The mobilization crisis of 1991 was one of the key events of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the creation of the new Serbian-Montenegrin state in the spring of 1992. The refusal of so many Serbians and Montenegrins to participate in the fratricidal and conquering war was a trauma after which nothing was ever the same; that crisis affected all future key events.
One desperate general was publicly astonished: how come Western Serbia, with its glorious tradition from four victorious wars, suddenly won't fight in Vukovar Gallipoli now. "As soon as Serbia is attacked, here we are," said a Valjevo reservist to the general, probably unaware of the example from 1914 when the Serbian army did not want to force the Sava and pursue the Austrians after the victories at Cer and Kolubara - because it is not their country across the Sava. It will turn out, very soon, that military deserters and rebel reservists saw better than the army and the government, but also the opposition. The mobilization crisis of 1991 traumatized all the actors of the war, each in a different way: the JNA, the Milošević regime, the opposition, and - conscripts, whose trauma was the greatest.
The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) revealed with inadmissible delay that it was conceived, founded, developed and trained in all aspects of its possible operation as a defense army of the Yugoslav Federation, not an army of civil war. In the besieged barracks of Slovenia and Croatia, the JNA discovered that the assumption of its effectiveness is the support of local resources: manpower, logistics, transport; in Serbia, she discovered that war cannot be waged without the consensus of the entire population. Or, in short, that there is no war without two necessary i by excellence political prerequisites - a clearly defined war goal and a national consensus around that goal.
Belgrade, March 9, 1991.
DRAWING BORDER: Slobodan Milošević's regime was very careful not to accidentally define its war goals when it entered into open hostilities in Slovenia at the end of June 1991. The consensus reached on Milošević's populist platform (1987–1990) was somewhat eroded in the multiparty elections; Milošević never stopped shifting responsibility for the war to Yugoslavia and the JNA, because "Serbia is not at war."
The JNA - it will become clear later - had some kind of strategy: this is what General Veljko Kadijević, then Minister of Defense, defines in his memoirs as "exiting the borders of the future state". Those borders were drawn in 1990 and 1991 by everyone: Dr. Vojislav Šešelj, the Union of Communists - Movement for Yugoslavia (SKPJ), Alija Izetbegović and Kiro Gligorov... All the plans included more or less the same territories, only their political content differed. In such confusion and without a declared state of war, national consensus was impossible. The JNA was the main victim of that policy. Milošević's regime did not break away by helping the JNA strategy; first, the state leadership under Milošević's control rejected the implementation of the second phase of the Slovenian operation (complete military occupation of the breakaway republic), and the proposal to declare a state of war, i.e. general mobilization, was also rejected. In the fall of 1991, the effects of that "policy" show that the response to the partial mobilization of JNA reservists barely reached 50 percent in Serbia (and about 15 percent in Belgrade), according to then unofficial data.
Passive resistance to the war was strong from the beginning, despite the outrageous warmongering campaign. A careful statesman could not have missed the difference in the energy invested and the results achieved, so it can be safely assumed that Milosevic was aware of the situation.
HISTORY OF GROWTH AND DECAY: Serbia from the beginning to the end of the 20th century
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RESISTANCE: The biggest loser of the 1991 mobilization crisis was the Serbian opposition, which allowed itself not to take advantage of the strong political charge and motivation of conscripts, the male population in their prime. Roughly speaking, the Serbian opposition at that time was a nationalist opposition: it tried to defeat Milosevic on the field of Serbian nationalism by Serbizing; she was for the war and against Milosevic, not realizing that it was Milosevic's war.
The trauma of conscripts is the greatest and - from a human point of view - the most important. These people either returned from the war with bitter memories, some crippled, some disturbed - or they joined the great migration of the young and capable to the West. Those who were mobilized, those who revolted in uniform and returned home (about 40.000), those who hid from the draft (between 100.000 and 200.000), all - and their families - lived in fear.
Passive resistance took different forms: avoiding military service; sleeping outside the house; caution in public places due to frequent police raids. The parents invented various excuses (claiming that their son had joined one of the paramilitary formations was quite an effective way). People fled abroad, even through illegal channels. Once in uniform, many slacked off; the general attitude of the reservists was to survive at any cost. When a critical mass of discontent was created, riots occurred at mobilization points, during trips to the front, in development centers and at positions. After returning home, reservists as a rule tended to avoid new calls to the front.
