by Adam LeBor
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.
Sarinic then contacted Milosevic’s office. ‘I asked if it would be possible to see President Milosevic.’ Perhaps not surprisingly, Milosevic’s staff were taken aback to pick up the telephone and find Tudjman’s chief of cabinet on the other end of the line. ‘President Milosevic is very busy,’ replied the Serbian official. But the message was passed on. ‘Milosevic’s secretary called the next day,’ said Sarinic, ‘and told me he was disposed to meet with me, but it should be completely secret.’
Croatia and Serbia were at war, but secret diplomatic missions across enemy lines long pre-dated Sarinic’s secret mission to Belgrade. Realpolitik – and business – knows no borders. Even at the height of the Bosnian war, shops in the Bosnian Croat town of Kiseljak, just outside besieged Sarajevo, were stocked with fresh kiwi fruit and German chocolate thanks to the black-market deals the Bosnian Croats made with the Bosnian Serbs, although they were nominally at war. In the beseiged government-held city of Bihac, Bosnian Serbs even sold arms and ammunition to their enemies across the front line.
Sarinic understood that parleying with Milosevic was a risky business. Under Milosevic’s protection, his safety was assured, but enemies awaited at home in Zagreb. ‘In war there are always battles parallel with negotiations. But this was not a popular mission. On the front line you risk your life, you fight and you know that your enemy is in front of you. People saw Milosevic as a black devil, and some regarded me as a traitor.’ To underline the seriousness of Sarinic’s mission, and to dispel opposition within the ruling elite, Tudjman promoted Sarinic to Major-General. He reported only to Tudjman.
A few days later, on 12 November 1993, Sarinic landed at Batajnica military airport, just outside Belgrade. The venue for the meeting was not disclosed until the last moment. ‘I was picked up in an old Mercedes. The police escort did not know where we were going. They were given instructions by radio along the route. Everything was very polite, very secure and very secret.’ Sarinic saw a city broken and decaying before his eyes. It was dark, cold and sombre. Sanctions had brought the economy to the brink of collapse. Sarinic began to see why Milosevic was so eager to meet. Even in Milosevic’s sparsely furnished office on Andriceva Street in Belgrade there was no heating and one modest bookshelf. T
he freezing toilet was kept locked. Sarinic travelled with three bodyguards, but they were disarmed on arrival. ‘They had to surrender their guns to the Serbian secret police. I asked, “What use are bodyguards without guns?”’ Sarinic was searched for wiretaps and then was ushered through. He was met by Mira Dragojevic, Milosevic’s secretary, who said that the president was waiting for him.
The two men got on well. ‘When Tudjman charged me with being the contact man I worried that Milosevic would not accept me, because I was not on his high political level. But he accepted it very well. I can’t say that we had a friendly relationship, but it was a good one. Sometimes he told me a funny story, or a joke.’
But in Bosnia, well into its second year of war, they weren’t laughing. When Croatia declared independence in July 1991, Bosnia had two choices. The republic could remain in a Yugoslavia dominated by Belgrade as a Muslim quasi-colony of ‘Serboslavia’ or it could declare independence. But independence almost certainly meant war, since most of Bosnia’s Serbs – one-third of the population – were utterly opposed to living in an independent Bosnia, and wanted to remain in Yugoslavia, which they saw as the best protector of Serb interests.
Bosnia was often referred to as a mini-Yugoslavia. Nowhere else was the ethnic and religious mix as pronounced. Its population of about 4.3 million was composed of 44 per cent Muslims, 31 per cent Serbs, 17 per cent Croats and just over 5 per cent declaring themselves as ‘Yugoslavs’7 This was partly a result of its geography. Bosnia bordered Croatia in the north and west, Serbia in the east and Montenegro in the south. In medieval times Bosnia had been an independent kingdom, until the Ottoman invasion in the fifteenth century. It remained a province of the Ottoman empire until 1878, when it was placed under the administration of Austro-Hungary, before being annexed in 1908 and then ceded to Royal Yugoslavia after the First World War.
As the westernmost stretch of Turkey-in-Europe, Bosnia was conservative, especially in its rural areas. But cities such as the capital Sarajevo, Banja Luka in the north and Visegrad in the south boasted some of Europe’s finest Ottoman-era architecture, and a way of life that was easy-going and civilised. Visegrad was the site of the bridge in Nobel laureate Ivo Andric’s most famous work Bridge on the Drina, a complex chronicle of the march of empires across the provincial city. When the Ottomans came they built mosques, bazaars, baths and religious schools, as well as bridges. The great sixteenth-century governor of Sarajevo, Ghazi Husrev Beg, is immortalised in this Sarajevo folksong:
I built the medresa [school] and imaret [public kitchen]
I built the clock tower by it a mosque
I built Taslihan and the cloth market
I built three bridges in Sarajevo
I turned a village into the town of Sarajevo
The new faith with its civilised comforts proved attractive. The great majority of Yugoslav Muslims are Slavs who converted to Islam, which brought a privileged status. A Muslim urban elite emerged. Bosnia wore its Islam with a comparatively light touch. ‘Go to Bosnia if you want to see your wife’ was one Turkish saying. After the partisan victory Tito had refused the demands of Serb and Croat nationalists that Bosnia be divided between Belgrade and Zagreb. Bosnia-Herzegovina – to give the republic its full name – was seen as a necessary counterbalance to the two strongest republics, Serbia and Croatia. Eventually Tito granted Yugoslav Muslims the status of full nationality. But Serb and Croat nationalists rejected this. Some claimed that Bosnian Muslims were merely Serbs or Croats who had converted to Islam. Others decried their Muslim neighbours as ‘Turks’. There is of course a contradiction here: Bosnians could not be both converted Slavs and Turks.
