THE BULLDOZER REVOLUTION

THE BULLDOZER REVOLUTION:
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
Guerillas Without Guns / Chapter 2
Posted June 24 2007

As Milosevic’s tottering regime came up against the “NATO foot soldiers” of Otpor in 2000, the group and its allies also looked ahead and worked to co-opt as much of the security forces as possible. For example, the young members of Otpor sent bouquets of flowers to the military on Army Day. An article in Peace explained that “such tactics recruited sympathizers in numbers that would not be apparent until the final days of the regime, when soldiers and police stood by while massive crowds stormed the Serbian parliament.” [1]

As the September 2000 election neared, the Serbian president banned international observers from monitoring elections, which were carried out on Sunday the 24th. The opposition claimed victory, with DOS leader Vojislav Kostunica winning over 50 percent support and declaring himself the “people's president.” But others were not so sure, and the Federal Election Commission called for a second ballot set for October 8, saying neither candidate won an outright majority. [2] Another top DOS leader, Zoran Djindjic announced “we will call people onto the streets and tell them not to leave until [Milosevic] gives up power.” [3] Djindjic said the opposition would call for continued protests, including a strike campaign and boycotts of schools, offices, theaters and cinemas. [4]

By this time, Milosevic’s Red Berets had evolved into an independent, self-perpetuating power, and when the regime began to crumble in mid-2000, they switched sides and negotiated a nonaggression pact with Djindjic, assuring him that they would refuse any orders to crack down on demonstrators. [5] With this floodgate opened, a coal miners' strike set the ball rolling; when Milosevic sent Interior Ministry soldiers to break the strike, thousands more citizens turned out in solidarity, blocking streets with barricades and their bodies. [6]
Mass protests in front of the Parliament building, Belgrade, Oct. 5 2000.

The strikes spread and by the 5th the country had come to a virtual standstill, except in the capital, where crowds swelling into perhaps hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters marched and swarmed around, over, and into all the official buildings. The central square was hazed with smoke from fires started by the protesters, lending to the air of chaos as police simply refused to crack down and the insurgents took the whole area, notably the State-run broadcasting apparatus. [7] Kostunica told supporters at a Belgrade rally that Serbia had been “liberated,” a message broadcast to the world. European and world leaders called for Milosevic to admit the obvious and step down as he finally did the following day. [8]

Otpor’s Ivan Marovich proudly boasted that Otpor and the people of Serbia had thus “organized the control of the elections by the civil society.” [9] When that alone proved insufficient, with Milosevic declaring victory anyway, they also helped organize the control of Belgrade, which finally did the trick. The actions of Otpor could not be credited entirely with the results, but they were by all accounts a huge, probably decisive factor in this bloodless revolution that achieved what NATO’s bombs had not. And their spirit of fun was infectious, leaving its mark on the October 5 uprising, dubbed “the Bulldozer Revolution.” It got this unofficial title when a man inspired by Otpor’s lead drove his bulldozer into the building of RTS, Serbian state television, which had been a symbol of Milosevic's rule. (this was a new building, the original having been recently destroyed by NATO bombs).

In the months following, Otpor members were the cause celebré of Serbia and the world at large and their clenched fist logo started popping up everywhere. Especially in Europe, politicians, rock stars, soccer teams and more brandished it proudly. Representatives of the group were even handed a special “Free Your Mind” award at the November 2000 MTV Europe Music Video Awards in Stockholm. MTV Europe’s CEO praised the youngsters’ “constant struggle against injustice and oppression.” [10] Americans in general were faintly pleased but basically unaware of the entire episode. Serbs were by and large elated. It had all seemed so easy once they figured it out – “break the fear,” follow the lead of the superbly-trained and confident young activists, take a clever, flawlessly printed sign and join the thousands of others doing the same. Like a powerful drug secretly administered in their sleep, the whole episode was liberating and exhilarating, almost too good to be true.

Sources:
[1] From Peace Magazine Apr-Jun 2003, p.10. Author=John Bacher; Title=Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance; URL=http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v19n2p10.htm
Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance
John Bacher
[2], [3], [4] Fletcher, Philippa. “Opposition Pressures Milosevic To Resign.” Reuters. St. Petersburg Times (Russia). Issue #607 (0), Friday, September 29, 2000.
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=12704
[5] Aaron, Paul. “The Anguish of Nation Building: A Report from Serbia.” World Policy Journal. Volume XXII, No 3, Fall 2005.
http://worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj05-3/aaron.html
[6], [7], [8] A Force more Powerful: Films: Bringing Down a Dictator: Chronology of Events.
http://www.aforcemorepowerful.org/films/bdd/story/chronology.php
[9] Htet, U Min. “Serbia: Demise of a Dictator.” BBC News. September 16 2005.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/burmese/learning/story/2005/09/050912_transition_prog12.shtml
[10] BBC News. “Madonna's MTV triumph.” November 17, 2000.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1027299.stm

