By Carl K. Savich
1. The Background to the Assassination of Zoran Djindjic
On April 22, 1999, US/NATO aircraft destroyed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s official residence on Uzicka Street in the Dedinje area of Belgrade. The home was hit with three laser guided missiles that struck the bedroom, living room, and dining room. Milosevic and his wife and son and daughter were not in the home at the time. The residence was said to have been “leveled to the ground.” Several rooms were burned out and debris littered the grounds.
Was this an attempt to kill Milosevic, an attempted “regime change” by the US government against a democratically elected leader of an independent and sovereign UN charter member, Yugoslavia? Was this an assassination attempt against an elected foreign leader made illegal/prohibited by US Executive Orders? NATO insisted that it was not specifically targeting the Yugoslav leader. NATO defined the home as a command and control facility thus it was a legitimate “military target”. Kevin Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman, stated: “We’re not targeting President Milosevic.” Yugoslav government minister Goran Matic disagreed: “NATO committed a criminal act without precedence---an assassination attempt against the president of a sovereign state.”
What was the significance of the attempted regime change of Slobodan Milosevic? In a March 10, 2003 briefing, Fleischer explained:
I suppose he might still be there had it not been for NATO and the United States. That was regime change in Serbia, wasn’t it?
Fleischer argued that the illegal NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 weakened Milosevic and led to his fall from power. Thus, we can ask: Would Zoran Djindjic ever have come to power in Serbia without the US/NATO bombing and the US attempts to overthrow Milosevic?
Maurizio Massari, the OSCE ambassador to the newly created nation “Serbia-Montenegro” (formerly Yugoslavia) maintained that regime change is only the first step in overthrowing a government, not the end result, but merely the preliminary step:
Regime change should not be confused with dictator change. Removing a dictator is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for changing a regime. …The lesson of the last three years is that if a dictator disappears, it is not the end of the job.
Massari added a new term to the vocabulary of the New World Order: “dictator change.” What is wrong with just calling a regime change by the old-fashioned term: “the overthrow of a government”. Why do we need new terminology? The term “regime” is derived from the French word based on the Latin “regimen” and the verb “regere”, to rule. So a regime change is the removal of the ruler or ruling/governing body of a nation/state.
In “Serbia Shows Shortcomings of Regime Change”, in the March 16, 2003,
Boston Globe, Brian Whitmore analyzed the Djindjic assassination to conclude
that a regime change does not lead to instant/automatic democratization and a
stable reformist regime. Taking his cue from Ari Fleischer, Whitmore too
attributed the overthrow of Milosevic to the US.
In “Murder in Belgrade: Did Serbia’s Leader Do the West’s Bidding Too Well?” in the New York Times, Steven Erlanger argued that Zoran Djindjic was forced to choose between his two backers: 1) the US government, which maintained him in power through economic and diplomatic support; and, 2) the underworld crime bosses who initially put him in power. Djindjic could not serve two masters. The US forced Djindjic to turn on his ally and patron, Milorad Lukovic, known as “Legija”, the leader of the Zemun Clan, who was the kingmaker who had in reality put Djindjic in power. Lukovic had controlled a police security unit, “the Red Berets”. The Serbian people never democratically elected Zoran Djindjic to public office. Milorad Likovic put Djindjic in power. Again, democracy had nothing to do with it. But now the US had forced Djindjic to jettison his sponsor and to turn on the man who had put him in office. Erlanger explained the connection to Lukovic:
Mr. Djindjic, no saint, made deals with various Serbian devils.