In November 1990 Bosnia, like its neighbouring republics, had gone to the polls. A coalition government of the three ethnically based parties was set up: the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) for the Muslims. Meanwhile, Milosevic played his usual double game. Even as he planned to dismember the country, he tried to woo the Bosnians into staying in Yugoslavia. Milosevic understood that talking up the need for Bosnia to stay would reduce the influence of those in Bosnia who wanted to arm themselves. Who needed to prepare for war when there was no danger of war? Milosevic exploited the attachment many Bosnians felt to Yugoslavia, and especially to Tito, who had given them a republic and nationality status.8 Several years into the Bosnian war it was still common to see Tito’s picture on Bosnian walls when he had disappeared everywhere else.
In March 1991 Milosevic had proclaimed that he thought that the Muslims did not have any reason to secede from Yugoslavia. ‘Some of them have been indoctrinated, but most of the Muslims want good, tolerant and I would say civic and friendly relations with the Serbs and other nations in Yugoslavia.’9 This was in marked contrast to Milosevic’s rhetoric about ‘Ustashas’ and ‘Albanian terrorists’. Few in Bosnia believed that war was possible, and many – tragically including much of the Muslim leadership – had faith in the JNA as a neutral peace-keeping force, not understanding that it was under Milosevic’s control. The JNA was allowed to disarm all troops in Bosnia (except its own) along with the Bosnian Territorial Defence Organisation as a means of preventing war. The Bosnian Croat and Muslim militias and paramilitaries were already vastly outnumbered and outgunned. This only weakened them further, and left the country defenceless against the Serbs.
Local Serbs were supplied with arms, and plans were drawn up to take over the local police forces and municipal administration. Just as in Krajina, the Bosnian Serbs declared SAOs, or Serb Autonomous Areas. Belgrade and local Serb television then launched a barrage of lies and propaganda about the coming horrors of a reborn Islamic state, under the rule of Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim leader.
In any case, the progress of the war in neighbouring Croatia and the distribution of weapons gave events their own dark momentum. As JNA artillery pounded Croatian cities and streams of displaced refugees fled the fighting, it was hard to believe that Bosnia would escape the same fate. In mid-October 1991 the Bosnian parliament met to discuss whether the republic should become sovereign, a precursor to full independence.
Izetbegovic was a well-meaning but ultimately tragic figure who was no match for the ruthlessness of either Milosevic or Tudjman. An Islamic dissident under Tito, Izetbegovic was put on trial in 1983 for ‘counter-revolutionary acts derived from Muslim nationalism’. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, of which he served six. He had already made his position clear in February 1991: ‘I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.’10 The Muslim and Croat political parties were in favour of sovereignty. The Bosnian Serbs were not. Their political leader, Radovan Karadzic, offered the following chilling forecast:
Do not think that you will not lead Bosnia-Herzegovina into hell, and do not think that you will not perhaps lead the Muslim people into annihilation, because the Muslims cannot defend themselves if there is war – How will you prevent everyone from being killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina?11
Like Milosevic, Karadzic is of Montenegrin origin. Born in 1945, he moved to Sarajevo where he qualified as a psychiatrist and treated the Sarajevo football team.12 Some of his psychiatric advice was unconventional: when one young couple went to Karadzic for counselling on their troubled marriage, he told the husband to beat his wife more. With his bouffant hair and hyperbolic manner, Karadzic also fancied himself as a poet. Four volumes of his mordant works were published. For example:
I hear misfortune walking
Vacant entourages passing through the city
Units of armed white poplars
Marching through the skies13
Loud, dishevelled, possessed of Balkan delusions of grandeur, an inveterate gambler, the Bosnian Serb leader saw himself as a mini-statesman who would shape Serbian history. Although Karadzic was Milosevic’s appointment, in many ways the poet-psychiatrist was more similar to Franjo Tudjman. Unlike
Milosevic, both Tudjman and Karadzic actually believed in their own nationalism. Karadzic’s refusal to follow the demands of realpolitik would later bring him into conflict with Milosevic. Meanwhile, he loved nothing more than to pore over maps, working out plans for the division of Sarajevo. He lapped up the attention of the world’s diplomats and media who treated him with reverence, respectfully listening to his lies and bombast. Karadzic was little more than a literate crook. He had served time in prison for corruption.
But his warning to Alija Izetbegovic was accurate. A month earlier, in September 1991, Karadzic had consulted Milosevic about the progress of setting up the Bosnian Serb mini-state. His telephone was tapped by Yugoslav intelligence, who passed the transcript to Ante Markovic, the last prime minister of federal Yugoslavia. In a well-targeted but ultimately futile attack on Milosevic, Markovic released the transcript to the press:
Milosevic: Go to Uzelac [JNA commander in northern Bosnia], he’ll tell you everything. If you have any problems, telephone me.
Karadzic: I’ve got problems down in Kupres. Some Serbs there are rather disobedient.
Milosevic: We can deal with that. Just call Uzelac. Don’t worry, you’ll have everything. We are the strongest.
Karadzic: Yes, yes.
Milosevic: Don’t worry. As long as there is the army no one can touch us . . . Don’t worry about Herzegovina. Momir [Bulatovic, Montenegrin leader] said to his men: ‘Whoever is not ready to die in Bosnia, step forward five paces.’ No one did so.
Karadzic: That’s good . . . but what’s going on with the bombing in . . .
Milosevic: Today is not a good day for the airforce. The European Community is in session.14
Markovic told his cabinet:
The line has been clearly established. I know because I heard Milosevic give the order to Karadzic to get in contact with General Uzelac and to order, following the decisions of the meetings of the military hierarchy, that arms should be distributed and the territorial defence of Krajina and Bosnia be armed and utilised in the realisation of the RAM plan.15