DIVIDE AND CONQUER/STATE SPONSORS OF TERROR

THE DARK SIDE OF THE WEST'S STRATEGY FOR YUGOSLAVIA
Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns
4/19/07

Slobodan Milosevic had charted an effective but unremarkable career in the Socialist party as a typical toady who was fiercely supportive of orthodox Marxism. But he was also an international banker and economic moderate who favored partial privatization of the economy and closer cooperation with the Americans, who saw him as a “breath of fresh air” in the 1980s. [1] Milosevic was a master sculptor of his media image, and knew just how to destroy an opponent politically. After protracted power struggles with President Stambolic, Milosevic emerged as the highly popular President of Serbia in 1989, just as the Warsaw Pact was crumbling away to the north.

He would be President of the Yugoslav Federation as well, but not until 1997, by which time the former SFRY had been nearly dismantled. Over the 1990s, four of six republics seceded, finally leaving only Serbia and Montenegro in a “rump” Yugoslavia. This was not simply a passive process but one helped along by outside powers. Greek peace activist Evangelos Mahairas took issue with the United States effectively cutting off aid to Yugoslavia as a whole in 1990, promising money to the six republics individually if they held separate elections. [2] Thus from 1990 on, the breakup of Yugoslavia was nearly inevitable as the West, notably Germany and the US, extended recognition to one Republic after the other that broke free from Belgrade’s control.

In fact if seen as intentional, this is essentially a divide-and-conquer strategy, as was being done with the former Soviet sphere. The plan is to decentralize, create multiple poles of power, get competition working in your favor and cut bilateral deals with independent states. By the mid-1990s the world was left with a mess of five bickering fragments (in alphabetical order): Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and “Yugoslavia” (or Serbia and Montenegro, capital at Belgrade). Serbia also contained two autonomous provinces: Vojvodina in the north (capital, Novi Sad) and the now well-known southern region of Kosovo (capital at Pristina). While Milosevic's critics allege he sought annexation of Serb-dominated areas in the neighboring republics under the banner “all Serbs in one State,” apologists explain that his role in this process was reactionary, seeking to keep Yugoslavia from disintegrating under outside pressure. In 1991 Serbia went to war with Croatia and again in 1992 fighting broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It’s worthy of note that both of these conflicts occurred only after the republics in question had moved to secede, putting at least some of the impetus for conflict outside Milosevic’s court, an important but often overlooked factor in assigning blame for the ensuing destruction.

Fighting and Byzantine political maneuvers roiled the region for the next few years. The second conflict in particular grabbed the world’s attention, with Muslim Bosniacs pitted against Serbian forces and local Serb paramilitaries. This violence triggered in response the first offensive use of NATO – not the first since the end of the Cold War, but the first ever - in 1995. Dubbed Operation Deliberate Force, NATO’s fierce bombing of Serb positions had the Bosnian War decided and called off before the year was out. Peace was re-established with the Dayton Accords but sanctions were imposed and Yugoslavia was left a Pariah state, withdrawing from the European mainstream (the OSCE) and even leaving the United Nations.

As war raged in the north during the early 1990s, Kosovo languished under total Serbian governance with the Albanian majority locked out in an apartheid system. Poverty and unemployment reached catastrophic levels, swelling the ranks of the dispossessed, desperate, and well-armed. On April 22, 1996, four attacks on Serbian civilians and security personnel were carried out simultaneously in several parts of Kosovo. A hitherto unknown organization calling itself the “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA) claimed responsibility, and it all went downhill from there. Milosevic cranked up the pressure of repression and ushered in the widely publicized phase of paramilitary terror: prison camps, mass rapes and massacres ensued – at least in Western accounts - and demanded the West’s leadership.

Criticism from Washington and Brussels cited the violence in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo as unilateral Serbian “ethnic cleansing,” casting Milosevic as the Hitler of the 1990s, seeking to kill or drive away as many innocent Croats/Bosniacs/Albanians as possible and Serbianize the regions by force. While not entirely untrue, this is a simplification of the situation that serves to distort the issue and give NATO moral carte blanche. For example, Western citizens heard hardly a mention of outside involvement in the Yugoslav civil wars like that presented by Canadian economist, researcher, and critic of globalization Michel Chossudovsky. In an essay written in October 2001, he brought attention to a 1994 report of the London-based International Media Corporation which noted tacit US approval of transfer by Iran of weapons to the separatists in Bosnia. Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers were even landed in Croatia and marched into Bosnia, and the report further noted that “the United States is now actively participating in the arming and training of the Muslim forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina.” [3]

These charges were serious enough to be used by a Republican Party Committee report published in 1997 that criticized the Clinton administration for “complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo.” It noted the policy’s personal approval by he U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, NSC Director Anthony Lake, and President Clinton himself. [4] Despite the political heat this could have applied to Clinton, such activities served the interests of the Anglo-American empire, which are bi-partisan, and so it was allowed to be buried and forgotten as focus shifted to other scandals, making such support into an invisible weapon that made Milosevic’s action seem yet more unjust as he seemed to battle the brave Bosnians for no good reason except blind ethnic hatred.

