Wars are often waged by those who know each other well, at the expense of those who have never met.
Stipe Mesic, President of Croatia.1
Two men chatted animatedly as they strolled through the landscaped gardens of the Karadjordjevo hunting lodge. 25 March 1991 was a beautiful spring day. Verdant ivy climbed up the walls of the villa; red and purple flowers blossomed on the terrace. Only the ring of security men around the villa indicated that something out of the ordinary was happening at one of Tito’s favourite retreats.
Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman were quite at ease in each other’s company, each holding a glass of fruit brandy. Film of the meeting shows Milosevic dressed in a dark-blue suit, with a white shirt and purple tie. Tudjman is dressed in grey. His silver hair, metal-framed glasses and febrile manner give him the air of a tyrannical university professor or a company chairman who has hung on too long. The two leaders lean towards each other confidentially as they walk through the grounds. Milosevic gesticulates with his arms wide open, while Tudjman nods and occasionally taps him on the shoulder. Milosevic, it is clear, is the boss.
How could the two leaders find so much to talk about, in such agreeable circumstances, when their countries were on the eve of all-out war? Fighting had already erupted between rebel Serbs and Croats in the Croatian town of Pakrac. While their troops exchanged fire, Milosevic and Tudjman exchanged pleasantries and ideas. They agreed that Yugoslavia was dead. They agreed that war seemed inevitable. But most of all they agreed that Bosnia had no right to exist, and should be divided up between them.
The Karadjordjevo meeting was the opening summit of the secret diplomatic line that, throughout the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, ran from Zagreb to Belgrade. Tudjman and Milosevic agreed on much more than Bosnia. The signals exchanged at the clandestine diplomatic meetings eventually decided the fate of Milosevic’s rebel Serb protégés within Croatia itself. Tudjman and Milosevic believed in each other, said Stipe Mesic. ‘One of them wanted a Greater Serbia and the other wanted a Greater Croatia. They trusted each other and they kept negotiating throughout the war. When Rudolf Hess landed in Scotland not even a non-commissioned officer wanted to see him. For several years Milosevic and Tudjman’s chiefs of cabinet held negotiations and talked to each other.’2
Some argued that, even before war had started, there was a cynical community of interest between the two men. This thesis was based on the premise that Tudjman arguably wanted a struggle of ‘national liberation’ to forge his new Croatian nation-state. War and the threat of an external enemy would bind the Croat people together and legitimise the new regime. It is an old technique, but no less effective for its age. Milosevic was happy to provide the necessary conflict.
Certainly by the end of 1991 many questions about Tudjman’s role in Slovenia and Croatia remained unanswered. Until Slovenia declared independence in June 1991, the Slovene leader Milan Kucan and Franjo Tudjman had worked together. The neighbouring northern republics were natural allies. But at the crucial moment, Tudjman backtracked. ‘In the fateful times of preparation for the plebiscite and the declaration of independence we worked together closely,’ said Kucan. ‘But when the war started against Slovenia we did not receive the assistance we expected. When the Yugoslav tanks rolled out from the barracks in Croatia, I telephoned Tudjman, asking for help. The idea was for him to assist the people who were blockading the Yugoslav army barracks and so prevent the JNA tanks driving from Croatia into Slovenia. Tudjman’s answer was that he would not let tanks get involved in a war in Croatia just because of Slovenia.’3
Kucan had been working closely with a Croat former JNA general, Martin Spegelj, who became Tudjman’s minister of defence. When the war started in Croatia General Spegelj proposed that the Croat forces follow the successful Slovene strategy of blockading JNA army bases to hold the troops and vehicles hostage. ‘General Spegelj was correct. He was thinking along the right lines as a soldier,’ said Kucan. Tudjman rejected this outright, and humiliated General Spegelj in a cabinet meeting. He then resigned, and was advised to leave the country for a while.
Events in Zagreb certainly suggest some kind of understanding between Milosevic and Tudjman. While the city came under sporadic attack, the JNA made no serious attempt to take over the city and topple Tudjman’s government. The presidential palace was bombed, but only once. Zagreb was never subjected to the rain of sniper- and shell-fire that came down on Sarajevo. Only one Serbian city – Sid, near Vukovar – was briefly shelled by Croat forces.
