Revolution is impossible until it is inevitable.
Leon Trotsky.1
When the US diplomat William Montgomery departed from Belgrade in 1978, Beogradska Banka president Slobodan Milosevic hosted his leaving party. Twenty-two years later, Montgomery returned the favour.
Montgomery ran the Office of Yugoslav Affairs (OYA) in Budapest. The OYA was a satellite of the US embassy. It opened in August 2000 and was a personal priority of Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state. Publicly, its aim was to aid democratic forces in Yugoslavia. Its actual function was to provide political and financial support (some of it covert) to the Serb opposition, in order to bring down Milosevic. During the Kosovo war, Albright had fought a turf war with Richard Holbrooke over Balkan policy. Albright was not interested in drinking Viljamovka and taking computer graphic trips around Bosnia with Milosevic. She said: ‘We are making it clear that we don’t see Milosevic in the future.’2
Milosevic had once snickered about Albright when he spoke on the telephone to his brother Borislav. But by the summer of 2000, Milosevic was in serious trouble. His indictment for war crimes on 27 May 1999 was the trigger the international community needed to orchestrate his downfall. Earlier that month Tony Blair had openly called for Serbs to ‘cast out’ the Milosevic regime, which he described as a ‘corrupt dictatorship’, guilty of ‘hideous racial genocide’.3 In July Time and Newsweek carried reports that President Clinton had authorised the CIA to commence covert operations against Belgrade to topple Milosevic.
These could include computer hacking against Milosevic’s international bank accounts; funnelling cash to opposition groups and making contact with dissident elements within the regime.
The OYA was one point in a network that stretched from Budapest to the State Department in Washington, D.C., the Foreign Office in London, Paris and Berlin. Britain also maintained a small Yugoslav liaison office at its embassy in Budapest, which was in regular contact with the OYA, and the same Yugoslav opposition figures.
Broadly speaking, the West’s plan was steadily to increase international political and economic pressure on the regime, while simultaneously supporting the domestic opposition that would undermine it from the inside. Eventually, enough force would be applied on two fronts to force its collapse. At which point prearranged clandestine deals with the Yugoslav army, police, intelligence services and special forces would ensure that when Milosevic called for help, none came. This part, known as ‘blocking the response mechanism’ was the most difficult to arrange. ‘The aim was to isolate the regime and engage the people. This concept was adopted after the NATO air-strikes. There was a strong team effort to plan and see this through,’ said one senior British diplomat.4 Moscow was also kept informed by email, partly as a thank you for Russian co-operation – more or less – over Kosovo, and also to keep Moscow ‘on-message’.
Washington, D.C. had long experience in toppling governments considered unhelpful to US interests, as the peoples of Guatemala, Iran and Chile could testify. In those countries the US had engineered the installation of dictatorships. In Yugoslavia the aim was to bring one down. ‘Montgomery was running an embassy-in-exile. It was a very small, very tight operation of five people. Much of its work was reporting. A steady flow of people were brought in. There were also meetings in southern Hungary in Szeged, in Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro. It was a regional effort,’ said a senior US official. ‘The beauty of having it in Budapest was that all the support systems could be organised by the embassy there.’5
There was no sign on the front door of the OYA. It was based in an anonymous office block on a narrow sidestreet in downtown Pest, conveniently located just a few stops away on the underground from the Yugoslav embassy. Milosevic knew something was brewing, and according to one source, Belgrade despatched over twenty people to find out what. The Hungarian capital filled with rival intelligence agents following each other around, while endangered opposition figures sought visas to the West. This was Harry Lime’s Vienna, shifted east and fast-forwarded to 2001. Serbs did not need visas to enter Hungary, and the city’s fin de siècle cafes were already crowded with chain-smoking, nervous exiles. But information is not always enough. By October 1917 the Tsar’s secret service, the Okhrana, had thoroughly penetrated the Bolshevik party. Events still assumed their own momentum.
