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Milosevic
What was the role and significance of Milosevic in the repression of the Albanian independence
campaign?
Slobodan Milošević
Politician and administrator, who, as Serbia’s party leader and president (1989–97), pursued
Serbian nationalist policies that contributed to the breakup of the socialist Yugoslav
federation. He subsequently embroiled Serbia in a series of conflicts with the successor
Balkan states. From 1997 to 2000 he served as president of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.
Milošević was born in Serbia of Montenegrin parents and joined the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia (from 1963 the League of Communists of Yugoslavia [LCY]) when he was 18
years old. He graduated from the University of Belgrade with a law degree in 1964 and began
a career in business administration, eventually becoming head of the state-owned gas
company and president of a major Belgrade bank. He married Mirjana Marković, a staunch
communist who became his political adviser. Milošević entered politics full-time in 1984 as a
protégé of Ivan Stambolić, head of the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS). Milošević
took over as head of the local communist party organization in Belgrade that year.
Milošević soon introduced a new populist political style to Serbia, appealing directly to the
Serbian people over the heads of LCY officials and calling for an “anti-bureaucratic
revolution.” He used his rising popularity to oust his former mentor Stambolić as leader of
the LCS in December 1987. As Serbia’s party leader, Milošević demanded that the federal
government restore full control to Serbia over the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and
Kosovo. And at a time when the federal government was trying to introduce free-market
reforms in order to relieve the faltering Yugoslav economy, he emerged as a leading defender
of the socialist tradition of state economic intervention, attacking economic reform for its
social costs.
In 1988 Milošević replaced the party leadership in Vojvodina and Kosovo provinces with his
own supporters, and in 1989 the Serbian assembly ousted Stambolić from the republic’s
presidency, replacing him with Milošević. In 1990 Milošević pushed through changes to the
Serbian constitution that curtailed the provinces’ autonomy. He resisted a growing movement
in favour of multiparty elections, and he sought to use the extensive Serbian diaspora
throughout Yugoslavia in his fight against confederalism, a looser union of sovereign
republics that was advocated by the leaders of Croatia and Slovenia. But Milošević’s policies
created an anti-Serb backlash in the other republics, and Serbia’s continuing resistance to
political and economic reform accelerated the breakup of the Yugoslav federation. The LCY
split into separate republican parties in 1990, and multiparty elections later that year brought
noncommunist governments to power in both Croatia and Slovenia. Milošević transformed
the LCS into the Socialist Party of Serbia and in December 1990 was returned to office by a
huge majority. He was reelected to the Serbian presidency in 1992.
In 1991 Milošević faced popularly elected leaders from Croatia and Slovenia who continued
to press for the transformation of Yugoslavia into a confederation. A negotiated settlement
proved impossible, and in 1991 first Slovenia and Croatia and then Macedonia declared their
independence. In 1992 the Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina also
voted to secede. In response, Milošević backed Serbian militias who were fighting to unite
Bosnia and Croatia with Serbia. After three years of full-scale warfare in Bosnia, however,
Serbian militias were unable to overwhelm the Bosniak and Croatian forces there, and in
1995 the Croatian army swept almost the entire Serbian population out of its historic enclaves
in Croatia. By this time Serbia’s economy, which had never recovered from the political
crises of the late 1980s, was suffering severely from trade sanctions that had been imposed on
Yugoslavia by the United Nations (UN) in 1992. In order to lift the sanctions, Milošević
agreed on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs to a peace accord in November 1995, thus effectively
ending the fighting in Bosnia.
During 1998 the long-standing dispute between Serbia and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo
deteriorated rapidly into open armed conflict between federal security forces and the
guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, which had begun killing Serbian policemen and
politicians. In the early spring of 1999 the Serbs launched a major offensive aimed at
defeating the insurgents. NATO forces retaliated by initiating a massive aerial bombing
campaign against Yugoslavia, expecting that Milošević would quickly capitulate.
Unexpectedly, many Serbs previously critical of his government rallied in support of their
country; capitalizing on this, he ordered a program of ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar
Albanians that drove hundreds of thousands of them into neighbouring countries as refugees.
By June, however, Milošević had agreed to a peace accord with NATO that obliged him to
withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.
