ALL THE PRESIDENT'S (FORMER) MEN

AIM, ZAGREB, January 3, 1994

During the last few day, only one newspaper in Bosnia-Hezegovina published a short news item informing the public that Rusmir Mahmutcehajic, the until then minister for special-purpose production, has been releaved of duty in Sarajevo. If something like this had been by chance announced less than a year ago, it would have made the front pages of many newspapers and aroused astonishment and wonder why Izetbegovic was removing from office his number one man?

However, as Alija Izetbegovic's policy changed from the declaratory advocacy of a civic state and both formally and officialy turned into the promotion of one's own national state, so the echelon of his top officials dissolved and changed again and again. Along with the pre-war departure of entertainment-prone, Muhamed Cengic, the Vice-President of the SDA, the others as well "disappeared" one by one: Irfan Ajanovic, Secretary of the SDA and top party man both in the federal as well as republican Assembly: Omer Behmen, the Party "grey eminence", Izetbegovic's prison mate from the time of the "Young Moslems"; Jusuf Prazina, a petty criminal who became an overnight myth and hero of the Bosnian Army; Armin Pohara, a man of Izetbegovic's utmost confidence and personal envoy in the mission of destroying civic Tuzla; Sefer Halilovic, the figure printed on the war T-shirts, called "Seferovka's", a name mentioned in their patriotic poems, the invincible general of the B&H Army; Hadzo Efendic, suposedly the legend of the defence of Gorazde and for many months the number one man in the B&H Government; and finally the low-pitched departure of Rusmir Mahmutcehajic, according to many, the ideologist of the SDA.

Getting rid of M. Cengic was most probably a great relief for Izetbegovic. A quite popular politician (up to the war Cengic's popularity was equal to that of the very popular group from Sarajevo, the "Nadrealisti"), he began supporting the opposition more and more in their attacks on the ineffective and nationally divided Government of B&H, whose Vice-President he was. The extremely large amount of money this businessman from Foca collected from the Moslem population in that city for the establishment and operation of the SDA, kept him nevertheless in the office of Izetbegovic's deputy until the outbreak of the war. Then Izetbegovic, allegedly with all the necessary official documents (for which it was later established that they were useless in Turkey), sent him to Istambul as the representative of B&H in that country. Today, Cengic is trying somewhere along the route between Turkey and Slovenia to establish some sort of contact with B&H and Izetbegovic himself, although the latter has lost all interest in him.

Irfan Ajanovic, the last delegate to the Federal Assembly and representative of the SDA in the B&H Parliament, substituted his epithet, by the will of the President, of former folk song singer,and later on, as one of the most radical men in the SDA, for the post of fist official logistics specialist, whose working place for months on end became the bar of the Hotel "Panorama" in Zagreb. Nontheless, after Ajanovic's arrival in Zagreb, various ligistic centres for B&H sprung up throughout Croatia under the patronage of the powerfull Zagreb lobby ( H. Cengic, Tankovic, S. Sabic) in which there was no longer a place for the Secretary of the SDA, namely possibility for acquiring riches. He was then seen behind numerous Europan speakers platforms, set up for discussions on the war in B&H, hysterically advocating a Moslem Bosnia. Nevertheless, he decided to return to B&H, where he was caught and taken prisoner by Karadzic's men. And while one wing of the SDA still believes him to be a prisoner in the Serbian prison in Banjaluka, the Serbian media report how Ajanovic has been strolling about Belgrade for months, at liberty of course.

On one occasion Izetbegovic stated that he would sacrifice the party for his prison cosufferer, Omer Behmen. During the entire period, Behmen thus represented a true Party grandee with a halo of the greatest martyr of the communist regime. Behmen's inviobility, which stemmed from the fact that he was treated with utmost cruely in communist prisons, quite frequently, perhaps, unjustifiably, bore the burden of the most extreme national uxclusivism. Accordingly Behmen became the protagonist of the nationalistic policy of the Moslem Party. During an Assembly session held on March 14, 1993, when the signing of the Vance-Owen plan was being considered, Omer Behmen said: " We are the losers! We have to sign what is offered to us, we have no alternative. What we are forced to do is nothing but a reflection of the state on the front. There where we are stronger on the front,that belongs to us, where we are weaker, that is not ours.. We have come face to face with Fate and all that awaits us". Whether Behmen's words annoyed Izetbegovic, who was getting ready to try to attain a few more percentage points of territory for the creation of an Islamic Bosnia and that both by military means on the negotiating table, or not is not know, however after that Behmen began packing for his trip to Iran as B&H Ambassador.

