Two Days Till Peace: A Sarajevo Airport Story

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Look Back At History

Foreword

The Fuel

Gucevo

‘In Hiding’

Jna At The Airport

We Open The Airport

Mackenzie

Local Communities

Jews Are Leaving

Hunting Starts

The Street Killer

Foreigners Are Leaving, Sarajevans Are Leaving

The Agreement On The Police Station

Diversion, Biljana Plavsic

Fikret Abdic

The Americans

The First Humanitarian Aid

The Us Will Not Intervene

Kukanjac

The Attack On Ilidza

New Attacks

The Conference

Kouchner

Cadets Are Leaving

Muslims Want The Airport

Izetbegovic Must Go To Lisbon

The Airplane From Graz

The Second Attack On The Airport

Magazin

The Titanic Travelers

The Telephone

The Resignation

No More Flights

The Plan For Reopening The Airport

Atc – The Serbians Are Leaving

The Engineers

The Robbery

I Am Leaving Too

Belgrade

Epilogue

In Retrospect

Attachments

Gen. Mackenzie Report – Sarajevo Update

Review Of Professor Nenad Kecmanovic

About The Author

To my parents Jovan and Dragica,

sister Mira and uncle Milovan.

Acknowledgments

This book could have remained unwritten if it were not for Boris Popovic, the former technical editor of RTV Sarajevo, now a refugee, my neighbor and friend in Toronto, who, one day in the fall of 1994, gave me a small floppy disk containing Quill, the simplest text-editing program. He told me I could put the floppy into any computer anywhere and use it to write my book: I needed nothing else. At the same time I got a clear idea about the structure of the book, and all my memories, still vivid and fresh and supported by the notes from my diary, poured out in a flood.

A year later, when I finished writing, I met Fahrija Causevic, now Urosevic, my teacher of Serbo-Croatian language from the elementary school in Rogatica, Bosnia. We had not seen each other for over 30 years. She was now living in Belgrade, and had come to Toronto to visit her son. She took my manuscript back to Yugoslavia, and spent the whole summer with it (even bringing it on vacation with her) and when I got the text back there were comments or grammar corrections on almost every page, marked in red. When I implemented them my manuscript became this book.

Thanks to Ferka and Pop.

Thanks to Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie for his report to the UN and a picture with Syrus Vance, to US Colonel Gene Whisnant for his picture of American planes bringing humanitarian aid to Sarajevo, to Leo Levi for the pictures of the first group of Jews leaving Sarajevo, and to Lieutenant Colonel Slobodan Stankovic from Rajlovac Air Base for a video made at Sarajevo Airport, from which I extracted several photos of then-current events.

To Professor Dr. Nenad Kecmanovic I owe thanks for his review and suggestions.

I always wondered what happened to those who left Sarajevo from the airport, and about those who came to the airport but couldn’t board a plane, where the former ones went, and if they made it there. What happened to those who had to return from the airport to the city and then spent three and half years in a besieged city? As an apology for the suffering they went through during the war, I want to tell them that we at the airport did everything in our power to provide as many flights as possible. My thanks in advance to anyone who decides to write me a note (mile@dvadanadomira.com). I will be very glad to hear from them.

For this English edition of the book I have a few words to add.

First, I would like to thank to Zlatko Maksimovic for translating a great part of the book into English, and then to a few relatives and friends who helped translate the rest. As written, the text had to be verified patiently and persistently and often fixed. That has been done by a fine man, Professor Joseph Griffin of the University of Ottawa and now, thanks to him, we have this book.

Second, I have done some modifications to make the book easier to read. I’ve removed several names, eliminated some abbreviations, and changed the names of some of the institutions of the Yugoslav political system. I’ve also found it unnecessary to keep the full text of my plan for deblocking the Airport and I have removed it from the annexes.

Third, at the beginning of the book I have added a new chapter to provide English readers with a historical and economical context of events. I’ve also added maps of Sarajevo and the Balkans, made by Ivica Horvat of Ottawa, to help them get a sense of the setting. And finally, I’ve added some new information about the breadline massacre that happened in Sarajevo in May 1992, and some comments on W. Zimmermann’s book about events in Yugoslavia.

A Look Back at History

With reference to recent wars in former Yugoslavia, it has been said in the media many times over that Serbs, Croats and Muslims have fought each other for centuries or for their entire history, and it was not a big surprise that they did it again in the ‘90s.

