The Armed Forces and Politics

AIM Podgorica, October 1, 2000

If Milosevic finds a seemingly legal mode to ignore the electoral will of the people and emerges from the present crisis as a victor, the armed forces will play a crucial role in the consolidation of the newly arisen situation. If, on the contrary, the army is the last means at his disposal in defending his personal power, then he is truly finished.

The outcome of elections held on Sept. 24th is known: the regime refuses to acknowledge the victory of Dr. Vojislav Kostunica and is ready to go to any length in order to ensure a second-round for the defeated President of FR Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic, while the Democratic Opposition of Serbia ( DOS ) is foretelling a general strike accompanied by various forms of civil disobedience. The first and the foremost dilemma of the given crisis is the possible reaction of the Yugoslav Army ( VJ ). Will, by misusing it, Milosevic try to cling to his present post and authority i.e., can he still count on the unconditional loyalty of the military?

The issue was partly resolved on Sept. 30th when Milosevic chose the promotion of the 53rd and 52nd class of the Technical Academy of the Military Academy in Banjica (Belgrade) to the rank of second lieutenants as the occasion for his first post-electoral address to the public. He did not mention the actual crisis in his speech, but nevertheless spoke of the NATO intervention, " all sorts of known and previously unknown pressures " on FR Yugoslavia, freedom as being the vital national interest, the heroic defence, rebuilding and reconstruction of the country, and so on and so forth... In other words, he made it clear that his policy of an undeclared state of war was still effective and that he has no intention of changing a single thing. For, the ultimate message of his speech runs like this : " We have defeated the enemy armed forces and they won't be returning here unless invited or endorsed by our internal foes who claim that surrender is the only means to save lives, although precisely that would be the most certain way to lose them..." To anyone familiar with political circumstances in Serbia, it's obvious who Milosevic is referring to when speaking of " internal enemies ".

Not only have high government officials been christening their political opponents as "mercenaries", "traitors" , "NATO infantry” etc., for years, but at the Fourth Congress of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) Milosevic himself termed the opposition "modern jannissaries" and compared them to rats, rabbits and hyenas in the speech given in Berane. Moreover, having in mind that according to the constitution of FR Yugoslavia, one of the duties of the army is "preservation of constitutional order" and that the novel army doctrine provides for the use of VJ in putting down riots in the country, the promotion ceremony of second-lieutenants in Banjica forebodes nothing good.

Judging by the treatment Milosevic's appearance at the army compound received in regime media, its objective was of a purely propagandistic nature. On the one hand, the march-past of the young officers, presence of their relatives, the brass band, flags fluttering in the wind and the informal reception of the most accomplished academy graduates along with their families, were supposed to demonstrate the absolute unity of the army as the most popular institution in Serbia and its "Commander-in-chief", as reporters of the state television (RTS) address Milosevic, even though the federal Constitution does not provide for such a post. More importantly, from a distance prescribed by Service Regulation, Milosevic was seen followed by the Secretary of Defense, Army General Dragoljub Ojdanic, and the Chief-of-Staff of VJ, General Nebojsa Pavkovic, who were the first to address him in this manner. Consequently, there is no breach between the Army top and Milosevic - the symbiosis of the top generals, Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Yugoslav Left (JUL) is still in effect: the statement that the possible breaking up of civil demonstrations is a matter for the police, not the army, to handle (Pavkovic) was most likely given in the initial moments of the colossal electoral collapse, while there were still no instructions from the White Court.

That is what things appear to be like on the surface and this foretells the deepening of the crisis, its likening to a foreign military intervention and, in this context, the threat that the army, allegedly in the name of defending the country, its independence, sovereignty and what not, while in fact preserving the personal rule of one man, will be called to intervene. How do things really stand on second sight?

The story of Milosevic and the Army began with his courtship of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), its unprecedented misuse at the start of the nineties, in the course of the wars waged in former Yugoslavia, and the resulting dismantling of the onetime "armed forces of all nations and nationalities".

