Serbia After Djindjic

War Crimes, Organized Crime, and Trust in Public Institutions

Eric Gordy

Serbian policies and perceptions remain clouded by the Miloevi era.

ERIC GORDY is associate professor of sociology at Clark University in Massachusetts and the author of The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives (1999).

N March 12, 2003, the prime minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindji, was killed by snipers as he walked to his office in downtown Belgrade. The assassination was the latest in a series of dramatic and unsettling political events to shake Serbia. Djindji had come to power in the parliamentary elections of December 2000, which followed Vojislav Kotunicas dramatic defeat of long-time Serbian strongman Slobodan Miloevi in the elections of September 24, 2000. (Miloevi was compelled to leave power after mass demonstrations on October 5.) Weeks before Djindjis death, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) had been replaced by a looser political confederation, Serbia and Montenegro, forcing Kotunica out of his job as FRY president. Now the most visible Serbian leader was gone, and the political scene was again in flux. Following the murder of Djindji, high-ranking Serbian officials began to clearly and openly draw linkages between war crimes and other types of crime, and between the perpetrators and the remnants of the Miloevi regime. As a result, the parties of the Miloevi regime and the parties perceived as advocating compromise with them seemed to be heading for the political margins. Initial evidence suggested an overwhelming degree of popular support both for Operation Sabrethe set of extraordinary measures against organized crime imposed following the assassination and for the political parties behind the operation. One year later, after three failed attempts to elect a president, the government that assumed Djindjis legacy did not survive the parliamentary elections it was forced to call in December 2003. Amid widespread fears that the political forces that dominated the Miloevi era may
Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 51, no. 3, May/June 2004, pp. 1017. 2004 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 10758216 / 2004 $9.50 + 0.00.

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reemerge, it has become almost commonplace to wonder how different the coalition government that succeeded Miloevi really was from the regime it defeated. This article sets out the dimensions of the potential break with the past that emerged in early 2003 and suggests some reasons why the opportunity was not realized.

When Crime Begets Crime

On April 28, 2003, a protected witness identified as C48 testified against Slobodan Miloevi before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Among other things, this witness testified that the Serbian State Security Service, on orders from its director, Jovica Stanii, had planned in 1993 to transport large quantities of heroin across the border to Croatia, as part of a special operation to depress the morale of fighting-age youth in Croatia, presumably by increasing the rate of narcotics addiction. According to C-48, during this operation State Security agents cooperated with known figures from the underworld of organized crime, including Darko Aanin and Zeljko Sobot.1 There may be little point in asking whether this allegation is true. As much as it sounds like an entry from the history of tabloid-conspiracy theory, more lurid claims have turned out to be true. It would also not be very surprising if specialists in the etiology of drug addiction were to point out that levels of addiction were already high throughout the former Yugoslavia, not just Croatia, and that the reasons for this could be found in causes mostly having little or nothing to do with the actions of Serbian State Security. True or not, the allegation has value as a story. And as a story, it is consistent with much of what has been offered since the murder of Prime Minister Djindji regarding the connections between war crimes and other sorts of crimes. Shortly before C-48s testimony, the Miloevi trial had been interrupted when Belgrade officials filed charges tying Miloevi to the kidnapping and murder of his predecessor as president of Serbia, Ivan Stamboli. It was again interrupted shortly afterward by the filing of charges tying Miloevi to the attempted murder of an opposition politician, Vuk Drakovi. Like any story that enters popular narrative, this is one with a morala moral dramatically illustrated by the Djindji murder. The moral can be stated structurally: Crimes committed against non-Serbs are closely related to crimes committed against Serbs. It can be stated in terms of fear: People who are empowered to hurt other people are also likely to hurt you. Or it can be stated pictur-

esquely, as acting Serbian president Nataa Mii did in identifying the remnants of the former regime as a mafia that justifies itself on the basis of patriotism, and whose patriotism consists of selling drugs to our children, and using the money from that for political activity, killings, and hiding from The Hague.2 The connection between violations of international law and violations of domestic law seems to be the logic behind the indictments filed against forty-five members of the Zemun clan and their suspected associates on April 29, 2003. In filing charges for terrorism and conspiracy to commit enemy action (udruzivanje radi neprijateljske delatnosti) the Serbian government stated:
The goal of organizing this criminal group was to commit illegal acts, including automobile theft, grand theft, extortion, kidnapping, murder, illegal trade in narcotics, and other criminal acts.3

