The Language of the Old School

The general staff of the Yugoslav Army issued on Wednesday (February 24th) an announcement describing US president Clinton's decision to air drop packages with humanitarian aid to the Muslims in Eastern Bosnia, under the control of the United Nations, as "an abuse of humanitarian relief". The general staff announced that America's decision to "finally and directly get involved in the civil war raging on the territory of former Yugoslavia" is based on the principle of "ethnic selection, exclusively to the detriment of the Serbian nation", and that it represents the "creation of conditions and reasons for a direct military engagement", since "the Americans are, in one way or another, directly involved in all the theaters of war on our continent. It mentions a "fascinating amount of lies and forgeries" against the Serbs in the United States. It is further added that "regardless of the wish of part of the international community, the Serbs will not commit collective suicide and thus, probably in the only possible way, prove their loyalty to the new world order". The announcement goes on to say that the "American interference in the internal affairs of absolutely all the countries in the world is acquiring unbearable proportions", expressing "belief that the American administration will stop playing the role of the world policeman". Finally, it is stressed that for its part, the Yugoslav Army had done everything it could in order for the conflict not to spread throughout the Balkans, Europe and the world at large".

The tone of the general staff's statement is contrary to the Yugoslav government's announcement issued a day before that saying that "the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has always had a positive attitude to the delivery of humanitarian aid and that it too has always been actively engaged to that effect" so that, therefore, "it sees the US efforts in that light as well", but it warns that their realization could entail risks "because of a realistic danger of an incident taking place without our participation and responsibility".

In that context, addressing the chairman of the Security Council, foreign minister Ilija Djukic points to the "unfounded" warnings to the Yugoslav Army for which, even though it is not present on the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is assumed that it could obstruct these operations". President Cosic set out his reservations in a flexible way in an interview to the Romanian newspaper "Adaverul". "We consider the decision on using the aviation to send relief to be very risky and we are afraid of the consequences whose causes we cannot control".

All the other protagonists in the crisis, from Karadzic to Izetbegovic, have said that their forces would not obstruct the operations and issued public orders for refraining from obstruction, in advance suspecting the other side of not doing so. Even if it has reliable information that this "humanitarian operation" is really just a facade for an already prepared military intervention on the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which Clinton has publicly denied, generals should make their calculations in silence, without provoking anyone verbally, and get ready in case the events take an unwanted course. The short course on depoliticizing the army could not teach them much. The latest announcement reminds of a document that preceded the war which led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. It explained the political circumstances in the then Yugoslavia with terms characteristic of an ideological struggle - "gradual engagement", "special war", "imperialism", "the defense of the socialist system". It also contained a tone of opposition to the UN intervention in Iraq. Professor Vojin Dimitrijevic, the former leader of the Belgrade reformists, recently said that he is not sure in what part of Yugoslavia would there have been a war and on whose side the then Yugoslav People's Army would have been if, by any chance, Vuk Draskovic won in Belgrade and a "more moderate option" won in Zagreb.

The first military intervention during the fatal crisis in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia took place in Belgrade, in March 1991, when the federal leadership discussed and rejected the proposal for introducing a state of emergency, and when Milosevic condemned the "forces of chaos and madness". /March 9th 1991 - demonstrations/. Before Milosevic's team came to power, the Serbian authorities included the so called military waste, theoreticians of a "special war", the association of reserve officers, with whose help this regime was established and cherished as hope and salvation.

The takeover of power in Serbia was prepared by a fierce campaign after the murder of the soldiers in Paracin committed by an Albanian. Afterwards that army lost three wars, it fell apart from the inside, it lost its old ideological framework, it was drawn into vague cooperation with paramilitary nationalist groups which diminished its reputation. The Yugoslav Army tried to turn the course of the war that was lost in the political sense by using explosives in an uncontrolled manner, like in Vukovar, and brought upon itself and its fellow countrymen a serious odium, explaining everything first by betrayal and then by a world conspiracy. At the time of Milan Panic's government, a return to the tradition of the army in Belgrade being politically neutral was advocated. Milan Panic tried to introduce the principle according to which the defense minister would be a civilian which the army didn't seem to accept, as retired general Stevan Mirkovic recently assessed. This was sensed by leader of the Serbian Radical Party Vojislav Seselj who constantly kept requesting that a minister of defense be appointed. "Anti-Europeanism" was cherished over the past five years in more moderate nationalist circles through the thesis that Europe was here on April 6th 1941 (the bombing of Belgrade), and now it has been taken over by the chauvinist right wing and the socialist authorities. Chief of Staff General Zivota Panic who once said that Seselj was a patriot, who shook hands with him in front of cameras several times and who said, after the elections, that he liked president Milosevic, while he said nothing about the other protagonists on the political scene, was, one the whole, somewhat more neutral. At the time when a military intervention was up in the air he made several political statements about Bosnia, in the sense that the Yugoslav Army would intervene "if the biological existence of the Serbian nation is endangered". Strictly speaking, not even this is correct towards the head of state and the supreme commander who is the one to give statements meant to deter, as well as statements that present Yugoslavia and the "protector" of Serbian interests on the other side of the Drina river. Over the past five years the army's external political pressure was contained in the request for waging an ideological struggle for defending the name and deeds of its dead commander, then only for fighting against the "enemy", and afterwards for "a struggle against fascism", while on the inside there was a constant struggle against healthy money, with vague requests for "dead" politicians to approve some kind of coup, or at least a state of emergency, first in Kosovo, and then elsewhere too.

All in all, the general staff's latest announcement is perhaps not intended for Clinton, but it rather, it seems, has something to do either with the composition of the future government or with the fate of the current president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or with the debate on the budget, or even perhaps with some still unpublished dilemmas regarding the future strategy in Bosnia.