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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 October 2000 Issue No. 503 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 October 2000 Issue No. 503
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Palestine International Economy Opinion Culture Books Interview Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Even the mighty fall
By Ervin Hladnik-Milharcic
Dictators don't resign. They don't retire either. And they certainly don't go on national television, congratulate their successor for the electoral victory and thank their people for not voting for them, because now they will have more time to spend with their wives, children and grandchildren. This just isn't how dictatorship works.
When the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic threw in the towel Friday and graciously bid adieu, he was painted as a ruthless dictator who was forced to resign after 13 years of iron-fisted rule under the pressure of three days of bloodless demonstrations. The scenes from Belgrade were compared to the uprising in Romania 10 years before, when Nicolae Ceauscescu was arrested by his own state security police and shot dead. The comparison doesn't do justice to the man. Milosevic was undoubtedly a harsh politician, an indicted war criminal and a despicable character. He ignited war in Yugoslavia, was responsible for the decimation of dozens of cities in Croatia and Bosnia and nearly succeeded in the eliminating the aspirations for independence of the Kosovo Albanians. But Milosevic, whose soldiers and militias killed 300,000 civilians, was no ordinary dictator.
The difficult truth of Milosevic's strength as a political figure -- what for a decade could make fools of two American presidents and an interminable procession of international negotiators -- is that he was elected to do the job. When it was clear last week that he had lost the elections, Bill Clinton advised him to leave office, or "he will lose the last remains of his legitimacy." Even in his downfall, the Americans, who orchestrated the 1999 NATO strikes against Serbia, couldn't forget that since 1989 they have dealt with Milosevic as a legitimate representative of the Serbs. The European Union was even less prepared to question his legitimacy and the Russians acknowledged it even when it was gone for good.
The faces of revolution: (left) two boys hold up stickers reading: "Closed because of fraud"in Belgrade. Behind them, the sign reads: "People have chosen - Vojislav Kostunica"; newly-elected President Kostunica addresses miners in a Kolubara coal mine demanding the recognition of his victory in the polls
photos: AP/Reuters
Milosevic was first elected president of Serbia by free and fair elections in a 1989 landslide victory. One year later he was re-elected and stayed in power for ten years. His methods were questionable and his political philosophy was destructive. For years Milosevic was despised by respectable national leaders, but nobody dared question the loyalty of his electorate or the legitimacy of his mandate.
Milosevic's career started with an insignificant provincial political takeover. In 1986, when Yugoslavia was still under the rule of Josip Tito's fragmented Communist party, he took control of the Serbian regional communist organisation. Yugoslav communism was a dying ideology and a moribund power apparatus, but Milosevic used the rising force of nationalism to inject new life in it. In two years he forged the communist hammer and sickle into a nationalist large-calibre field gun. He used Kosovo as the perfect tool. In Serbian mythology the province is the cradle of their orthodox church, the sacred land from where they originate. Kosovo's two million Albanians were the majority in the province, but a minority in Serbia. The province had limited autonomy, with Albanians controlling local institutions.
The Serbs were unhappy with this situation; they had openly racist feelings toward the Albanians and Milosevic rode the wave of this negative sentiment. In 1989 he was ready and formulated his programme on a battlefield 600 years old, addressing a million Serbs in a historical rally. The Serbs were the majority in Yugoslavia, but they lived in different national federal republics; strong Serb minorities existed in the republics of Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and in two administrative regions, Vojvodina, which was populated mostly by ethnic Hungarians, and Kosovo. Milosevic promised his nation "that all the Serbs will live in one state." He also promised that he will protect this idea "with force if necessary." This simple programme started a 10-year-long war.
The various Yugoslav nations heard the message. To the Slovenians, Croats, Bosnians, Albanians and Macedonians, they would either have to live in a unitary state controlled by the Serbs or go their separate ways. One by one they decided to leave the federation. Slovenia was the first to go. It didn't have a Serb minority and the matter was settled in a week of low-level military confrontations. Croatia followed and quickly paid the price. One-third of the country was occupied by Serb forces using the arsenal of the Yugoslav armed forces seized by Milosevic. Two years later half of Bosnia was devastated and the other half occupied. Macedonia left unscratched, but Vojvodina had been neutralised and Kosovo was under direct military occupation.
By 1992 more or less all the Serbs lived in one state. It was a state at war, economically ruined and politically isolated, but it stretched from the border with Slovenia in the north, across eastern Croatia, through Bosnia down to the border with Greece. The territory was littered with mass graves and ruled by war criminals, but it was homogenous and what mattered most -- ethnically clean.
In 1994 I travelled from Sarajevo to Belgrade and it looked like Serbia had won the war. One year before Milosevic had won another election. He had no political opposition worth the name, and even the existing opposition never really questioned his programme. I asked a dying Milovan Djilas, once the president of the first Yugoslav parliament and later one the last dissidents under Tito's reign, what kind of a ruler Milosevic was. He was cautious: "Milosevic is the most capable politician in Serbia." He was careful with definitions and rejected my suggestion that fascist might be a legitimate term. "There is no mechanical equation between the tradition of European fascism and Serbian nationalism," he said. "Fascism is a homogenous ideology, a disciplined organisation, a clear political and social programme. What we have here is autocracy. But don't forget that Milosevic has the largest popular support in the country." In Belgrade you could find people who were dissatisfied with the man, but nobody questioned his right to rule Bosnia, Croatia or Kosovo. In the countryside, there were even less doubts about the leader.
The support started to crumble in 1995, when Croatia reconquered its eastern territories. Later, the massacre of 8,000 civilians in Srebrenica and the Western military intervention in Bosnia forced Milosevic to sign the Dayton Peace Accord, which left the Bosnian Serbs at least nominally out of his country.
He was dubbed a "peacemaker" by the international community, but at home he lost his winning aura. He had to rig the local elections in 1996, and for the first time there were massive demonstrations against his rule. They were colourful but ineffective and still an expression of a minority of Serbs -- but a growing minority. Montenegro, which stood by him in victory, deserted him in defeat. His one-time partner Milo Djukanovic turned against him, won the regional elections and started conducting separate politics.
With two important wars lost in one year, Milosevic had to stiffen his control of the apparatus, play the various opposition parties against one another and reopen the Kosovo file. Kosovo was the emotional trigger of his career, and by escalating the repression he provoked the Albanian rebellion. The support grew, but in March 1999 NATO started air raids against his forces. After three months of bombardment, he capitulated. The game was lost.
The Serbs lived in a country of sorts, but the map of Greater Serbia drawn by Milosevic in 1998 had shrunk to less than what it was in Tito's Yugoslavia. Montenegro, the last of the old Yugoslav republics still in the federation, had taken a fancy to independence. He lost the war and he lost his constituency. He also miscalculated. Milosevic obviously figured that with 30 per cent of popular support, he could still win the vote. But when he went ahead and called new elections ahead of schedule, he dug his own tomb.
After a clear electoral defeat Milosevic was faced for the first time in his career with becoming a dictator who rules only with the power of the police and military behind him. But the loyalty of his forces had the same roots as the support of his voters; they were fighting for an idea of a state that was defeated. A tired, impoverished and disillusioned nation rejected the man who promised so much, was given all the support and irreversibly lost the war. To the surprise of everybody Milosevic retired. He has run out of options.
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