SAD WARFARE: Reservists and…
JUL 1991: Psychologically, the mobilization crisis was prepared by the ten-day war of the JNA in Slovenia, which the regime (Milošević's) media in Serbia portrayed as the weakness of the state (Yugoslavia) and the army (JNA). Banal data say that by July 1, 1991, JNA forces occupied 137 of the 134 assigned key positions on the territory of Slovenia in the first phase of operations; the fact that at that moment the entire 5th Army, reinforced by elite units of paratroopers and military police was ready for the second phase of the operation was completely ignored in favor of the story of "betrayal".
All this led to the movement of parents of recruits - a prelude to a mobilization crisis. First, Milan Kučan, the president of Slovenia, publicly called on the presidents of the other Yugoslav states to recall their citizens-recruiters of the JNA from Slovenia, because he cannot guarantee their safety, and called on all Slovenians - soldiers and officers - to leave the JNA and join the Slovenian Territorial Defense. Then, on June 1, 30, the 1991st Army began a limited mobilization of reservists, which was met with political resistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Izetbegovic's SDA and Tudjman's HDZ advised the membership to "assess on the spot the need to respond or not," and Karadzic SDS to "act according to the law". On July 2, 1991, the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina officially requested the suspension of mobilization, referring to the constitutional provision according to which only the Presidency of the SFRY can order mobilization.
...and the territorial fighters in 1991.
The media reports that on July 2, 1991, about 300 angry parents broke into the hall of the Serbian Parliament shouting "treason" and cursing. "The wave of anti-war sentiment is mixed with moral indignation at the betrayal... Reminiscences of the collapse of 1941 are mixed with anger at the political incompetence of the leaders," writes the concerned parliamentary reporter of "Vremena" and concludes that after that night (when the deputies fled in front of their parents) "this assembly and its government no longer have the moral right to decide on war and peace."
The same evening, newly mobilized soldiers from Serbia set off for the border between Vojvodina and Croatia. The next day in Loznica, citizens block a mobilized unit of reservists. The media reports on "almost complete disarray", speculates on the political background of the parents' movement, on the public refusal of reservists to "go to Slovenia"; statements of reservists tired of waiting and uncertainty are quoted. In Belgrade, there is massive dodging of the draft, while the nationalist opposition is trying to establish its own paramilitary formations, waving "Guards booklets", shouting about the "Serbian army" which will do everything much better than the JNA...
WITHDRAWAL OF JNA FROM SLOVENIA 1991: Prelude to an even hotter war
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News comes from Montenegro that the response to the mobilization is "unexpectedly weak", mentions of "halved units". The President of Montenegro, Momir Bulatović, is the first to publicly mention "the order for conscripts to declare whether they are ready to carry out the assigned tasks and, if they are not, to leave their units". The active officers did not help much in the consolidation of the Montenegrins: a lieutenant colonel Radoman Radović was quoted as saying that "in six hours he would fry Slovenia", but he had only four reservists left from one company. General Života Avramović, the new commander of the 5th Army, reprimands the parents who came to Zagreb to pick up their children: "And you would like your children to eat, fuck and fight on your doorstep."
And then a decision was made to withdraw the JNA from Slovenia, but the mobilization continued. At some border crossings, they started turning men back regardless of valid passports. The Ministry of Defense (SSNO) claims that it has nothing to do with it. In mid-July, reservists released on vacation demonstrate in Pancevo: they demand everything - from the destruction of mosquitoes on the ground where they are located to the replacement of the Supreme Command; they complain of nervous breakdown and uncertainty; they ask to be explained if there is a JNA, if only they defend the country or also reservists from other republics, etc. At a peace meeting in Titograd (Podgorica), under the slogan "Today, bravery is not going to war", about 5000 people protested against the war: "This is not our war, we refuse to participate in it!" The Serbian opposition flirted with militarism during that time under the slogan "We want weapons!" and he wakes up in a mousetrap because "reservists' rebellions and growing resistance to militarization have not caused either the government or the opposition to reconsider their strategy."
