In 1989, as Communist governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe began to break apart, opportunities for free expression and self-determination encouraged the development of separatist movements. Democratic reforms in the neighboring countries of Eastern Europe encouraged reformers in all the Yugoslav states; they also hardened the determination of nationalists everywhere, including Milošević, who encouraged the Serbian Communist government to resist reform and preserve its power.
Ambition, political skill, and control of the Communist Party organization quickly made Milošević a powerful source of trouble in Serbia and in the Yugoslav federal government. He purged the Communist Party of Kosovo in 1988 and promised to “make Serbia whole again” by depriving Kosovo and Vojvodina of autonomy and votes, increasing Serb (and his own) power in the collective bodies. With Serbia effectively exercising the votes of Vojvodina and Kosovo, it would control three of the eight votes in the federal presidency. It could generally count on Montenegro as well, giving it control of four of the eight votes.
In January 1990, the Yugoslav Communist Party voted to give up the monopoly on power it had held for forty-five years and permit the formation of other parties. In the fall of 1990, the first free elections since 1945 were held in Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia. Nationalist political parties triumphed in the first two states; in Serbia, Milošević won 60 percent of the votes. In December, he won the presidency again (after winning in 1989), and Serbia’s Communists won 194 of the 250 seats in parliament.
Milošević’s reelection had been credited, in part, to his successful rallying of Serbian nationalists, who rewarded Milošević for unilaterally abolishing the provincial legislature in Kosovo and extending Serbia’s control—first limiting, then revoking the 1974 statutes that had made Kosovo and Vojvodina autonomous provinces with powers nearly equal to those of the six Yugoslav republics. He confiscated the weapons of Kosovo’s territorial defense forces and moved to disarm the defense forces of Yugoslavia’s other states.
Then, in short order, Milošević began his policy of “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, expelling ethnic Albanians (that is, Muslims) from their jobs, homes, and farms and forcing their relocation. The Muslims’ jobs and property were quickly taken over by Serbs from other provinces. From the start, teachers were special targets of the policy, as were trade union leaders, who were also targeted for expulsion, beatings, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, and shooting. Virtually all institutions in Kosovo were sucked into the purges, which became progressively more brutal.2
Slovenian, Croatian, and Bosnian officials watched the evolution of events in Kosovo and in the federal presidency. Milošević’s determined effort to gather all power into his own hands increased the interest of these republics in secession from the federal state of Yugoslavia, an interest that was heightened when Milošević blocked the scheduled accession of the Croatian representative Stipe Mesic to the rotating presidency.
Janez Drnovsek, a member of the collective presidency who later became prime minister of Slovenia, provided a day-by-day account of the deepening political split between those who desired economic and political reforms with multiparty elections and free markets and those who saw reform as a threat to the Communist system.3 In his memoir, Drnovsek asks whether it might have been possible to prevent the breakup of the Yugoslav nation. His answer: “Yes, the tragic, violent development could have been prevented—by prompt and helpful action from outside Yugoslavia.”4 But the needed “political and economic aid, swift incorporation into the processes of European integration, and…rapid results”5 to overtake the mounting hostility and disorder were not forthcoming. Western Europe was busy with its own integration.
As Slovenia and Croatia leaned toward independence, Milošević and other Serb leaders insisted that independence was not an option because Serbs were spread throughout Yugoslavia. Members of the collective presidency tried to draw up a balance sheet of each state’s debts and credits with the national government. Again and again, Milošević drove differences to a climax and refused to recognize the authority of the federal executive body. Citizens rallied in the street, calling for his resignation.
Beginning in May 1990, Milošević used the Yugoslav National Army (JNA), which he controlled, to try to disarm the militias of each of the republics, demanding that all arms be handed over to the JNA, which was largely controlled by Serbia. Slovenia’s militia refused to hand over its weapons, which enabled the republic to declare independence in 1991 and face the national army.
Together with Croatia, Slovenia proposed that Yugoslavia become a loose confederation with a democratic multiparty system. In December 1990, 88 percent of Slovenes voted to separate from Yugoslavia. The Croatian referendum on independence passed with 94 percent of the vote. Milošević announced again that if component states of Yugoslavia became independent, Serbia would insist on bringing the 8.5 million Serbs, scattered in several areas, into a single state and would demand territory commensurate with their numbers.
In June 1991, Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence. Immediately, fighting broke out between Croatia and the largely Serb JNA. Brutal from the start, the war included all the elements of ethnic cleansing: siege, murder, confiscation and destruction of property, rape, beatings, and forced relocation of whole populations.
