The Court Putsch Underway

The time sequence of events is by itself illustrative:

1. The Bijeljina Assembly and the letter of the Belgrade trio signalled a change in the rules of the game. Extremism is no longer fashionable, which creates a possibility (or a need) for the next event;

2. Generals Boskovic (intelligence sector) and Domazetovic (personnel department) retired all of sudden. The Information Service of the General Staff isultedly denied the "speculations" from the newspapers, claiming that what had taken place is absolutely normal, that is, "according to the needs of the service."

3. General Zivota Panic started saying that the Yugoslav Army will not react to a possible military intervention in Bosnia, all until the borders of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are not endangered.

4. Vojislav Seselj started making public claims that General Nedeljko Boskovic was disposed of, because he supplied him with the classified data. There was no better way for Seselj to hammer the last nail into the political coffin of his "collaborator" (using the police jargon) in the top leadership of the Yugoslav Army; General Boskovic did not deny this until Thrusday, which might be interpreted as excessive self-confidence. On Thursday General Boskovic claimed that he had no "personal connections" with the Serbian Radical Party, and that he had never had (yet there are witnesses who claim the opposite). One way or another, a scramble to end retirement started - the first time for ones, the second for others.

5. The OPERA ensemble struck back (a big intelligence service affair: when the Serbian Intelligence Service, more precisely the Serbian President, took over the Yugoslav Army's Intelligence Service): Generals Vojislav Radovic and Zivan Mircetic, Colonel Slobodan Rakocevic, Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Sabolovic and Radenko Radojicic, a volunteer, brought criminal charges against 13 members of the Yugoslav Army and against Branko Kostic, a civilian. The charges were brought for abusing the position for illegal personal gains, disclosing military secrets, inflicting damage on the military security service, illegal appropriation of mobile property, overstepping authority, misuses in the service, forgeries, libel, etc. Generals Bozidar Stevanovic, the Air Force Commander, and Nedeljko Boskovic headed the military personnel on the list; the rest were the officers of the military security and legislature involved in the proceedings related to the OPERA affair; the name of General Aleksandar Vasiljevic who was acquitted of serious charges in the meantime was strikingly missing from the list...

6. Vojislav Seselj launched a campaign against General Zivota Panic, the Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Army, through the Belgrade daily "Vecernje Novosti". At first, this paper forcefully promoted his accusations, only to later dissociate itself by saying that the accusations represented Seselj's "personal opinion." Both the General Staff Information Service and General Panic, personally, reacted, but with a certain delay; the reaction was slightly more emotional, that what would be considered optimal.

7. The Supreme Defense Council (comprising all three presidents, the defense minister, the chief of the general staff and the others who are summoned) appointed a state commission to investigate credibility of "the public criticism" on account of General Panic. The results are expected with tension.

A cat has nine lives. It is bound to be seen soon how many active lives a Yugoslav People's Army/Yugoslav Army (JNA/VJ) general has. General Boskovic already has two lives, and, all things considered, is hoping for the third. On the other hand, General Vasiljevic could count on one more, that is, the second active live, in case there is a serious political turn of events.

It is being worked on both cases. General Nedeljko Boskovic at first refused to receive a paper with a decision on his sudden retirement "according to the needs of the service"; he, then, retrieved to Montenegro, and stayed with Branko Kostic. From there the general threatened that he owned the data about everybody, that he would call a press conference, etc... The timing overlapped, which became significant: while General Boskovic was busy with his activities, Seselj stated that he had been regularly receiving the classified information about the developments in the Yugoslav Army from him. Who's protecting who, who's selling out, and when? Did something change in the meantime so that General Boskovic had to be revived again? Seselj first "objectively" nailed General Boskovic, only to subsequently start quoting him in his accusations against General Panic: the wording of those accusations reflects the language used by the employees of the security service and military bureaucracy. Seselj's "classified information" could have come from there only, especially if its language is taken into account.