AVGUST 1991: The warmongering hysteria of the regime media is growing. Around 100.000 people from all over Yugoslavia gather in Sarajevo at the beginning of the month for a peace rally and rock concert; the future president of the "truncated Yugoslavia" Dobrica Ćosić says in a public statement that "pacifist rhetoric is meaningless at this moment". At the beginning of August, the public learned that in mid-July the Minister of Defense Veljko Kadijević signed an order to hire incompetent officers from the JNA, to deal with deserters according to the laws of war, but also to suspend classic mobilization in favor of voluntary mobilization, while at the same time dismissing "hesitants" , defeatists and those who don't want to fight". Estimates of the number of such at the beginning of August are around 50.000. 1000 criminal charges were brought against the rebel reservists in Tuzla alone (without results); in Montenegro, only in the first wave at the beginning of July, there were 1300 "deserters". The order will not be respected at any point. That is why the volunteers of the party's paramilitary units were granted the status of members of the armed forces (which would only become public in October 1991).
The press publishes the results of a survey, according to which 49 percent of Belgrade residents, 54 percent of Zagreb residents and 92 percent of Ljubljana residents believe that refusing to receive weapons cannot be punished. On August 21, 1991, the head of the Political Administration of the JNA, General Marko Negovanović, explained that "the Army never resorts to coercion in filling its ranks, except for persons who avoid military service." The independent press hailed this contribution to the "Catch 22" philosophy: "We conscript none but those who will not fight in a fratricidal war; we let those who change their minds out of the army, but anyone who asks to be let home is obviously sane, because otherwise he would stay fighting in a fratricidal and senseless war."
SEPTEMBER 1991: The end of August was marked by an event that changed the entire picture of the war in Yugoslavia. It was an attempted coup by Marshal Yazov in Moscow on August 19. Its failure destroyed the last hope of the Milosevic regime and the ruling JNA clique to gain external support for their own counter-revolution in Yugoslavia. The "anti-fascist" propaganda rhetoric of the JNA and the regime is beginning to turn into Greater Serbian rhetoric; "Ustashe" increasingly means "Croats" and less and less "HDZ regime". The JNA units developed in July on the border of Vojvodina and Croatia are moving into an attack for the territories, and not - as previously expected - in an attack to overthrow the HDZ from power in Croatia.
This did not make the mobilization any more successful. Independent media reports on resignations in the JNA and statements by senior officers that the Army will carry out tasks with professionals. New classes of recruits and new reservists can only be expected from Serbia and Montenegro; The JNA is slowly becoming a five-pronged Serbian army, and officers on the Slavonian battlefield complain that they sleep with a gun in their hand, in fear of new reservist rebellions. Various local authorities announce their mobilizations (Knin, Banija, SAO Slavonija and Baranja); Croatia declares general mobilization and the transition to a war economy; the demands of parents to return their children and to release all those who have completed their military service are getting louder.
In the fall of 1991, the mobilization crisis took on its definitively tragic dimension: on September 20, during a rebellion in a unit of Gornjo Milanov reservists in Slavonia, somewhere between Šid and Tovarnik, reservist Miroslav Milenković between two machines - a "traitor" and a "patriot" - shot himself in the the head. The Gornjomilanovac reserve was raised in the night between September 16 and 17; they were told to go to Sandžak, but they found themselves in the Ruma area as "an elite detachment of volunteers to clean up remaining pockets of resistance as soon as Vukovar falls". They have been given weapons they do not know; there were no medical examinations, so there were diabetics and heart patients in the train with the healthy; the sniper rifles they were given were not fired. When the reservists asked logical questions to the officers, they were called traitors and cowards.
