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In the mid-1990s, Slobodan Milošević was seen as a guarantee of peace in the western Balkans. However, electoral manipulations and the conflict in Kosovo have undermined its authority in the western half of the world. And economic hardship and lost wars eroded his domestic popularity. Finally, on October 5, 2000, today, twenty years ago, it was swept away by a coalition called the Serbian Democratic Opposition. In his later years, the heart of a politician referred to only by the nicknames “Balkan butcher” and “political arsonist” canceled his service in 2006 in his cell in The Hague.
Fast race
From the gray mass of communist party officials in Yugoslavia after Tito’s death (1980), Milošević unexpectedly emerged and then, at a stormy pace, became the dominant politician not only in Serbia and Yugoslavia, but in all of the Balkans. . In the mid-1980s, we witnessed a revival of Serbian ethno-nationalism, and the people of Karagyorgyevich felt that despite their previous war heroes, they were treated as outcasts in many parts of Yugoslavia, from the Krajinas in Croatia to Kosovo. It was in this environment that a news event burst when a Belgrade politician on a routine visit to Rigomezda shot down the police against local Serbs who were protesting loudly in front of the cameras and, turning to the stone-throwing nationalists, spoke the words. words that later became legendary:
From now on no one can hurt you
With this, MiloŠeviĆ went overnight from a gray communist cadre to a political patron saint of Serbian nationalists in Yugoslavia.
Suddenly he came drunk with popularity Milosevic he aggressively burst into power, breaking all the rules of the game of the Yugoslav political system after World War II. With his unscrupulousness he paralyzed his opponents for a long time; it was almost unbelievable that one so blatantly ignored all the balancing elements that the Titos had devised after World War II to make this ethnically diverse state stable. In doing so, they gained international fame and respect for the socialist country of the Balkans, half of which had climbed under the Turkish yoke just a hundred years ago.
Yogurt and Firewood Revolution
Milošević first defamed his former political mentor, Ivan Stambolić, in the fall of 1987, who was assassinated 13 years later, in the summer of 2000, by one of the secret service’s execution brigades. He toppled the communist leadership in Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo with street protests to bring his own followers to power, obtaining half the votes in the Yugoslav collective presidency.
His political brand was to proclaim fictitious mini-revolutions, either personally or through his henchmen: there was an “anti-bureaucratic revolution” against the anti-nationalists, a “yogurt revolution” which refers to the method of street protesters, and a “log revolution” when the Krajina Serbs were paralyzed in part of the territory of a Member State.
The paralyzing astonishment first turned to anger in the Slovenian and Croatian member republics, igniting nationalist sentiments there. Muslim Bosnians and Orthodox Macedonians basically supported Yugoslavia, but Milosevic seeing their frantic running, at one point they also tried to escape the screams. The seemingly stable Yugoslavia of the 1980s fell into its atoms in 1992, in the eyes of the dismayed international community. Slowly, Western leaders and diplomats who previously supported him also turned away from the politician elected Serbian president in 1989. In June 1991, US Secretary of State James Baker took off from his plane in Belgrade with a mandate to make a last attempt to unite Yugoslavia (already in the arms of Milosevic). Just a year later, sanctions for armed aggression against Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina had already been voted on at the UN against Belgrade, and in late 1992 a “Christmas message” was sent from the outgoing Bush administration through diplomacy threatening to a military intervention. Milosevicet al in the event of an outbreak of armed conflict in Kosovo after Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.
Slobo, as many have dubbed him, had a reputation for being a brilliant and astute tactical negotiator, but as a strategist he proved to be a real shock. As early as the 1990s, many felt that their policies could only lead to disaster. One of the main culprits for the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the bloody ethnic wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and, last but not least, the severe impoverishment of Serbia, was seen by contemporary political analysts, although there is no doubt: and with tremendous power.
Verbal Candidiasis Battle
Slobo’s political career had vertiginous ups and downs and dramatic ups and downs. If the Balkans ever had a Shakespeare, Milošević would certainly be the star of one of his plays, because his exploits and destiny led to Macbeth and III. Richard is quoted, the number of victims of the Yugoslav saga is no less than that of the English War of the Roses, and the fall of the negative protagonist is sufficiently theatrical and tragic.
In one of the climaxes of his power Milosevic he delivered a speech to nearly a million people in Rigómező, on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of 1389. Even with the wind against the western world, he spectacularly won the Serbian presidential election against a United States millionaire, Milan Panic, in 1992 In the 1990s, the leaders of the Serbian nationalist and democratic opposition clashed on countless occasions, ridiculed, raised or thrown him away in accordance with their current interests, and for a long time he seemed simply invincible. For some time before the dissolution of Yugoslavia (1992) and the Dayton Peace Accords, Western diplomats sought his favor because they saw it first as a guarantee of Yugoslav unity and then peace in the Balkans.
However, in countries ravaged by brutal wars, he soon became a symbolic object of hatred, first among the enemies of the Serbs and then among the Serbs. When the Croatian operations of Lightning and Storm in 1995 wiped out the Serbs in Krajina, Milosevic spectacularly left them alone. Some Bosnian Serbs considered the Dayton peace treaty a treason, as Milosevic signed that they could not be part of the Serbian continent.
However, the occupation of the territories beyond the Drina has been a fundamental objective of Serbian nationalism since the middle of the 19th century: it costs what it costs, even the conflict with the Monarchy. The NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, followed by the Serbian military withdrawal from Kosovo in the summer of 1999, which the Belgrade propaganda machine tried to see as a victory with a tragicomic effort, and the bitter exodus of Serbian civilians Kosovo from their homeland were part of Milošević’s historic self-defense.
The end was near
This was followed by internal political slaps. The years in power have greatly worn down his good reflexes and intuitions: in the summer of 2000, he called early elections in a completely unnecessary way, as he was convinced that he could not have an opponent in the fight for the presidency of the then former Yugoslavia. (Federation of Montenegro and Serbia). So it didn’t happen that way; the Serbian opposition finally found the person of Vojislav Koštunica, an impeccable nationalist, who knew how to defeat Milošević in the elections. Of course, by then Slobo’s nimbus, which was already badly worn, had been defeated in war, impoverished by sanctions, and shattered by organized crime.
Political assassinations and mafia tales alternated weekly: Arkan, the uncrowned king of the Serbian underworld at the time, whose paramilitary units, the Arkan Tigers, carried out so many brutal massacres in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo in the 1990s. 1990; but a defense minister and a deputy interior minister were also murdered in Belgrade during these times, just a few examples from a long list of 200 to 300 murders.
As the Yugoslav president did not want to acknowledge his electoral defeat, a widespread movement broke out in Serbia, with hundreds of supporters of the excavations of the countryside arriving in Belgrade to enforce the will of the people. At this point, both the police and the army withdrew from Milošević, who on October 5, 2000 gave up the fight and handed over power to the democratic opposition. From here it went further down: in 2001 he was extradited to the Hague Tribunal for War Crimes in Yugoslavia, and although he defended himself with all his rhetorical ability in his criminal case, he only saved himself from severe prison sentences with his dismissal in March. 2006. in his cell.
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