Milosevic (51 page)

Step by step, day by day, the West was ratcheting up the pressure. The broadcast media had helped keep Milosevic in power, so breaking the regime's information monopoly was a high priority. Radio Free Europe, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America and other western stations were beamed in from transmitters located in neighbouring states including Bosnia and Croatia. This was known as the ‘Ring Around Serbia'.
Support was also funnelled to the network of independent radio stations within Serbia, in part through Britain's £3 million Independent Media and Civil Society Programme.

Not far from the OYA's office, in the riverside Hyatt hotel, British diplomats were nurturing a Yugoslav élite-in-waiting. Senior Serbian figures in fields such as the military, law enforcement and academia were brought to Budapest to design a blueprint for post-Milosevic Serbia, and prepare for the country's re-integration into Europe. This was the New Serbia Forum, an initiative funded by the Foreign Office, and organised by Sir John Birch, former British ambassador to Hungary. Serb opposition leaders were also brought to the Foreign Office centre at Wilton Park. Milosevic was feeling increasingly beleaguered by this international effort. In Belgrade, recent visitors to Budapest were liable to be pulled in by the police for questioning.

There was a lot of forward planning that summer, and not only in Budapest. Western officials were despatched to cities including Vienna, Banja Luka in northern Bosnia, and Pristina in Kosovo. Among their tasks were the opening of channels to dissidents within the regime, and ensuring that the response mechanisms were blocked. ‘Some of these people, who worked behind the scenes, were heroes, the ones from small anonymous offices in London and Washington, D.C.,' said the Serbian source. Detailed preparations were also drawn up to ensure that the revolution would be broadcast live on television. ‘Great importance was placed on the media. There were three different plans to ensure satellite access for CNN and the others, through different television stations.'
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Germany too played a role. Squabbling Serbian opposition leaders were brought to Berlin, and money was channelled to cities with opposition mayors.

Force would be met with force. In the southern city of Cacak, an opposition stronghold ruled by fiery mayor Vladimir Ilic, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) was building its own private militia of shock troops. Disgruntled army officers, policemen, karate champions, body builders and criminals trained for the final showdown. The football fans who had once chanted, ‘Serbian Slobo, Serbia is with you', now chanted ‘Slobo, save Serbia and kill yourself'.

As it degenerated, becoming more reliant on violence and intimidation, the regime slid closer to all-out dictatorship. Armed police stood on almost every corner, checking documents and demanding identification, often backed up by interior ministry troops. Men of military age were
asked to report to the interior ministry to have their addresses confirmed. Milosevic, in true Ceausescu-style, was proclaimed a ‘national hero'. Belgrade wits coined a new joke about ever-shrinking Serbia: Mira wakes up one morning and looks out of the window of their house at Uzicka. She is alarmed to see a checkpoint outside, ringed by armed men. ‘Slobo, come quickly, there are gunmen in uniform outside the house!' Slobo rolls over and says, ‘Oh, don't worry about them. They're just the new border guards.'

A series of killings, and attempted killings punctuated Serbia's steady darkening. On 3 October 1999 Vuk Draskovic, who had briefly served in Milosevic's wartime government, narrowly escaped death in a highlysuspicious road accident in which two bodyguards and his brother-in-law were killed. Draskovic, and many others, blamed the Serbian security services. Draskovic took refuge in Montenegro where he had another narrow escape the following summer, when a sniper's bullet grazed his forehead. In January 2000 Arkan was shot dead in the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel. The security conscious Arkan had not seemed alarmed when his killers had approached, indicating that he knew them. Some blamed the mafia. But many others believed the regime was responsible.

Arkan was an intelligent individual and probably understood that Milosevic's shelf-life was limited. There were repeated rumours that Arkan had been in touch with the Hague tribunal through intermediaries to try and cut a deal. Interviewed in 2002, Graham Blewitt, deputy prosecutor, said: ‘We told Arkan's lawyer that we will deal with you when your client is standing in front of the tribunal.'
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Arkan's killing was followed by the death of federal defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic, shot by a sniper while dining in a restaurant. In late April Zika Petrovic, the head of Yugoslav airlines and a childhood friend of Milosevic, was killed. As shooting followed shooting, rumours swirled in Belgrade of a group dubbed ‘The Men in Black', darkest of all the forces that supposedly operated in the shadows of the regime.