Since the loss of Kosovo, the aura of decay around Milosevic’s regime had strengthened. Operation Allied Force was a harsh psychological blow for the man who for the previous decade had been courted by presidents. More significantly, the NATO air-strikes were a profound psychological shock to a nation that, despite ten years of neighbouring conflicts, had not confronted the harsh, direct reality of war. ‘During the previous decade Serbia supported the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, but was never directly affected. Belgrade was a relatively acceptable place,’ observed Braca Grubacic, publisher of the VIP newsletter. NATO bombs blew that complacency apart, he said. ‘You can live in poverty, you can be humiliated, but war is the ultimate event.’6
Milosevic’s own Socialist Party was demoralised by purges and politically marginalised by Mira’s JUL and Seselj’s ultra-nationalists. Figures such as federal defence minister Dragoljub Ojdanic remained loyal, but Ojdanic was an indicted war criminal. General Momcilo Perisic, sacked by Milosevic as army chief of staff, spoke for many in the military: ‘The current state leadership must be removed by political means, and the people should be taken along the path of civic and democratic programmes, and not those of hatred and violence’.7 As for the intelligence services, morale was low after the professional officers around sacked intelligence chief Jovica Stanisic had been replaced by JUL loyalists. ‘Mira’s people decided to take over everything, even though for this kind of work, you need professional skills,’ said one high-level Serbian source. ‘When I heard that one of the most important analytical intelligence positions was filled by someone from JUL, I knew they were on the wrong track.’8
Step by step, day by day, the West was ratcheting up the pressure. The broadcast media had helped keep Milosevic in power, so breaking the regime’s information monopoly was a high priority. Radio Free Europe, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America and other western stations were beamed in from transmitters located in neighbouring states including Bosnia and Croatia. This was known as the ‘Ring Around Serbia’. Support was also funnelled to the network of independent radio stations within Serbia, in part through Britain’s £3 million Independent Media and Civil Society Programme.
Not far from the OYA’s office, in the riverside Hyatt hotel, British diplomats were nurturing a Yugoslav élite-in-waiting. Senior Serbian figures in fields such as the military, law enforcement and academia were brought to Budapest to design a blueprint for post-Milosevic Serbia, and prepare for the country’s re-integration into Europe. This was the New Serbia Forum, an initiative funded by the Foreign Office, and organised by Sir John Birch, former British ambassador to Hungary. Serb opposition leaders were also brought to the Foreign Office centre at Wilton Park. Milosevic was feeling increasingly beleaguered by this international effort. In Belgrade, recent visitors to Budapest were liable to be pulled in by the police for questioning.
There was a lot of forward planning that summer, and not only in Budapest. Western officials were despatched to cities including Vienna, Banja Luka in northern Bosnia, and Pristina in Kosovo. Among their tasks were the opening of channels to dissidents within the regime, and ensuring that the response mechanisms were blocked. ‘Some of these people, who worked behind the scenes, were heroes, the ones from small anonymous offices in London and Washington, D.C.,’ said the Serbian source. Detailed preparations were also drawn up to ensure that the revolution would be broadcast live on television. ‘Great importance was placed on the media. There were three different plans to ensure satellite access for CNN and the others, through different television stations.’9 Germany too played a role. Squabbling Serbian opposition leaders were brought to Berlin, and money was channelled to cities with opposition mayors.
Force would be met with force. In the southern city of Cacak, an opposition stronghold ruled by fiery mayor Vladimir Ilic, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) was building its own private militia of shock troops. Disgruntled army officers, policemen, karate champions, body builders and criminals trained for the final showdown. The football fans who had once chanted, ‘Serbian Slobo, Serbia is with you’, now chanted ‘Slobo, save Serbia and kill yourself’.
As it degenerated, becoming more reliant on violence and intimidation, the regime slid closer to all-out dictatorship. Armed police stood on almost every corner, checking documents and demanding identification, often backed up by interior ministry troops. Men of military age were asked to report to the interior ministry to have their addresses confirmed. Milosevic, in true Ceausescu-style, was proclaimed a ‘national hero’. Belgrade wits coined a new joke about ever-shrinking Serbia: Mira wakes up one morning and looks out of the window of their house at Uzicka. She is alarmed to see a checkpoint outside, ringed by armed men. ‘Slobo, come quickly, there are gunmen in uniform outside the house!’ Slobo rolls over and says, ‘Oh, don’t worry about them. They’re just the new border guards.’
