yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 2
Volunteers from the ranks of the Serbian Radical Party (estimated
at between 30,000 and 50,000 men) fought in the war from
the very beginning. Their departure for the front was widely publicized
on Serbian television. Men returning from the front flocked
to Šešelj’s party because “he instills security.” 275 Šešelj’s volunteers
became part of the ypa, while other paramilitaries had their own
insignia but were under the ypa command. This arrangement was
made public in an August 23, 1991 decree of the Serbian government
on the enlistment of volunteers as Territorial Defense members.
Article 1 of this decree states: “Replenishment of the ypa with volunteers
shall be carried out in conformity with federal regulations.”
The most disciplined paramilitary unit was the Serbian Volunteer
Guard, which operated within the Novi Sad Corps and gave
birth, in 1993, to the Party of Serbian Unity. Established on October
11, 1990, the Serbian Volunteer Guard “steadily prepared to resist the
Ustasha army and its storm troopers.” 276 The founder of the Serbian
Volunteer Guard was Željko (“Arkan”) Ražnatović, who had a long
record of collaboration with the State Security Service as its executioner
of mainly Croat émigrés. In the 1970s, he had emigrated illegally
to Western Europe and embarked on a career of violent crime.
He was imprisoned several times but repeatedly managed to escape.
He returned to Yugoslavia in the 1980s, when he rejoined the State
Security Service. His paramilitary group was known as “Arkan’s
Tigers” and was entrusted by Milošević with helping to trigger
wars in Croatia and Bosnia. The Serbian Volunteer Guard operated
in close cooperation with the ypa—its source of weapons—and
played a decisive part in the closing stage of the “liberation” of Vukovar.
Arkan’s reputation as a Serbian hero was thus established, and
photographs of him began to appear on the front pages and covers
275 Borba, November 20–21,1993
276 Borba, March 31, 1992 .