How Serbia Welcomed Peace

Who is Proud of the Victory

By proclaiming victory, the regime is trying to postpone the time when it will be forced to answer the question since when do the victors have to withdraw, and the defeated move into their place, whether Kofi Annan is really cadre from Pozarevac, and why, who and for what reason has brought the country into the situation to wage war against NATO

AIM Podgorica, 14 June, 1999

(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

On 9 June, in the vicinity of Kumanovo, after negotiating for five days, representatives of the Army of Yugoslavia (VJ) and NATO reached a military technical agreement. In this document it is stated that Yugoslav security forces would begin withdrawing from Kosovo and that they would be immediately replaced by troops of the Alliance with the mandate of UN Security Council with the name KFOR. As expected, NATO Council automatically decided to suspend bombing of FR Yugoslavia.

As soon as this was made public by state TV in its daily news at 22.30, fire was opened in Belgrade from all sorts of arms: petards, pistols, machine-gun bursts, shots from automatic weapons and anti-aircraft artillery from the outskirts of the city. Very soon, at the central city square, several hundred citizens gathered - mostly young men and girls. The atmosphere reminded of festivities when Yugoslav basketball players win some important championship: there was chanting, opening and sprinkling of champagne, people wrapped in national flags... Indeed, a group of young men sang: "You took the trophy, Paspalj" (head of the national basketball team). Cars were honking, youngsters sitting on hoods and hanging from car windows pointed three fingers; car headlights, camera flashes and lamps of an impressive number of newspaper photographers and TV cameramen were practically the only lights in the completely dark Square of the Republic. For almost a month Belgrade has been without street lights. That is how peace was welcomed with carousing and "basketball" merrymaking.

Generals of VJ and NATO agreed that withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces last eleven days and that it begin from the north of the province; that KFOR begin deployment 24 hours after adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 on Kosovo; that the buffer zone between VJ and KFOR be 5 kilometres wide for ground forces and 25 kilometres from the border of Kosovo for air-force and anti-aircraft defence, and a number of other military technical details. Unofficially it was possible to learn that the greatest stumbling block was the initial insisting of NATO on demarcation zone between ground forces of 25 kilometres inside FR Yugoslavia: a considerable part of southern Serbia and Sandzak, including cities like Novi Pazar and Vranje would have been left only with local police. In any case, the last word was said by NATO.

Article V of the military technical agreement literally says: "The only person authorised to make final interpretation of this agreement and aspects of security of the peace agreement shall be the commander of KFOR". Although this paper from Kumanovo does not mention use of entire Yugoslav traffic infrastructure free of charge contrary to the papers from Rambouillet and Paris, the impression is however that the current military agreement is more disadvantageous.

Before 24 March, it was planned that 28 thousand foreign soldiers enter Kosovo, and now 60 thousand will come, and the withdrawal of VJ should have lasted for six months; the paper from Rambouillet permitted 1,500 Yugoslav border guards to be in the 5 kilometre border region as well as military barracks in Djakovica, Prizren and Urosevac; 2,500 members of the ministry of internal affairs (MUP) of Serbia should have remained in Kosovo...

If there is any advantage in the current agreement, it should be sought in the complicated political control of the troops and transfer of their mandate from NATO Council to UN Security Council. From the words addressed to the nation by president of FR Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic it was learnt that during eleven weeks of the war 462 members of the Army of Yugoslavia and 114 policemen were killed. He did not state the number of civilian victims, but it is estimated that between 1,200 and 1,500 civilians were killed and more than six thousand were wounded. NATO estimates that about 3,500 persons were killed in Kosovo, but they do not say precisely who they were - members of Yugoslav security forces, civilians, members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) or all of them put together. Only one thing is certain: during NATO attacks on FR Yugoslavia, more people were killed than in all the conflicts in the province from March 1998 until March 1999.

Besides, Yugoslav economy, traffic and power infrastructure suffered exceptionally severe damage, although it should be noted that the real consequences of the destroyed factories, bridges and other have not been estimated yet. The inevitable question is what this war has brought. For all those, very few, who for different motives by directives of the regime gathered on Belgrade bridges, carrying flags and banners, there is no doubt about it. For a few days already, they are shouting: "We have won". Milosevic is also quite clear. "We have not given Kosovo", "Territorial integrity of our country cannot be questioned", "We have defended the multiethnic community, the only mutiethnic community that has remained from former Yugoslavia", are accents from his address to the nation, the first after two and a half months on the front page of Politika.

However, has the war ended in a victory for majority of ordinary people who have suffered the horrors of everyday bombing by NATO air-force? These people are not present at the by the regime orchestrated festivities where even politically aware turbo-folk stars and starlets sing on bridges and stages erected on city squares. Even if these ordinary people did carouse on 9 June, and then phoned their relatives and friends to check whether the war was really over, they did it because they could finally sigh with relief and gather their families scattered in villages inside Serbia, lie down in their beds without the sound of sirens, with no fear of guided bombs and cruising missiles. In other words, to devote themselves again

• as much as possible - to something that is called normal life. Contrary to them, by proclaiming the victory, the regime will do its best to postpone the time when it will have to answer the question how come the victors are withdrawing to make place for the defeated who are moving in to take their place, whether Kofi Annan is really "Milosevic's man" and finally the question of all questions - what was accomplished?. When answers will be sought for these questions, there will be no doubt about the fact that NATO strikes were a brutal shameless act and that every state's duty is to defend itself, but it is who and for what reason brought about the situation in which something like that became even conceivable. In other words - Who is guilty for the victory?

Philip Schwarm