There was also the strange episode of the Hungarian arms smuggling operation. In October 1990 General Spegelj went on a clandestine arms-buying mission to Budapest. Hungary agreed to sell 30,000 Kalashnikovs at DM280 a piece, less than half the going rate. Spegelj also bought mines, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft systems. The first two consignments crossed the border into Yugoslavia a few days later, monitored by agents of KOS, Yugoslav military counter-intelligence. At this time Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia, yet no order came from Belgrade to stop the arms smuggling. While in Budapest General Spegelj had also negotiated secretly with JNA officers, to persuade them to hand over weapons. His mission had been filmed by KOS agents with a camera concealed in a television. Milosevic ordered an edited version of the film broadcast repeatedly on Belgrade television. War hysteria erupted.
The siege and fall of Vukovar raised the most questions. The once-pretty Danube town was pounded into rubble by JNA guns during a three-month siege in which hundreds were killed. Vukovar became known as Croatia’s Stalingrad. Not just in terms of destruction, but as a symbol of Croatian patriotism. Vukovar surrendered to the JNA on 18 November 1991. Two hundred and sixty Croat prisoners were then taken away under JNA supervision, shot and bulldozed into a mass grave. Just over a month later, on 23 December, Germany unilaterally recognised Croatia. Understandably, Vukovar triggered substantial international sympathy for Croatia, diverting attention from unwelcome matters such as the human rights of Croatia’s Serb minority, who were also being ethnically cleansed, but by Croat extremists.
Vukovar’s defenders accused Tudjman of cynically abandoning the city for political gain. Its commander, Milan Dedakovic, known as ‘the Hawk’, said that his fighters could have held out.
I asked for two or three brigades and an armoured battalion, but they never arrived. Croatia had the resources and could spare fifty tanks which is what we needed. But Tudjman and the political leadership are more concerned with policy-making than with the war. I feel absolutely betrayed and so do all the people of Vukovar . . . I fought fiercely for Croatia and when both Tudjman and Milosevic saw Vukovar could be defended by such a small group it did not suit either.4
A furore had erupted after a busload of Croat policemen entered the Serb village of Borovo Selo on 2 May, to be met by a hail of bullets that left twelve dead and twenty wounded. The background to this was that the previous month Gojko Susak, an extreme émigré Croat nationalist from Ottowa and Tudjman’s defence minister, had taken a night trip to the outskirts of the village. Accompanied by the local police chief, Josip Reihl-Kir, Susak, a former pizza parlour owner, had fired three rockets into the village. Susak’s version of home delivery could not have benefited Milosevic more if he had ordered it himself. One of the unexploded shells was shown on Belgrade television as indisputable proof of Croat aggression. Reihl-Kir was horrified at the attack, which he described as a ‘lunatic’ action. The police chief was a brave and honourable man who spent months trying to defuse local tensions. Soon after this incident he was shot eighteen times by one of his own colleagues.
Milosevic and Tudjman were partners in a common project, said the Belgrade military analyst Milos Vasic. ‘Whenever there was some sort of truce or easing in the field, either Milosevic or Tudjman would produce an incident, a little massacre here or there, to start it all up again. They have been collaborating together since the beginning.’5
Sometimes Milosevic and Tudjman communicated through the staging of incidents, and sometimes they spoke to each other directly, using ‘ti’ rather than the more formal ‘vi’. But mostly the deals were cut through a man called Hrvoje Sarinic, one of the few Croatian officials at the March 1991 Karadjordjevo meeting. He recalled: ‘I was together with Tudjman and Milosevic for just fifteen minutes. Then they went out from the house and went for a walk. There was speculation that they discussed Bosnia. I don’t think this was speculation. It was an unavoidable subject between them. This project of partitioning Bosnia was both of theirs, and finally they agreed that Bosnia historically has no right to exist.’6
Tudjman sent Sarinic to Belgrade thirteen times. A technocrat, who was fluent in English and French, with extensive international business experience and good intelligence contacts, he proved the perfect envoy. Sarinic’s secret mission was launched on 9 November 1993, when he was summoned to Tudjman’s rooms. The President was lying on his bed, covered with a blanket, listening to the radio with his eyes closed. The Croatian leader had been thinking. He had a brilliant new idea: open a direct channel of communications with Belgrade. ‘It may be good to talk about this with Milosevic.’ Sarinic replied that he understood what Tudjman meant. ‘Then ring up and see how Milosevic is breathing,’ Tudjman instructed, meaning Sarinic should try and discover what was on Milosevic’s mind.