It is explained to the reservists from Čačak and Pranjan that they will go to Srem, and after a two-day journey they find themselves in Lipika. The seeds of rebellion spread further: the Kragujevac People's Army (around 2000 of them) returns home from Šid, the center of chaos on the Slavonic battlefield; Valjevo reservist Vladimir Živković sits in an armored personnel carrier and drives it to the SFRY Assembly as a sign of protest (the Valjevo armored-mechanized battalion later returned home after being mistakenly bombed by the Yugoslav Air Force); several thousand more reservists returned from the fronts during September. Regime media reports on this with an increasing presence of political disqualifications. The real reasons for the reservists' revolts were not touched upon anywhere - except in the independent media, which talk about the "political void", the incompetence of the officers and the JNA as an organization, a replay of the Srem Front from the end of the Second World War, without any reason for sacrifice and the lack of a political goal of the war. According to one general of the JNA, "it is better that whoever wants to leave the unit leave - for the sake of others" because "the bigger problem is those who stayed, but they will not move forward".
At the end of September in Vojvodina, they mobilize judges for military courts and give them ranks without any formalities. Those ancestral courts-martial, however, never worked. In an attempt to pacify Valjevo, the Minister of Religion (!) Dragan Dragojlović had the nerve to say: "Serbia, apparently, is not at war in order not to be the aggressor, so it does not have its own army, but it is within the JNA..." Reservists from Kosjerić, furious because of the poor organization and acceptance, they did not even go to the meeting places; instead, they replaced the municipal government and appointed their reserve captain as the president of the municipality. At the same time, thousands of reservists are returning from the assembly area of Šabac to Smederevska Palanka, Kragujevac, Rača, Knić, Topola, Bogatić and other places. General Blagoje Adžić, Chief of the General Staff, allows himself in Tovarnik to lash out at the exhausted soldiers who fought honestly. "When General Adžić visited us, I brought a dead, massacred comrade who was a shapeless mass; it was bombed by our aviation," says one reservist. "I said: General, if the Ustashas are beating us, why are our aviation beating us too?" He grabbed his gun and answered me: 'Shut up, they love one, it's a lie!' The lieutenant present said: 'General, it's not a lie.' And he wanted to arrest us all. That's how I got the partisan name 'Vo'" (Rade Andrić, reservist from Valjevo).
The September partial mobilization of the JNA and TO was ordered by the Headquarters of the Supreme Command, because the Presidency - which according to the Constitution is the only one that can make such decisions - "is not functioning", reveals "Vreme". According to the SSNO, the unconstitutional order was "forced" by the situation in Croatia. For his part, the Minister of Defense, General Veljko Kadijević, complains in an interview with Sky News that it is difficult to make reservists listen when the Army does not have the powers arising from the declared state of war.
OCTOBER 1991: The declaration of a state of immediate danger of war, on October 3, 1991, will not help: no one is ready to stand behind the unconstitutional act passed by half of the members of the SFRY Presidency, one of whom (Branko Kostić) no longer has the support of the "base" (Montenegro). Montenegrin media reports about a flood of volunteers, even girls eager to take up a rifle, and the Belgrade "Politika Express" carries an anthology title on the front page: "Dubrovnik awaits liberation."
A man from Belgrade returned his son's military draft with a note: "ZP cannot join the army." His father doesn't allow him."
The Serbian Parliament is considering the unhappy secret reports about the riots of the reservists in Kikinda, Novi Sad, Kruševac, Leskovac, Loznica... Socialists blame the failure of mobilization and the lack of warrior spirit in the people on the opposition, which listened to this year's request by Milošević not to criticize the army that protects the Serbs. Valjevo is still the center of resistance: several thousand reservists returned from Šid, Tovarnik and Nevesinje, because they did not want to participate in the fratricidal war. The reservists who came from Herzegovina were disgusted by the looting, the shooting of mosques, the mistreatment of Muslims and the intention to conquer Dubrovnik.
Then the then president of Montenegro, Momir Bulatović, signed the Hague document, after Slobodan Milošević transferred Bruka to Montenegro due to the ill-fated operation in Dubrovnik. Bulatović emphasized that "not a small number of members of the armed forces from the Republic of Serbia on this battlefield do not want to fight and carry out the orders".
