Security, Democracy and War Crimes

Security Sector Transformation in Serbia

J. Gow, I. Zverzhanovski

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137276131
• eBook ISBN: 9781137276148
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines how the war crime legacy resulting from the Yugoslav war of the 1990s on political and military transformation in Serbia was an impediment to security reform, democratization and the achievement of Western standards in the Belgrade armed forces.

1

Introduction

On 6 October 2000, Serbia embarked on a process of democratic change, a decade after the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.¹ The regime of Slobodan Milošević crumbled under popular pressure and democratic forces finally took centre stage. The transition from a hybrid post-communist dictatorship, authoritarian hegemony and façade democracy (or, as Andy Wilson had dubbed it in the Russian and Ukrainian contexts, ‘virtual’ or ‘fake’ democracy² – though ‘veneer democracy’ might be another, even more accurate, term), all combined, could begin in earnest. However, this was no more than the start. While no democratisation project can ever be considered complete, most former communist countries made fairly rapid progress to a consolidated position, where political processes were broadly in line with those in established liberal democracies. Central to those processes of transformation had been assuring both democratic accountability and reform of the security sector. Serbia was different. Serbia did not really find its democratic feet fully for another twelve years. The arrest of war hero turned war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladić marked the closing bracket to the period begun with the fall of Milošević. The subject of this book is a particular aspect of that change: the transformation of civil-military relations and the war crimes legacy. This was core to the friction that delayed Serbia’s transformation, with a failure to address the war crimes legacy already embedded in the denial of the Milošević era, in which the crimes were committed. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the process of transition, from a post-communist, or post-authoritarian defence and security system to a model based on the Western liberal experience, while seeking to explain the achievements and failures of the democratic regime.

A central problem for the democratic transition in Serbia and its ability to join Euro-Atlantic integration processes was its readiness to address the legacy of the Milošević years and, in particular, the issue of war crimes committed during the Yugoslav War. The armed forces were a crucial part of this legacy and, as such, were central to the ability to resolve it. As in other Central and Eastern European countries, in Serbia the transformation of civil-military relations was a function of the combination of restructuring of the defence system, the establishment of a democratic legal and institutional framework which enables democratic and civilian oversight of the armed forces, and the development of capacity for an effective democratic management of security policy. However, the added dimension of the war crimes legacy complicated the issue and remained central to the problem of democratic control of the armed forces. The failure to resolve the problem of this legacy impeded the transformation of civil-military relations and in turn jeopardised the consolidation of democracy.

Before setting out the remainder of the book, this chapter will establish the two primary contexts for addressing the question of how the war crimes legacy impeded the democratisation of civil-military relations in Serbia. (A third, closely related context, but contingent to the primary focus of this study, is that of Serbian politics and history, which are briefly introduced in Chapter 2 and run throughout the volume.) The first primary context concerns the literature on civil-military relations in Yugoslavia and Serbia, the core focus of our analysis. The second is the wider context of civil-military relations and democratisation in Central and Eastern Europe’s formerly communist countries. While our study is primarily a contemporary history of the security sector transition in Serbia and the peculiar challenges of confronting the legacy of war crimes that was the Serbian armed forces’ and the country’s heritage,³ the theoretical literature on post-communist civil-military transition in Central and Eastern Europe is a significant context, for two reasons. First, Serbia’s war crimes questions presented a distinct dimension that did not fit any of the templates developed. Second, although the war crimes legacy made Serbia an exception and presented a challenge to the theoretical models established, parts of that literature are used to inform the structure of our contemporary history, which progresses thematically, rather than using a purely chronological narrative. In turn, our study, by addressing this exception, can add reflectively to theoretical considerations of security sector reform. In doing all of this, we build on our well-received past work on the Belgrade military,⁴ both as the JNA in Yugoslavia and in federal Yugoslavia’s dissolution and war, and its successors, during the years of war (discussed below), as well as research conducted in the context of a project funded under the ESRC’s ‘New Security Challenges Programme’, before Ivan Zveržhanovski left academic life for the world of the practitioner, and the AHRC’s ‘Beyond Text’ Programme.⁵

The purpose of this book is twofold. First, on a more general level, it seeks to fill the gap in the field of study of the former Yugoslavia by examining one of the crucial aspects of the democratic transition in Serbia, while at the same time advancing knowledge on a topic of particular importance for the security of South Eastern Europe. Second, it seeks to advance general knowledge in the field of democratisation of civil-military relations in post-communist and post-conflict societies. The significance of this research is its attempt to advance knowledge and understanding of one of the central problems in the Western Balkans, namely the contribution to future conflict prevention in the former Yugoslavia through a democratic and civilian control of the security structures in Serbia and the tackling of the war crimes legacy. Therefore we shall argue that the transformation of civil-military relations and the establishment of democratic civilian control over the armed forces is crucial to ensuring long term security and preventing future conflict in the region, but that transformation of civil-military relations in Serbia could not be successful without addressing the war crimes legacy and successfully dealing with it. This legacy was an impediment to reforms, democratisation and the achievement of Western standards in the Belgrade armed forces.