Sarinic then contacted Milosevic’s office. ‘I asked if it would be possible to see President Milosevic.’ Perhaps not surprisingly, Milosevic’s staff were taken aback to pick up the telephone and find Tudjman’s chief of cabinet on the other end of the line. ‘President Milosevic is very busy,’ replied the Serbian official. But the message was passed on. ‘Milosevic’s secretary called the next day,’ said Sarinic, ‘and told me he was disposed to meet with me, but it should be completely secret.’
Croatia and Serbia were at war, but secret diplomatic missions across enemy lines long pre-dated Sarinic’s secret mission to Belgrade. Realpolitik – and business – knows no borders. Even at the height of the Bosnian war, shops in the Bosnian Croat town of Kiseljak, just outside besieged Sarajevo, were stocked with fresh kiwi fruit and German chocolate thanks to the black-market deals the Bosnian Croats made with the Bosnian Serbs, although they were nominally at war. In the beseiged government-held city of Bihac, Bosnian Serbs even sold arms and ammunition to their enemies across the front line.
Sarinic understood that parleying with Milosevic was a risky business. Under Milosevic’s protection, his safety was assured, but enemies awaited at home in Zagreb. ‘In war there are always battles parallel with negotiations. But this was not a popular mission. On the front line you risk your life, you fight and you know that your enemy is in front of you. People saw Milosevic as a black devil, and some regarded me as a traitor.’ To underline the seriousness of Sarinic’s mission, and to dispel opposition within the ruling elite, Tudjman promoted Sarinic to Major-General. He reported only to Tudjman.
A few days later, on 12 November 1993, Sarinic landed at Batajnica military airport, just outside Belgrade. The venue for the meeting was not disclosed until the last moment. ‘I was picked up in an old Mercedes. The police escort did not know where we were going. They were given instructions by radio along the route. Everything was very polite, very secure and very secret.’ Sarinic saw a city broken and decaying before his eyes. It was dark, cold and sombre. Sanctions had brought the economy to the brink of collapse. Sarinic began to see why Milosevic was so eager to meet. Even in Milosevic’s sparsely furnished office on Andriceva Street in Belgrade there was no heating and one modest bookshelf. The freezing toilet was kept locked. Sarinic travelled with three bodyguards, but they were disarmed on arrival. ‘They had to surrender their guns to the Serbian secret police. I asked, “What use are bodyguards without guns?”’ Sarinic was searched for wiretaps and then was ushered through. He was met by Mira Dragojevic, Milosevic’s secretary, who said that the president was waiting for him.
The two men got on well. ‘When Tudjman charged me with being the contact man I worried that Milosevic would not accept me, because I was not on his high political level. But he accepted it very well. I can’t say that we had a friendly relationship, but it was a good one. Sometimes he told me a funny story, or a joke.’
But in Bosnia, well into its second year of war, they weren’t laughing. When Croatia declared independence in July 1991, Bosnia had two choices. The republic could remain in a Yugoslavia dominated by Belgrade as a Muslim quasi-colony of ‘Serboslavia’ or it could declare independence. But independence almost certainly meant war, since most of Bosnia’s Serbs – one-third of the population – were utterly opposed to living in an independent Bosnia, and wanted to remain in Yugoslavia, which they saw as the best protector of Serb interests.
Bosnia was often referred to as a mini-Yugoslavia. Nowhere else was the ethnic and religious mix as pronounced. Its population of about 4.3 million was composed of 44 per cent Muslims, 31 per cent Serbs, 17 per cent Croats and just over 5 per cent declaring themselves as ‘Yugoslavs’7 This was partly a result of its geography. Bosnia bordered Croatia in the north and west, Serbia in the east and Montenegro in the south. In medieval times Bosnia had been an independent kingdom, until the Ottoman invasion in the fifteenth century. It remained a province of the Ottoman empire until 1878, when it was placed under the administration of Austro-Hungary, before being annexed in 1908 and then ceded to Royal Yugoslavia after the First World War.
