Case study 3

INTRODUCTION

International criminal trials do allow individuals to be held accountable for what may have been state violence committed through institutional state structures and state bureaucracies; but a focus on individual criminal responsibility in the investigation into and prosecution of alleged mass atrocities has a number of potential pitfalls. The first is that charging a single person with extensive crimes spread over years carries the risk of ‘over-prosecution’ or even of distorting the complex historical and political processes that led to the mass atrocities in question. The second pitfall is that isolating a single political leader as responsibility for mass atrocities risks scapegoating an individual for what was in fact can also be seen as the criminality of a state and of state institutions.

Yet, there is no doubt that Slobodan Milošević, due to his de jure and de facto powers, and his role as the leader of all Serbs by 1990 bears a huge, if not a crucial responsibility of the violent disintegration of the SFRY. The opinion of some historians is that existing interpretations of the disintegration of Yugoslavia are based chiefly on “contradictory and hardly impartial evidence” such as witness accounts, personal memoirs, and Milošević’s own public statements. This view is sometimes supported by the assertion that Milošević was “extremely secretive, leaving very little documentary trace,” and that his strategic decisions were made in the seclusion of his home, where only his wife and a small group of advisors were party to his thoughts.1 The ICTY investigation into Milošević’s political and criminal behaviour had initially found that Milošević preferred one-on-one meetings and had suggested that these meetings, both domestic and international, were not officially recorded and archived as prescribed by domestic laws and regulations. Milošević was said to have been regularly accompanied by Goran Milinović, his Chef de Cabinet, who supposedly made notes.2 But in 2001, the Prosecution discovered that there were indeed records of these meetings; and that the most interesting – and arguably most valuable – material was located in the state archives of the FRY and Serbia.

THE SLOBODAN MILOŠEVIĆ TRIAL ARCHIVE

Although, there is some recognition among historians of the need to explore new material that has emerged from the ICTY and government archives, there have been a few attempts to incorporate that material in the studies in the history of the SFRY and its demise. And, for good reason, because research of the trial record reveals a different picture – that Milošević did at times leave traces, and that audio and video records in some cases irrefutably establish the veracity of certain events or claims.

Documents tendered by the Prosecution and pertaining to Milošević’s state of mind before, during, and after the wars in Croatia, BiH, and Kosovo – which were analysed for this research – are thus important to the developing historiography of the conflict. During the early years of war, in the period relevant to the Croatia indictment, telephone intercepts, records of meetings of the Presidency of the SFRY (PSFRY), and a video known as the Kula Camp Video illustrate the evolution of Milošević’s state of mind. For the period covered by the Bosnia indictment, this evidence again includes telephone intercepts, but also records from two FRY state organs, the Council for Harmonization of Positions on State Policy and the Supreme Defence Council (SDC). For years covered by the Kosovo indictment, documents from an ad hoc body known as the Joint Command were of great value, but the key piece of evidence shown at the trial was undoubtedly a video that featured a Serbian-based paramilitary group, the Scorpions, executing civilians taken from Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. The Scorpions were re-deployed by the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Poslova, or MUP) in 1999, when they again committed crimes against civilians. Although footage from the Scorpions Video was shown during the cross-examination of a Defence witness, the video was never tendered into evidence. Yet, what transpired in the courtroom was the cause of an unprecedented uproar in the world and in the region.

Materials selected as evidence by the Prosecution and Defence in the Milošević case constitute an unmatched historical source; and even with some gaps in the trial record, it incorporates documents from state archives that would have otherwise been unavailable to the public and to researchers for many decades. Indeed, some of the trial material would never have surfaced at all were it not for the obligation of states to cooperate with the ICTY, or more precisely, to provide the OTP and the Defence with materials upon request. Still, there remains trial material that is officially available and yet inaccessible to the public; and the (in)accessibility of ICTY records to the public is an important issue. The ICTY Court Record (ICR), an electronically accessible database, is sometimes more of a challenge than an aid to researchers because it comprises only a selection of materials, not the full record of every trial, and remains incomplete for a number of technical and other reasons.3

What makes the Milošević trial record especially interesting as a source of history is the fact that it includes responses by Milošević himself to every piece of evidence brought against him. Milošević not only represented himself in court, and therefore responded in that capacity to the evidence presented, but also made remarks throughout the trial from the standpoint of a man attempting to defend his political and private decisions.

The test for the introduction of evidence in court is bound by a strict forensic process, which consists of presentation of evidence by one trial party, followed by cross-examination by the opposing party, and eventually the right of re-direct by the first party. The product of this process – forensic truth – is different from historical truth in several ways. For one, a historian is not bound by the same forensic process in order to include a source in a historical account and instead seeks corroboration in other available sources, of a greater variety than are admissible in a courtroom, and through this analysis develops a historical interpretation of an event. And, over the course of time, this interpretation might be altered by other historians, which is another way in which historical and legal narratives about the same topic may differ considerably; as the latter is captured in closing arguments and judgements, which are formed in the normative legal framework and in rigid court procedures, and remain fixed in time.

At the ICTY, a discrepancy between the public perception of responsibility for mass atrocities and the legal requirements for proof of the crimes alleged against an individual such as Milošević have often led to the accrual of a great deal of evidence in order to prove ‘the obvious’ in a court bound by strict legal rules and procedures.4 For every general allegation against Milošević, probative evidence was needed to establish that the crime actually happened and that Milošević was criminally responsible for it. The large amount of evidence presented by the parties during the trial was also partially due to the changing world in which we live. Modern technology made the wars in the former Yugoslavia into media spectacles, watched daily on the television and captured on the Internet. Minute details of the conflicts became available and accessible to the public in nearly all the world’s languages; and material from these ‘open sources,’ potentially relevant as evidence, was almost unlimited.5

Notwithstanding the huge amount of audio, video, and written material that exists about the conflicts and about the role of Slobodan Milošević in them, ICTY Prosecutors – unlike their Nuremberg counterparts – did not have full or easy access to documentary material from the archives of the former leader’s country.6 Documents from the official archives of the FRY and the Republic of Serbia, considered more important from a forensic point of view than open source materials, were difficult and sometimes impossible to obtain.7 This was in stark contrast to the experience of prosecutors in Nuremberg, for which Allied Powers had simply seized the state and Nazi Party archives of defeated Germany for use as evidence in court. Nonetheless, evidence that did come directly to the ICTY from state archives in Serbia, the FRY, the RS, and the RSK makes the Milošević trial record particularly valuable, as it includes state documents that would otherwise have remained protected for decades or even longer. Once used in court as evidence, most of these documents became public.

The Milošević trial record comprises transcripts, material tendered as evidence, motions on administrative and procedural matters, and decisions and judgements of the Trial Chamber and Appeals Chamber. The record – the main source for this research – is so large that it is too substantial to be analysed in a single academic study, and it is not examined in full here. Still, missing source materials that were requested but never produced represent a gap; meaning that the trial record, while vast, is not exhaustive. And so, despite its size, the trial record alone was insufficient for the task of this research, and sources from outside the trial proceedings – known as extratrial material – were also analysed.

Extratrial material originating from the ICTY and OTP includes investigative and analytical documentation, such as reports by in-house investigators, researchers, and analysts on the Milošević trial team, which were not used per se in court proceedings. ICTY internal policy documents on topics such as indictment strategies or how to conduct the trial also fall under the designation of extratrial material. In other words, a considerable amount of extratrial material was used for the court’s investigative and research purposes without becoming a part of the official trial record. The ICTY database contains diverse materials collected by the OTP, from demographic data on the former Yugoslavia to media reports that may have been used in preparation for cross-examination of Defence witnesses to seemingly endless supporting evidence and courtroom exhibits.8 Access to some of these materials remains limited to OTP employees until, or unless, they are made publicly available, which will depend on the conclusions of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT).