State, society and military in Serbia

The transition to democracy in Serbia was less straightforward than in most other former communist states. It was made possible by a mixture of the will of the people and military intervention in politics. The rule of Slobodan Milošević created a gap between the communist Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia and a Serbia that was ready for democracy, as its people overthrew the Milošević regime on 5 October 2000. This gap was a state created out of violent break-up of the former Yugoslavia, whose transition to democracy was delayed by ten years of authoritarian rule. However, this authoritarian rule had a semblance of democracy with regular elections, a functioning parliament and a large and vocal opposition. While some aspects of pluralist arrangements existed throughout the 1990s, power was really exercised by a small group of people, lead by Milošević.⁶ Hence, Serbia’s transition was both post-communist and post-authoritarian and involved a decade of conflict on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Serbia was a hybrid, with some parts evolving towards democracy, while an authoritarian regime clung to power through any means necessary.

In addition, the state that the new democratic rulers inherited in October 2000 was in crisis. Milošević’s rule had left Serbia with an inflated security sector and duplicating structures with their own vested interests.⁷ As in all transitional countries, these structures, if left with no civilian control, could seek to establish themselves as ‘states within states’ and were inefficient, not only because they lacked clearly defined spheres of responsibility, but also because they formed a constant source of friction and the threat of civil or international conflict. In addition, the benefits of controlling security structures could become a focus of internal political struggle as they sought to play political actors against each other. Serbia provided a perfect example of this threat with the assassination of its first democratically elected Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjić, by members of the special security forces working together with organised crime groups.

As reforms and transition got under way, Serbia faced a bigger challenge than any other Central and East European country. Its military, although in some aspects highly professional, was still living in the shadow of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), was compromised by allegations of corruption and saw itself as legitimate actor in politics. Additionally, although there was formally one military, there were a number of other forces such as the Ministry of Interior (MUP) forces, as well as the remnants of the paramilitary forces from the war in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The presence of NATO troops on what was still formally the territory of Serbia and Montenegro as well as the remnants of the UÇK (Ushtria Çlirimtare E Kosoves)⁸ and its offshoots, added to the confusing web of actors. Such a situation made transformation more difficult as well as more pressing and crucial.

For their part, the Serbian armed forces existed in a climate of almost ten years of international isolation, conflicts in the near abroad, a conflict on their own territory, and an authoritarian regime and economic hardship. These conditions, coupled with the legacy of the JNA strained the relations between society and the military.⁹ Although shifting, this relationship was primarily shaped by factors such as domestic pressures, economic problems, the current threat perception, international engagement and most importantly the lack of obvious correlation between armed forces and society.¹⁰

There is a gap in the study of the former Yugoslavia, namely civil-military relations in Serbia. Only limited examples of serious scholarship exist to date, all of which are assessed below. Serbia is important because of the central role that it played and will continue to play in the Western Balkans.¹¹ Having in mind the part Serbia played throughout the 1990s and the fact that its security structures were central to the fuelling of hostilities in the early 1990s, democratic civilian control of these services was a necessary step in the process of peace building and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia, and these issues needed to be addressed. As we show in the following paragraphs, while the period of the JNA and the wars of the 1990s had received attention – notably, but not exclusively, our own – there has been no more than a limited attempt, until now, to address the post-conflict and, crucially, post-Milošević era.

