Agony and The Last Days

"If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I would be part of THE regular army, and the JNA a paramilitary formation, I would have died of laughter", said a "Chetnik-volunteer" in Eastern Herzegovina last week. A little later, pointing his gun at the major who wanted to take it away from him, he refused to return an expensive hand-radio station which he had received from the JNA. The Krajina authorities in Banja Luka (in the Serbian B&H Krajina) have been issuing ultimatums to the Army, such as: you can go, but you cannot take a single bullet, and there is no movement of military units without our consent. When the acting Federal Minister of Defense, Lieutenant-General Blagoje Adzic came to Banja Luka to "explain certain matters", he received a noticeably cold welcome: Mr. Radisav Vukic, the local SDS (Serbian Democratic Party) boss explained to him that he was a "foreign citizen". The local generals with battle pedigrees (Talic, Mladic and Nikovic) expressed views in such discord with Adzic's that it almost resembled mutiny. The story goes that this time, General Adzic did not shout or draw his gun. Times have changed.

"It's Danang all over again". This is how a foreign correspondent, who witnessed the evacuation of the said military base in Vietnam, described the current situation at the Sarajevo airport. The Banja Luka airport did not offer a better sight: military police could barely maintain order, and the planes were overloaded. The JNA's withdrawal from B&H is taking place in an atmosphere of anxiety, resignation and grumbling; the professional soldiers are concentrating in Serbia and Montenegro, looking more like refugees than an organized army withdrawing. The general atmosphere of despair and the bitterness of defeat have already began to affect discipline: the younger officers with combat experience are roaring with discontent, and nobody has the nerve to stop them. "Scapegoat" has become the most wanted specialist profile in the new Yugoslavia's army, and the list of suggestions is quite long and obvious: "This fish will be cleaned from the head down", said a somber young major. The atmosphere is beginning to smell of a coup, and if things continue to develop this way, a coup would surprise no one.

Everybody knew that B&H was the last defense line for the already beaten and halved JNA. However, the JNA did its best to lose B&H -why, and for whose sake? Just a month ago the JNA could have restrained the local irregular forces, saved lives, property and military plants: it only had to teach both sides a lesson and unbiasedly punish anyone who dishonored the cease-fire, just the thing it did not do in Croatia. The JNA had the power, but lacked political will.

On April 27, the JNA became a foreign army in B&H territory, committed to withdrawing before May 19 (the latest deadline).

The whole idea is to withdraw the men to Serb-controlled territories, and to transfer those who are not Bosnian to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, so that everyone keeps their weaponry and equipment. According to General Adzic, 85% of the soldiers in the JNA are B&H citizens.

Anyhow, the new Serbian B&H Army (made up of whatever the JNA leaves in Bosnia) will have to be re-organized from the start. Its equipment and large armament systems remain an unresolved problem since they demand technological and expert support. This did not deter the Serbs from Banja Luka from demanding that the whole 5th Air Force Corps be left with them.

Financing the remnants of the army is another problem, and it seems that nobody is taking this into account. Another unavoidable question is who will be better off after the Bosnian soldiers with their equipment have been left: the JNA or the Serbian Republic of B&H? It is obvious that the JNA could have stayed in B&H if it had wanted to. However, if it had it would have stood in the way of the agreement between the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) and the SDS (or maybe even the Tudjman-Milosevic agreement) concerning a brotherly division of B&H. In short, it means that the JNA has once more been manipulated, becoming the only defeated side in this particular Balkan war. The one who profited, as usual, was Mr. Milosevic: not only did he trick the B&H Serbs (here's your army), but he also psychologically and politically weakened the JNA as a possible political threat to his new state (which has been the aim towards which he had cleverly and successfully striven from the very beginning).

A weakened JNA could have represented a dangerous and unpredictable partner. Therefore, steps had to be taken in order to assume the initiative from within. The "differentiation" amongst the officers proceeded along its natural course over the past 12 months: everyone but the Serbs and Montenegrins left, while the Army's overall degradation directed the anger towards the highest ranking officers. General Veljko Kadijevic was the first to be politically wasted. Then, at the end of last year, it was a group of senior generals, while a whole new team was promoted (according to unknown criteria).

Last Autumn, signs appeared that a "Young Turk" line was emerging within the JNA, when the JNA's magazine "Narodna Armija" started bashing Admiral Mamula (ex Federal Defense Minister) and when the Army's Political Directorate's mood ultimately turned against the "old guard", collectively referred to as the SK-PJ (League of Communists - The Movement for Yugoslavia).