Well, I knew it was not true because I learned it elementary school! In Yugoslavia we learned that the conflicts among our peoples started at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the other hand, I remembered a somewhat strange observation that came some forty years ago from a renowned Croat and Yugoslav writer, Miroslav Krleza. Referring to our recent history he said that the wars we had showed that the western and eastern Roman Empire were still fighting each other! Now, as an adult and writing this book, I asked myself whether I missed something that I should know. To check it, I made a quick trip into our history and this is what I found.

Far back in time, some two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire ruled all lands around the Mediterranean Sea. That huge empire was hard to rule and in 395 the Roman emperor Theodosius split it in two and set his two sons to rule the parts. The capital of the western part of the empire remained Rome, and the city of Byzantium was selected as the capital of the eastern part. Byzantium was located on the Bosphorus where the Black Sea touches the Mediterranean, and where Europe touches Asia. (Later the name of the city would change to Constantinople to honor the first Christian emperor, Constantine.) Once split, the separated parts became rivals and started fighting each other for supremacy. The church also split arguing about irrational religious issues and liturgy. Gradually, the popes of Rome and the patriarchs of Constantinople would become adversaries and enemies.

What is important for our story is the fact that the line of separation went through the middle of the Balkans, following the Drina River.

The Western Roman Empire was conquered by barbarian invaders and ceased to exist in 476 with the fall of Rome. The Eastern Roman Empire, known as Byzantine, lasted another thousand years.

Fleeing the terror of Asiatic tribes, in the fifth century, huge masses of Slavs left their homeland between the Baltic and the Black Sea and moved to central and southern Europe. Two hundred years later they flooded the Balkans crossing the Sava and Danube Rivers, the northern borders of the peninsula. At that time the entire Balkans was part of the Byzantine Empire. The Empire had colonies and strong cities in the coastal regions of the peninsula. The interior was less populated due to mountains and deep forests, and the newcomers settled those areas and swallowed up the local population. They were good farmers and cattle breeders and would clear forests to get more arable land and pastures. In the seventh century, following the Slavs, the Hungarians, a vital Asiatic tribe, settled the plains north of the Danube River, and another Asiatic tribe, the Bulgars, conquered the newly settled Slavs in the eastern part of the Balkans.

Suddenly, the Slavs had become the most numerous people in the Balkans. Byzantine rulers tried to remedy this situation, waging two important campaigns against the Slavs, capturing and resettling hundreds of thousands of them to Asia Minor. However, this had little relevance.

The Byzantine Empire was Christian Orthodox, in permanent conflict with the Catholic popes in Rome. The newcomers to the Balkans were pagans. Not being able to defeat the Slavs, the Byzantines looked for a way to influence them and decided to evangelize them. A crucial role in that process was played by Cyril and Methodius from Thessaloniki (today’s Greece) and their disciples. In the ninth and tenth century they Christianized not only the Slavs in the Balkans but also the Slavs in central and eastern Europe. Cyril invented an alphabet and translated gospels and liturgical texts especially for the Slavs. This is how the Serbs adopted the "Greek faith[1]. About the same time, missionaries from Rome baptized Slavic tribes in the northwest part of the Balkans. That is when the Croats adopted the Roman faith." This difference in religion was a seed for future discord between Serbs and Croats.

The Southern Slavs lived in huge tribes and had their own leaders. In 925 the Croats had their first king, Tomislav. He ruled northern Dalmatia[2] and parts of the plains around the Sava River. The Croat kingdom lasted almost 200 years. Most of the time it had to fight Germanic tribes, but it was finally defeated by the Hungarians in 1102.

The Serbs had a number of principalities since the beginning of the ninth century in today’s Kosovo, Serbia, southern Dalmatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They got their first king in 1217, Stefan The First-Crowned, who united all these principalities. He was the first Serbian ruler to be proclaimed king by a Roman pope. The Serb kingdom also lasted some 200 years. During that time Serbs had several powerful kings who expanded the kingdom to today’s Macedonia. Serbia was pretty rich having several gold and silver mines. Many monasteries were built in that period. In the fourteenth century, the Serb ruler Dusan The Mighty, fighting Byzantine, conquered half of the Balkan Peninsula, became tsar in 1346, and created the Serbian Empire that outspread from southern Dalmatia on the west to the Peloponnese and Tracie (northern Greece) on the south. All these territories were mainly populated by Slavs. With the establishment of the Empire, the Serbian Church became independent from the Constantinople Patriarchy. The Serb Patriarchy was located in Pec, Kosovo, and is still there.

