Back to the Balkans

 

 

in 1945 and tried to make their way back to Yugoslavia, tens of thousands were massacred near the border by Tito’s Partisans. Varying accounts number those slaughtered on the Austrian/Slovenian border from 20,000 to 40,000, de­pending on whether you believe the Serbs—the predom­inant nationality in the royal army—or the Croats. In any case, the returning remnants of a royalist Yugoslav Army could hardly have been tolerated by Tito, whose Communist Partisans were on the top of the heap when the war ended in 1945.

Tito had used Stalin’s coattails to catapult his Partisans to victory under the banner of communism, against both the occupying Germans and the Royalist Chetniks (Mikhailovic and his Serbian officer corps). He was wooed by Winston Churchill and supplied by the British and even­tually the Americans.

Post-War Tito

Stalin’s support for Tito cooled toward the end of the war, as the Soviet dictator gazed longingly at the Yugoslav ports on the Adriatic. The Russian quest for warm-water ports fueled the West’s worst fear: that Yugoslavia might fall into the warm bosom of the Warsaw Pact, either by force or by gentle seduction. Serious concern over the growing Soviet fleet taking possession of the excellent ports of Rijeka, Split on the central coast, and Tivat on the strategic Bay of Kotor in the south catapulted the navy to the forefront of the post-war equation of Balkan geopol­itics. The Soviet focus on the Adriatic seacoast of Yu­goslavia became a key issue for the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.

After Tito’s split with Stalin in 1948, the use of Adri­atic ports remained a key issue of the Cold War until the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Soviet naval presence in the Adriatic had been made relatively per­manent by the continuous repair of a submarine tender and two diesel attack submarines in the port of Tivat. The Soviet Navy’s active participation in warship visits to the Yugoslav Adriatic ports became a key diplomatic front­line contest with the U.S. Navy—one that made the naval attache job in Belgrade a rich and intriguing experience’

The West, in delight over Tito’s break with the Com­munist bloc, hastened to his side with economic and mil­itary assistance. Many Yugoslavs still remember the U.S. aid packages sent in the post-war years. Fewer re­member that U.S. economic assistance built a number of roads, including the grand coastal highway that links the coastal cities from Rijeka in the north to Ulcinje on the Albanian border in the south. Fewer still recall the hun­dreds of U.S. tanks and other surplus military hardware that poured into the country to keep it on the right side of the new Iron Curtain.

Courting Tito was difficult, however, and a rift soon

d,

al

ei

P'

si

re

tc

H

a

P

ii

S

E

8

\

P

s

ti

s

s

I

t

s

r

44

J

viet watch officer further com­plained of my presence near the ships, the gendearme asked me for my identification. When I produced my diplomatic ID, he showed it to the Russian stating, “I told you he was from the Embassy.”

The Russian responded indig­nantly, “Comrade, he’s from the American Embassy, not ours!” During another Soviet visit, this time in Dubrovnik, the Italian at­tache and I motored too closely to a moored Soviet submarine. A voice in the Croatian language on a loud-hailer pierced the quiet har­bor afternoon: “You in the small boat, what is your business?” We beat a hasty retreat as we noticed a group of Yugoslav surveillants in a small police launch cast off from a nearby seawall and head our way. Thanks to a faulty en­gine, they came to an abrupt halt and sat dead in the water in the central harbor as we disappeared quietly into a crowded fishing an­chorage nearby.

P. A. Huchthausen

with Israel off limits and Egypt closed to them since 1972, the So­viet fleet was limited to liberty in Syria, Libya, and Algeria. A Soviet port visit to Dubrovnik, Split, or Rijeka was a genuine treat for the Russians, as well as an observation feast for the NATO naval attaches in Belgrade.

The NATO attaches dedicated a great deal of effort to observing the Soviet ships and their crews in the Yugoslav ports. Given the se­crecy shrouding all Soviet military operations, the NATO attaches in Yugoslavia became the only West­ern military observers with a regu­lar window for close-range scrutiny of operational Soviet naval forces. We boarded their ships often as visitors.

During one Soviet navy visit to Rijeka, the Canadian attache and I were arrested at Soviet navy re­quest and escorted from the port area by a local gendarme. When accosted by the Yugoslav police­man and asked where I was from, I responded, “From the embassy,” and he released me. When the So­

f°r the Soviet military machine. As ^an attache, I found that initially difficult to support. In the midst of ^ltle Cold War, the Soviet navy rou­tinely used Yugoslav airspace with 'mpunity to fly reconnaissance and fissile-configured medium-range J^et bombers from air bases in the Soviet Union to bases in North Africa in support of their Mediter­ranean Fleet.