Such covered-up outside support is also seriously alleged to have flowed in Kosovo, to the militant KLA. Michel Chossudovsky tackled this angle as well, citing British military sources to argue that “the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain's Secret Intelligence Services MI6” along with former British Air Force vets from the 22 SAS Regiment and private Anglo-American security companies. [5] On the other end, the KLA is linked by some evidence to Osama bin Laden’s Islamist and criminal activities in the Balkans; Chossudovsky cited Kosovo as part of the conduit for Afghan opium on its way to refineries and markets in Europe. Supplying roughly 80% of the street supply there, this massive operation is said to have helped bin Laden fund his operations in Afghanistan, and the KLA was reportedly in on the trade. [6] And on the return end, it’s well known that along with Kashmir and Chechnya, Kosovo was one of the main export regions for Islamist militants training at the Afghan camps.

A brief survey of Chossudovsky’s evidence shows that the Bin Laden-KLA-Anglo-American link and the Iranian-Bosnian-Anglo-American link both follow a similar pattern; both helped provoke Belgrade into open hostilities, both times followed up with NATO wars against Serbia. There was enough evidence all in all for US-based Bosnian Serb historian and analyst Srdja Trifkovic to call this “the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years.” “Throughout the 1990's,” Trifkovic wrote, “the U.S. government effectively aided and abetted bin Laden's operations in the Balkans, long after he was recognized as a major security threat to the United States.” [7] Bin Laden was not the big enemy just yet, and at the time it seems plausible that he and his allies were seen as simply convenient tools to help pry Yugoslavia apart.

This would be well within the lines of how Osama had begun his Islamist adventures in Afghanistan. At the urging of National Security Adviser Brzezinski, president Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the anti-Communist opposition in Kabul on July 3, 1979. With this aid, “we didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would,” Brzezinski explained. [8] Thus the Soviet invasion of December was the result of a conscious American plan to trick the USSR into “its Vietnam War,” with the Muslim guerillas secretly funded, armed, and trained by the U.S. and its allies (notably Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) to “make the Soviets bleed for as much, as long as possible” [9] Zbig continued to boast of this whole deal as “an excellent idea” even as late as a January 1998 interview with a French paper. Just six months before bin Laden started blowing up American embassies. [10]

Next: The Limits of Air Power/The Pariah’s Club

Sources:
[1] Sell, Louis. Page 140-141.
[2] Mahairas, Evangelos. The Breakup of Yugoslavia.
[3], [4], [5], [6] Chossudovsky. “Osamagate.” Center for Research on Globalization. October 9, 2001. Accessed December 15, 2004 at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
[7], [8] December 2001. Chronicles Intelligence Assessment. Srdja Trifovic “Osama bin Laden: The Balkans Connection.” http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/December2001/1201CIA.htm
[9] CNN. Cold War Experience. Episode 20. Soldiers of God. Accessed November 9, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/script.html
[10] Johnson, Chalmers. Abolish the CIA!. November 5 2004. Accessed November 6, 2005 at: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=6583§ionID=11

THE HEART OF SERBIA/POINT OF NO RETURN

At the heart of a disintegrating Yugoslavia is the ancient land of Serbia, a nation with a strong sense of self and a long memory. A particularly poignant and long-standing element of Serbian nationalism is the “Kosovo myth,” a 600-year old specter hovering over a site called Kosovo Polje (the field of blackbirds), from which the modern region of Kosovo in southern Serbia takes its name. It was here that Serb forces were vanquished in a major battle with the Islamic Ottoman Turks in the year 1389, an epic loss marked every year, on June 28, as the vidovnan, or St. Vitus’ Day - the most significant date in the Serbian calendar. For centuries they nurtured the dark memory under Turkish rule, only to emerge by struggle and Ottoman decay and re-enter “the European mainstream” in the early 1800s. The re-emergence of the Serbian kingdom into a much-changed Europe opened them to new oppressors. Serbia and its surrounding areas were wrangled over by the Austrian empire (and increasingly Germany) – who had the advantage of proximity – and the Russian empire, which had the advantage of common Slavic identity with the Serbs and a serious drive to gain influence over the shipping lanes to warm water ports to the Mediterranean Sea.