As the westernmost stretch of Turkey-in-Europe, Bosnia was conservative, especially in its rural areas. But cities such as the capital Sarajevo, Banja Luka in the north and Visegrad in the south boasted some of Europe’s finest Ottoman-era architecture, and a way of life that was easy-going and civilised. Visegrad was the site of the bridge in Nobel laureate Ivo Andric’s most famous work Bridge on the Drina, a complex chronicle of the march of empires across the provincial city. When the Ottomans came they built mosques, bazaars, baths and religious schools, as well as bridges. The great sixteenth-century governor of Sarajevo, Ghazi Husrev Beg, is immortalised in this Sarajevo folksong:
I built the medresa [school] and imaret [public kitchen]
I built the clock tower by it a mosque
I built Taslihan and the cloth market
I built three bridges in Sarajevo
I turned a village into the town of Sarajevo
The new faith with its civilised comforts proved attractive. The great majority of Yugoslav Muslims are Slavs who converted to Islam, which brought a privileged status. A Muslim urban elite emerged. Bosnia wore its Islam with a comparatively light touch. ‘Go to Bosnia if you want to see your wife’ was one Turkish saying. After the partisan victory Tito had refused the demands of Serb and Croat nationalists that Bosnia be divided between Belgrade and Zagreb. Bosnia-Herzegovina – to give the republic its full name – was seen as a necessary counterbalance to the two strongest republics, Serbia and Croatia. Eventually Tito granted Yugoslav Muslims the status of full nationality. But Serb and Croat nationalists rejected this. Some claimed that Bosnian Muslims were merely Serbs or Croats who had converted to Islam. Others decried their Muslim neighbours as ‘Turks’. There is of course a contradiction here: Bosnians could not be both converted Slavs and Turks.
In November 1990 Bosnia, like its neighbouring republics, had gone to the polls. A coalition government of the three ethnically based parties was set up: the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) for the Muslims. Meanwhile, Milosevic played his usual double game. Even as he planned to dismember the country, he tried to woo the Bosnians into staying in Yugoslavia. Milosevic understood that talking up the need for Bosnia to stay would reduce the influence of those in Bosnia who wanted to arm themselves. Who needed to prepare for war when there was no danger of war? Milosevic exploited the attachment many Bosnians felt to Yugoslavia, and especially to Tito, who had given them a republic and nationality status.8 Several years into the Bosnian war it was still common to see Tito’s picture on Bosnian walls when he had disappeared everywhere else.
In March 1991 Milosevic had proclaimed that he thought that the Muslims did not have any reason to secede from Yugoslavia. ‘Some of them have been indoctrinated, but most of the Muslims want good, tolerant and I would say civic and friendly relations with the Serbs and other nations in Yugoslavia.’9 This was in marked contrast to Milosevic’s rhetoric about ‘Ustashas’ and ‘Albanian terrorists’. Few in Bosnia believed that war was possible, and many – tragically including much of the Muslim leadership – had faith in the JNA as a neutral peace-keeping force, not understanding that it was under Milosevic’s control. The JNA was allowed to disarm all troops in Bosnia (except its own) along with the Bosnian Territorial Defence Organisation as a means of preventing war. The Bosnian Croat and Muslim militias and paramilitaries were already vastly outnumbered and outgunned. This only weakened them further, and left the country defenceless against the Serbs.
Local Serbs were supplied with arms, and plans were drawn up to take over the local police forces and municipal administration. Just as in Krajina, the Bosnian Serbs declared SAOs, or Serb Autonomous Areas. Belgrade and local Serb television then launched a barrage of lies and propaganda about the coming horrors of a reborn Islamic state, under the rule of Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim leader.
In any case, the progress of the war in neighbouring Croatia and the distribution of weapons gave events their own dark momentum. As JNA artillery pounded Croatian cities and streams of displaced refugees fled the fighting, it was hard to believe that Bosnia would escape the same fate. In mid-October 1991 the Bosnian parliament met to discuss whether the republic should become sovereign, a precursor to full independence.
