Milosevic (39 page)

Courted by a procession of world statesmen and diplomats, Milosevic positively bloomed under the world's spotlight. There was a strong argument that European diplomats, such as Lord Owen, somehow legitimised his regime. As the European envoy of the International Conference on Former Yugoslavia, Owen was an influential figure in Balkan diplomacy, who seemed to spend vast amounts of time sitting on Milosevic's sofa nodding sagely. At one meeting in Serbia Owen had delivered a clear message to Sarinic, Tudjman's envoy recalled. ‘I remember very well, it remains with me to this day. Stoltenberg and Owen were there with their teams. We discussed how to solve the problem of Krajina and occupied Croatia. Owen told me, “Don't think you are going to get on the green table what you lost on the battlefield.” You can imagine such a statement from an important representative of the international community, it encouraged Milosevic.'
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Neither Owen nor Milosevic lacked self-belief. The good lord had, as one of his domestic critics pointed out, ‘Balkanised' a few political parties himself. Sarinic had once asked Milosevic if it was true that Lord Owen had written the introduction to Mira's book, which had recently been published in Russia. Milosevic said: ‘Owen is our good friend, Mira's and mine, but he did not write the introduction, although he did make some suggestions. The Russian edition alone brought Mira 340,000 Deutschmarks.' Sarinic replied: ‘You married well.' Milosevic could only agree: ‘I can't complain.'
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Tibor Varady, Yugoslav Minister of Justice in the short-lived prowestern government of Milan Panic, recalled: ‘For many years we implored western leaders not to negotiate with Milosevic. In order to create the impression that legality matters, I said why don't you negotiate with the man who is entitled to speak, the Yugoslav prime minister, Radoje Kontic. He would have called Milosevic every five minutes on the telephone, but it would have been something.'
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Varady believes that negotiating with Milosevic became a kind of badge of pride for many politicians. ‘I am not entitled to guess their motives, but for western diplomats speaking with Milosevic was some kind of achievement. It was very important for their careers, to have negotiated with this mighty, ruthless ruler. To say, “I was there with Kontic”, well, who on earth is Kontic? But Milosevic, that was more manly as well. Diplomats are also human.'

Varady recalled how in August 1992, he and Milan Panic had dined with Lord Owen, after the envoy had lunched with Milosevic. ‘Owen
said, much to my surprise, “Now it is clear that Milosevic really wants peace.” That is what he came up with after his lunch with Milosevic. I could not be rude, so I told him he was not the first person to come to this conclusion.'
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Mira was certainly taken with Lord Owen when she and Milosevic had a double-date for lunch with Lord Owen and his wife Debbie in March 1994. ‘He left an impression of a civilised and very cultured person, close to me in many things regarding the wars in Yugoslavia itself, and in general questions of civilisation. It was an easy conversation. He was absolutely close to my stance.'
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But Mira was piqued to discover Lord Owen's recollection of their lunch in his book
Balkan Odyssey
. ‘I was astonished to see what he wrote, that I in our conversation had been against the market economy, when I was not. Secondly, we did not speak about that. He is a doctor and he does not know the first thing about economics.'
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Lord Owen, and arguably the whole panoply of European diplomacy, were anyway about to become irrelevant. The US government had engineered the Croat-Muslim Federation agreement. Now it was going to re-organise its armies. The future of the former Yugoslavia would be decided on the battlefield, not at the dining tables of diplomats. Like its post-Communist neighbours, Croatia wanted to join Partnership for Peace, the entry-salon for eventual NATO membership. All PfP members were required to bring their Warsaw Pact era forces up to NATO standards. This was a massive undertaking, requiring extensive re-training in current western military techniques, familiarisation with NATO weapons and a total re-organisation of the defence ministry.

