Tobacco Road

The driver of a FAP truck (license plate TB 77-09) wasn’t nervous because he was late. It was only 6pm. on Thursday May 30, 1996, a quiet day on the Jazina border crossing between Montenegro and eastern Herzegovina. There was no need for anxiety: Montenegrin highway patrols escorted him from Podgorica airport with his load of 1,000 cartons of cigarettes worth at that moment (before the middlemen raised the price) about 150,000 DEM. Even the fact that the cargo would be worth twice that as soon as it crossed the border wasn’t a cause for concern, because there was a verbal agreement with Miro Prelo, chief of the Trebinje state security center, to meet him as soon as he crossed into Republika Srpska and provide a police escort to his final destination. Just after 6:00, the truck crossed the border and went on towards the junction of the M-6 and M-20 roads, escorted by Prelo and two other men. Policemen Miroslav Kovacevic and Aco Markovic were waiting at Vinogradi to escort the truck on to the village of Berkovci (between Bileca and Stolac) and on westwards towards Stolac. They got to Dol at 9:05 and stopped at a restaurant to wait for whoever was going to take the truck on to its final destination.

No one appeared at the agreed time and Kovacevic and the two men escorting the truck drove to the police station in Berkovici to make a phone call. In the meantime, the Mercedes that they were waiting for, with Herzeg-Bosna license plates, appeared. Between 9:50 and 10:15, the license plates on the truck were replaced with Bosnian Croat plates, the driver who was brought in got into the cab, and both the truck and Mercedes crossed the RS-Herzeg-Bosna border.

We have no idea what the policemen thought about their mission, but we do know that they filed a detailed report the next day.

We also don’t know what Trebinje state security department chief Milo Prelo thought about the whole thing, but we know that he and the chief of the Trebinje public security center did not attend a very important meeting in the Trebinje public security center at 1:00 p.m. on October 22, 1996, which the rest of the security chiefs attended. That meeting was preceded by a number of meetings by security and police officials. The meeting in Trebinje sent dispatch no. 17-01-548/96 to the RS president, prime minister and government, public security department and the police anti-terrorist brigade chief. The dispatch was signed by "meeting chairman, Trebinje public security center police department chief Colonel Miroslav Duka".

The wording of the dispatch is bitter and concerned; it concluded that there were "cases of import and transport of cigarettes from the FRY for sale in the Moslem-Croat Federation with escort provided by the police and the transports organized by police officials".

We know that RS President Biljana Plavsic asked for an explanation from Major General Milenko Karisik, head of the RS police public security department. Karisik replied on October 25 in dispatch RJB 537/96 saying he had no idea about "cases of trade with the Federation under police auspices" nor did he know that the police were involved. He said that he "personally does not approve and condemns" cases like that but took the opportunity to distance himself: he complained that internal affairs minister Dragan Kijac "is appointing top security officials without my knowledge and without consulting me" which he said upsets the system of command.

Back to Trebinje. On January 20, 1997 dispatch no. k/p-1-28/97 from the internal affairs minister’s cabinet in Pale arrived in the public security chief for the center itself. He demanded that "the re-export of cigarettes by the Selekt-imex company to the Federation be allowed" as well as the return of "goods confiscated in Nevesinje from that company". The letter was signed by Kijac.

And that’s the essence of the first big problem Plavsic faced as RS president. The problem is as old as the RS, and Plavsic is playing at not knowing about it. The RS produces almost nothing except for some lumber and some farm products. The only source of foreign currency is the population, because the economy is in a very bad state. The consumer goods with the highest profits are cigarettes and liquor and it’s logical for that trade to be kept within the control of the security services.

That’s how the whole thing starts: first it’s deals with oil and other strategic materials, then it’s humanitarian aid and finally cigarettes and liquor. The shady side of the deals is the key, because it was unavoidable, necessary and predictable considering personnel policies throughout the RS where the greatest "patriots" got the best positions. Anyone capable of robbing, expelling or killing their neighbors just because they’re a different nationality is capable of anything. Once they ran out of those other nationalities, they turned to their own people. Thieves are principled people with no ethnic prejudices. That’s an old truth that the RS is discovering slowly but surely.

Mihajlo Bajic, assistant chief of the security center in Rogatica near Sarajevo sent a report on illegal activities to Plavsic and Aleksa Buha on September 25, 1996 making accusations against "fighters for Serbdom" who "actually are a cause of fear for the people in the area who see no protection from the legal police". Specifically, top level officials in the state security department and ministry, allegedly with permission from the RS president, organized illegal trafficking with the enemy through the sale of expensive cigarettes and other goods, Bajic said. He also mentioned eight loads of cigarettes from Montenegro which state security officers and Kula policemen sold in Sarajevo "in the last month alone"; three truckloads of cigarettes from Montenegro for Sarajevo (15 tons or 1.5 million DEM) escorted by security officers and the whole transport organized by Kijac and state security chief Dragisa Mihic; another truckload from Vrsac (September 18, 1996); Kijac’s party on September 14, 1996 in the Venus restaurant in Lukavica when the police minister was seen drinking with "criminals who sell cigarettes in Sarajevo and being given a new Golf car stolen in the FRY". Bajic pointed out links between state security officers, members of the police special brigade and criminals who were issued police ID cards: "A number of those "troops" - actually criminals - who are not members of the police even escorted President Plavsic during an election rally in Srpska Dobrinja". Bajic accused those "troops" of "not even shrinking away from physical liquidation if they meet any opposition".

The main legal front for those operations are the Centrex (Bijeljina) and Selekt-imex (Banja Luka) companies. Centrex is known to have been operating on a wide scale since 1994 and is completely under the control of the RS internal affairs ministry. The essence of its deals is that nothing can enter the RS without Centrex getting a 10% commission. Selekt-imex was set up recently after Centrex was compromised.

The RS borders on Croatia, Herzeg-Bosna, the BiH, Serbia and Montenegro. In practical terms this means a number of border crossings which are the site of cigarette and liquor smuggling. The cigarettes from the truck at the start of this story ended up in Moslem eastern Mostar (Mayor Safet Orucevic attended meetings on the smuggling in eastern Herzegovina) and in Herzeg-Bosna and Croatia. Cigarettes brought in by Centrex and Selekt-imex go to Pale and Lukavica or Kula and end up in Sarajevo and Kiseljak; the transports that go through the Brcko corridor get to Banja Luka but end up on Bosnian Moslem territory or Croatia.

The average profit rate is 100% which means that if 360 tons of cigarettes got through in August and September of 1996 (as Mihic admitted to Plavsic) alone how many got through that year.

According to transit goods lists drawn up by the EU mission in Bosnia, coffee, alcohol, beer and fruit juice come into the RS from Croatia and Herzeg-Bosna.

So could all those deals be done with the FRY without the cooperation of the federal customs and security service? Knowing the tobacco roads in this country and who controls them, that’s highly unlikely. And that brings us to the other problem facing Plavsic: the security services in all the Serb lands. If Kijac and Mihic are doing all this, it has to be in cooperation with their fellow officers on this side of the border, otherwise they couldn’t do anything and their profits would be much lower.

Before her clash with Pale, Plavsic tried to turn the anti-terrorist battalion of the Banja Luka police into her intelligence and security service. Remember that Milan Babic fell in the Krajina as did Radovan Karadzic in the RS while trying something similar in Knin and Bijeljina. The Krajina state security service was disbanded and then reorganized to come under the command of one man. Karadzic’s efforts in the RS also ended in failure quickly.

The message is that all the Serbs in the world, no matter how many states they have, have only one security service and no one goes against it.

Plavsic has no idea what she’s got herself into.