Serb chief: why he's so defiant
Justin Brown
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA
He was born under German occupation, his
family eventually broken up and devastated
by three suicides. But he probably would
have led an ordinary life - had he not married
one well-connected Communist, and become
the best friend of another.
But Slobodan Milosevic made a mercurial
rise to the top. Now the Yugoslav president,
he is thought to have no real spiritual or
emotional attachment to Kosovo. Rather,
Kosovo is Mr. Milosevic's tool, his ticket to
power and key to political survival.
How far will Milosevic go in his resistance to
bombing? How much power will he gain
during a state of war? And, finally, how much
damage will Milosevic's forces inflict on the
ethnic Albanians, as he appears to be
conducting a campaign of "ethnic cleansing?"
"Milosevic's position has never been better,"
says Ognjen Pribicevic, a political analyst in Belgrade. "The only thing
NATO managed to do is unite all the Serbs."
Since NATO began its attacks, Milosevic has held firm in his earlier
refusal to sign a peace deal on Kosovo. Yesterday, however, he met
with Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, whom Milosevic
trusts because of Moscow's stand against NATO attacks.
DEMONSTRATION: A woman
held a picture of Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic
during a protest March 30 in
Belgrade against NATO
airstrikes.
(PETAR KUJUNDZIC /REUTERS)
Early life
Slobodan Milosevic was born in 1941, just after the Germans
occupied Yugoslavia. His father, a schoolteacher, left the family after
World War II and committed suicide in 1962. His mother, also a
teacher, raised the family under strict Communist doctrine. She too
committed suicide, in 1972. A favorite uncle also killed himself.
Young Slobodan was said to be serious and disciplined, uninterested
in sports or other extracurricular activities. He fell in love with a
classmate, Mirjana Markovic, whose extended family was well
connected in the Communist Party.
Milosevic went to university in Belgrade and became close friends
with Ivan Stambolic, who was also well connected in Communist
Yugoslavia.
Stambolic took Milosevic to the top, getting him lucrative jobs in the
1970s running a state gas company and bank. In 1986, Stambolic
became president of Serbia. He named Milosevic head of Serbia's
Central Committee.
When a crisis was brewing in Kosovo in 1987, Stambolic sent
Milosevic as an envoy to the autonomous region, to quell Serbian
demonstrations against the predominantly ethnic Albanian police.
Milosevic did just the opposite, whipping the crowd into a nationalist
frenzy. "No one will dare beat you," Milosevic famously told the
crowd.
Milosevic then went back to Belgrade and sacked Stambolic. From
there, he stirred up more nationalism that would quickly fan through
the ethnically mixed Yugoslavia. That nationalism, analysts say, was
more politically opportune than genuinely ideologic.
'We can surely fight'
When Milosevic became president of Serbia in 1989, he timed his
inauguration ceremony to coincide with the 600th anniversary of the
Battle of Kosovo Polje, the legendary battle in which the Ottoman
Turks overran the Serbs.
"If we Serbs cannot work, we can surely fight," Milosevic said in his
acceptance speech.
"I was disappointed with his speech [because it was nationalist],"
recalls Stevan Mirkovic, the former commander of the Yugoslav
Army under dictator Josip Broz Tito. "That's where he got the power
and the support he has right now, and he's very hard to overthrow
because of his connection with Kosovo. Kosovo can never be
questioned by the Serbs."
As president, Milosevic stripped Kosovo of its autonomy. Croatia
broke from Yugoslavia in 1991, then Slovenia went, and in the war in
Bosnia, the term "ethnic cleansing" was coined.
Milosevic's role in Bosnia and Croatia was somewhat unclear, but he
was widely believed to have directed the Bosnian Serbs and supplied
them with weapons. He signed the Dayton peace accords in 1995,
and was blamed at home for losing the Serb-populated regions of
Krajina and Slavonia in Croatia and an estimated 20 percent of
Bosnia.
During three years without a war, he lost popularity at home and was
almost overthrown by students and opposition politicians in the winter
of 1996-1997.
All that changed, however, with the outbreak of another ethnic war,
in February 1998, in the place where it had all begun, the place
where the man had been made - Kosovo.
And now, as NATO airstrikes enter the eighth day, fellow Serbs rally
around Milosevic, holding to the nationalism he stirred up more than a
decade ago.
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