A series of killings, and attempted killings punctuated Serbia’s steady darkening. On 3 October 1999 Vuk Draskovic, who had briefly served in Milosevic’s wartime government, narrowly escaped death in a highlysuspicious road accident in which two bodyguards and his brother-in-law were killed. Draskovic, and many others, blamed the Serbian security services. Draskovic took refuge in Montenegro where he had another narrow escape the following summer, when a sniper’s bullet grazed his forehead. In January 2000 Arkan was shot dead in the lobby of Belgrade’s Intercontinental Hotel. The security conscious Arkan had not seemed alarmed when his killers had approached, indicating that he knew them. Some blamed the mafia. But many others believed the regime was responsible.
Arkan was an intelligent individual and probably understood that Milosevic’s shelf-life was limited. There were repeated rumours that Arkan had been in touch with the Hague tribunal through intermediaries to try and cut a deal. Interviewed in 2002, Graham Blewitt, deputy prosecutor, said: ‘We told Arkan’s lawyer that we will deal with you when your client is standing in front of the tribunal.’10 Arkan’s killing was followed by the death of federal defence minister, Pavle Bulatovic, shot by a sniper while dining in a restaurant. In late April Zika Petrovic, the head of Yugoslav airlines and a childhood friend of Milosevic, was killed. As shooting followed shooting, rumours swirled in Belgrade of a group dubbed ‘The Men in Black’, darkest of all the forces that supposedly operated in the shadows of the regime.
Throughout his rule, Milosevic had cemented his power by finding enemies. He had led his people to war in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and he had lost every one. Many feared that Milosevic would now either start a civil war, or turn against the last republic remaining alongside Serbia in Yugoslavia: Montenegro. The homeland of Milosevic’s parents was led by a pro-western reformer, Milo Djukanovic. Yugoslav army troops took over the airport at the capital Podgorica. Belgrade implemented a complete trade embargo. Milosevic used the Yugoslav army to harass and intimidate the Montenegrin security forces, all the while broadcasting Serbian propaganda into the province.
Milosevic’s newest enemy was the student movement Otpor (Resistance), founded at Belgrade University in autumn 1998. Emblazoned on T-shirts, leaflets and stickers, Otpor’s clenched-fist symbol soon appeared on walls across the country, often accompanied by the slogan ‘Gotov je!’ (He’s finished). Otpor was dynamic, innovative and decentralised. Its members painted red footsteps on the ground to symbolise Milosevic’s final departure from parliament. Cardboard telescopes offered passers-by a chance to watch a falling star named ‘Slobotea’. When actors in a Belgrade theatre raised their hands in a clenched-fist salute, the audience gave them a standing ovation.11 Such incidents gave strength and determination.
Eventually more than 70,000 young Serbs joined Otpor. Many were barely twenty. After the great exodus of the early 1990s, when tens of thousands of young people left Serbia, mostly never to return, it took eight or nine years for Milosevic’s children to come of age. Because Milosevic was essentially an authoritarian centraliser, he was unable to grasp the principles behind Otpor’s horizontal, non-hierarchical cell structure. Unlike Zajedno (Together), which had spearheaded the winter protests of 1996–7, Otpor could not be destroyed by splitting or arresting the leadership.
Cells operated out of a nationwide network of safe houses. Members kept in touch through mobile telephones and emails, often routed through servers abroad. Milosevic also had his own email address posted on the Yugoslav government website: Slobodan.Milosevic@gov.yu with an invitation to drop him a line, although he did not write back. The information war was one he could not win.
Increasingly, the regime hit back with arrests, intimidation and beatings. In Vladicin Han, a small town in southern Serbia, Otpor members were subjected to an orgy of violence by three drunken policemen. The activists were strangled until they were about to pass out. They were ordered to squat with outstretched arms. Anyone who moved was beaten. They were raised up above the floor and subjected to the ‘bastinado’: a severe pounding of the legs and feet. But in Vladicin Han, and across Serbia, whenever Otpor activists were arrested, threatened or beaten, they gave the same message: ‘We are not afraid.’
Otpor leaders were brought to Budapest for instruction in techniques of non-violent resistance. Ensconced in the luxurious Hilton hotel that overlooks the Danube, they absorbed the principles of what was called ‘asymmetric political warfare’ – turning the regime’s strength against it: the more the regime tries to crush opposition, the greater the backlash.12When a previously law-abiding son or daughter returns home battered and bruised from a police beating for wearing an Otpor T-shirt, his or her parents will be radicalised (as happened in Vladicin Han, where enraged parents demonstrated outside the police station).