SCHOLARLY DEBATE ON THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE DISINTEGRATION OF YUGOSLAVIA

The narrative that developed over the course of the trial tracked Milošević’s political motivations, objectives, and intentions and the trial record provides a unique chance for historians to revisit existing disputes and controversies about historical details, the legality of particular political decisions and actions, and the real nature of policies implemented by leaders at both the republic and federal levels. Many politicians who were in power at the outbreak of violence in fact testified as Prosecution or Defence witnesses.9 Their testimonies were further enriched by Milošević’s courtroom performance – his comments, protestation, denials, and even his body language regularly gave away more than he would have revealed had he not represented himself.10

The part Milošević played in events of the 1980s and 1990s has also been explored in a number of political biographies and is an important sub-topic of analysis. However, the most well-known of these biographies, written in both English and Serbian, were published before his trial or in the same year that it started.11 This means that few authors have presented the trail of evidence that was followed in the courtroom to establish responsibility for the break-up of Yugoslavia and, more importantly, the violence that followed.

Did Milošević genuinely try to save Yugoslavia? Did he, together with others, inadvertently cause its disintegration through a series of well-intended blunders?12 Or, did he actively work to re-draw its borders?

A majority of authors agree that Milošević played a central role in events that unfolded in the former SFRY between 1987 and 1999. For the purposes of this study, three categories of interpretations of Milošević’s role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia have been identified: intentionalist, relativist, and apologist.13 ‘Intentionalists’ see Milošević as having dictated the pace of the Yugoslav crisis through well-articulated and planned objectives that drove the other republics away.14 According to this view, violence was used cynically and practically with a clear purpose. The intentionalist perspective is that violence against non-Serbs was the result of a pre-meditated strategy – the success of which is irrelevant – to secure Milošević’s promise of “All Serbs in a Single State” at any cost.15

Alternative to this are authors who tend to see Milošević as an intelligent and ruthless politician but not a good tactician or strategist, whose politics were mostly reactive.16 These ‘relativists’ see Milošević’s policies as responses to developments that were driven by leaders of Slovenia, Croatia, BiH, and Kosovo, and by the international community. From this standpoint, Milošević genuinely wanted to preserve Yugoslavia but did not succeed.17 Relativists perceive Milošević as an immensely ambitious politician who endeavoured to achieve more than he was capable of; and his rule has been cast by authors in this camp as a sequence of mistakes and failures – at the national and international levels.18 The violence that accompanied the disintegration of Yugoslavia is thus explained as resulting from a complicated interplay of many factors, leading to an escalation of the crisis that was beyond the control of Milošević alone.

‘Apologists’ share the opinion held by relativists regarding the role of the republics that sought independence and of the international community in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Yet they not only see his goal to preserve Yugoslavia as well-intentioned but also defend his politics and decision-making in general.19 They downplay Milošević’s calculating and ruthless side to recast him as a somewhat clumsy, wayward, and inconsistent authoritarian leader who merely failed to deliver on promises he made.20

In fact, apologists frame Milošević as an atypical authoritarian ruler who could have secured his power by force but was willing, instead, to compromise his initial goals.21 Apologists also dismiss arguments about the influence of Greater Serbia ideology on Milošević or on Serbia’s involvement in the ethnic cleansing in Croatia, BiH, or Kosovo. They stress that it was NATO that committed grave crimes in Serbia and Kosovo, for which nobody has been held accountable. And, as to Milošević’s domestic criminality, some apologists say that there has been no definitive proof of his personal involvement in assassinations that took place during his rule; and some go further in their absolution of him, arguing that even if he did play a role in these murders, there were “not many such examples.”22 Apologists see Milošević as having been a true statesman who resisted foreign pressure.23

TRIAL EVIDENCE AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ON SERBIA’s ROLE IN
DISINTEGRATION OF the SFRY

For the purpose of this study, the Slobodan Milošević’s ICTY trial archive record will be analysed in search for the material about three events that are still a matter of historical controversies as it has still be contested if the events ever took place or if they did happen what is their historical and political significance. As illustration the historical significance of the mass atrocities trial archives, three events will be examined by using the material available in the ICTY trial record of the Slobodan Milošević’s unfinished trial: (1) Greater Serbia as Serbian State Ideology in the 1990s (2) the SANU Memorandum – an ideological blueprint for Serbia’s politics under Slobodan Milošević? (3) the Karađorđevo meeting of March 1991and the premeditated plans to partition Bonsia and Herzegovina

GREATER SERBIA AS SERBIAN STATE IDEOLOGY in the 1990s

Questions about Milošević’s role in the collapse of the SFRY are most relevant where they concern how it became violent. When, why, and by whom was violence unleashed? And for what purpose? In scholarly literature, the outbreak of violence has often been ascribed to Greater Serbia ideology and efforts to create a Serb state. Some authors hold that Milošević’s plans corresponded with the historical goals of Greater Serbia ideologues but that his political choices actually had no basis “in any particular scheme.”24 Criminal investigations into the language of leaders attempt to uncover derogatory and racist words that might represent prejudice or hatred toward members of a targeted enemy group. This evidence is essential to revealing the state of mind of an accused, needed to establish criminality. To prove a criminal case, both the words and deeds of an accused are equally important. Although actus reus – the criminal act itself, such as killing or rape – is an essential starting point for every criminal investigation, proving the criminality of a political leader focuses more on mens rea, the criminal mind, which must be shown to have led to or accompanied the actus reus. Throughout the Milošević trial, witnesses who were once close to or engaged in political negotiations with him testified that there was often a discrepancy between Milošević’s words and deeds. So, what were Milošević’s true intentions and why did he try to obscure his political goals? Was it because he knew that the creation of a single state for all Serbs could be achieved only through violence against non-Serbs?

Since 19th century, Greater Serbia ideology is associated with territorial expansionism, advocating that the Serbian state be enlarged to the south (into Macedonia and Kosovo) and to the west (into BiH and Croatia). Early proponents of a Greater Serbia aspired to expand Serbian borders into Ottoman and then Habsburg territories – which had ethnically mixed populations with large numbers of non-Serbs – and the Prosecution argued that this history of efforts to enlarge Serbian territory was one of mass atrocities against those non-Serb populations. In establishing Milošević’s criminal state of mind, it was essential for the Prosecution to present evidence on his adoption of this ideology that has long inspired attempts by Serbian political elites to create an ethnically-defined Serbian state; efforts known to frequently have been accompanied by violence.25

Greater Serbia Ideology and a History of Violence:
From Terrorism to Mass Atrocities

Expert witnesses for both the Prosecution and Defence addressed the history of the Greater Serbia concept. Prosecution Expert Witness on history Audrey Budding credited the term to Serbian politician Ilija Garašanin (1812-1874), who wrote a short nationalistic manifesto in 1844 known as Načertanije (The Outline), which identified the borders of a future Serbian state.26 The document was kept secret until it was finally published in 1906.27 Since Garašanin’s time, there has been much debate over his ideology and what the notion of Greater Serbia implies. Is it a unified South Slavic state incorporating a large number of non-Serbs, or a Serbian national state meant to unite Serbs and connect all predominantly Serb territories? In other words, does it reflect Yugoslavism or Serb nationalism?