By the early 1900s the Austro-Hungarian Empire had taken effective control of the region that would become Yugoslavia, to the dismay of Russian-supported Serb nationalists. In the spring of 1914, a small group of them associated with the “Black Hand” society was tipped off that Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand would visit the Capital, then Sarajevo, to oversee regional military operations. His date of arrival was listed as June 28. One of the young men involved later fumed “how dared Franz Ferdinand, not only the representative of the oppressor but in his own person an arrogant tyrant, enter Sarajevo on that day? Such an entry was a studied insult.” To clarify that it was the date that clinched the deal, the conspirator noted “only four letters and two numbers were sufficient to make us unanimous, without discussion, as to what we should do about it.” [1] The Archduke’s killing on the 525th commemoration of the vidovnan of course set into motion the chain of events that led to World War I, which finally eliminated the power of both the Ottomans and the reviled Austrians, but also killed half of Serbia’s male population.

Of course this also laid the groundwork for the Second World War in which the area was jointly occupied by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. After the war was done and the Axis was knocked down, Soviet-organized Communist rule took hold over the area, merging six republics together into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Marshal Tito ran the country tightly during nearly the entire Cold War, but after a falling out with Stalin in 1948, he pulled his nation from the Warsaw Pact and until his death in 1980 charted a more moderate Socialist course outside the Iron Curtain, earning points with the West. Tito’s Yugoslavia posed an unusual case for America and Europe - neither a puppet nor an outright enemy, and an important member of the global Non-Aligned Movement, playing both sides against each other for maximum gain.

Serb nationalism was of course suppressed at this time in the interest of Yugoslav unity (“a weak Serbia makes a strong Yugoslavia” was the gist), but beneath the culturally muting blanket of Socialist harmony, it was a nation deeply gouged by the ridges and valleys of the Balkan Mountains and by its intense history long before being glued together in 1945. The six republics were peopled with a tense ethnic mix of Serbs, Croats, Bosniacs, Albanians, and others; many were Muslims, a remnant of centuries of Ottoman rule. Like a mini-USSR, it was ideologically Socialist and composed of numerous smaller republics united around a dominant central state (with Serbia as its Russia). Like the USSR, the glue could only hold so long.

After Tito died, the Kosovo myth was re-introduced by Serb nationalists in the 1980s in Kosovo itself, peopled with a mix of Muslim ethnic Albanians and Christian ethnic Serbs. The efforts of Kosovar Serbs to increase their population – and thus power - were outstripped by the astounding Albanian birthrate; it was the region’s Albanians, 78% of the population and overwhelmingly Muslim, who made Kosovo far and away the most densely populated part of Yugoslavia. Louis Sell, a US State Department veteran involved in the diplomatic efforts in the 1990s explained how in March 1989, the Serbian Parliament adopted a constitutional amendment stripping Kosovo of autonomy; the intention was clarified with a rally held by the newly elected president in a Kosovar town three months later. On the 600th commemoration of the Vidovnan, Slobodan Milosevic dropped onto the stage from a helicopter to dramatically welcome a million mostly Serbian attendees to “Kosovo – the heart of Serbia.” [2] He had invited American and European diplomats to the speech but they declined, and this day has been widely seen as the point of no return that led to the Kosovo conflicts, the next major test of the New World Order.

Next: Divide and Conquer/State Sponsors of Terror

Sources:
[1] The Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, 28 June 1914. Borijove Jevtic. Eyewitness to history. Ed. John Carey. New York. Avon Books. Page 442.
[2] Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. London. 2002. Duke Universiry Press. Page 88.

OTPOR FALLOUT: JUST ANOTHER WEAPON

Once the initial sweetness of Otpor’s example and the bloodless revolution faded, a sort of saccharine aftertaste in the Serbian mind became evident. Brian Pozun wrote for Central Europe Review in early 2001:

“Ostensibly, the movement accepted Western aid to promote their goal of a purged, democratized Serbia. When it became clear, however, that Western governments were involved, many in Yugoslavia and elsewhere began to wonder what sort of return those generous governments will want on their investment in Otpor. [1]

Citing Milosevic’s ads that had Otpor’s fist stuffed with American dollars, Pozun explains, “many are left wondering just how far off the ad really was.” In another play from Milosevic’s propaganda campaign, the President made public an intercepted, top-secret CIA plan to remove him from power by supporting Otpor and other such groups. But the paper Milosevic cited was in fact an openly available plan to unseat him by supporting and training the opposition. It was a memorandum to the US Congress, written by Daniel Server at the US Institute of Peace, recommending a trial run of Sharp’s and Helvey’s strategic nonviolence. It was Milosevic’s secret police that made the changes to make it appear secret and CIA-sponsored, and thus sinister. [2] But again, despite the creative license, the paper was otherwise presented as written, and we must wonder how far off the mark Milosevic really was.

