Does The Army Obey Milosevic

The Yugoslav generals have steered clear of politics since General Zivota Panic was replaced as Chief of Staff by General Momcilo Perisic. But the halting of direct economic and military aid to the Bosnian Serbs and indirect aid to the Krajina Serbs has made the issue of the military establishment's mood topical again. The mild support offered to Milosevic (just one statement of support by Perisic on August 5) and the close ties with the Bosnian Serb Army seem to have initiated the fight for the political support of the professional soldiers.

It turns out that the Serbian President doesn't have all that much support in the Bosnian Serb Republic (RS), while the Bosnian Serbs have the support of Serbia's entire ``nationally conscious'' opposition. The blocking of both the Federal and Serbian parliaments, caused partly by that difference of opinions, shows that the leaders in Belgrade are facing a stormy autumn, much more so than the RS leaders. Milosevic also faces added difficulties from the international community which wants him to recognize both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia in their pre-war borders and has set other conditions to ease the sanctions against the FRY. So it seems that the way the mood in the army is presented will be an important element because of the stalemate in the parliaments. The army is being re-introduced to politics by the politically marginal Communists, a powerful force thanks to a symbiosis with the ruling socialists.

Zoran Cicak, a prominent member of the United Yugoslav Left (JUL) and close associate of Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic, JUL's ideologist, said there were indications that supporters of Radovan Karadzic (assessed to be as numerous as 20%) in the Yugoslav Army are organizing patriotic cells. Cicak is also concerned that the ``general staff only lent support to Milosevic once, timidly,'' ``that the process of cleansing extremists from the officer corps... has not been completed,'' and added that they will form ``three communist cells for every patriotic cell they discover and don't arrest.''

The general staff reacted by saying that the statement was caused by nostalgia for the times when officers were inevitably Communist party members and when the party commanded the army. The general staff also said the army had been depoliticized under the constitution and added that there were no cells, patriotic or otherwise.

Retired Chief of Staff and Communist party chairman Stevan Mirkovic said Cicak's statement was part of the JUL pre-election campaign and added that JUL wanted to show strength that it didn't have. He said the communists couldn't form cells even among the civilian population, let alone the army, and added that the forming of cells in the army was illegal. The Cicak statement even drew a reaction from the League of Communists---Movement For Yugoslavia (SK-PJ), a collective member of JUL, which said Cicak was not an SK-PJ leader and was speaking only in his own name. There were also some informal interpretations which said the statement was a form of pressure on Milosevic to force him to speed up purges in his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), i.e. that the army really is a hotbed of dissatisfaction and division.

Just two days later, ``Borba'' daily quoted ``Nova Nada'' to report that Perisic had resigned. B-92 radio aired a denial from the General Staff the same day. The most interesting part of the denial said that ``problems in financing the Yugoslav Army have become chronic and could in the future cause certain, exclusively individual, steps.'' What those steps could be became clear after the military establishment's ``Vojska'' weekly editorial was published on August 25. The editorial said the Serbian government had earmarked 358,475,500 Dinars for the republican police in its budget while the army received 221,985,000 Dinars. It also pointed out that a number of conclusions could be drawn from those figures. ``Vojska'' editor-in-chief Milorad Pantelic lost his job after that issue, but the obvious conclusion is still that the army has publicly voiced its dissatisfaction after a long time.

Specifically, army pilots earn around 450 Dinars a month including overtime and benefits, top technicians earn between 250 and 300 Dinars, nurses in the Belgrade military hospital earn 130 Dinars... One high ranking officer went 700 Dinars into debt with his bank to buy his three children the schoolbooks and other things they need to start the school year. The desperate housing situation doesn't even need to be mentioned.

The attitude of the police towards the army is also a factor. Their relations deteriorated from mutual salutes once to unconfirmed reports of police harrassing soldiers. Those reports say Serbian policemen recently beat a soldier so fiercly after he caused a disturbance in a train that he lost a testicle. A colonel allegedly suffered the same fate a year earlier. In short, the army has begun openly wondering whether the state needs it now that the police are so powerful. General Perisic allegedly had no response to that question when he was asked this by retired Generals just months ago.

It's no secret that the army's reputation is at an all-time low and that it is surviving under any existential minimum. Many skilled technicians have left it and its equipment is in catastrophic conditions. The army has warned of those facts all along, but now, because of the delicate situation with the RS, it's top brass is believed to have decided to voice its demands and fight for the money they think belongs to them. Political loyalty would be paid for in apartments and higher salaries. If that happens soon, the generals could easily give up on controlling their subordinates and their ``exclusively individual'' behaviour.

What's all this about?