Izetbegovic was a well-meaning but ultimately tragic figure who was no match for the ruthlessness of either Milosevic or Tudjman. An Islamic dissident under Tito, Izetbegovic was put on trial in 1983 for ‘counter-revolutionary acts derived from Muslim nationalism’. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, of which he served six. He had already made his position clear in February 1991: ‘I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.’10 The Muslim and Croat political parties were in favour of sovereignty. The Bosnian Serbs were not. Their political leader, Radovan Karadzic, offered the following chilling forecast:
Do not think that you will not lead Bosnia-Herzegovina into hell, and do not think that you will not perhaps lead the Muslim people into annihilation, because the Muslims cannot defend themselves if there is war – How will you prevent everyone from being killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina?11
Like Milosevic, Karadzic is of Montenegrin origin. Born in 1945, he moved to Sarajevo where he qualified as a psychiatrist and treated the Sarajevo football team.12 Some of his psychiatric advice was unconventional: when one young couple went to Karadzic for counselling on their troubled marriage, he told the husband to beat his wife more. With his bouffant hair and hyperbolic manner, Karadzic also fancied himself as a poet. Four volumes of his mordant works were published. For example:
I hear misfortune walking
Vacant entourages passing through the city
Units of armed white poplars
Marching through the skies13
Loud, dishevelled, possessed of Balkan delusions of grandeur, an inveterate gambler, the Bosnian Serb leader saw himself as a mini-statesman who would shape Serbian history. Although Karadzic was Milosevic’s appointment, in many ways the poet-psychiatrist was more similar to Franjo Tudjman. Unlike Milosevic, both Tudjman and Karadzic actually believed in their own nationalism. Karadzic’s refusal to follow the demands of realpolitik would later bring him into conflict with Milosevic. Meanwhile, he loved nothing more than to pore over maps, working out plans for the division of Sarajevo. He lapped up the attention of the world’s diplomats and media who treated him with reverence, respectfully listening to his lies and bombast. Karadzic was little more than a literate crook. He had served time in prison for corruption.
But his warning to Alija Izetbegovic was accurate. A month earlier, in September 1991, Karadzic had consulted Milosevic about the progress of setting up the Bosnian Serb mini-state. His telephone was tapped by Yugoslav intelligence, who passed the transcript to Ante Markovic, the last prime minister of federal Yugoslavia. In a well-targeted but ultimately futile attack on Milosevic, Markovic released the transcript to the press:
Milosevic: Go to Uzelac [JNA commander in northern Bosnia], he’ll tell you everything. If you have any problems, telephone me.
Karadzic: I’ve got problems down in Kupres. Some Serbs there are rather disobedient.
Milosevic: We can deal with that. Just call Uzelac. Don’t worry, you’ll have everything. We are the strongest.
Karadzic: Yes, yes.
Milosevic: Don’t worry. As long as there is the army no one can touch us . . . Don’t worry about Herzegovina. Momir [Bulatovic, Montenegrin leader] said to his men: ‘Whoever is not ready to die in Bosnia, step forward five paces.’ No one did so.
Karadzic: That’s good . . . but what’s going on with the bombing in . . .
Milosevic: Today is not a good day for the airforce. The European Community is in session.14
Markovic told his cabinet:
The line has been clearly established. I know because I heard Milosevic give the order to Karadzic to get in contact with General Uzelac and to order, following the decisions of the meetings of the military hierarchy, that arms should be distributed and the territorial defence of Krajina and Bosnia be armed and utilised in the realisation of the RAM plan.15
This transcript is highly significant. It details the military-political triangle that linked the JNA, Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs. It shows that Milosevic is the political mastermind behind the military strategy. The transcript also highlights Milosevic’s keen awareness of the need to respond to the international diplomatic situation. The Yugoslav airforce would not be used while diplomats were meeting. It is also clear that the southern republic of Montenegro was completely under Milosevic’s control. Through the following months, the signs of coming war in Bosnia became ever louder and clearer.
