In the early 1980s, there were troubling signs that the Yugoslav system was unraveling and that the country was sliding toward civil war. The seeds of discord had been sown, but they had not yet sprouted; to an untrained eye, it probably seemed that the society was coping well enough. By summer 1987, ordinary people in Belgrade and Zagreb were talking openly about their fears of civil war. It was not yet inevitable, but the storm clouds were gathering. The rupture first of cultural and intellectual contacts, and then also of economic and political contacts between Slovenia and Serbia, along with growing discontent among Croatia’s Serbs in the late 1980s, however, set the stage for civil war.

From late 1990 through the early months of 1991, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Montenegro allegedly diverted money sorely needed for economic investment into arms purchases. The JNA is said to have approached the Soviets with a long shopping list for their army, without the knowledge of Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Marković.¹ Hungary sold Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles to Slovenia and Kalashnikov rifles to Croatia, according to Tanjug reports; some of the rifles were reportedly transshipped via Bulgaria. Austria purchased large quantities of Spanish pistols and resold them to Slovenia and Croatia.² Borba reported that Montenegro also purchased arms.³ Arms from Lebanon’s sixteen-year civil war made their way into Yugoslavia, if accounts in American newspapers may be believed; in a matter of four months, some $100 million worth of artillery, machine guns, and ammunition were shipped from Lebanon, to unspecified groups in Yugoslavia.⁴ Various private companies in Austria, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Great Britain, the United States, Spain, Panama, Argentina, and Israel were also said to have sold arms illegally on the Yugoslav market.⁵ Various countries issued denials that they had sold any weapons to Yugoslavia’s warring factions, among them Hungary, Spain, Poland,⁶ and Austria (which also denied reports that it was training Croatian forces on its territory).⁷

Quantities of sophisticated JNA weaponry were delivered to Croatia’s Serbs, who formed local militias. Vojislav Šešelj, the most important personality among the leaders of the Serbian “Chetnik” irregulars, stated in a Spiegel interview that he had received weapons from the JNA and went on to say that his group had also purchased weapons from the Hungarians.⁸ Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo also formed citizens’ militias, asserting that they needed to defend themselves. Croatian and Muslim citizens in Bosnia armed themselves, although they were said to be not so well armed as the Serbs.⁹ The Serbian paramilitary militias set up in the Croatian Krajina, in Slavonia, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina represented a particularly dangerous escalation.

By spring 1991, some observers¹⁰ were certain that the explosion would come very soon. Interrepublican negotiations were deadlocked, and neither side was willing to compromise: the Serbs had refused to accept a confederal arrangement, and the Croats had refused to grant political autonomy to the republic’s Serbs. US Secretary of State James Baker visited Yugoslavia on June 22 and told the republics that the United States favored Yugoslav unity and that it would not recognize the independence of Slovenia or Croatia. About the same time, NATO commander General John Galvin told the Belgrade daily newspaper Politika that NATO did not consider Yugoslavia within its defense perimeter and therefore would not intervene in a Yugoslav civil war.¹¹

The Dispersion of Populations

Serbs can be found in all the former federal units of Yugoslavia. Even in Slovenia, there were (according to the 1981 census) some 42,182 Serbs.¹² In the same census, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, ethnic Muslims, Albanians, Montenegrins, and even smaller groups such as Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Ruthenes were each to be found in all eight federal units.¹³ Since in each republic the dominant nationality gave its own language and culture a preeminent position (except in Bosnia, where no nationality is numerically dominant), local minorities could complain from time to time of the deprivation of rights: examples included complaints from the Serbs in Croatia, the Albanians in Kosovo, and, on occasion, the Hungarians in the Vojvodina. Serbs inhabiting parts of Croatia began to press more adamantly for autonomy or separation from Croatia, emphasizing that they had no desire to live in a Croatian state but reiterating their commitment to live in a united Yugoslavia. Vojvodina’s Hungarian minority also complained, alleging that authorities had taken steps to seize the legitimate property of Hungarian minority organizations¹⁴ and had banned the use of Hungarian names of towns. Hungarian sources said that a new law mandated the exclusive use of Serbo-Croatian in the Cyrillic alphabet (which few local Hungarians can read) in all official functions.¹⁵ On the other hand, Radovan Bozović, prime minister of Vojvodina, contradicted Hungarian sources. “The position of the Hungarian minority in Serbia,” said Bozović, “is good, which cannot be said of the Serbian minority in Hungary.”¹⁶

The 1981 census recorded some 1,303,034 Albanians living in Serbia—more than twice the number of Serbs living in Croatia. On July 16, 1991, the Serbian Assembly passed a law empowering the authorities to distribute 6,000 hectares of land among Serbs wanting to settle in Kosovo.¹⁷ The following month, Serbian sources reported that about 6,000 ethnic Albanian secondary-school teachers had been dismissed because of—as Deputy Provincial Secretary for Education Žika Nedeljković put it—their opposition to “the unified plans and programs of the Republic of Serbia.”¹⁸ Albanian and Serbian sources offered conflicting versions of what was happening in Kosovo. An Albanian source from Priština complained, for example, that “it is an everyday phenomenon for the Serbian police to beat and maltreat innocent Albanian citizens.” According to this source, “The Serbian police not only impose fines [on the Albanians] but commit acts of theft and seize documents of various kinds, such as driving licenses, passports, etc. This obliges the individual to report later to the police station, where he is again subjected to violence and reprisals.”¹⁹ Serbian sources, on the other hand, called such reports fabrications and affirmed that Albanians were enjoying full human and civic rights. Slobodan Milosevic, president of Serbia, for example, told visiting Austrian parliamentarians in August that the situation in Kosovo was normal and “denied that the Albanians in Kosovo suffer even the slightest disadvantage.”²⁰

Under the pressure of events, provocative statements were made. Croatian President Tudjman told the London Times, at one point, that the “division of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be the best solution to the Yugoslav crisis.”²¹ Later, the presidium of the Bosnian branch of the Croatian Democratic Community (i.e., the sister organization of Tudjman’s party) issued a contradictory statement, upholding the sovereignty and indivisibility of Bosnia.²² On the other side, Milan Martić, the newly elected defense minister of Croatia’s Serbs, talked of wanting to separate Zadar from Croatia, because “we need a large port.”²³ The majority of the population of Zadar is, however, Croatian.

