yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 2
Operational Plans for War in Croatia and Bosnia
Slovenia might have been quickly lost, but the ypa believed that
it could successfully assume control of the entire territory of Croatia
and so prevent the formation of a Croatian army and quell its aspirations
for independence. The process of planning how to achieve this
goal had begun in back in 1990 with the creation of “Ram.”
Ram (“framework” in Serbo-Croatian) originated in the offices
of kos, the ypa’s counterintelligence service, in 1990, when Communist
rule was clearly losing ground in Slovenia and Croatia. 258 This
secret, highly complex operation involved hundreds of operatives,
including members of Serbia’s State Security Service, which played
the key role in arming Serbs in Croatia. Apart from pro-Serbian ypa
leaders, crucial parts in the implementation of the plan were played
by Jovica Stanišić, head of the State Security Service within the Serbian
Ministry of Interior, and Franko Simatović, one of the most
important persons in the military faction of the Interior Ministry.
(Stanišić and Simatović were in charge of the “Military Line”
within the Serbian mup that organized paramilitary formations to
fight for a Greater Serbia. It was through the Military Line that
Milošević created his armed forces which were answerable to him
personally.)
Ram was first publicly mentioned at the September 19, 1991, session
of the federal government and was disclosed in the September
30 edition of Vreme, which stated that Ram had been discussed in
258 KOS numbered some one thousand officers before the war . Aleksandar Vasiljević describes
it as the “‘most capable, most reliable and best organised security force in the country . KOS
systematized all information on the YPA’s internal decision making, recorded all hostile acts
committed or planned to be committed, analyzed every relevant development outside
the purview of the YPA, and monitored everything abroad bearing on the security of the
YPA and Yugoslavia .” NIN, June 12, 1992 . KOS was not under civil control after Tito’s death .
The SFRY Presidency tried to establish a commission that would monitor the work of the
State Security Service, including KOS, but the initiative was under extraparliamentary
pressure to be postponed because the ”‘country was faced with more serious problems,”
such as ”economic difficulties” that should not “waste the energy of the Parliament .” Raif
Dizdarević, Od smrti Tita do smrti Jugoslavije, Svjedocenja, sarajevo, 1999, p . 116 .