Milosevic simply couldn't trust the then generals. True, they were loyal to him and generally carried out his orders, but since they did not owe him their rank and station, he was never certain how they would react in a future crisis; would they remain loyal or decide to engage in an autonomous policy, something they have grown so used to during the last decade of the SFRY? Precisely because of this, the successor of JNA - the Yugoslav Army - remained the step-child of the regime up to the Kosovo bloodbath. Financially starved-out, politically belittled, it simulated its own emancipation from every ideology and transformation into a supposedly modern army. How far it went in achieving this goal was brought to light by the guest appearances of Gen. Ojdanic and Pavkovic at the meetings of SPS and JUL and the statements they made which could not be distinguished from the statements of the sternest diehards among members of the mentioned parties. Nevertheless, such as it was, this very army managed to rise above the worst of the daily political mire. Can anyone envisage Gen. Pavkovic receiving the delegation of the Student's Protest the way Gen. Momcilo Perisic had done during the civil unrest of 1996/1997 or imagine him promising them not to bring the tanks out into the streets as on March 3rd, 1991? But, at the time, this didn't concern Milosevic much: he had transformed the Ministry of the Interior (MUP) into a veritable interior army whose more than 80 000 strong force was assigned (and is still ready to carry out) a single, top-priority task – to uphold the regime.

But, as the escalation of violence in Kosovo proceeded more and more headlong towards the NATO intervention, so did the political role of the army change. Since the cleansing at the end of 1998 and 1999, the army top is made up by generals who owe their commissions and status to Milosevic solely. They were the ones to introduce the title of the "Commander-in-Chief" during the bombing and, after the Kumanovo Agreement and the withdrawal from Kosovo, alongside the rest of the regime bigwigs, incessantly trumpet about victory, verbally lynch the "fifth-columnists" and glorify all sorts of propagandistic manifestations of the ruling parties. At the time, it seemed as if the army top figured solely as an uniformed subsidiary branch of the two parties of the conjugal couple Milosevic-Mirjana Markovic (SPS-JUL); they entirely disregarded the fact that the Supreme Defense Council, without whose consent the President of the Republic cannot command the armed forces, had not met once. In other words, after the NATO intervention, the Army was allotted the role of the living proof that the detrimental political course of the regime was the only feasible course to take, as well as an unprecedented means of manipulating the patriotic feelings of the people. With this in view, a heavy shower of medals, appointments and commissions befell the army brass. After all, whose continual presence in the public incessantly reminded the citizens that the political opponents of the regime are nothing less than "NATO infantry" and that the undeclared state of war will be effective until the day Milosevic and his spouse overthrow the "New World Order".

There should be no doubt as to whether Pavkovic and Ojdanic are prepared to go to any lengths in defending the regime and the "Commander-in-Chief" they are so deeply indebted to. But, it's altogether a different question when the rest of the military are concerned. That is to say, the enlisted ranks of the Army are made up of young men from Serbia and Montenegro who have not been dropped to the spot out of the blue or born in army barracks, well aware that their families, friends and girlfriends are out in the streets, of the way they all live and the reasons for voting the way they did. If not in uniforms, they themselves would probably be out in the streets at the moment, raising high the banners inscribed with slogans such as "He is finished". The like holds true for the better part of their immediate superiors.

Exactly like the rest of the citizens, they too are subjected to the constant struggle of making ends meet and the feeling of hopelessness when the future of their children under the present regime is concerned. >From Slovenia to Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, they are constantly being served with identical excuses for being ordered to withdraw and empty phrases about "historic victories" and "uppermost national interests", supposedly plausible explanations for their ill fate; at the same time, all of them are fully aware of the systematic decay of the Service they belong to and the Country they have sworn to defend... It is highly unlikely that Ojdanic and Pavkovic may, by relying on the "material" as unreliable as the one mentioned, hope for success in the extremely risky business of salvaging a regime so thoroughly unmasked and worn-out as the Belgrade regime is. Even more so, the chances for this adventure to last, let alone succeed, are very slight.

For, in fact, what could the top generals hope for by ordering the tanks out into the streets, if not for new medals and further reconstruction of their apartments and houses, already measured in acres of square yards, reserved for the minority at the very top of the armed forces? According to what seems to hold true at the moment, various forms of pressure brought upon the military to vote for and campaign on Milosevic's behalf have had a contrary effect.

The Army is a huge and complex organisation. Its conduct and actions depend on given social circumstances much more than on individual plans and attempts to misuse it. In case Milosevic manages to find a seemingly legal way to trample down the will of the people and a mode to come out as a victor out of the actual constitutional crisis, the armed forces will play a significant role in the consolidation of the novel state of affairs.

If, as many are inclined to think, the Army proves to be the last stance in the preservation of Milosevic's stark naked personal power, then he is, as the popular slogan goes, indeed "finished".

Philip Schwarm

( AIM )