During this period, both the U.S. and Soviet navies had active port ^visit programs under way in the Jugoslav Adriatic. The purpose of these visits for the Sixth Fleet was ft only to show the flag but also f° enjoy the unique window on so­^cialism that Yugoslavia offered.

We were careful that the Sixth f leet conducted an equal number °f visits with the Soviet navy, to ^ensure Yugoslavia remained truly Uonaligned. Adriatic ports became Popular liberty calls for both the H-S. and Soviet fleets in the Mediterranean. Since NATO had a eorner on all the classy ports on ^lhe French and Italian rivieras and ^visited Turkey and Greece, and

developed. The U.S. continuation of reconnaissance flights along the Adriatic coast spurred Tito to shoot down sev­^eral U.S. military aircraft. This cooled relations to the Point that the United States not only slowed economic as­sistance but insisted that all U.S. World War II dead be ^returned from graves in Yugoslavia.

During his 35-year rule, Tito, himself a Croat, managed ^to keep a lid on the ethnic strife between Serbs and Croats. His tactics were as ruthless as those of the Nazis, Ustashe, ^and Chetniks he defeated in World War II.

He set a time bomb with the Serbs by carving the two Provinces Vojvodina and Kossovo out of Serbia and giv­ing them autonomous status. He further embittered the Serbs by denying them rule over the Serbian enclaves in Bosnia and Croatia that were wrenched from Austro-Hun- gary during World War I and from the Nazis during World War II. Instead, he granted all six Yugoslav re­publics equal status in his collective leadership. As a re­sult, Bosnia under Tito received for the first time in his­tory status equivalent to Serbia and Croatia. This simmering issue of the minority enclaves later would spawn the cries for “Greater Serbia” and ethnic cleansing.

The diverse ethnic groups scattered throughout Yu­goslavia—normally a healthy ingredient for a country Messed with so rich a variety of nationalities are the source of today’s problem. Only 6 million of the total 9 million Serbs in the Balkans live in Serbia. The remain­

ing one third are spread throughout other regions. Of the total 4.5 million Croats in the Balkans, nearly one fifth live outside of Croatia. Tito’s own actions made renewed strife inevitable once central control of his communist sys­tem dissolved along with all the other Eastern European states

Tito and his generals from the wartime Partisan days created one of the few relatively independent Commu­nist states of the Cold War era. The economy was rea­sonably sound, and the tourist trade—especially on the

_coast___ was growing rapidly. But most important to the

West, in the midst of the Cold War, Yugoslavia was in­dependent of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet and Yugoslav militaries, however, shared the close camaraderie of joint training, attended each other’s professional military institutes, and used com­mon Soviet weapon systems. All Yugoslav officers spoke Russian. The senior defense leadership of the 1980s, Min­isters Lyubisic and Mamula included, had been educated in the Moscow Voroshilov Staff College and also spoke Russian.

Post-Tito Cold War and the Naval Ingredient

At Tito’s death, the Yugoslav National Army was a So­viet-trained and Soviet-equipped army. However, defense cooperation between the U.S. and Yugoslav militaries had

45

begun to improve again in the 1970s. Several Yugoslav Army officers attended our Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, and Yugoslav naval officers later began to attend our Naval War College. We also sold them some Mark 44 torpedoes and a few TPS-53 air traffic control radars. We began an exchange of senior of­ficer visits and lectures that included precedent-setting vis­its to Belgrade by U.S. European Command Deputy Comander-in-Chief General W. Y. Smith and Comman­der-in-Chief U.S. Naval Forces Europe Admiral William J. Crowe in 1983.

Nevertheless, two symbolic factors stuck in the craw of most senior U.S. Defense Department officials and pre­cluded closer ties in the 1980s: Yugoslavs still wore a red star as an insignia, and, in tactical exercises, they depicted their army in red markings and the aggressor’s in blue.

This distrust turned even more hostile when the focus shifted to the training of terrorists in Yugoslavia. There was growing evidence that terrorists—the majority from Libya—were training in Yugoslav military centers. The training varied from basic military discipline to handling explosives but was general enough to make it difficult to mark it as definitely terrorist related. There was, however, ample evidence that members of some of the most noto­rious terrorist groups had received training in Yugoslav schools.

In domestic affairs, the Yugoslavia of the 1980s hardly resembled the satellite Communist countries of the War­saw Pact. Yugoslavs enjoyed relatively open borders, free­dom of travel internally, and, with their work­ers self-management, a form of comparative economic in­dependence. They also had select rights to certain bla­tantly capitalist private enterprises, such as restaurants and family owned and operated bed and breakfast businesses. Yet millions of Yugoslavs flocked to Western Europe, to earn hard currency. They took low-paying jobs in Ger­many, Switzerland, Sweden, and other Western countries but generally saved or sent their remittances home. Most important, they were learning Western business practice and were gaining a leg up on the other Eastern European Communist countries.