The Kragujevac regiment also revolted in the Pasuljanski meadows, which was joined by reservists from Smederevo, Arandjelovac, Velika Plana, Topola and Svilajnec. Prosecutions begin: in Niš, the military court sentenced six soldiers from Leskovac who left their units in Croatia to prison terms of four to six months. Two reservists from Aleksinac were arrested in Dalje on the charge of being the ringleaders of the rebellion in which 150 of the 200 soldiers went home from the front. There is a rebellion of reservists in the Belgrade barracks "4. July': they wanted to be replaced by new troops, but still agreed to return to the front; one of them alluded to threats of dismissal. The then opposition leader Vuk Drašković and his Serbian Restoration Movement issue the first statement condemning the persecution of those who will not go to war.
Repression against rebel reservists continues in Valjevo: the new wave of invitations was delivered to only 250 out of 1800 addresses; the rest took shelter (in the first mobilization of 6460 calls, 5693 were delivered). Hundreds of candles are lit every night in front of the Presidency of Serbia for all those who died in the war.
NOVEMBER 1991: The beginning of the month is marked by a ban on men traveling abroad without confirmation from the military department. The news refers to the "decision of the Presidency of Yugoslavia on the introduction of a state of immediate danger of war", but the SSNO knows nothing about it. It will turn out that the decision was made by the Belgrade City Command, because it was trying to raise some reserve units, and the response was scandalously small. Admiral Stane Brovet, Assistant Minister of Defense, bitterly complains in the Assembly of the SFRY - in front of only Serbian deputies - that the Army no longer has behind it "neither the state, nor the Presidency, nor the Government, nor the Assembly".
FATE OF CIVILIANS: Escape, refugee or survival
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In the barracks "4. July" a new rebellion of reservists; this time, they are asking for it to be recorded in their military records that they were in the war, and not on a "military exercise". The Belgrade reservists, the entire armored battalion, have been asking for days for someone to accept them and provide them with a replacement at the front. Reservists from Preljina and Čačak blocked the Ibar highway. There was shooting in the air, and since an MUP armored vehicle appeared, an anti-tank missile was fired at the parked trailer: "To let them know what awaits them", according to the statement of one reservist. There are large demonstrations against the war in Senta and Ada, with the request to call a referendum on whether to go to war or not. The already started anti-Hungarian campaign against peace activists in Senta, Ada, Temerin, Bečej and Novi Sad is growing in the regime media.
Montenegrins are increasingly divided over the war in Konavle. "We cannot justify ourselves with the alleged cowardice of reservists from Serbia, because it was more courageous to reject weapons and return home, than to stay at the front. For me, that is great civil courage, which, unfortunately, we don't have here, even now when I ask that my name not appear in the newspaper," says one Montenegrin reservist. In November 1991, the results of a public opinion poll conducted in August of the same year were published: 80 percent of the respondents declared themselves in favor of preserving peace in every way; 54,9 percent said that they do not want to go to war, but "if you have to, what can you do"; 23,3 percent said that "it is not my war, let those who started it lead it, I will not participate in it." A repeated survey showed that 48 percent of respondents dispute the war policy of the Serbian regime, and 52 percent support it; however, 83 percent circled the offered answer "Refugees are hiding, and we are fighting for them." According to the age structure, 55,6 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 36 dispute Milosevic's war policy.
Then, on November 19, Vukovar fell. The bloody senselessness of war showed its face; there is an anticlimax - there is no triumph, except for the most extreme warmongers; the practical loss of Western Slavonia at the end of November goes unnoticed (it will be noticed only on May 3, 1995, when the Croatian army will occupy what is left of Western Slavonia in two days). Vuk Drašković, with the usual delay, horrified by the true truth of war, writes his historical text "Take off your hats and keep quiet" for "Borba", in which he calls Vukovar "Serbian Hiroshima". Vance's plan for Serbian lands in Croatia was accepted. The Dubrovnik operation ends in disgrace and retreat. The war is over for Serbia, which was not in it. There are no problems with mobilization.
DECEMBER 1991: The JNA has never published the actual figures of war losses in Croatia. The Minister of Defense of Serbia, General Tomislav Simović, rejects requests to replace reservists at the front because some specialties are missing, and it is calculated that they might be needed if the "southern front" is opened. General Kadijević also mentions "organized disruption of mobilization as an extremely significant factor in the overall combat capabilities of the armed forces..." Later, in May 1993, he will say that those who called for desertion should have been "physically chased away, including, if necessary, the use of weapons."
