Fear of Saigon

Many Serbs in Kosovo have been very upset recently. At dawn they listen to passing cars and the sound of footsteps, recalling past episodes and trying to balance things out in their minds. Considering everything that's happened in Serbia’s southern province over the past year, you might guess that they’re afraid of being victimized by the secretive terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) or other ethnic Albanian separatist organizations. Wrong: Serbs in Kosovo, especially the ones who are close to the authorities, most fear the Serbian police and judiciary, which showed some very peculiar behavior just before the new year.

First, while they were still celebrating Milan Milutinovic’s victory, a report came that three Serbs were arrested for allegedly inflicting serious bodily harm on Milenko Bjelanovic, a Serb refugee from the Krajina. The three are Nenad Radulovic, head waiter at the Rog restaurant, Nebojsa Radovanovic, owner of the restaurant and the Tri T company, and Radojica Kovacevic, head of the explosives department in the Pristina police. Radovanovic is the son in law of SPS Pristina board chief Zoran Gligorijevic, and allegedly one of the richest Serbs in Pristina. Kovac is also well know in Pristina, especially for taking part in dispersing the ethnic Albanian student demonstrations on October 1.

Bjelanovic the refugee is still recovering from a beating with baseball bats which caused several broken bones. He told investigators a horrible story of himself and his family being abused by the three men. Bjelanovic said Radulovic and Radovanovic were involved in organized prostitution and recruited his wife who was a Rog employee but spends most of her time in the Bozur hotel. That wasn’t enough so they raped his underage daughters and moved them to the Bozur. "I wanted to talk to them as a man, but they told me that they would F... me as well if I bothered them," Bjelanovic said.

Then they beat him up and took him to police headquarters and handed him to a group of policemen headed by Kovac. He was beaten for hours with his legs tied and finally dumped semi-conscious in the mud outside a soccer stadium.

The thing that shocked Pristina wasn’t that Radulovic, Radovanovic and Kovac are involved in prostitution, rape and other things, but the fact that all three were arrested. "We all thought that no one could do anything to those men," an informed source said and added that the arrest warrant came from Belgrade.

Radovanovic and Kovac were held under arrest while Radulovic managed to escape and is reported to be in Greece with several million DEM. The financial police raided Radovanovic’s company and everyone’s waiting to see what they’ll find.

The second shock came before anyone had recovered from the first: on the morning of December 27, the police arrested Goran Papovic, one of the most colorful figures in Pristina. Goran Papovic is the nephew of Radovan Papovic, rector of Pristina university, and son of Milivoj Papovic who is CEO of the Grading construction company. Goran’s cousin is Minja Milovanovic, director of the Kosovo development fund and member of the SPS executive board. Being a member of that family, Goran had to be a success: at age 37 he was co-owner of Bel Pagette and owner of the Pap commerce company. The young Papovic was arrested along with Mirko Panic, owner of the Drago San company, who was charged with smuggling sugar from Bulgaria and evading taxes.

Sources close to the Pristina police said steps were taken to stop Papovic from escaping and he was taken to Belgrade after just 45 minutes in the Pristina police. He was released two days later just before new year’s eve, but Panic is still in jail.

As if all that isn’t enough, there’s a White Book going around Kosovo. Allegedly, the ethnic Albanians have prepared the release of evidence they collected for years on corruption within the Serbian state apparatus in Kosovo. The story says they recorded every bribe to the Serbian authorities as a way to complete any big business deal, even to the point of recording the serial numbers of banknotes. Now they’ve brought it all together in a book which is supposed to appear soon and shake up the establishment. That is if it appears, because the White Book is being discussed only by Serbs, while informed ethnic Albanian sources swear they have no confirmation that it exists.

Understandably, the arrests and rumored White Book caused an upset, and the holidays without the daily press only served to raise anxiety. The few reports that found their way into the Belgrade press were contradictory and caused suspicions that something was happening and that everything was being heated up with some goal in mind.

The greatest interest was drawn by a series of articles in Dnevni Telegraf about Goran Papovic signed with the initials SP. Those articles even got the Pristina university council to issue a statement condemning the Belgrade daily for attacking rector Papovic and his family. Also, the first report about the White Book came from Dnevni Telegraf and was signed with the same initials.

All VREME sources in Pristina described rector Papovic as the most powerful man in the provincial establishment. "He’s probably the only rector in the world who gets morning reports every day from the local police chief, district chief and even party chief," said a university employee who insisted on anonymity. "Papovic and his family decide not just who’ll get a university job or apartment but many other things as well. There’s the multi-million project to construct a university suburb in Pristina. The job went to Grading which is run by another Papovic. Construction material is bought from private companies owned by the family and transported by Minja Milovanovic."

Some people suspect that the latest events are the start to eliminating hard liners in preparation for Milosevic’s future deal with ethnic Albanian leaders. Still, it might be too soon to conclude that the central authorities in Belgrade have decided to launch a coordinated action to break up the entrenched chain of corruption which was built for years on vows of the sacred Serbian lands. In the end, these are people who have indebted the regime, not only by fighting against separatism but by successfully organizing elections. Don’t forget that Milutinovic beat Seselj mainly thanks to the votes in Kosovo. In fact, corruption is at the very heart of the regime in Kosovo and that regime can’t sustain itself if the local Mafia is broken up. Everything would go to hell if the White Book appeared in public. "Everyone would run," a source close to the police said. "And they’d use helicopters."

The image of helicopters brings back images of the last days of the puppet government in South Vietnam, when officials from the Lon Nol regime in Saigon fought each other for seats in US helicopters, fleeing the Vietcong offensive.

The unusual new year events in Kosovo are part of a similar story with the top ranks being hit by their subordinates who wanted to rise up to the top.

Kosovo’s Serbs and Montenegrins who aren’t lucky enough to have important relatives, stopped thinking about those things long ago. They’ve been leaving for years in buses, cars and trucks and their numbers are dwindling.