Living in the Past

Psychologists have recognized that people with serious unresolved problems tend to rehash the past, and to read yesterday’s meanings into today’s events. When an entire society is locked in the past, such obsessive behavior is a sure sign of deep and pervasive unresolved problems at a mass psychological level. An Austrian official visiting Yugoslavia in August 1991, driven to exasperation by this syndrome, complained, “Nobody talks about the future. Everybody is obsessed [with] the past.”²⁴

At the center of this preoccupation with the past is the memory of the Second World War, with all the pain and hatred it called forth, and the consequent unresolved dilemmas. The chief controversy regarding the war has long been about the number of casualties.²⁵ World War II is central to the mythology and symbology of the 1991 civil war. The current Serbian Chetniks’ long beards represent a self-conscious identification with the nationalistic Chetniks of World War II, while the privately financed Croatian “Black Legion”²⁶ dons black in order to recall the uniforms of the wartime Ustaše.

It might be helpful to examine some of the underpinnings of beliefs about the past.

After the war, the Yugoslav government estimated that the country had suffered some 1,700,000 casualties. This figure remained the “official” estimate of wartime casualties for as long as there was a working Yugoslav government (i.e., until 1989/90). In 1989, using more accurate sources and data than had been available immediately after the war, Yugoslav demographer Vladimir Zerjavić set total war-related deaths at just over a million. Table 25 shows Zerjavić’s breakdown of war casualties by republic; it reveals that almost half of all Serbian casualties occurred outside the NDH. Moreover, not all those killed within the territory of the NDH were necessarily victims of the Ustaše. In fact, beginning in spring 1942, Ustaše and Chetnik forces actually began to collaborate, on the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in order to wage a joint struggle against Tito’s Partisans.²⁷ In the course of this collaboration, Chetniks and Partisans inflicted losses on each other, with a large number of Chetniks (Serbs) annihilated by the Partisans in May 1945 in particular.²⁸ Other Serbian lives were lost in aerial bombardment by the German air force,²⁹ German massacres and military operations,³⁰ a typhus epidemic which spread in Chetnik ranks in January 1945,³¹ and in Partisan campaigns against the Albanian resistance in Kosovo in 1945.³²

Table 25. War Casualties by Republic, 1941-45 (in 1000s)

Source: Vladimir Zerjavić, Cubici stanovništva Jugoslavije u drugum svjetskom ratu (Zagreb: Jugoslavensko Viktimološko Društvo, 1989), pp. 61-66.

The Ustaše were obviously responsible for many deaths, as were the Chetniks, the Partisans, and, of course, the Nazi occupation forces. Other active agents on the Yugoslav political scene included the Domobrani, the Albanian Ballists, the collaborative forces of Milan Nedić in Serbia, the “Russian Corps” (anti-communist Russian emigres),³³ and the Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian occupation forces, all of whom inflicted casualties. In the course of 1991, however, Serbian and Croatian television produced lengthy documentary programs about World War II, dwelling on each other’s atrocities and blaming each other exclusively for past sufferings.

The Road to War

In the first six months of 1991, the Yugoslav republics convened a number of conferences in an effort to find some formula on which all could agree. Slovenia and Croatia continued to seek complete confederalization; Serbia and Montenegro insisted on recentralization. First Bosnia and then Macedonia reportedly came to support the confederal option.³⁴

During this time, the federal government was rapidly decaying: its staff had been trimmed back by 15 percent by July 1991,³⁵ its revenues disappeared (because of the republics’ refusal to pay the established subsidies), and it gradually lost control of the army. The subsequent use of the army to attack civilian populations in Croatia—over the objections of Yugoslav President Stipe Mesić—made it clear that the JNA no longer responded to federal orders. Mesić repeatedly ordered the army to cease hostilities, only to find himself ignored.

Slovenia had promised to secede “by June 26,” if no agreement could be reached on the framework for a “new” Yugoslavia. Croatia had promised to follow suit. And Bosnia and Macedonia had both declared that they would not remain within a truncated Yugoslavia.

On June 25, 1991—a day before the deadline—first Croatia and then Slovenia declared their secession from Yugoslavia. The JNA responded by sending troops into Slovenia, temporarily passing over Croatia. During the ensuing ten-day military engagement, the JNA bombed the Slovenian airports at Brnik (Ljubljana) and Maribor, and tried, unsuccessfully, to seize control of Slovenia’s borders.³⁶ The Slovenian militia fought back, capturing more than 2,000 JNA troops and contesting the federal army’s efforts to take control of the border crossings.³⁷ The Slovenes sustained $2.7 million in damage during the brief engagement, a figure which was said to exceed the Slovenian state’s annual revenue by 40 percent.³⁸

A few days later, through mediation by the European Community, Slovenia and Serbia agreed on the terms of disengagement, and Serbian troops were ordered to withdraw from Slovenia (a process completed in October 1991).³⁹ American President George Bush’s first reaction was to discourage Slovenian and Croatian independence. On June 26, he expressed “regret” at their acts of secession, adding that the United States planned to proceed as if Yugoslavia were still intact.⁴⁰ The Soviet Foreign Ministry echoed this sentiment, declaring that “the unilateral actions [by Slovenia and Croatia] have not been recognized by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s state bodies and cannot be regarded as promoting the solution of Yugoslavia’s serious problems. As in the past, the Soviet Union consistently favors the unity and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, [and] the inviolability of its borders, including its internal ones.”⁴¹ But on July 3, Milosevic’s ruling Socialist Party of Serbia issued a statement declaring, “Serbia has nothing against Slovenia’s secession, it does no harm to our interests and we have no reason not to accept their separation if it is conducted in a peaceful way.”⁴²