Peace magazine in 2003 described how American support for Otpor “benefited from a temporary consistency and coherence in American foreign policy during the Clinton presidency, which actually pursued the strategies advocated by Gene Sharp.” [3] The Server letter Milosevic cited led to Congressional approval of $41-$45 million for the project (overall estimates vary). While NATO set its bomb sights, the article explains, “sanctions were applied in a more targeted fashion. For example, they were not applied to municipalities that voted to support opposition politicians.” To further the freeing of Serbian minds in other towns, Radio transmitters were set up in Eastern Europe and organized into a “Ring Around Serbia,” beaming in western media like the BBC, Agence France-Presse, and Voice of America. Other actions approved included the US Treasury Department’s freezing of Milosevic’s assets tracked down to banks in Cyprus. [4] Not being able to pay one’s security forces can’t help one’s cause.

The revelations that Otpor in fact had been part and parcel of the well-orchestrated American-led campaign that had also produced the bombings and the ‘Allo ‘Allo re-runs eroded the widely held view of Otpor as spontaneous, grass-roots people's movement. While they were still free of Milosevic and sanctions, the sunshine of public optimism was now overcast with doubts. Serbia’s youth had been co-opted into a “post-military weapons system” of the NATO campaign, a troubling precedent to ponder. Originally they had felt their country was under attack because of their leader’s wrongdoing, but now had to reflect on one of Milosevic’s last speeches; on October 2, as Otpor and the DOS “NATO foot soldiers” closed the noose on him, Milosevic explained that his people had it all backwards. “It should be clear to all, after the past ten years, that NATO isn't attacking Serbia because of Milosevic; it is attacking Milosevic because of Serbia.” [5] Just three days later the attack was complete, Milosevic was removed from the scene, and the DOS took control of Serbia and started selling it to the West.

MILOSEVIC'S PIPELINE PLANS PREVENTED

Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns
Posted 4/7/07


Caspian export routes, existing and proposed. General contours of Russian-Iranian-Chinese-dominated systems vs. the American-led model.

One window of opportunity for Caspian Sea oil and gas export was due west across the Caucasus states of Azerbaijan and Georgia, the rocky alley between Russian and Iranian turf. These Caucasian pipelines could then connect via Turkey to the Mediterranean, to pipelines - running north through the Balkans - into Europe and its vast energy markets. Other planned lines could snake beneath the Black Sea to enter Europe at Bulgaria, and flow west through Macedonia (split from Yugoslavia in 1991) and end on the Albanian coast.

Before he was driven from power, Slobodan Milosevic had seen these same pipeline dreams and hoped to squeeze Yugoslavia’s way into the Caspian oil rush. He looked to a north-running route with Caspian oil piped from Greece (after being shipped from Ceyhan) and into Europe proper. In 1997 talks began on the Yugoslav portion, a pipeline running north from Macedonia to Belgrade, pumping 200,000 barrels a day to the refinery at Pancevo. It would pass through Kosovo, and would enable Yugoslavia to become a net exporter, shipping oil and petrochemical derivatives along the Rhein-Main-Danube highway to Europe’s markets. Yeltsin’s Russia was reportedly interested in aiding Milosevic, allowing him to tap into a major Russian pipeline to further boost his export potential.

But then those pesky rebels started rocking the boat in Kosovo, and when the war finally came, among the targets NATO chose for the fiercest bombardment were Serbia’s oil refineries, oil storage sites, petrochemical plants, and the infrastructure of ports and bridges along the Danube River. It was made clear that so long as Milosevic remained in power, such ambitions would remain out of reach. So the noble work of Otpor to bring freedom and decency to Yugoslavia also – as an unintended side effect of course – closed the way to Russian-sponsored pipelines tied in with Milosevic’s closed economy. Any such northbound pipeline that may be built will now have a name like Exxon, BP, or Shell attached.

(for more on Caspian pipelines, read here).

THE LIMITS OF AIR POWER/THE PARIAH’S CLUB

The Stage is Set for the Bulldozer Revolution
Adam Larson / Guerillas Without Guns
Posted 3/13/07

As pressure grew over the situation in Kosovo, Yeltsin’s Russia pursued diplomacy, trying to make a name in the international community as a peace-maker while protecting the interests of its client state. The US played along with the Rambouillet conference of early 1999, though Milosevic was accused of leveraging such periods of calm to push his campaign deeper into Kosovo. With talks thus deemed counterproductive, Washington led the formation of an offensive coalition to solve the crisis. President Bush, confronted with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, had used the UN Security Council, the mark of the New World Order. But this time the plan was different. In 1995, Clinton pursued NATO as the venue of action instead, circumventing Russian and Chinese involvement in the decisions. [1] When the peace process broke down over Kosovo, it was again decided to pursue the Euro-Atlantic route and NATO again decided on war.