The European Community (EC) called repeatedly for an end to the fighting and announced that it would recognize no unilateral declaration of independence. The Bush administration was willing to defer to the EC on political matters in Central and Eastern Europe, and the EC and its Luxembourgois president, Jacques Poos, were ready to take charge. The EC appointed a troika to deal with the problem: Poos and the foreign ministers of the Netherlands and Italy, Hans van den Brock and Gianni le Michelis. They thought they had achieved their goal of preserving Yugoslavia with the Brioni Agreement, a cease-fire pact signed on July 7, 1991. The agreement stipulated that the Slovenes and Croatians would take no action toward independence for ninety days, the JNA would return to its barracks, and Stipe Mesic would assume the presidency of the federal executive. The agreement came unstuck as soon as it was adopted, but Poos insisted, “If anyone can do anything here, it is the EC. It is not the U.S. or the USSR or anyone else.”6
The Americans had no desire to assume responsibility. James Baker, then secretary of state, commented in his memoir, “The Bush administration felt comfortable with the E.C.’s taking responsibility for handling the crisis in the Balkans. The conflict seemed to be one the E.C. could manage. Yugoslavia was in the heart of Europe, and European interests were directly threatened…. our vital national interests were not at stake.”7
The EC asked the British foreign secretary, Lord Peter Carrington, to undertake the task of making peace. Carrington convened the first meeting of The Hague Peace Conference on September 7, 1991. He had concluded that Milošević and Franjo Tudjman, Croatia’s prime minister, were prepared to split Bosnia between them, which would surely lead to war. The only way to avoid war, Carrington believed, was to devise a settlement that was acceptable to all. For a brief period, it looked as if he had secured an agreement on a loose association of independent republics; arrangements for protecting minority communities in all republics, including human rights guarantees; and no unilateral changes in borders. The agreement was quickly approved on September 25, 1991, by the UN Security Council.
Lord Carrington wrote of this plan, “It seemed to me the right way to do it was to allow those who wanted to be independent to be independent, to associate themselves with a central organization as far as they wanted to. Those who didn’t want to be independent, well, they could stay within what had been Yugoslavia. In other words, you could do it…à la carte.”8 Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia quickly agreed, but Serbia refused. Milošević insisted that it was essential for all Serbs to live in one state, not in a number of independent republics. The Carrington plan called for equal rights for all minorities in all states, but this provision was vetoed by Milo
šević, who was interested not in unity or fairness but in a greater Serbia. To that end, he pressed Serbia’s claim to sovereignty over Kosovo, whose population was 90 percent ethnic Albanian Muslim.
The violence worsened, even as Carrington continued to seek an agreement in which all minorities had equal rights in all states. Once again, all states except Serbia agreed. Milošević was unyielding and this newest attempt also fell apart. Meanwhile, the Bush administration quietly suspended all economic assistance to Yugoslavia, including assistance from international financial institutions, effective May 6, 1991.9
The new UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, proved unhelpful in the process. Boutros-Ghali complained that Carrington should have sought his approval of the EC plan before it was submitted to the Security Council; he could have told them that the UN lacked the resources to implement the cease-fire agreement. The secretary-general stated bluntly that activities relating to peace and security should be managed by him and his staff. This was by no means the last time Boutros-Ghali would claim powers for himself that the UN Charter clearly vests in the Security Council, not in the secretary-general.
The United States and most EC member states favored preserving Yugoslav national unity over self-determination for the republics. Only Austria and Germany (which had the closest historical association with the Croats and Slovenes) expressed sympathy for the aspirations of those who wished to secede. In June 1991, as Slovenia and Croatia moved toward independence, James Baker made a hurried visit to Belgrade, where he called for Yugoslav unity, discouraged secession, and rebuked Serb leaders for their repression of Kosovo. He emphasized that diplomatic recognition by the United States would not be forthcoming if any of the republics unilaterally declared independence. At the same time, Germany warned the Belgrade government not to send troops to fight Slovenia and Croatia, and said that Bonn would recognize them as independent states. But the Serb attacks spread. That same year, Bosnia-Herzegovina also declared its independence.
Two top officials of the Bush administration had long personal experience in Yugoslavia. Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as deputy secretary of state and then as secretary of state, had been U.S. ambassador to Belgrade in the late 1970s and knew Milošević well. Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s national security advisor, had served as an attaché in Belgrade and had written his doctoral dissertation on Yugoslavia. Both men had headed Kissinger Associates after their assignments in Belgrade and had done business with Yugoslav enterprises and leaders during their tenures there. Both were very concerned about the effects of the collapse of central authority. Before Baker traveled to Belgrade, he was briefed by Eagleburger and Scowcroft. Eagleburger emphasized Yugoslavia’s history of violent conflict: “We believe the only solution to these internal differences in Yugoslavia is an open, multiparty democracy throughout the entire country which protects individual rights.”10 The new U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman, a talented Foreign Service officer who had already served two tours of duty in Belgrade, also strongly opposed Slovenian independence and the breakup of Yugoslavia.
American and European diplomats sought to prevent the disintegration of Yugoslavia, to prevent Croatia and Slovenia from seceding, to prevent the outbreak of violence and war, and, after war had broken out, to prevent it from spreading and prevent the establishment of independent states. They failed to achieve any of these goals.