Otpor activists translated sections from Gene Sharp’s book From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation13 and passed them from cell to cell. Sharp listed 198 methods of non-violent action, many of which could be employed in Serbia. The Milosevic regime was never quite an all-out dictatorship. Milosevic saw himself as a democratic and modern leader. Otpor operated in the space – albeit rapidly shrinking – the regime left open to claim it was a democracy. But the most important principle was simply to stop being afraid.
American newspapers reported that over $70 million was eventually paid to the Serbian opposition. Much was handed over in cash in Budapest, and then smuggled across the border. As a new NATO member, the Hungarian government was keen to help. A senior British diplomat admitted: ‘There was so much money pouring into the opposition that Milosevic would have been justified in cancelling the election on the grounds of outside interference.’14 In public, however, Otpor and the West kept their distance. ‘It was important that the Serbs got rid of Milosevic. Otpor did not want to be seen as anyone’s lackeys. Everyone was very conscious that the US government must not topple Milosevic or be seen to topple him, especially because of who the Serbs were and their proud history,’ said a US official.15
Former allies of Milosevic also began to invest in the future. ‘Who was behind Otpor? The United States and Britain. But also Greece, and money and business in Serbia. Some of these companies are now very successful. They needed a movement out of control of the political parties, but where they had influence,’ said the Serbian source.16 Athens had supported Milosevic throughout the Yugoslav wars, to the West’s growing anger. One hundred Greeks had fought with the Bosnian Serb army in the ‘Greek Volunteer Unit’, based at Vlasenica, Bosnia.17 By September 2001 Greece realised it had backed the wrong man. Four Otpor activists attended a reception at the Greek embassy in Belgrade, after an invitation from Greek foreign minister George Papandreou. Lured outside by Serb police, they were immediately arrested.
The regime cracked first, not in Belgrade, but in the provinces. Through the drab towns of rural Serbia, a cold anger spread. Nowhere more so than Pozarevac, which Marko ran as his personal fiefdom. Unknown faces in town were harassed by state security agents. Marko’s mafia allies beat and intimidated Otpor activists at will. ‘It was very dangerous here for young people. This is a small place and everyone knows everyone else. There were death threats,’ said Slavoljub Matic, a local councillor who took over as mayor after Milosevic was toppled. ‘Marko did not have a political position, but he was the son of the president and could do whatever he wanted. He had power, not legal power, but from the shadows, from his family.’18
During the NATO bombing Marko had built the Bambiland amusement park on the outskirts of town. Although Serbia was at war, Marko obtained enough building material and manpower to construct an elaborate playground, complete with a large wooden boat painted in day-glo colours. He spent the war strutting around town in uniform, brandishing automatic weapons. Mira Markovic said that her son always carried out his patriotic duty:
Half the money he made in Pozarevac, he gave to the town itself, and to the hospital. He was a volunteer during the war, during the air-strikes. When it was announced that there will be bombing, Marko said he will immediately go to Kosovo. I said to him, why would you go there, you will get killed? Volunteer, but if you have to get killed, then do it here, not in Kosovo. That was his duty, as his father was head of state.’
In fact Marko, said his mother, was always concerned for others’ welfare.