The Macedonian Assembly took up the question of Macedonia’s secession on June 26, at which time representatives of the VMRO—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity urged the immediate proclamation of independence. Other Macedonian parties urged restraint, and the Assembly adopted a “wait and see” strategy.⁴³ Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov cautiously told the Turkish daily Hurriyet on June 30, “Macedonia will remain faithful to Yugoslavia and will not follow the example of Slovenia and Croatia.”⁴⁴ But events were moving rapidly, and by July 6 the political wind was shifting: the Macedonian Assembly decided that “if no agreement can be reached in a peaceful and democratic way on a union of sovereign states on Yugoslav territory, the government must put before the assembly a constitutional law whereby the Republic of Macedonia, as an independent and sovereign state, will assume and carry out its sovereign rights.”⁴⁵

By mid-July, as JNA troops began to pull out of Slovenia, Serbian irregulars (backed up by the JNA) started to clash with Croatian defense units in the Croatian “Krajina” and in Slavonia. On July 10, Croatian authorities repeated their guarantee of equal rights and full cultural autonomy to the Serbian minority living within Croatia’s borders.⁴⁶

In early July, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman expressed optimism that there would be no serious clashes involving Croatia. “Croatia is not Slovenia,” he said. “We will not allow the army to become involved in the battle. Our path to freedom is different.”⁴⁷ Meanwhile, clashes between the Croatian militia and Serbian irregulars increased in frequency. Within a few days of Tudjman’s optimistic statement, Šime Djodan—Tudjman’s defense minister—gave an entirely opposite assessment, and expressed concern that full-scale war between Croatia and Serbia could break out “in a matter of days.”⁴⁸

Within a few weeks, in July war escalated dramatically. Self-styled Chetniks, sporting long beards, traditional Serbian shepherds’ caps, and royalist badges, staged rallies in the mountains of Ravna Gora, chanting, “We want war!” and recalling the “glories” of the earlier Chetniks’ massacres of Croats and Muslims. Amply equipped with heavy artillery and backed by the Serbian-led JNA, they struck at various targets, including Vinkovci and Vukovar in eastern Slavonia, Glina, Banja, Tenja, Petrinja, and Osijek. Serbian forces also attacked exclusively Magyar villages (such as the village of Korogy)⁴⁹ and the exclusively Czech village of Ivanovo Selo.⁵⁰ A few soldiers deserted from the JNA almost immediately,⁵¹ and in Belgrade there were a few scattered anti-war demonstrations by students and opposition forces.⁵² But these protests were ineffectual. Meanwhile, within a matter of weeks, some 40,000 volunteers joined the Serbian Guard organized under the auspices of the Serbian Renaissance Movement.⁵³ Additional numbers volunteered to join Šešelj’s Chetniks and other paramilitary units. Of special interest here was Tanjug’s July 2 announcement that the League of Communists-Movement for Yugoslavia (the communist party organization set up within the army) was organizing guerrilla units of the People’s Front of Yugoslavia and signing up volunteers. The LC-MY also spoke of its plans to create a government of “national salvation. “⁵⁴

The Croatian government claimed that the army was assisting the Serbian Chetniks. The army denied these allegations and said that it was only trying to keep the warring sides apart. Slobodan Milosevic explained, “If someone wants to take a part of Serbian settlement out of Yugoslavia, by armed force, well it is logical to expect that the army must intervene.”⁵⁵ Referring to Serbs’ right of national self-determination, Milosevic pledged to assure that all Serbs could enjoy the right to be included in Serbia. The Croatian weekly Danas, however, commented, “If the Republic of Serbia does not abandon the fanatical idea that all Serbs live in one state, then let Croats make the same demand. Without a doubt that would make for a new war plan on Croatia’s part.”⁵⁶

War spread rapidly, as Serbian forces laid siege to key Croatian cities. Vukovar, 150 miles east of Zagreb, was bombarded.⁵⁷ Although reportedly seriously outgunned, Croatian forces held out in Vukovar, and (as of September 19) the Croatian defense there claimed to have destroyed 60 Serbian tanks and killed 800 Serbian soldiers.⁵⁸ By the end of the first week in October, after two months of heavy fighting, Serbian irregulars and the JNA controlled the center of Vukovar, but Croatian forces held onto the western portions of the city. The Slavonian capital of Osijek (24 miles northwest of Vukovar), which has been Croatian for more than a thousand years, was shelled by Serbian forces; the newspaper of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje, gave its blessing to the campaign in a lengthy article on “the contribution of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the development of the culture of the city of Osijek.”⁵⁹ The Serbian Orthodox Church also published a series of articles on the “massacres of the Serbian people” in wartime Croatia,⁶⁰ as well as a number of articles about Serbian sufferings at the Ustaše concentration camp at Jasenovac;⁶¹ an article also recalled the attacks endured by the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia during World War II.⁶² The Serbian Orthodox Church seemed to bless the campaign as a “holy war.” Meanwhile, the Croatian weekly Danas published material from British archives to the effect that Tito’s Partisans had liquidated large numbers of Catholic priests immediately after the war, including (according to the translation published in Danas) “the entire Catholic clergy” in “occupied Herzegovina.”⁶³