The Main Committee of the Democratic Party - with some delay - in mid-December condemns the "offensive activities of the JNA towards Dubrovnik, Osijek and other Croatian places". Reservists who have returned from the Slavonic battlefield receive new invitations to the army.
SUPREME COMMANDER AND MILITARY CORPS: Slobodan Milosevic with obedient officers
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In Serbia, 50.000 people signed a petition for peace and a referendum on the country's participation in the war. The organizers of the petition (peace movements and organizations) estimated that 150.000 people have fled Serbia since the war, that 50.000 reservists are currently hiding from being called up for the army, and that ten thousand misdemeanor or criminal proceedings have been initiated against them. Civilian and military authorities have provided companies in Serbia with lists of reservists who are hiding, presumably expecting layoffs and other pressures. In Kragujevac, there is a scandal due to the publication of lists of "deserters" in the local newspaper - soon it turned out that - in addition to being shameful - they are also incorrect. The Ivangrad Magistrate's Court fined 400 reservists who allegedly failed to respond to the military call-up; all those reservists had certificates that they had been on the battlefield.
JANUARY 1992: In an unexplained incident, JRV planes shot down a European Mission helicopter on January 7. General Kadijević resigns, and General Blagoje Adžić becomes acting minister. The first half of the Balkan wars is over. Reservists who have returned from the front with the implementation of Vance's plan sit in the barracks and despair. They don't let them take off their uniforms, they don't give them back their military cards with their residence in the war until they return the last piece of equipment.
In the territory of southern Serbia and the Timočka Krajina, the largest rebellion of reservists since the beginning of the war occurs at the end of January. There is unrest in Sokobanja, Zaječar, Negotin, Niš, Knjaževac, Aleksinac, Svrljig. In Knjaževac alone, 4000 reservists gathered and asked to be explained why they are being raised now and what the goals of the war are. In Sokobanja, the reservists do not believe that there are 10.000 Kurds on the Bulgarian border who want to invade Serbia, as the regime's newspaper claims. The mayor of the municipality joins them and promises that no one from Sokobanja will go to war in Croatia before it is declared that Serbia is at war.
On January 21, Police Minister Radmilo Bogdanović explained to the socialists of Belgrade's Stari Grad municipality and to the Serbian public that "10.000-15.000 people cannot simply be brought before the court and that everyone, including the SPS, must take responsibility for that (desertion).
Vladimir Živković, the soldier who brought an armored personnel carrier from the battlefield and parked it in front of the Parliament building in Belgrade, was absolved of responsibility.
QUESTION AMNESTY (1992 1995): At the end of February 1992, the media estimated that during the seven months of the war, around 12.000 people came under the military conscription law, and that between 100.000 and 150.000 people left the country. Democratic Party Judiciary Committee Proposes Amnesty; The Center for Anti-War Action drafted a bill and sent it to the Presidency of the SFRY and the Parliament of Serbia. Some former and active members of the Military Court propose an immediate amnesty for all; others confirm that criminal prosecution of at least 10.000 people is practically impossible, but also that the issue of amnesty is a matter of political decision.
During 1991, the Military Prosecutor's Office resolved 1753 criminal charges; the investigation was initiated against 1199 persons, 480 were accused, of which almost half (45 percent) were civilians. In early March 1992, however, the Belgrade military court found four reserve officers from Arandjelovac guilty and sentenced them to two and a half years in prison. The case is extremely interesting, because on October 31, 1991, those four refused to participate in a certain operation in advance and took their soldiers, 67 of them out of a total of 81, from Bač back to Aranđelovac. It was about an operation that never happened - forcing the Danube near Vukovar. The operation was abandoned - it will be learned later from senior active officers of the JNA - at a stormy meeting of the command of the operational group: there was a fierce conflict between the commanders who proposed forcing the Danube and those who were against; when an estimate of 60 percent losses was put forward, some commanders refused to even discuss it. First of all, the Danube was at that moment about 600 meters wide at the place of the predicted forcing, with the water level on the rise; the Vukovar coast at the height of Lužac, which was supposed to be the goal of the landing, was well fortified and occupied, because the defenders expected danger from that side; The JNA hardly had the technical capacity for such a complex and dangerous undertaking. In an earlier separate forcing attempt, a smaller unit with several rubber boats was killed; the support of the river war flotilla was requested, but the ship's captain refused to approach the Croatian positions because he had to remove additional armor from the vessel by order of the superior command. In the end, the whole operation of forcing the Danube was abandoned, but someone had to be blamed.