Bosnia occupies mountainous areas between Dalmatia and Serbia. Its eastern border with Serbia follows the Drina River. From the ninth to the fourteenth century Bosnia was first a Serbian feudal state, and then it was ruled by the Hungarians. However, from 1377 until 1463 it was an independent kingdom and quite powerful. In those times Bosnia had its own church.

The Bosnian Church was Bogomil, a Christian sect which opposed some official religious teachings. The Bogomils were considered heretics by the Orthodox and Catholic churches and both churches, particularly Rome, sought to bring them back to the true religion or to destroy them.

All the successes the Serbs had then were possible because the Byzantines were in decline for some time. Their fall had begun in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. The Crusaders, supported by the pope in Rome, conquered large parts of the Byzantine and sacked Constantinople, then probably the richest city in the world.

The fourteenth century was the time of the rise of a new powerful empire in Asia Minor, the Ottoman Empire. It conquered vast Byzantine territories in Asia and broke into the Balkans. The Bulgars stopped them for a while, but the Turks returned with a large army. Then the Serbs tried to stop them. The decisive battle took place at Kosovo Field in 1389. Thousands were killed in the battle, including both rulers the Serbian ‘tsar’ Lazar and the Turkish sultan Murat, but the Serbs essentially lost it. The Turks left and returned some sixty years later with an even larger army. This time they conquered Bulgaria, remaining pieces of the Byzantine Empire, and finally Constantinople in 1453. The Eastern Roman empire ceased to exist. In the coming thirty years the Turks will conquer Serbia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina (a Serb principality), and defeat the Hungarians and Croats. The whole of the Balkans was in their hands except Dalmatia and Montenegro.

Let me stop here for a minute to make a point.

Since their arrival to the Balkans in the sixth century, until the fall of the Croat kingdom to Hungarians and the Serbian and Bosnian kingdoms to the Ottoman Turks at the end of the fifteenth century, there were no wars between Serbs and Croats. That is a span of 900 years.

During the following 500 years Serbia and Bosnia were under the rule of the Ottoman Turks, Croatia (the Sava River region) was under the rule of the Hungarians, and Dalmatia under the rule of the Austrians.

During these 500 years Bosnia suffered a great deal and underwent great change. Over one hundred thousand of people were taken as slaves and resettled. The nobility converted to Islam and continued to rule over their lands. Those who didn’t convert lost their lands to Turkish military figures. The Turks played the politics of sticks and carrots with infidels. They didn’t force Christians to convert to Islam, but they gave big privileges to those who did. For instance, Muslims had to go to the army but didn’t have to pay taxes in things (crops, cattle), didn’t have to do hard work for local rulers (mohel), and didn’t have to give their young boys into janissaries[3] and girls to harems (tax in blood). Christians had to do all these things, and the tax in blood was the worst of all taxes. The local rulers and landlords (agas, beys) had all powers and would often extort more of everything by exercising brutal force. To avoid this calamity many Serbs moved to Dalmatia, Croatia and Hungary. Austrian and Hungarian rulers settled them along the borders with Bosnia and armed them to defend the borders from the Turks. This area got the name Krajina (borderland). Gradually, over the centuries, many Christians in Bosnia and almost all of the Bogomils converted to Islam. These converts would become a distinct Slav group, the Bosnian Muslims. However, the majority of Christians kept their faith, suffered oppression, and hoped for better times. The hopes of the Croats were directed to the Vatican, and the Serbs dreamt about the freedom they once had and lost at the Kosovo Field. On the other hand, the Bosnian Muslims hoped the Ottoman Empire would last forever. In the middle of this period some Jews began arriving from Greece, after being expelled from Spain. They brought a longing for Spain and dreams about distant Jerusalem. Thus, Bosnia became a land of unhappy people.

One good thing about the Ottoman Empire should be mentioned. During the five hundred years of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the rest of Europe was caught up in long and bloody religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, and Inquisition. Millions of people were killed. There was nothing of this in the Ottoman Empire. In a sense the Ottoman Empire protected Christen Slavs from the religious madness and evil happenings in the neighborhood.