In his Opening Statement, Milošević asserted that the concept of Greater Serbia had been invented for a propaganda campaign launched by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Ottoman territory conquered by Christian powers was redistributed in 1878 by the Congress of Berlin, BiH became an Austro-Hungarian protectorate, to the great consternation of the adjacent emerging Kingdom of Serbia.28 Between 1878 and 1914, the relationship between the Kingdom of Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dominated by a rivalry over BiH territory, which worsened when Austro-Hungary annexed BiH in 1908. Milošević cited that rivalry as the reason the Austro-Hungarian Empire had devised the “Greater Serbia” concept, in order to accuse the Kingdom of Serbia of expansionism.29

Čedomir Popov, a Defence witness on the topic, similarly claimed that the concept of Greater Serbia was a consequence of the power struggle for territory between the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the Serbian kingdom. He testified that the “myth” of Greater Serbia ideology had been fostered as a scare tactic, saying it:

...was nurtured and further developed after the 1878 Berlin Congress, acquiring the character of a never-ending political and religious campaign. The aim of this campaign and the creation of the myth was threefold; to prevent the creation of a Serbian state within its national borders, to conceal the fact that Austria possessed some of the Serbian and Balkan territories and aspired to others, and to open the routes to a Catholic missionary campaign among the Orthodox population of Southeastern Europe. No effort was spared to spread the myth about a Greater Serbian threat...30

A number of Defence witnesses repeated the explanation Milošević and Popov offered for the negative connotation attached to the term Greater Serbia, asserting it was a foreign invention meant to discredit Serbia – an emerging political power in the late 19th century – and prevent its westward expansion.31 Defence Expert Witness Kosta Mihailović also brought up the role of two well-known Serbian socialists, Dimitrije Tucović (1881-1914) and Svetozar Marković (1846-1876), who he claimed contributed to a negative appraisal of the term by applying it to Serbian expansionist policies in the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, and whose views he said were due to “unyielding” ideological positions that were “one-sided.”32

Čedomir Popov also claimed that Načertanije had not advocated aggression and therefore should not be seen as having instigated violence.33 Instead, Popov argued, Garašanin’s plan focused on integrating lands claimed by Serbia on linguistic and religious grounds – BiH, Northern Albania (specifically Kosovo and Metohija), and Montenegro – allowing Serbia to unite all Serbs while leaving the door open to other South Slavic nations, including Bulgarians as well as Croats from Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia. According to Popov, Garašanin’s primary aim was to liberate Serbs in the Balkans from Ottoman rule, invoking their “sacred historical right” based on the pre-Ottoman legacy of the 14th century Serbian state under Tsar Dušan the Mighty.34

Asked by the Prosecution to comment on the proposition that a future Serbian state as envisaged by Garašanin would have been based on historic, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geostrategic criteria and be led by a Serb dynasty, Popov replied that, indeed, Načertanije advocated the national interest of Serbs, but he said that similar nationalist and irredentist35 conceptions “prevailed throughout Europe in the 19th century” and that “Serbs also had the right to espouse such an idea.”36 In his Expert Report, Popov characterised Greater Serbia ideology as a myth that had been “nourished, fostered, and spread” to destabilise Serbia, which he claimed in court was meant to enforce a stereotype against Serbs as hegemonic. When Milošević asked if he in fact saw Serbia as a “victim nation and a victim state,” Popov said that he did.37 His answer reflected the ideological framework of Serb victimhood by which Serb nationalist elites had mobilised social action in Kosovo in the 1980s.

A History of Expansion of the Serbian State by Force, 1912-1941
The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913

Serbian state borders were redrawn twice during the Balkan Wars, waged in 1912 and 1913, in which emerging Balkan states fought the Ottoman Empire. Serbia extended its borders south, to Vardar Macedonia (a region now in northern Macedonia) – also known as Old Serbia because it was part of the medieval Kingdom of Dušan the Mighty – and into Kosovo and parts of Sandžak. These conquests meant that the Kingdom of Serbia incorporated large numbers of non-Serbs.38

In his Expert Report, Defence witness Kosta Mihailović wrote that Serbian socialist Dimitrije Tucović had asserted at the time of the Balkan Wars that Serbia’s 1912 military incursion into the northern parts of Albania proved it was trying to conquer that territory as well, with aspirations to gain an outlet to the Adriatic Sea. Mihailović contested this, saying that it was in fact the threat of the creation of a Greater Albania that had spurred the start of the Balkan Wars in the first place.39 But it wasn’t just the Albanians who had expansionist ideas, and the danger of competing irredentist or separatist claims had been recognised in the late 19th century by another Serbian socialist, Svetozar Marković, who drew attention to the hypocrisy of Serbia for asserting the right to an exclusive state in the Balkans but denying that right to others. Marković was also quoted by Mihailović in his Report, though Mihailović dismissed Marković’s concerns by asserting that “it can be reasonably assumed that he did not know the real intentions of [Serbian] policy.”40

The Serbian conquest of territory in Kosovo during the Balkan Wars involved atrocities committed by Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers, which some observers saw as a systematic attempt by the Serbian military to alter the demographic balance of the region in order to justify the incorporation of Kosovo into the Serbian state.41 On this issue, Prosecution Expert Witness Budding referred to the Carnegie Endowment’s 1914 Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, which chronicled these atrocities:

Houses and whole villages reduced to ashes, unarmed and innocent populations massacred en masse, incredible acts of violence, pillage and brutality of every kind – such were the means which were employed and are still being employed by the Serbo-Montenegrin soldiery, with a view to the entire transformation of the ethnic character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians.42

Defence witness Čedomir Popov recognised that atrocities had been committed by Serbian forces; but he contended that they were only in response to attacks by Albanian units, which he claimed were motivated by the Albanian majority’s refusal to accept Serbian authority.43

Slavenko Terzić, who was called by the Defence as an Expert Witness on the history of Kosovo, notably omitted any reference to the Balkan Wars in his Expert Report. Yet, this particular episode in the history of Kosovo and Serbia is undeniably significant because, in 1913 – after almost 500 years – Serbia repossessed Kosovo from the retreating Ottoman Army and incorporated its territory into the expanding Kingdom of Serbia. In the Prosecution’s cross-examination, Terzić was asked why he hadn’t mentioned these historical events, including mass atrocities committed against Kosovo Albanians by Serb soldiers, in his Report. Terzić accepted that the Carnegie Endowment’s accounting of the extent of the atrocities was probably accurate, but said that they were the expected consequences of war. He rejected the Prosecution’s suggestion that these atrocities resulted from a Serbian government plan to ethnically cleanse that territory, concluding that such a plan would have been implemented if it existed.44 Terzić also failed to mention the Serbian government’s Kosovo colonisation programme in his Report, though it was significant for having offered certain economic privileges to Serbs who were willing to settle in Kosovo after 1913. As Audrey Budding explained, the purpose of the programme was to change the ethnic composition of Kosovo in favour of Serbs; but the scheme never really worked and Kosovo Albanians maintained a majority.45

The First World War, the London Treaty of 1915, and a Greater Serbia

In questioning Čedomir Popov, the Prosecution pressed the matter that some of the first Greater Serbia ideologues had advocated violence for the purpose of unifying Serb-claimed territories, asking about the early 20th-century organisation known as both “Unification or Death” (Ujedinjenje ili smrt) and the “Black Hand” (Crna ruka). Popov corroborated that, indeed, a member of the organisation had assassinated Aleksandar Obrenović – the last king of the Obrenović Dynasty – in 1903. Obrenović was known for having cultivated a good relationship with Austro-Hungary, then seen by Serb nationalists as the major obstacle to territorial expansion and a specific challenge to territorial aspirations in BiH. The same group was also involved in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.46

Popov, who had initially rejected the Prosecution’s proposition that Greater Serbia ideology was linked to violence, was challenged to admit that terrorism had indeed marked early attempts at Serbian irridentism. He agreed that the assassinations of King Aleksandar and Archduke Franz Ferdinand represented a shift toward support for a more violent approach by the Black Hand, which he described as a paramilitary organisation comprised of active army officers of the Serbian Royal Army. The objective of the group, he said, was Serbia’s unification with Serbs from Bosnia, an aim which he claimed was fully supported by Bosnian Serbs.47 Popov denied that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 was an expression of Greater Serbia ambitions, though, asserting that Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims were members alongside Bosnian Serbs of Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna), the organisation that actually carried out the assassination. According to Popov, Young Bosnia representatives sought support from the Black Hand when they were refused assistance from the Serbian government.48 The assassination was of course seen as triggering the outbreak of the First World War, during which the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated and after which BiH became part of a newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