RS military commander General Ratko Mladic, notwithstanding the embargo, is maintaining his military machinery at lethal levels and it is practically the only thing still functioning properly in the RS. At one time, official Belgrade counted on him seriously as an opponent to RS President Radovan Karadzic. Mladic met with Perisic and other General Staff officers who tried to persuade him to lend support to Milosevic. Unofficial reports said Mladic calmly rejected that option and voiced his loyalty to the Pale leaders. But he didn't join in the propaganda effort from Pale and, in return, he and his army were, at least on paper, spared by the Belgrade poison pens. The Associated Press (AP) reported that Pentagon sources said Mladic still had open telephone lines with the General Staff in Belgrade, that he receives radar reports and, the Pentagon sources said, that there were mysterious helicopter flights across the Drina into Bosnia (before the blockade, the RS army transferred its seriously wounded to Belgrade by helicopter). AP said a number of Yugoslav Army officers were fighting with the RS army and still being paid by Belgrade.

The explanation is that Milosevic doesn't want the Bosnian Serbs to suffer total military defeat. Officers born outside Serbia and Montenegro are no longer being sent to Bosnia and Krajina as ``volunteers'' and their jobs aren't being abolished, but the officers who are already there are not being withdrawn. Is this long-term support of Mladic, who could even be offered Karadzic's place? Or, in other words, are the Serb armies on both sides of the Drina a bridge that is intended to bring the Bosnian Serbs back into the fold.

The fact that the RS army was spared from Belgrade's criticism could have undesirable effects: instead of keeping Mladic under control, he could start controlling rebellious Yugoslav Army officers whose leaders have lost what little reputation they had. The ``exclusively individual'' behaviour would become the norm rather than the exception. This doesn't mean that Mladic and Perisic will go to war together, nor that they are fascinated by each other, nor that the officer corps wants to solve the situation by force (``volunteers'' were hard to find). It simply means that, left to themselves, army decision makers could put themselves up for sale to the highest bidder. And there's no need to explain what that could mean in politics.

Still, when it comes to party sympathies in the army, General Mirkovic points out the make-up of the Supreme Defence Council: everyone except Perisic is a member of the ruling Serbian and Montengrin Socialists' coalition and so far they have proved strong enough to prevent any other party from coming in. Army watchers compare the army's current social status with a farmers' cooperative and the influence of the Chief of Staff with the cooperative's manager. That comparison is confirmed by the purges in the army so far: ``nationally conscious'' officers were replaced long ago with officers who had ``class awareness,'' who were replaced by anonymous officers loyal only to Milosevic. They say the obedient mentality has been raised to levels that prevent any specific consequences in the army if they are replaced, because every member of the officer corps is looking out for his own interests. Besides, the third trial of General Vladimir Trifunovic is warning enough to anyone who thinks for himself.

The latest announcement of retirements and new appointments in the army drew speculations that the dissatisfaction in the army warrants those measures.

The retirements included the First army commander and navy commander because of their age and the training and operations chief in the Third army. None of those three men has any political clout. First army commander Jevrem Cokic suffered a helicopter crash in 1991 which left him with health problems. Navy commander Dojcilo Isakovic has no claim to fame, despite claims that he ordered his men to give RS army hawk Bozidar Vucurevic the coordinates needed to bomb Dubrovnik airport. Bozidar Djokic, Third army operations chief, has been considered incompetent for a long time.

The appointments were nothing spectacular either. Blagoje Kovacevic was named deputy Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral Milan Zec now commands the navy, and Nedeljko Copic became assistant Chief of Staff. They are mainly inexperienced at war and with the infighting within the army. If Isakovic left because of his links to Vucurevic, a balance was found in Zec, who was born in Krajina.

Some believe that the retirements and appointments allow Perisic to regain some authority (mainly through the retirement of Cokic, who was a general long before Perisic) and add that personnel changes in the army have finally been made without the influence of the Serbian police.

Many assessments say the Yugoslav Army has been marginalized, if only because of Milosevic's assessements that internal strife is more likely in Serbia than outside aggression. The police got more money because of that. The main sources of financing are reported to be Federal customs chief Mihail Kertes and Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic. Both funnelled profits from oil smuggling to their republican police and the army was left with only the federal budget as a source of income. Now reports say that Milosevic sees that the police force has changed so much that it can undermine his authority. It springs to mind that the police force, as opposed to the army, was never cleansed of its ``national-radical'' elements who were involved in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. Some assessments say that the regime is ready to gradually lean on the army, based on the heritage of Josip Broz Tito which says the army and police are the two main and equal pillars of the state. Some confirmation can be found in the fact that the oil tankers headed for the RS were impounded by army border guards; so is the blockade of the RS too serious to rely only on the police? Other reports say that the army security service is doing its best to supress crime in its barracks while the Serbian police doesn't have that kind of service. The police have even done their best to supress police scandals.

So the state can be expected to embrace its armed forces soon; not in the measure the army expects, but enough to prevent a financial and moral collapse. The reason lies in the fact that the Serbian President doesn't want a completely happy army, if only so he could do a deal with the international community; how can he force concessions without serious opponents? How can he prove that they have to grant his wishes because he claims to be the only one who can end the war?