Throughout his rule, Milosevic had cemented his power by finding enemies. He had led his people to war in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and he had lost every one. Many feared that Milosevic would now either start a civil war, or turn against the last republic remaining alongside Serbia in Yugoslavia: Montenegro. The homeland of Milosevic's parents was led by a pro-western reformer, Milo Djukanovic. Yugoslav army troops took over the airport at the capital
Podgorica. Belgrade implemented a complete trade embargo. Milosevic used the Yugoslav army to harass and intimidate the Montenegrin security forces, all the while broadcasting Serbian propaganda into the province.

Milosevic's newest enemy was the student movement Otpor (Resistance), founded at Belgrade University in autumn 1998. Emblazoned on T-shirts, leaflets and stickers, Otpor's clenched-fist symbol soon appeared on walls across the country, often accompanied by the slogan ‘
Gotov je
!' (He's finished). Otpor was dynamic, innovative and decentralised. Its members painted red footsteps on the ground to symbolise Milosevic's final departure from parliament. Cardboard telescopes offered passers-by a chance to watch a falling star named ‘Slobotea'. When actors in a Belgrade theatre raised their hands in a clenched-fist salute, the audience gave them a standing ovation.
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Such incidents gave strength and determination.

Eventually more than 70,000 young Serbs joined Otpor. Many were barely twenty. After the great exodus of the early 1990s, when tens of thousands of young people left Serbia, mostly never to return, it took eight or nine years for Milosevic's children to come of age. Because Milosevic was essentially an authoritarian centraliser, he was unable to grasp the principles behind Otpor's horizontal, non-hierarchical cell structure. Unlike Zajedno (Together), which had spearheaded the winter protests of 1996–7, Otpor could not be destroyed by splitting or arresting the leadership.

Cells operated out of a nationwide network of safe houses. Members kept in touch through mobile telephones and emails, often routed through servers abroad. Milosevic also had his own email address posted on the Yugoslav government website: [email protected] with an invitation to drop him a line, although he did not write back. The information war was one he could not win.

Increasingly, the regime hit back with arrests, intimidation and beatings. In Vladicin Han, a small town in southern Serbia, Otpor members were subjected to an orgy of violence by three drunken policemen. The activists were strangled until they were about to pass out. They were ordered to squat with outstretched arms. Anyone who moved was beaten. They were raised up above the floor and subjected to the ‘bastinado': a severe pounding of the legs and feet. But in Vladicin Han, and across Serbia, whenever Otpor activists were
arrested, threatened or beaten, they gave the same message: ‘We are not afraid.'

Otpor leaders were brought to Budapest for instruction in techniques of non-violent resistance. Ensconced in the luxurious Hilton hotel that overlooks the Danube, they absorbed the principles of what was called ‘asymmetric political warfare' – turning the regime's strength against it: the more the regime tries to crush opposition, the greater the backlash.
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When a previously law-abiding son or daughter returns home battered and bruised from a police beating for wearing an Otpor T-shirt, his or her parents will be radicalised (as happened in Vladicin Han, where enraged parents demonstrated outside the police station).

Otpor activists translated sections from Gene Sharp's book
From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation
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and passed them from cell to cell. Sharp listed 198 methods of non-violent action, many of which could be employed in Serbia. The Milosevic regime was never quite an all-out dictatorship. Milosevic saw himself as a democratic and modern leader. Otpor operated in the space – albeit rapidly shrinking – the regime left open to claim it was a democracy. But the most important principle was simply to stop being afraid.