The Defence position was that Serbs had never aspired to form a Greater Serbia, and had even rejected an enlarged state when it was offered to them in the 1915 London Treaty, preferring instead to form a joint state with the Slovenes and Croats. Milošević introduced this notion in his Opening Statement in August 2004, stressing that the Serbs had rejected the London Treaty despite promises by the Allies to expand Serbia to include territories in BiH and Croatia:

To make the irony and absurdity even greater and to make the lies and injustice against the Serbian people even worse...it is well known that in 1915, the allies of Serbia, in the so-called London Treaty, offered Serbia, after winning the war, an extension of its territory to Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of Dalmatia, parts of Slavonia, and so on and so forth. There are documents to show all this. But Serbia did not do this. Serbia instead embraced and espoused Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes alike from the former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and this is how the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes was created, later on to be called Yugoslavia. This option taken by the Serbian state to create a common state of Yugoslavia rather than their own state provided protection to our Croatian and Slovenian brothers. We protected them from territorial fragmentation. And also, after they had been part of a defeated state, they became part of the winning camp.49

Popov contextualised the London Treaty historically and politically, saying that Austro-Hungary was the enemy state and its territory had been offered to Italy by the British in order to get Italy involved in the war on the side of the Allies. According to Popov, Serbia was not involved at all in these secret negotiations; but the British had agreed with Italy to the division of a considerable part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with the rest going to either Serbia or a common Serb, Croat, and Slovene state.50 Further, Popov testified, there were two London Treaty Maps, the second of which dealt specifically with Serbia. This second map captured changes made to the first, he said, and marked the territories offered up to Serbia, including Macedonian territory, as compensation for the fact that Serbia had lost Dalmatia to Italy.51 Popov explained that Serbia was also offered Bosnia, Eastern Slavonia, Bačka, Srem (Syrmia), and the part of Dalmatia from north of Split up to the Planck peninsula. He commented that this was more territory than Serbia ever considered rightfully due.52

Map 2: London Treaty Map showing land offered to Serbia in 1905 by the Allied Forces

The First Yugoslavia or Greater Serbia?

The contention of the Defence was that the London Treaty could have secured what was, in effect, a Greater Serbia, but that the Kingdom of Serbia had rejected this prospect because it chose instead to liberate Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs who lived under Austro-Hungarian rule. Popov testified that Serbia’s war aims had been laid out in the 1914 Niš Declaration and favoured the creation of a common Yugoslav state.53 However, Prosecution Expert Witness Budding offered a different interpretation of these events, saying that Serbian political elites in fact saw a common state as an expanded Serbian state, not as a Yugoslav state, which was then a fundamentally new concept. Budding testified that, at the time, the notions of Greater Serbia and Yugoslavia were synonymous, at least in the minds of political decision makers. According to her, the Niš Declaration was a continuation of Serbia’s pursuit of the unification of all Serbs.54

Croat representatives in the negotiations that preceded the creation of the first Yugoslav state advocated for a confederation; though they eventually compromised with the Serbs and established the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes under the Serb royal dynasty of Karađorđević.55 As Audrey Budding noted, there were Serbian intellectuals who also saw the importance of making a distinction between a common state and the expansion of Serbian domination, and pushed for a federal state that would decentralise power.56 In 1929, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes changed its name, becoming the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, or the First Yugoslavia. The state was troubled by inter-ethnic relations and growing Serbo-Croatian conflict. Still, Serbia did engage in political dialogue with Croats and Slovenes and treated them as equal nations; but its relationship with other ethnic groups – the Bosnian Muslims, the Macedonians, and the Kosovo Albanians – remained problematic.

An extreme example of how some Serbs felt the non-Serb population should be dealt with was found in yet another document that remained hidden away from the public for years, at the Institute for Military History in Belgrade, titled “The Resettlement of the Arnauts” (Iseljavanje Arnauta).57 The term ‘Arnauts’ was used to denote ethnic Albanians, and the document recommended moving the Albanian population to Turkey and paying the Turkish government as compensation for resettlement costs. The proposal was written by Vasa Ćubrilović, then a junior historian who was known for his Young Bosnia membership at the time of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Ćubrilović wrote the document when he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Belgrade and presented it at a session of the Serbian Cultural Club in 1937. The Club was an establishment for the elite, including prominent Serb politicians, high-ranking military personnel, and intellectuals with considerable influence over politics and public opinion.

The Second World War and the Historical Legacy of
Moljević’s “Homogeneous Serbia”

The disintegration of the First Yugoslavia in 1941 and its partition among the Third Reich, Italy, and neighbouring Nazi satellite states – such as Hungary and Bulgaria – redrew the map of Yugoslavia considerably. Croatia was rewarded with more territory for its alliance with the Third Reich, extending its borders to the east by annexing BiH and Syrmia and reaching as far as the suburban town of Zemun in the vicinity of Belgrade. The Serbs, on the other hand, were left by Nazi Germany with a Serbian state that was much smaller than the new Independent State of Croatia (Nezavasina država Hrvatska, or NDH). The NDH was led by the extreme right Ustasha movement, which started exterminating Serbs, Roma, Jews, and Communists in the Jasenovac concentration camp in order to change the ethnic composition of the NDH in favour of Croats.

In both Nazi Serbia and the NDH, several Serb Chetnik guerrilla units were active. The Chetnik guerrillas under the command of Colonel Draža Mihailović were considered by Allied Forces to be a royal army and were seen as an official resistance movement until 1943, when Tito’s victorious communist guerrillas, known as the Partisans, became the only recognised resistance movement on the territory of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. One of the ideologues of the Chetnik guerrilla movement was Stevan Moljević (1888-1959), a lawyer from Banja Luka who was a member of the Serbian Cultural Club. In 1941, he authored a pamphlet titled “Homogeneous Serbia” (Homogena Serbia), which revitalised Greater Serbia ideology in the political and military context of the Second World War and the changing European State System.

Map 3: Moljević’s Map of Greater Serbia. From Izvori Velikosrpske Agresije,
page 146, Exhibit P807.

Asked by Milošević to comment on Moljević’s contribution to the Chetnik movement and Greater Serbia ideology, Čedomir Popov testified that it was Ustasha terror against Serbs in the NDH that led to the Chetnik movement. He described the Chetniks as an incoherent group, but said that, for some time, Draža Mihailović’s movement indeed seemed to have adopted Moljević’s ideas. According to Popov, Moljević envisaged a Greater Serbia that would encompass even more territory than offered by the London Treaty in 1915:

...Moljević envisaged that this should be a homogenous Serbia from a national point of view along the following lines: The non-Serb population will be allowed to leave on their own or will be exchanged for those Serbs which remain outside this Greater Serbia. This programme was rejected by the Chetniks themselves. It was revised at the so-called Sveti Sava Congress in the village of Bar in January 1944 when, under pressure exerted by the Allies and because of the general feeling that prevailed among the Allies, a decision was made to create a federative Yugoslavia with Serbia at its centre.58

The historical importance of the Moljević map for the development of Greater Serbia ideology is in its demarcation of a Western border running from the Northern Croatian town of Virovitica, through Karlovac, to Karlobag in the South of Croatia. The Prosecution asked Popov to comment on Moljević’s map, and in particular on the proposed boundary, which would have left Croatia as a very narrow strip of territory beyond the projected Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag (V-K-K) line. Popov asserted that this border was not accepted by all Serbs,59 and indeed, that’s possible; but the V-K-K line grew to be seen by many as a potent and enduring representation of Greater Serbia ideology and proved relevant to the war in Croatia in 1991.

The SANU MEMORANDUM - AN IDEOLOGICAL BLUEPRINT FOR
SERBIA’S POLITICS UNDER SLOBODAN MILOŠEVIĆ?