At the same time, the statement charged that the criminal group
had completely regulated connections with various personalities from state institutions, the police, the judiciary, the prosecutors office, the Security Information Agency (BIA), with the president of the Serbian Radical Party Vojislav eelj, with military security commander General Aco Tomi, and with the entire command of the Unit for Special Operations (JSO) which was, in fact, under their strong influence, that is under their command.4

With these connections established, the indictment turns to the terrorism chargenamely, that the murder of Prime Minister Djindji constituted part of a plan to take political power that also involved murdering other high government officials. The language of the government statement is especially interesting in the way that it draws together criminal and ideological themes:
In order to accomplish their terrorist-criminal interests described above, they aligned themselves with quasipatriotic interests, the so-called patriotic or antiHague political bloc in Serbia. The concrete decision, according to information currently available, to carry out the killing was made by (Duan) Spasojevi and (Milorad Lukovi) Legija. Legija named the terrorist plan Stop The Hague.5

Although an association between the parties of the former regime and organized crime groups is asserted, the nature of the connection remains an open question. The charges can be read as meaning that the nationalist parties are fronts for organized crime, that organized crime is a tool of the nationalist parties, or that the naGordy Serbia After Djindji 11

tionalist parties and organized crime groups are both threatened by the same legal institution. The implication that paramilitary organizations, parastate organizations, and organized crime groups have close connections with one another should not surprise anybody who has followed events in the region over the last decade. Many details have come forward as a result of the Djindji murder investigation, but there is little about this nexus that was not already common knowledge, at least in general outline. What is new is that this common knowledge is being articulated from the top levels of governmentand apparently also acted upon. This could have important implications for how war crimes are understood, for the development of the political landscape in Serbia, and for the way that public institutions, especially judicial and law enforcement institutions, are perceived in Serbian public opinion.

Undermining the Parallel Universe of War Crimes

Successful prosecutions under international humanitarian law are able to separate the criminal act being prosecuted from the question of whether the political motivation for the act is legitimate.6 This helps to establish law as a legitimate institution founded on a perception of objectivity and equality of application, and also fundamentally as a field more concerned with acts than with motivations or identities. To the degree that law succeeds in this effort, it organizes collective feelings in outrage against the offense, and it strengthens commitment to the legal code under which an offense is defined as criminal. This is, in fact, one of the earliest propositions in the sociology of law, offered by Emile Durkheim: The function of law is to constitute and reconstitute a society as a moral community whose members are bound by the collective sentiments codified and crystallized in law.7 International humanitarian law presents several problems for this theoretical model, because it is enforced sporadically and is frequently imposed from outside the social community. Part of the reluctance in Serbian public opinion to accept charges of war crimes has to do with this unusual legal situation, and part of it has to do with perceptions of what is acceptable in the environment of war. What is crucial here is identifying how public opinion seeks dispensationsjustificationsfor war crimes. One dispensation relates to the pretexts offered for fighting a war in the first place. For example, there may be a perception that an enemy existed that, given the
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opportunity, would haveand may havecommitted the same offenses with which the perpetrators are charged. This rhetorical strategy symbolically places the enemy outside the moral universe that is affirmed by law, postulating a parallel universe in which moral obligations do not apply. This construction is far from unknown in environments of intense inequality and conflict. It has been extensively documented, for example, that African-American slaves maintained a strict moral code among themselves, but did not condemn acts of theft and sabotage directed at slaveholders, who were considered to have removed themselves from the moral universe by being slaveholders.8 In contexts of war and genocide, an essential rhetorical function is achieved by dehumanizing the enemy. Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda, for example, exhorted its listeners to kill the people whom it defined as cockroaches.9 The other major dispensation is related to the atmosphere of war itself. War is perceived as an anarchic and dangerous environment in which the goals that must be achieved are so vital that any means are justified and any excesses are understandable. The rhetorical move here is to postulate a universe that outsiders cannot possibly understand and should not attempt to discuss, much less regulate. Drawing a believable connection between war crimes and other types of crime undermines both strategies of dispensation, since the victims of domestic organized crime, and even of domestic political crimes, are not considered to be outside the moral universe, and the domestic environment cannot be persuasively constructed to resemble the mythological environment of war. To the degree that war criminals can be made to appear to public opinion as falling in the same category as other criminals, support for their prosecution and punishment is likely to be stronger. On the level of dispensation, what remain are political arguments about the International Criminal Tribunals ulterior motivations, lack of balance, and so on. The strength of these arguments depends on how much public opinion accepts arguments about patriotism, which is likely to decrease as patriotism comes increasingly to be seen as a label that demonstrated criminals apply to themselves.10

