A Belgrade voice that should be heard
Jelena Milic, Executive Director of Serbia’s Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, takes a hard look at reform of the security/justice sector and finds it still lacking (in a speech in Dublin to the Institute of International and European Affairs):
Note her criticism of U.S. cooperation with the military starting around minute 23.
She also testified two days later at the Joint Committee on European Affairs:
if Serbia meets other E[uropean] C[ommission] expectations from last year’s progress report, which will be evaluated in Commission findings and its recommendations to be announced on 12 October, and if the situation in Kosovo does not deteriorate and dialogue with Prishtina resumes, and if the state demonstrates that it can provide for the protection of the constitutional rights of the participants in the Pride Parade, Serbia should be given candidacy status.
This will provide some support for genuine pro-EU forces within Serbia and preempt a drop in public support for the EU integration process in advance of the 2012 general election in Serbia. The date of the EU negotiations should then be announced and organized as quickly as is feasible, but be firmly and clearly conditioned. Continued Serbian progress towards EU membership, if predicated on the strengthening of institutions and regulatory bodies within Serbia would weaken the principal opponents of the pro-EU agenda.
I’m less keen than Jelena on doing things based on their presumed impact on Serbian politics, but hers is a voice that should be heard.
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Thanks for posting this. It’s a useful reminder, on the anniversary of their unseating of Milosevic, of just how complicated it can be to transition from a dictatorial system to a democracy.
Even in the now Czech Republic, where there was probably more support for the idea of a democratic state (which they had been in the past) and less support for the communist system (which could in any case be explained as a foreign imposition) there was the problem of what to do with the security forces. Firing large numbers of low-level police officers who had been assigned security duties under the Communists merely produced a criminal class with weapons training, knowledge of criminal networks, connections with politicians, and so on. It’s a bit disappointing to hear that the annual payments from the US government hasn’t done more to reform the Serbian force. They treat protesters more nicely these days, at least.
She suggested that certain elements in Belgrade are more closely connected to the events in northern Kosovo than are acknowledged – too bad Draskovic’s information from that Parliamentary security committee meeting weren’t available when she was speaking. (His comments and part of a TV interview were reported in the Serbian version of B92; a day later they haven’t shown up in the English-language pages.) At the meeting, they received information from their own security people that it was non-locals who attacked the Kfor troops (at the closed-on newly constructed road cross the border), apparently running a truck into an American soldier who ordered the driver not to ram the barbed-wire barrier. The weapon wrested from him had not yet, according to Draskovic, been recovered – how long will it be before evidence starts turning up that Kfor has been responsible for murders throughout the area? (What were their ROE that there was no firing until after a soldier was injured?)
On that restitution bill she mentioned that’s now moving through Parliament under EU prodding – it’s less than it sounds like. Property seized during WWII (mostly from Jews and Muslims) is not covered, just what what seized by the Communists. Since Kosovo is Serbia, will that mean that the land seized from Albanians under Milosevic for building churches will be returned?
And while she may not be enthusiastic about the level of cooperation between the U.S. and the Serbian military, would she rather have Serbian officers going off to Moscow for training? It was a U.S.-trained Serbian general who convinced Milosevic that there was no way that Serbian forces could take on Nato on the ground – that was worth (to both sides) whatever had been spent on his education, although the ending in Kosovo might have been cleaner.
Too bad she didn’t have time to go into all the spokes Belgrade is poking into Montenegro’s wheels, but as long as the country continues to make progress toward EU membership there’s a chance of some kind of protection for their independence. It’s ironic in a way when you consider that Montenegro retained its independence during all those centuries when Serbia was part of the Ottoman Empire.
As to the largely incomplete reform of the security-intelligence apparatus in Serbia, which Ms. Milic rightly mentioned, there are three issues that require particular attention.
The first pertains to the military counterintelligence, many of whose senior officials were being retrained in Russia, i.e. at former Soviet Union military academies. These old guards have over time forged very strong, almost inextricable ties with their counterparts and mentors from certain factions within Russian intelligence services. Even those among them who have been retired in the meantime have retained high levels of influence over the intelligence affairs in the country (not only in the military sector).
The second are private security companies, at least half of which are either owned or are employing persons with an imposing criminal background (including corrupt policemen who are concurrently working both in the police and as bodyguards to various crime bosses), or – which is most often the case – both. These agancies are virtually allowed to operate without any institutional oversight and proper regulation.
Finally, the third, there are between five and ten thousand of militant ultranationalists in Serbia, whom Ms. Milic calls – rightly again – “paramilitary units”, which are closely associated with both of the aforementioned elements.
Yet, these issues wouldn’t look so insolvable if there existed a political will – something on which every facet of life in such a cenralized state as Serbia inevitably depends. And that lack of will stems from high-level corruption in which most politicians – with a few honorable exceptions – are involved in one way or another. In other words, such politicians do not see any interest in implementing reforms that could bring about stable and independent institutions, as they certainly don’t want to see themselves end up behind bars.
What you say about the close ties with the Russian services makes me wonder why we are so eager to persuade Serbia to join Nato. They may not be anybody’s biggest concern at the moment, but still, inviting their best friends inside the tent doesn’t really seem to make sense.
A very good question, indeed. And one that requires a complex answer.
Now, it is true that, from the U.S. viewpoint not only Serbia, but Balkans as a whole, is certainly not a country/region of the highest importance – especially not so much as it is for the European powers, and nowhere near as much as is the Middle East. But even so, Balkans always represent a geopolitical time bomb whose potential to explode one should never underestimate if they are to avoid being taken by surprise (as it was the case with the war following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the 1st half of 1990s). Moreover, Balkans are geographically connected with the very Middle East via Turkey – an influential player that straddles and seeks to pursue its interests in both regions.
Now that Serbia is, not only presently but throughout the modern history, a major troublemaker in this, western half of the Balkans, it is at the same time – and by that very fact – a major linchpin of the peace and stability in the region (this may sound as a paradox, but actually makes a lot of sense). In other words, for the United States having Serbia in NATO means converting a major troublemaker in the western Balkans into a strategic ally and, thus, an invaluable regional proxy that helps you keep the entire region calm in the long term.
And this particularly comes to the fore at a time of accelerated global dynamics, compounded by an economic crisis that is increasingly threatening to precipitate into a sort of a broader security concern.
As for the ties between the elements within Serbian military (and) intelligence and their Russian counterparts, Serbia’s accession to NATO would facilitate efforts by those genuinely pro-Western figures of Serbia’s defense and security system – one of whose most notable representatives is the acting Defense minister, Mr. Dragan Sutanovac – to neutralize the influence of the pro-Russian, and by extension, anti-Western faction or, at least, reduce it to an extent that they cannot any longer endanger the so much needed westernization of Serbia in every respect – politically, strategically, economically and – which is perhaps the most important – mentally.
Of course, if Serbia was to join NATO, it would first have to announce its intention to do so and then to fulfill certain conditions, just like any other aspirant. And that pre-accession process is precisely where the pro-Russian faction can be gradually eliminated from the scene through a careful and thorough cooperation with the U.S. intelligence operatives (especially since, as far as I know, the United States is the only NATO member which enjoys the legal right, approved by other members, to install its intelligence outposts on their territories).
Unfortunately, all this remains, at least for the foreseeable future, just my wishful thinking, given the prevalently anti-American and anti-NATO sentiment among Serbs coupled with Serbian political elite’s proclivity to behave in a populist rather than a strategically rational manner.