What Can Kill Milosevic?

Nezavisne Novine, Banja Luka, Srpska, B-H, December 8 1999

People like that are stubbornly refusing to realize that the regime, which is still not doing the worst it can to us - at least, to most of us - actually believes that it is doing the best it can for us!

There is no doubt that many people, both here and abroad, would like to see Slobo dead. There is even less doubt that among those who would like to see Milosevic dead, there are some people who are already dead, who will soon be dead or for whom we can forecast with mathematical precision by how long they will not outlive Slobo.

Namely, after the bombs which the Americans slammed into the White Palace [official residence of Yugoslav head of state, similar to the White House, referred to NATO as "Slobo's palace"] (no matter that this was the result of their hysterical fury at their former partner rather than a serious assassination attempt - did they really expect to find the Fearless Leader sleeping in his bedroom in the middle of the war?) no one serious can say that foreigners are not out to get Slobo. Likewise, no one serious would swear that what we have here is a literal attempt at physical elimination (they haven't succeeded in killing Castro who lives only a couple of hundred kilometers from Florida) because an assassination attempt on the Serbian Ayatollah is, by my estimate, only in the fourth place on the American wish-list.

The most desirable scenario for them would be Slobo's departure from power of his own accord, through elections or negotiations, and his departure to be tried in The Hague. Among the Serbian people, however, not a single opposition party or group, in the near future, will succeed in achieving a majority if it agrees to accept the obligation to foreigners to hand over the Serbian leader to international justice. That's just the way it is!

The second scenario is a brief, intense and bloody conflict between the opposition, disgruntled citizens, the Army and a part of the Police against the forces loyal to Milosevic. This assumes only indirect military and logistical assistance to the anti-Slobo forces so that the conflict can maintain the image of a Serbian civil war. As such, a "domestic civil war" would spare the future government from the prefix "traitorous". However, it would create the obligation of extraditing everyone on the list to The Hague.

The third scenario represents a direct and total military intervention. Only two things can cause an air and ground attack on Serbia: one is the entry of our forces into Kosovo; the second is a massive, armed conflict between the Montenegrin police and the Yugoslav Army's Second Army. Since I believe that the Yanks and the Europeans are not prepared to risk the death of even a hundred of their soldiers to see the last of Slobo, and after that, a long guerrilla war which would move into the Republic of Srpska and Macedonia as well, this possibility is the least likely. The Serbs, therefore, will not return to Kosovo by force, and a war about Montenegro will be avoided by both sides - because such an act of madness would bring foreign governors to both countries.

The fourth and final possibility is the direct organization of an assassination attempt on Slobo by foreign secret services. It is, as far as their interests are concerned, the least likely, the least profitable and carries the greatest implications in terms of negative consequences. Namely, aside from the fact that the infamous secret services have not to the present day succeeded in eliminating a single one of the archetypal enemies of the dollar; Gadaffi is still riding camels; Saddam is beating up on his disloyal sons-in-law who conspire against him; Castro is puffing away at his "partaga" cigars; Bin Laden is still waving around his Kalashnikov; Kim Il Sung passed away from natural causes; what we have here is a plot of a different kind.

First of all, in the event of such an act, not only would the responsibility for a political murder fall squarely on the American president and European statesmen - and that is, even in a world of hypocrisy, a burden with which it is difficult to win future elections - but the foreigners would not accomplish their political goal. That goal is that Milosevic's departure remains an internal Serbian matter, a product of the people's decision, a result of their judgment regarding the achievements of the past decade and a shift in the relations of political forces within the country. Only these conditions prevent Milosevic from becoming a myth, from continuing to rule even after his departure from power or from spiritually naming heirs who will preserve Slobism and transfer all the hot spots of this age into the next millennium.