Between a Hard Place, a Soft Place, and No Place

One of the fundamental controversies that divided and eventually destroyed the political coalition that defeated Miloevi in October 2000 was the question of whether Serbia needed a soft or a hard transition. Advocates

of a soft transition, led principally by Yugoslav president Vojislav Kotunica, argued that continuity had to be maintained as much as possible, that political and economic reform should proceed gradually with an effort to minimize displacement, and that legal and political institutions from the preceding period should be maintained as far as possible. Advocates of a hard transition, led principally by Serbian prime minister Djindji, wanted to replace, as quickly as possible, the system inherited from the communist and nationalistauthoritarian periods with one that could integrate easily into European and global institutions. This group argued that the high social costs of a rapid transformation would be compensated with long-term economic and political benefits. To some degree, positions on the hard/soft axis might be thought of as indicating which bloc of supporters political groups hoped to attract in their efforts to build a viable electoral base. The soft position would appeal more to groups that had been ideologically sympathetic to the former regime, while the hard position would appeal more to opportunity seekers and technocrats. However, the issue of war crimes meant that there never was a genuine choice between a soft transition and a hard one. If significant elements of the inherited state structures, including the military and political elite, were deeply involved in a criminal enterprise and needed to be tried and punished to ensure the survival of the state, then there was no question of maintaining legal and political institutions from the preceding period. In that light, advocating a soft transition came increasingly to appear like a polite way of advocating no transition at all. The position only became tenable to the degree that it was possible to deny or disguise the criminal nature of the Miloevi regime. President Kotunica and his Democracy Party of Serbia (DSS) adopted this very position, which moved him further from the multi-party coalition that had brought him to power and closer to the parties of the previous regime. For this reason, Kotunica spent the latter part of his presidency casting doubt on the Miloevi regimes purported violations of international humanitarian law and on the credibility of the tribunal established to enforce it.11 This position seemed to resonate with the public throughout 2002, considering Kotunicas defeat of hard-transition advocate Miroljub Labus in the republican presidential elections in September 2002.12 Hard-transition advocates seized on the Djindji murder to accuse soft-transition advocates of creating conditions that had allowed the old criminal structures to regroup. Vice Prime Minister Neboja ovi, in an

interview the day after the murder, presented this thesis in language that had become popular in recent years, namely that people in Serbia had succeeded in bringing about October 5 (the actual date on which Miloevi was compelled to leave power in 2000), but that October 6 (the imaginary date that symbolized the definitive break of Serbian political culture from the legacy of the Miloevi period) never occurred:
It seems to me that October 6 has started now. I think that these are all consequences of all those things that were not done and had to be done from October 6, 2000, onward. . . . I often say that on October 5, 2000, some people feared for their safety, on October 6 for their money, on October 7 for their status, and by October 8 they had already managed to enter somehow into our structures and that they are now getting their revenge.13