Non-strategic sites in Croatia were also reported to have been destroyed or damaged, including hospitals,⁶⁴ a veterinary station,⁶⁵ schools,⁶⁶ churches,⁶⁷ a Franciscan monastery,⁶⁸ and many of Croatia’s historical and cultural landmarks. A New York Times editorial said that “calculated assaults” had already destroyed 116 churches, castles, and other historic monuments as of September 22, including the great dome of St. Jacob’s Cathedral in Šibenik, the castle and museum in Vukovar, the historic center of Karlovac, and a number of Baroque buildings in Varaždin.⁶⁹ At the same time, Ilija Kojić, minister of the territorial defense of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Srem, said that “members of the [Croatian] Ministry of Internal Affairs and other Croatian storm troopers [had] attacked all [the] Serbian villages in this region. These villages are: Pačetin, Bršadin, Trpinja, Borovo Selo, Tenja, and Bogota. “⁷⁰

In mid-September, the JNA imposed a naval blockade of Croatia’s coast and launched aerial attacks on the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Croatian authorities imposed a blockade of their own on thirty-three large JNA garrisons on their territory, cutting off their food supplies, water, and electricity. One by one, these garrisons surrendered, allowing the Croats to confiscate JNA equipment. Subsequently, the JNA began shelling the outskirts of the walled city of Dubrovnik. As of early October, Sisak, Šibenik, and Zadar were also besieged, and Serbian forces were within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of Zagreb. Slobodan Milosevic, speaking in English at one of a number of “peace conferences” called by the European Community, said, “Serbs in Croatia are not attacking anybody. They are purely defending themselves.”⁷¹

The Bosnian Connection

As serious as the Serbian assault on Croatia was, a number of observers expressed fear that if the conflict spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina, the result would be a Balkan Armageddon.⁷² As I have previously noted, the population of Bosnia is so intermixed that it would be impossible to draw a clean line dividing it into “logical” ethnically based units. Yet, by spring 1991, the Bosnian-based Serbian Democratic Party was appealing to the principle of self-determination and actively promoting the secession of those parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina bordering on Croatia and advocating their union with Serbian-dominated sections in Croatia, to form a new “Krajina” Republic.⁷³ Vreme, a privately owned magazine published in Belgrade, reported that Radovan Karadžić, president of Bosnia’s Serbian Democratic Party, had met with Milosevic to discuss the timing of an eventual army attack on Bosnia.⁷⁴ Meanwhile, the Croatian Party of Law (headed by Dobroslav Paraga) demanded that all of Bosnia be annexed to Croatia.⁷⁵ Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, in his repeated allusions to the possibility of changing the border with Bosnia, was only slightly less threatening to the Bosnian authorities and, given the circumstances, was politically inept in so doing.

By July, according to a Serbian source, Milosevic and Karadžić were stepping up the smuggling of armaments to Bosnian Serbs,⁷⁶ and Colonel-General Drago Vukosavljević, commander of Territorial Defense Headquarters of Bosnia, ordered the mobilization of police reservists in the ten municipalities of the Bosnian Krajina. This order was issued in defiance of instructions by the Bosnian government, leading the Muslim Bosniak Organization, the Party of Democratic Action, the Croatian Democratic Community of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Socialist Democratic Party to issue a joint statement warning that a de facto coup was being carried out in Bosnia under Serbian sponsorship.⁷⁷

According to the 1991 census, the population of Bosnia was 43.7 per cent Muslim, 31.3 per cent Serbian, and 17.3 per cent Croatian.⁷⁸ The two most important Muslim parties in Bosnia are the Party of Democratic Action, whose president is, at this writing, the president of Bosnia (Alija Izetbegović), and the Muslim Bosnian Organization, headed by Adii Zulfikarpašić.⁷⁹ In July 1991, Zulfikarpašić approached Radovan Karadžić with a proposal for a “historic agreement” between the two parties.⁸⁰ Karadžić, speaking on behalf of all of Bosnia’s Serbs, said that Serbs would “do their utmost for the sake of the republic’s integrity, in case Bosnia-Herzegovina remains in the federal state of Yugoslavia.”⁸¹ Zulfikarpašić, for his part, said that “the interests of Serbs and Muslims [have] never clashed in any area since [the] departure of the Turks in 1878.”⁸² Bosnian President Izetbegović criticized the agreement between Zulfikarpasić and Karadžić for leaving out the Croats.⁸³ He made no reference, critical or otherwise, to the exclusion of his own party (part of the ruling coalition of Bosnia) from the talks leading to that agreement. At the same time, the League of Communists of Bosnia-Herzegovina / Socialist Democratic Party announced its support for the agreement.⁸⁴

Muhamed Filipović, vice chair of the Muslim Bosnian Organization, issued a brief statement on August 6. Observing that Bosnia was afflicted by “political confusion,” Filipović said,

the Serbs are armed to the teeth, they have created a state within [the] state in Bosnia-Herzegovina, relations are increasingly worse, and psychological pressure on the Muslims is growing. It is possible that a conflict between Serbs and Muslims will break out any day. To prevent this, [an attempt] is being made to sign an agreement on the preservation of the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina and on securing its legal status.⁸⁵

The following day, Izetbegović reiterated his opposition to an agreement concluded without the participation of the Croats, but underlined that he supported dialogue with the Serbs.

In this context, various figures, including even the internationally known film director Emir Kusturica, staked out positions for or against the agreement.⁸⁶ The climate of controversy spread to the Bosnian presidency, where, in August, a debate arose concerning procedural questions. Protesting against an alleged anti-Serbian coalition between Izetbegović’s Party of Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic Community, and remonstrating against unacceptable procedures in the republic presidency, Nikola Koljević (a member of Karadžić’s party) announced on August 8 that he intended to boycott further meetings of the Bosnian presidency, of which he was a member. His colleague, Biljana Plavsic, joined him in so doing.⁸⁷

It might be noted that Šešelj was not a signatory to the Serb-Muslim agreement, and that (as recently as August 5) he articulated his belief that “the Muslims in Bosnia are Islamicized Serbs and part of the so-called Croats are Catholic Serbs,” and his hope to see “the republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, and the Serbian areas of Croatia” incorporated into Serbia.⁸⁸