There is quite a heated public debate about the first official proposal for an amnesty for military deserters. In the Federal Assembly, Verica Dudić, MP from Vojvodina, proposes to declare an amnesty for military fugitives on March 18. The proposal is condemned by "patriotic" deputies. Two days later, two representatives of the Socialist Party of Serbia submit to the Serbian Parliament a draft law on banning the return of citizens who left Serbia since June 1991 due to war operations. Voting result: 80 for, 80 against and 23 abstentions. In those days, General Marko Negovanović, Minister of Defense of Serbia, declared in Gornji Milanovac: "There can be no talk of any amnesty, because those who committed a crime against the armed forces must answer for it, especially those who encouraged and organized desertion."
Reserve officers who were tried for "desertion" do not give up: thirteen of them from Nis, who in October 1991, together with 450 other reservist soldiers, refused to go to the front within one hour, spoke to the public at the end of March. They say that they have no intention of serving prison sentences (from four to six months), that they are in contact with their comrades from Arandjelovac who think the same; they accused two generals and several colonels "of the behavior and military ignorance that brought the VP 3987 unit into a state of disorganization and chaos." At the beginning of April, the Belgrade-based "Politika" published a study by the Center of Higher Military Schools, which included 230 soldiers and 80 officers of a mechanized guard unit that was on the Vukovar battlefield. A third of the soldiers were not clear about their role and task in the field; only 100 soldiers felt qualified to carry out the tasks. Only 13,9 percent of soldiers were "very satisfied" with the officers.
The overall impression of the media consideration of the problem is that there were indeed desertions, but that the following are to blame for it: the unclear goals of the war, the lack of a declaration of war, the fact that the JNA is not a Serbian army, the disorganization of the JNA, the betrayal of officers of other nationalities, party propaganda, cowardice, etc. One of the few contributions that speaks about the matter itself is a letter from Milivoj Milićević, a reserve lieutenant from the "Arandjelovak Four", who says: "Desertion is when someone attacks Yugoslavia, when a soldier finds himself in a combat position and allows the enemy to conquer our territory. They are real deserters. There is no desertion in mutual confrontation, in the civil war that was and is still being fought in some parts of the country."
"Vreme" publishes an analysis of emigration from Yugoslavia: the war played a key role in that process; none of the migration experts expect the return of the best young experts; Serbia is crippled.
At the beginning of May, the Scientific and Teaching Council of the University of Belgrade decided (with 16 out of 25 votes) to propose to the Government of Serbia to start a procedure with the competent authorities in order to enable the return without consequences of young people who left the country because of the war. There were also divided opinions, along the same "patriotic-peacemaking" lines as elsewhere. The book of the former chief of staff of the Minister of Defense of Serbia, Dobrila Gajić-Glišić, Serbian the army, reveals that Slobodan Milošević refused General Simović's requests for general mobilization because "Serbia is not at war", but that he demanded the punishment of deserters.
In September 1992, MP Dr. Aleksandar Tasković (SPO) asked the Assembly to order the judicial authorities to suspend the proceedings against "deserters" until a decision is made on whether there will be amnesty or not. According to information from the General Staff and the federal government to the Assembly of the FRY from the beginning of 1993, the amnesty law could cover 13.672 persons, of which 8448 or more are not citizens of Yugoslavia or are abroad; there were 4976 crimes of escaping from the armed forces, and the perpetrators were mostly soldiers (7191), and less often civilians (5625); we are talking about proceedings initiated by the end of 1992.
