A rchive Date
[ 01-10-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Yugoslavia ]
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[Milosevic refuses to admit defeat
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
October 1, 2000
Time is running out for Serbia's despot, Slobodan Milosevic, a communist banker turned nationalist demagogue who rose to power by inciting ethnic hatred among the lower elements of Serb society.
The wily Milosevic persistently outwitted, bluffed or wrong-footed squabbling internal enemies, the bumbling UN, and western powers. Now, however, after 13 years, his regime is clearly crumbling as many Serbs turn against the strongman who brought them a decade of war, economic misery, gangsterism and international disgrace.
In a dramatic reversal of fortune, Milosevic came out second in last week's presidential election in Yugoslavia - in spite of the usual massive rigging. The winner was a bland but respected non-communist nationalist, Vojislav Kostunica, who benefited from the lion's share of US$77 million worth of covert western financial support to the opposition and the endorsement of the influential Orthodox Church.
Milosevic, who has nerves of steel, refused to admit defeat and sought to buy time by calling for a run-off election a week today (Oct. 8), hoping the opposition would splinter as it did two years ago. Milosevic and his powerful wife, who heads the Serb Communist party, still control parliament, the army commanders and the police. As long as the security organs remain loyal - and many of their senior officers are, like Milosevic, indicted war criminals - the present regime will hold on in spite of street protests.
Milosevic still commands substantial support among poorly educated rural Serbs and those who have benefited from his extensive patronage. His main opponents are educated urban dwellers, students and business people who have had enough of inflammatory nationalist politics and want to return to being normal, respectable Europeans.
Serbs have suffered greatly from the embargo imposed on them by the West, porous though it is, and last year's NATO bombing. Serbia's economy is in ruins, its youth have no future. Milosevic's ambitions to create Greater Serbia produced three major, calamitous wars, 250,000 dead and millions of refugees, among them hundreds of thousands of Serbs.
There is mounting discontent within Serbia's 109,000-man armed forces. Eighty percent of the army's conscripts voted against Milosevic last week. The Serb Army covered itself in glory during the 19th-century wars of independence against the Turks, in the Balkan Wars, and in two world wars. Serbia's generals, who regard themselves as guardians of national honor, intervened twice last century against unpopular governments.
Refusing orders
A number of courageous senior officers resigned from the army, or were fired by Milosevic, when they refused his orders to massacre civilians in Bosnia and Kosovo. They still command loyalty of mid-ranking officers, and stand ready to lead the military against the pro-Milosevic generals who fouled the honor of the nation and army in the Wars of Yugoslav Disintegration.
Milosevic's Praetorian Guard of generals, police officers, paramilitary thugs, and gangsters knows if the present regime falls, they will be handed over to the UN War Crimes Tribunal as a way of cleansing Serbia of the former regime's crimes. Unless the Milosevics flee - possibly to Russia, Greece, Cyprus, or China - they will likely share the same fate as Romania's late husband and wife despots, the hated Ceausescus, who were arrested and summarily executed by the army and secret police.
Even if the Milosevics flee or are shot, the issue that brought them to power, Kosovo, will remain unsolved. Kostunica is as adamant that Kosovo must remain Serb as was Milosevic. NATO caved in to Russian pressure and left Kosovo in a geopolitical limbo at the end of its mini-war against Serbia last year: de facto Albanian, but still de jure Serb.
This weak-willed fudging guaranteed that Kosovo will remain a powderkeg, with revenge-seeking Albanians driving out the remaining handful of Serb residents and seeking full independence, and Serb irredentists demanding invasion of Kosovo and a second wave of ethnic terrorism.
First step
Getting rid of Milosevic and his cronies is at least a major first step. If a majority of Serbs can be convinced that reintegration into Europe is far better than Balkan nationalist fanaticism, there may be some faint hope for a workable Kosovo settlement. That's if the transition goes smoothly.
There are more dangerous scenarios:
- Kostunica proclaims a government, Milosevic refuses to resign, civil war ensues.
- Fanatical nationalists, led by ethnic cleanser Vojislav Seselj, seize power in a coup backed by the heavily-armed paramilitary police.
- Milosevic launches a new war in Montenegro, which is slipping away from Serb control, or in Bosnia.
- The 400,000 ethnic Hungarians in the Serb province of Vojvodina seek to rejoin Hungary.
- The Muslim enclave of Sanjak rebels.
- Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia returns to press royalist claims.
- Russian troops intervene in Serbia, to save Milosevic or install a new, pro-Moscow regime.
One thing is certain: Milosevic and fellow war criminals like Gen. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic must not be allowed to gently retire with their stashed-away millions in Moscow or Athens. They committed the worst crimes against humanity in Europe since Stalin and Hitler and must be brought to justice. Any nation that harbors these criminals - notably Russia - must be isolated, boycotted, and denied loans.
Allowing these criminals to escape for the sake of expediency would mean we have learned nothing from the last bloody century.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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