Today, Behmen is dispatching letters to Sarajevo in which he asks to return to the city, since he has almost no contacts at all with B&H or anyone from B&H! At the time when Juka was considered a hero, the Sarajevo media,among which the journal "Oslobodjenje", wrote about him as the fearless hero of the present, while editors boasted that they had the honour of having coffee with him personally! The reputation of the Robin Hood of Sarajevo who helps his desperate compatriots was earned by this pre-war criminal by stealing hundreds of automobiles in the city, tonnes of crude oil and food supplies, so that giving away in humanitarian purposes a small part of his wealth naturally posed no problem at all, but did attract additional publicity in the media. Carried away by the publicity (writers wrote about him, musicians composed songs), Prazina began to think of himself as genious predestined to be the new leader of Bosnia. Soon however, precisely because of that, he fell into disfavour with the authorities, and with the media, of course, left the city and began to play the role of a local ruler at Igman, letting people into or stopping them from entering Sarajevo at random and according to his wish. He soon passed over to the HVO and for a time served as an additional argument to Boban against Izetbegovic, only to flee, a little after that abroad, first to Germany, then to the Netherlands, Austria and finally Belgium.

A few day ago, the Sarajevo papers brought a story of how Prazina was killed in Liege!

Armin Pohara entered politics in 1990, just before the first multi-party elections, as the president of the midget "Party of Mixed Marriages" from Bosanski Brod, those basic concept was - brotherhood and unity, and as a must, the federation of former Yugoslavia. He integrated collectively his party to Markovic's reform movement, critisizing the former primer minister for not being sufficiently oriented towards Yugoslavianism. When the war broke out he put on a camouflage uniform of the Defence Commande of Bosanski Brod, the city which was soon taken over without a fight by Karadzic's army.

Suddenly remembering his Moslem origin, the leader of the "mixed marriages" party offered his services to Izetbegovic who promoted him into coordinator of the Armed Forces of B&H and his special envoy in the retribution against "red Tuzla". Since Pohara, Izetbegovic's pawn, was banished from the city by the citizens of Tuzla, and the Muslim-Croat conflict broke out in the meantime, this political chameleon ran for shelter to Mate Boban and saw his future in the political option of a Croat-Moslem Party. An anonymous pre-war journalist, saw his dream come true today - he is the president of a party, the editor-in-chief of an "independent journal", the "Zapadna Bosna", the leading columnist in his paper and pretender for one of the new Geneva negotiators.

The former captain of the Yugoslav Army, Sefer Halilovic, entered the political B&H stage through the grand entrance, obsessed by his historical mission of a man who shall defend the integrality of Bosnia. A descendant of Sandjak, this captain refused the introduction of ranks in the Army of B&H, with the motto "we shall all prove ourselves in battle", causing the dissatisfaction of the more experienced and educated officers of the B&H Army. With all the required media coverage, Halilovic most frequently appeared in public as a politician and not as a soldier, which soon provoked the foreign press to ask who actually had the real power in B&H, Halilovic or Izetbegovic. The giving up of the idea of an integral Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the negotiations on additional percentages of territory for the so called Bosnian state, are in the background of Izetbegovi's decision to remove Halilovic from office and to appoint Rasin Delic in his place, a professional soldier, without any political ambitions. In the beginning rumour had it that Halilovic would be given another jobrather than be dismissed, while today the news about him are much more precise, namely Halilovic is in house arrest in Sarajevo.

Hadzo Efendija, is a man of limited intellectual capacities but extremely loyal to Izetbegovic, pulled out by the SDA in the period when it was compromising a number of its leading members, into the limelight as a new cadre.The image created about him was that he was the man that defended Gorazde.However, this Muslim enclave in Estern Bosnia, under the patronage of the UN as a protected zone, represents today a synonym for the suffering of the Bosnian Moslems. Appointed to the office of the Vice-President of the Government of B&H, in the absence of the then prime minister, Mile Akmadzic,Efendic figured as its strongest man, the greatest achievement of who was the repetition of worn out phrases on togetherness, while it suited Izetbegovic to advocate the concept of an integral B&H under his leadership.

Today, when the option is to have a small Moslem state, Efendic has been removed from Sarajevo according to a tested recipe,namely, he has been appointed ambassador to Vienna. The last quiet removal of one of the leading men of the SDA, Rusmir Mahmutcehajic, is at all events the most indicative example of Izetbegovic's policy in B&H. In times of peace, when Izetbegovic had absolutely no intention of publicly proclaiming his Moslem state, Mahmutcehajic had the reputation of being an ardent nationalist in the ranks of the SDA. Currently when Izetbegovic is finalizing his Islamic political option, Mahmutcehajic is a person that has in fact become unsuitable for the job. His dismissal is proof of how Izetbegovic's goal - a Moslem Bosnia - has long since outgrown Mahmutcehajic's nationalism. The former Party ideologist today enjoys a special form of support of the Sarajevo intellectuals as a man of a moderate political option in B&H.

The struggle for the place that is as close to Alija Izetbegovic as possible is at present being waged between Ejup Ganic and Haris Silajdzic. In the last few months, Silajdzic has had considerable priority over Ganic and is more and more frequently accompanying Izetbegovic on all his more important journeys. However, Ganic as a perpetual political aspirant to any high office, will hardly allow Silajdzic to be too far ahead of him. In any way, the contest for second place among Izetbegovic various assistants, once again confirms the same thing- his sacred sovereignty on the throne of Bosnian Moslemhood.

DRAZENA PERANIC