The criminal charges which the members of the former Counter Intelligence Service (KOS) brought against 14 important people from the Army and against Branko Kostic are very thorough (16 typed pages) and potentially very unpleasant. They start with dry pragmatic accusations of disrupting a normal work of the JNA security authorities (preventing the transfer of duties and violating all procedures) which, as they say, deprived the armed forces of safety protection, and divested the security department. According to the charges, this led to tarnishing of the Service's reputation, disintegration of the networks of associates and the situation where no one wants to work for the Service any longer. A libeling campaign was then launched in the media to justify this, the complainants claimed. The criminal charges also include the accusations against Branko Kostic: during an opening ceremony of the Technology Fair in Belgrade over a year ago Kostic described the OPERA affair as the biggest espionage case since the war (WW II) and disputed the entire work of the JNA Security Department, in order to, allegedly, justify the ending of Nedeljko Boskovic's retirement and his promotion to the rank of general. All decrees on personnel changes in the military security and legislature were signed by Branko Kostic, until his mandate in the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) expired on June 10, 1992. On May 15,1992 Kostic first abolished, and then reinstated the Air-Force Prosecutor's Office four days later; the complainants claimed that he did this in order to create grounds for persecuting the innocent former leadership of the Counter Intelligence Service (KOS).

There are reports that in the meantime Branko Kostic used to hold regular meetings in northern Montenegro with General Boskovic and Bozidar Vucurovic, leader of the Serbs in Herzegovina, which is the reason why he was, allegedly, summoned by the Montenegrin Ministry of the Interior for an informative talk and was warned to stop doing it. This is related to Kostic's well-known activities aimed at destabilizing the Montenegrin regime; some military officers played an important role in this. Kostic, Vucurovic, Generals Domazetovic, Boskovic and Strugar (Commander of the Podgorica Corps) appeared together with Seselj at the famous rally in Zeta.

It is obvious that the generals closed ranks on the extreme right: General Panic was left almost alone in the center. This is somewhat understandable: in a chaos, which ensued, everybody has the right to decide for themselves from where the wind blows, how late it is, and to steer their ambitions in whatever direction they think they should. However, most of the generals have one life only.

Since this is the state of affairs, one might as well make the best of one life they have. None of the great "transformers" of the JNA into the "non-political" Yugoslav Army has obviously taken the promises about a "non-political and professional army" seriously. Therefore, already in summer of 1991 General Stevanovic started taking Seselj by Air-Force helicopters, which incited fierce protests among the pilots and crews.

Nothing came out of the army's transformation: one ideology was replaced by the other, and whoever believed into a "non-political" army, not influenced by the parties, turned out to be a fool. A party sparrow in the hand proved to be better that a non-party pigeon on the roof: a career is a career. The complainants went even further: a new team of the Security Department was accused of stealing 3 vehicles, 34,000 DM in cash, 15-20,000 DM in various goods (mostly the ownership of the Dutch Company "Graphiline"), large quantities of weapons and equipment, all of which was established during a helter-skelter investigation against the OPERA. Regardless of these details a political message of the criminal charges against the former Counter Intelligence Service (KOS) is clear: at this point (translation: after Milosevic's transformation into a peacemaker) all injustice resulted from the previous - supposedly wrong - policy should be corrected. An underlying message says: you are better off with an army free of intrigues, a rat race and mutual bickering; purge the culprits and your life will be much easier.

Whoever may be right, the crux of the matter was missed once again. A question, which has no answer, was asked last week in very dramatic circumstances: does anybody actually care about a "transformed" and "non-political" army? It seems that everything depends on this answer. The findings of the State Commission about the "public criticism" directed at General Panic may, perhaps, provide a temporary answer, while there is no permanent answer anyway.

From this - political - point of view it does not make any difference whether Goran Panic, a son of General Zivota Panic, sold potatoes to the Yugoslav Army at a higher, privileged price. On a superficial level, that is on the level of excuses, it is significant that General Panic's was trading with the military at all (which is not done on principle, if the father happens to be the Chief of the General Staff). On a deeper, political level this is completely irrelevant. General Panic will either survive or fall, depending on a political option. Moreover, it does not make any difference either who survives and who falls - as long as he is a champion of certain political option.