It is hard to find any literature on the Yugoslav crisis that does not make note of connections between the SANU Memorandum and the political programme introduced by Milošević, but there are various perspectives on the nature of these connections. One view is that the Memorandum served as the “blueprint” for Milošević’s war policies.60 Another is that it more generally advocated “a reformed federation.”61 And alternative to both of these is the view that the Memorandum can be seen as an “explicit post-Yugoslav Serbian national program.”62 Some authors argue that the Memorandum did not advocate the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the creation of a Greater Serbia, or ethnic cleansing, and that no connection has been established between the authors of the Memorandum and Milošević. According to some authors at the time of the Memorandum’s publication, Milošević’s views were no different from other Serbian communist leaders.63 Nonetheless, some ICTY witnesses talked in court about the importance of the SANU Memorandum, and the polarised narratives that unfolded followed the fault lines of pre-existing scholarly debate on the importance of the Memorandum. And once again, this courtroom narrative was significantly shaped by Milošević’s active participation in court, discussing his position on the SANU Memorandum with several of its authors who appeared as Defence witnesses.64

In 1985, Serbian political leaders approved a proposal by members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) that they contribute to solving the profound social, economic, and political crises facing Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia at the time. Stambolić consented to the endeavour because he firmly believed that science should be part of those efforts. The SANU leadership organised several expert teams, each of which analysed different aspects of the crisis and made proposals for how to resolve them.65 The product of this work – the SANU Memorandum – took Stambolić by surprise, and he qualified it as an “obituary for Yugoslavia.”66 He felt that the recommendations advanced in the document were contrary to the interests of Serbs in Yugoslavia, whom he felt were best served by a common state. Stambolić was one of the first communist officials to criticise the Memorandum in public, warning against the dangers of attempts to “unite” Serbs on the ruins of Yugoslavia, and saying presciently that this would lead to conflict with other Yugoslav nations and with the rest of the world.

In the months following a ‘leaked’ disclosure of the Memorandum in 1986, it was the topic of discussion at all Party forums. Unlike fellow politicians Stambolić and Dragiša Pavlović, Milošević remained silent; he was diligent about not speaking against the Memorandum in public, though he did allow for some criticism of it by others in less public settings.67 And while he never commented on the contents of the Memorandum itself, Milošević defended the Academy on a number of different occasions, saying that it was only natural that an institution of the highest intellectual and moral standards would deal with solving complex issues like the Yugoslav crisis.68

The Prosecution mentioned the SANU Memorandum only briefly in its Opening Statement, referring to the threat it had alleged faced Serbs in Kosovo and Croatia and how that rhetoric contributed to creating fear among Serbs.69 But the Memorandum kept cropping up in evidence as the trial went on, progressively revealing its importance as an apparent blueprint for the political programme that had been implemented by Milošević. The central arguments in the Memorandum were based on the notion that economic and political systems had suffered negative consequences as a result of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution, by which the Federation had become a confederation. According to the Memorandum’s authors, the 1974 Constitution made the Yugoslav political system “a textbook case of inefficiency” and they argued that the only way out of the crisis was to abandon the political and economic systems that were based on that Constitution.70 They also identified three additional issues confronting Serbia in the Federation: its economic underdevelopment, its unresolved relationship with the state and the provinces, and “the genocide in Kosovo.”71 These and other very serious charges painted a dim picture of life for Serbs and included accusations that the Serb population in Kosovo and Croatia had been threatened by “physical, political, legal, and cultural genocide” that had directly affected the ethnic balance in the Yugoslav Federation.72 The conclusion of the Memorandum’s authors was that the root of both the Yugoslav crisis and the Serbian crisis lay in Yugoslavia’s decentralisation. They called for transforming Yugoslavia and referred, though only in passing, to the possibility of its collapse.73

The Memorandum’s one-sided emphasis on Serbian victimisation was reflected in all forms of public debate in the years that followed. But Prosecution Expert Budding suggested that the content of the Memorandum was not its most relevant feature; she considered it most significant for the way in which it had been introduced to the public and how it had polarised Serbian political leadership.74 Budding also drew attention to the fact that, unlike previous critics of the 1974 Constitution, the authors of the SANU Memorandum catalogued pre-existing grievances together with one important and groundbreaking new inference – that Serbs might be able to do without Yugoslavia.75

Authors of the Memorandum Appear as Defence Witnesses

In his Opening Statement in February 2002, Milošević said that the indictments against him accused not just him but the whole Serb nation, beginning with the Serbian intelligentsia and members of the SANU. He defended the SANU and the Memorandum, saying that Serbian academics had responsibly and authoritatively described the situation in Kosovo.76 Though he had hardly ever spoken publicly of the Memorandum and it was difficult to prove that he had even read it, its role in shaping his ideology became clear when Milošević called some of its most prominent authors to the stand for his Defence. The fact that they were asked to appear spoke volumes despite his reticence.77 Professor Kosta Mihailović, an economist who was among the Memorandum’s authors, was an advisor to Milošević at all major negotiations in the early 1990s; he testified as an expert witness on the topic of Serbia’s economic sluggishness in the First Yugoslavia (1918-1941), and also about the Memorandum and Milošević’s attitude toward it. In 1993, Mihailović had co-authored a book titled Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Answers to Criticisms in which he and Vasilije Krestić – a Professor of History and fellow SANU member who was responsible for the part of the Memorandum that addressed the history of genocide against Serbs – explained why and how the Memorandum was written. While Mihailović confirmed in his testimony that there was indeed a link between the ideas in the Memorandum and the views of Milošević on legal, political, and economic aspects of the crisis, in the book, he and Krestić denied that this was anything but coincidental:

The insinuation that Slobodan Milošević was carrying out a national agenda contained in the Memorandum is a pure fabrication. This claim was inspired by the course of events and the anti-Serbian propaganda’s need to keep the official and unofficial organs of Serbia under a constant barrage of accusations.... Another charge against the Memorandum is that it served as a springboard for Slobodan Milošević’s policies. There is nothing strange in the fact that he may have seen some of the problems and solutions in the same or similar light as the document in question. It is more likely that he did not learn about the existence of these problems for the first time from the Memorandum, but that he found in it confirmation for some of his own personal observations.78

The booklet also shed light on the few criticisms Milošević had actually expressed about the Memorandum:

...some facts suggest that he was critical of the authors of the Memorandum more out of compliance with the party discipline than out of personal conviction. During the political witch hunt in Serbia, it was noted that his criticisms were rare and relatively mild. After assuming the key political position in Serbia, finding himself able to influence the direction of political action, he stopped the campaign against the Memorandum. The importance of this is not diminished by the fact that he had stopped the attacks against the Serbian Academy as part of the democratisation of society, an official change of heart toward the intelligentsia, freedom of speech and the introduction of a multiparty system.79

The publication – or rather, public disclosure – of the Memorandum had been the subject of controversy itself. The authors maintained that it was leaked without their knowledge. Others claimed that it was deliberately leaked in order to generate interest among Serbs for the topics it discussed. A second controversy centred on the version of the text that was published. Was the 1986 publication an unfinished version as the authors claimed? Or was this label used as a way to brush off and deter criticism by claiming that this first published version was not the final, authorised text?

Kosta Mihailović addressed this point in his testimony, saying that uproar over the Memorandum was unjustified, and all the more so because the version that was leaked was unedited. He explained that there were initially twenty copies printed, of which sixteen were meant for the contributors and members of the commission, along with copies for each of three consultants – Dobrica Ćosić, Ljuba Tadić, and Jovan Đorđević – leaving one copy undistributed.80 Mihailović stressed that this unauthorised draft of the text was not approved as the final version.

