by Hasan HADZIC
This statement is not scandalous only because a high official of the DGS has taken the liberty to determine the character of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, in a highly questionable and sensitive manner, but above all because this outrageous act did not prompt any reactions within one of the key state services. Several Bosniak representatives in the highest state and federation bodies were immediately informed about Dostanic's statement, but dismissed it outright, as unworthy of reaction. Therefore, even though in the Hague Milosevic is day by day being crushed by evidence proving that he led the aggression against Bosnia-Hercegovina and genocide - some 2,000 members of the DGS will officially treat the conflict as a "civil war". Just like the mentioned Rado Dostanic, chief of the Operations Sector (position akin to that of a commissar with the Cantonal Police), remains alpha and omega of all DGS activities in the field.
Just two weeks after the mentioned letter instructing on how best to deal with negative consequences of the "civil war" was distributed, the DGS was shaken by a dramatic affair in which Dostanic himself played an important role.
How BIA travels: It all began on April 10 when Svevlad Hofman, head of the DGS Unit for International Cooperation, formally charged DGS director Mile Juric with giving permission for an armed agent of the Serbian secret police (BIA) to enter B-H and make a prolonged stay in Bosanski Samac and Banja Luka, without going through the proper channels, i.e. the foreign ministry and the bureau of Interpol. "Juric forwarded the request from BIA to director of personnel Enes Gracanin, who passed it on to Rado Dostanic. Dostanic sent the request to the DGS Operations and Communications Centre, with an order that the Serbian agent be allowed to cross into Bosnia at Raca near Bijeljina."
Hofman, who happened that day to be replacing the Centre's absent head, refused to forward this request to the Raca border crossing. At Dostanic's insistence, however, Juric overruled Hofman and the agent was allowed to enter. Soon after Hofman had submitted a complaint to the Bosnian public prosecutor, he was placed under disciplinary investigation and suspended. The charge against him was that he had released information about DGS's work into the public domain without official permission. Judging by the previous activities of the commission which ordered Hofman's suspension, it is known that it mostly implements ideas of Rade Dostanic, who used to be its member in the past.
Hofman's case, however, reached the state ministry of security, whose appeal commission returned Hofman to his post. Unlike Svevlad Hofman, who was fortunate to have "caught big fish", many other less fortunate custom officers, however, have been dismissed either for refusing to participate in their superiors' illegal trans-border activities or for no reason at all.
Cleansing the border: Dani has already written about the case of three officers from the DGS unit for Zvornik - Selmo Hasanovic, Marinko Galesic and Mevludin Buric - who, at the end of October 2002, were charged by the Zvornik public prosecutor for having allegedly seven months earlier failed to search a truck smuggling sugar into Serbia.
On the basis of those charges, they were temporarily suspended from their posts, at the suggestion of the commander of the Zvornik DGS unit, Petko Pavlovic. Pavlovic is infamous for his important role in the darkest sides [sic] of the DGS mission on the eastern border. The suspension was uncommonly quickly processed by the disciplinary commission and the four of them were sacked. The whole case is linked with Rado Dostanic. It is important that he is Pavlovic's close friend and mentor in the DGS. In any case, in the chronicle of infamy of the DGS it will remain recorded that three young policemen were forced from the service for charges that were dismissed by the court only three days after their sacking.
At the time, spokesperson and member of the Lower Disciplinary Commission of the DGS Alma Efendic hypocritically stated for our magazine that internal disciplinary responsibility has nothing to do with criminal responsibility, as established by courts. Hypocrisy becomes even more blatant considering shameful involvement of the same commission in "Hofman affair", and their refusal to do their own job in "Juric affair".
The staged trial is a good occasion to pay close attention to Petko Pavlovic, commander of the Zvornik DGS unit and, according to numerous indications, the key man of Rade Dostanic, expert for "civil war", on the eastern border of Bosnia-Hercegovina. He emerged from anonymity after the fall of Srebrenica, when he became the local police chief. It is known that at that time Radovan Karadzic personally named for his representative in the massacred town the chief of SDS in Bratunac, Miroslav Deronjic, currently imprisoned in the Hague. It is unlikely that Pavlovic would have got this job had he not been a trusted member of Radovan Karadzic's party, the SDS.
Naturally, all of that, if one were to take seriously claims that the DGS is the most united and most professional state service, could not have been a good reference for a job with the DGS. Pavlovic's area of responsibility covers six bridges on the river Drina. However, given that he is a close friend of Rado Dostanic, a distinguished official in the Srpska Police from the time of Dragan Kijac, then his questionable past actually becomes an asset. Although a Serb policeman stated at the trial that Pavlovic had asked him to testify falsely in order to incriminate certain Muslims, i.e. these custom officials, this caused no reaction from either the DGS or the European Police Mission (EUPM).