Djindjic knew Lukovic. Indeed, most victims know their murderers. Murder is essentially a personal crime. Djindjic had a “shadowy relationship” with Lukovic. Lukovic’s police/security forces had actually arrested Milosevic in 2001. So Lukovic and Djindjic were allies. Why was Slobodan Milosevic arrested? Was he arrested because he committed war crimes? Erlanger averred: “Mr. Milosevic was arrested because Mr. Djindjic needed millions of dollars in American aid.” It was all about money. Greed was the motivation. As Tim Judah remarked: Djindjic had a “love of money”. The US set an April 1, 2001 deadline for the arrest of Milosevic if Djindjic was to receive any US economic aid. Djindjic then relied on Lukovic to arrest Milosevic before the April 1 deadline. In making the arrest and extradition, Djindjic violated the Yugoslav constitution, which prohibited the extradition of Yugoslav nationals to stand trial in a foreign court. He also failed to notify Kostunica of the arrest and extradition to the Hague. At first, Djindjic and Kostunica claimed that Milosevic would be tried in a Yugoslav court of law. But this was a lie. Djindjic arrested Milosevic because he intended to turn him over to the ICTY regardless of what the constitution mandated. Djindjic revealed that he was not going to let something as minor as the law stand in his way.
Media analysts of the Djindjic regime imposed a fallacious dichotomy. They pitted the democratic capitalist reformer Djindjic against the corrupt Serbian criminal underworld. But they failed to note that Djindjic was a Marxist/Communist whose father had been a Communist/Partisan. In other words, Djindjic brought a Communistic, totalitarian mindset to resolving economic/political/social issues in Yugoslavia. Moreover, Djindjic was part of the problem, not the solution. Djindjic himself was part and parcel of the corrupt Serbian underworld which he pretended to combat. Erlanger noted this criminal connection:
Mr. Djindjic himself had many complicated business interests, with reputed connections to the Surcin mafia, and many Serbs saw him as an elegant kingpin turned politician.
Djindjic was termed a “Westernizer” and a “reformer” seeking the “democratization” of Serbia, but this was merely a smokescreen. Djindjic was a political opportunist who used Lukovic and the so-called Serbian criminal underworld when it suited his interests. He just as easily rejected that criminal syndicate when he thought that the US could give him more or a better deal. The whole thing was merely about power. All Djindjic ever cared a whit about was obtaining political power. It never mattered how he got that political power. In the early 1990s, Djindjic supported and allied himself with Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic when he thought that was the way to obtain power. In 1993, Djindjic sought to rule Yugoslavia in partnership with Milosevic, if only Milosevic would just give him power. Djindjic worked with Zeljko Raznjatovic, Arkan, the paramilitary leader and crime figure. In 1996, Djindjic became a populist demagogue, marching in the streets of Belgrade with new ally Vuk Draskovic because this appeared to be the way to power. In December, 1999, Djindjic met with Madeleine Albright in Berlin because he felt that this would bring him power. The only thing Zoran Djindjic ever wanted or believed in was obtaining political power. It didn’t matter how. What Djindjic never understood was this: It is easy to obtain power. The difficulty is keeping it. More importantly, what do you do with power when you achieve it? Djindjic was at a total loss because a political opportunist does not know how to create and maintain a constituency or base of support. The main motivation is a lust for power.
Why was Djindjic assassinated now and not earlier in his regime? The following article in the New York Times from January 24, 2003 provides a clue: “U.S. Offers Belgrade a Deal for 3 Wanted Men”. The US would remove conditions imposed on financial aid if Ratko Mladic, Miroslav Radic, and Veselin Sljivancanin were arrested. In other words, if Djindjic wanted any more money from the US, he had to now arrest Ratko Mladic. Turning over Slobodan Milosevic was not enough to satisfy the appetite of the US. Now the US was ordering Djindjic to turn over Mladic to the ICTY. As Erlanger noted, the ICTY was perceived by a majority of Serbs as anti-Serbian, anti-Orthodox, as an example of “victor’s justice”. Yugoslavia/Serbia was the only country that had opposed the US/NATO takeover of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Now Serbia would pay the price. Serbia would be punished.