In response, the Prosecution produced an analysis that compared the leaked “unauthorised” version from 1986 with the official version published in Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Answers to Criticisms seven years later. Only six small differences existed between the two, and mostly in language, not in substance.81 Mihailović readily accepted the Prosecution’s findings and stated that he was personally aware of only one change in the section on economics that he authored, which appeared to be the result of a typing error. He admitted that if there were any differences between the two versions, they could be only minor. On the question of the leak, he insisted that the document had been leaked without the authors’ involvement, and that their intention was never to make it public.82 Mihailović attributed the leak to Professor Jovan Đorđević’s son-in law, a journalist at the daily Večernje Novosti who allegedly spotted the draft text at Đorđević’s house and published it in the newspaper.83 This explanation is unlikely, though, as it was quite inconceivable in the communist system that any journalist would dare, or be able, to publish such an explosive text without consent of their editor-in-chief and the backing of at least a handful of politicians. Both the political system and the media were tightly controlled by the League of Communists.

The publication of the Memorandum led to a buying frenzy, with photocopies sold at every street corner in Belgrade. The Prosecution suggested that this leak had been manipulated and compared the clandestine nature of it to the treatment of Načertanije, which was written in 1844 but kept secret until it was published for general consumption for the first time in 1906. But Mihailović rejected the Prosecution’s suggestion that secrecy had helped generate popular interest in either of those documents.84 He insisted that the Memorandum was meant to be a non-public document, written to animate the political establishment.85

In his Expert Report, Prosecution Expert Witness on propaganda Renaud de la Brosse qualified the publishing of the Memorandum as a “deliberate leak” and suggested that its appearance in a daily newspaper in several instalments could not have occurred without the approval of at least some members of the LC.86 Just how broad support for the Memorandum was in Serbia became apparent at the Eighth Session of the Central Committee, held in September 1987, when it divided the Serbian leadership into Stambolić and Milošević blocs. A majority of delegates supported Milošević against Stambolić and Dragiša Pavlović, the two most vocal critics of the Memorandum, and the standoff that ensued exposed proponents and opponents of a new policy course.87 The wave of political purges that followed allowed Milošević to quickly rid the government of anyone who did not readily accept this new political direction.88

The Influence of the SANU Memorandum on
Post-Communist Serbian State Ideology

The SANU Memorandum reflected criticism that had been expressed by Serbian elites since the adoption of the 1974 SFRY Constitution, which was seen by some as disadvantageous to Serbia because it partitioned the republic into three political-administrative parts by making the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina federal units. To contextualise the aims of the 1974 Constitution, Audrey Budding explained that in the 1950s and 1960s, Serbia had dominated the Kosovo political scene. At the time, Aleksandar Ranković, a Serbian communist functionary who held significant influence, made centralisation of the Federation and of Serbia a dominant political goal. Ranković had risen to the highest political ranks by serving as the first Head of the Communist State Security Service (UDBA). Even when he moved on to more visible political functions – making an impressive political career in post-WWII Yugoslavia by becoming Vice-President of the Federation – he continued to control the Secret Service. Ranković was eventually dismissed from the Party in 1966 for, among other things, disloyalty to Tito and espousing Serbian unitarism. He was accused of abusing the power he had over the security services, including by allegedly putting Tito himself under surveillance, as well as for unlawful use of the police in Kosovo. Some of his contemporaries later claimed that Ranković had been loyal to Tito but had gotten himself into trouble trying to secure his position as Tito's heir. Nonetheless, Ranković was labelled a Stalinist, a centralist, and a Serb nationalist, and the post-Ranković period brought democratisation and decentralisation of the Party and the state, with changes in the balance of power in Kosovo in favour of its Kosovo Albanian majority.89

Addressing the criticism by Serbian intellectual elites of the Constitution of 1974, Budding explained that the first changes to the status of Kosovo and Vojvodina came with three sets of constitutional amendments passed between 1968 and 1971, in which Serbia’s autonomous provinces were given greater independence from Serbia and greater decision-making power at the federal level. The most radical of these changes were passed in 1971, when a twenty-three member collective federal presidency was introduced, with three representatives from each republic and two from each province, and Tito as the 23rd member. The 1974 Constitution reduced that number to nine: one representative from each republic and province, and Tito as the ninth member.90 The composition of the Presidency changed once again in 1980, after Tito’s death, to an eight-member body, since no one replaced Tito as the singular head of state.

Serbian communist liberals led by Marko Nikezić and Latinka Perović, who were in power until 1972, welcomed decentralisation. Still, many Serbian intellectuals and sitting communist politicians resisted the changes. According to Budding, there were two groups of opponents to decentralisation: Yugoslav unitarists were ardent Yugoslavists who saw decentralisation as weakening the original Yugoslav concept; and the ‘particularists’ had been early proponents of Yugoslavism but sought unity in Serbdom when they felt a common state was being undermined. This latter group remained preoccupied with the unity of the Serbs, rejecting the idea that they should be divided among different federal units, and began raising concerns about the rights of Serbs outside Serbia.91 One of the most articulate critics of decentralisation was Dobrica Ćosić, who was still a member of the Party and of the communist establishment at the time. When Ćosić became marginalised for his criticism of decentralisation, he moved his activities to the Serbian Literary Cooperative, the so-called Zadruga, of which he was elected president.92

The most serious and explicitly political condemnation of the decentralisation amendments came from the Law Faculty of the University of Belgrade. At a Faculty session in March 1971, Serbia’s most authoritative legal experts articulated their criticism in a public discussion, concluding that after the adoption of the amendments, Yugoslavia would no longer exist as a state. Some participants called on Serbs, in Serbia and beyond, to look to their own interests, alluding to a post-Yugoslav era.93 More severe criticism included the claim by philosopher Mihailo Đurić that “in the name of national equality several independent and even opposing national states had already been established on Yugoslavia’s territory.”94 Yugoslav authorities responded with repression and did not resolve the issue, which Budding called a missed opportunity.95

In 1977, the Serbian Presidency commissioned an analysis of the Constitution and its impact on Serbia, presented in March of that year and dubbed the Blue Book (Plava knjiga) because of its blue cover page.96 The Blue Book was never officially discussed by the Party or made public due to its explicit criticism of the implementation of the 1974 Federal Constitution.97 It stated that Serbia had been divided into three separate political, legal, and economic entities since each province, like all the republics, had its own constitution, presidency, government, and supreme court. The analysis emphasised the procedural difficulties of passing or implementing laws that applied to the whole republic, and drew attention to the political asymmetry that resulted from the fact that republic-level organs were theoretically empowered to enact measures for the entire republic but were in practice limited to sovereignty over Serbia proper, i.e. excluding Kosovo and Vojvodina. Further, representatives of the two provinces took part in decision-making processes and bodies of the republic, while there were no representatives of the republic in the decision-making organs of the provinces.98

The authors of the Blue Book avoided nationalist language and, according to Budding, offered their most extreme statements in its conclusion, where a lack of cooperation between Serbia’s republican and provincial bodies was said to be adversely affecting the unity of Serbian national culture and identity, and the question was raised as to whether Serbs were being allowed to exercise their historical right to a national state in the Yugoslav framework, as stipulated by the 1974 Constitution.99 Although the Blue Book was never explicitly adopted by activists in the 1980s, Budding noted that similar rhetoric cropped up again in that decade, creating common ground for cooperation between Serbia’s politicians and opposition intellectuals.100 And indeed, contrary to the culture of a one-party system, various petitions in the 1980s demanded protection of the rights of Serbs in Kosovo.101

One such petition, made public in January 1986 and signed by 212 Belgrade intellectuals, promoted the idea that Serbs were being victimised.102 Among other things, the petition said that Kosovo Albanians had been driving Serbs out of Kosovo for three centuries. Although the ethnic composition in Kosovo did change over those centuries, the number of migrations tied to the 20th century was exaggerated in the petition text, as were their causes; but the claims presented in the petition portended the economic and political arguments that would be expressed in the SANU Memorandum, published later that year.