In that sense, hard-transition advocates used the state of emergency imposed after the assassination to compensate for actions, especially personnel changes, that had been blocked in the 20012003 period. They were helped along in this by a flood of revelations about holdovers from the previous regime and their involvement with organized crime groups, as well as by revelations from media and government sources that provided the opportunity to make crucial personnel changes in the military. If Kotunica sought to uphold the reputation of the soft transitionists, he initially appeared to have fumbled it completely. After a half-hearted statement of mourning (he and Djindji had always had a strained relationship), Kotunicas Democratic Party of Serbia condemned the state of emergency and a proposal for the formation for a concentration government to be made up of all parties represented in parliament this would have included the formerly ruling Socialist Party (SPS), as well as the Serbian Unity Party (founded by paramilitary Zeljko Arkan Raznatovi, whose widow was believed to be harboring conspirators in the killing) and the Serbian Radical Party (headed by Vojislav eelj, who was named as an accessory in the killing), and also, incidentally, Kotunicas DSS, which had left the governing coalition in 2002. Later, Kotunica offered statements characterizing his former adviser Rade Bulatovi, also named in the conspiracy, as a political prisoner.14 Surveys following the dramatic events of March 2003 seemed to suggest that a realignment of political preferences was taking place in Serbia, although any survey results obtained under such extraordinary conditions need to be taken with a good deal of reserve. The StraGordy Serbia After Djindji 13

tegic Marketing agency found in March that 73 percent of the respondents in Serbia supported the state of emergency.15 Kotunicas proposal for a concentration government was supported by 31 percent of the respondents, as opposed to 66 percent who supported the combination of a state of emergency and a continuity government.16 Asked to name an ideal candidate

speculation that the government had failed to reform the security forces. Remarking on the lack of change in the State Security Service, the journalist Dejan Anastasijevi observed:
The structure that existed before was never demolished, not after Miloevi was removed from office, not after the arrest of (former State Security director) Rade Markovi, not even during Operation Sabre. The (State Security) bureaus strategy was to remove a few people from the top level, and rotate the rest around, send some to the interior or to other offices, and then later to quietly return them to more important positions, where they would continue to work in the way they have worked until now. They adopted that strategy after October 5, they used that strategy after the arrest and replacement of Rade Markovi and after the murder of prime minister Djindji, and every time it has worked for them.20

Hard-transition advocates seized on the Djindji murder to accuse soft-transition advocates of creating conditions that had allowed the old criminal structures to regroup.
for president of Serbia, 15 percent named Kotunica, down from 21 percent in December 2002, while the number of respondents volunteering the name of Miroljub Labus rose from 11 percent to 17 percent in the same period (the top responses remained dont know at 41 percent and someone else at 23 percent).17 The results showed a rapid increase in positive impressions of the hard-transition Democratic Party (DS) and G-17 party, a rapid decline in positive impressions of the soft-transition party DSS, and the complete marginalization of the parties of the former regime.18 It appeared that the time had come for the complete political defeat not only of the anti-reform forces, but also of the soft-transition option. The murder of Djindji was for some time thought to provide an opportunity to finally bring about the mythical October 6, under two conditions: first, if action against war criminals and organized crime groups were carried out quickly and decisively before the question could be eclipsed by other political issues, and second, if law enforcement action was not perceived as a pretext for the elimination of political opponents. The slow pace of the investigation and prosecution of suspects after the March assassination probably dissipated the initial enthusiasm for the battle against organized crime, as did the perception that the crackdown on organized-crime groups was partial and incomplete. As the post-assassination energy dissipated, the continuity government of Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovi suffered from new scandals involving corruption and political intrigue, which severely undermined its authority as an anti-crime force.19 The sluggishness of the law enforcement agencies on several well-known Miloevi era crimes, especially the 1999 murder of the newspaper publisher Slavko uruvija, also led to widespread
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Over time, repeated instances of corruption and inactivity have contributed to the perception that the governments action against organized crime has been more symbolic than sincere, and that the government did not in fact differ meaningfully from its predecessors in terms of willingness to face democratic accountability. The defeat of the government in a confidence vote in November 2003, combined with the failure of presidential elections in the same month, indicated that the moment of opportunity had passed and that these conditions had not been met. The parliamentary elections of December 28, 2003, showed that the hard-transition forces had failed to consolidate the legitimacy they briefly enjoyed in March and April. The ultra-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS) received the largest number of votes with 27.7 percent, while the Democratic Party (DS), which dominated the Serbian government under Djindji and afterward, received only 12.6 percent. After protracted negotiations, a new government was formed with Kotunica as prime minister, including his DSS, the newly formed liberal party G17+, and a coalition of Draskovis Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) and Nova Srbija, a populist party led by aak mayor Velimir Ili. A coalition of minority and regional parties did not receive the necessary 5 percent to enter the parliament, but Miloevis Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) did, with 7.4 percent (Miloevi, the titular head of the party, was not selected as a parliamentary deputy, a post he would not be able to take as he is in detention in The Hague). Kotunica was able to form a minority government without the involvement of DS by agreeing that SPS would support, but not participate in, his government.