Gow’s Legitimacy and the Military examined civil-military relations in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) through the development of a new approach based on the concepts of regime legitimacy and military legitimacy. He argued that Yugoslav civil-military relations were a function of regime legitimacy and military legitimacy and that this helps explain the state of civil-military relations through different stages.¹² In the case of the last days of the SFRY, military legitimacy was dependent on regime revitalisation, which, in turn, required a profound transformation of the armed forces. Without redefinition of the bases of military legitimacy, any regime re-legitimation would be virtually impossible.¹³ Later work, developing from this, identified the Belgrade exception to post-communist patterns of civil-military relations, but offered only an overview, which is used as a departure point for the present book. Similar issues of legitimacy and civil-military relations confronted Serbia to those that confronted and, in the end, resulted in the demise of the SFRY, to which Serbia was one of the successor states.¹⁴

Serbia was the European exception in its pattern of civil-military relations in three ways: the absence of a clear break with the communist power structures and the past pattern of civil-military relations; the correlation of armed forces to statehood; and an uncertain national-international context.¹⁵ Although under the regime of Slobodan Milošević Belgrade had some semblance of democracy (such as elections, a multi-party system, a parliament etc.), it was mainly run as a dictatorship relying on a strong internal security service and ultimately the control of information flows. Milošević never fully trusted the armed forces and relied heavily on the Ministry of Interior Police and Special Forces.¹⁶ Nevertheless he was quite successful in mobilising them in line with his own goals.¹⁷ Milošević’s rule resulted in the creation of a complex of other forces (interior ministry and paramilitary) that had to be taken account of in discussing the transformation of civil-military relations. The existence of two MUP forces with their special units, as well as semi-autonomous paramilitary units controlled by the Serbian Security Service (JSO – Jedinica za Specijalne Operacije), an insurgent force with its offshoot (UCK/KLA in Kosovo and UÇPMB in Southern Serbia), and the international presence in the form of KFOR all contributed to the unique complexity of the Belgrade security sector.¹⁸ Hence, the basic civil-military question for Belgrade, after a decade of statehood defining war, concerned legitimisation and the correlation of statehood and regular armed forces.¹⁹

A number of works have dealt, in a limited fashion, with the problem of the armed forces after the break-up of Yugoslavia. Most of them treat the role of the armed forces only as part of a wider theme (be it war crimes, or a history of the Yugoslav war), but still provide useful background for this study. In one of our own earlier works, The Serbian Project: A Strategy of War Crimes, it is argued that the Serbian project was at the core of the Yugoslav war and that the essence of this project was the commission of war crimes due to the strategic decision to control territory through the removal of non-Serb population.²⁰ The chapter on the armed forces established the role of the armed forces, the paramilitary forces, the Serbian Security Service and the irregulars as the means in Milošević’s strategy. We analysed how the Serbian leader co-opted the armed forces to become willing executioners of his strategy, as well as his inability to establish full control over the Vojska Jugoslavije, until late 1998. This account charted the full complexity of the elements that took part in the Serbian project, as well as the uneasy civil-military relations of the 1990s.

Another example of our own work forcefully addressed the question of war crimes and their link to the transformation of civil-military relations, asserting that, in spring of 2002, there was significant progress on this important, yet painful, aspect of security sector reform – although, at that point, confrontation of the war crimes record was no more than nascent and remained essential to the transformation of the army.²¹

The importance of the war crimes legacy was also noted, albeit briefly, by Biljana Vankovska and Håkan Wiberg²² in their partly successful attempt to provide an overview of the state of civil-military relations in the post-communist Balkans, as a whole, while, at the same time, acknowledging the disparity and heterogeneity of the countries and their military traditions. The chapter relating to Belgrade was a particularly lengthy account of the Kosovo conflict, although it was not clear how it fitted with the post-Milošević military ethos and how the authors measured its importance. The authors identified the link formed between Milošević and the army top brass, and their joint responsibility for the commission of war crimes.²³ However, they did not go far enough in explaining the central role war crimes played in Milošević’s strategy during the 1990s, and hence the importance of dealing with such a legacy in democratising civil-military relations in Serbia.

In 1996, in the context of an analysis of civil-military relations in the Soviet and Yugoslav successor states, Robin Alison Remington provided a short analysis of the state of Belgrade civil-military relations.²⁴ Remington noted the impact of the war on both the state and the armed forces, but unfortunately spent the bulk of her study giving a historical background of the army, starting from the battle of Kosovo in 1389. She did note, however, in line with Gow, that civil-military relations were ‘dominated b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Civil-Military Relations from the Break-Up of Yugoslavia to the Fall of Milošević
• 3 De-Politicisation and Transition Delayed
• 4 Civilianising Defence Policy-Making and Military Reform
• 5 Rules: The Legal and Institutional Framework for Democratic Control
• 6 Effective Management of Defence Policy: The Role of Democratic Security Policy Communities
• 7 The War Crimes Legacy
• 8 Passing the Mladić Test
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index