In the beginning of 1992, the "Young Turk" (for the time being, apparently pro-Milosevic) line became entirely apparent. The gauntlet was thrown down on March 26, when young Major-General Vuk Obradovic gave an interview to "Politika" daily, where he announced the birth of a "new", "professional and politically unbiased", "efficient and ideologically unbiased Serbo-Montenegrin army". He also announced the withdrawal from B&H, and the remaining of a part of the JNA in the republic. He bitterly attacked the SK-PJ, at whose inaugural convention he once had sat, stood and applauded. He declared "victory" ("some 95% of the territories in which Serbs are the majority are in their hands") and openly threatened with a further retirement of generals. Since March, an orchestrated escalation of public appearances by General Obradovic's cohorts has become evident. "Narodna Armija" and "Politika", in their regular comments, have shown less and less scruples in criticizing the "biologically and ethically worn-out people" on which the blame for all the defeats has been put.

In the field of psychological operations and propaganda warfare, however, the attack has been much broader and more diversified. In a well-coordinated operation with the "Young-Turks" in the Army, Mrs. Dobrila Gajic-Glisic's (ex-chief-of-cabinet of the Serbian Defense Minister) memoirs were presented to the public by the "NIN" weekly magazine. Mrs. Gajic-Glisic's message was quite clear: General Simovic and other advocates for a "Serbian army" are honest people who were tripped up by certain JNA officers; all the responsibility for the "paramilitary formations" went to the SK-PJ, because the senile retired generals have not only armed Serbs throughout Croatia, but also kept updated files on the matter. The most important information revealed is that regarding the intended talks between General Veljko Kadijevic and Mr. Slobodan Milosevic concerning the "President's assumption of supreme command" (beginning of December 1991). The talks were never held.

Colonel Milan Milivojevic then appeared on a local Belgrade TV station with a new challenge: he directly accused Generals Kukanjac, Adzic and Kadijevic of being the main culprits for all troubles the JNA and Yugoslavia were facing.

And finally, as this is being written (Friday, May 8; 3:20 P.M.), news of General Adzic's resignation and General Kukanjac's dismissal has arrived. Thus history acts faster than analysis. It is obvious that these moves represent an attempt to wash the B&H disgrace from the new army's inheritance.

People who have served under General Zivota Panic (General Adzic's successor) describe him as a competent, resourceful, skilled and quick-thinking officer. His sharp move from the old JNA's "general line" to the new, obviously pro-Serbian, line of Gen. Obradovic, is evident.

Meanwhile, the ideal picture of the new "Serbo-Montenegrin Army" (General Obradovic's words) has been painted vividly in order to give us at least an idea of the wishes concerned in the matter. Harsh reality, however, gives another picture. The FRY's (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) economic potentials do not favor the development of an "efficient, modern and professional" army. There is no answer to the basic question - who will be financing the Serbian Krajinas and states outside FRY and their armies. The losing of an integral Bosnia-Herzegovina and its military industrial complex has deprived the new army of huge hard currency revenues: not a single tank, heavy gun, aircraft or any other significant armament system will be produced here. The Army's reserve stocks are running low, and hyper inflation will not be able to save things much longer. Having an army is an expensive pleasure these days...

The only logical solution is to supply the political and military public with new scapegoats - until they get fed up. According to the "Young-Turks'" attacks, General Marko Negovanovic (the head of the JNA's intelligence during the war in Slovenia) is putting himself forward as the next victim. Right beside him are the following generals: Zivota Avramovic and Andrija Raseta (assistants to the Federal Defense Minister), Aleksandar Vasiljevic and Simeon Tumanov (head of the Security Directorate and his Deputy, respectively), Spiro Ninkovic (Bihac Corps Commander), Milan Aksentijevic and Vojislav Djurdjevac (Sarajevo Corps), and Milan Pujic (Political Directorate of the Federal Defense Ministry). The turn of the famous General Perisic ("the knight of Mostar") will come when the need to calm the international public arises.

It is clear now that the professional military are divided into three groups: the "reformists", the "conservatives" meant for "execution" in a given order and the overwhelming majority of professional military men whom no-one asks for opinion. All that, however, does not mark the end of the political drama between the army and the ruling regime in the new FRY: if the "Young Turks" manage to clear the Army's name in any way by providing new scapegoats to the people, they might develop a taste for the method. It wouldn't be so hard to find the culprit for the state's and Army's downfall, as this is quite obvious...Milos Vasic