Fostering Trust in Public Institutions

The state of emergency ended on April 22, 2003. Many people were arrested and some indictments filed, but trials have yet to begin. Acting President Nataa Mii highlighted the uncertainty surrounding this next step in her statement suspending the state of emergency:
The past forty-two days have changed Serbia permanently. For the better. From the report of the Serbian Government it is clear that the police have achieved meaningful results. Now the focus is on the judiciary. I hope that everybody who works in judicial institutions understands that they have before them a great opportunity to recover respect for their profession, which some irresponsible individuals among them have stained.21

change, given the association of domestic organized crime groups with the anti-Hague political bloc in Serbia, as well as the increasingly plausible perception that the ICTY, for all its shortcomings, has had some success in capturing and convicting suspects, whereas domestic institutions have not. In the unlikely event that an improvement in the public perception of the ICTY comes at the expense of public perceptions of the domestic judiciary, however, this is not likely to help reestablish trust in public institutions.

Serbian public-opinion surveys show that institutions are regarded as relatively closed, as corrupt, and as working against the interests of ordinary people.
For its own part, the ICTY has remained a central locus of controversy in Serbia. At least one new indictment has had the effect, probably unintentional, of keeping the debate over the legitimacy of the tribunal and the desirability of official cooperation with it alive. On October 20, 2003, the ICTY indicted four high-ranking military and police officers for crimes in Kosovo.26 The indictments, which charged the four on the basis of command responsibility and did not draw on new evidence of direct participation in criminal activity, included a police commander on active duty, Sreten Luki, who enjoys some popularity as a key figure in the anti-crime Operation Sabre. The indictment was widely criticized by government officials as an ill-timed and unwelcome intervention in the pre-election campaign, and almost every party joined in rejecting it. Prime Minister Zivkovi speculated that the ICTY was actively con tributing to the popularity of the parties of the former regime, and accused ICTY prosecutor aak Del Ponte of unconsciously participating in the elections on the side of eelj and Miloevi.27 Whether Zivkovis provocative charge is a fair assessment or an effort to manipulate anti-ICTY sentiment, it points to a background fact that has remained unchangedthe tribunal is not seen as an ally of reformist political forces in Serbia.

It is difficult to be optimistic about the incipient role of the Serbian judiciary. The investigation of the Djindji killing revealed close connections between high officials in law enforcement and organized crime groups. Among the individuals charged in this connection was Milan Sarajli, the deputy state prosecutor, who admitted to regularly receiving payments from the Zemun clan to obstruct investigations and feed evidence to suspects.22 The publics lack of trust in judicial institutions is symptomatic of a more general problem. All institutions, whether from the past or the present, and whether domestic or international, consistently receive low-confidence ratings in Serbian public-opinion surveys. Repeated surveys show that institutions are regarded as relatively closed, as corrupt, and as working against the interests of ordinary people.23 Domestic judicial institutions rank near the bottom on measures of public confidence.24 The 2003 investigations and arrests may have deepened this endemic distrust, in that the levels of corruption are even worse than had been popularly assumed. The judiciary has yet to demonstrate its competence to confront the evidence that will soon be presented. But, just as the operations against organized crime groups during the state of emergency appears to have drastically improved the image of the police, it is not impossible that exemplary behavior on the part of the judiciary might bring about a similar effect. One question awaiting research is how the recent operations against organized crime have affected popular perceptions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Arguments contesting the legitimacy of the ICTY have frequently received a sympathetic hearing in Serbia.25 This could