More simply said, I am not sure how many Serbs there are, even in the situation in which we are in now, who would appreciate having foreigners killing or abducting their kings, emperors or presidents. Throughout history we have always handled such matters ourselves and that is how we reached, by logical deduction, the majority opinion that the best form of government in Serbia is enlightened absolutism with a few assassinations. However, the only two Serbs who could have carried out something like this, with reasonable amount of risk, Jovica Stanisic, the long-time, powerful chief of the secret police, and general Perisic, the former head of the Army and current apprentice opposition politician, as far as I know, never even considered the option.

Stanisic, because he was personally too close to Slobo, even when he disagreed with him. Perisic, a well-disciplined officer from the Titoist past, would never endure the psychological burden of being the first to lead a military coup since Jajce in 1943 [when Yugoslav Communists overthrew the king]. So both of them left without any resistance. Slobo, after them, will never again allow his system to produce such strong and independent thinking individuals that he would have to ask himself whether, given the right circumstances, they will start playing by their own rules.

In the end, what is the recently exposed group of assassins supposed to represent? Spiders or spider-webs? A comical group of amateur Rambo-like special-force soldiers trained for civilian conflicts who keep their plans for the liquidation of Slobo on papers accessible to the federal ministry of information? A megalomaniac association of putsch advocates lost in a jungle of secret brotherhoods and interests? Willing victims in the name of higher goals? Unwilling blood donors selected for crucifixion because somewhere at some time they shot off their mouths, hid something or didn't divide shares equally? Men who don't realize that they are victims of the hairy chest syndrome? Greedy executors of work-orders given by the owners of dollars or francs? Maniacs who killed to settle their own accounts and in between murders drove truckfuls of sand to construction sites throughout the land? Or, finally, an ambitious, conspiring gang to whom Serbia looks like a banana republic? Fine, so there are some elements of truth in that one.

While considering the political essence of the story of the assassination attempt on Slobo, let's start with the most logical question: who stands to gain the most from this story, the arrest and the pomp surrounding the whole deal? Slobo! Exactly; first it gives the hero of defense and reconstruction an aura of the most important target, a man who consciously bears the burden of the world's most desirable victim, all in the interests of his people, the battle against the New World Order, and the battle to redesign the United Nations. The story ties together, in logical sequence, the six victories: the victory in war, the victory in reconstruction, the moral victory, the victory against assassination, the victory in elections and the victory in the future.

This string of pearls represents the simultaneous start of two campaigns. The first is an election campaign, regardless of when or if ever the elections will be held here. The assassination story perfectly continues the demonization of the foreigners (who, to tell the truth, really stick their noses into everything) and, together with touching openings of bridges, demonstrates the omnipotence of the regime which will not allow a single crack in its control of the external and internal enemies of everything that Serbs have today, thanks only to Slobo, and that everyone else wants to snatch from us.

The start of the second campaign involves the leisurely but observable shift from the domain of propaganda into the domain of force, extortion and the combination of those two highly effective methods for training of Serbs. Therefore, there is a synopsis of the assassination attempt and there are arrested would-be assassins. Everyone who doubts such a verdict, even before the case is heard in our independent courts, in many ways is himself a would-be assassin. That is why not a single well-meaning citizen will discuss the matter at all. Of course, all those in doubt about the outcome of the trial should be treated as accomplices of the assassins or be rehabilitated by terror.

The common thread of both campaigns represents some sort of warning to everyone involved in politics with an opposition twist, or leading some segment of heretical Serbianhood or Montenegrindom. Namely, if our Leader is not safe, none of you can be safe! I foresee a very interesting winter. Even if it is our last winter.

In an atmosphere of death on the roadways, unexplained murders in the cities, summary laws and summary courts, hit-men in civilian garb who beat students with official clubs, an assassination attempt inspired by the outside world which is unwisely seen as a role model by some of the locals - all the Serbs who are talking about electricity, heating, Kosovo, pensions, salaries, freedoms and rights, media and universities, the future and children, medicine and food, elections and stealing, do not deserve to bear the honorable name of our tribe.

People like that are stubbornly refusing to realize that the regime, which is still not doing the worst it can to us - at least, to most of us - actually believes that it is doing the best it can for us