Yet while Izetbegovic took his country down a path that would lead to war, he made almost no preparations to fight one. His doomed strategy was to hope for intervention by the United Nations or the United States, to prevent conflict. According to one gloomy joke, Izetbegovic put his faith in a magic fish: Izetbegovic, Milosevic and Tudjman go fishing one day. They catch a magic fish, which grants them each one wish. Milosevic asks that independent Croatia be crushed. The fish agrees. Tudjman requests that Serbia be defeated. The fish agrees. Izetbegovic asks the fish if Croatia has really been crushed and Serbia defeated. The fish confirms that this is the case. ‘In that case, I’d just like a nice a cup of coffee,’ says Izetbegovic.
On 9 January 1992 Karadzic declared the foundation of the Bosnian Serb Republic, later known as Republika Srpska, precisely modelled on the Serb Republic of Krajina. On the last weekend in February Bosnia went to the polls to vote for independence. The Bosnian Serbs boycotted the poll. They already had their own republic. On 6 April Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia. Milosevic was well prepared. He had anticipated that international recognition of Bosnia was inevitable, but also predicted, correctly, that the West would not go to war to save the country. Karadzic recalled: ‘President Milosevic couldn’t care less if Bosnia were recognised. He said, “Caligula proclaimed a horse a senator, but the horse never took its seat. Izetbegovic will get recognition, but he’ll never get a state.”’16
Milosevic had already ensured that when the fighting in Bosnia began, the balance of forces was massively in the Bosnian Serbs’ favour. A UN investigative report detailed the clear chain of command between Belgrade and rebel Serbs in both Bosnia and Croatia:
The JNA adopted a new defence plan in early 1992 calling for the protection of the Serbian population outside of Serbia. [Serbian] territorial defence units in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were to be supplied with small arms, artillery, armour and missile launching systems. Moreover the Ministry of Defence of the Serbian Autonomous Regions (SAOs) of Croatia and Bosnia were to be subordinated to the Serbian Ministry of Defence. The JNA and the SAOs were to coordinate their defence plans and jointly protect their external borders and constitutional system.17
What this meant was that the Bosnian Serbs were not autonomous at all, but a client army of Milosevic and the JNA, whose overall strategy was controlled from Belgrade.
In early April 1992, when fighting broke out in Bosnia, the JNA had 80,000 troops deployed in the country. In early May the JNA was ordered to pull back to Yugoslavia. But Milosevic had already decided that all JNA troops born in Bosnia could stay on in the country. In addition, Bosnian Serb officers stationed elsewhere in Yugoslavia were redeployed in Bosnia. So 25,000 JNA troops left, but 55,000 Bosnian Serb soldiers remained. These were all transferred to the Bosnian Serb army. The Serb gunners laying siege to Sarajevo, for example, were now no longer soldiers of the JNA, but of the Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb army. But they were the same troops, firing the same guns from the same positions. They were still paid from Belgrade. For the citizens of Sarajevo, the distinction was purely academic as the shrapnel burst around them.
Milosevic then appointed General Ratko Mladic as commander of the Bosnian Serb army. But his army failed to capture Sarajevo. The defenders – drawn from all three ethnic communities, Muslim, Serb and Croat – beat back the Serb offensive as the heavy tanks got jammed in the narrow streets. For the next three years the General took a slow revenge. This is an intercept of one of his military communications to an officer commanding an artillery unit overlooking the city.
General Mladic here
Yes, sir
Don’t panic. What’s your name?
Vukasinovic
Colonel Vukasinovic
Yes, sir
Shell the presidency and the parliament. Shoot at slow intervals until I order you to stop. Target Muslim neighbourhoods – not many Serbs live there.
Look at all the smoke
Shell them until they’re on the edge of madness.18
Shelled until they were indeed on the edge of madness, Sarajevo’s inhabitants eked out a living in near-medieval conditions. Under the eyes of the world, live on television every day, a European city was turned into a giant concentration camp. Deprived of heating, electricity or running water, Sarajevans lived in a state of perpetual hunger and cold, surviving on food brought in by the intermittent UN airlift. High up in the bunkers in the surrounding hills, the Serb gunners picked off women filling buckets at a public spigot or lobbed mortars at children playing football. A simple journey across town became a deadly gamble: ducking in doorways, sprinting across open squares, and crunching a path across broken glass in abandoned buildings that offered meagre cover against incoming fire.