Some General and Tentative Conclusions

Considering the rapid changes since March 2003 and the continued instability of the political situation in Serbia, any conclusions suggesting that fluctuations in
Gordy Serbia After Djindji 15

public opinion are likely to become permanent changes would certainly be premature. Much of the initial response to the murder of Zoran Djindji could be explained in terms of shock. But shock is short-lived. It will not be possible to speak of genuine changes in popular orientation unless they become stable over the long term or fundamentally rearrange the political landscape. There were some early signs that this sort of rearrangement might happen. First, the widespread general distrust of institutions found an echo in the publicized findings of the police investigations, in what amounted to a rapid and efficient revelation of the layers and depth of corruption and squalor. These discoveries took place in a new wayhigh-ranking state officials revealed evidence and pledged to act upon it. This put state institutions in a new position, in which they had the potential to channel distrust and dissatisfaction into support for a program of institutional reform and reconstruction. Second, one of the strongest potential political bases for opposition to reform of institutions was fundamentally undermined. To the degree that patriotic arguments may have been successful in justifying war crimes, they could not be used to justify other crimes committed by the same people with the involvement of the former regime. Rather, the anti-reform bloc came increasingly to be seen as part of a vast criminal enterprise. The political violence exemplified by the Djindji killing stood as a concrete illustration of the negative correlation between the fate of war crimes suspects and the fate of citizens. Third, given the decidedly spotty record of governments in the region since Yugoslavia was first established in 1919, one general observation was hard to avoid. Whatever may be made in retrospect of the motivations behind the crackdown against organized-crime networks, it offered the first concrete evidence that the state was capable of efficient and coordinated action. In an environment in which major social institutions are described as having become empty forms,28 decisive action of any kind was probably welcomed by many people as a sign that conditions were changing fundamentally. These three major possibilities did not translate over the following year into a foundation for legitimacy or popularity for the coalition that had governed since October 2000. However powerful the potential of the situation, it is always a mistake to underestimate the capacity of the Serbian political elite to demolish its own opportunities and devalue its own political capital. To the degree that the reorientation of the political landscape depends only on the capacities of the individuals who now occupy it, it remains uncertain, as does Serbias
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ability to break decisively with the legacy of the Miloevi period.

Notes
1. Unsigned (attributed to FoNet), C-48: SDB ubacivala heroin u Hrvatsku (C-48: State Security Sent Heroin to Croatia), Danas (April 29, 2003). 2. Unsigned (attributed to Beta), Nataa Mii pozvala gradjane na jedinstvo (Nataa Mii calls for unity among citizens), B92 vesti (March 19, 2003). Reports from Serbia confirm that drug addicts were the incidental victims of the action against organized crime. Now that their supply and distribution networks have been interrupted, they are seeking treatment for withdrawal symptoms in large numbers. For a report from Novi Sad, see Vesna Savi, Sablja i u zakonima (Sabre in the Laws, Too), Novosadski nedeljnik (April 2003), available at www.nsnedeljnik.co.yu/aktuelno.html. 3. The full government statement, including the names of all fortyfive individuals charged in the conspiracy, can be found on-line on the Serbian government Web site: www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/vesti/2003-04/29/ 335683.html. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. A well-elaborated political motivation may, under international law, lead to a crimes being considered as more rather than less severe. Whereas violations of the laws or customs of war can occur as the result of oversight, evidence of an explicit policy of committing violations would encourage prosecutors to seek charges of crimes against humanity or genocide. 7. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), trans. W.D. Halls (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1982). 8. See, for example, Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage, 1976). 9. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 10. One example of the effort to maintain this label is provided in the open letter released in January 2003 by Milorad Lukovi-Legija, the suspected ringleader of the conspiracy responsible for the murder of Djindji. In the letter he claims credit for the change of regime in 2000, accuses Serbias political leadership of humiliating the state by cooperating with the ICTY, and claims authority for himself on the basis of the patriotism that he has demonstrated and proved countless times. The full text of the letter was published in the Belgrade daily Blic on January 28, 2003, and is available on-line at www.blic.co.yu. 11. In addition to numerous public statements, President Kotunica also acted less publicly to hinder cooperation with the ICTY. In March 2001 he established a Commission of the General Staff of the Army of Serbia and Montenegro for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, parallel to the government commission established by parliament. Kotunicas commission was staffed by active and retired military officers (among them General Milan Gvero, former deputy to Ratko Mladi, himself under indictment), who were able to exercise some control over the documentation available to domestic and international prosecutors and, consequently, to hinder official cooperation. See Ukinuta komisija GS Vojske SCG za saradnju sa Hagom (Commission of the SRJ Army General Staff for Cooperation with the Hague Disbanded), B92 vesti (April 11, 2003). 12. The elections were declared invalid because turnout was below the 50 percent threshold. A second round was held in December, but boycotted by all major parties except Kotunicas DSS and the extreme-right SRS of Vojislav eelj. A third effort in November 2003, in which the DOS candidate Dragoljub Miunovi was pitted against the SRS candidate Tomislav Nikoli, also failed due to low turnout. 13. Jelena Kosani, interview with Nebojsa ovi, Radio B92 (March 13, 2003). The text of the interview is available at www.b92.net/intervju/ 2003/ovi.php. 14. All the statements by Kotunica and DSS are taken from the archive of party press releases at the DSS Web site: www.dss.org.yu. 15. Strategic Marketing, Istrazivanje javnog mnenja (Public Opinion Research) (March 2003), p. 3 (www.smmri.co.yu).