NATO, it seemed, had found its new mission and reaffirmed it on March 24, a bare twelve days after announcing its expanded power with the addition of Poland, Hungary, and the Czezh Republic. The campaign opened with bombs on Serb forces in Kosovo, eventually moving to Serbia itself. Operation Allied Force was waged entirely from the air, though there were threats of ground invasion late in the campaign. Civilian installations such as power plants, petrochemical plants, water processing plants and the state-owned broadcaster were intentionally targeted, and the Chinese Embassy was also hit, allegedly a simple accident.

CNN reported May 18 that “NATO launched its 55th day of air strikes against Yugoslavia on Monday,” with a “decided downturn […] from around 600 sorties daily to just 343. NATO said bad weather forced the cancellation of most flights.” [2] Such a massive bombardment was sure to kill civilians, as was made clear by well-publicized events like the apparently purposeful attack directly on an Albanian refugee convoy that killed 87. [3] Yugoslav reports of total civilian deaths ranged as high as 6,000, while Western estimates range from 500-1500. Even this number was artificially inflated, NATO said, by Milosevic’s use of “human shields” bussed in to potential targets and confined there to die. Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon estimated that up to half of all civilians killed in the NATO air campaign may have been deliberately placed around bombing targets. He said such incidents stand as evidence of the “depravity of Milosevic,” thus demonstrating the justness of the war that was having over 600 bombing runs a day pounding those targets anyway. [4]

Under siege, Milosevic hung on stubbornly with solid support from Russia under President Yeltsin. On April 7, Milosevic met with a Russian envoy who stated that Russia condemned NATO's “criminal aggression on Yugoslavia,” insisted it should stop immediately, and passed on the Russian people's “support for and solidarity with the people of Yugoslavia.” [5] The air war evidenced the growing rift between the US and Russia as NATO took up its offensive military role. They had signed a “Founding Act” for cooperation in 1997 – that is between Yugoslav wars. When this failed to have Moscow consulted or even informed before the second campaign, they quit the partnership program and again adopted an adversarial stance with NATO. [6]

On June 10 Milosevic agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and the bombardment ended, though Milosevic’s power survived the conflict. The bombs had failed to force him to surrender, and in many ways nationalism had increased under foreign aggression. And he was reportedly ready for a bold new venture. According to a December 1999 article from the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), the Yugoslav leader entertained dreams of “an axis stretching eastward,” allied with Lybia, Iraq, and North Korea – and possibly China and/or Russia - as a sort of Pariah’s club who felt abused by the West for having chosen a different path. Belgrade state media described this proposal as “a coalition of free states ranged against the New World Order.” [7]

In late 1999, IWPR noted, delegations from the governments of Iraq and North Korea visited Belgrade as China delivered $300 million of ‘humanitarian’ aid. As Serbian Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic pointed out, “Yugoslavia has many friends in the world.” [8] Serbian Information Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Vojislav Seselj, Deputy PM in the Federal Government, jointly emphasized the need for these friends to move closer together in the “struggle against American imperialism and hegemony.” [9] Baghdad and Belgrade were working towards a deal whereby outstanding Yugoslav loans to Saddam’s government could be repaid in oil, as well as early talk on a “medicines for oil” deal. [10] So not only was Milosevic still in power, the butchers of Baghdad and Belgrade were moving closer together, both despite American-led wars and continued sanctions, hoping to scrape together enough of their own resources to trade and create a small outcast economy. The West’s policy of starving nations out by excluding them from the global economy was set to backfire by pushing aside one too many and creating a viable fringe bloc, with the colossal, if faint, possibility of Chinese and Russian inclusion.

Milosevic looked forward to presidential elections in Moscow and Washington to set the tone for his next plans. In Russia, Milosevic was distrustful of “Washington’s man” Yeltsin, reportedly banking on Communist Gennady Zyuganov as next Russian president. IWPR reported that Milosevic felt Zyuganov could forge “a military-political alliance between Russia and China, which would of course include Yugoslavia.” And on the American front he was looking for the Clinton team that had so harassed him to simply go away. IWPR predicted that “a victory by the Republican and isolationist candidate George Bush Jr. in the US would likely lessen Washington's will to get involved overseas.” [11] As 2000 dawned, the US direction was yet to be seen but it was clear Putin was in power in Russia, and while not a communist he was keen on reviving Soviet policies and as time would show he had his own geopolitical ambitions, some indeed involving Milosevic’s hoped for alliance with China (a point to which we’ll return in later chapters). Washington clearly felt that the time to take out Milosevic was short – preferably before the US elections.