What happened in this story and when?

Seselj chose the unsuccessful session of the five Serbian parliaments to announce generalized accusations against General Zivota Panic. The details appeared in the Belgrade daily "Vecernje Novosti", on two occasions, day after day. The first day a story was published that the Serbian Radical Party was buried with complaints about General Panic and other "traitors." The next day, however, (Wednesday, May 19,1993) "Vecernje Novosti" dissociated itself from the accusations Seselj voiced the day before. What was missing appeared only in the provincial edition of "Novosti": 12th item on the list of Seselj's accusations against General Panic. This item was not published in other editions - the lines of dissociating from Seselj were published instead. 12th item says, "The officers of the Yugoslav Army are, with disgust, commenting the fact that the lovers of General Panic's daughter - Dragana Panic - who were noncommissioned officers received the officer's commission while those who were officers were granted high ranks and positions in the Yugoslav Army for several hundred or thousand DM (the price depending on the rank and position." There are obviously some things which not even "Vecernje Novosti" would not publish, considering them to be a matter of bad taste (or dangerous).

The remaining eleven items from Seselj's list of accusations follow: the claim that General Panic "ruined" Vukovar instead of "liberating" it (a revision of the official dogma: when people condemned the destruction of Vukovar, "patriots" named them "traitors"); the objection that General Panic did not "transform" the Yugoslav Army; 5th item is the accusation that General Panic failed to carry out ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav Army, "although there were several proposals within the Army itself that all non-Serbs are removed" (probably due to bad coordination or a lack of time: according to some sources, General Bozidar Stevanovic was spreading a story that General Zivota Panic had conducted the ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav Army), 6th item refers to "deserters" and "suspects" (whose families are outside the Serbian lands) who remained on their positions, 7th item tackles the presence of former generals on the facilities, 8th item deals with a failure to pass the law on mobilization (for which retired General Domazetovic was in charge), why former JNA heads have not been prosecuted, where the money (7.5 million DM) and automobiles (450 vehicles) from Vukovar are, where General Panic got himself a Mercedes and the money for his son's company. Seselj stated on Thursday that he not only expected General Panic to be replaced, but a criminal law suit against him as well.

Within less than a week's time the Information Service of the Yugoslav Army's General Staff managed to issue two clumsy announcements regarding this affair. It was said at first that Generals Domazetovic and Boskovic retired according to "the needs of the service", while anything else represents an ill-intended interpretation. And, then, Seselj was reproached for having lost the common sense ("the ability to make rational judgments") by having been left without a possibility "to be informed about the events within the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army and the Yugoslav Army as a whole, which comes as a consequence of personnel changes in the top leadership of the Yugoslav Army." Seselj was accused of making "uncontrolled public appearances", "attempting to use the army for his party and political goals", "frustration", "destabilizing the state and its armed force", and "attempting to remove from responsible state and military position all people whose place of birth is located deep within the borders of the Republic of Serbia."

General Panic's statement is slightly too pathetic to be convincing. The Panic family (especially Dragana Panic) should have immediately and without a word uttered brought charges of libel and insult against Seselj. But, General Panic started explaining the Vukovar operation instead. The Chief of Staff called the attacks "bestial" and "forged": which would suffice for a law suit if he is seriously convinced in it.

The time dynamics - the so-called timing - has been lost: it seems that the charges raised against former heads of the Counter Intelligence Service (KOS) triggered a preventive strike, so that Seselj, somewhat nervously, (the omission of 12th item in the "Novosti") hurried to outrun General Panic and accuse him before the military legislature initiated the proceedings responding to the charges.

The turning point of Milosevic's policy in Bosnia has caused panic among the Yugoslav Army, but none of the currents there seemed to have sufficient knowledge for placing a safe bet (exactly this represents the greatness of Milosevic - the tactician who never even hinted at the winning combination).