16. Ibid., p. 4. 17. Ibid., p. 17. 18. Ibid., p. 14. 19. Two of the most important scandals involved charges of money laundering against Zoran Janjuevi and Nemanja Kolesar, both of them mid-level political appointees, and the apparent manipulation of parliamentary voting in the removal of the controversial National Bank governor, Mladjan Dinki, and his replacement by Kori Udoviki. 20.Specijalni sud jo nije dobio zahtev za sprovodjenje istrage (The Special Court Did Not Receive a Request for Investigation), B92 vesti dana (December 10, 2003). 21. Ukinuto vanredno stanje u Srbiji (State of Emergency Lifted in Serbia), unsigned news item posted on the Web site of the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (April 22, 2003). The article is available at www.cesid.org/vesti/index.shtml. 22. R.D., Uzeo 150 hiljada evra za adresu zatienog svedoka (He Took 150,000 Euros for the Address of a Protected Witness), Danas (March 21, 2003). 23. For a recent example, see Sreko Mihailovi, Gradjani u susretu sa institucijama u tranziciji (Citizens Confront Institutions in Transition) (Belgrade: Center for Policy Studies, May 2002). The results are similar to those in a survey from the previous year, Sreko Mihailovi et al., Javno mnenje Srbije: Na poetku novih deoba (Serbian Public Opinion: The Beginning of New Divisions) (Belgrade: Center for Policy Studies, August 2001). All of the published research reports of the center are available in PDF format at www.cpa-cps.org.yu.

24. Institut drutvenih nauka, Jugoslovensko javno mnenje 1996 (Yugoslav Public Opinion, 1996), cited in Ognjen Pribievi, Da li je minimalistiki koncept demokratije jo uvek validan? Sluaj Srbije (Is the Minimalist Conception of Democracy Still Valid? The Case of Serbia), 1998. The article is available at www.komunikacija.org.yu/komunikacija/ casopisi/sociologija/XL_3/Cl03/document/. 25. See the summary of public opinion research in Eric Gordy, Rating the Sloba Show: Is the ICTYs Leading Case Advancing Justice? Problems of Post-Communism 50, no. 3 (MayJune 2003): 5363. 26. The four officers charged were the former chief of staff, Neboja Pavkovi, the former commander of the Pritina Corps, Vladimir Lazarevi, the former chief of public security, Vlastimir Djordjevi, and Djordjevi s successor, Sreten Luki. The indictment had been issued on September 22, but was unsealed on October 20. 27. Unsigned, Zapad delimino snosi krivicu za popularnost ekstremista (The West Carries Some Responsibility for the Popularity of Extremists), B92 vesti dana (December 4, 2003). 28. Silvano Boli, Destroyed Society: Serbia in the Nineties and the Prospects for Renewal (lecture at Brown University, 2002). An outline of the lecture is available at www.watsoninstitute.org/muabet/new_site/ events_bolcic.cfm.

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Gordy Serbia After Djindji

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