As Gene Sharp would later tell an interviewer, “when violence fails, people don't say violence doesn't work. They keep the belief that violence is the most powerful thing they can do even though it has proved to be a disaster.” [12] This was the perfect time and place to prove that attitude wrong. Serbia in 2000 provided the fertile soil of political discontent by the tractor-load. Political analyst Dejan Anastasejevic explained the source of this sullen mood:

“The people turned against [Milosevic] because he lost four wars in a row. He initially had a very large support but once he lost four wars, people started to look at you and thought may be you are not a very competent man. Also living standard in Serbia went sharply down during his rule because of the sanctions by the United Nations. People wanted these sanctions lifted so that they could live like normal people. And only way they saw that could happen was to remove Milosevic from power.” [13]

So even the discontent can be engineered from without as in this case - bombs and sanctions were direct decisions of the nations targeting Milosevic for removal. But either way the idea was planted in peoples’ minds – there is only one way out of this situation and Milosevic is blocking the exit. As Metta Spencer explained in Peace magazine, “Sharp has shown that dictators require the assistance of the people they rule - their skills and knowledge, their material resources, and especially their submission.” Once these were broken in Serbia, Spencer claims with only some hyperbole “Sharp's strategy brought down Milosevic.” [14]

Next: otpor! "Biting the system."

Sources:
[1] Justin Logan and Ted Galen Carpenter. “NATO Insists on Poking Russian Bear.” Cato Institute. January 27 2006. Accessed via MosNews. http://www.mosnews.com/commentary/2006/01/27/russianbear.shtml
[2], [4] “NATO says 'human shields' account for bombing deaths Albanian troops clash with Serbs.” CNN. May 18 1999. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/17/kosovo.03/
[3] “Who NATO Killed.” Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. Counterpunch. 1999. Accessed at: http://www.counterpunch.org/dead.html
[5] “Yugoslavia's Milosevic meets with Russia's Seleznyov.” April 7 1999. Accessed May 4, 2006 at:
http://www.serbia-info.com/news/1999-04/07/10606.html
[6] De Haas, Marcel. ''N.A.T.O.-Russia Cooperation: Political Problems Versus Military Opportunities.'' Power and Interest News Report. May 29 2006. http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=498&language_id=1
[7], [8], [9], [10], [11] Sunter, Daniel. “Milosevic Dreams Of Military Axis To The East.” Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Dec 17 1999.
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=bcr&s=f&o=245700&apc_state=henibcr1999
[12] Spencer, metta. “Transcript: An Interview with Gene Sharp.” Peace Magazine. July 9, 2003. http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/07/09/aninterv1.html
[13] Htet, U Min. “Serbia: Demise of a Dictator.” BBC News. September 16 2005. http://www.bbc.co.uk/burmese/learning/story/2005/09/050912_transition_prog12.shtml
[14] Spencer, Metta. “Gene Sharp and Serbia: Introduction: Nonviolence versus a Dictatorship.” Peace Magazine Oct-Dec 2001, p.14. http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v17n4p14.htm

OTPOR'S ORIGINS

OTPOR! BITING THE SYSTEM
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / Guerillas Without Guns
November 2006
re-posted 2/17/07

As the second NATO bombing campaign against Serbia came and went in early-mid 1999, it was the young who led the way out of NATO’s fire and into the West’s frying pan. “Otpor!” is a Serbian word for “Resist” or “Resistance.” It was chosen as a name for a presumably sincere group of dissident students at the University of Belgrade in October 1998. [1] They were reportedly incensed at Milosevic’s repressive media laws, and immediately launched a graffiti campaign across downtown Belgrade, leaving images of their name and their clenched-fist symbol. An early Otpor early website reportedly explained “the fist itself is conceived as the symbol of individual initiative, that the time and energy of every single person should be invested to bring about change. This symbol of personal courage was born with the first public manifestation of RESISTANCE, a leaflet called "Bite the System." [2]

As NATO air strikes poured over their territory and people rallied around the government in early-mid 1999, Otpor’s public activities paused; people refused to rise up in apparent solidarity with the people bombing their country. But in the disastrous aftermath of the bombings, late 1999 and into 2000, the students resumed, taking bigger bites further beyond the campus. Otpor took root in the south and the rural areas; there were eventually more than eighty branches of the movement, with each branch representing a Serbian city. [3]


In Belgrade, an Otpor-led street campaign against Milosevic targeted the minds of the capital’s electorate. They drew on existing American mental technologies, seeking to brand their name and message into the brains of Serbia. Ivan Marovic, a leader of the Otpor movement explained “our idea was to use corporate branding in politics. The movement has to have a marketing department. We took Coca-Cola as our model.” [4] Marovic also described to a BBC Malaysia reporter the techniques used in their campaign, involving creativity, humor, and an uncommon application of strategic psychology:

“In the first phase, we used symbolic street actions. Small number of people would organize the action, which would symbolize the problems they were facing in their own towns. These actions were not something that were too dangerous, so people could easily join and by doing that they could show that they were not satisfied with the situation in the country. With these actions that had a dosage of humour and laugher we managed to break away fear which was the main problem facing [them] under Milosevic’s dictatorship.[5]

In early May the political front shaped up with the emergence of a unified Opposition coalition; eighteen political parties merged into the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). By this time, Otpor itself was ready to challenge the President directly; in the two years since the group’s inception, it had grown to at least 70,000 members, a force to be reckoned with. The police fought back, but no matter what the authorities did, the movement just got bigger. Thousands of young protesters were arrested. Perhaps hundreds were beaten and interrogated, but the movement’s leadership proved tough to ferret out; Otpor prided itself on the fact that the group had no single leader or hierarchical structure, which rendered ordinary suppression nearly impossible.

