Milosevic (30 page)

Sarinic then contacted Milosevic's office. ‘I asked if it would be possible to see President Milosevic.' Perhaps not surprisingly, Milosevic's staff were taken aback to pick up the telephone and find Tudjman's chief of cabinet on the other end of the line. ‘President Milosevic is very busy,' replied the Serbian official. But the message was passed on. ‘Milosevic's secretary called the next day,' said Sarinic, ‘and told me he was disposed to meet with me, but it should be completely secret.'

Croatia and Serbia were at war, but secret diplomatic missions across enemy lines long pre-dated Sarinic's secret mission to Belgrade. Realpolitik – and business – knows no borders. Even at the height of the Bosnian war, shops in the Bosnian Croat town of Kiseljak, just outside besieged Sarajevo, were stocked with fresh kiwi fruit and German chocolate thanks to the black-market deals the Bosnian Croats made with the Bosnian Serbs, although they were nominally at war. In the beseiged government-held city of Bihac, Bosnian Serbs even sold arms and ammunition to their enemies across the front line.

Sarinic understood that parleying with Milosevic was a risky business. Under Milosevic's protection, his safety was assured, but enemies awaited at home in Zagreb. ‘In war there are always battles parallel with negotiations. But this was not a popular mission. On the front line you risk your life, you fight and you know that your enemy is in front of you. People saw Milosevic as a black devil, and some regarded me as a traitor.' To underline the seriousness of Sarinic's mission, and to dispel opposition within the ruling elite, Tudjman promoted Sarinic to Major-General. He reported only to Tudjman.

A few days later, on 12 November 1993, Sarinic landed at Batajnica military airport, just outside Belgrade. The venue for the meeting was not disclosed until the last moment. ‘I was picked up in an old Mercedes.
The police escort did not know where we were going. They were given instructions by radio along the route. Everything was very polite, very secure and very secret.' Sarinic saw a city broken and decaying before his eyes. It was dark, cold and sombre. Sanctions had brought the economy to the brink of collapse. Sarinic began to see why Milosevic was so eager to meet. Even in Milosevic's sparsely furnished office on Andriceva Street in Belgrade there was no heating and one modest bookshelf. The freezing toilet was kept locked. Sarinic travelled with three bodyguards, but they were disarmed on arrival. ‘They had to surrender their guns to the Serbian secret police. I asked, “What use are bodyguards without guns?”' Sarinic was searched for wiretaps and then was ushered through. He was met by Mira Dragojevic, Milosevic's secretary, who said that the president was waiting for him.

The two men got on well. ‘When Tudjman charged me with being the contact man I worried that Milosevic would not accept me, because I was not on his high political level. But he accepted it very well. I can't say that we had a friendly relationship, but it was a good one. Sometimes he told me a funny story, or a joke.'

But in Bosnia, well into its second year of war, they weren't laughing. When Croatia declared independence in July 1991, Bosnia had two choices. The republic could remain in a Yugoslavia dominated by Belgrade as a Muslim quasi-colony of ‘Serboslavia' or it could declare independence. But independence almost certainly meant war, since most of Bosnia's Serbs – one-third of the population – were utterly opposed to living in an independent Bosnia, and wanted to remain in Yugoslavia, which they saw as the best protector of Serb interests.

Bosnia was often referred to as a mini-Yugoslavia. Nowhere else was the ethnic and religious mix as pronounced. Its population of about 4.3 million was composed of 44 per cent Muslims, 31 per cent Serbs, 17 per cent Croats and just over 5 per cent declaring themselves as ‘Yugoslavs'
⁷
This was partly a result of its geography. Bosnia bordered Croatia in the north and west, Serbia in the east and Montenegro in the south. In medieval times Bosnia had been an independent kingdom, until the Ottoman invasion in the fifteenth century. It remained a province of the Ottoman empire until 1878, when it was placed under the administration of Austro-Hungary, before being annexed in 1908 and then ceded to Royal Yugoslavia after the First World War.

