Dangerous Liaisons

Was it on March 9th when Borisav Jovic (former President of the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) himself (without a decision of the constitutionally established Supreme Commander) ordered the tanks to the streets of Belgrade during mass demostrations, or was it during those summer days in 1991 when someone of the General Staff decided that the "newest" Yugoslavia will be defended on the borders of those municipalities where the Serbs account for 30 per cent and over of the population ("the truncated Yugoslavia"), or was it the decision on reprisal, in other words, "retaliation against the vital objects," more precisely, the civilian population in Croatia, or, about the same time, when "the Greater Serbia" was calculated with (according to the "census" taken in the heads of the so-called party leaders and "nationalist leaders"). Or, perhaps, in the spring of 1981, when the JNA as a regular army of the then "fairly well" arranged country obediently left for Kosovo to carry out the police tasks?

At the beginning of July, 1991, amidst the "Slovenian war," VREME, at the time unaware of certain orders which would be made public only several months later, wrote not only about growing reservations of the republics about enlisting conscripts into the JNA, but also about a fatal policy of the so-called national parties. "A limited draft" was called (or was supposed to be called) on June 30th in Bosnia-Heryegovina, which then had less than a year of peace ahead. However, the "national parties" (the Party of the Democratic Action, the Serbian Democratic Party and the Croatian Democratic Union) sent a public message to its membership, into which they included "their" entire peoples without even asking them, "to make an assessment on the spot whether there is a need to respond to the draft." This would have been interpreted in all normal countries, and followed by a necessary criminal prosecution, as the ultimate sign that all the wars, which did not even start, were already lost.

Despite the statement which was then made by the Commander of the Banjaluka Corps, Major General Nikola Uzelac ("The mobilization will be on until the last reservist has joined his war unit"), a response was more than miserable. The then Lieutenant Colonel in command of the Sarajevo Corps, Vehbija Karic, testified that even the municipal recruitment offices talked the reservist out of responding. Meanwhile, "the national leaders" counted the ethnic make-up of the conscripts, while the highest military experts made categorical assessments that "all attempts at transferring the conflict into Bosnia would fail."

General Marko Negovanovic, at the time in charge of military assessments, has, meanwhile, been promoted the Serbian Defense Minister. His successor on the post of the Head of the Yugoslav People's Army/the Yugoslav Army (JNA/VJ) Security Department, Brigadier General Aleksandar Vasiljevic was to be "liquidated" in court, but, as it is clear today, this ended in a glorious failure. Nowadays (the stress is on nowadays, when all of us have learned a lot) Veljko Kadijevic, former Federal Defense Minister, says that one of the key facts which marked the time period before the outbreak of the Yugo-wars was a long-lasting state of neither war, nor peace. The state of emergency, whether it be acknowledged or not, calls for raising of the army's combat readiness, mobilization of reservists, and filling of the systems and units. The frequent "harassment" of the reservists and military led to oversaturation of the reserves contingent, the loss of confidence in the state, and, therefore, in the army. On the other hand, there was an absurd situation, where every day the officers would be carted off home by buses from the Federal Secretariat of the National Defense and the Headquarters buildings, when Belgrade "lived in peace", while its citizens and children were being sent to Vukovar for the "military drills."

Completely divergent events in the state and army provided a wider backdrop to the "reservist situation". When the army was almost certainly headed for its disintegration, its political leadership adopted decisions on its radical reduction. The JNA's combat readiness was made directly dependent on the mobilization echelon, even when the units ready for immediate action were concerned, the interlocutors have told VREME. "The combat ready units of the A echelon were maintained at an 80 per cent level of being filled. Yet, these units were not conceptually envisioned to prevent an overall collapse, but to react immediately, sustain the first outer attack and endure for 24 hours," it has also been told to VREME. Late in 1991 a response of reservists in Bosnia-Herzegovina boiled down to 60-65 per cent. This might not seem bad to a layman. Moreover, it might strike one as a fairly good response given the circumstances, but it means that any five-man crew, operating any weapon, lacked two soldiers, not even to mention more complex systems.