But not for long!

In the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire was weakening and failing. In 1867 Austria and Hungary united in a Dual Monarchy ruled from the court in Vienna. Serbia got independence from the Turks in 1869 after two uprisings and became a kingdom. Montenegro, a small Christian Orthodox principality located in the southern mountains of Dalmatia, and never conquered by the Turks, became a kingdom in 1878. Croats remained under the rule of the Hungarians but had much autonomy. Located between all of them, Bosnia and Herzegovina were still parts of the Ottoman Empire. In 1875 a large uprising of Serbs broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbs wanted to get rid of the Turks and join free Serbia and Montenegro. The uprising was suppressed by the Turkish army in a bloodbath. Around 150,000 were killed (14% of the entire population), most of them Serbs. Europe had to intervene. At the Berlin Congress in 1878, the great European powers got the Ottomans to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina and, instead of giving it independence or letting it join Serbia and Montenegro, Otto Bismarck of Germany pushed for Austria to occupy and administer it. It was a historic scandal that shocked Europe[4]! The consequences of this decision would be catastrophic for the Slavs in the Balkans and for the whole of Europe.

So here we are at the end of the nineteenth century and all I learned in elementary school was right!

Austro-Hungarian troops moved into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian Croats welcomed the new rulers, being of the same religion, but Serbs and Muslims confronted them with arms. In vain. During its rule Austro-Hungary favored Croats, did nothing to change the privileged status of Muslims, and left Serbs in a position of serfdom, a status they had had under the Turks for centuries. Austria started building military barracks,[5] railroads, and westernizing Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1879 there was a census that showed that there were 1.16 million inhabitants in Bosnia and Herzegovina: 43% were Serbs, 39% Muslims, 18% Croats.

In 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and almost provoked a war with Serbia. In 1912 the Balkan states (Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria) waged a war against the Ottomans and liberated the entire Balkan leaving only Constantinople (Istanbul) and its area to the Turks.

Then in Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914, a young Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, killed Franz Ferdinand, the archduke and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and, accidently, his wife Sofia, during their official visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Dual Monarchy accused Serbia of being behind this attempt and declared war on Serbia. Russia immediately declared war on Austro-Hungary, Germany declared war on Russia, France declared war on Germany, etc. Europe was in flames. It was the bloody Great War that lasted until 1918 and took over 20 million lives.

In Bosnia, during the war, the Dual Monarchy first mobilized Serb men and sent them to fight the Russians[6]. Fifty thousand Serbs were sent to concentration camps. Then they formed special units of Croats and Muslims, called Schutz Corps, and tasked them to punish Serbs for the death of the Archduke. Serb civilians, who were unprotected, suffered horrible losses. In 1914 Austrian troops tried to cross the Drina River but were beaten back by the Serbian army. In 1915 Austrian armies broke into Serbia from the north, crossing the Sava River; the Serbian king with his army retreated to Greece, leaving the civilian population at the mercy of the Austrian troops and the Schutz Corps. What they did was genocide. They killed over a million civilians, one third of the entire population, and torched to the ground many towns and villages. However, in 1917-1918, the Serbian army, helped with France, came back and liberated Serbia, Vojvodina (north of the Danube River), Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Croatia and Slovenia. The Entanta[7] won the Great War in 1918. The end of the war represented the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the death of the Ottoman Empire.

Let me stop here for a moment to make a point:

During the Great War Austria turned Croats and Muslims against Serbs. This was the first time in our history that these three fraternal people fought each other.

At the Peace Conference in Paris, in 1818, on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire several new states were created, among them the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Serbian King Petar Karadjordjevic, The Liberator, became the ruler of the new country. Soon his son Aleksandar took over the throne and renamed the country to Kingdom of Yugoslavia[8]. The creation of Yugoslavia was a dream come true for millions of Southern Slavs, particularly Serbs, the strongest and most numerous among them. Many Croats and Slovenes who were inspired with ideas of pan-Slavism were happy with Yugoslavia too.