Zoran Djindjic was being supported by the US for two reasons: 1) Djindjic was needed to round up, arrest, and send alleged Serbian war criminals to the ICTY; and, 2) Djindjic was needed to negotiate the independence of Kosova, which would be a newly-independent state sponsored by the US. The US did not want to re-establish normalcy. Normalcy was bad. Normalcy would mean that Kosovo-Metohija would have to be re-integrated back into Serbia and the 240,000 Kosovo Serb refugees would have to be returned to Kosovo. By keeping the ICTY open-ended and a permanent war crimes tribunal set up to indefinitely try Serbian war criminals, the US was avoiding normalcy and resolution and preventing the re-integration of Kosovo with Serbia. Moreover, the war crimes trials created a greater impetus for creating a nation out of Kosovo, creating independence for Kosova, which was the goal for the NATO bombing in 1999 all along. The goal was always to create a US sponsored independent nation of Kosova. Djindjic was useful in this US goal. Djindjic was an opportunist. He would work with the US. Djindjic would sign away Kosovo, i.e., “negotiated” independence. The ICTY and Carla Del Ponte put the nail in his coffin. Lukovic and many of the underworld bosses had been paramilitaries in the conflicts in Krajina, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Now the US was ordering Djindjic to arrest the people that had put him in power. Serbian political analyst Bratislav Grubacic put it this way:
I think that’s what this murder is about: these guys helped Djindjic and the democrats come to power, but thought he was betraying them.
This unrelenting pressure from the ICTY was the last straw. To add insult to injury, Carla Del Ponte planned to attend the Djindjic funeral. Goran Svilanovic, the foreign minister of Serbia, sought to dissuade her. This was an indirect rebuke of the ICTY.
The ICTY was like the Versailles Treaty of 1919 and the Djindjic regime was like the German Weimar Republic. The problem with the ICTY was that it sought to punish only one actor, one side in the Yugoslav conflict. The Versailles Peace Treaty similarly sought to punish only Germany for World War I. In the infamous War Guilt Clause, Germany was assigned total guilt for the war. Versailles was meant to destroy Germany as a nation/state. The ICTY sought to destroy Yugoslavia and to dismember it, creating an independent Kosova state. It is forgotten now, but Versailles too sought to dismember Germany and to create independent states sponsored by France. France sought to create independent nations out of the Ruhr region of western Germany. Why? To weaken Germany as a nation/state. The ICTY is similarly empowered to dismantle and destroy the remaining Yugoslav nation/state. Like Versailles, the motivations are not jurisprudential or legal, but political. The result is inevitable in both cases. Chaos and extremism result, not democracy or economic/political/social reform. The Weimar Republic was a product of the German military defeat in World War I. The Zoran Djindjic regime was a product of the US/NATO illegal bombing and military occupation of Kosovo. The Weimar Republic was despised by German citizens because it lacked legitimacy due to the fact that its very existence was based on the Allied military victory over Germany. The political leaders of the Weimar Republic were seen as the “November criminals”, those who had done the bidding of the Allied powers. Similarly, Djindjic was perceived as “a NATO mercenary”, a puppet or lackey of the US/NATO. Like Reich Chancellor Friedrich Ebert, Matthias Erzberger, and Walther Rathenau, in the Weimar Republic, Zoran Djindjic, Goran Svilanovic, Natasha Micic, lacked legitimacy because they were perceived as puppets of a foreign power. The US sought to create a pliant, dependent, subservient, proxy or client state. In doing so, US policy deprived Djindjic of any legitimacy and doomed any economic reforms or restructuring.
In 1995, the US aided Croatia in planning a regime change in the self-declared Serbian Republic of Krajina (SRK), overthrowing the regime of Milan Martic, ethnically cleansing over a quarter of a million Krajina Serbs, the largest single act of ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav conflict, planned and organized by the US government. The US engineered the regime change of the Srpska Republika in Bosnia-Hercegovina by preventing Radovan Karadzic from political leadership. Following the illegal US/NATO bombardment and subsequent military occupation of Serbia, the US attempted a regime change, supporting the anti-Milosevic forces that overthrew Milosevic in October, 2000.
The concept of regime change, however, took absurd and schizophrenic and ironic turns in the Yugoslav conflict. The US in fact wanted to keep Milosevic in power because doing so was more advantageous to US foreign policy in the Balkans. This is a fact overlooked today. The US sought to keep Milosevic in power because a regime change would mean that the US would have to establish normal diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, normalcy, something the US opposed. Milosevic needed the US as much as the US needed him. Milosevic needed the US threat to Yugoslavia to remain in power while the US needed Milosevic to maintain a hostile military presence in the region. In this way they could maintain the status quo of economic isolation/strangulation, sanctions, keeping Yugoslavia diplomatically ostracized. Milosevic was a whipping boy the US needed to maintain its presence in the region. Conversely, Milosevic needed the US threat to maintain his grip on power.
