Milosevic's Achilles Heel: Ego leads accused to admit control

When confronted with the possibility that major events occurred in Kosovo or Serbia outside his control, Slobodan Milosevic seems unable to resist setting the record straight -- even if it means implicating himself in war crimes.

Colonel John Crosland, British military attaché to Belgrade from 1996 to 1999, testified that Yugoslav Army (VJ) and Serbian police (MUP) tactics to eliminate the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were counterproductive and ineffective because they were excessive and largely focused on retaliation against the civilian population. Such tactics helped grow the KLA from a disorganized band of several hundred to an army of many thousand. According to Crosland, a military officer with 35 years experience, Serbian forces could have eliminated the KLA early on. Through ineptitude or calculation, they did not do so.

Crosland testified that both VJ and MUP forces participated in the Kosovo campaign during 1998 and 1999, concluding that the two forces engaged jointly in operations and were well coordinated. At that time, the VJ field command was headed by Colonel-General Nebojsa Pavkovic, commander of the Third Army in Kosovo.

The Serbian anti-terror campaign, according to Colonel Crosland, resulted in hundreds of villages burned, crops wantonly destroyed, businesses routed, and mosques damaged. He lodged objections with the Army General Staff, including its chief, General Momcilo Perisic, Pavkovic's superior. Crosland testified that during lengthy conversations with Perisic and General Dimitrijevic, his regular VJ contact, it was 'quite clear they were unhappy with how the operations were being organized.' Yet they said they were powerless to stop them because Milosevic had set up an alternative chain of command -- from Pavkovic directly to Nikola Sainovic, Milosevic's chief Kosovo advisor, and to Milosevic himself. In October 1998, Milosevic removed Perisic as head of the VJ. His replacement was General Pavkovic.

In his cross examination, Milosevic attempted to characterize Pavkovic's actions in 1998 as those of a field commander who must react to concrete situations as they arise. Colonel Crosland replied, 'I never said that a field commander shouldn't act on his own initiative. Of course he had to. What was indicated by your General Staff was that it was outside the chain of command. . . .They felt they no longer had control of what was going on in Kosovo. They indicated that Pavkovic was acting [without their approval]. . . .'

Faced with the implication that Pavkovic was directing his own mission in Kosovo, Milosevic's ego got the best of him. In a revealing question, he asked Crosland, 'Is it clear to you that his reaction to the situation on the ground must be and was in conformity with orders given down the chain of command? If it was outside, he would have to bear the consequences. I maintain he was not acting outside the chain of command.'

Crosland responded, 'In that case, you and Pavkovic must be responsible for what happened in Kosovo -- the massive destruction of the civilian infrastructure.'

Though he wasn't under oath and wasn't testifying, Milosevic clearly implied that Pavkovic's actions -- including attacks on villages with heavy weapons -- were part of a plan approved at the highest level, i.e. by himself as head of the Supreme Defense Council.

Nor did he disavow tactics that, according to Crosland, violated the Geneva Conventions. While claiming there were no attacks against 'undefended' villages, Milosevic asked rhetorically whether it isn't legitimate to attack villages from which there is firing at troops. Crosland responded, 'You are not entitled to fire artillery and anti-aircraft weapons against villages. . . . You used these time and time again.'

Rather than probe to discredit the substance of Crosland's testimony, Milosevic, as he has done repeatedly throughout the trial, tried to discredit Crosland himself, asking whether it seemed plausible that the Chief of the Army General Staff would talk about such things to a foreign general. When Judge May told him he'd missed the point, Milosevic tried to suggest that Britain, too, has assumed the right to protect dependent territories thousands of miles away (an apparent reference to the Falklands War).

This irrelevancy was too much for Judge May who interjected, 'You have missed the point --the destruction caused by the use of artillery against villages; the disproportionate response by your forces against the KLA. This has been the point throughout the trial. It is not one you seem to have grasped.'

Given Milosevic's focus on irrelevancies and peripheral matters, as well as his overarching ego, he may prove incapable of mounting a real defense to the charges. Perhaps he does not truly understand that civilians and civilian infrastructure are not legitimate targets in war or anti-terrorist police actions. Or perhaps he believes the racist rhetoric he promoted for more than a decade that Albanians are not fully human; therefore, their deaths in war are unremarkable collateral damage. A worldview that encompasses either of these can only be the product of an ego that denies any reality except the one it has created. In the end, Milosevic's ego may be the Achilles heel that proves his undoing.