Still the city’s inhabitants tried to live the semblance of a normal life. Women put on their make-up every morning before going to work in an office where there was nothing to do, their pride in their appearance a tiny gesture of defiance. Portly men with empty briefcases leapt across exposed intersections. Civic-minded citizens put up signs saying ‘Pazi Snajper’ (Danger – sniper). Even war could not interrupt the great Bosnian coffee ritual, except now customers placed their guns next to their cups. They chatted and tried to joke, but their hands twisted continually, fingers interwining, as one cigarette followed another. As the economy collapsed, cigarettes became a quasi-currency. Criminals and black marketeers soon cornered the market in pilfered UN aid and smuggled food, but the criminals had saved the city. So unprepared was the government of Alija Izetbegovic that when the war started the defence of the capital was led by mafia gangs, as they were the only ones who had weapons and knew how to use them.
Although Sarajevo did not fall, by the autumn of 1992 the Bosnian Serbs had captured almost 70 per cent of the country. The many months of detailed planning in Belgrade had paid off. The international outcry against the brutality of ethnic cleansing had done nothing to slow down the Serbian advance. Serbia, the nation that had suffered so much at the hands of the Nazis, set up its own network of concentration camps in Bosnia. Places such as Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje became bywords for a macabre horror not witnessed on mainland Europe since the Second World War.
Once again men starved behind barbed wire, while their captors tortured and killed them on a whim, often by knife or hammer so as not to ‘waste’ bullets. The slightest infraction of camp ‘rules’ was enough to be beaten to death. A kind of insanity descended, said Dr Milan Kovacevic, a former hospital director who had helped set up Omarska.
What we did was not the same as Auschwitz or Dachau, but it was a mistake. It was planned to have a camp for people, but not a concentration camp. Omarska was planned as a reception centre . . . But then it turned into something else. I cannot explain the loss of control. I don’t think even the historians will find an explanation in the next fifty years. You could call it collective madness.19
How much did Milosevic know of what was happening at the camps? Several thousand miles away, President George Bush certainly knew. On 3 August 1992, after news broke of the Omarska camp, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters that administration officials had been aware that ‘Serbian forces are maintaining what they call detention centres’, and also knew about the ‘abuses and tortures taking place’.20
Belgrade and Omarska had until recently been part of the same country. The chain of command between Belgrade and the Bosnian Serb army and political leadership was such that it is inconceivable that Milosevic did not know what was happening in Bosnia. The transcript of the telephone conversation between Milosevic and Karadzic in September 1991 details how Milosevic was overseeing war preparations, and deciding whether or not to use the Yugoslav airforce. Milosevic was the apex of a triangle that linked the Serbian Intelligence Service and the Bosnian Serb military and political organisation. Belgrade supplied the weapons and uniforms of the Bosnian Serb army that captured the territory on which the camps were set up. It even paid their wages. Serbian intelligence supplied detailed briefings to Milosevic about the situation on the ground. Certainly by 6 August Milosevic, like the rest of the world, knew about the camps, as news of Omarska had been broadcast around the world by British Independent Television News.
Not all the victims of the ‘collective madness’ were Muslim or Croat. Many Bosnian Serbs lived on the ‘wrong’ side of the lines, in Bosnian Croat or government-controlled territory. Radmila was a Serb lawyer from the picturesque Ottoman-era city of Mostar. When in spring 1992 the JNA began bombarding Mostar, she covered the walls of her home with pictures of Tito. But her Yugoslav gallery of loyalty could only ever be a quixotic gesture. ‘All through the war I tried to keep my identity as a person, not by nationality or religion. I did not want to leave my city and my friends. I never felt like a Serb, but they decided for me.’ Harassed and intimidated by Bosnian Croat forces, Radmila and her husband – a JNA officer – fled to Belgrade. The departure was full of pain and heartache. ‘How can you decide what to pack when you flee from your home? Should you pack the slippers your baby first walked in, or the ones he needs now? The furniture we left behind is not important, but the memories are.’21
Over 250,000 Bosnian refugees found sanctuary in Serbia, including some Muslims. Belgrade retained enough of its cosmopolitan spirit to take them in. But whatever their nationality, on a personal level many Bosnian refugees found they were not welcomed. Milosevic’s idea of all Serbs in one state was fine in theory, but the practice it seemed was different. Radmila was unable to find a job. ‘When I apply for jobs even as a secretary and they hear my Bosnian accent, they put a little mark on the form and nobody asks to see my qualifications.’
