio with his eyes closed. The Croatian leader had been thinking. He had a brilliant new idea: open a direct channel of communications with Belgrade. ‘It may be good to talk about this with Milosevic.' Sarinic replied that he understood what Tudjman meant. ‘Then ring up and see how Milosevic is breathing,' Tudjman instructed, meaning Sarinic should try and discover what was on Milosevic's mind.