However, things didn’t go smoothly in the new country. The cultural and historical differences between Serbs, Croats and Slovenes that developed over the time they had lived in two different empires were too much to handle. Despite enjoying democracy a majority of Croats and Slovenes didn’t feel Yugoslavia to be their own state; they felt rather that they had been conquered by new rulers – the Serbs. In Macedonia there were people who would have preferred to be part of Bulgaria, not Yugoslavia. As a consequence some of them took up the arms against the new country.

Two terrorist organizations were formed in then-fascist Italy: Croat Ustashas, and the Macedonian VMRO. Both organizations plotted and managed to kill King Aleksandar of Yugoslavia in Marseille in 1934 during his official visit to France. After the king’s death Yugoslavia became very instable politically; a prominent Croat leader was even killed in the Yugoslav parliament in Belgrade.

Then came 1939 and Europe was in flames again; this time Hitler’s Germany was on the march! Hitler annexed Austria, then crushed the whole of central and western Europe. Hungary and Bulgaria took his side.

Yugoslavia, which suffered a great deal during the World War I tried to stay apart from the conflict. Hitler offered neutral status to Yugoslavia, asking only for free passage of his troops between Germany and Greece, where England had its bases. The Regent of Yugoslavia, who ruled in place of a teenage son of King Aleksandar, accepted the offer in March 1941. Proud Serbs and antifascists revolted all over Yugoslavia. In the revolt a group of Air Force officers, propped up by the British Secret Service, enacted a coup d’etat in Belgrade. They removed the Regent, declared the teenage Peter Karadjordjevic king (he was 17), and nixed the pact with Hitler. Hitler was furious and reacted immediately. On April 6, 19941 German Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade. Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria attacked Yugoslavia from all sides and its army capitulated in two weeks. A large part of the Yugoslav Army surrendered to Germans, but the majority of soldiers and officers, particularly Serbs, fled into the woods[9]. The young King of Yugoslavia and his government fled to the British in London. They would never return!

Hitler didn’t wait a minute to dismember Yugoslavia, hoping it would once and for all disappear. Each of the invaders took some parts of Yugoslavia[10]. From what remained Hitler created a small quisling Serbia, and by joining Croatia and Bosnia he created the Independent State of Croatia.

During World War II a horrible civil war took place in Bosnia. The power of the Independent State of Croatia was given to the Ustashas who came from Italy along with the occupiers. Their goal was very simple, to rid the Independent State of Croatia of Orthodox Serbs. One third of Serbs had to be killed, one third had to be converted to Catholicism, and one third of these vermin had to be pushed over the Drina River[11]! The new Ustasha regime immediately passed a law declaring Croats and Muslims to be of the Aryan race and outlawed Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies and began exterminating them. Three concentration camps were built for that purpose in Jasenovac, Djakovo[12], and Zemun. Many Muslims joined the Ustashas to help them realize their goal.

The Serbs in Krajina and Bosnia rebelled.

The four-year war in Bosnia was fought between German troops, Ustashas, and the regular army of the Independent State of Croatia called home defenders on one side, and two predominantly Serb resistance movements on the other. The German troops were supported by two Nazi divisions formed from local people: the Handzar (Dagger) Division made up of Muslims and the Prinz Eugen Division made up of ethnic Germans from Vojvodina, Hungary, and Romania[13]. During the war, the infamous black-shirted Ustashas, like the Schutz-Corps before them, committed enormous mass crimes against Serbs, often with unimaginable cruelty. German generals were appalled and asked Hitler to stop them[14]. He did nothing. The two resistance movements were Partisans (communists) and Chetniks (royalists), mutually adverse. The Chetniks were idle for most of the war, fighting only Partisans, sometimes openly cooperating with the occupiers. In Eastern Bosnia, vindicating Serb victims, the Chetniks killed thousands of Muslim civilians. At the end of the war the Allies helped the Partisans, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito, to win. Some 1.7 million people were killed in the whole of Yugoslavia, including 700,000 in Jasenovac alone[15]. Of the people living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbs perished in the largest numbers, then the Muslims, and then the Croats. The leaders of the Independent State of Croatia managed to escape justice and with the help of the Vatican settled in Franco’s Spain and in Latin America.

Let me stop for a moment to make this point:

During WW II Nazi Germany turned Croats and Muslims against Serbs for the second time in our history, only 23 years after Austria had done the same during WW I.

And one more point:

In both world wars the Serbs fought on the side of the Allies. The Serbs fought for their freedom and the victory of the Allies. They succeeded in both but paid a horrible price: a nation of eight million lost two million people.