On October 28, 1993, the European Parliament unanimously adopted the Resolution on deserters from the former Yugoslavia, the essence of which is the request that the international community adopt regulations on the protection of deserters; that member states of the European Community accept deserters, give them legal status and not allow their expulsion (especially from Denmark, which had such an intention). At the same time, a campaign to sign the "Appeal for support for deserters from the former Yugoslavia" began in 16 European countries, under the slogan "It's nice not to obey criminal orders" (Anatole France). The Belgrade "Politika" only mentions the Appeal on January 10, 1994 and considers it necessary to remind that the policemen at the border have lists of deserters and can immediately arrest a "Yugoslav citizen who decided to jump to his homeland." The newspaper "Vojska" calls on the "wider social community and competent authorities" to take measures against those who avoid military service.
In mid-March 1995, the daily press reported on the Draft Federal Law on Inheritance: that act stipulates that "a conscript who left the country to avoid the duty of its defense, and does not return to the country until the death of the testator" - loses the right to inherit. That wording replaced the previous one, in which the prohibition of inheritance also applied to "a citizen of Yugoslavia who fled the country in order to avoid conviction for a serious criminal offense or to avoid the obligation to serve in the army, or to carry out hostile activities against the SFRY". This means that only one of those categories was retained - military fugitives - while criminals and "enemies of the state" are privileged in relation to them.
Stojan Cerović's comment is published in "Vremen", which will cause outraged reactions from the media of the Serbs across the Drina and the domestic "patriotic" press.
"All I want to say is that Belgrade lacks a monument that would properly mark and remind of the drama and tragedy of these years." Neither monuments from the First War, nor from the Second War, nor from the Serbian uprisings, nor from the NOB, nor the House of Flowers, nor Pobednik are suitable for this function. And I will not agree with anyone who thinks that there is nothing to commemorate here and that it is best not to remember anything... Therefore, my proposal is a monument to the Unknown Deserter. Even at the beginning of the wars for the breakup of Yugoslavia, while the JNA was trying to mobilize reservists in Serbia and Montenegro and while various national armies and private guards were being created, I thought that the best and smartest thing would be to avoid the uniform, refuse weapons or desert. In various ways, thousands of people in Belgrade and Serbia did that, and that is the most that anyone here could be proud of in the future... Before that, she was forced to withdraw every human virtue. Decency and integrity were demobilized; deserted intelligence, truthfulness and humanity. No one and nothing is yet inviting those people and those virtues to return. Such a monument would give them recognition and honor, although Slobodan Milošević would never lay a flower on it. After all, he wouldn't even have to because it's not about a monument to the dead, but to those who refused the invitation to fall or kill in his war."
What started on June 11, 1995 cannot be called mobilization in the true sense of the word, unless we apply the rules of the Thirty Years' War, when everyone forcibly mobilized everyone without distinction. From June 11, the police in Serbia began to arrest men between the ages of 18 and 60 who were either born on the territory of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, or were registered there in military records. The place of birth in the identity card, the refugee ID or even the wrong accent are sufficient grounds for deprivation of liberty. All people captured in this way are placed in transit camps (military and police facilities), guarded by armed guards - sometimes from the RSK army and police - who have orders to shoot. The Government of Montenegro officially rejected Radovan Karadžić's request to extradite men of military age from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to reports from the field, from the Republika Srpska Krajina and the Republika Srpska, it can be considered that at least 6000-7000, and at most around 25.000 people were extradited from Serbia to those two Serbian states. The first wounded from those contingents began to return to the Military Medical Academy after two weeks; the first news about the dead arrived a little earlier. That operation "Storm" was called off, allegedly, on the night between July 23 and 24, 1995. From a legal point of view, this campaign by the Serbian authorities is a series of criminal acts and the grossest violations of all international agreements and conventions that Yugoslavia and FR Yugoslavia, as an aspirant for the heir, signed and acknowledged. There is the most important principle of the UN, known as non-refoulement (non-return) of refugees, which obliges the country that received the refugee not to carry out repatriation under any circumstances if the refugees in the country of residence are threatened by any danger. Not to mention elementary constitutional principles, the rights of citizens of the FR Yugoslavia and the rest. Lawlessness is committed and tolerated; no one responded, and part of the public greeted the action of the Croatian army "Storm" in early August 1995.
