WHEN A MAJOR COMMANDS A COLONEL

Army and Political Crisis in RS

AIM Banja Luka, 17 August, 1997

Two shocks have so far seriously threatened survival of RS: The first was of a military and political nature (discharge of the main headquarters of the army of RS of duty and establishment of the general staff), which almost caused an inter-Serb armed conflict. After hardly six months, the Serb entity is eaten from within by a political crisis of unseen contents and proportions. Dissolving of the national assembly by the President of RS on 3 July, opened another Pandora's box in this space. An artificially created constitutional crisis was added to the political crisis. This politicized the people, politics, the authorities, the army and the police, but they also polarized and differentiated into supporters and opponents of the President of RS. Conceived and initiated as a struggle against state crime and crime in general in the entity, after it had developed into a political crisis, the decision of the President of RS caused many more conflicts. In such a situation, the political crisis in RS may get out hand and lead to disastrous consequences.

If this crisis fails to be resolved soon, all possibilities are open. The possibility of division of RS itself into the western and the eastern part should not be eliminated, nor an international protectorate over this entity, nor even an inter-Serb civil war. In this misfortune, it is fortunate that Dayton accords exist, and that the fact that the West is behaving more than correctly in relation to internal problems of RS is evident.

The greatest puzzle in this political crisis is the army of RS. Several times changed position of the general staff of the army of RS towards the participants in this political conflict contributes to this. Such a situation among the ignorant may cause doubts about the background of this phenomenon, but also delusions about real and objective possibilities of the army of RS to come to any judgement about these developments in the Serb entity.

In this political conflict inside the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and the political crisis in general, the army of RS is not such a military force nor a political power which would provide for it a significant position and a role in it.

The average number of troops of the army of RS (without occasional mobilizations by means of registered letters) is about 15 thousand men, out of which about 2500 are non-commissioned officers and officers. Its armament, heavy weapons, equipment, air-force and all kinds of helicopters are under close supervision of SFOR. The situation is identical concerning mobilization, training and all other activities of the army of RS. That is why SFOR is capable of preventing any undesirable engagement of the army of RS, especially for political purposes.

The army of RS suffers from permanent lack of resources which threatens even the daily sustenance of its personnel. Reorganization of the army of RS has been completed, but not its professionalization, which cannot be done without money. Lack of money prevents regular and high-quality maintenance, repair and reconstruction of combatant and non-combatant technical and material means. Such a general situation of the army of RS is a direct result of long efforts of the state and political leadership of RS (the SDS) to devaluate the entire military organization, just as it was done in the FRY (by Milosevic). In accordance with it, priority in RS has also been given to police which has about 30 thousand men. Besides, by the new law on defence (adopted in September 1996), by dismissing the main staff and general Mladic of duty and by the law on the army (adopted in December 1996), the state and political leadership of RS achieved certain objectives the results of which have already turned against them. Conditions have been created for creation of a party army, in which the general staff was expected to play the main role, majority of active commanding officers with the war experience have been eliminated from the army of RS on various grounds, and connections and relations between the army of this entity and that of Yugoslavia have been reduced to a minimum. Contrary to the former main staff which was connected directly to the president of RS, the general staff can reach her only through the minister of defence and the supreme council. Even everything said so far shows that the general staff and the army of RS do not have such military and political positions to enable them to have a significant say in the resolution of the crisis in RS.

Plenty of other things contribute to such a situation and position of the general staff. Out of 26 generals of the army of RS from the past war, only five have remained (generals Talic, Kelecevic, Simic, Zec and Tomanic). After dismissal of the general staff another eight generals have been promoted (Colic, Josipovic, Pandurevic, Torbica, Kukobat, Andjic, Orescanin and Savcic) so that the army of RS nowadays has 13 generals. The army of RS consists of four corps, the air force and the school centre. The first corps is in Krajina and its commanders are Talic and Kelecevic, the third corps is in the regions of Posavina and Semberija (generals Simic and Zec), the fifth is in the region of Podrinje (general Josipovic and colonel Andric) and the seventh is in Herzegovina (general Andjic and colonel Sladoje).

The commander of the air force of army of RS is general Torbica, and the commander of the school centre is colonel Cavic. Generals Talic, Kelecevic, Simic, Zec and Andjic, as well as colonel Sladoje, have the highest possible military training (they have completed the military academy, the higher military academy and the war school). General Josipovic has completed the quartermasters' academy. In the general staff of the army of RS the situation is quite different concerning the military professional training of the leading officers. The head of the general staff (general Colic) completed only a course for non-commissioned officers lasting three months and some other political courses in former JNA. His deputy (general Pandurevic) has completed only military academy. Similar is the case with majority of other officers on the general staff. General Tomanic (rear-area assistant), who was the commander of the second Krajina corps, has the highest education in this staff. All the other leading officers of the general staff (generals Colic, Pandurevic, Kukobat and Savcic, and colonel Kutlesic) in the past war were commanders of brigades. The main criterion in selection of officers for the most responsible posts in the general staff was affiliation and loyalty to the SDS.

In the army of RS military professional training has been completely neglected, which led to a series of paradoxes. It turned out that those with no military professional training command those who are highly educated. Major-general Colic is the head of the general staff and he is the commander to colonel-general Talic and colonel-generals Kelecevic and Simic, and former brigade commanders are superiors to former corps commanders and heads of staffs.

Ever since the beginning of the political crisis in RS, the commanding personnel in the army of RS was paralyzed and differentiated on various grounds. The political crisis has rounded up this process by dividing the leading cadre of the army into supporters and opponents of the president of RS. In such conditions, connections and relations between the general staff and their immediate subordinates (corps commanders) are so strained that they are about to burst.

The political split in the army of RS is the reality. It is an established fact that the general staff, the fifth and the seventh corps sided with the SDS (Pale), and that the third and the first support the president of RS, that is, the supreme commander of the army of RS. It should be kept in mind, however, that the first and the third corps (generals Talic and Simic) control 80 per cent of RS in the military and political sense. Certain exceptionally important facts have affected the political split in the army of RS. The SDS resolutely opposed the president of RS and her decision primarily because it was aware what its implementation would mean for it. The loss of that battle does not mean only loss of power for an indefinite time, but also criminal responsibility for many of the state and the political leadership of RS. Similar is the situation in the army of RS. The most responsible persons in the general staff are fully aware that they have come to their posts solely thanks to the SDS. The fall of this party from power means their fall, but also criminal responsibility of some of them for the defeat of the army of RS on the western front in summer 1995. Due to all that, the head of the general staff at first supported the president of RS and allegedly disassociated the army of RS from this political conflict. Immediately after that he was present at the session of the dissolved national assembly, supposedly in order to ensure food for the army of RS. Then he expressed support for the president again, and then sent a "strictly confident" letter which in an "unknown manner" reached the public. In this letter he demands from the president of RS to consult without failure the general staff before she reaches any decision. That is how the army of RS, but in fact its smaller part, took sides with the SDS, and not its supreme commander. At the moment, a status quo is in the army of RS in this respect, which will probably keep until the resolution of the political crisis in this entity.

Nikola Popovic