As Serbia’s president, Milošević had continued to dominate the new Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, which had been inaugurated in 1992 and consisted of only Serbia and
Montenegro. He maintained power by his repression of political opponents, his control of the
mass media, and the opportunistic alliances he formed with parties across the political
spectrum, including Yugoslav United Left, the party led by his wife. Having served two
terms as president of Serbia, Milošević was constitutionally barred from serving a third term.
He retained power, however, by having the federal parliament elect him to the presidency of
Yugoslavia in 1997. Milošević’s attempt to cling to power by taking the federal presidency
exposed him to indictment by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague. It had been difficult to charge Milošević when he was
president of Serbia before 1997 with any possible offenses committed by Yugoslav troops
during the war with Bosnia, but, as president of Yugoslavia, he was also the commander in
chief of the federal armed forces. He was thus deemed responsible for any offenses against
international law committed during the Kosovo conflict and was indicted in May 1999.
Unrest under Milošević’s rule and a faltering economy grew in 2000, and in the September
presidential elections he was defeated by opposition leader Vojislav Koštunica. Milošević
was arrested by the Yugoslav government in 2001 and turned over to the ICTY for trial on
charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The trial began in February
2002 but experienced numerous delays because of the poor health of Milošević, who served
as his own defense lawyer. On March 11, 2006, he was found dead in his prison cell.
“Slobodan Milošević.” Britannica School.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 10 Mar. 2011.
http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/1502. Accessed 6 Sep. 2016.
Flashback to Kosovo’s war
Kosovo hit the international headlines in the late 1990s, when forces under Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic attempted to suppress the ethnic Albanian majority’s
independence campaign.
Serbs and ethnic Albanians had vied for control in the
region throughout the 20th Century. While Serbs latterly
only made up about 10% of the population, the historic
and emotional importance of the province for them was
enormous. Serbs consider Kosovo the cradle of their
culture, religion and national identity.
The 1974 Yugoslav constitution laid down Kosovo’s status
as an autonomous province of Serbia. Pressure for
independence mounted in the 1980s after the death of
Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.
Milosevic was the first acting head of state to be
indicted on war crimes
In the latter part of the decade, when Milosevic was number two in the Serbian
Communist Party, he harnessed resentment over Kosovan influence within the Yugoslav
federation. At the same time, Serbs were complaining about persecution by the majority
Albanians. Milosevic, motivated by political opportunism, became a champion of Serbian
nationalism.
In 1987, he was sent to Kosovo and,
spotting an opportunity, seized it. In an
impromptu televised address that made
his reputation overnight, Milosevic
promised Serbian demonstrators in
Kosovo that “no one will dare to beat
you again”.
KOSOVO TIMELINE
1989: Milosevic begins to remove Kosovo’s rights of autonomy
July 1990: Ethnic Albanian legislators in the province declare
Kosovo independent from Serbia
1991: Albania recognises Kosovo as independent
Sept 24 1998: Nato issues ultimatum to Milosevic to stop
crackdown on Kosovo Albanians or face air strikes
March 1999: Peace talks end in failure
June 1999: Nato suspends air operations
Two years later, when he became Yugoslav president, he set about stripping Kosovo of
its autonomy. Serbian nationalism was on the march.
Mass protests
A passive resistance movement in the 1990s failed to secure independence or restore
autonomy, although ethnic Albanian leaders declared unilateral independence in 1991. In
the mid-1990s the ethnic Albanian rebel movement, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA),
stepped up its attacks on Serb targets. By the summer of 1998, Albanians were
mounting mass protests against Serbian rule and police and army reinforcements were
sent in to crush the KLA.
A deal to end the crisis was brokered by the international
community in early 1999. The autonomy plan was
reluctantly accepted by the ethnic Albanians but rejected
by Milosevic. The continued persecution of Kosovo
Albanians led to the start of NATO air strikes against
targets in Kosovo and Serbia in March 1999.
Meanwhile, a campaign of ethnic cleansing against
Kosovo Albanians was initiated by Serbian forces.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Albania,
Macedonia and Montenegro. The international tribunal in
The Hague said its investigators had found at least 2,000
bodies.
Graves in the town of Velika Krusa of ethnic
Albanian killed in March 1999
…
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