As the westernmost stretch of Turkey-in-Europe, Bosnia was
conservative, especially in its rural areas. But cities such as the capital Sarajevo, Banja Luka in the north and Visegrad in the south boasted some of Europe's finest Ottoman-era architecture, and a way of life that was easy-going and civilised. Visegrad was the site of the bridge in Nobel laureate Ivo Andric's most famous work
Bridge on the Drina
, a complex chronicle of the march of empires across the provincial city. When the Ottomans came they built mosques, bazaars, baths and religious schools, as well as bridges. The great sixteenth-century governor of Sarajevo, Ghazi Husrev Beg, is immortalised in this Sarajevo folksong:

I built the medresa
[school]
and imaret
[public kitchen]
I built the clock tower by it a mosque
I built Taslihan and the cloth market
I built three bridges in Sarajevo
I turned a village into the town of Sarajevo

The new faith with its civilised comforts proved attractive. The great majority of Yugoslav Muslims are Slavs who converted to Islam, which brought a privileged status. A Muslim urban elite emerged. Bosnia wore its Islam with a comparatively light touch. ‘Go to Bosnia if you want to see your wife' was one Turkish saying. After the partisan victory Tito had refused the demands of Serb and Croat nationalists that Bosnia be divided between Belgrade and Zagreb. Bosnia-Herzegovina – to give the republic its full name – was seen as a necessary counterbalance to the two strongest republics, Serbia and Croatia. Eventually Tito granted Yugoslav Muslims the status of full nationality. But Serb and Croat nationalists rejected this. Some claimed that Bosnian Muslims were merely Serbs or Croats who had converted to Islam. Others decried their Muslim neighbours as ‘Turks'. There is of course a contradiction here: Bosnians could not be both converted Slavs and Turks.

In November 1990 Bosnia, like its neighbouring republics, had gone to the polls. A coalition government of the three ethnically based parties was set up: the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) for the Muslims. Meanwhile, Milosevic played his usual double game. Even as he planned to dismember the country, he tried to woo the Bosnians into staying in Yugoslavia. Milosevic understood that talking up the need for Bosnia to stay would reduce the influence of those in Bosnia who wanted to arm themselves. Who needed to prepare for war
when there was no danger of war? Milosevic exploited the attachment many Bosnians felt to Yugoslavia, and especially to Tito, who had given them a republic and nationality status.
⁸
Several years into the Bosnian war it was still common to see Tito's picture on Bosnian walls when he had disappeared everywhere else.

In March 1991 Milosevic had proclaimed that he thought that the Muslims did not have any reason to secede from Yugoslavia. ‘Some of them have been indoctrinated, but most of the Muslims want good, tolerant and I would say civic and friendly relations with the Serbs and other nations in Yugoslavia.'
⁹
This was in marked contrast to Milosevic's rhetoric about ‘Ustashas' and ‘Albanian terrorists'. Few in Bosnia believed that war was possible, and many – tragically including much of the Muslim leadership – had faith in the JNA as a neutral peace-keeping force, not understanding that it was under Milosevic's control. The JNA was allowed to disarm
all
troops in Bosnia (except its own) along with the Bosnian Territorial Defence Organisation as a means of preventing war. The Bosnian Croat and Muslim militias and paramilitaries were already vastly outnumbered and outgunned. This only weakened them further, and left the country defenceless against the Serbs.

Local Serbs were supplied with arms, and plans were drawn up to take over the local police forces and municipal administration. Just as in Krajina, the Bosnian Serbs declared SAOs, or Serb Autonomous Areas. Belgrade and local Serb television then launched a barrage of lies and propaganda about the coming horrors of a reborn Islamic state, under the rule of Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim leader.

In any case, the progress of the war in neighbouring Croatia and the distribution of weapons gave events their own dark momentum. As JNA artillery pounded Croatian cities and streams of displaced refugees fled the fighting, it was hard to believe that Bosnia would escape the same fate. In mid-October 1991 the Bosnian parliament met to discuss whether the republic should become sovereign, a precursor to full independence.

