In fact, knowledgeable sources say, Milosevic remains secluded behind the gates of one of his villas in the wealthy neighborhood of Dedinje, in the hills above Belgrade, protected by an outer ring of soldiers and an inner ring consisting of Special Police units under the command of General Senta Milenkovic, Milosevic’s former chief bodyguard. Two Yugoslav Army helicopters sit on the runway of a military base just beyond the villa, guarded by armored personnel carriers. But it may already be too late for Milosevic to count on a flight to exile from Serbia.
The deposed leader’s fate, sources say, now depends almost entirely on the ability of representatives of DOS, the coalition of 18 opposition parties led by Kostunica, to wrest power from the old guard who remain loyal to Milosevic. During the past four days, the opposition has seized control of hard currency reserves, most of the courts, customs, the federal reserve bank, and the state-run media. The opposition is consolidating control of all aspects of life in Serbia, including factories, hospitals, universities, schools, and utility companies.
The Yugoslav military has pledged loyalty to Kostunica. That leaves just one major instrument of power still out of the opposition’s hands, but it’s by far the most important: the Ministry of the Interior, which controls both the Secret Service and the 150,000-strong police force. So far, it’s a stand off. The Interior Minister, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, a member of Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia and an indicted war criminal, resigned yesterday. But his two main deputies, both Milosevic loyalists, still control many units of both the secret and the regular police. The opposition forces, led by Kostunica’s charismatic wheeler-dealer Zoran Djindjic, are using two simultaneous strategies to finish them off. On the one hand, they’re negotiating with their opponents for the cabinet post in the interim transitional government that will run Serbia until December 17 elections. At the same time, in what the ultra nationalists describe as a “creeping coup,” they’re using strong-arm techniques and, sources say, payoffs and immunity promises to win over remaining police commanders. In the meantime, says Nebojsa Covic, a key opposition leader, “everyone and no one” controls the police. The result, says one Serb politician, is “double power”–and a continuing threat to stability.
The streets of Belgrade looked normal yesterday, but behind the scenes, there was tension and confusion. At a half dozen police barracks throughout the Belgrade area, thousands of pro-Milosevic officers stayed indoors, possibly awaiting instructions from their superiors. The only visible police presence patrolling the city were officers who had switched sides and exchanged their dark-blue six-digit license plates with new, four-digit ones. Four top police generals, all of them key Milosevic loyalists, went over to DOS yesterday, according to Yugoslav press reports. At the same time, the Secret Service has split, and Zoran Djindjic charged today that pro-Milosevic units were again bugging the phones of DOS leaders.
If the pro-Milosevic factions do collapse, sources say, the former leader then will be surrounded by a mere handful of loyalists–and extremely vulnerable to arrest at any time. That prospect has already galvanized discussion in Belgrade cafes about how to exact revenge. The majority of Serbs–miserable, impoverished, unemployed–despise the Milosevic, and would like to see him stand trial for ruining the country. Yet almost all, including Kostunica, remain dead-set against dispatching him to The Hague. The international war crimes tribunal is widely seen as a tool of American anti-Serb policy, and the Kosovo conflict, for which Milosevic and four other top officials were indicted last year, is emblazoned in the Serb mind as a NATO war crime.
In the bookstores and kiosks that jam the Belgrade’s main pedestrian zone, among the more popular items are garish postcards documenting “77 Days of NATO aggression.” Color photographs of the fiery Belgrade skyline, bombed petroleum refineries, the smashed Socialist Party Headquarters, and a burning American flag are hawked by street vendors alongside fake CDs and new souvenir campaign buttons bearing the opposition’s famous slogan “He’s finished.” “We want to see him on trial, but Kostunica is right to oppose turning him over to the tribunal,” said Milidrag Nikolic, 40, a private attorney, sipping a Pils Beer in Republic Square in downtown Belgrade. “He belongs on trial in this country for the crimes he committed against us.”
Indeed, the talk on the streets of Belgrade is not about Serb atrocities in the Balkan Wars, but about Milosevic and his cronies’ embezzlement of millions, his gangster son Marko (who fled to Russia with his family last Saturday), the wars Milosevic lost, and a spate of Mafia-style killings that they often lay at his doorstep. The hatred runs deep. “Milosevic had some good moves, but in the end he destroyed Serbia,” says Ljubomir Sojic, who came to gape at the blackened, broken windows of the Federal Parliament building on Wednesday afternoon. “He was arrogant, he removed people who stood in his way, and he reduced us to paupers.” Sojic shrugged when asked whether Milosevic or others should be held to account for crimes committed in Bosnia and Kosovo. “Those crimes were not yet proven,” he said, reflecting the widely held view–fostered by years of government propaganda–that the Serbs were Milosevic’s biggest victims.