This called for US military assistance, much of it channelled through private contractors. US military aid was almost certainly Croatia's reward for forming the Croat-Bosnian Federation in April that year. There were reports that Croatia also agreed to the building of a CIA base on the island of Krk to operate unmanned ‘Predator' drones, and supported air-drops of weapons to the Bosnian army.
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The balance of power in the Balkans was about to change for good. At the beginning of May 1995 Operation Flash was launched. Over three thousand Croatian troops, backed by twenty tanks, recaptured Serb-occupied Sector West in less than two days. The Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, did nothing to help his brothers in arms. Nor did Belgrade. Analysts noted that Operation Flash was based on current
western military doctrine, far in advance of the lumbering Soviet-era tactics used by the JNA. The Croatian armour and infantry were well co-ordinated, aided by good use of modern communication techniques and equipment.
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Although Milosevic had indicated that he would not deploy the JNA to aid the Krajina Serbs, he was still enraged when the attack started. He immediately called Hrvoje Sarinic demanding a ceasefire. When Sarinic asked him to sack the Krajina Serb leader, Milan Martic, Milosevic responded furiously, if disingenuously: ‘How can I sack him. I never appointed him there, so I can't sack him,' he shouted, before slamming down the telephone. But, crucially, the JNA troops stayed in their barracks. The rebel Serbs fired Orkan rockets fitted with cluster bombs into downtown Zagreb, killing eleven civilians, a cowardly act that made no difference to the military outcome, for which Milan Martic was indicted by the Hague Tribunal for war crimes.

Faced with the capture of Sector West, the international community proposed a plan known as Z4. Considering the future events of that summer of 1995, Z4 offered unimaginable benefits to the rebel Serbs, including self-determination, their own flag, police, parliament and a president. Milosevic supported the plan, as did Tudjman although with reservations. In a decision of quite remarkable stupidity, the Krajina Serb leaders, Milan Martic and Milan Babic, rejected Z4 outright. Instead they despatched troops to join the Bosnian Serb army's attack on the Bosnian-government-held city of Bihac.

Bihac, cut off by besieging Serbs, had been declared a UN safe area, like Srebrenica. When Srebrenica fell in July, the Bosnian Serb military leader, General Ratko Mladic, launched an attack on Bihac. Unlike Srebrenica, Bihac had been fairly quiet for years, thanks to the region's massive black market from which all three sides profited. So quiet, in fact, that the Bosnian Serb army sold considerable amounts of weapons to their supposed enemies, believing they would never be used. The Bosnian Serbs were wrong. The Croat and Bosnian Croat army attacked the besieging Serbs from behind, while the Bosnian Croat and government forces inside Bihac broke out. The Serbs were caught in the middle. ‘Welcome to Bihac,' said the Bosnian army commander Atif Dedakovic, when the Croat forces broke through. ‘We have been waiting for you.'
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The liberation of Bihac marked the end of the Republic of Serb Krajina. At dawn on 4 August, Operation Storm commenced. With
200,000 troops, the Croat forces outnumbered the Krajina Serb army five to one as it advanced on the rebel stronghold of Knin. Many Serb soldiers, and their political leaders, simply fled. Few were willing to risk their lives for a ‘republic' that had offered almost nothing to its citizens except the chance to live under Serb rule. The economy barely functioned, there was little work and no investment.

Ethnic cleansing turned out to be a poor foundation for a state. The Republic of Serb Krajina collapsed overnight. By 10.00 a.m. on 5 August, the Croatian flag was flying over Knin castle. Between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs ran from the Croat onslaught, often escaping only with what they could carry by hand, leaving meals half-eaten on the table and a trail of dropped possessions that littered the roads into Bosnia. It was the end of a historic European community that had stretched back centuries. As Hrvoje Sarinic had predicted, Milosevic did nothing to aid the rebel Serb statelet he had helped found.

How effective was US military assistance? Operation Storm was a brutal exercise in ethnic cleansing. Civilians and civilian buildings were shelled. But in the grim arithmetic of Balkan warfare, the level of atrocity was comparatively low compared to, for example, the Serb assault on eastern Bosnia. The aim seemed to be to expel the Serbs and prevent their return, rather than wholesale slaughter. None the less, at least 150 Serb civilians, many of them elderly, were executed. And if Serbs did want to return there was nowhere to go. For weeks afterwards Croat troops burnt down houses and farm buildings owned by Serbs, according to the war crimes indictment of the man in charge of Operation Storm, Major-General Ante Gotovina. Graham Blewitt, deputy prosecutor at the ICTY, said: ‘Operation Storm is not being indicted, only the crimes committed within it. We have seen no evidence of indictment to war crimes from the US.'