American newspapers reported that over $70 million was eventually paid to the Serbian opposition. Much was handed over in cash in Budapest, and then smuggled across the border. As a new NATO member, the Hungarian government was keen to help. A senior British diplomat admitted: ‘There was so much money pouring into the opposition that Milosevic would have been justified in cancelling the election on the grounds of outside interference.'
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In public, however, Otpor and the West kept their distance. ‘It was important that the Serbs got rid of Milosevic. Otpor did not want to be seen as anyone's lackeys. Everyone was very conscious that the US government must not topple Milosevic or be seen to topple him, especially because of who the Serbs were and their proud history,' said a US official.
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Former allies of Milosevic also began to invest in the future. ‘Who was behind Otpor? The United States and Britain. But also Greece, and money and business in Serbia. Some of these companies are now very successful. They needed a movement out of control of the political parties, but where they had influence,' said the Serbian source.
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Athens had supported Milosevic throughout the Yugoslav wars, to the West's growing anger. One hundred Greeks had fought with the Bosnian Serb army in the ‘Greek Volunteer Unit', based at Vlasenica, Bosnia.
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By
September 2001 Greece realised it had backed the wrong man. Four Otpor activists attended a reception at the Greek embassy in Belgrade, after an invitation from Greek foreign minister George Papandreou. Lured outside by Serb police, they were immediately arrested.

The regime cracked first, not in Belgrade, but in the provinces. Through the drab towns of rural Serbia, a cold anger spread. Nowhere more so than Pozarevac, which Marko ran as his personal fiefdom. Unknown faces in town were harassed by state security agents. Marko's mafia allies beat and intimidated Otpor activists at will. ‘It was very dangerous here for young people. This is a small place and everyone knows everyone else. There were death threats,' said Slavoljub Matic, a local councillor who took over as mayor after Milosevic was toppled. ‘Marko did not have a political position, but he was the son of the president and could do whatever he wanted. He had power, not legal power, but from the shadows, from his family.'
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During the NATO bombing Marko had built the Bambiland amusement park on the outskirts of town. Although Serbia was at war, Marko obtained enough building material and manpower to construct an elaborate playground, complete with a large wooden boat painted in day-glo colours. He spent the war strutting around town in uniform, brandishing automatic weapons. Mira Markovic said that her son always carried out his patriotic duty:

Half the money he made in Pozarevac, he gave to the town itself, and to the hospital. He was a volunteer during the war, during the air-strikes. When it was announced that there will be bombing, Marko said he will immediately go to Kosovo. I said to him, why would you go there, you will get killed? Volunteer, but if you have to get killed, then do it here, not in Kosovo. That was his duty, as his father was head of state.'

In fact Marko, said his mother, was always concerned for others' welfare.

My son takes after me in personality. He is vulnerable, romantic. He always has strong feelings for other people. The other day when we spoke over the telephone I asked him, ‘Marko, are you clever like your mother or after your father, what kind of intelligence do
you have?' He said, ‘Mama, I am sorry to say that I have your intelligence, but I would prefer to have my father's.' He didn't want to say that he was stupid because of that, but that he had the kind of intelligence which is difficult for him. He would have liked to have a less complicated intelligence, something more simple. This always creates worries for him.
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Marko certainly appears to have had strong feelings about Zoran Milanovic, a young man who worked as bartender at Madona. An indictment issued against Marko in November 2001 claimed that when Milanovic joined Otpor he was beaten by Marko's bodyguards and delivered to Marko. In an interview with an American journalist Milanovic recounted what happened next: ‘Marko appeared with the saw. He said, “What's up, you traitor? You scumbag. You will not be the last one or the first one that I have cut up and thrown in the Morava river.” Marko put the saw near my head and turned it on. It lasted for several seconds. Then he turned it off and put it on the bar. Marko told his guys to take me away and deal with me promptly. I started crying.'
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Mira dismissed these allegations. ‘It would be comical if it was not tragic. The charges are that he threatened to cut someone with a chain saw. Our daughter-in-law [Milica Gajic, Marko's wife] wrote in the newspapers that we did not have a carpenter's shop, with saws, because we did not deal with wood. So I could return the charges, and say that someone chased us with a lawnmower. That is all they have discovered and they want to put Marko on trial with these.'
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