On September 20, Serbian forces entered Bosnia, hoping to cross that republic’s territory and open a new, southern front against the beleaguered Croatian town of Vukovar. Local Croatian and Muslim residents erected barricades and set up machine-gun nests; they succeeded in bringing a column of 60 Serbian tanks to a standstill in the vicinity of Višegrad. The following morning, the Serbian army units opened fire on Muslim and Croatian positions, and more than a thousand Muslims and Croats fled the area.⁸⁹

Eventually, in mid-October, the Bosnian parliament held a marathon session to discuss the question of sovereignty. The 73 Serbian delegates walked out, declaring the session illegal. Thereupon, the remaining parliamentary deputies (Muslims and Croats) adopted a memorandum, preparing the way for secession and underlining that Bosnia would under no circumstances allow itself to be conjoined to either Croatia or Serbia. Commented Izetbegović, “There is no place for us in [this] Yugoslavia.⁹⁰ Radovan Karadžić commented that the memorandum set Bosnia “on the same road to hell as Croatia and Slovenia.”⁹¹

Even prior to the memorandum, President Izetbegović lamented the intensification of a propaganda campaign directed against Bosnia—propaganda which he described as “identical with the propaganda conducted by the Nazis prior to their attack on Poland.”⁹² In search of diplomatic support, Izetbegović visited Libya and Iran, contacted the Turkish ambassador in Yugoslavia, and made preliminary inquiries for a visit to the United States to see Secretary of State James Baker.⁹³

The Republics

In Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Bosnia, fissures appeared within the political elites, and internal dissension grew. It would be misleading to portray the situation as if politically unified republics were engaged in controversy and debate only with each other. On the contrary, not one of these republics was able, as of October 1991, to achieve internal consensus.

The divisions within Bosnia have already been traced.

In Croatia, part of the controversy arose from differences of opinion as to what policy should be adopted vis-à-vis the Serbs of Croatia. In late July, for example, Zvonimir Lerotić, a close adviser of Tudjman’s, said that Croatia’s Serbs would soon be offered political and territorial autonomy.⁹⁴ Less than two weeks later, however, Zvonimir Separović, Croatia’s foreign minister, was reported to have said that Croatian Serbs were being offered only cultural autonomy and “local self-management.”⁹⁵ At the same time, the Zagreb daily Večernji list wrote that granting “autonomy” (presumably political autonomy was meant) would not alleviate problems; Večernji list argued that some people wanted to destabilize Croatia and were not interested in compromises.⁹⁶

But there were broader issues dividing Croatian politicians. Some favored negotiations, others preferred a hard line of “no compromise” and opposed any negotiation with the Serbs.⁹⁷ Opposition extended even into the ranks of Tudjman’s party, and in June three high-ranking members were expelled from that party.⁹⁸ On July 31, leaders of eight opposition parties in Croatia joined in accusing the Croatian Democratic Community of having “considerably contributed to the difficult political and security situation in Croatia.” Opposition leaders said that the “postponement of democracy” in Croatia was unacceptable, and demanded that the powers of the president be curtailed and that the use of “various influential parastate organs” be curbed.⁹⁹

Others were more critical. The Belgrade daily Politika, for instance, stated on August 25 that Croatian President Tudjman was planning to kill off Serbs in his republic, adding that the genocide would be carried out “silently and without any realization by the world public about what is happening in Croatia.”¹⁰⁰ Politika commented dourly, “Fascism now walks openly in Croatia; an Ustaše regime has been reestablished in Zagreb.”¹⁰¹ These sentiments were seconded by Yugoslav Vice President Kostić, who argued that Croatia’s Serbs were endangered by the policies of the “fascist authorities” holding power in that republic.¹⁰²

In Macedonia, there were signs of alarm in August, when Ljupčo Popovski (of the Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia and a member of the Republic Assembly) accused unnamed persons of having committed “high treason” by “selling” Macedonia to Serbia in secret talks. The Social Democrats demanded that the guilty persons be named, arrested, and tried on charges of treason. They also criticized Macedonian President Gligorov and Assembly President Andov of “turning Macedonia into a Serbian protectorate.”¹⁰³

At the same time, there were signs of distrust, or fear, of other republics. Nova Makedonija, the Skopje daily, characterized a proposal outlined by Serbian President Milosevic in mid-August as “a hegemonistic stand, “ said to reflect “a desire for a greater Serbia”;¹⁰⁴ yet the following day, Nova Makedonija also expressed its disapproval of Croatian authorities, whom it characterized as “warmongers.” The Macedonian daily also criticized a view commonly expressed both in Yugoslavia and by Yugoslavs abroad—that Tudjman and Milošević shared exclusive responsibility for the crisis; Nova Makedonija highlighted that other people had contributed to the escalation of tensions as well.¹⁰⁵

A small reflection of internal divisions in Macedonia came on August 22, when Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Kljusev reportedly dismissed the republic’s defense minister, Risto Damjanovski, ostensibly because of the latter’s opposition to demands that Macedonian conscripts in the JNA should serve in Macedonia¹⁰⁶—although, given the republic’s steady gravitation toward independence and the consequent implication that this issue would resolve itself in time, it is difficult to imagine that no more than this was involved. In fact, a vague statement from Kljusev was reported, words to the effect that Damjanovski had “lately worked in contravention of the positions taken by the Macedonian government.”¹⁰⁷

In Serbia too, there were pressures and fissures. In mid-October, the Financial Times of London reported that Belgrade was gripped by “an atmosphere of desperation” as oil supplies dwindled, the money supply soared beyond the government’s capacity to back it, and people expressed concern about an accelerating slide toward widespread poverty.¹⁰⁸ In this climate, criticism of the government inevitably surfaced, and divisions came into public view.

The most extreme position—at least so far as I am aware—is that taken by Vojislav Šešelj. An excerpt from an interview he gave to Der Spiegel aptly captures his thinking:

Der Spiegel: If you were the Serbian president, what would you do now?