Milosevic, however, became expendable in 1999 after the US occupied the Serbian province Kosovo-Metohija. He was no longer needed or useful. The problem was that there was no one who could replace Milosevic in a US-sponsored regime change. The US rejected the so-called opposition groups, rejecting Zoran Djindjic and Vuk Draskovic out of hand. The US State Department understood that any political leader the US installed in Belgrade would be perceived as a US/NATO puppet or quisling or vassal. The US funded the opposition and sought to make the regime untenable by economic strangulation through sanctions and military pressure through support of the KLA/UCK incursions into Southern Serbia. The US organized the Southern Serbia incursions by the KLA/UCK. Serbian soldiers, police officers, and civilians were systematically targeted and killed under the protection and sponsorship of the US government. Serbian police officers were murdered in the so-called neutral zone and their bodies mutilated. Many Serbian police officers were killed by mines set up by the US-supported KLA/UCK in the Presevo/Bujanovac/Medvedje area of Serbia. The objective was to put pressure on the Milosevic regime.
Are these the first US/Western attempts at regime change in Yugoslavia? In April, 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded, occupied, and dismembered by Nazi Germany and German allies. The regime of Regent Paul had been overthrown by a military coup d’etat. Peter Karadjordjevic had been too young to assume power. Following the German occupation, the Yugoslav government went in exile in England. Draza Mihailovich was made a general and continued the fight against German military occupation by a guerrilla resistance, the first major guerrilla resistance movement in Europe. A rival Communist guerrilla movement emerged led by Croat-Slovene Josip Broz Tito that eventually resulted in a civil war. By 1944, the major Western powers, the US, UK, USSR, and France, abandoned the Karadjordjevic regime in what amounted to a regime change. How did Josip Broz Tito and the Communist/Socialist regime really come to power? Was he democratically elected? Was it an example of a regime change?
In October, 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill went to Moscow to work out the series of regime changes which were to follow the surrender of Germany. This is how the political leaders of Eastern Europe were actually chosen. They were not democratically elected but picked by Winston Churchill. Churchill took a small piece of paper. On it, he wrote down what the future regime in each country would be. Churchill assigned Romania to the USSR: 90% to Russia, 10% to US/UK/France. Greece was assigned 90% to US/UK/France, 10% to USSR. This entailed that the Communist faction in Greece would have to be eradicated and a regime change engineered that would establish an anti-Soviet regime in Greece. This decision resulted in the 1946-49 civil war in Greece. Hungary was assigned 50% to the UK, 50% to the USSR. Bulgaria was assigned 75% to Russia, 25% to UK. Yugoslavia, like Hungary, was divided as follows: 50% to USSR, 50% to UK. Churchill passed the sheet over to Stalin. Stalin looked over the percentages changing Bulgaria to 90% to go to the USSR, 10% to UK. Stalin then checked it off with a blue pencil signaling his agreement. These regime changes were decided in Moscow. This is how the political regimes in Eastern Europe were actually decided.
2. The Assassination
The March 12, 2003 assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic marked the third time in the last one hundred years that a political leader of Serbia was assassinated. On June 10, 1903, King Alexander I Obrenovic (1893-1903) and Queen Draga were assassinated in Belgrade by officers of the Serbian army and government officials. The two brothers of the Queen were also killed as were two ministers in the cabinet. The Obrenovic dynasty in the form of King Milan and Alexander had ruled Serbia from 1868 to 1903. No political opponent of the King or Queen or her brothers was safe with his life. The King had suspended the Serbian Constitution. Moreover, he had made Serbia a dependency of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, political ties that were not popular in Serbia. He thus lacked popular support for his Austrian ties which failed to galvanize a political vision for the country. H. W. Temperley stated: “Political revolution was justified on every ground.” Nevertheless, the countries of Europe severed diplomatic relations with Serbia. Only Russia and Austria-Hungary maintained relations, but they too were pressured to sever diplomatic ties. Britain re-established diplomatic relations with Serbia in 1906. In 1934, King Alexander Djordjevic was assassinated in Marseille, France while on a state visit by Croatian separatists, the pro-Ustasha movement, and Bulgarians who sought to annex Macedonia.
