A Net For Catching Small-Fry

The majority of analysts who are studying the problem of the rapid criminality of society, do not deny that many forms of organized crime are taking place under the protection of the authorities, which in this way ensure growing funds for waging war and for maintaining some kind of social peace. While there are not many doubts as to where the criminality of society started, there are dilemmas as to the date. Many believe that it all started with the war and later spread with the introduction of sanctions. Economist Dejan Popovic said recently, that the so-called Colombian syndrome (the fusion of political power and various forms of the economic underworld and mafia) was set up long before the economic embargo. Popovic claims that in the last few months this way of "doing business" has only been encompassed by state measures, which really points to the fact that this is a strategic commitment. Even if the circumstances which led to sanctions were no longer in existence, the developed world would be wary of this Latin American virus in a European setting.

Another economist, Daniel Cvjeticanin, said that everything had started much earlier: "Five or six years ago, when some people wondered how they could become rich. They found the answer in war, isolation, shortages, the people's overall poverty and drop in standard of living. The idea of detaching the ruling caste as the economically strongest group was worked out. These sham patriots hold burning speeches while the people are cutting down their needs to a third...."

It is important to determine now when, and if, all this can be stopped. Does the announced "determined battle against crime" (quote from President Milosevic's inaugural speech) mean that the current authorities are prepared "to bite their own tail?" In reacting to the government's announcement last week that it was declaring war on crime, opposition party representatives, many intellectuals and people familiar with the law, said that "arsonists cannot put out fires." The government's determination to start fighting corruption and crime, including its capability at hitting at the monster it had helped create, are suspect. In the meantime, things have gone out of control and many "cadets from the state school of crime" now want things back where they were before the war - in the underworld or on society's margins. The rules of "newly-created patriotism" allow them to seek much more today - participation in authority.

"Well informed circles" have been cited as saying that the first "strong measures" in putting down crime and corruption will be made public next week and that street dealers will be among the first to be affected.

Director of the Belgrade Institute for Criminal and Sociological Research Dobrivoje Radovanovic told the daily POLITIKA that his institute had a ready program for battling crime. The program, which is expected to see light very soon, mentions the forming of a special committee for battling corruption in state institutions. Such a committee consists of what are known in the West as "morally pure" and "unimpeachable persons" who have the strength and power to comb through state bodies and prevent corruption.

The state's involvement in many criminal activities leaves plenty of space for suspicion that this war against crime, corruption and all forms of illegal activities, will bring in only the small-fry: street dealers who do not work for state banks, cigarette sellers, small-time thieves, con men and desperate people who, after the return of national pride, are today forced to write out dud cheques in order to survive. But, the creators of a policy without security, traders in national illusions, drugs and arms, all those who are consciously impoverishing the people, and in the name of the people are transferring money to Cyprus, or who knows where, will get away with it all.

It is difficult to believe that the authorities which are responsible for the creation of this particular social environment in which crime aims at rising to the level of a parallel authority, will really start "biting their own tail" soon. But, the newly-elected government of "untouchables" must not be denied the right to try. Inasmuch as Duke Wellington was right when he said that only the end of a war was worse than war, then so are those who claim today that "to resign oneself to crime is worse than crime."

The man who has unofficially been given the role of the "first Serbian Elliot Ness" - Interior Minister Zoran Sokolovic, is being offered a second chance to enter history. The first time he did so was when his policemen illegally occupied the Federal Ministry of the Interior building. This time he has been given the ungrateful role of a "contractor" who is expected to pull Serbia out of the quicksand of crime.