In foreign relations, Yugoslavia became a key player as a founder of the nonaligned movement. Although a toothless alliance, it became a vocal force to which the world eventually gave reluctant attention until the collapse of one entire side of the aligned world in 1989.

Power within the leadership of the League of Commu­nists and the Federal Collective Presidency began to de­centralize after 1980. The League of Communists (the Yu­goslav Communist party) after Tito’s departure lacked the strong arm of party discipline enjoyed by the Soviet party and other more doctrinaire Communist parties, such as the PCR of Ceausescu’s Romania. The disciplinary arm of the League in Yugoslavia had been Tito’s personal leader­ship. Hence, when Slovenia first broke the rules in 1982 (requiring the League’s collective leadership to change yearly) and demanded that their leader stay for two years, nothing could be done. It was the beginning of the end for Tito’s collective leadership legacy.

Communist central control and the strong arm of the

Yugoslav National Army (JNA) continued to keep the lid on open strife until 1991, when the remaining shards o¹ communism disappeared in the Soviet Union and then M' bania. The remnants of fear and police control dissolved completely. In revulsion to the continuation of a norni' nally Communist system and the growing advocacy of •' Greater Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic, Slovenia and Croatia seceded.

The JNA’s attempt to force Slovenia’s return failed after a short fight. The small, well-equipped, and superbly trained Slovenian army overwhelmed and captured larg^e numbers of the JNA. This was followed by the resufflp' tion of mutual annihilation between Serbs and Croats—-^t0 “protect” pockets of ethnic Serbs living in the newly ere^- ated independent states—which spread quickly to Bosnia'

Belgrade’s Role and Intervention

Tito’s concept of the defense of Yugoslavia against an outside threat from either the Warsaw Pact or NATO w^aS a defense-in-depth, with the small number of main for^ce JNA conventional maneuver battalions (armored and an' titank) fighting delaying actions, while the Territorial V^e' fense Forces of each of the six republics and local hom^e forces combine to fight prolonged World War II-styl^e guerrilla actions. Enough arms and ammunition had to be stashed in the hinterlands of all the republics and the two autonomous provinces to support an all people’s d^£" fense for years. The existence of the arms caches makes an arms embargo or blockade by air and sea much le^sS relevant today.

An additional element crafted in Tito’s time to counter potential intervention was a strong Yugoslav Navy. I^ts role in conflict was clearly defined to Admiral Crowe (the'¹ Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, and head of NATO’s Southern Command) during his visit to Yugoslavia in April 1983. The former Yugoslav Navy Chief and Commander of the Naval and Military District of Split, Admiral Tihomir Vilovic, stressed to Admirrd Crowe that his navy—armed with Soviet and Swedish made antiship missiles—forming a defensive system in­terlacing the 1,400 Adriatic islands, could seal off the rugged Yugoslav coast to any major naval power con' templating seaborne intervention.

However, the All People’s Defense designed for YU' goslav ground forces dissolved with the 1991 departures of Slovenia and Croatia. The Yugoslav Navy, now an in­effective remnant of its former self, is bottled up mostly in the Bay of Kotor/Cattaro, able to operate only as far ^aS Cavtat, south of Dubrovnik.

A full year has passed since the first clashes began h¹ Bosnia between Serb, Muslim, and Croat fighters. Ye¹ most observers still are unwilling to recognize that the war in Bosnia was planned and is being directed by the top political and military leadership in Belgrade through the general staff of the Yugoslav Army. .

The Yugoslav Army reorganized quickly after the brie' and unsuccessful fight waged when Slovenia and Croati" left the fold in June 1991. By December, it had completed the transition into an all-Serbian force and began the re'

.

dist

Jugoslav Army units fight­ing openly in support of the Bosnian Serbs. Units from the Yugoslav Army already are ^eUgaged in the Serb offensive in eastern Bosnia. The com­mander of U.N. Protection Forces on the ground in March this year reluctantly concluded that the Serb forces threatening to overrun eastern Bosnia will not cease ac­tion without Belgrade’s authority and sought direct inter­^Vention by Slobodan Milosevic and his Yugoslav Army literal staff.

. The International Court of Justice in The Hague, in a judgment on 8 April 1993, implicitly recognized that Bel­grade is directing and supporting Serb military and para­military forces in Bosnia. The court’s judgment issued

deployments that would ensure that Serbian domination 'ⁿ Bosnia could be achieved quickly. The rapid movement ^bY the Yugoslav Army into Bosnia, code-named Rahm by ^tbe Belgrade general staff, was accomplished allegedly to Protect all minorities in a possible future conflict, should Bosnia break away from Yugoslavia and declare inde­Pendence. During the rede­ployment process, Belgrade ^c°vertly provided large Quantities of arms to the *°cal Serb military forces rapidly organizing in Bosnia.