Djindjic was assassinated by domestic Serbian crime figures that were threatened by the economic/political/social reforms that Djindjic was pushing through. These groups had aided him in obtaining power. Now, due to US pressure, Djindjic was moving against these groups. Djindjic was perceived as “a NATO mercenary” and a lackey of the US in Serbia itself. Djindjic did nothing to dispel these allegations. At any rate, he was perceived as an opportunistic leader who had only come to power because of the US/NATO war against Yugoslavia/Serbia and the Slobodan Milosevic regime. This perception deprived him of any legitimacy.
Zoran Djindjic was never the choice of the US in a potential US-engineered regime change in Serbia. In a July 12, 1999 New York Times article, Jane Perlez noted that the US sought to make a regime change in Yugoslavia but that because of the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, no opposition candidate that the US supported would be acceptable. Perlez all but conceded that the illegal US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and subsequent illegal occupation had bolstered the legitimacy/credibility of Slobodan Milosevic and his regime. Perlez wrote: “Despite its clear desire to see President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia ousted” any candidate the US favored would be seen as a puppet of the US/NATO. Instead, US policy was to “isolate” Milosevic and to “generate hardship” for his supporters and the general population. What this entailed was systematically ruining the Yugoslav economy and allowing Albanian UCK/KLA incursions into Southern Serbia to infiltrate the region. Perlez noted that the US was “careful” to back an opposition leader because of Serbian animosity to the illegal US/NATO bombing and occupation of Yugoslavia under a spurious propaganda pretext of preventing genocide. In fact, there was no genocide in Kosovo. What existed was a US-supported separatist/terrorist Albanian Muslim campaign to create a Greater Albania and the expulsion of the Serbian Orthodox population from Kosovo. Subsequent events in Kosovo proved this without any doubt. The US/NATO plan was transparent.
The article is remarkable because of what it revealed about future Serbian Prime Minsiter Zoran Djindjic, who was subsequently assassinated on March 12, 2003. Perlez quoted “a senior administration official” who stated that:
The Europeans are making a dramatic mistake by picking Djindjic as their poster boy. He has very little support. We should let the people pick a winner.
This senior US administration official concluded in 1999 that Djindjic “lacks the necessary support and leadership skill”. Djindjic was not suitable for replacing Milosevic in a regime change because Djindjic had lived in Montenegro during the illegal US/NATO bombing of Serbia and thus was discredited in the eyes of most Serbs. Djindjic had lived and studied in West Germany where he had obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy, a very unsuitable academic discipline in the real world of practical politics. Djindic along with Vuk Draskovic participated in the 1996-97 street demonstrations against Milosevic but both lacked any real political experience. Djindjic formed the short-lived Zajedno movement (Together) and was the mayor of Belgrade for a brief period after the demonstrations. Moreover, on December 17, 1999, Djindjic, Vuk Draskovic, and Milo Djukanovic had met with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Berlin and had been photographed together in a photo-op session. Albright had been the mastermind of the illegal US/NATO bombing and occupation of Yugoslavia. Earlier, Albright had engineered and orchestrated the anti-Serbian policy against the Bosnian Serbs and Krajina Serbs. Albright was instrumental in the ethnic cleansing of the quarter million Krajina Serbs in 1995. Indeed, her brilliant anti-Serbian successes as US Ambassador to the UN won her the job as Secretary of State. There was nothing Djindjic could do to discredit himself more than by meeting Albright. But Djindjic was blas� and unconcerned. He didn’t get it. He never got it.
