Echos of the War in Belgrade

Two dead people and one wounded - this is the result of the latest echo of the war in Belgrade. Borivoje Stajic, a volunteer from the Bosnian front, killed a policeman at the main railway station and was then killed himself. Another policeman was wounded. Immediately after this unfortunate event, the Belgrade police stepped up its control. Three people were arrested; one who was arrested right near the railway station had a bomb with him, the same kind with which Stajic had killed the policeman a few hours before. "There will be more of this", said professor Jovan Maric, a psychiatrist whose patients have lately been people returning from the front, who cannot explain their aggressiveness and who say that something drives them to fight again. Since these people won't have a place to go one day (the war will, hopefully, really end once), it is clear that they will have to express their aggressiveness in their surroundings. At the same time, professor Maric's thesis that surgeons are the busiest during the war, but that psychiatrists are afterwards, will prove to be quite true. The incident at the railway station was announced in advance on that Saturday, February 20th. Like so many days before, early in the morning policemen started taking away the usual amount of weaponry from various warriors. Altogether - six bombs and four rifles. Something really had to happen. Borivoje Stajic himself was seen somewhere later in the afternoon, in a train from Sid to Belgrade. He was in a camouflage uniform, he had an automatic rifle with several ammunition frames. The train arrived in Belgrade at platform ten at the main railway station at 3:30 PM. Afterwards everything happened pretty quickly. According to the official police report, right from the train Stajic was taken to the police station for the purpose of "determining his identity". Thus, a certain Zoran Spasic claims that special police units with automatic rifles and bullet-proof vests appeared at the station before the train from Sid. He also said that two policemen first came out of the train with their hands raised and that behind them appeared a man in a camouflage uniform pointing his automatic rifle at them. The official and the unofficial versions of what happened afterwards match. The special units surrounded the police station, some twenty minutes afterwards Stajic appeared for a moment at the door only to throw out a burning Serbian flag, and soon afterwards there was an explosion in the station. Stajic ran out shooting and then fell. He was riddled with shots and dead. Before him, the bomb explosion killed policeman Zivomir Pavlovic, and a member of the air-force, Ranko Mrdak was badly wounded. The two of them had the misfortune to be in the police station with Stajic trying to convince him not to activate and throw the bomb. Some more facts were determined when it was all over. First of all, the policemen who were leading Stajic (it is possible that he was leading them), did not fully do their duty. They took away his automatic rifle but they did not search him which they were obliged to according to duty regulations. Secondly, according to the testimony of Borivoje Stajic's relative, he used to come to Belgrade armed even earlier on since his job was to catch the "runaway" inhabitants of Bosnia who are able to serve the army, and to take them where they should be - at the front. All this shows that the police here, at least until recently, seemed to have had a lenient attitude to the "warriors" who would come armed to the teeth to Belgrade from the war-afflicted Serbian lands. According to some unofficial information, the policemen who first came across Stajic and did not act in accordance with duty regulations have been suspended. This was pretty much a wrong move because it is clear that without "approval" from the top, Stajic and those like him couldn't have come to Belgrade to catch "deserters", while the police here turned a blind eye, nor would Belgrade policemen mostly look benevolently upon the armed people in uniform walking round town. In any case, one can see every day in Belgrade restaurants and cafes well armed officials of the Serbian Republic and the Republic of Serbian Krajina, with a just as well armed escort. And now, which policeman would, for instance, dare stop and disarm any of them? The story that was to be heard after the incident was the one concerning Stajic's past. Journalists found out that Stajic had spent nine years in prison for murder, that he was prone to drink alcohol and "kind of weird". All this, of course, is no reason to condemn someone in advance and for even to proclaim him a problematic person inclined towards criminal acts, but it certainly is something a "real" army would pay attention to when recruiting soldiers. Unfortunately, volunteers are collected here from all around without any knowledge about who they are and what they were doing before the war. Stressing that the fact that Stajic was once in prison for murder cannot be taken as an explanation for the tragedy at the railway station, professor Maric speaks about the "bad selection" when choosing fighters, comparing this to the famous cowboy motto known from films - "every gun against the Indians is welcome" usually says the main character before releasing a convict. The story about Borivoje Stajic is a story about something else and it could be brought in connection with an event in Bijeljina last February and which was soon forgotten thanks to everything that happened soon afterwards in that and many other Bosnian towns. We recall that, at the time, reservist Drago Milcic got drunk and killed six people, and the public started talking about the Vietnam syndrome. This is how, according to professor Maric, the Vietnam, that is the post-Vietnam syndrome is professionally described: nightmares, insomnia, pictures of massacres and battles come to mind; the feeling of guilt because of having survived and because of the death of friends, and also because of having killed without clear justification, the feeling that he was used for the purpose of "politics", anger because of having been deceived, inability to love because of fear of betrayal, alienation from the society and social institutions that used him, withdrawal into one's self, speechlessness, attacks of aggressive behavior, a lower threshold of tolerance to frustrations, periods of depression with regret if he behaved dishonorably, alcoholism as a form of escape from reality, disappointment in people because he witnessed that "man is a beast"; as a witness of great human dramas and violence, he minimizes everyday disputes and often reacts brutally. The man who was the first to bring death to Bijeljina, appeared in that town in February, just like Borivoje in Belgrade. Less than two months later, a real war broke out in Bijeljina.