Book Review : Slobodan Milosevic - Portrait of a Tyrant
... Milosevic’s wisdom and strength, but rather with the unstated support he was receiving from those who played behind the scenes – the military and the police. It is these forces that provide an explanation of the speed and efficiency achieved in gaining such an enormous following and popular support for Milosevic: the support of state television and of the most influential daily Politika, the support of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the leading intellectuals. Milosevic spent the better part of 1988 and 1989 focusing his politics around the Kosovo problem. He organized public demonstrations, which are also known as the Anti-bureaucratic Revolution. By leading the demonstrations, he managed to remove the elected leadership of provinces Vojvodina and Kosovo in March 1989 when the leader of the Kosovo Albanians, Azem Vlasi, was arrested. The same year, Milosevic was elected the President of Serbia. In March 1989, the Assembly of Serbia amended the Constitution of SR Serbia and decreased the autonomy of the two provinces. In January 1990, at a Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Milosevic insisted on the reversal of the old Constitution policy that empowered the republics and rather wanted to introduce a policy of "one person, one vote", which would empower the majority population, the Serbs. This caused the Slovenian and Croatian delegations to leave the Congress in protest and marked a culmination in the split of the Yugoslav ruling party. Milosevic than transformed the League of Communists of Serbia into the Socialist Party of Serbia, and adopted a new Serbian constitution, which increased his power. Milosevic was subsequently re-elected president of the Serbian Republic in the direct elections of December 1990 and December 1992. Milosevic's rise to power coincided with the growth of nationalism in the rest of Yugoslavia. By that time, Slovenians, Croatians and Bosnians had already elected nationalist governments which were ready to recess. The nationalist flame was lit among the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia; the historical fears and hatreds roused among the people. At this stage, the Serbian leader became the number one problem, and Serbia itself a sick society whose destructive intentions could not be stopped and, as Eagleburger notices, the reason for that was the Milosevic’s plan of Greater Serbia. All the European and American analysis warned of the inevitable catastrophe, countless diplomatic missions were sent without any result, Milosevic simply ignored them. He refused to talk to the US Ambassador, and did not care about joining the EC. People tried to stop Milosevic at a March rally in Belgrade in 1991 in which Belgrade’s students, joined by thousands of ordinary citizens, mounted massive anti-war demonstrations. However, the upheaval resulted in nothing but strengthening Milosevic’s belief that there was no time to be wasted, that only in war he could hold his power and keep homogenizing his nation. It was in those days that he met with Tudjman, the Croatian President, at Karadjordjevo to discuss the partition of Bosnia. They both wanted the whole of Bosnia. However, the Bosnian Muslims had problems with accepting either Serbian or Croatian rule. War with Slovenia began on June 25, 1991, and war with Croatia followed. Milosevic publicly insisted that Serbia was not involved in the war with Croatia, though. But, behind the scenes, he directed strikes by the Yugoslav Air Force in support of the Serb rebels in Croatia and prepared the Yugoslav Army for the coming Bosnian war. Milosevic’s position in Serbia was getting worse, the economy was declining, and Belgrade was flooded with more than 500,000 refugees. The president failed to inspire his people for a national crusade, and his army performance was disappointing. A majority of men refused to “volunteer” for the front, so Milosevic decided to unleash paramilitary gangs, such as Tigers, which were led by Zeljko Raznatovic – known as Arkan, and the Chetniks, led by Vojislav Seselj. Zeljko Raznatovic - Arkan Milosevic used the same scenario in waging war in Bosnia which emerged in 1992 – refusing any compromise, using the same method of pushing the Army and Serbs into extremism, committing crimes, all the while making sure that Serbia remained officially out of the game and that he himself never gave a single hint that he might be in charge of the war, although he was included in all the negotiations and all the western diplomats knew very well that most of the decisions were his and no one else’s. In May 1992, the UN imposed a total economic embargo against Yugoslavia. Serbia was completely cut off from the rest of the world. Throughout May and June, students led mass protests against Milosevic’s was policy. However, nobody could stop him. Milosevic continued running an authoritarian government and arming Serb separatists in Croatia and Bosnia. He was trying to buy time in front of the International Community by bringing Cosic to become the President and Panic to become the Prime Minister of what remained Yugoslavia. Milosevic’s policy ended in disaster when, in August 1995, Croatia managed to drive out the remaining Serbs from their self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina. When hundreds of thousands of terrified and abandoned Serbs fled Croatia and flooded the roads in Bosnia and Serbia, they found no reaction from Milosevic. But, by that time, he had appeared to abandon his nationalist rhetoric in favor of peace. Since the middle of 1994, the president of Serbia sought a way out of the war and relief of all responsibility. As Richard Holbrooke noticed, Milosevic had changed radically. He decided to become a peace-maker. Bosnia still bathing in blood, Serbia on her knees, and Milosevic in Dayton is negotiating and signing peace. There, while entertaining American diplomats, he was noticed as the most charming and the most tolerant of all negotiators. During the peace negotiations, he abandoned Serb claims for a Greater Serbia and was rewarded with a partial lifting of the international sanctions...