The Krajina refugees poured into Belgrade on tractors, and on foot. Whole families were jammed into tiny cars. At best they found a grudging reception from mother Serbia: most Serbs were too wrapped in their own problems of trying to put food on the table to care about their brothers from the rocky hinterlands of Krajina. Many felt that the refugees from Krajina – and the increasing numbers from Bosnia – should have stayed and fought. Writing in
Duga
magazine Mira Markovic noted:

The patriots from Bosnia and Krajina living in Belgrade are not satisfied with the results of the war, and they express their dissatisfaction
aggressively. They are angry with the poor in Bosnia's and Krajina's rugged hills for not being more efficient . . . It simply does not occur to them that they must take part themselves in the war which they have launched with so much propaganda.
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Few had been more responsible for war propaganda than Milosevic's tame journalists, yet in Belgrade there was no media campaign demanding the defence of the Krajina. Belgrade Television showed a circus festival in Monte Carlo.
Politika
newspaper reported the next day: ‘Serbs Withdraw: Military Command Moved to Reserve Positions.' Milosevic's abandonment of the Krajina was cynical, but also supremely realistic. By 1995 few young Serb men wanted to risk their lives for the opportunity to shell Croatia's Adriatic coast.

At the same time, there was no longer any dispute about Croatia's status as a former Yugoslav republic. If Serbia defended the Krajina Serbs it would be declaring war on an internationally recognised sovereign state. An all-out war with Croatia would certainly have triggered a furious diplomatic backlash. Milosevic wanted sanctions lifted, not tightened. He also understood that his regime was highly unlikely to survive a new conflict. And, ultimately, the Serbs in Krajina did not matter that much. As Borisav Jovic had told the Croatian politician Stipe Mesic back in 1990: ‘We are not interested in the Serbs in Croatia. They are your citizens, you can do what you like with them, you can impale them for all we care. We are exclusively interested in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was, and will be, Serbian.'
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More than this, Milosevic understood the importance of the entrance of the United States, both in diplomatical terms – with the Washington agreement on the Croat-Muslim Federation – and in military terms. For not just in Belgrade, but also in Washington, D.C., realpolitik triumphed over morality. The biggest single act yet of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia
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had been carried out by an army trained – to whatever extent – by US military advisers and almost certainly aided by US intelligence. ‘There is a lot of proof that the Americans cooperated with Croatia. The CIA was here all the time with General Gotovina, they knew everything, they sent special equipment for controlling intelligence and eavesdropping,' said Hrvoje Sarinic.

On the ground, the balance of power had been altered for good. It was time for Milosevic to forge his own Pax Americana.

Our army is very, very responsible. People, civilians as well as UN personnel, are completely safe and secure.

Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb leader.
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Outgunned and outnumbered by the besieging Bosnian Serbs, the inhabitants of Sarajevo hit back with humour. One of the favourite themes of Sarajevo radio's Surrealist Hit Parade show was the increasing disobedience of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Not only was the wild-haired psychiatrist-poet one of the most accomplished liars in the Balkans, but he was also disobeying Milosevic's orders. He and the Bosnian Serb leaders repeatedly refused to sign up for peace plans that would end sanctions against Serbia. In a bedtime-story voice, the Hit Parade presenter narrates a very Balkan children's tale: ‘Far, far away, in a tiny land, in a tiny village, in a tiny workshop, Slobetto the Toymaker has carved a disobedient puppet named Radovanocchio.' But Radovanocchio keeps getting his maker into trouble, and simply won't do what he is told. ‘I'm going to make an orthopaedic brace out of you!' yells Slobetto at his wayward creation.
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Milosevic couldn't do that. But he could, and did, stand by as the Croats destroyed the rebel Serb statelet in Knin. A side benefit of which was the weakening of Radovan Karadzic. In Knin and Pale, the leaders of the rebel Serb statelets had succumbed to delusions of grandeur, believing they could survive without Belgrade's support. Their armies engaged in joint operations together, and their politicians preferred to consult each other rather than Milosevic. They issued grand communiqués about uniting their armies under one joint command, but forgot who supplied the bullets and guns to fire them: Belgrade.