The petition’s core assertion about the risk to Serbs in Kosovo was rooted in the fact that the percentage of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo had fallen from 27% in the four censuses after the Second World War to just under 15% in 1981.103 Serb nationalist activists saw this emigration pattern to be the result of a federal policy that favoured Kosovo Albanians and discriminated against Serbs in the province; and also frequently pointed to high birth rates among Kosovo Albanians as evidence of a ‘special war’ waged against the Serbs and meant to change the demography of Kosovo. But this argument failed to account for some significant demographic, social, and cultural differences between Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs. For example, in rural areas where Kosovo Albanians were already a natural majority, women generally did not work, leading somewhat automatically to higher birth rates among Kosovo Albanians than among Serbs, who lived predominantly in towns.104 Nevertheless, the petition asserted that emigrations of Serbs and Montenegrins had been the result of intimidation and violence that was meant to create an “ethnically pure” Kosovo. The word “genocide” was also deployed, coupled with the claim that it could not be stopped without making profound social and political changes throughout the country.105

The SANU Memorandum had effectively synthesised and aggregated several strains of complaints, grievances, criticisms, and arguments, and had given them a new legitimacy in the post-Tito era. The views expressed in court by Defence Expert Witness on the history of Kosovo - Slavenko Terzić - echoed the arguments articulated in the 1970s and 1980s by his fellow Serbian intellectuals and academics.106 The SANU Memorandum authors, ostensibly offering solutions, were responding to deep political, economic, inter-ethnic, and social crises that had been unfolding in the Yugoslav Federation since the late 1970s; yet, they seemed interested primarily in the status of Serbia and of Serbs in other republics, and they concluded that the most expedient solution was a revocation of the autonomy of the two Serbian provinces.107 Even Vasa Ćubrilović, who authored “The Resettlement of the Arnauts” in 1937 and who was himself a member of the SANU, had criticised the recommendations of the Memorandum, saying that the authors had spent years analysing the maps of Bosnia, trying to discover how to connect Serb lands from Belgrade via BiH to the Croatian town of Karlovac.108

THE KARAĐORĐEVO MEETING, MARCH 1991

One event that has in particular sparked contesting interpretations about Milošević’s attitude toward the break-up of Yugoslavia is the 1991 meeting in Karađorđevo at which Milošević and Croatian President Franjo Tuđman allegedly discussed the partition of BiH between Serbia and Croatia. Scholars have described this meeting as significant for many different, and sometimes contradictory, reasons.

Both Milošević and Tuđman had managed for years to avoid responding to rumours about what may have passed at the Karađorđevo meeting; but at the trial, it was addressed in detail by several witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the event. For Milošević, the idea that he had even contemplated the partition of BiH undermined his proclaimed position as the champion of Yugoslav unity. And so, Milošević denied that he and Tuđman had ever discussed the partition of BiH, at Karađorđevo or elsewhere. This denial was significant; for, why disavow facts testified to by reliable witnesses except to distance himself from what such a plan or agreement would have revealed about his state of mind? As he claimed to be fighting for the preservation of Yugoslavia, had his deeds in Karađorđevo – hidden at the time from the public – reflected the covert objectives he truly wished to achieve?

Courtroom Reconstruction of the Karađorđevo Meeting and
the Agreement to Partition BiH

At the PSFRY session held on 9 January 1991, Croatia had been called on to disarm its police forces and punish those responsible for the illegal importation of arms to Croatia. Croatia took no action by March, and at the PSFRY session held between 12 and 15 March, JNA Chief of Staff and Federal Minister of Defence General Veljko Kadijević proposed the introduction of extraordinary measures in response to Croatia’s noncompliance. These measures – legally required in order to activate the armed forces in times of peace – were intended on this occasion to allow use of the JNA against the legitimately elected Croatian government. Of eight PSFRY votes, five were needed to enact extraordinary measures, and only seven members were present; and so when BiH representative Bogić Bogićević, an ethnic Serb, voted against the proposal – surprising his fellow Serbs – the measures were not passed.109

This failure by the Serbian and JNA leadership to impose their will led to a dramatic walkout by Jović, the Serbian representative and President of the PSFRY at the time. In a televised address that followed, Milošević declared that Yugoslavia was finished and that Serbia would no longer be bound by decisions of the federal Presidency.110 Milošević quickly reversed his position, and most importantly, brought Jović back into the PSFRY; for, in truth, he could not afford to give up the power afforded by the Presidency and the access it provided to the JNA.111

After these events in March, relations between Serbia and Croatia worsened by the day as armed rebellions by Croatian Serbs spread from the Knin region to Western and Eastern Slavonia. At a meeting with Jović, Croatian PSFRY representative Stjepan Mesić complained about what he saw as concerted efforts by local Serbs and the JNA to destabilise Croatia, warning that if a full-fledged war were to break out, the Serb minority would not be able to stand up to the Croatian majority. According to Mesić, Jović told him that Serbia was not interested in Croatia, but in BiH, and particularly in the 66% of BiH territory that they felt was, and should remain, Serb. Mesić proposed a meeting to identify and resolve these issues through political means, in particular concerning BiH, and a meeting between Presidents Milošević and Tuđman was set.112

Tuđman informed his closest associates at the time, including Mesić, that he had arranged a tête-à-tête with Milošević at Karađorđevo. He invited no one to join him, nor did he later disclose the content or outcome of the meeting.113 Tuđman’s view on BiH had changed so completely after the meeting in Karađorđevo that Stjepan Mesić described it in his testimony as an “about turn.”114 Before the meeting, Mesić testified, Tuđman had been in favour of maintaining the territorial integrity of BiH; but afterward, he advocated for dividing BiH between Serbia and Croatia in order to restore Croatia to its historical glory by re-establishing the borders of the Banovina of Croatia that had existed from 1939 to 1941. Indeed, Milošević had allegedly promised Tuđman the Muslim majority towns of Cazin, Kladuša, and Bihać in the Bosnian Krajina – once, the so-called Turkish Croatia.115 Prosecution witness Stjepan Kljuić, the leader of the HDZ in BiH – a party affiliated in the 1990s with Tuđman’s Croatian HDZ – gave a similar account of assurances between Milošević and Tuđman over future territories. Kljuić was known for his support of the territorial integrity of BiH and his vocal opposition to its division. He also testified that Tuđman told him on one occasion about Milošević’s pledge to give him the part of northwestern BiH that was once Turkish Croatia. Kljuić recalled telling Tuđman that such a statement was akin to Milošević offering Sardinia or Sicily as a gift, “because it doesn’t belong to you and it doesn’t belong to Mr. Milošević.”116

Prosecution witness Hrvoje Šarinić – who was Tuđman's Chef de Cabinet before and during the wars in Croatia and BiH and who met as a special envoy with Milošević many times during the Bosnian war – testified that the date of the Karađorđevo meeting was 26 March 1991.117 He said the meeting did not lead to any firm agreements between the two Presidents, but to the establishment of two working groups that were tasked with expanding on the principles agreed upon at the meeting. On the Croatian side, the working group included President Tuđman’s political and legal advisors Josip Šentija, Dušan Bilandžić, Zvonko Lerotić, and Smiljko Sokol. The Serbian group included President Milošević’s advisors Vladan Kutlešić, Kosta Mihailović, Ratko Marković, and Smilja Avramov; all of whom except Kutlešić appeared as Defence witnesses in The Hague almost 15 years later.