Baker and President Bush made trips to the region, where they made strong statements discouraging secession. Baker urged Yugoslav leaders to accept two basic realities: (1) that they needed to negotiate their differences, not act unilaterally, and (2) that under no circumstances would the international community tolerate the use of force.11 His message to Milošević went further: “[W]e regard your policies as the main cause of Yugoslavia’s present crisis…. If you persist in promoting the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia will stand alone. The United States and the rest of the international community will reject Serbian claims to territory beyond its borders.”12
Bush’s top advisers were united in the belief that the United States should avoid becoming bogged down in a protracted civil war; they feared that a Yugoslav breakup might encourage present and former republics of the Soviet Union to consider secession. This concern inspired Bush’s famous “Chicken Kiev speech,” in which he declared that “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”13 General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that the United States had “no clear military goals in Bosnia” and stressed that “the solution must ultimately be a political one.”14 Bush, Baker, and Powell expressed no sympathy for the aspirations of the Croatians, Slovenes, or Bosnians or their desire for independence. Nor did they speak of self-determination. Scowcroft, Bush’s national security advisor and good friend, wrote,
Eagleburger and I were the most concerned about Yugoslavia…. We tried very hard to prevent the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. The British and French agreed, but the Germans for the first time really asserted themselves in the Community. The French were very sympathetic to us, but in the end the cohesiveness of the Community was more important.15
Both the American and the EC governments were shocked when the Serb-controlled central government used savage force to crush rebellions against the authority it claimed. The U.S. State Department was only slightly behind the British, the French, and the rest of the EC in realizing that this had become the principal problem.
On June 25, 1991, Slovenia declared independence; Croatia followed suit. The next day, national army tanks rumbled into Slovenian towns, but the Slovenes were ready. Forty-four JNA soldiers were killed and 187 wounded. Slovenia’s secession was recognized. Yet the alliance between Slovenia and Croatia soon collapsed, and the JNA began shelling Croatia, including the historic, defenseless cities of Vucovar and Dubrovnik. Three months of heavy shelling and siege reduced Vucovar to shambles, its inhabitants to hunger and to hiding in basements. The Croats surrendered on November 20, 1991. Many were killed; others were stuffed into overcrowded prisons.
Tapes of telephone calls between Milošević and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in July 1991 provide clear evidence that Belgrade was making regular secret deliveries of arms to Bosnian Serbs.16 The tapes also make it clear that Milošević, who was collecting weapons from the republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, was simultaneously directing the JNA to deliver weapons to the Bosnian Serbs in an attempt to build a Bosnian Serb military force and link Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia with those in Serbia. Vojislav Seselj, a political ally of Milošević, told Der Spiegel that Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and much of Croatia should be transferred to Serbia.17
On September 21, 1991, a number of European and American publications reported the invasion of Croatia by the JNA. Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia had designated four “Serb autonomous regions,” which then requested protection from the JNA, by then wholly under Serb control. On September 25, at the request of Yugoslavia, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 713, which imposed an arms embargo that froze in place Serbia’s huge advantage in weapons and left the newly independent states nearly defenseless at a time when massacres of their populations were already under way.18
At the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), President Bush said that the world must stop Serbian terrorism “no matter what it takes.” But he later added that the United States would not act without European engagement. The result was that two U.S. warships waited off the Adriatic coast for a European naval force that was incredibly slow in arriving to begin monitoring the embargo.
The arms embargo, enforced by the United States (among others), remained in effect until 1995, when Resolution 1021 recalled previous resolutions, 19 in spite of the fact that the people of Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia had voted in favor of independence, and the countries had been admitted to the UN
on May 22, 1992. As UN member states, these nations were entitled to all the rights, privileges, and protections in the UN Charter, including “the inherent right to self-defense.” The legal interpretation underlying the decision rested on a recommendation of former president Carter’s secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, the UN secretary-general’s appointed mediator and personal envoy to Yugoslavia.20 But Vance, the secretary-general, and the Security Council had not considered the full implications of imposing an arms embargo in the context of Serb aggression against the people of Croatia and Bosnia, who lacked the means of self-defense. And the resolution did not take into account the clear contradiction between denying Bosnia and Croatia arms to defend themselves and various other Security Council resolutions that dealt with violations of Bosnia’s territorial integrity.
Because the embargo rendered Croatia and Bosnia virtually defenseless, it became the center of a heated and long-lasting debate in the U.S. Congress between those who wanted to provide arms to the Croatians and Muslims so they could defend themselves, and those who believed that such measures would only further inflame the fighting. An intense debate developed in the UN between the United States (which repeatedly threatened to revoke the embargo unilaterally) and its allies, especially the British and French, who had historic ties with the Serbs and eventually had troops in the UN Protection Force for Croatia (UNPROFOR), who they feared would be endangered if arms were provided to the Bosnians. Denying arms to the Croatians and Bosnians laid the foundation for mass slaughter.
Newsday correspondent Roy Gutman provided the first descriptions in English of Serb concentration camps. Later, in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book A Witness to Genocide, he noted that the Bosnian Serb army—the old Yugoslav army—began to oversee the burgeoning horror of ethnic cleansing, which featured “arbitrary executions and wholesale deportations.”21
Making War to Keep Peace Page 19