My son takes after me in personality. He is vulnerable, romantic. He always has strong feelings for other people. The other day when we spoke over the telephone I asked him, ‘Marko, are you clever like your mother or after your father, what kind of intelligence do you have?’ He said, ‘Mama, I am sorry to say that I have your intelligence, but I would prefer to have my father’s.’ He didn’t want to say that he was stupid because of that, but that he had the kind of intelligence which is difficult for him. He would have liked to have a less complicated intelligence, something more simple. This always creates worries for him.19
Marko certainly appears to have had strong feelings about Zoran Milanovic, a young man who worked as bartender at Madona. An indictment issued against Marko in November 2001 claimed that when Milanovic joined Otpor he was beaten by Marko’s bodyguards and delivered to Marko. In an interview with an American journalist Milanovic recounted what happened next: ‘Marko appeared with the saw. He said, “What’s up, you traitor? You scumbag. You will not be the last one or the first one that I have cut up and thrown in the Morava river.” Marko put the saw near my head and turned it on. It lasted for several seconds. Then he turned it off and put it on the bar. Marko told his guys to take me away and deal with me promptly. I started crying.’20
Mira dismissed these allegations. ‘It would be comical if it was not tragic. The charges are that he threatened to cut someone with a chain saw. Our daughter-in-law [Milica Gajic, Marko’s wife] wrote in the newspapers that we did not have a carpenter’s shop, with saws, because we did not deal with wood. So I could return the charges, and say that someone chased us with a lawnmower. That is all they have discovered and they want to put Marko on trial with these.’21
Milosevic had announced that elections would take place on 24 September 2000, even though his mandate did not run out until July 2001. Many saw the date as significant: exactly thirteen years earlier, at the Eighth Session in September 1987, Milosevic had brought down his former friend and mentor Ivan Stambolic. Mira was known to be highly superstitious about this. Slavoljub Djukic notes that she told her JUL colleagues: ‘The opposition will not be a problem. We should be concerned about the ghost of the Eighth Session affecting our ranks.’22 Stambolic had left public life for good. But lately he had been considering a return. The veteran Times correspondent Dessa Trevisan had lunched with Stambolic in 1999. ‘Stambolic asked me my opinion. I said “No, because you are the one who brought Milosevic into politics.”’23
According to Dusan Mitevic, American officials wanted Stambolic to stand in the Yugoslav presidential elections. He remained a popular figure, and could have split the Socialist vote. ‘Stambolic felt that Milosevic had betrayed him. He had been sidelined for thirteen years and he wanted to become active again. The Americans did not think Stambolic would win, just get ten to twelve per cent. But that would come from Milosevic’s vote and so Milosevic would not be able to make a coalition.’24
Stambolic travelled to Montenegro at a time when the republic’s pro-western leaders were in close contact with the United States. He told Montenegrin television, ‘At the end he [Milosevic] must be destroyed, most people are against him and they will get him. He will never go in peace.’25 On 25 August Milosevic’s former kum went for his usual jog. While resting on a park bench he was bundled into a white van, according to eye witnesses.
Stambolic was never seen again, and his remains have never been found. No details of the kidnapping have ever leaked out, leading many to believe that the regime, rather than the mafia, was responsible.
An unassuming law lecturer called Vojislav Kostunica presented a more dangerous political threat. Under pressure from the United States, most of Serbia’s fractious opposition united around Kostunica as the candidate for the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). Kostunica had been sacked from Belgrade University for criticising the 1974 constitution that made Kosovo and Voivodina virtual republics. He was a Serbian nationalist, but a moderate, and he was also seen as uncorrupted. He was certainly no fan of Montgomery’s Budapest operation. ‘I call this affair with the office in Budapest the kiss of death . . . It really is counterproductive. Directly, we can get nothing out of forming that office.’26 Conservative, law-abiding Kostunica did not like Otpor, and the feeling was mutual. But everyone focused on the primary objective: Gotov je (He is finished).
By 2.00 a.m. on 25 September, the DOS election monitoring operation announced that Kostunica had won 52 per cent of the vote, while Milosevic took 35 per cent. This was enough to bring Kostunica victory in the first round. He declared: ‘Dawn is coming to Serbia.’ Milosevic thought otherwise. According to Serbian press reports, he grabbed his fellow indictee Nikola Sainovic by his moustache and demanded that he fix the results.27 The regime then announced that Milosevic had gained 38.6 per cent of the vote, and Kostunica 48.96 – enough to stop Kostunica winning on the first round. A second round was planned for 8 October. Milosevic’s plan was probably to cancel the second round, blaming outside interference in the election, and move to all-out dictatorship.
