'I Work for the One Who Pays Me:' JNA Colonel Describes Links with VRS

On Thursday, June 12, a former commander of a JNA (Yugoslavia People’s Army) base gave evidence linking the activities of ethnic Serb TO (“territorial defense”) units in Bosnia to the JNA and to top officials in Belgrade, including Slobodan Milosevic. Colonel Osman Selak, a Bosnian Muslim, was responsible for over 2000 troops and civilian workers at a logistics base in Banja Luka until leaving his command in October 1992. During that year, the military organization of the territories of the former Yugoslavia underwent radical change. JNA units were recalled by the FRY command in Belgrade first from Slovenia and Croatia, and then from Bosnia in May 1992. At the same time, the JNA was reconfigured and became known as the VJ, and newly formed militaries emerged in Bosnia based to greater and lesser extents on ethnic affiliations. After May 18, Selak’s base officially supplied the Army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, later to become the VRS, or Army of the Republika Srpska, in August of 1992 of the same year. These bodies interacted with the municipal TO units, which had been established under Tito as a form of local defense, and which played devastating roles in the Bosnian conflict.

In court, Selak identified documents signed by TO leaders in ethnic Serb municipalities requesting equipment and ammunition from the JNA, all of which were approved, according to his testimony. He described one request for 1,200 uniforms for the TO unit of Bosanski Petrovac, which, added to the over 500 men normally participating in the unit, represented the mobilization of the entire male population of the municipality. Selak also attested to daily, direct contact between his base and Belgrade even after May 1992, when the JNA was officially recalled from the newly independent Bosnia. Selak testified that no Serbian or Montenegrin JNA officers actually left the Banja Luka base after the redeployment, contrary to official orders that all non-native personnel leave the area. Rather, he said, the officers remained as part of the new Bosnian Serb military structure, leaving intact their chains of command and contacts with the Federal and Serbian governments in Belgrade.

This is the third trial for which Selak has been called as a witness at the Tribunal. His testimony was used in the Tadic case to support the court’s finding that the VRS maintained direct contact with the VJ and that they shared the same command structure originating in Belgrade. Prosecutor Dermot Groome submitted to the court extensive transcripts of the Tadic testimony as well as of the evidence Selak gave in the Brdanin and Talic case, limiting Thursday’s direct examination to a few key points. This evidence comes on the heels of witness C-47, who testified last week about the close relationships of command and organization between Serb paramilitary groups active in Croatia and Bosnia, JNA officers, and political officials at the highest levels of Serbian and Yugoslav government. Selak’s evidence bolsters the case that Serb police, paramilitary, and military forces were intimately involved in the violent division of Bosnia, contrary to Milosevic’s assertions.

In cross-examination, Milosevic correctly identified the greatest weakness in Selak’s testimony: as a Bosniak man, Selak was not considered “politically acceptable” by much of the Bosnian Serb leadership, and was excluded from many conversations between defense officials in the Republika Srpska and top Belgrade brass. The core of what he did witness, however, is strong evidence against Milosevic’s claim that the VJ cannot be linked to events on the ground in Bosnia. For example, Selak discussed a 1990 JNA directive that had recalled weapons from all TO units in the former Yugoslavia (meaning from all ethnic groups) to be stockpiled in army warehouses. According to his testimony, the weapons held in his area of command were redistributed in 1991 pursuant to orders from JNA generals Adzic and Uzelac. However, the weapons were redistributed only to TO units from Serb municipalities.

JNA forces returning from Slovenia and Croatia after their secession from Yugoslavia were under orders to transport all military equipment out of those territories. Selak told the court that JNA transports passing through Bosnia distributed these weapons to members of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (led by Radovan Karadzic) and to Serb TO units. The amici curiae pursued a line of questioning intended to elicit whether such distribution of arms and equipment wasn’t ordinary replenishment for JNA bases in Bosnia, or the result of confusion on the ground as to the proper role of the federal military at that time.

At least as to the issue of replenishment, Selak was clear: his base was at 105% capacity for equipment, the maximum allowed under military regulations, and certainly didn’t require reinforcements. Rather, his base itself provided local Serb units with whatever munitions were deemed lacking after the distributions from retreating JNA units. Moreover, Selak testified that he could see no practical reason why military equipment could not have been transported out of Bosnia once the region declared independence and the JNA was ordered to redeploy out of the area, as had been the case in Slovenia and Croatia. Instead, he indicated that army equipment was either simply maintained by the new VRS, or else transferred to TO units.

In addition to the daily communications with Belgrade, Selak also organized frequent convoys from the Banja Luka base to Belgrade after the official May 18, 1992 split until his departure from his command. The convoys consisted of columns of 45-50 trailers and fuel tank trucks, and were described by Selak as the lifeline keeping Banja Luka alive, transporting fuel, ammunition, food and money from Serbia. Without that corridor, Selak said there could have been no military presence in Banja Luka at all. Additionally, the salaries and benefits of the officers who remained at the Banja Luka base after the order for all non-native JNA personnel to withdraw continued to be supplied by Belgrade, and those officers continued to be subject to a centralized disciplinary system based in Belgrade. Military personnel recruited after May 19, 1992 were to be financed by the VRS administration.

Milosevic treated this disclosure as obvious and non-probative of a relationship of command or responsibility; in his formulation, the JNA personnel remaining in Bosnia had vested material interests and rights in the JNA and had paid into a social system that did not abandon them. Not ever conceding that Serbian and Montenegrin officers were in Bosnia after the official recall, Milosevic did not dispute that JNA personnel continued to be paid by the FRY government in Belgrade. He disputed only the resulting implication that the JNA general staff was somehow responsible for or linked to the actions of the VRS. In response, Selak reminded him of a local saying: “I work for the one who pays me.”