SUPPORT WITH DELAY

Army and Politics

AIM Belgrade, 20 January, 1997

The head of the General Staff of the Army of Yugoslavia (VJ), general Momcilo Perisic, was forgiven for everything by everybody: peace lovers forgave him for destruction of Zadar and Mostar in 1991 and 1992, "national patriots" forgave him for not having intervened in Krajina and Republica Srpska (RS) in 1995, disappointed officers for their miserable financial and social status of VJ. Even the regime started treating him with more respect. In order to achieve this, general Perisic needed only eighty minutes on 6 January, 1997: that is for how long the head of the General Staff (but also commanders of the Air Force and the Army, as well as heads of security and information administrations) talked to the five-member students' delegation of '96/'97 Students' Protest.

"Students informed general Perisic about the aim and forms of their protest and demands they had put forward", it is said in the statement of the VJ Information Service. "General Perisic put emphasis in the talks on the constitutional role and tasks of VJ, as well as the special interest for the current problems to be overcome in legal institutions of the system, in a way fitting for every democratic country in order to enable FR Yugoslavia to join the international community as soon as possible". In their description of the meeting and the course of the talks, members of the students' delegation say that general Perisic also said that the Army and the students were on the same side, because they demand implementation of the Constitution, and then promised that he would not bring tanks in the streets in order to suppress the demonstrations like general Veljko Kadijevic on 9 March, 1991. Students were not quoted in the official statement of VJ, but nobody denied what they had said. It served as the foundation for a spread conviction that the army had clearly and unambiguously denied support to Milosevic.

General Perisic did not call the demonstrants fascists as Chairman of the Assembly of Serbia Dragan Tomic did, nor fifth-columnists as Slobodan Milosevic. Although defence of independence of FR Yugoslavia was the fundamental motto of the counter-demonstrations of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), in the statement of the Army of Yugoslavia there is not even a hint that anyone is endangering it. General Perisic does mention "legal institutions of the systems" as all regime officials, but he refers to practice of democratic countries which can hardly be said to exist in Serbia. He concluded also that students' protests were peaceful, and by that questioned the presence of the police in the streets. Finally, he stressed the significance of "the most urgent possible return to the international community" at the very moment when it became obvious that hard-core members of the SPS and the JUL were moving the country further away from badly needed foreign loans and credits...

Reactions to the meeting of the Army and the students were thunderous and quick as lightning. Satisfaction of the USA and the European Union with the stance of the VJ was so great that the cynics always on duty in Serbia predicted that general Perisic would be invited to Bill Clinton's inauguration, or awarded a prestigious prize as a contribution in the struggle for human rights. When speaking of Serbia, it should also be said that the opposition and the students in Serbia were so enthusiastic about manifested depoliticization of the Army that they saw in it its readiness to oppose with arms the Ministry of the interior, if the latter started to put down the protest by force. The regime did not waste time either, so a message was sent to general Perisic through daily Politika. It reads: it is not the head of the General Staff that commands the Army, but President of FR Yugoslavia Zoran Lilic in compliance with decisions of the Supreme Council for National Defence. Therefore, general Perisic's job is not to make promises, but to take care that the tanks have crews, fuel and ammunition. And whether tanks will come out into the streets of Belgrade and the Square of the Republic can be ordered only by Slobodan Milosevic through the Supreme Defence Council. By the way, members of this body with the right to vote (the others are invited as required), apart from Milosevic, are the President of the FR Yugoslavia and high official of the SPS Zoran Lilic and President of Montenegro and the Democratic Party of Socialists Momir Bulatovic. So far for that to what extent the Army is depoliticized...

Nevertheless, the fact remains that VJ for the first time officially contacted someone who is not from the current authorities and is indeed against them. The meeting is all the more significant because it followed after the letter of support to the civil protest written by a group od anonymous officers from a few military posts from Nis and the surroundings the authenticity of which was not officially denied.

Connoisseurs of circumstances in the Army believe that despite everything, this is not a case of a deliberate move on the part of the Army, but rather that it was caught by surprise due to the political crisis in Serbia. The same sources claim that the military commanders would not refuse to obey Milosevic's command to get involved in protection of his regime, but by no means without a legitimate state decision. The fact that decisions about the use of the Army can be made solely by the Supreme Defence Council, complicates things. There are serious indications that Montenegrin authorities would not give consent to bringing the Army into the streets. If this should occur, it is not quite clear whether the Supreme Defence Council could reach a decision by majority of votes (Milosevic and Lilic) and whether such a decision would be considered to be valid by the Army commanders. Additional complication is the widely spread discontent of the army officers with their social status, salaries, solution of status problems, etc. The proportions of discontent are best illustrated every evening between 7.30 and 8, by deafening banging of pots and pans and whistling in New Belgrade blocks populated by army officers and their families.

Therefore, it is highly questionable whether troop officers would lead the army out into the streets to introduce order by measure of the regime even if they were ordered to do it. And again, even if they did, nobody could say with certainty how the army would act. Assessments vary from the one that the soldiers would either scatter or take sides with the citizens to those that they would remain extremely passive, even selling fuel from military vehicles and parts of equipment. Almost nobody predicts the possibility that the Army would, side by side with the police, set out to end the demonstrations by force. There are even speculations that, if the police were ordered to introduce order by all means and if it started to act accordingly, in other words, if major, blood-stained violence began, certain military units could appear in the streets on their own and without any order. In any case, it seems that the discontented Army the behavior and actions of which it is impossible to predict with certainty, is in fact the key anchor preventing the authorities to reach out for repression. Further stances of this and such an army at the head of whose General Staff is general Perisic will be determined by developments. As the regime in Serbia is founded on coercion and propaganda, it is hard to believe that the armed forces will be able to remain neutral.

(AIM) Philip Schwarm