In Moscow, Milosevic’s defeat sent Russia into a ‘state of advanced panic,’ according to a senior British diplomat. Not to mention at the Yugoslav embassy where Borislav Milosevic represented his brother’s regime. ‘The Russians thought that Milosevic would win. Their whole position crashed down around their ears. Russia made a strategic misjudgement. The Russians had penetrated the Serbian establishment so effectively that they had lost contact with ordinary people. They completely underestimated the effect of the training, and of email. The Serbian opposition said they had never met a Russian diplomat.’28
Patriarch Pavle, the nation’s spiritual father, helped save the day for DOS. He greeted Kostunica as the president of the country, saying he should take power in a ‘dignified manner’. Even the paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj called for Milosevic to step down. On 2 October Milosevic gave a televised speech to the nation claiming that a DOS victory in the second round would boost crime and poverty. Serbs asked themselves where he had been living over the last decade. Milosevic then met with army chief of staff, General Pavkovic, and intelligence chief, Rade Markovic. They had bad news. Substantial numbers within both the police and the army were moving over to the opposition. Mira became hysterical and had to be given a tranquilliser injection, while Milosevic, according to one report, ‘looked like he was going to die’.29
The endgame began. A wave of strikes swept through Serbia, demanding Kostunica’s victory be recognised. At the Kolubara mine, 7,000 pitmen downed tools. Kolubara supplied the coal that kept Belgrade and northern Serbia lit and heated. Schools, shops and businesses locked their doors. The meteorological institute stopped its forecast. Newspapers printed a statement that forecasts would resume when the election result was recognised. As rumours swept through Belgrade that the regime had a death list of opposition figures, Otpor and DOS leaders began to sleep away from home, and wear bullet-proof jackets.
The day and time was set when Serbia would demand that Milosevic step down: 3.00 p.m. on 5 October. But would the response mechanisms be blocked? On 4 October Zoran Djindjic met with Milorad Lukovic (also known as Legija), a commander of Milosevic’s feared praetorian guard: the security service’s Special Operations Unit (JSO). JSO fighters were trained in low-intensity urban warfare. They were accused of committing atrocities in the Yugoslav wars, and they were the revolution’s greatest threat.
Legija had already told Djindjic that his men would not intervene in the first round of the elections. But now? The two men rode around Belgrade in an armoured jeep. The orders he had received were ‘extreme’, said Legija. ‘It’s going to be a mess.’ Djindjic asked what the opposition should do. ‘Don’t fire at the police. Don’t charge the barracks.’ The deal was done. Djindjic said later that the JSO had been his greatest fear: ‘When he told me that as far as they were concerned there would not be any intervention it was a load off my mind.’30
In the early hours of 5 October Vladimir Ilic led ten thousand people out of Cacak. The convoy of 230 trucks, 52 buses and hundreds of cars was twenty-two kilometres long. ‘Revolution or death,’ they shouted as they drove the ninety miles north to the capital. Hidden under tarpaulins were the shock troops of DOS, armed with Kalashnikovs, pistols, rocket-propelled grenades and even mortars. A building worker called Ljubislav Djokic drove his bulldozer. At the last moment, he took a passenger in his cab, a seventy-two-year-old baker called Milan Vatic. This unlikely pair would be the heroes of the day.
As the Cacak convoy surged north, four other convoys also trundled towards the capital. Police barricades on the roads were simply barged aside. The police did not resist. The orders of interior minister Vlajko Stojilkovic to use anti-tank grenades and automatic weapons were ignored. The sixth column, the residents of Belgrade, were already in place. Through the morning, a crowd assembled in front of the federal parliament building, cheering and chanting. The first wave attacked at noon, but they moved too soon, and the police beat them back with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The hard men then fell back and regrouped behind an armoured door at a DOS office in downtown Belgrade. Braca Grubacic published his VIP newsletter from rooms on the floor above. Gunmen guarded the building’s entrance and crowded the staircases. The street fighters used VIP’s bathroom to wash off the tear gas. Grubacic recalled:
At the beginning it was touch and go. One of the high-ranking opposition leaders said to me, ‘Braca, they dispersed us, it is finished.’ There were people wearing flak jackets and carrying baseball bats. Not gangsters exactly, but people who like to fight. Then someone told me, ‘Braca, the decision is taken. We are going until the end.’ So they went to the parliament, and then it started.
