Poverty of the Officers

Marija (16) lives in an army barrack in Belgrade. Her father is a Yugoslav Army (VJ) officer who left a three room apartment in Ljubljana. She lives in a room with her parents and sister. The same building is home to another 30 similar families. They share a small kitchen with one washbasin and two cookers as well as washing machine. They also share four shower cabins and two toilets. "Every day we see men shaving while women put makeup on and mothers washing their children," Marija says. It’s all at a cost of 200-300 dinars a month.

Marija will tell you that she’s doing fine. She heard that some army families share 14-bed sleeping quarters. Those people are the "most endangered category" of army personnel. They’re listed as people whose housing problem hasn’t been solved. Official figures say the VJ provides some form of accommodation for 15,000 people. Others share the way of life with civilians. Their salaries are small and late.

The persistent demonstrations have shown that the population of Serbia is not happy with the regime that brought it to where it is now. Since the VJ keeps saying it is part of society, the conclusion could be that they’re not happy either.

"Once I truly believed in Milosevic," a high-ranking officer in Belgrade said. "Now I was the first to start making noise in my building during the main evening news. My eyes weren’t opened by Slovenia, the Krajina or Bosnia but by the fact that I can’t buy shoes for my child."

The army’s Vojska weekly revealed how things stand. Of the 4.215 billion dinars the VJ was approved in 1996, 700 million was never paid. On January 9, 1997, the army owed a total of 876 million dinars; 401 million dinars in salaries and pensions and 475 million to suppliers.

So what can they expect in 1997? The federal government predicted that prices and the dinar will be stable, the social product will rise by 13%, living standards by 12% and exports by 48%. Vojska said the federal budget was adopted on the basis of that prediction (6.5 billion for the armed forces) and added that "a large number of prominent economy experts" were skeptical about those predictions. In that context, the weekly stressed the foreign trade debt of over two billion dollars at the end of 1996, a general lack of funds, the fact that just 40% of the economy was operating. "Those facts show that a deterioration in VJ financial operations is possible," Vojska said.

"If the flow of funds from the federal budget stays the same as in the past three months, the VJ will reach a completely absurd situation by the end of the year, owing more than what will be allocated for the army in the 1998 budget," Colonel Radisa Djordjevic, head of the defense ministry budget department, told Vecernje Novosti daily. "That means there will be very little money for the army in 1998 and the military organization could die out on its own," he added.

Colonel Djordjevic said the defense ministry and general staff proposed measures to get some money somehow. Specifically, they want to pay the 160 million dollars they owe the military industry in dinars taken from the state through the Yugoslav National Bank (NBJ); to sell arms and equipment in accord with the Dayton agreement; to give away they weapons they can’t sell because their maintenance is expensive; to sell off or rent unnecessary military facilities. Djordjevic admitted that very little consideration was given to those proposals. He offered two answers to why that was done.

First, the regime decided to strengthen the Serbian police as much as possible and practically turned it into a military armed force. As confirmation of that he said the police were being trained to drive tanks and use anti-aircraft guns and added that a multiple rocket launcher was being built specially for the police and that the police academy had published an army textbook on tactics while the VJ didn’t have the money to print it for its needs.

Second, the overall state of the economy affects military financing. There isn’t enough money for anyone and as long as the regime keeps doing what it does there won’t be any money. The authorities are scraping the bottom of the barrel and using what they can gather together for what they think is important.

Since there is very little a demobilized artillery or infantry officer can do in Serbia today, anxiety and mistrust is running high. That was also why VJ personnel who talked to VREME insisted on complete anonymity. Their salaries are small and late, but something is better than nothing. Marija, the officer’s daughter, thinks most of her neighbors in the barracks support the students but she added that no one is making noise during the main evening news or going to the demonstrations. Also, they only talk about everyday things, never politics. You never know if you might loose what little you have if you open you mouth carelessly.

Many experts have left the VJ and the shortage of money means the army is saving on training exercises and target practice. Now, some reserve artillery officers do better during live ammo drills than young active officers. Also, the fact that active military personnel are banned from "any activities which run counter to VJ interests" isn’t attracting young men to the army. It’s a public secret that many officers and non-coms make a living on smuggling and selling goods at markets or through small businesses in their wives’ names.

"If VJ chief of staff General Momcilo Perisic ever came to one of Belgrade’s markets and shouted 'Attention' at least half the men there would jump," one officer said.

Vojska weekly said a further deterioration of VJ financing is expected in the first quarter of this year. It said "that makes the state of political and social tensions in Serbia following the elections even more complex". It also warned that dramatically of "numerous negative consequences, especially in the field of training, morale and overall combat readiness in the VJ".

Obviously, the VJ chiefs have started distancing themselves from the regime cautiously in an effort to stop being one of its pillars. The shortage of money in the VJ was there in the past few years but no one said anything about it apart from a few clumsy statements. The moment chosen to speak out about the problem shows that the only people who can make a living there are the people who know where the 10-20 million dinars a day allocated to the VJ go. A statement after General Perisic met with a student delegation is indicative because it calls for an urgent return to the international community. At a moment when Mira Markovic was talking about a planet-wide plot against the Serbs and psychological warfare, Perisic’s statement can be interpreted only as an appeal to have the November 17 election results reinstated. Everything that has happened since is taking the country further away from the money it needs for the economy (and army) which everyone agrees can only come from abroad.

We shouldn’t expect a coup from the army. Most likely, it is using the current political crisis to grab what it can as an interested party. In simple terms: if the regime wants to be sure some units commanded by dissatisfied officers won’t take to the streets if there’s violence, it should pay up. The authorities can’t do that and it has nothing to pressure the army chiefs with. If they dismiss Perisic he will become a popular public figure at a moment when any threat of further budget restrictions is senseless.