^is included more than ^00,000 small arms and as­sault weapons taken from Croatia during the fighting there.

This set the stage for the ^Se'zure by Serbs of some 20% ₀f tf,_e Bosnia territory. iSerbs make up roughly 31%

the population of Bosnia.)

Without the redeployment of the Yugoslav Army into the hastily created Second Yu- |°slav Military District of Sarajevo before Bosnia de- eiared independence, the ^edgling Serbian Republic °h Bosnia, which declared its ^existence on 14 January 1^92, never could have con­quered such a large part of “°snia once large-scale lighting commenced.

The reluctance of the United Nations, the Euro­pean Community, and the United States to acknowl­^edge the distressing fact that Belgrade still controls the Serb enclave fighters pre­ludes effective action to ^!t°p the conflict. Even more dressing is the appearance strong legal words of censure against Belgrade but stopped short of taking immediate action for compensation. Al­though not an organization noted for precipitating ac­tion through its legal judgments, the court’s findings nev­ertheless reflect a strong, worldwide consensus and damning evidence against Serbia.

Until the world deals with Belgrade, efforts to enforce a lasting cease fire and to implement the Vance- Owens Peace Plan or any other formula are—like the U.S. airborne relief effort— doomed to sabotage at will by the Serbs in Bosnia.

The road is open to com­pel adherence by both Ser­bian and Croatian leadership to an externally imposed truce, policed by effective peacekeepers: taking direct control of the defense mech­anisms in both Belgrade and Zagreb.

This must be done to sever the heads from the semiautonomous ethnic Serb and Croat paramilitary forces fighting in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vo- jvodina, and soon in Kossovo. Serb enclave fighters depend in the long run on Belgrade for much of their food, clothing, and ac­cess to weapons and ammu­nition, just as Croat fighters depend on Zagreb. The key to the situation lies in the fact that Belgrade remains the cultural, religious, and political center for all Serbs, as Zagreb is for all Croats.

Intervention to stop the violence need not consist of the complex insertion of U.N. or NATO forces into the disputed hinterlands. This will only lead to infinite irregular warfare, especially in Bosnia, where the U.N. forces now are struggling fruit­lessly to contain local paramilitary fighters.

The inability of the Germans to subdue local forces in that terrain during the last world war should be sufficient proof of the futility of the present U.N. Protection Forces employment. Piecemeal intervention by U.N. forces in those rugged areas will continue to be as ineffective as the em­bargo of arms, oil, and other materials declared but left un­enforced on the Danube River.

The strategic advantages of the ground corridors to Za­greb and Belgrade from the north through Vojvodina

of

and from the east via the Danube River are well known to military stu­dents. Swift intervention by international forces could achieve rapid suc­cess with relative im­punity, if decisive action were taken by the United Nations and European Community using NATO and Eastern European troops. This could lead to immediate cessation of hostilities by paramilitary Serbs and Croats, who would be cut off from their chief sources of material and political and moral support.

Only this extreme

measure can gain the undivided attention of all semiau­tonomous Serb and Croat military formations in the Balkans. It must be done soon to preclude the impending explosions in Kossovo and Macedonia, which, if allowed to occur, risk the involvement of Albania, other Islamic nations, Greece, and Bulgaria. Fortunately, the traditional Russian support for Serbia now plays a role only in the domestic politics of Yeltsin’s hard-line opposition in the anachronistic Russian Parliament and is of little geopo­litical impact.

Before taking these measures, Belgrade must be given

carefully crafted ultim³' turns by the United N³' tions that outline ^a timetable of increasing sanctions. These should be enforced and should culminate—if the aggre^s' sion is not halted in all Balkan locations—in th^e seizure of Belgrade’s mil' itary infrastructure by ³ coalition of NATO an¹ other Eastern Europe³¹¹ military forces.

Fears about intervefl' tion in the Balkans base¹¹

international meddli¹^ should not hamper dec*' sive action. The Unite³ Nations, Europe, and th^e United States already are involved; and half-baked aC' tions—like the historical meddling of great powers i*¹ the past—merely contribute to the worsening of an already bad situation. Doing nothing is itself a form of intervefl' tion—acquiescence to one side in the conflict. Wh^3t happened to the hard-learned lesson that neither benigⁿ neglect nor appeasement halts the determined aggressor-

Captain Huchthausen was the U.S. naval attache to Yugoslavia an³ Romania from 1980 to 1984.