Marxist/Communist novelist turned pseudo-ultra-nationalist Vuk Draskovic was likewise “written off” by the US government as a possible candidate for regime change. The US dismissed him as an “opportunist” who had joined the Milosevic regime and had then been ousted by same. Perlez stated that “undermining Milosevic is not as easy, some argue, as was unseating the regimes in Eastern Europe” during the Soviet era. A senior US administration official noted: “The Yugoslav army does not have a history of coups. This is not Latin America.” The US policy was to “isolate” Milosevic so that he would be “asphyxiated”, choked to death. One method explored was to use humanitarian aid as a weapon in the policy of regime change. The US administration proposed giving humanitarian aid selectively to hospitals in regions and districts which were in areas opposed to Milosevic. This was the manipulation of humanitarian assistance to achieve regime change. James Hooper of the Balkan Action Council, argued that Milosevic would be difficult to overthrow because he was an “ultra-nationalist”, unlike the earlier Eastern bloc rulers who had failed to co-opt the pseudo-nationalism of the masses. Hooper is correct to note that Milosevic and many of the Serbian political figures did adopt a nationalist stance, but it was a sham or phony nationalism, a caricature of nationalism. But he neglects to mention that all of the former Yugoslav leaders had similarly adopted an ersatz ultra-nationalism. Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic and Milan Kucan and Kiro Gligorov too were ultra-nationalists in this sense. The term became meaningless.
The US met with anti-Milosevic activists and funded the Serbian opposition. But the only opposition candidate the US had any faith in was Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro in 1999. The US government was thoroughly “disillusioned” with Zoran Djindjic and Vuk Draskovic as candidates for a potential regime change.
Djindjic swept to power on October 5, 2000, following the rejection of the Milosevic regime by Serbian voters. Djindjic rode on the coattails of Vojislav Kostunica, leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), who became the new President of Yugoslavia, replacing Milosevic. Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party (DS), became Prime Minister on the strength of the electoral showing of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DOS) coalition, made up of 18 parties. But Djindjic was never elected by the Serbian electorate. He was “assigned” his political position by the coalition to be the future premier of Serbia. The first major decision he made was to violate the constitution. In 2001, Djindjic violated the Yugoslav Constitution by extraditing Milosevic to the ICTY. The Yugoslav Constitution prohibited the extradition of Yugoslav citizens to stand trial in a foreign court. Moreover, Kostunica was never even notified or informed that Milosevic would be handed over to the ICTY. Djindjic’s brazen move alienated him with the Serbian population.
In the BBC article “Zoran Djindjic: Pragmatist or Opportunist?”, March 6, 2001, Tim Judah analyzed the undemocratic nature of Djindjic’s assumption of power. Judah noted that Djindjic had “never been particularly popular with voters” and had “a personal lack of appeal.” In a 2001 poll, Djindjic was found to be the 11th most popular politician in Yugoslavia. But Djindjic is the founder of the Democratic Party (DS) of Serbia? Yet “democracy” had nothing to do with how he obtained power. Like Adolf Hitler in 1933, Djindjic was assigned his post, he was appointed, by the DOS coalition. Djindjic, again like Hitler, could never win a democratic and fair election on his own. But then why does the US government and media trumpet Djindjic as representing the “democratization” of Serbia? Why is he the poster child for democracy in Serbia? Democracy ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. Judah noted that Djindjic is regarded as “a NATO mercenary”, “an immoral political opportunist” in Serbia itself. In the US and Western media, he is a “political pragmatist”, a “pragmatic modernizer”, a “technocratic reformer”, a “reformer”, and according to BBC News, “a crusader for reform”. Judah stated that Djindjic was known for his “love of money”. Indeed, as Judah explained, Djindjic was able to come to power because of his links to the Serbian security services and military. Is this what we call “democracy” in the New World Order now?