In a referendum after the war, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was replaced by a federal republic, and the Karadjordjevic royal family was forbidden to return to the country.

New Yugoslavia was led by Marshal Tito. He became famous worldwide by being the only guerilla leader in Europe who liberated his country. He won the war because he managed to mobilize millions of people, the majority of them being Serbs, into a broad struggle for liberation, saying that our peoples are brothers, and that they should all unite to liberate the country, and build a more just Yugoslavia.

The crucial problem for every multi-national country is to define rights of each people. Yugoslavia had five of them: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, and Macedonians[16]. So Tito defined Yugoslavia as a federation created by these peoples. Each nation kept right to self-determination, including the right to separate. Then he divided Yugoslavia into six republics, defined as administrative units: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Each people in these republics could grow and prosper. Two important compromises were made. Southern Dalmatia, which used to be part of the Serb or Bosnian kingdoms or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was given to Croatia, instead of Serbia or Bosnia. The Krajina region, even though entirely populated by Serbs, remained in Croatia. This solution was balanced by the Constitution of Croatia, which defined Serbs in Croatia, along with the Croats, as a sovereign nation: this implied the right to self-determination. Bosnia and Herzegovina was defined as a republic where Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, living in mixed ethnic areas, had all sovereign rights. It didn’t belong to any of them, but to all of them. Serbia was the only republic having provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina. Kosovo had a considerable number of Albanians, and Vojvodina of Hungarians.

Ideologically, during the war Tito was a Stalinist, and after the war a moderate communist. In 1948 he rejected Stalin’s model of socialism and began developing his own. He believed in the people of Yugoslavia who were abandoned by their government during the war and left to the mercy of the occupiers, the people who managed to self-organize, survive, and finally win the war, and who paid a huge price for their freedom; he believed that this people would know how to rule themselves in peace. To realize this idea and secure the needed peace he built a strong army, the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA[17]), originating from Partisan units. He created a powerful state security service to punish war criminals and collaborators of occupiers, and to keep an eye on extreme nationalists. He proclaimed a policy of brotherhood and unity, self-management, and non-alignment. The brotherhood and unity was meant for Yugoslav nations. He nationalized all that was not destroyed in the war and gave it to the workers and the employees to manage themselves. He didn’t want to join neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact in the cold war, and was one of the founding fathers of the non-alignment movement. To make sure his policy would be implemented he made his Communist Party (later the League of Communists[18]) the only party in Yugoslavia, the party that would lead and rule the country. The vast majority of people supported him and many joined the party. His party, before the war a clandestine organization of 8,000 members and outlawed by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia grew to a party of two millions! (One in five adults was a member of the party.)

Marshal Tito died in 1981 at the age of 88. In almost four decades of rule he built a good country for 22 million people. Yugoslavia grew quite wealthy and people enjoyed a relatively good life. Almost everyone was employed; everyone had lodging, free education, and health care. It was open to the entire world for cooperation, visits and friendship. It had 800 agreements with the European Community alone. Millions of young people got a good education and became very skilled craftpersons, engineers, doctors, researchers. There were large companies realizing big projects abroad, particularly in Russia and non-aligned countries. People were free to travel to 190 countries without visas. The generation that was born after WW II, the baby-boomer generation gave excellent artists in film and music. Yugoslavia had excellent sportsmen in soccer, basketball, water polo, handball, tennis, etc. All of them, like millions of others, were proud to be citizens of Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia was envied in all countries of the Soviet block for its freedoms as a socialist country, admired among non-aligned countries around the world for its support, and its courage to be independent, but not loved very much by the West for the all of the above.

By the time Tito died some serious problems had accumulated. The main problems were in the political and economical area. Under the pressure of the leaders of Croatia and Slovenia a new constitution was passed in 1974. It defined republics as states, and gave them significant powers to the detriment of the federation. The Presidency of Yugoslavia, as the future successor of President Tito, was also introduced. It consisted of eight members: each of the six Republics, as well as the Serbian provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, would designate one representative to the Presidency. Tito didn’t like this constitution and didn’t sign it, but he let it pass. Along with the constitution, the United Work Act was passed. This law prescribed in detail how the new constitution should be implemented, and how the new economical and political system should work. It defined companies as united work organizations whose goal was not profit but development of self-management and care for the social-economical status of its employees. There was one problem with these radical changes that nobody dared to point to: these prescriptions had never been tested! The entire country, actually the communists, rolled up its sleeves and set to work to implement the new constitution and the United Work Act. The result was catastrophic! On one side, the provinces and republics (and their communist leaders) assumed large powers and stopped caring much about the federation. On the other side, the economy lost its efficiency; many good companies broke down into small and often antagonistic units. Because of these changes Serbia was paralyzed! It was not able to pass important laws because of obstruction coming from its own provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina, who got unusual powers through the changes.