Šešelj: I would immediately mobilize all Serbs, amputate Croatia in a blitzkrieg, and then inform the international community of the new Serbian borders.

Der Spiegel: Where would these borders be?

Šešelj: The current Serbia, including the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo, would have to include the republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, and the Serbian areas of Croatia with the borders at Karlobag, Karlovac, and Virovitica.

Der Spiegel: This would mean reducing Croatia to about one-third of its current territory.

Šešelj: To as much as one can see from the tower of the cathedral in Zagreb. If this is not enough for the Croats, then we will take everything. Of course, we will have to resettle those 200,000 Serbs who live in Zagreb and the 30,000 from Rijeka. . . .

Der Spiegel: Are you paid by Serbia’s President Milošević? It is said that in reality you are his henchman.

Šešelj: If I come to power, I will probably arrest Milošević. As long as the Americans try to overthrow Milošević by supporting the crazy Vuk Drašković and Mičunović’s Democratic Party, however, I will help Milošević.¹⁰⁹

At the other end of the Serbian political spectrum are some members of the Serbian opposition. Here one may include Serbian painter Mica Popović, who, in an interview with Belgrade’s weekly news magazine, NIN, had sharp words of criticism for both the Serbian and the Croatian government. “All the democratic and quasi-democratic parties in Yugoslavia are led, above all, by former communists,” he complained. “Even in the opposition parties. And we are not talking about just any communists, but about the most severe communists.”¹¹⁰ These former communists were, he said, stirring up “chauvinism” and “hysteria”; Serbia’s own government he characterized as “typically communist.”¹¹¹

Somewhere between these two extremes is Slobodan Milošević, Serbia’s leading figure since 1987. Milošević, who first championed the principle of “one person, one vote” in Yugoslavia’s constitutional debate, told NIN in April that, with or without Slovenia, the international-legal continuity of Yugoslavia would be maintained: “We, as a state, have more than 8,000 international agreements, various obligations; we are a founding member of the UN, and one of the founders of the International Monetary Fund; we are an old state, not a new state.”¹¹² But, with or without Slovenia, Yugoslavia (according to Milošević and his adherents) could not be confederal; this has been restated on many occasions.¹¹³

At the same time, Milošević has held to the principle that Yugoslavia’s internal borders were administratively drawn and needed to be revised. In August, he set forth a preliminary plan for redrawing these borders, only to find that some of the other republics were not willing to discuss his suggestions seriously.¹¹⁴ In the aforementioned interview with NIN, Milosevic explained, “Questions of borders are essential questions of state. And borders, as you know, are always dictated by the strong, never by the weak. Accordingly, it is essential that we be strong.”¹¹⁵

The federally oriented newspaper Borba expressed its reservations about these ideas, however. In Borba’s view, “It is impossible to create a greater Serbia and keep it, and it is impossible to instrumentalize Yugoslavia for one’s own [Serbian] national interests . . . Slobodan Miloševic,” Borba continued, “is like his opponent [the president of the Republic of Croatia] Franjo Tudjman—in a trap. If he pursues his current policy, Serbia—great or small—is headed for international isolation, poverty, and internal unrest out of which Milošević cannot emerge triumphant.”¹¹⁶

Meanwhile, in the course of summer 1991, various Serbian critics of Milošević raised their voices in protest. In July, the leaders of Serbia’s principal opposition parties united in demanding changes in the government of Serbia, to include creating a government of “national unity,” replacing Milošević with a “noncommunist,” and appointing the majority of the ministers of the new government from outside the ranks of Milošević’s Serbian Socialist Party.¹¹⁷ Although Milošević ignored these demands, NIN opined that time was on the side of the opposition.¹¹⁸ Less than two weeks later, Vuk Drašković, leader of the Serbian Renaissance Movement, told the Austrian magazine Profil that “Serbs and Croats should rise against the dictatorial regimes in their republics.”¹¹⁹ In another context, Drašković agreed with Šešelj that the western border of Serbia should be drawn along the line determined by Karlobag, Karlovac, and Virovitica.¹²⁰

Serbian writer Borislav Mijalović Mihiz also criticized Milošević. Setting forth his ideas in a Proposition for Reflections, In Ten Points, Mihiz declared his belief that Yugoslavia could not be revived or sustained, because the Slovenes and Croats had essentially opted to leave. He therefore called on Serbs to set aside their self-ascribed reputation as “the guardians” of Yugoslavia, to recognize the independence of Slovenia, and to accept the legitimacy of Croatia’s claim to independence, conditional upon Croatia’s recognition of the right of Serb-populated districts to decide freely with which state they wished to be affiliated.¹²¹

Yet another critic of Milošević’s—Belgrade political scientist Živorad Stojkovič—lamented what he viewed as “ideological, moral, and mental deformities of generations of working and unemployed people of this nation,”¹²² and targeted, in particular, the simplified—as he saw it—concept of nationality which had been propagated in Serbia: “Our concept of Serbian ethnicity is linked with Orthodoxy, but not with any cultural and historical totality which is much broader and which is generally accepted [elsewhere] in Europe.”¹²³

Finally, one may make note of Ivan Kristan, a judge sitting on the Constitutional Court of Yugoslavia. Approached by NIN for his assessment of the crisis, Kristan struck a pacific pose, urging that “force cannot solve controversial questions.”¹²⁴

There was, thus, a wide spectrum of political opinion in Serbia, just as there was in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, and—even though I have not discussed them here—the other republics as well. The various opinion groupings held different views about the interests of their respective republics, as well as about the appropriate policies, strategies, and instrumentalities to be adopted. Commenting on Serbia, the Swiss newspaper Neue Ziircher Zeitung claimed that local opposition to Milošević was placed at a disadvantage: “Every criticism of Milošević or the army is portrayed as treason or as an attempt, at a time of highest danger, to split the Serbian nation.”¹²⁵

