yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 4
light soon after October 5. 507 When Đinđić tried to confront the Red
Berets—a special anti-terrorist unit created in 1991—over the unit’s
links to war crimes and organized crime, the attempt cost him his
life. The mastermind of his murder, Miodrag Legija Ulemek, had
been groomed by Milošević into a powerful figure, his unit having
been assigned an important part in dodging sanctions, generating
war profits, and carrying out ethnic cleansing. The Red Berets
had agreed in 2002 to do nothing to try to save Milošević, but Legija
and his comrades were ready to assassinate the prime minister in an
attempt to save themselves.
Just as the state’s internal security services have been able to
maintain their privileged position despite Milošević’s ouster from
power, so too has the Army. Closely associated with Milošević, the
Army avoided a purge of its senior officers by finding patrons in the
government that replaced him, notably, the newly elected federal
president, Koštunica. The fact that General Nebojša Pavković, chief
of the General Staff and Milošević’s crony, remained in office for
several months, as did the chiefs of the Army counterintelligence and
intelligence services (kos and vos), was proof that the Army could
not be touched, especially by the inexperienced dos politicians. The
Army’s policy regarding war crimes was to sacrifice junior officers in
order to protect the chief culprits. Another policy was for the Army
publicly to distance itself from the secret police and the various paramilitary
formations.
Only after joining nato’s Partnership for Peace in 2006 did Serbs
make a breakthrough in reforming the army by retiring all the
officers who had taken part in recent wars. Although Serbia had not
met all the preconditions for joining the security association, nato
member-states concluded that from a regional security standpoint, it
507 In March 2001, authorities discovered 623 kg of heroin (valued at $300 million) in the
vaults of the Belgrade branch of Komercijalna banka, a DB collaborator . It was clear
that narcotics were a source of finance keeping the Milošević regime in existence .