But not everybody agrees. Sitting in her tiny, cluttered office off one of the city’s shabby streets, Sonja Biserko, the head of Belgrade’s Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, insists that Milosevic belongs on trial in the Hague. Bringing him before a court in Serbia for criminal acts committed in his own country will only reinforce Serbs’ myth of victimhood, she believes. It’s in the “national interest,” she says, that he, along with “two thousand” powerful politicians and paramilitary executioners living in Serbia face international justice. Milosevic always went out of his way to vilify the international tribunal. However, considering the growing lust for revenge in Belgrade’s crowded coffee houses, it might be his safest option.
title: “Letter From Belgrade” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “John White”
The question now: Will he lose power? The indicted war criminal who started four wars in order to extend his rule shows no sign of giving up. To buy time, his government has ruled that a runoff election must be held on Oct. 8. (A runoff is required by law if neither candidate pulls 50 percent of the vote. Milosevic says Kostunica had 48 percent and that he won 38 percent). The opposition, which believes Kostunica polled much more than 50 percent, describes the runoff as “a joke” and vows to hold regular street demonstrations and launch a general strike and boycott of all institutions. Even the influential Serbian Orthodox Church has declared that Kostunica fairly won the election. “Everything should stop until Milosevic is gone,” says Zoran Djindjic, Kostunica’s campaign manger. “No normalcy while he is around, because he had abolished normal life in Serbia.”
Opposition supporters seem poised to follow the call. On Wednesday night, hundreds of thousands turned out to celebrate Kostunica’s victory. Many in the jubilant crowed at Belgrade’s Republic Square have no memory of pre-Milosevic’s days. For thirteen years, they have endured isolation, poverty and destruction under his rule. The nation that had in the beginning adored Slobo and than feared him, now just wants to see his back. “He is finished” has been the mantra of the crowd. “You’ve chosen new life and a new Serbia”, Mladjan Dinkic, a popular opposition politician, told ecstatic Belgraders at the rally. “Now they have a chance to chose to leave peacefully.”
Belgrade is rife with rumors that Milosevic’s family–including his wife–have left the country. And opposition leaders claim that some among Milosevic’s cadre have indicated that they are ready to call it a day. “Many are signaling to us their willingness to live the sinking ship,” says Zoran Djindjic, who had promised repeatedly that an opposition government would seek no revenge against those who previously held power–only justice. But the word ‘justice’ is an intimidating one for members of a nomenclature that not only broke most of the nation’s laws, but did so with complete faith in their own invincibility. The refrain of the most popular song of the Slobo’s scotch-drinking inner circle goes: “Nobody can do anything to us. We are stronger than destiny”.
That was, of course, before Kostunica. Does this shy bookworm that we Serbs suddenly decided to embrace really represent change? My friends from Sarajevo and Pristina called to say that based on pre-election rhetoric, they didn’t see much of a difference between the two candidates. I don’t believe they’re right: Yes, Kostunica is a Serb nationalist. Yes, the law scholar is highly unlikely to send Miloseciv or any other indicted Serb war criminal to the War Crimes Tribunal. But, we believe that Kostunica will, as he had promised, truly transform Milosevic’s Serbia into a “normal,” “boring” country. If he doesn’t, he won’t hold on to office for long.
But back to reality. We need to solve the Slobo problem first. While people in the west like to think that Slobo will some day end up in the detention unit of The Hague War Crimes Tribunal, few Belgraders believe that will ever happen. The most popular game in the Yugoslav capitol these days has been betting on what the defeated president and his hated family might do. The options range from suicide (a kind of Milosevic family trait) to flight to China, where Slobo has been more popular than in Serbia since last year’s NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Some think that Slobo, son of an Orthodox priest, may try to reinvent himself again and seek a refuge in an Orthodox Christian monastery. Others believe that because Slobo’s left coalition controls the Yugoslav Parliament, he could let Kostunica be the President and make himself the Prime Minister.
Others call Slobo’s plans irrelevant. They argue that his powerful cronies will soon switch sides and dispatch him. Optimists dominated the crowd on Wednesday night. “He is already gone”, an opposition supporter says. “It’s just that there is nobody around him to tell him that.”
I am still a pessimist. Though I hope I will be wrong again.