In Zagreb, President Tudjman watched all this with envy. Croat and Muslim soldiers had fought together against the JNA and the Bosnian Serbs. But Tudjman saw the establishment of Republika Srpska in Bosnia as a signal from Milosevic that he would permit Zagreb to do the same. He was correct. Tudjman had tremendous respect for Milosevic, said the British diplomat David Austin. ‘Milosevic had plenty of self-confidence. Tudjman did not, at least in his dealings with Milosevic. Tudjman thought they were working to the same agenda, the division of Bosnia. But that was not Milosevic’s real agenda. It was fine if Bosnia was divided, but all Milosevic cared about was Milosevic. He did not have a bigger agenda than that.’22
Tudjman believed that Croatia needed to annex the southern part of Bosnia known as Herzegovina, a Croat majority area and home to hard-line nationalists. He looked back longingly at the pre-1939 maps when Croatia had encompassed large stretches of land now in Bosnia. ‘Tudjman said Croatia is a crescent shape, and it is impossible to defend such borders,’ remembered Hrvoje Sarinic. ‘He asked me one day to calculate what is the length of the border per capita in Croatia and to compare it with France. I don’t remember exactly what it was, something like 2.5 metres per inhabitant in Croatia, and 0.8 in France. He said that we should enlarge the part of Croatia in the south, by adding Herzegovina.’
Tudjman already had a Croat equivalent of Radovan Karadzic. Mate Boban was a hard-line extremist headquartered in the backwater town of Grude. He did not write poetry, but like Karadzic he had served time in prison, in his case for black-marketing. On 5 July 1992, under Boban’s leadership, Croats in Herzegovina declared their own quasi-state, to be known as Herceg-Bosna. A separate Bosnian Croat army was set up, known as the HVO. Like the Bosnian Serb army, the HVO was nominally independent, but in reality it was armed, trained and financed by Zagreb. Tudjman and the HVO followed the pattern set by Milosevic and the Bosnian Serb army. Just as in Serb-occupied Bosnia, checkpoints were erected and the movements of Muslims controlled. The Bosnian flag was replaced by a new Croat flag; the Bosnian dinar was replaced by Croatian currency. Boban declared that Sarajevo’s authority would no longer be recognised. Herceg-Bosna even issued its own car number plates.
Inevitably, in the autumn of 1992 fighting broke out between the HVO and Bosnian government troops, gleefully watched by the Bosnian Serbs. Tudjman’s military cooperation agreement with Sarajevo was torn up. With Zagreb’s support the HVO laid siege to Mostar. Lacking the UN airlift that kept the Bosnian capital alive, Mostar’s conditions were even worse than those in Sarajevo. Mostar too was split into two: Croats on the west bank, Muslims on the east. Boban’s army, like the Bosnian Serbs, wanted the Muslims swept away. Even Muslim soldiers who had fought with the HVO were arrested and sent to Bosnian Croat concentration camps such as Dretelj. There they were starved, beaten and killed on the whim of their jailers. The line of command went straight back to Zagreb and Tudjman’s office. The Croat leader Stipe Mesic recalled: ‘When I found out about the camps, I told Tudjman, “You know they have camps there.” He said, “So what, the others have camps as well.”’ Eventually the Croatian camps, like their Serb counterparts, were disbanded under pressure from the international community.
As for Milosevic, he did not have a problem with Herceg-Bosna, said Hrvoje Sarinic. ‘He told me one day in Belgrade, “Tell Franjo that with Republika Srpska I solved 90 per cent of the Serbian national question, just as he will solve the Croatian national problem with Herceg-Bosna”.’