Kosovo is a special story. It was the least developed and poorest part of Yugoslavia. Before WW II, Serbs were a majority in the province. During the war, under Italian occupation, this changed; many Albanians arrived, and many Serbs fled to half-free Serbia. New Yugoslavia invested a great deal in the province. Progress was obvious in many fields. At the same time, one strange thing happened – the explosion of the Albanian population. This was not happening anywhere in the Balkans but in Kosovo! In a couple of decades, the Albanians became the overwhelming majority. Feeling uncomfortable as a minority and often pushed by Albanian provocations and open threats, Serbs began leaving Kosovo in masses.

Tito died in 1981, not having the time to do anything about the constitution, the United Work Act, and Kosovo. And then the Albanians in Kosovo rebelled asking for the status of a republic! JNA and the federal police were sent to stop them.

The country was 20 billion dollars in debt. The international banks asked for money to be returned. Yugoslav politicians introduced severe austerity measures, reducing imports. People were hit by a scarcity of oil, gas, coffee, and many other products. The economy wasn’t able to produce and export as much as needed. The situation in the country was worsening.

Then two new figures took the stage: Ante Markovic from Croatia became Prime Minister of Yugoslavia and Slobodan Milosevic became leader of the League of Communist of Serbia. Markovic said that Serbia should have the same powers as other republics, and Milosevic said that the United Work Act should be abolished immediately, and that companies should compete on the market and work for profit only. Milosevic got communists in Kosovo and Vojvodina to change their provincial constitutions and reduce their own powers in order to unblock Serbia. A new Law on Companies was passed. Many hoped and believed that these two men would save Yugoslavia.

Then, in 1989 the Albanians rebelled again. Milosevic stood up to defend oppressed Serbs. Again, the JNA and federal police were sent to Kosovo. Milosevic asked for larger contributions from Slovenia and Croatia to resolve the economic situation in Kosovo. They refused, citing the constitution. Milosevic introduced sanctions to Slovenia. In January 1990 there was a congress of the ruling League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Milosevic wanted to talk about strengthening the federation, the Slovenian delegation wanted Milosevic to lift the sanctions first. He refused. The Slovenian delegation left the congress and the Croatian delegation joined them. It was the end of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the leading and ruling party of Tito’s Yugoslavia.

Now, Yugoslavia was left to be ruled and lead by the republics’ communists and weakened federal government.

Milosevic organized mass protests called anti-birocratic revolution, removed the leadership of Vojvodina and Montenegro from power, and installed his own followers. Then he went overboard by sending traveling rally people to Bosnia and the Krajina region to boost the solidarity of local Serbs with Serbs in Kosovo. These rallies, sometimes using nationalistic rhetoric, shocked many Serbs west of the Drina River, and all non-Serbs around Yugoslavia. Nationalists of all kinds, the greatest danger for Yugoslavia, began coming out from their rabbit holes.

Ante Markovic had serious programs to recover Yugoslav economy and needed additional five billion dollars. The international financial institutions conditioned their help to Yugoslavia by abandoning the one party system. Yugoslavia accepted it.

Let me here make a final statement: Yes, of course, Krleza was right. Yes, in the modern history of the Balkans, the Western Roman Empire was still fighting the Eastern Roman Empire. It was done on a lower religious level during WW I and WW II. The worst example occurred in ‘the Independent State of Croatia’ whose official policy was to convert one third of the Orthodox Serbs to the ‘Roman faith’, kill one third of them, and expel one third across the Drina River, the ancient border of the Western Roman Empire. The world wars were started by Austro-Hungary and Germany. Driven by their imperial ambitions they realized that Serbia and Yugoslavia were in their way. For that reason they turned Croats and Muslims against much stronger Serbs,