By 3.30 p.m. hundreds of thousands had gathered in front of the federal parliament. The thin lines of riot police looked nervous. When protesters slapped giant stickers proclaiming ‘Gotov je’ on their riot shields, the police stood by. Milosevic had ridden to power on crowds. But this was Canetti’s reversal crowd: ——the rebels are always driven to act by the stings they carry within them; and it always takes a long time before they can do so’.31
It had taken ten years. Perched in the cabin of the bulldozer, now festooned with Otpor stickers and posters, Djokic the builder and Vatic the septuagenarian baker, vanguard of the revolution, led the charge. ‘Fuck those bastards,’ shouted Djokic. ‘Put your foot down!’ yelled Vatic.32 The bulldozer rumbled forward, crushing the parliament’s concrete flower boxes. Djokic raised the great shovel and brought it down on the windows. Glass flew in every direction. The police fired canisters of tear gas and a fusillade of rubber bullets. Protesters began to cough and vomit. Some wore home-made masks of wet cotton and plastic film. They picked up the smoking canisters and hurled them back through the air at the police.
A choking cloud covered downtown Belgrade. Smoke poured from burning police vehicles. Paint blistered and popped. Molotov cocktails rained down on the parliament building, and flames began to spread. Canetti had written: ‘if many men find themselves together in a crowd, they may jointly succeed in what was denied them singly; together they can turn on those who, until now, have given them orders’. The sound and fury of revolution: a proud sea of flags; the acrid smell of tear gas and burning rubber; the clarion call of trumpeters blaring out Chetnik marching songs. That magical alchemy had been achieved, when adrenalin overrides fear, when the exhilaration of liberation makes men something more. They clenched their fists, they held hands, they shouted and they charged. A great unstoppable, human tide surged forward. This time, they were going to the end. Gotov je!
The police fled, many handing over their gas masks and weapons to the revolutionaries. Milosevic, and the rest of the world, watched his regime go down in flames live on television. As parliament burned, he called the interior minister Stojilkovic and army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, demanding the uprising be crushed. True to form, he did not bother consulting his ministers. No crisis cabinet was summoned, no urgent conference calls made. Armoured vehicles were sent to Dedinje to protect Milosevic’s house but none moved to protect his government. General Pavkovic was a Milosevic loyalist. But he knew many army officers would not follow orders to fire on the people. ‘Ultimately even Pavkovic understood that there are certain limits in this kind of scenario. If you have a million people on the streets, all over Belgrade and Serbia, then the army cannot do anything. There is a threshold, a critical mass,’ said Braca Grubacic.
In addition, the army and police lacked sufficient available manpower to crush the uprising. This is curious as by this time Milosevic was running a virtual police state. His security services must have known what was being prepared. But government buildings were protected by only a thin line of police, many of whom had been brought in from the provinces. The highly-trained state paramilitary forces remained in their barracks. Dusan Mitevic said: ‘Milosevic was betrayed, by the police, by the intelligence services and by the general staff.’33 Cacak mayor Vladimir Ilic later claimed that senior police officers were feeding him information. ‘We saw every order coming from the interior ministry. We knew what they were planning. We saw their faxes.’34
As parliament burned, the crowd swarmed through. Boxes of ballot papers were tipped out of the window, fluttering down in the breeze. Bottles of vodka and brandy were passed round. One man helped himself to an armchair. Djokic reversed out, and drove his bulldozer towards Belgrade Television. Back in the street protests of 1991, when the opposition leader Vuk Draskovic had dubbed the station ‘TV Bastille’ the name had stuck. Like the prison in Paris thrown open in 1789, Belgrade Television was the regime’s symbol of power.
It took Djokic four attempts to ram his way into ‘TV Bastille’. Bullets and CS gas canisters bounced off his cabin. Two bullets punched holes in the windscreen, narrowly missing him. As he finally crashed through the lobby the police fled. Hundreds poured in behind him, setting light to the building. The remaining police inside reassured the by now terrified journalists that the army was on the way. They were not. Belgrade Television’s director Dragoljub Milanovic was severely beaten, as were other male journalists. Women were abused and spat on. The newsreader Ljilja Jovanovic was called ‘Milosevic’s whore’.
The JSO were ordered to the television station. On the way, their vehicles were hit twenty-nine times by bullets. An elderly man shooting from behind a rubbish container loosed off nine rounds, although no fire was returned.
The JSO pulled up. Behind the bullet-proof window of his armoured vehicle, Legija surveyed the scene.
The crowd held its breath.
Legija gave the order.
His troops gave the Serb three-fingered salute and then drove back to base.
The crowd roared, cheers fuelled by profound relief.
Belgrade police commanders told their men to fall back. ‘Gotov je,’ they said.
And he was.