Radio Free Europe reported that “Otpor is a state of mind rather than an organization,” a contention backed up by Nis Deputy Mayor Toplica Djordjevic, a Milosevic foe, who told RFE/RL “how many people are in Otpor in Nis I cannot say. But how strong are they as an idea, as a movement -- that is easy to say. Otpor is everywhere. Otpor is an idea that young people embrace and struggle for with full force and full legitimacy.” [7]

The Otpor logo and its advertisement by activists in Belgrade, 2000. Ivan Marovic: “We took Coca-Cola as our model.”

On May 13 a Socialist Party ally of Milosevic, Bosko Perosevic, was gunned down in Novi Sad. The assassin was quickly arrested and accused of membership in Otpor and the SPO opposition party, based on literature found in his apartment. Otpor claimed the evidence was planted, and responded shrewdly that same day with a “surrender action,” handing their membership lists over to the authorities – and to the media. They were apparently banking on the PR move as a sign of innocence, but the government accelerated its repression and arrested many of the activists on the lists anyway, calling them “fascists” and “terrorists.” [8]

Once the youth movement went public, it was no longer a matter of ferreting them out – everybody knew who Otpor were and they were all so cute and brave. Opposition activist Slobodan Vuksanovic touted the movement’s appeal is Serbia as “young people who certainly are not trusted for their experience. They cannot be experienced. Rather, they are trusted because they are clean.” [9] Srdja Popovic, the 27 year-old self-described “ideological commissar” of Otpor, explained that their nonviolent methods had been designed “to show how superior, how advanced, how civilized” they were, and the approach worked quite well. [10] Ordinary citizens, realizing their own children were members, gradually came to accept the movement as the inevitable face of the future. Andrew Mueller interviewed “Otpor’s nominal figurehead,” 20-year-old Branko Ilic. Ilic described the group’s role in the success, describing himself and his comrades as “guerrillas without guns.” [11]

On July 17 Milosevic, having pushed through Parliament a constitutional amendment that would allow him two more terms as president, announced early elections scheduled for September 24, perhaps afraid his popularity would fall after that. [13] As the political opposition moved towards greater unity, Otpor focused on securing the upcoming elections for the opposition. Their prime achievement to this end was their 2000 Gotov Je (“He’s Finished”) pre-election campaign. Over two million stickers announcing this belief were placed around Belgrade and elsewhere to mobilize as many disaffected voters to the polls as possible to vote their conscience – this time they weren’t going to let it be stolen.

So the fight moved to a different level; the government issued a statement blaming all unrest on the cross-pressure from NATO-controlled information warfare and the activities of “an internal fifth column.” [14] Milosevic ran a series of ads targeting Otpor as “NATO foot soldiers” and tools of foreign powers; the spots cleverly had the trademark Otpor fist clenched around a wad of American dollars. [15] The public at the time dismissed the campaign as a cynical lie from a desperate ruler, solidifying in their minds that indeed “Gotov Je.”

Sources:
[1],[6] Pozun, Brian. "Planning for an Uncertain Future." Central EuropeReview. February 26 2001. http://www.ce-review.org/01/8/pozun8.html
[2] "Bulgarian paper says CIA is tutoring Serbian group Otpor." From the Bulgarian newspaper The Monitor. Translated by Blagovesta Doncheva. (Posted 9-8-00) http://emperors-clothes.com/news/cialectures.htm
[3] Sell, Louis. Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Page 339.
[4] Traynor, Ian. “Young democracy guerrillas join forces: From Belgrade to Baku, activists gather to swap notes on how to topple dictators.” The Guardian. June 6 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1499871,00.html
[5] Htet, U Min. "Serbia: Demise of a Dictator." BBC News. September 16 2005. http://www.bbc.co.uk/burmese/learning/story/2005/09/050912_transition_prog12.shtml
[7] Naegele, Jolyon. “Yugoslavia: Otpor Launches Get Out the Vote Campaign.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. July 18 2000. http://www.rferl.org/features/2000/07/f.ru.000719154500.asp
[8] Human Rights Watch. http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/serbia0601.htm
[9]
[10]