The International Dimension

When Croatia and Slovenia first declared their independence and the Serbian army struck into Slovenia, various countries repudiated the secessionist republics and endorsed the continued existence of a unified Yugoslav state; among the countries endorsing unity were the United States, the Soviet Union, China,¹²⁶ Britain,¹²⁷ France,¹²⁸ Sweden,¹²⁹ Denmark,¹³⁰ Italy,¹³¹ Greece,¹³² Romania,¹³³ Poland,¹³⁴ and (cautiously) Hungary.¹³⁵ The governments of Austria and Germany, pressured by populations long accustomed to vacationing along the Dalmatian coast and, partly for that reason, broadly sympathetic to Croatian and Slovenian aspirations, nonetheless held back from recognizing the breakaway republics. The Serbian press expressed misgivings about German intentions, however, referring to alleged dangers of a “Fourth Reich.”¹³⁶ “The spirit of national socialism in Germany and Austria [is] seriously increasing,” said the Belgrade daily Politika ekspres. “Their allies in Slovenia and Croatia are trying not to fall behind.”¹³⁷ Večernje novosti, another Belgrade daily, fretted that “Germany has always striven to expand toward the East, even to the south and the southeast.”¹³⁸ At the same time, Milan Drečun, a military-political commentator for the army newspaper, Narodna armija, accused Austria and Germany of supplying sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry to the Croats.¹³⁹ For his part, Croatian Foreign Minister Separović indicated, in an interview with Austrian television on August 12, that Croatia looked to Austria and Germany to lead the way in extending diplomatic recognition to Croatia.¹⁴⁰

Albania and Hungary accused the Yugoslav Air Force of having violated their airspace, and both countries took military precautions lest the fighting spill across their borders. Hungary’s precautions focused on defense of its airspace.¹⁴¹ The Albanian president placed Albania’s army in a state of alert as early as the beginning of July.¹⁴² The Albanian government also declared its full support for the creation of a Republic of Kosovo “within the framework of the Yugoslav federation or confederation.”¹⁴³ Meanwhile, Albania’s ambassador to the SFRY, Kujtim Hysenaj, held talks with Croatian foreign minister Zvonimir Separović about “the possibilities of foreign political cooperation between Albania and Croatia,” as Radio Croatia put it.¹⁴⁴

Bulgaria issued a statement to the effect that the Bulgarian army would not threaten “Yugoslav” security,¹⁴⁵ but also intimated that it was prepared to recognize an independent Macedonian state.¹⁴⁶ The Sofia newspaper Demokratsiya spelled out Bulgarian concern quite clearly:

If not from the territorial point of view, then at least from the historical—and this also means spiritual—point of view, Macedonia cannot be separated from Bulgaria. . . . If Bulgaria forgets Macedonia, it will disavow itself. The Bulgarians must desire the existence of the Macedonian Republic precisely as they desire the existence of the Bulgarian state. . . . Whatever direction the events in Yugoslavia take, the Macedonians in Vardar Macedonia must feel our fraternal shoulder. ¹⁴⁷

The Bulgarian connection assumed greater poignancy after September 9, when early returns from a popular referendum showed that 74 percent of Macedonians favored independence. At the same time, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia wooed foreign capitals: Slovenia and Croatia sought support in Vienna, Bonn, Rome, and Washington DC above all; Bosnia courted Istanbul.¹⁴⁸ The European Community was loath to intervene and, at least as of this writing, restricted itself to sending a few dozen unarmed observers to the war zone and helping to bring about a series of futile truces. In late September, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia.¹⁴⁹

Escalation?

Four months after its outbreak in late June 1991, the Yugoslav civil war showed no signs of abating. By that point, there had been reports that the Yugoslav air force had used napalm against the Croats,¹⁵⁰ claims by Serbs that Croatian President Tudjman was trying to develop a nuclear option,¹⁵¹ and open discussion in the Serbian press about the possibility of an air strike against Slovenia’s nuclear power plant at Krško (NIN cited the precedent of Israel’s strike against Iraq’s French-built nuclear power plant).¹⁵² Large numbers of ethnic Croats from Canada, the United States, Australia, and various European countries were said to be returning to Croatia to fight for their homeland.¹⁵³ By late September, some 232,412 Croatian citizens had reportedly been driven from their homes. Of this number, 106,000 refugees were said to have fled to other locations in Croatia, 60,000 (chiefly Serbs) to locations in Serbia, about 30,0 to Hungary, and some 3,500 to Germany.¹⁵⁴

Up to that point, despite the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, the increasingly impotent eight-person collective presidency had continued to meet. But on October 3, the four pro-Serbian delegates (representing Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Vojvodina) expelled the delegates from the other four republics and elected Montenegrin delegate Branko Kostić president of the collective presidency, thus ending the post-Tito practice of maintaining a strict annual rotation schedule, with turnover timed for each May.¹⁵⁵ This produced the ironic result that Slovenia and Croatia, which had declared their secession, wanted nonetheless to keep their delegates in the collective body, while Serbia and Montenegro, which did not recognize the secession of Croatia, declined to include either the Slovenian or the Croatian delegate in that body. Macedonia and Bosnia joined Slovenia and Croatia in condemning the Serbian move, which they termed a “putsch.”¹⁵⁶ The US State Department also issued a statement characterizing this development as “a clear attempt by Serbia and Montenegro to seize control of the federal government. “ The State Department added, “In such circumstances, the United States does not accept that this rump group legitimately speaks for Yugoslavia.”¹⁵⁷ One of the first acts of the “rump” presidency was to praise the work of the JNA up to then.¹⁵⁸

In the wake of this development, Defense Minister Kadijević pledged “to force the neo-fascist leadership’ [of Croatia] to its knees . . . [and called upon] all patriots’ to defend their country against the threat of ‘fascism’. “¹⁵⁹

