A Bullet for Djindjic

The five year anniversary of the Yugoslav Army (VJ), i.e. the fourth year anniversary of its holiday - June 16 - has been marked by the following three events. The first was a turbo-advertised air meet at the Batajnica airport where foreign military planes were present after an absence of many years; the second was the ceremonious academy at the VJ Club in Topcider where the President of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic sat in the front row, while the third event was when sergeant Radovan Pavlovic killed his commanding officer, lieutenant colonel Milivoje Djindjic, narrowly missed captain Milisav Zivkovic and finally shot himself in the Drinka Pavlovic army barracks in Kursumlija.

The army tried to hush up this murder which occurred on June 13 for as long as possible. The ceremonious atmosphere could not have been spoiled even by the fact that VJ personnel lasat received their wages on April 15, coupled with the fact that they owe 700 million dinars to military suppliers. On the contrary: the general staff chief, General Momcilo Perisic didn't mince words at the annual press conference over "certain journalists" for having created the impression "that the army was on the brink of poverty", i.e. for "letting the others outside the country know that the army has been destroyed by the sanctions". Later, during a speech made in front of his future chief commander Milosevic in Topcider, Perisic swore to "strengthen the unity and power of the FR of Yugoslavia", accusing "hypocritical global powers" for all the misfortune.

Still, when the pilots completed their acrobatics and flew off, when Milosevic returned from the academy having received the army's informal support for his candidacy (something which always seemed to have been important to him for some reason) and when all the ritual sentences about the power, readiness and decisiveness of VJ were forgotten, the army was alone again. Alone with the Kursumlija murder which perfectly illustrates its position following its fifth anniversary.

People claim that sergeant Pavlovic was a violent, conflict-prone man. He had physically attacked another commander once. Despite all of that, the army had approved his transfer to the Belgrade garrison on account of his family. Otherwise, as a commissariat-officer, he was managing the Kursumlija army barracks restaurant. Prior to reporting off duty, sergeant Pavlovic got into a fight with another soldier. The announcement of the Third Army Information Department states that he had requested an official meeting with the commanding officer of the barracks, lieutenant-colonel Djindjic, where he was conducted by lieutenant-colonel Milic Petrovic.

We were unofficially told that Djindjic told Pavlovic that he wouldn't be transferred to Belgrade until that dispute was settled. At that moment the sergeant took out his official magnum .357 revolver, shot his commander and killed him on the spot with two bullets, then went out to the corridor, shot at captain Zivkovic, missed him, took a few steps and shot himself in the lungs, as stated in the official announcement. Both Djindjic, who came to Kursumlija from Bitolj, and Pavlovic left wives and two small children behind.

"The worst thing that can happen to a system is when a system no longer exists", says an army psychologist expert for VREME, insisting upon remaining anonymous. "It was proven that chaos functions better than a system which has started to collapse. A person expects nothing from chaos while in a system a person expects things to function as they should. Finally, you find yourself in a no-way-out situation, trapped in a corner - frustrated because you cannot do or change anything. The Yugoslav Army is that system which has started to collapse."

VREME's source explains why the army has found itself in that situation. Whatever people may say, what we have before us are armed forces which have lost wars and territories, suffering from a losers syndrome. After defeat, the situation becomes extremely complicated and tense in every army. More so because the majority of the commanding officers could have used their weapons in the war. On top of that, we have conflict in the army itself between professionalism and politics. The top commanders in the army don't seem capable of giving up all that had accompanied an ideological army which stood as one of the regime's backbones and to finally opt for professionalism, which incites further conflicts. And finally, once the former political system collapsed in which the army's personnel was trained, a certain void opened up in the morale.

Our source compares the current army situation to an inverted pyramid. Instead of having a number of GI's in training at the base, working upwards according to the ranks, what we have are army barracks with ten soldiers and one hundred commanding officers.

"The base of the pyramid has thinned out, there are less and less GI's, while the top structures are getting bigger. We have seven general-colonels in VJ today." The catastrophic financial situation only makes matters worse.

"Those above-mentioned commanding officers are not training any GI's since they've got no one to train and are working amongst themselves. What they are actually doing is relaxing during their active duty hours to be able to dedicate their spare time to a job which is truly supporting their families. When tired people arrive in the morning - anything can happen. Especially as all authority vanishes when a subordinate and a commanding officer meet every day elsewhere, like in the open flea market, where they are forced to work in order to survive."

"A long time ago, the General Inspection Department of the national army (GINA) induced fear amongst all JNA officers", says the expert on army psychology. "When they were announced for a visit, everything had to be perfect and all were shaking with fear - from sergeant to general. Such a thing no longer exists. The issue of command stands unresolved now: how can you command someone who has watched you sell undergarments at the market; how can you influence anyone as his commanding officer when you don't have the power to solve a single problem addressed to you; how to conduct military training and modernization when the entire commanding corps is struggling to survive."

An army which has a surplus of commanding officers - idle, on the brink of survival - inevitably has internal wrangling which finally come to the point of a bullet tragedy. In places where people are fighting to live close to their parents in order to secure a more comfortable family life, where everyone is looking into the others' back yard, where those who are obedient magically rise up the company ladder and where those who use their own heads remain at the bottom and where the only goal is to survive, usual standards - both moral and legal - can no longer be applied. General Perisic is utterly right there: the army is in the same boat with its impoverished citizens who should allocate their funds to support it and with the government which it is supposed to defend.