What did the US/Western media omit in its analysis of the Djindjic assassination? First of all, Zoran Djindjic is a Bosnian Serb, born in the Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac in northeastern Bosnia, now part of the Srpska Republika. The media failed to inform us that Djindjic was a Bosnian. Second, the media censored the fact that Djindjic supported Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic and the Bosnian Serb forces in the Bosnian civil war. Indeed, Djindjic made an official visit to Pale during the siege of Sarajevo to meet with Karadzic and Mladic. As Judah noted, Djindjic “once famously roasted an ox with Radovan Karadzic.” How quickly they forget. How did this miraculous transformation occur that transmogrified Djindjic from an ultra-nationalist Bosnian Serb (potentially a war criminal?) to a Western-styled democratic reformer of Serbia? Third, in 1993, Djindjic met with Slobodan Milosevic and had talks with him about forming a non-partisan government of experts, a joint government with “the Butcher of the Balkans”. Djindjic had no problem with Milosevic then. Why the sudden change?
Economically, Djindjic sought to implement stabilization measures and market reform programs. The Serbian economy had been shattered by US-imposed economic sanctions for almost 12 years. The Serbian economy in 2002 was half the size it was in 1990. US-imposed sanctions, the embargo, US/NATO bombing of automobile plants and factories and other economic infrastructure, and a war economy, had all contributed to this reduction. Unemployment was as high as 40% in 2002. There was a low standard of living, inflationary prices, low wages, and a slow pace of governmental economic reforms. Djindjic did attempt to obtain US and Canadian investment in the Serbian economy. Djindjic visited the US on September 18-21, 2002 in a trip organized by the Business Advisory Council, chaired by former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. The goal was to obtain US corporate investment in Serbia. Serbian government representatives met with US companies in the J. P. Morgan bank. Djindjic even spoke at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Just how much Djindjic achieved on the economic front with reforms is a debatable issue. Following the overthrow of Milosevic, in December, 2000, Yugoslavia’s membership in the IMF was renewed, and Yugoslavia re-entered the World Bank (IBRD) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Following Djindjic’s arrest and turning over of Milosevic to the ICTY before the US deadline of April 1 resulted in the June 2001 Donor’s Conference sponsored by the World Bank-European Commission which made available $1.3 billion for economic restructuring. Also, in November, 2001, 66% of the $4.5 billion Paris Club debt of Yugoslavia was written off. But the slow pace of economic change, conflict between Djindjic and Kostunica over economic reform measures, and the elections fiasco where the required 50% threshold could not be met, contributed to creating economic malaise. Most importantly, the US tied economic aid to the arrest and the turning over of suspected Serbian war criminals to the ICTY. Such blackmail and coercive extortion tactics generated resentment and animosity on the home front and made economic recovery contingent on meeting US demands. Such conditional economic aid was counter-productive to Serbian economic recovery. The Serbian economy was being held hostage by the US. Was the US effort to reform and stabilize the Serbian economy genuine or merely a ruse or sham?
3. Conclusion
At the time of his assassination, Djindjic had failed to reintegrate Kosovo-Metohija into Serbia as stipulated by UN Resolution 1442, he had failed to return the approximately 240,000 Kosovo Serbian refugees ethnically cleansed by the UCK/KLA, he had failed to obtain the return of Serbian police and military to Kosovo-Metohija. He had negotiated the Prevlaka Peninsula away to Croatia and shortly before his assassination, the UCK had begun infiltrating Southern Serbia and begun another campaign of “liberation” of Serbian territory with attacks against Serbian police. This could not be accomplished without US/NATO complicity. Or could it? Djindjic had begun to disenfranchise segments of the economy who had emerged since the US-imposed sanctions. Djindjic had worked hand in glove with the ICTY and ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. Djindjic pledged to apprehend and turn over Ratko Mladic to the ICTY. Remarkably, Djindjic managed to alienate almost every segment of Serbian society. This state of affairs showed his total indifference to, or ignorance of, practical politics. Political leaders serve or represent their constituents, those that elected them, or in whose name they govern. But Djindjic seemed to be ignorant of this fundamental tenet of representative government. Djindjic represented not his constituents, but his foreign power base. Djindjic was termed a “quisling”, a US/NATO “puppet”, a “lackey” of the US/NATO, a “traitor”, a “collaborator” with US/NATO. Djindjic was no politician. The first principle of politics is to never alienate your power base. Djindjic remained ignorant of this rudimentary tenet.
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/040.shtml