A series of ceasefires brokered by the European Community fell through. The eighth such ceasefire, negotiated on October 9, was violated within a few hours, when the JNA and Croatian units resumed the exchange of artillery fire.¹⁶⁰ The following day, Germany’s Martin Bangemann, Vice President of the EC Commission, called for Bonn to extend diplomatic recognition to Slovenia and Croatia without any further delay.¹⁶¹ His initiative seemed to be ignored. But at the same time, Dutch Foreign Minister van den Broek announced that after five hours of discussions with Presidents Milošević and Tudjman and Defense Minister Kadijević, all present had agreed that all units of the JNA would be withdrawn from Croatia within a month. The following day, however, the Defense Ministry indicated that it considered the agreement non-binding and null because it had not been officially signed.¹⁶² By that point, the Croatian city of Vukovar was said to have been “completely destroyed.”¹⁶³

High officials of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) convened an emergency meeting in Prague on October 11 and agreed that the use of force to bring about boundary changes was “not acceptable.” The delegates in attendance also condemned what they called Serbia’s “cold putsch” in the collective presidency.¹⁶⁴ Meanwhile, the European Community-sponsored peace conference in The Hague proposed to the Yugoslav republics that they accept a loose confederation, to include a free-trade zone, common currency, a common army, the maintenance of existing internal borders, and guarantees for the protection of minorities, under international supervision. Milošević immediately rejected the proposal.¹⁶⁵

The JNA continued its campaign against Croatia, sending its air force on bombing missions against the Croatian towns of Osijek, Nova Gradiška, Ogulin, Otačac, Gospić, and Pakrac.¹⁶⁶ At the same time, the JNA tightened its siege of the Croatian port city of Dubrovnik by mounting an amphibious assault to seize a beachhead, and then capturing several coastal villages to establish a base of operations three miles from Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik was also said to have been subjected to aerial bombardment.¹⁶⁷ Ninety percent of Dubrovnik’s 60,0 inhabitants were Croats. In response to the siege of the walled city, the US State Department issued a protest on October 24.

The Hague peace conference offered a slightly revised peace package on October 25, but Milosevic rejected this proposal as well. This second proposal would have entailed the demilitarization of all ethnic enclaves and guarantees of autonomy for Kosovo and Vojvodina. Milošević said the proposed changes would have “opened the way to new instability and tension.”¹⁶⁸ In August, Croatian President Tudjman had told a German journalist that he ruled out any territorial compromise whatsoever: “We are not willing to give even the smallest piece of land to Serbia.”¹⁶⁹

The tenth ceasefire was announced on October 19, and after more than a week of non-observance, the European Community belatedly announced that this latest ceasefire had collapsed. “Ceasefire agreements have been violated by all parties,” the European Community noted in a public statement. “But recent Yugoslav Army attacks are out of all proportion to any noncompliance by Croatia.”¹⁷⁰

Conclusion

The general direction of political developments in Yugoslavia from the 1960s through the 1980s was toward ever-greater decentralization. There were only two logical end results of this process: complete and total confederalization or civil war. Unable to agree on terms for confederalization, the Yugoslav republics slid into war.

Insofar as this book has been founded on an analogy between international and domestic politics, we may say that the eruption of war in Yugoslavia shattered this conceptual boundary, converting Yugoslavia, de facto, into a regional international system.

What will be the legacy of the war? First and foremost, the war has sown much deeper hatred between Serbs and Croats than ever existed before, a hatred that has estranged Slovenes and Serbs and that could last for generations. Second, the war has gutted the tourist trade, damaged foreign trade more generally, destroyed much of the economic infrastructure, caused serious damage to the transport system (specifically to airports, seaports, highways, and railways), wiped out Yugoslavia’s credit on foreign money markets, and reduced available budgetary funds by at least 60 percent between 1990 and 1991.¹⁷¹ According to estimates from the Yugoslav Ministry of Information, the Yugoslav GNP had already been sliced by 20 percent by mid-August 1991, with industrial production expected to drop by 50 percent by autumn.¹⁷² By late August, the Yugoslav government was indicating that repayment of the $938 million in foreign debts falling due by the end of 1991 posed “an exceptionally big challenge for the Federal treasury.”¹⁷³ Even food supplies have likewise been seriously affected. Third, the civil war has fueled a discussion of irredentist ideas in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and even Italy (albeit chiefly in the small Italian Liberal Party). Fourth, the war has diverted public attention, in Serbia and especially in Croatia, from such concerns as economic development, environmental quality, gender equality, and cultural and artistic exchange. Fifth, as a result of the economic impact and the mobilization of ethnic loyalties, the war has seriously complicated the efforts by democratic forces in the republics to move toward stable pluralism.

In this chapter, I have tried to let the participants in the struggle in Yugoslavia speak for themselves. At a descriptive level, I have intended above all to set forth, as fairly and as completely as possible, the views of the different actors and the complexities of the political scene in each republic, to show where and how they came into conflict, and to indicate which elites advocate what kind of coalition strategy for their respective republics.

Analytically, this chapter contributes to an assessment of how political systems disintegrate. Morton Kaplan alterted us, in 1957, to the importance of analyzing the manner in which systems break down, and the consequences thereof. The events described here corroborate a point made earlier in this book: that inter-unit conflict may exacerbate conflicts within a given unit, and that rival elites within any given unit may (as in the Bosnian and Macedonian cases) articulate alternative coalition strategies. Finally, this chapter draws attention to the question of the stability of balance-of-power systems, the subject of some controversy in the literature. Are balance-of-power systems inherently unstable and inevitably doomed to break down; or are they potentially stable configurations, and should system breakdown be viewed, on the contrary, as the result of contingent (and therefore avoidable) factors? This is not an easy question, and the debate as to whether the civil war was inevitable—given the system and the legacy of past policies—will no doubt continue for years to come.