Izetbegovic was a well-meaning but ultimately tragic figure who was no match for the ruthlessness of either Milosevic or Tudjman. An Islamic dissident under Tito, Izetbegovic was put on trial in 1983 for ‘counter-revolutionary acts derived from Muslim nationalism'. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, of which he served six. He had already made his position clear in February 1991: ‘I would
sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.'
¹⁰
The Muslim and Croat political parties were in favour of sovereignty. The Bosnian Serbs were not. Their political leader, Radovan Karadzic, offered the following chilling forecast:

Do not think that you will not lead Bosnia-Herzegovina into hell, and do not think that you will not perhaps lead the Muslim people into annihilation, because the Muslims cannot defend themselves if there is war – How will you prevent everyone from being killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina?
¹¹

Like Milosevic, Karadzic is of Montenegrin origin. Born in 1945, he moved to Sarajevo where he qualified as a psychiatrist and treated the Sarajevo football team.
¹²
Some of his psychiatric advice was unconventional: when one young couple went to Karadzic for counselling on their troubled marriage, he told the husband to beat his wife more. With his bouffant hair and hyperbolic manner, Karadzic also fancied himself as a poet. Four volumes of his mordant works were published. For example:

I hear misfortune walking
Vacant entourages passing through the city
Units of armed white poplars
Marching through the skies
¹³

Loud, dishevelled, possessed of Balkan delusions of grandeur, an inveterate gambler, the Bosnian Serb leader saw himself as a mini-statesman who would shape Serbian history. Although Karadzic was Milosevic's appointment, in many ways the poet-psychiatrist was more similar to Franjo Tudjman. Unlike Milosevic, both Tudjman and Karadzic actually believed in their own nationalism. Karadzic's refusal to follow the demands of realpolitik would later bring him into conflict with Milosevic. Meanwhile, he loved nothing more than to pore over maps, working out plans for the division of Sarajevo. He lapped up the attention of the world's diplomats and media who treated him with reverence, respectfully listening to his lies and bombast. Karadzic was little more than a literate crook. He had served time in prison for corruption.

But his warning to Alija Izetbegovic was accurate. A month earlier, in September 1991, Karadzic had consulted Milosevic about the progress of setting up the Bosnian Serb mini-state. His telephone was tapped by Yugoslav intelligence, who passed the transcript to Ante Markovic, the last prime minister of federal Yugoslavia. In a well-targeted but ultimately futile attack on Milosevic, Markovic released the transcript to the press:

Milosevic: Go to Uzelac [JNA commander in northern Bosnia], he'll tell you everything. If you have any problems, telephone me.
Karadzic: I've got problems down in Kupres. Some Serbs there are rather disobedient.
Milosevic: We can deal with that. Just call Uzelac. Don't worry, you'll have everything. We are the strongest.
Karadzic: Yes, yes.
Milosevic: Don't worry. As long as there is the army no one can touch us . . . Don't worry about Herzegovina. Momir [Bulatovic, Montenegrin leader] said to his men: ‘Whoever is not ready to die in Bosnia, step forward five paces.' No one did so.
Karadzic: That's good . . . but what's going on with the bombing in . . .
Milosevic: Today is not a good day for the airforce. The European Community is in session.
¹⁴

Markovic told his cabinet:

The line has been clearly established. I know because I heard Milosevic give the order to Karadzic to get in contact with General Uzelac and to order, following the decisions of the meetings of the military hierarchy, that arms should be distributed and the territorial defence of Krajina and Bosnia be armed and utilised in the realisation of the RAM plan.
¹⁵

This transcript is highly significant. It details the military-political triangle that linked the JNA, Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs. It shows that Milosevic is the political mastermind behind the military strategy. The transcript also highlights Milosevic's keen awareness of the need to respond to the international diplomatic situation. The
Yugoslav airforce would not be used while diplomats were meeting. It is also clear that the southern republic of Montenegro was completely under Milosevic's control. Through the following months, the signs of coming war in Bosnia became ever louder and clearer.

Yet while Izetbegovic took his country down a path that would lead to war, he made almost no preparations to fight one. His doomed strategy was to hope for intervention by the United Nations or the United States, to prevent conflict. According to one gloomy joke, Izetbegovic put his faith in a magic fish: Izetbegovic, Milosevic and Tudjman go fishing one day. They catch a magic fish, which grants them each one wish. Milosevic asks that independent Croatia be crushed. The fish agrees. Tudjman requests that Serbia be defeated. The fish agrees. Izetbegovic asks the fish if Croatia has really been crushed and Serbia defeated. The fish confirms that this is the case. ‘In that case, I'd just like a nice a cup of coffee,' says Izetbegovic.