That is why the JNA entered the war(s) in 1991, with its ranks filled only or almost only with the men on active service, that is, conscripts, a large number of whom had not even started a serious training. This assessment primarily refers to the generation of conscripts in March 1991. Among the publicly admitted losses of the JNA in Slovenia, out of 44 soldiers and officers 12 were younger than 19 years of age, 6 were younger that 20, 4 were younger than 21, the age of 6 men was not established, one was not identified, while four men were not even 23... It has yet to be announced how many people survived and withdrew from Slovenia, only to be later sent to Croatia and be killed there. "These children-soldiers have stoically coped with the war," our interlocutors have said. Their testimony was verified in the field. "The active army never retreated, they fought until the end," they have said referring to the events in Gospic, Slunj, and Otocac.

Nobody knows today when, where and how a famous "decision on including the volunteers and volunteer units into the contingent of the Yugoslav Armed Forces" appeared. It is not certain either whether this decision had a legally established form of an order, recommendation, or, whether it was only a "stand", as some interlocutors have told VREME. Unlike the prevailing oblivion about the issue, the reason why the volunteers were accepted in well known: in brief, because of the Army's insatiable "hunger for men."

In October 1991 the newspapers published a short and terse news item about "the orders" to accept the volunteers in the JNA. According to the assessment by the top army circles, "the real war" broke out in September, 1991. Then the kind of warfare, which could be described as "they want to secede, and we won't let them", was replaced by the draft call; the objective of the war was also changed, from defending Yugoslavia to "defense of the endangered Serbian people from genocide," but with much less ado. It was believed, and quite wrongly as well that the supreme hostages to the idea of the Greater Serbia and/or the truncated Yugoslavia - the volunteer national fanatics - were more suitable for achieving the goal that the "reserve" disinclined against the war, and, furthermore, reduced by 150,000 of those who chose some foreign country or hiding, rather than leaving their bones in an "army drill", where they would be sent on somebody's whim.

According to official interpretations, which were subsequently announced, "the Yugoslav public at large welcomed the idea about the volunteers with an approval, and, therefore, it should not be surprising that the idea is being very successfully realized." That is how the organ of the JNA, "Narodna armija" (today "Vojska") wrote on December 4th, 1991. The Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was already rump, passed a decision (on a still unidentified date in July 1991) on "including the volunteers and volunteer units into the ranks of the armed force", and that "the Supreme Command headquarters, in accordance with this decision, gave orders and necessary instruction for the mobilization of volunteers."

However, the entire system of recruiting the volunteers, the way it had been planned, fell apart at the very beginning, as the well informed claim. The idea was that the JNA units were filled with volunteers on basis on their specialty; but, the volunteers had completely different ideas. "We shall not separate, we don't want your officers, we want ours, not your insignia, we won't go there, but this way..." And so forth, until today.

According to numerous testimonies, they were mostly looters, or criminals, which was proved in several cases at least, who occasionally provided security to the "regular units of the Bosnian Serb Army", as they did in the corridor in Posavina in the autumn of 1992. A dozen-odd bodies of those killed by the "liberators" are still in the "Ovcar" farm near Vukovar. The competent military court is in possession of evidence about "their" and "our" crimes in Baranja, Eastern Slavonia and Western Srem. Some reports on crimes were submitted by the JNA officers, for example, by Lieutenant Colonel Milan Eremija who reported the crime in Lovas; despite those mentioned (and other much worse) testimonies those concerned about a peaceful sleep of the public, keep quiet even when they, although rarely, initiate an investigation, persecution or trial.

Helplessness, or, perhaps, the lack of readiness of the former JNA, currently the Yugoslav Army (VJ) to settle accounts with "the volunteer units" has, unfortunately, been carried over to Serbia and Montenegro, along with the army's pull-out. Everything happened the way it did not have to, even though it had been announced that "one day the army would be responsible for war crimes, since the volunteers are under the army control", as Radoman Bozovic (former Serbian Prime Minister, currently the Speaker of the Federal Parliament's Citizens' Chamber) and Vojislav Seselj (leader of the Serbian Radical Party). Some "euphoric" officers-liberators have been quietly removed, and that's about it. All questions related to the sense and purpose of the policy of "spontaneous silence", and as to who is pulling the string of "the volunteers" as well as to looted artistic treasure, money and valuables are still valid. The current settling of accounts in the Yugoslav Army's Headquarters may be hiding some answers, or, more probably, the road signs to possible answers.