Despite three meetings of the working groups, nothing concrete was achieved.118 The first of the meetings was held on 10 April 1991 in Tikveš, a village near the Croatian town of Osijek; the second followed on 13 April, in Belgrade; and the third and final meeting was held one week later in Zagreb. Dušan Bilandžić, of the Croatian working group, wrote on various occasions of his account of these meetings. During its cross-examination of Serbian working group member Ratko Marković, the Prosecution presented him with a passage from an October 1996 article in which Bilandžić had described the tasks laid out by Tuđman for the Croatian working group. According to Bilandžić, Tuđman explained that he and Milošević had come to an agreement on partition in principle but that the working groups were to develop concrete details in the form of maps; which, after many hours of discussions, could not be agreed upon.119 Marković confirmed that the meetings of the working groups were held behind closed doors, but rejected any suggestion of a secret agreement for partition, reached at Karađorđevo or elsewhere.120 He denied that such a division was ever discussed at working group meetings he attended, formally or informally, though he did allow that the maps Bilandžić referred to might have been discussed at the third meeting held in Zagreb, which Marković claimed not to have attended.121

Ratko Marković’s working group colleague Smilja Avramov wrote in her book that two teams had been established to review the political, economic, constitutional, legal, and international law consequences of a possible disintegration of Yugoslavia. She asserted that the major issues to emerge in working group discussions were the problems of borders and the continuity of public law.122 At the meetings she attended, she recalled that there had been discussion about whether existing republican borders could be the basis for drawing new state borders. According to Avramov, the Croatians had insisted that Serbs give up the Krajina in Croatia – which was rejected by the Serbian delegation.123

According to former SFRY Prime Minister Ante Marković, Milošević and Tuđman were indeed planning for the dissolution of Yugoslavia. He asserted that they discussed two key topics at Karađorđevo – the partitioning of BiH between Serbia and Croatia, and how to get rid of Marković. Milošević and Tuđman apparently confirmed this to Marković personally when he confronted them both on separate occasions.124 According to Marković, Milošević told him that BiH was an artificial entity created by Tito, which could not survive, and that most Bosnian Muslims used to be Orthodox but had been forced to convert. When Marković warned him about the potential for bloodshed should BiH be partitioned, Milošević seemed confident that a partition would not cause a conflict because the majority of the BiH population were Serbs and Croats, and moreover, he said they planned to create an enclave for Muslims.125

Ante Marković testified that Tuđman had echoed Milošević’s rhetoric; only, Tuđman claimed that the Muslims had been Catholics who converted to Islam. When Marković brought up to Tuđman that a partition could bring violence, he also responded that he did not believe it would lead to a war, but because he thought Europeans would not support a Muslim state in the heart of Europe.126 Šarinić testified that Tuđman believed Tito had erred in not making BiH an autonomous province of Croatia. A historian, Tuđman claimed that BiH was a historical absurdity that had resulted from Turkish conquests in the 15th century. And during his first election campaign in 1990, Tuđman had expressed an interest in changing the borders of Croatia when he had complained that the shape of Croatia looked like a kifla, a crescent-shaped roll popular in Central and Eastern Europe.127 According to Šarinić, Tuđman proposed broadening the thin strip of land in the south of Croatia by integrating it with a part of BiH territory that was claimed by Croatia on an ethnic basis.128

Particularly valuable testimony about the plans discussed at Karađorđevo came from Milan Babić, who testified that Milošević had showed him a map on which the division of BiH, as agreed between he and Tuđman, was marked.129 But Milošević worked hard in court to downplay the Karađorđevo meeting and any evidence of plans to carve up BiH. While he was unable to refute or seriously challenge the evidence given by Prosecution witnesses, he raised the issue when Defence witness Vojislav Šešelj was on the stand. According to Šešelj, details about the Karađorđevo meeting had been invented in order to upset Alija Izetbegović and other Bosnian Muslim politicians, to turn them against and Serbia and Croatia. Yet, when asked by the Chamber to elaborate on who had invented the story, and exactly why, Šešelj responded vaguely. First, he alluded to the Borba newspaper, a pro-communist newspaper that, he alleged, sided with the federal government of Ante Marković and Western powers. When the Chamber then asked him to explain why Marković might spread false rumours, Šešelj – rather unconvincingly – postulated that Marković could have feared that a possible agreement between Milošević and Tuđman would keep Yugoslavia together but would eliminate him as its leader.130 Yet, Marković himself had testified that successful reforms of the federal government might have halted the disintegration of the SFRY and kept all the republics together in one state, something that he felt Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia no longer wanted.

In his cross-examination of Ante Marković, Milošević confirmed that he and Tuđman had indeed met in Karađorđevo. He said they shared an appreciation that the chief issue for the future of the SFRY was the relationship between Serbs and Croats or, rather, between Serbia and Croatia; but he denied any discussion of partitioning BiH or removing Marković, suggesting that Marković had accorded himself too much importance and asking why they would consider him at all.131 Marković replied that Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia had all embraced the idea of independence by 1991, and that they had schemed about his dismissal because they perceived the reforms he advocated – which were aimed at preserving Yugoslavia – as a threat. As Marković saw it, a common state was no longer an option for Milošević or Tuđman and Marković stood in the way of their plans to establish their respective states within ethnically-defined borders, each including territories claimed in BiH.132 By August 1990, the official view of leading Serb politicians was that Marković could not be trusted, and they accused him of being an extended hand of the US.133

Milošević also challenged Hrvoje Šarinić regarding his testimony on Karađorđevo, acknowledging that Bosnia was discussed but claiming that the topic of conversation had been the influence of Islamic fundamentalism in BiH. Šarinić corrected Milošević, saying that this particular issue had not been discussed at Karađorđevo but at the follow-up meeting in Tikveš, which Šarinić attended.134 He went on to testify that, at that meeting, Milošević had given Tuđman a handwritten note detailing a supposed Muslim axis, which he referred to as the ‘Green Transversal.’ Milošević had asserted that this axis presented a major threat, alleging that it ran through Turkey, Bulgaria, Western Macedonia, Sandžak, and Kosovo, and claiming that Muslims sought a unitary state including BiH where Serbs and Croats would be a minority. According to Šarinić, after that second meeting in Tikveš, Tuđman grew less optimistic about cooperating with Milošević.135

Šarinić also testified that Tuđman had brought attention in Tikveš to the Log Revolution, staged by Croatian Serbs in August 1990, and had protested the fact that it had cut off a large part of Croatian territory from the control of its central authority in Zagreb. Milošević denied that he was behind the Log Revolution and Tuđman challenged him, calling Krajina the Trojan horse of Serbian politics in Croatia and implying that Milošević stood behind the RSK leadership. Milošević continued to deny his involvement, but eventually granted that the Croatian problem could be resolved; leaving Šarinić wondering how Milošević could propose such a resolution if he really had nothing to do with the Log Revolution in the first place.136 But what Šarinić learned eventually was that, for Serbia, the Serb national question in BiH was of far greater importance than the Serb national question in Croatia. In 1995, Milošević himself told Šarinić that the creation of the RS had resolved 90% of the Serb national question just as President Tuđman had resolved the Croat national question with the establishment of Herceg-Bosna,137 a territory in BiH claimed by Croatia as of November 1991.

Although there has been no official and final resolution on the question of whether a partition of BiH was agreed to at Karađorđevo by Milošević and Tuđman, the spirit of such a plan was manifested in efforts by both Serbia and Croatia to encourage population transfers within BiH; and these efforts were at least somewhat coordinated. On 8 January 1992, Nikola Koljević, a politician in the Serb Democratic Party of Bosnia (Srpska Demokratska Stranka, or SDS), had informed President Tuđman that a reorganisation of Bosnia was necessary, stressing the need for homogenisation of certain areas and a transfer of property and populations.138 Perhaps the Croatians and Serbians thought a civilised and mutually agreed transfer was possible and preferable, but it was something the Bosnian Muslims could not accept and never did. Muslims in BiH understood that ‘homogenisation’ would amount to ethnically uniform Serb and Croat territories, at the expense of the Muslim population. Later that year, a transfer of populations in BiH was again discussed, in September, between Tuđman and then FRY President Dobrica Ćosić in Geneva.139

Despite attempts by both Serbia and Croatia to partition BiH, Hrvoje Šarinić insisted that the Croatian approach to BiH was less straightforward than that of Serbia given that Bosnian Croats, unlike Bosnian Serbs, had supported the February 1992 referendum on the independence of BiH.140 And indeed, in support of this position, Croatia was among the first countries to recognise BiH after its declaration of independence in April 1992.141 Serbia, conversely, withheld its recognition of BiH until after the RS was established and internationally approved in 1995.