Road next to Drina: In preparing this report Dani journalists spent several days traveling along the border with Serbia, from Crnjelovo on the Sava to Skelane and Bajina Basta on the Drina, crossing the border three times. We learnt from a reliable source that the Sepacki Bridge border crossing, where the dismissed custom officials had worked, has since become a main smuggling route; and that their removal was arranged as a demonstration to the international community on the part of Pavlovic and his superiors of their supposed determination to prevent smuggling. We also learned that, although the charges against the dismissed customs officials were filed based on testimony provided by a couple of Serbian police officers from Lozinca, which implies that accomplices in the alleged crime were identified on the Serbian side of the border as well, in Serbia no border officials were punished. Several of our interlocutors in Bijeljina, Bratunac and Loznica confirmed that Petko Pavlovic, who was rather poor until the end of the war, has suddenly acquired a substantial flat in Zvornik and a villa in Belgrade.
Scrutiny of the DGS personnel list shows a disproportionate number of Serbs from Bratunac and Srebrenica, all loyal to the SDS. Besides Petko Petrovic, other high ranking individuals include Slavko Surlan, who was ultimately caught embezzling on such a scale that even Rado Dostanic could not save him. However, thanks to good connections with the former mayor of Srebrenica Desnica Radivojevic and other Serb and Bosniak local politicians, Surlan's bad reputation did not stop him from being appointed director of GP "Radnik". Once he sold apartments owned by the company, he was promoted for the assistant for economy to new mayor Abdurahman Malkic.
The fact that Srebrenica's economy is at a standstill does not mean that the local leaders are not doing well. Their enrichment is based on the smuggling of cattle and other goods from Serbia, implying close cooperation with the DGS. Our team was able to witness a great number of barges crossing the river between Bratunac and Skelane without a single DGS officer in sight.
Bootleg trade is not the only problem. According to our source in the Danish contingent of SFOR, which has just completed its tour of duty in Bosnia-Hercegovina, during the past months there was growing tension between SFOR and EUMP in the Drina area. Despite SFOR pressure on the DGS to work closely with international forces in this area, assumed to be one of occasional Karadzic's shelters, the DGS has shown little desire for that, probably thanks to Dostanic and the SDS lobby in the DGS. SFOR finds no support or understanding on this issue from EUMP, which fears the loss of its authority over DGS and its own gradual marginalization.
In contrast to the Danes, however, the Americans are far more aggressive and we were able to meet their patrols all over the place. People who have returned to the Bratunac villages along the Drina tell us that their activity has increased since Carla del Ponte's last visit to Banja Luka. Their presence is worrying the DGS (i.e. SDS) officials, who see themselves as lords of the Drina. A source close to SFOR told us that the recent destruction of the car used by the Trebinje DGS official Kundacina was staged as a proof of the service's alleged great struggle against crime in the region that is the biggest stronghold in the protection of Radovan Karadzic.
The same source stated that the nearby Metaljka border crossing on the frontier with Montenegro remains a key spot for smuggling stolen cars and all manner of luxury goods. However, aware that they will not be able to obstruct international efforts in connection with Karadzic in the long term, and using the mentioned "Kundacina affair" as cover, Dostanic and his buddies are concentrating the most loyal fighters for the Serb cause within the DGS in Trebinje. Trebinje, where the DGS/SDS has its sector "south" office, has recently become the home of a certain Spaso Skoro who, according to information obtained by western intelligence services, has regularly visited Foca region and other places where SFOR organized ambushed aiming at catching Karadzic. All of these ambushes failed because the information about them had been leaked in time for Karadzic to escape. It is important to mention that Skoro has been registered as a commander of a sniper unit active in besieged Sarajevo during the war.
One could add further names and other evidence belying the image promoted by the international community and B-H media, about the DGS as a highly professional, multi-ethnic and non-political formation. It is enough to spend a few days along the eastern border on the Drina to establish that the Bosnian state is not in charge there.
We had another shock on the following day when we visited several villages in the vicinity of Srebrenica. The locals complained about the UN Development Program (UNDP) office in Srebrenica, which as part of the international aid effort supplies them with starving and sick sheep. They also stated that UNDP was involved in contraband activities of the Srebrenica agricultural cooperative and smugglers from Serbia. The cooperative, we were told, was run by local Bosniak officials Abdurahman Malkic and Sadik Ahmetovic. We were also told that, while the sheep they get are bought for KM120-150, the price entered into the books is KM300-350.
Just as we were going to press we learnt that UNDP has started also to distribute cows from Serbia, likewise in poor condition. The main supplier of these illegally imported animals is one Radivoje Orasanin, the king of contraband cattle, whose house at Zeleni Jadar we were able to photograph during our expedition. It is said to be quite modest in comparison to the one he has built for himself in Bajina Basta on the other side of the border.